Among the many interesting ideas thrown around at ITSMA’s annual conference this week was that the era of PR is over. As in dead. Don’t do it anymore. First, let’s define what PR means from the perspective of the customer (i.e., a journalist) and the customer’s customer (i.e., the readers of the journalists’ publications). Guard dog PR. It’s a myth. MORE >>

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I think that monitoring social media is one of four key aspects of a social media engagement strategy. Social media monitoring is a way to figure out what’s being said about your brand and reveals opportunities for engaging in conversations with customers and influencers. Assign a response. Attentio. MORE >>

Thanks for the great comments on last week’s post, “Is the Era of PR Over.&# Okay, so if the traditional model for PR is failing, what do we do instead? Most journalists have discovered social media as an important research tool. And research shows that even the stodgiest C-level executive does at least three web searches per day. Outreach. MORE >>

One of the cornerstones of a social media strategy is having a clear set of corporate social media guidelines or policies. The best documents don’t just tell employees what not to do; they also tell them what they should be doing to further the marketing goals of the company. But don’t provide them with a blank slate. This [Choose. Blog, Space.] MORE >>

When people ask about how to use social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, I suspect that they are really asking about how they should sound in those tools. After all, the tools themselves are dead simple. You need a second hand on your watch to track how long it takes to set up a Twitter account, for example. Relevant. Empathetic. MORE >>