Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
Yet, I work for the largest private Public Relations firm in the world, Edelman. Luckily however, I was hired on the Digital team which doesn’t require a whole buncha’ public relations knowledge. And, to be completely transparent (since that is the word of the decade), I used to laugh at PR people because I thought it was such an easy job.
Working for Edelman Digital has opened my eyes to this new skill set and I am learning something new every day. There is a lot more to public relations than most people think. I used to be of the mindset that it was just about writing a press release or getting mentioned somewhere in the media.
I was wrong.
This may seem obvious to some but I come across many brands (big and small) who have yet to optimize their content distribution network. A content distribution network is sometimes referred to as the “hub and spoke” model of a brand’s web presence. The hub serves as the “base of operations” and could be a web page or blog. The spokes are the brand’s “off domain” web properties and can include sites like Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Twitter. One trend I have noticed is that many brands are using their Facebook fan pages as the hub and leveraging multiple media channels to drive traffic and awareness to these pages. Friend and colleague Steve Rubel calls these “Digital Embassies.”
An optimized content distribution network tightly integrates the hub and spokes so that users can connect with a brand in the communities they choose. For example, if brand X’s hub is a blog, [...]
I attending the SMC event a few nights ago and one topic that came up was Forrester’s recent decision of not allowing their analysts to blog about social media unless it was on the official Forrester blog. Here is LaSandra Brill, Janet Fouts and Erin Robbins take on personal and corporate brands:
Hat tip to my colleague at Edelman Digital, TJ Kelly for sending this to me last week.
Well, that’s what I thought before I joined a PR firm and yes, I admit that I was wrong. My analytics background stems from managing multimillion dollar search campaigns; where one tenth of a percentage point made a difference in the performance of a campaign. Every dollar invested was tracked, measured and easily backed by a strong ROI. Transitioning into social media several years ago has brought an entirely new set of metrics to the table that I am still learning to this day.
In the past, I have always reported into some sort of web marketing organization and due to the nature of my job, I have worked closely with internal PR teams on various projects. To be completely honest, I’ve always had this particular perception that PR metrics were soft. Although I never said anything out loud, I would consistently chuckle under my breath when I saw something like [...]
I got an email from a colleague at work today asking the broader team about the definition of “social popularity.” It was an excellent question and I have been thinking about it all day. I am still not sure what the right answer is but I think the term “popularity” is a little fluffy and vague. Unfortunately, I see many people today using tools like Twitter to “gain popularity” using shady tactics; and all it really amounts to is their perceived influence over others merely by their follower count or the ego they try and down play in their bio. Twitter is just one example but it happens all over the web, and even in person.
Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.
Here is real time search can drive business results:
Increased reach of your messages
Growth in social equity
Potential customer acquisition
According to this report, senior marketers say that social networks and applications were their biggest priority for their 2010 marketing plans, followed closely by digital infrastructure. The others priorities included search optimization, mobile, blogger outreach, viral campaigns, digital advertising, email marketing and games. While these are all important, what’s interesting is that “community management and/or engagement” is not mentioned at all. Perhaps those marketers interviewed consider community management a part of “social networks” but I doubt it.
