After the past week’s distractions, I’ve been able to finalize a FREE eBook that compiles the Using Social Media Series into one easy-to-use guide. The previous posts included:

1) Using Social Media: Part 1 – Microblogging

2) Using Social Media: Part 2 – Search Feeds

3) Using Social Media: Part 3 – Social Networking Sites (Updated link)

4) Using Social Media: Part 4 – Linking Strategies

5) Using Social Media: Part 5 – Blogger Relations

6) Using Social Media: Part 6 – Measurement

Again, the purpose of this eBook is to provide a quick guide for using social media. If you find this eBook valuable, please forward this to your friends, share on Facebook, retweet it or let me know what you think. I just ask that you provide attribution to the site.

Let me know what you think. I look forward to improving this moving forward.

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.
 

It’s that time of year when reporters, bloggers and companies take out their crystal ball to predict trends for 2008. Here are my top three trends that will impact the PR industry:

1.   Let a 100 Blogomerates Bloom: With the relaunch of Industry Standard (I believe as a blog) and the popularity of GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, I envision more blogomerates gaining prominence and influence on the media landscape. “Traditional media” have already started creating blogs in specific topic areas but this will need to branch out more in terms of open comment policies and having dedicated bloggers versus reporters who blog. 

2.       Social Media Connections: I envision savvy PR departments/agencies leveraging social media networks to keep key reporters, bloggers, analysts and other influencers up to date on announcements. Facebook is probably the best default for this as you can maintain the invites and funnel interesting tidbits related to a specific industry/company for story ideas. Will news be broken via Facebook or other similar tool, that will be interesting to see. 

3.       Long Tail PR: Chris Anderson described the concept of the Long Tail and Now Is Gone did a great review of this for PR. The question is how does this truly impact PR? Top media coverage now extends from traditional media (i.e. WSJ, BusinessWeek, etc.) to top bloggers (i.g. GigaOm, TechCrunch, Read/Write, etc.). As PR has the opportunity to manage social media relationships, then how do you balance and measure the impact of “long tail” relations will be key in 2008. 

Tom Pick of Web Market Central also provided me with his predictions for 2008. My husband would be happy with number 4:

1. The social networking space will begin to implode. There are far too many players currently competing for too few eyeballs. The biggest and strongest (e.g. Digg, MySpace, FaceBook) will survive as general purpose social sites, but smaller players will need to specialize in order to remain viable. Specialization will revolve around affinity groups and demographics.

2. As a follow-on to prediction #1, businesses (at least a few forward-thinking ones) will begin to figure out how to capitalize on the popularity of social networks. It’s not about running ads on YouTube, it’s about participation: if a CEO or anyone else can bring value to a particular community (e.g. through great content and tags, and spending the time for back-and-forth dialog that adds value), then that person’s company and product/service will benefit from indirect association with that expertise.

3. PR professionals will reach out to bloggers in different ways, beyond just pitching press releases. For example, the blog community can bring value as – pardon the language, but it’s the clearest way to say this – bullsh*t detectors, as in “we think we’ve got something really hot on our hands here. We’d like to make this claim. Will that stand up to scrutiny?” and then let the dialog of the blog help determine the answer.

4. Realizing that none of its teams has a prayer of beating New England in the Super Bowl, the NFC sends its All-Pro team to Arizona. The Patriots still win by three touchdowns.

Here are links to other Top Trends for 2008:

1. Top Marketing Trends via CRM Blog
2. Jon Fine of Business Week via blip.tv
3. Consumer Internet Trends via VentureBeat
4. The Year of Business Networking from Read/Write Web
5. What’s Hot or Not PRSA Panel with top reporters: Wall Street Journal‘s Kara Swisher and Don Clark; Business Week‘s Rob Hof; Forbes‘ Victoria Murphy Barrett; and Scobleizer‘s Robert Scoble. Ann Winblad of venture capital firm Hummer Winblad moderating.
6. BtoB’s “2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans” survey
7. 2008 IT trends from IDG 
8. Year of LinkedIn from Anne Zelenka of GigaOm  – Personal comment – this truly depends how LinkedIn maneuvers to “catch-up” to the other social networks. Advantage – seen by most as a professional site. Disadvantage – first move advantage taken over by Facebook and slow response to changes for the site.
9. O’Reilly’s 2008 Stories they would like to see
10. WebWorkerDaily’s 2008 Predictions
11. AdAge came out with some interesting 2008 trends: marketers & micro trends, another interesting list, and CMO issues
12. David Armano states that 2008 will be the Year of Mobile - what does this mean for PR and marketing opportunities?
13. Micropersuasion’s Digital Trends for 2008 – Part I - this is just the first of several that will be posted, so tune in to the Micropersuasion blog for updates.
14. Interesting SaaS Trends to watch for 2008

15. BtoB Magazine presents their 2008 Trends for Email Marketing – By the way, my company actually did point 4 for a client =)

     

16. An Eentrepreneur’s US Tech Trends for 2008 - note – this is via VentureBeat and written by Bernard Moon.

     

17. GigaOm Panel Discussion with Dan Farber and Rafe Needleman about 2008 Tech Trends (video)

     

18. Jeremiah Owyang interviews Guy Kawasaki about his predictions for marketing and tech in 2008. Interesting point, Guy says 2008 will be key for marketers. Demonstrating key value of programs is important for programs.
19. B.L. Ochman’s 2008 Marketing Trends - personally, I think privacy has been an issue. It just comes back every few years depending on the technological landscape.

20. Judith Hurwitz provides her 2008 Tech Trends

     

21. MediaPost provides insight for Media Trends for 2008.

     

22. Merril Lynch Internet Trends 2008

     

23. Raghav Gupta’s 2008 Trends and Themes to Watch via GigaOm

     

24. John Battelle’s 2008 Predictions - hmmm, I’m actually curious to see if these company predictions come true. I’m wondering if Microsoft can regain that magic and if Yahoo! can make the turnaround happen.

     

25. George Dearing writes his trends for enterprise content management (ECM) in InformationWeek.Adding this because has tangential relevancy to my current company. I’m curious to hear more about platform-as-a-service.

     

     

 Am I missing any compilations? Do you have any recommendations of other trends for 2008? Let me know in the comments.

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TechCrunch Boston Checked out the TechCrunch Boston event while in town for a family gathering. Was a little bit difficult to find because there was Boylston Place and Boylston Street. 

Thankfully, we found someone who mentioned it was the old Alley Cat Bar, a place that my husband knew. With my husband’s help, we found the event and helped another attendee get there too. 

Was a little jetlagged so didn’t do a lot of networking. 

Met Dave from mZinga, which launched at the event. Interesting company because they took a very successful LMS company and combined with a knowledge management company. They are bringing in an interesting business model and expertise for developing, monitoring and valuing social networking within companies. Their advantage is experience in services and methodology from the LMS space. Will be interesting to see how they leverage this experience with mZinga. 

Checked out an online poker tournament company (don’t remember name) – wasn’t sure if the model will work. Little wary of making money on advertisement. 

With over 700 people in attendance, open bar, and an after party at a nearby Irish Bar (yeah, in Boston?), I wonder if there will be more written about the Web 2.0 Exuberance.  

(Photos: Mike Arrington (top), IDG Ventures (bottom)

Technorati Tags: IDG Ventures mZinga Social media social networking TechCrunch Web 2.0

Here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues:

Dell Pulling Out All the Stops – According to Now Is Gone, Dell is taking social media/conversation a step further with the launch of Dell Shares – an investment relations related blog. Maybe transparency and conversation is currency for this economy. Hmmm, consider buying some Dell stock.   

Digging It – Pro Net Advertising provides some simple tips for creating an interesting digg title. I haven’t tried venturing onto Digg yet, so if you have other helpful hints, let me know. When New Best Practices are Old - CK brings up a good point about a recent B2B marketing best practices report that was just published. From her perspective, these reports merely add to the echo chamber of what is believed to improve a product launch, versus truly unveiling best practices on what is happening around us. She plans to unveil her top ten best practices shortly.

 Lately I’ve been feeling a case of deja vu. Industry Standard is being resurrected. The umpteenth company being funded for video sharing, online video, social networking – select the focus and someone’s funding it. Here are the Top 7 Signs of the Web 2.0 Exuberance – the replay of the dot.com days?:

1. Though the valuations may be lower, it’s eery how most start-up seem to have business plans based on – advertising.

2. And if the business plan isn’t based on advertising, then the hope is … acquisition. Previously the company of choice was Microsoft, now the likely dream company is Google or maybe even Cisco.

3. High flying IPOs anyone? VMware, Compellent are just the beginning. Maybe this time, these companies have actual revenues and strong business numbers backing them. Question is, will the next ones be as financially sound?

4. During the dot.com boom and bust days, I saved money on alcohol and food with all the launch parties, cocktail events and other networking events. Now we have the LinkedIn lunch events, Ignite by O’Reilly  (by the way I’ll be at the Ignite SF event on Oct. 16) and others.

5. If the answer to “What does your company do?” is Web 2.0, social networking or video, then you might be part of the Web 2.0 Exuberance. This is the new catch phrase whereas the previous hot answer was “my company is taking a brick & mortar model (remember that phrase?) to the Internet.” 5.a Your hipness factor is based on where you’re working. If you’re not doing Web 2.0 or social networking, forgetaboutit.

6. High flying companies going belly up. Not yet but TechCrunch is doing a good job with their dead pool. Takes me back to the days of f*cked company

7. VCs are hot again. Need I say more?

Give me your take. Are there other signs of the past?

Technorati Tags: dot com boom and bust Social media social networking Web 2.0

Social networking sites are extremely popular, receiving a lot of attention in the press. From my perspective, LinkedIn is different from other social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace or Reunion (disclosure: my good friend works at Reunion), in that the purpose is busines related.  There are other bloggers who have focused on how to measure social media, most notably KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog.  My goal is to specifically look at how LinkedIn Answers can provide measureable impact, especially from a business-to-business perspective.

In terms of measuring the impact of participating – this is where coordinating with your marketing department will be key.

1. How many people were referred to your site from LinkedIn?

2. Did an incoming sales prospect reference the site?

3. If you included links to a page on your site, how many clicks did it get from LinkedIn?

4. And if you decide to include your contact info, did someone contact you as a result of the contact info?

And of course, it’s a great way to get your “community” to help with research , such as services, resources, and other expertise.

I would love to hear if anyone experienced direct benefit from LinkedIn.