My Biggest Influencers

Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology tagged me for a meme about my biggest influencers. Here are my biggest influencers:

My Grandmother (photo)- As I mentioned in an earlier post, my grandmother passed away in September. She was such a vibrant woman who took care of her children and grandchildren. She embodied what a strong woman is – she came from a small village in China and emigrated to the States. She was always there – caring and loving. She was my grandmother.

My Parents – It’s so funny. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have appreciated everything that my parents did for me. As an adult with a husband, home and profession, I now realize how hard my parents worked to raise and put me and my three siblings through college. They came to the US for a better life for their family. I truly appreciate everything they did and they have taught me the value of hard earned money.

My best friend, Danielle – I’ve known Danielle since my freshman year in college. Danielle has taught me so much about life and perserverence. She showed me patience when maybe, at times, I didn’t deserve it. She showed me what a true friend is and how to be a good one.

So there you go, my biggest influencers. I’m going to tag CK, Mack Collier and Brendan Cooper. Let’s see what they say.

Are You Going to Blogger Social?

It’s a brand new year and I’m so looking forward to the Blogger Social. Only 90 more days and party in New York! I’m looking forward to meeting all the bloggers I’ve emailed, as well as those I read.

It should be tons of fun and I offered to teach a salsa class too. If you’re interested in meeting up or learning salsa, leave me a comment and we can arrange some time in between the events.

If you haven’t registered yet, you have until February 15, 2008 to register. It includes three events – one Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening.  

There’s event a funny video that was put together of everyone attending:

Apologies for No Updates – Been Out Sick

I’ve been sick this whole week. I hope to come back strong with posts. I’ve also been tagged by Paul Dunay about my biggest influencers, so I’ll work on that as well. Thanks!

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: December 20, 2007

OOPS – forgot to publish this last week =)

This will be my last summary until the New Year. Come back next week for my post reflecting on my first 6 months of blogging and popular posts. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed: 

Pitched Into a Coma -  Ok – I shouldn’t be pointing to this but I did find Ken Magill’s of DIRECT Magazine description of a bad PR pitch quite amusing. Here’s an excerpt of his “rant”:

Or maybe the reason we didn’t call back is because the pitch put us into a catatonic state. Such was the case with a pitch received here several weeks back.

It was so buzzword laden that before it put me into a catatonic state, it made me cock my head to the side like a confused dog.

Remedial Social Media Guide – Michael Pick wrote a great primer for social media at MasterNewMedia. For those just starting out, this is a must read, while it may seem simplistic for those already implementing social media.

Social Networking for B2B PR – Tom Pick provides some interesting tips on how to use social networking for B2B PR. I highly recommend points 1 and 3 for any PR practitioner. 

Oh No Spock! – Alec Saunders typically writes about VoIP type of issues. He occasionally looks at things that impact him, such as this interesting practice from Spock – the people search engine. Alex highlights how Spock is using interesting ways to send invites to people for your trusted network.  

SEOd Blog Drives Sales Results – BtoB Magazine highlights how a company leveraged SEO to increase blog traffic which in turn drove sales leads. As more and more B2B companies begin experimenting with social media applications and tools, there will be more case studies of this type.
 

Thoughts for 2007: Popular Posts

It’s that time of year to reflect back on the year and make your resolutions for the New Year. I gave up resolutions a long time ago – how can you ask a chocolate lover give up chocolate for a whole year? Sorry – just can’t do it.

So instead of resolutions, here are the top posts from 2007:

1. Let the 2008 Trends Lists Begin
2. Many of you were curious about me
3. You liked the compilation of How to Pitch Bloggers list
4. And like me, online reputation management was a concern
5. SEOing press releases was another top post

Embargoes – Valid in the Brave New World of PR?

Recently, I saw CenterNetworks tweet about broken embargoes and Allen wrote a follow up post about his views on embargoes.  This raises an interesting question about whether or not embargoes are still valid in this new world of instantaneous news and the desire to scoop your fellow bloggers and traditional media. 

Even before blogs, you always risked the possibility of a reporter breaking your embargo. Heck, this happened to me when I worked with a reputable national business outlet before my client launched at a conference. The article appeared on the Sunday before the conference began and also mentioned a couple of other companies.  

The saving grace? Reporters were still interested in learning more about the company and technology. And there were several high-quality articles written about the company. 

In the end, I believe embargoes are still valid. The question isn’t should you have an embargo or not but rather how you go about securing and managing embargoes.  

Considering an Exclusive to One Outlet – Depending on your news and objectives, it may be worthwhile to give one media outlet an exclusive on the news. Usually, if the news is big enough for a top-level reporter/blogger to honor an embargo for an exclusive, other reporters/blogs will still cover your news. 

Use Your Common Sense – If a reporter or blogger has consistently broken an embargo, it’s most likely that that they won’t honor an embargo. Still brief the person on your news, but schedule the briefing for the day of your announcement, not before. If the briefing is early enough, then they still have time to write up a brief for online publication. 

Not All News Require an Embargo - I think we tend to fall into the habit of trying to have embargoes for all press releases. This just won’t work. If you’re going to require an embargo, make sure the news is worthy of one.

Be Consistent with Embargoes – As Allen highlighted in his post, he “broke” his embargo because he noticed the news on the company website. If you’re going to have an embargo, be consistent on when information gets updated to a corporate website, blog, or social network, as well as distributed on the wire. If it happens often, reporters/bloggers will begin assuming it’s ok to post things early.

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: December 14, 2007

Better late than never – here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed: 

What Consumers Really Use Media – Via KD Paine’s blog, I saw this tidbit about Ketchum’s new survey. The survey highlights where consumers turn to for information and advice. Here’s the gist of the results: “Despite the strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place.” 

Refresher Course for Blogging – Robin Good posts this primer from Joshua Porter. Joshua provides his nine tips for blogging. As communicators/practitioners/marketers, I think it’s key to understand how bloggers are constantly seeking to improve their blogs. And personally, I liked Joshua’s tips! 

To Astroturf, Is to Be? – Now is Gone is fast becoming one of my favorite PR related blogs. In this post, Ike highlights that astroturfing is just part of our human DNA. In the great words of the Borg “Resistance is futile” – or is it?  

Take a Community to Build a Social Network – Toby Bloomberg shares 12 tips for creating a social networking community. Very solid tips for any company wanting to create a community.  

The Great Twitter Experiment – As many may have heard by now, Jeremiah Owyang started an interesting experiment earlier this week. Jeremiah’s twitter post helped many people find each other, including yours truly. Check out my post about this as well. 

When Blogging Isn’t for Everyone – This comes courtesy of the Influential Interactive Marketing blog. Seems like Scott Adams of Dilbert fame is realizing that a blog may not be the best outlet for achieving his goals. In this case, Adams had some goals for his blog. As Rohit states: “Free or not free, if your blog ends up having a different voice than what your audience expects, then you may need to come to a similar realization about your blog.”  

Social Media in China – Da Jia Hao! (Hello Everyone!) – I will always have a soft spot for China and Taiwan. Buzz Bin brings us an interview with Debbie Weil and the growth of social media in China. Don’t underestimate China. Just because the media and information is supervised doesn’t mean it will curtail participation by individuals. People have learned to adapt within the unsaid rules of the culture.  

An Evolved CMO –  I found this interesting CMO research from Forrester interesting as it may help to understand what a CMO’s ultimate goal is. And heck, maybe we can help with this as well! 

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