BLOG.BERTELLIGROUP.COM
Free press release posting sites
phil(at)BigNews.biz compiled this list -- it's a fluid list and will be updated as information changes. Always good to have these sites in one's tool box. Here they are -- hope they help!
1. PRLog.org
4. BigNews.biz
7. PR-USA.net
8. OpenPR.com
9. free-press-release-center.info
10. SBWire.com
11. PowerHomeBiz.com
13. TheOpenPress.com
14. Live-PR.com
15. USPRWire.com
What I am thankful for from 2010
- Brett Favre for showing his unmentionables. Characters like this will always need damage-control PR.
- Smart, savvy clients.
- TSA employee Tweets.
- The discussion, ad nauseam, of the impending Royal nuptials distracting everyone from the sputtering global economy.
- Justin Bieber on the big screen.
Blue Over Leaving JetBlue
It seems Steven Slater has had a change of heart about his dramatic exit from his 20-year flight attendant career. I guess that doesn't seem so strange -- usually when we have those knee-jerk moments in life, they are quickly followed by the "oh shi*, what did I do moment." Lesson: do some om's before the knee jerk. It will be interesting to see if he can crawl back into the graces of an airline - a regional jet carrier perhaps?
I'm still curious to see if JetBlue uses this PR opportunity to its advantage. I like the post on the company blog, giving kudos to their employees. More of this from JetBlue!
Check it out: The Hybrid Professional
http://www.deirdrebreakenridge.com/2010/06/the-hybrid-professional/
Exactly!
Exactly!
WSJ article -- Hype Exceeds Reality: Value of Social Media
Test
Bingo!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575123691040422082.html
MARCH 15, 2010
Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media
Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It's Overrated; 'Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality'
By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.
The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. "You can't buy that exposure," says the firm's co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.
But Mr. AvRutick's experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they're highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
"The hype right now exceeds the reality," says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University's Lubin School of Business.
Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.
Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What's more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.
"It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect," says Mr. Chiagouris.
A business owner's time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot's Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey's respondents say it requires more effort than expected.
To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.
Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a "patient investment."
"My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven't made millions of sales," says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds's accounts on Twitter and Facebook. "People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago."
Some entrepreneurs say they've found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.
"The people coming from social media have been buying," says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.
As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company's Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
"The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines," says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn't invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.
Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what's being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers' buying decisions.
Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.
Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot's Web site about kayaking.
Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.
"I didn't find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands," she says.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
Bingo!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575123691040422082.html
MARCH 15, 2010
Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media
Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It's Overrated; 'Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality'
By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.
The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. "You can't buy that exposure," says the firm's co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.
But Mr. AvRutick's experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they're highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
"The hype right now exceeds the reality," says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University's Lubin School of Business.
Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.
Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What's more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.
"It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect," says Mr. Chiagouris.
A business owner's time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot's Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey's respondents say it requires more effort than expected.
To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.
Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a "patient investment."
"My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven't made millions of sales," says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds's accounts on Twitter and Facebook. "People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago."
Some entrepreneurs say they've found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.
"The people coming from social media have been buying," says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.
As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company's Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
"The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines," says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn't invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.
Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what's being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers' buying decisions.
Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.
Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot's Web site about kayaking.
Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.
"I didn't find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands," she says.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
Under the Bus
This week one of my client's competitors re-released a well-thought-out guide to B2B and social media. Overall, I found the report to be informative and providing concrete advice until I reached the paragraph where the author suggested, and I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, that traditional PR is dead and those budgeting dollars should be allocated to social media.
While I agree that there is a valid place for social media and companies will fall behind if they don't incorporate a social media plan into their overall PR/marcomms strategy, it is careless to throw traditional PR under the bus and suggest that organizations solely rely on social media.
For one, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Social media is a forum to reach an audience and not a replacement for the services traditional PR offers. It is bad advice to tell clients that they don't need traditional PR and can replace it with social media simply to try and usurp more of the budget allocated for PR/marketing services. What makes this example even more annoying is the source -- a lead generation/marketing automation SaaS provider. Now, stay with me here: a lead generation provider broadcasting that companies should fire their PR team and shift the budget to social media. Hmmm, but I digress.
It's important to have representation across all fronts -- social media, lead generation and, yes, traditional PR -- and bad form to suggest a company could have its social media team doing messaging, media/analyst relations, etc. I would never purport to do direct marketing and it behooves my colleagues in that space to tread lightly when suggesting direct marketers or social media experts can replace traditional PR.
While I agree that there is a valid place for social media and companies will fall behind if they don't incorporate a social media plan into their overall PR/marcomms strategy, it is careless to throw traditional PR under the bus and suggest that organizations solely rely on social media.
For one, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Social media is a forum to reach an audience and not a replacement for the services traditional PR offers. It is bad advice to tell clients that they don't need traditional PR and can replace it with social media simply to try and usurp more of the budget allocated for PR/marketing services. What makes this example even more annoying is the source -- a lead generation/marketing automation SaaS provider. Now, stay with me here: a lead generation provider broadcasting that companies should fire their PR team and shift the budget to social media. Hmmm, but I digress.
It's important to have representation across all fronts -- social media, lead generation and, yes, traditional PR -- and bad form to suggest a company could have its social media team doing messaging, media/analyst relations, etc. I would never purport to do direct marketing and it behooves my colleagues in that space to tread lightly when suggesting direct marketers or social media experts can replace traditional PR.
