Friday Roundup: I’d like to quote you

I'd like to quote you.

Without doubt, the marketing and PR professions are in revolutionary flux right now. I reckon that if we didn't have these disciplines to date but just realised here and now that we actually wanted to influence what people think and do, and ensure we're influenced straight back, that we'd design things very much differently to the status quo we've inherited.

I'm delighted that Wiley has invited me to write a book on just this topic. It's going to focus on the much needed transformation of marketing and PR strategies, and the related disciplines in the influence mix, for the current and future digital age.

The book explains what’s happened, what’s happening and what’s coming up. It points to the changes of direction organisations and individual practitioners must pursue to remain relevant.

And in the spirit of a marketer honing a product’s positioning, I’ll tell you what this book is not. This book is not a social media ‘how to’. Rather, it's about your organisation, your profession and your career. As with all changes to the competitive landscape, the earliest adapters will secure competitive advantage for their organisation and personal careers, whilst the laggards will suffer competitive disadvantage. And quickly.

I'd like to quote you. Please do get in touch if you'd like to share your viewpoint and experiences... the book will only be improved by your contributions. Seriously, do it!

And if you're interested in the bit about what's coming up, I'm running a session this coming Thursday in London at the CIPR on the Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things if you'd like to join us.

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

5 Not-So-Easy Steps to Managing Your Brand Online

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Unless you literally run your business with your ears plugged and your eyes covered, you are aware of the importance of social media and its impact on both brand and bottom line. However, while social media is the topic du jour in mainstream news, on blogs, in books, at conferences and at your local Starbucks, we may still underestimate its overall promise and potential.

The socialization of business is comparable to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland or the red pill in the Matrix. If ignorance is bliss, awareness is awakening. More...

Video documentaries as brand journalism

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

A short online video documentary is a terrific form of brand journalism for any organization. Brian Halligan and I recently finished out "follow the band book tour" to launch our new book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History.

I created this mini-documentary to illustrate how the Dead freed their music, cultivated a relationship with fans, and built a social network before Mark Zuckerberg was even born. Near the end of the video, Brian and I discuss how every business can use these ideas. More...

Building your personal reputation online (and getting hired) – lessons from recent graduates

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

Individuals that want to get ahead in digital PR should use social media to build their personal reputation. At least that was the conclusion of the CIPR Summer Social workshop that I led last week on getting ahead and getting hired in digital. I included examples from recent graduates such as Ben Cotton, Jed Hallam, Laura Tosney and Matt Watson that have used digital techniques to build their personal reputation during the last two to three years.

Their experiences getting hired into some of the UK’s leading PR and social media agencies are inspirational and worth sharing more widely. More...

Marketing Metrics and Myopic Usage of Analytics

by David H Deans of Digital Lifescapes

Most U.S. marketers are using analytics. They recognize the importance of measuring marketing effectiveness, especially when they are asked to justify their spending. However, according to a report by eMarketer, there is room for improvement in formalizing approaches and communicating results.

According to a survey of senior marketing executives by Forbes Insights and MarketShare Partners, nearly seven in ten said they used analytics to measure marketing effectiveness. Marketers with large budgets were significantly more likely to do so than those with spending of less than $1 million. More...

TAC Straps in for a Terrific Integrated Campaign

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

In the communications game it's important to ensure you have plenty of 'layers' to the stories you tell on behalf of your clients (if agency) or organisation (if in-house).

That's often the job of the PR and/or advertising team - to bring a story to life so that it resonates with audiences. To do this, you need to be able to identify and add layers of interest, to 'join the dots' of a story and then leverage via a multitude of different channels.

Sometimes a bit of luck can fall your way and the elements come together beautifully, thus ensuring the communication enjoys maximum impact. More...

Does the average UK Facebook user spend 24 hours per month on the site?

by Andrew Smith of escherman

According to Hitwise, the average amount of time spent on Facebook by a Briton has decreased from 30 minutes in December 2009, to 27.36 minutes during June and July 2010.

According to Google, the average session time was 26.40 mins – not wildly dissimilar to Hitwise’s estimate. Perhaps even more interesting, Google claims that the average number of visits per UK Facebook user last month was 51 (worldwide average is 33). On Google’s figures, that would suggest the average UK Facebook user spent 1360 minutes on the site last month – More...

The Difference Between Doing Social Vs. Being Social

by Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks

There is a rather large difference between companies "doing" social and "being" social. For a company to succeed at this new business model, they must learn how to do social and also, enable their people to be social.

Doing social is the imperative part of the equation. This means making plans, defining objectives complete with outcomes, tracking and measuring success and making adjustments to the plan along the way. Most companies start doing social within their marketing and sales departments to drive traffic to their site and raise awareness about their products or services. More...

Educating your salespeople about the new B2B sales cycle

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

I spent most of my career in B2B marketing, although for four years I was in B2B sales. So I've seen both sides. Back in the mid 1990's it was hard to find evidence of love between marketing and sales. At many business-to-business companies the relationship was downright adversarial. Often, the tension extends all the way up to senior management.

It all stemmed from the sales process involving a "handoff." Marketing generated leads, handed them over to sales and then the sales team owned them until close. More...

Ethics in PR Measurement

by Philip Sheldrake of Influence Crowd LLP

I took part in the #measurepr Twitter chat today on ethics in measurement. These chats are organised by Shonali Burke and her blog post "Influence: From BS to Best Practice" set the scene nicely.

At the most fundamental level, we were asking whether some of the techniques being deployed for PR measurement are compatible with the aspiration of public relations professionals to be transparent and authentic, and, more precisely, whether they are compatible with codes of conduct as published by the likes of the CIPR, PRSA and CPRS. More...

Why poor backlink requests are like bad PR Pitches

by Andrew Smith of escherman

The SEO vs PR debate continues to rumble on. However, on a very tactical level, it occurred to me that certain SEO practitioners are starting to emulate some of PR’s worst habits – specifically, the bad pitch. Or at least it’s SEO equivalent – the poor Backlink Request. The key qualities they share are irrelevance and lack of personalisation.

Journalists hate getting mass-mailed irrelevant junk. And in a similar way, if you run a website or a blog (and let’s face it, that’s a lot of us these days), it is just as annoying to get spammy link requests. More...

What your Bounce Rate Says About You

by Paul Greenhalgh of Searched, Designed, Developed

le Analytics is a very powerful tool but sometimes its results can be misleading. It is very easy to see a green improvement percent and think that all is well. Even metrics that we have benchmarks for don't always mean what we think they do. A good example of this is Bounce Rate. If you've never heard of Bounce Rate before, check out the Analytics glossary at the bottom of the page.Bounce Rate benchmark

If a Bounce Rate is over than 40%, I take it as an indication that site visitors are not getting involved with site content. More...

Video: The Great Advertising Disconnect? From Campaign to Continuum

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

In part eight of a series of conversations exploring the state and future of social media, Chris Beck, founder of 26dottwo (@26dottwo) and I discuss the changing landscape of advertising and engagement.

Advertising and marketing is experimenting with campaigns and engagement programs that essentially brings creative to life. It’s the fusion of influence and confluence that will define their success over time.

But how do we define success?

Success stories in social are now common, but can we truly use them as templates for our unique market dynamics? In order to measure the success of our programs, we must design metrics and desired outcomes into the plan. More...