Mark McClennan
Today, PRSourceCode released the results of its 2008 "Top Tech Communicators" survey. The organization surveyed 800 tech journalists to determine who they thought were the best PR agencies when it came to "the value they deliver on the editorial process in terms of responsiveness, reliability, and overall recognition of editorial needs."
Schwartz Communications was ranked #1 in the "Large Agency" category (agencies with more than 60 people). I was very happy, to say the least, when I read the news. But then it really started to sink in and I was humbled. This wasn't an award like the Silver Anvils or Bell Ringers, where we showcase the best of the best.
This award, voted on by journalists, is a direct result of the day-to-day interactions of every one of our 230 employees. It isn't one team going above and beyond, it is everyone from the VPs (yes, we still pitch) to the account executives we train, coach and practice with daily. It isn't just for work on behalf of one client, but all our clients. Every day. Every call. Every email. Every blog post.
We coach our employees -- be topical, think beyond the pitch, be responsive, open and transparent. Everyone matters. Everyone. Take the big swing.
This is the best proof that our staff lives our beliefs and puts them into practice every day. I did the math one time, and we interact with reporters, bloggers and analysts more than 600,000 times every year.
We are deeply honored by this award. It reflects not just good work, but good processes and a commitment to excellence. On behalf of the Schwartz team -- thanks to the journalists, our clients and our staff.
Posted by Mark McClennan on August 12, 2008 at 2:08 PM
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Some interesting news last night - As reported in IR Web Report and elsewhere, the SEC yesterday has determined that "under certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD, according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today."
This is a big shift, but it is one that recognizes the changing communications landscape and the vehicles that key stakeholders use to research and gather information. One of my clients pointed out to me that Jonathan Schwartz from Sun must be happy, as he has been campaigning for this for a while, and took some pretty dramatic steps.
This is no longer the mid 80s and 90s when I was using my 300 baud modem to dial up to Compuserve for my news, or using an MCIMail account. With the wide availability of the Web, its increasing role in breaking news, and technologies such as RSS and Atom (which the SEC chairman mention), it is high time this change occurred.
This is not carte blanche to post information on the Web site, and this is not the death knell for newswires. There are subtleties to this ruling that I am still parsing (and reading about from others, such as Jennifer Leggio). There are stipulations. I am sure they are going to want to make sure the information is in a visible place and not buried on some obscure page. I would not counsel my public clients to changing things tomorrow - but we all need to read up and learn more about this.
What do you think? Will more companies follow Sun's lead, or is what Sun is doing just the tip of the iceberg? Either way, the next few months are going to see some major shifts in the way people are approaching this, and I look forward to working with my clients and their CFOs and IR firms to navigate this new landscape.
Tags:
disclosure,
RegFD
Posted by Mark McClennan on July 31, 2008 at 5:24 PM
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Last week I had the pleasure of attending an event featuring Gary Vaynerchuck -- a smart businessman who is changing the wine industry and leveraging social media to do so. He has daily videos where he tastes and evaluates wine, and regularly interacts with fans through every social medium available ... check out his daily videos here.
He has built a strong following -- with people coming to see him from around New England. He managed to pack a room with 200 people and keep us entertained for 90 minutes (and it could have gone longer).
Out of the entire discussion last week, there are three thoughts that I wanted to share with everyone. Specifically, a few of his comments can be applied to social media and public relations in general. I do not think Gary will mind too much, since I am taking the seeds he planted in my mind and growing them into full blown, PR-specific thoughts for you all to taste and evaluate ....
1) The only way to improve your wine palate is to taste wine -- You can read the magazines, watch the movies, read books and visit vineyards; but in the end, what gives you a true appreciation for wine is actually tasting it. The same applies to PR and social media. Theory is essential. You need to have a grounding in the fundamentals ... but in the end you need to execute. You need to practice what you preach. If you aren't engaged -- why not? This leads me to my next point ....
2) The only way to appreciate wine is to stay out of a rut -- try new things. Most people find a few wines and stick to them. They have wine racks full of Yellowtail, Conundrum, Cakebread Chardonnay and Parallel 44. (This gives you an inkling of my tastes). That's great, but it is limiting. Try a new wine frequently. The same applies to PR. It's why a good PR pros are constantly looking for the next new channel, a new approach to doing things. It's a mantra we preach here at Schwartz.
3) Wine is a living thing -- unlike my beloved single malt Scotch, wine can change dramatically from year to year. A wine that was great one year may be horrible (or as Gary says "utter crap") the next year. This holds true for even the best, most proven and time tested wines. Ask any wine connoisseur about 2007 Bordeaux. Too often companies and PR people fall into that trap. It worked last time, we should do it again. As we all know from the financial services commercials -- past performance is not an indicator of future results. Always re-evaluate ... is this likely to work this time? Is there something better I should try? I know my teams ask me that constantly, and as PR pros, we need to be aware of this at all times.
Sláinte Mhath!
Tags:
social media,
theory
Posted by Mark McClennan on June 23, 2008 at 9:28 AM
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Last night at the 2008 Bell Ringer Awards, Schwartz Communications was recognized with 27 awards, including 12 Bell Ringer Awards and 15 Awards of Merit. (For those curious, you can find the full list here).
The work spanned numerous categories, including consumer, healthcare and technology. One key standout was that we received both Bell Ringer Awards presented for the Best New Media category.
The award total is impressive (close to our highest ever), but in all honesty it is what is behind the awards that is even more impressive. In speaking with a number of other vice presidents at the ceremony last night - these awards would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts our team members seem to always give and the great clients with whom we have the pleasure of working every day.
Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, our co-founders, tell us regularly to take the big swing. Our clients expect it of us. My clients set the bar high, and when we reach it, they move it higher. Only by doing this can we truly realize dramatic business results through public relations.
The Bell Ringer judges obviously agree with Steve and Paula Mae, for they also awarded them the Crystal Bell lifetime achievement award last night for their work in bringing a new approach to high-tech and medical public relations.
So thank you to our teams, our clients and our co-founders for making last night possible.
Tags:
awards,
public relations
Posted by Mark McClennan on June 3, 2008 at 9:21 AM
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Last week at a gala event, Schwartz's own Kristina Ebenius was honored by Resume as one "Sweden's 499 best & most powerful" within media and communications.
The publication created the list to honor those executives "who do the unexpected and most creative, those who manage to get new clients without severing ties with old ones and those whose opinion we just must read about and hear. The souls who turn media and communication into Sweden's most fun and vital industry."
Now, I am frankly not sure why they didn't go with 500, but we are proud they put her on the list for "leading a global secret in Sweden."
At Schwartz we all know Kristina is a tireless dynamo who has helped grow our office more rapidly than our most optimistic projections. She has been instrumental in bringing Schwartz's results-oriented, media relations-focused brand of PR to Europe and are glad to see others recognizing her for her efforts.
Stort Grattis Kristina! Det var väl förtjänat!
Tags:
awards
Posted by Mark McClennan on at 6:07 AM
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One of Schwartz's core competencies is helping entrepreneurial companies use public relations to take on larger competitors and win. Earlier this week, at the Sabre Awards in New York City, the Holmes Report recognized Schwartz for not just talking the talk, but walking the walk.
There is no way to write this without coming across as bragging, but in reality I want to call out the great work of my team and our client.
The Sabre Awards are one of the most prestigious awards in public relations. Winners are selected based their strategic approach to public relations campaigns and measureable results.
This week, Schwartz received a Gold Sabre Award for its work on behalf of Digication, an eight-person technology company that set out to change the way teachers teach and students learn and showcase their portfolios. Using a combination of trade media relations and social media campaigns, in less than a year, Schwartz helped Digication grow from a base of about 10 schools to more than 1,000 schools nationwide.
Digication has a great product and visionary founders (both of which help quite a bit), but it faced a challenge many start-up companies face - it had to take on entrenched competition and win. Working together, Schwartz and Digication did just that.
The same held true at the Sabres. Digication and Schwartz were in a category with Hitachi, Rubbermaid and New York Life -- all much larger companies and well-known brands. Yet in the end, Digication triumphed.
Congratulations to a great company -- Digication -- and a great team for showing that with aggressiveness, focus and a commitment to excellence, public relations can have a quantifiable business impact -- and proving once again the revolutionary power of entrepreneurial companies no matter their size.
Tags:
awards
Posted by Mark McClennan on May 15, 2008 at 9:40 AM
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At Schwartz we counsel our clients that they need to be actively engaged in social media. We also counsel them that transparency is crucial. You can have a point of view, but there is no need to hide where it is coming from. Transparency helps build brand credibility and trust.
Thanks to Twitter, I was made aware of a recent AdAge article that shows transparency isn't just a good idea, in the U.K., it will soon become the law. According to AdAge, "starting May 26, when it will become a criminal offense for brands to seed positive messages online without making the origin of the message clear.
This doesn't just impact U.K. companies, it would impact any company doing viral marketing or online public relations in the country.
There is no long term benefit for a business to hide who they are. There is long term benefit to engaging in conversations, listening to your customers and the market, and being an active participant.
Both the PRSA and Word of Mouth Marketing Association already have ethics guidelines that prohibit this type of activity. This is just another reason to slap down that whisper we occasionally hear from others.
Tags:
ethics,
social media
Posted by Mark McClennan on April 28, 2008 at 10:36 AM
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The Masters just ended and my passion for golf is reignited. Unfortunately, like most people, my ability to write about and talk about golf far exceeds my skill at the game.
Therefore, I decided to share words of PR wisdom as golf analogies. But I need your help. Golf may be one of the two most overused analogies in business, only after military themes and slightly beating out baseball and The Godfather .… So share your own PR/golf lessons in the comments section and I will add the best here.
Following are five to get you started:
Don’t be seduced by the driver—The driver is a great club. When you hit it well, there is nothing like watching the ball fly and hearing the “oohs” and “aahs” from appreciative fans (or members of your foursome). But for most people muscling the driver rarely results in a 300+ yard straight drive off the tee. Sure you will hit that perfect drive once in 20 rounds, but you are much more likely to whiff, hit it in the woods or end up in the sand--raising your score and leading to frustration.
The same goes for media relations. Being on the Today Show, the Wall Street Journal or in Parade is outstanding and usually a reason to celebrate. But too often your outreach there won’t connect, or you will neglect other important elements, and put yourself at a handicap. You should go after these outlets, but if all you do is swing the driver … you will be in trouble. This leads to the next point.
Drive for show, putt for dough—All the creative ideas, the flashy presentations and the red Nike shirts don’t amount to anything if you haven’t mastered the short game. Execute flawlessly. Pay attention to detail.
Why does Tiger Woods hit 1,000 practice balls?—Focus on fundamentals brings success. A PR campaign needs to be built on solid fundamentals--the trades to bring the key messages to prospects and customers is the solid drive off the tee; lay it up onto the green with user testimonials and analysts, and *then* you are in position to go for the deceptively simple putt with the business media (which is never as easy as it looks), to get the birdie. It’s the little things that add up to success.
Pay attention to the course and your environment—In golf, it's good to have a general plan of how you will play the course. But conditions change, your competitors change, even your swing can change in mid-round. You may have planned to hit a hard driver on the 15th hole, but by the time you get there it's raining and windy ... change of club and plan.
Successful golfers plan, but they also adjust and trust their instincts to adapt to the changing circumstances. Successful PR people need to do the same thing to achieve success in the face of changing conditions.
You WILL hit the bunkers—Every golfer hits the sand traps. Hitting them is not the end of the world. The same goes for a PR program. You will hit the rough, the bunkers and even the water. Think about what you will do in those situations and you can recover from it. Have disaster plans in place.
Tags:
common sense,
golf
Posted by Mark McClennan on April 14, 2008 at 5:50 PM
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The Big Dance is about to begin and corporate networks are about to slow to a crawl as employees feverishly work to finish their tournament brackets and then stream the games on Thursday and Friday.
I love the Tourney, but since my beloved Orangemen aren't in this year, I decided to take a slightly different approach - what if The Big Dance was a social media tournament? What if the schools had to compete based on their social media prowess, not their hoop skills?
At 3:00 a.m. last night, I decided to make that thought a reality. I evaluated the field of 64 and had the teams face off solely on social media skills and came up with a power ranking for each school. I kept the NCAA seeds and let them face off.
How was the ranking determined? It was determined by (# of facebook users in the School network/number of students at school according to Wikipedia). Note: Yes that includes alumni, but they count as fans in the stands cheering on the team. And if the students didn't join their schools network..they didn't show up for the game. I recorded it all in a handly notebook and used the Microsoft calculator app to do the math.
The Final Four: Stanford vs. Duke and Notre Dame v. Davidson
The Final: Davidson v. Stanford
The results? No surprise to loyal Valleywag readers - Stanford takes it all with a 2.5 ranking, beating Davidson with a 2.05
Other interesting observations:
- UCLA (1.39) was the only #1 seed to make it to the Elite Eight
- Two 5 seeds made the Elite 8 - Michigan State (1.41) and Notre Dame (2.01)
- Once again a 15-seed was dangerous (I still remember the Richmond Spiders) - American University (1.51) beat Butler (1.37) and University of Oklahoma (1.18) to go to the Elite Eight
- Toughest Draw: Cornell. They had a 2.17 ranking, but they were up against Stanford in the first round. If Cornell was in the East or the Midwest, they would have made it to the finals. Next year, they deserve more respect.
- Closest game: Kansas State v. Wisconsin in the 2nd round (1.328 v 1.320)
- The schools with the lest social media power? Indiana (0.61), Boise State (0.463), Portland State (0.432) Cal State Fullerton (0.414), and Mississippi Valley State (0.14)
Finally, for my beloved Syracuse fans, if they had made it into the tourney, they would have done what they usually did, make it to the Sweet 16 with a Power Ranking of 1.47 and then bowed out...
Click to view the bracket
Tags:
NCAA,
social media
Posted by Mark McClennan on March 18, 2008 at 12:10 PM
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For the past month, my three year old son has been having me read him the Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hears A Who in preparation for the movie that was released this weekend.
Despite reading the story more than 30 times in 30 days, I still really like it, and that made me wonder whether there are there any lessons from the book that can be applied to social media and PR practitioners. Similar to my “All you needed to know about PR you can learn from Dora the Explorer” essay, Yes, there are. Horton and Dr. Seuss provide companies and professionals engaging social media with some great guidelines.
A person's a person, no matter how small—This is the overarching theme of the book, and is also a central tenet of social media. Companies can no longer afford to ignore the “little guy.” Or as I tell my teams – everyone matters.
Listen—Horton teaches all the other animals in the jungle of Nool something that many companies are still learning. At a minimum they need to listen. If you are not listening, you are missing a world of possibilities. If your ears aren’t open to RSS, Twitter, Facebook and the dozen of other ways in which people are communicating, what are you missing?
Engage others—It was only by working together that all the Whos in Whoville were able to be heard. Don’t go it alone. Find people of similar (and even dissimilar) interests and engage them in conversation and build a relationship. You never know when you might need your friends.
Beware the Wickersham Brothers (and cousins)—A mob can appear out of nowhere and attack you. The important thing to plan is how will you respond? Plan out and ask the tough questions and scenarios. If you don’t take the initiative, do you think anyone else will? Be ready to fight back against the brothers.
The beezlenut oil is simmering—Ignore competitors, dissatisfied customers and bloggers at your peril. There is always a vat of beezlenut oil simmering in cyberspace in which your company, product, reputation, posts and videos can be dunked. Just because you don’t see the pot, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Try to avoid it, but if it spills – work to get out fast. Don’t ignore the oil and get boiled alive.
Ignore tags and technology at your peril—If Horton had tagged his clover with “Who” or “Whoville,” he would have been able to find it, instead of searching three million clovers before finally finding the right clover. Use technology to your advantage. Tag everything you can and search tools are wonderful.
Finally—The power of Yopp—Speak out. Your voice matters. It doesn’t matter if you are not an A-lister blogger, a megacorp or social media guru. If you don’t participate you lose, and even the smallest Yopp, the smallest contribution, can make a significant difference.
Tags:
common sense,
Horton,
social media
Posted by Mark McClennan on March 17, 2008 at 11:43 AM
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At Schwartz we have a number of clients for whom Valentine’s Day is a big deal, from OKCupid, a free online dating site, to an alternative payments company, Bill Me Later, whose survey found that men really don’t know what women want for Valentine’s Day.
This caused me to think about Valentine’s Day and public relations. Since one of my clients sells a lot of puppies, I thought of Puppy Love and how does that relate to PR in general.
The launch of a new company or a new technology is a lot like puppy love. Some users find an immediate flush of attraction. They embrace the service, become infatuated and fall hard. Malcolm Gladwell addresses this to an extent in Blink and Geoffrey Moore calls them the early adopters in Crossing the Chasm.
But puppy love does not last forever. For companies, many early enthusiasts may move on to a new fling, leaving the technology forgotten and abandoned like many people’s junior prom dates.
So what can companies and PR people do when the first rush of puppy love fades and the blush comes off the rose?
You need to commit to building a long term, deeper relationship. This isn’t the Bachelor.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, following are some PR love relationship tips:
- Know what you stand for and don’t compromise—core values are essential. If you change too much for your users or your sweetheart, eventually you will either become something you don’t want, or you will become bitter and unhappy and lose that special something anyway. Highlight your values and attract the right customers and partners.
- Know what you are looking for—the best relationships don’t happen by accident and the same goes for PR. What type of user are you trying to engage? Are you looking to attract buyers for the short term, or do you need a deeper commitment (enterprise software)
- Be prepared for the unexpected—no relationship escapes twists and turns, ups and downs. What you thought would happen to your life when you were sixteen or when you were going on your first date is rarely how things end up. Your plans are going to go awry (if they didn’t we wouldn’t laugh so much at romantic comedies). Don’t let the setbacks get you down. Learn from them, re-evaluate and change as necessary. Don’t get locked into one pitch, be ready to adapt.
- Make a commitment—positive, productive relationships aren’t easy. They require a lot of work. That goes for both real life; a company’s relationships with its prospects and customers; and a PR pros relationships with reporters, analysts and clients. Inattention is noticed. Commit to doing the best job you can. Don’t ignore the little things. They will build up.
- What you want will change over time—that’s OK. What we want in our teenage years is different that our 20s, 30s and 40s. The same goes for an angel funded company, a pre-IPO company and a public company. It goes for a PR pro who is first introducing a company to a reporter to one that has been telling the same story to the same reporter for years. Just make sure you are aware of what is changing and re-evaluate your plans and strategies on a regular basis.
- Listen and communicate openly—this is relationship 101, but too often its gets forgotten. Spin doesn’t work with the ones you are closest with. Be honest. Listen. Communicate. Engage in conversations. Act on the feedback you receive. If you don’t, expect reporters to stop listening, customers to stop buying and your competitors who are communicating openly to gain marketshare.
I hope you have a good Valentine’s Day. And beware of PR Puppy Love. It doesn’t last.
Tags:
common sense
Posted by Mark McClennan on February 12, 2008 at 11:05 AM
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Last week the gaming and marketing blogosphere was abuzz with articles on a negative piece on the popular video game, Mass Effect. The game was incorrectly decried as pornography and for showing "full frontal nudity." Neither is correct.
What is most telling is one of the talking heads making the attack, author Cooper Lawrence, admitted at the end of the interview she had never played or even viewed the game.
What a lot of the marketing blogs missed, which is important for PR and marketing people to know, is the blacklash that has been going on in the gaming blogs. Specifically, the gamers stuck back.
Cooper has a number of books listed on Amazon. They are now being panned by a wide audience. Her books now have an average rating of 1 to 1.5 stars on Amazon with hundreds of negative comments. (There were more, but Amazon prunes aggressively). Her most recent book is being panned. And it is not just a few hundred energized reviewers, a quick glance has 1,000+ people endorsing them. Even the "positive" reviews are damning with sarcasm and fait praise.
The attacks aren't stopping with bad reviews. Gamers are a tech savvy audience on a whole and they are tagging her books with comments such as ignorant (1300 people), bias (729 people) and hypocrisy (1,021 people).
Update since I started writing this post. The author now says "she misspoke".
What can non-gaming companies learn from this?
- An engaged user base can be a powerful tool - If the users hadn't responded so aggressively, the misstatements would most likely not have been corrected. An engaged user base can be a powerful asset - so you need to interact with them
- A reputation that takes years to build, can be torn down in a few minutes-You are the only safeguard to your reputation and brand. The commentator, with poorly informed public comments, has tarnished her brand and it will take quite a while to build it up.
- The walls are torn down-The speed of response to this incident was electrifying. What are the likely crises you will face and how will you engage them? You no longer have the luxury of time, so make time to game out the tough questions. If you don't, who will?
Tags:
consumer,
gaming,
social media
Posted by Mark McClennan on January 28, 2008 at 2:15 PM
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The evolution of social media and technology is constantly causing companies and people to try new approaches and tactics to take advantage of and react to technology advancements.
Sometimes this can cause people to head down some very strange and impractical paths. This isn't unusual. It has happened throughout human history.
For example, I am reading a great book on naval warfare in WWI (Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie). To deal with the new submarine threat, the British Admiralty tried a number of initiatives.
One that has caused me great amusement was allegedly proposed by Admiral Sir Frederick Inglefield. He not only proposed the idea - he received authorization for it.
The idea was to train seagulls to block the lenses of German periscopes with seagull droppings. (Google it if you don't believe me). Eventually the program was dumped. The admiralty tried a number of ideas before they settled on something more practical...depth charges.
There are a number of lessons to be learned here. The most important one for us as PR and marketing practitioners is to keep our eye on the end goal and not get distracted and pursue something tangential.
We need to embrace and respond to changing technologies. Social media is changing the dynamic just as much as submarines did in World War I. But don't panic over new developments. That will only cause you to react in sub-optimal ways. You don't need to use and react to every social media tool that is created.
Clearly define your goals and then figure out the best way to achieve them. Ask yourself about the desired outcome. Determine the level of engagement and ask if it is sustainable in the long run. Otherwise, you may just end up training seagulls.
Tags:
common sense,
social media
Posted by Mark McClennan on November 14, 2007 at 10:46 AM
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In school, my mother always cautioned me to be responsible and study hard or any infractions would go on my "permanent record." I had visions of a metal vault in a big building where files on everything I did, from getting in a fight with my best friend to my less than stellar performance in Mr. Corr's Spanish class, would dog me through college, my job search and the rest of my life.
The truth is, there now really is a permanent record, and every company and individual has one. What's worse, these records aren't written on paper and stored in a musty vault--they're graven in digital bits and available for everyone to see.
We talked about this at PodCamp 2 - Boston this past weekend. It was a gathering of hundreds of social media experts, public relations practitioners, bloggers, podcasters and videographers to discuss the future of communications and marketing.
The term that was used was a person's (or company's) "digital footprint." It's important to remember that everything we do is recorded, tracked and accessible. Everything anyone says about your company--be it an employee, a competitor, a happy customer or a disgruntled customer--becomes part of the footprint. And unlike footprints in the sand, these digital footprints will not be washed away. They may become fainter, but they are always there for people to see.
I am writing to remind people about this and provide a few steps they can take.
1) Keep track of your footprint. Just like you monitor your bank account and credit report, monitor what is being said about you and your competitors. If you do not have Google Alerts set up for every term of interest to you, set them up today. They are easy to use and free. Don't let others define you.
2) Provide employees with blogging and commenting guidelines. You do not want employees saying something on behalf of the company, or that gets associated with the company, that will dog you for years.
3) Think before you post. The line between personal life and professional is more blurred than ever before and will get even blurrier. Eventually Google Image search will get Facebook photos. Everything you write and post online impacts your personal brand. Be smart.
4) Make your digital footprint work for you. Just like the first day of college, you have a chance to remake yourself in whatever image you want. If you want to be an expert on a topic, start commenting on it. You can build and shape your footprint.
In conclusion, your mother was right. There really is a permanent record on you and your company. Take control of it.
Tags:
common sense
Posted by Mark McClennan on October 29, 2007 at 8:49 AM
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Peter Kim of Forrester recently reported that Forrester "data shows that 6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly." There has been some debate on the accuracy of the numbers, and it makes interesting reading.
As Schwartz's first (and heaviest) Twitter, I wanted to post briefly on the numbers and what they mean to companies.
To be honest, for the sake of this discussion, it doesn't matter if the numbers are accurate. What matters is there are vibrant and growing networks that are providing new and easy way for the average person to communicate with others.
Twitter is a great tool for PR pros. Using Twitter I have found out
- About stories reporters are planning to write
- What matters to reporters so I give them the information that really care about
- New reporters and mavens
- What is being said about my clients by consumers
This is powerful stuff, particularly the last point. This technology directly impacts the consumer and changes the way we interact. With Twitter's search functionality it is easy for people to find and join all kinds of conversations
As a PR practitioner or company, should you tweet on Twitter? Perhaps. You need to make the call yourself (although I am happy to share my opinions). But you must monitor Twitter and the other applications like it (Jaiku, etc).
You don't need to become a power user and active on every social network and communications tool out there. But you should be engaged and you need to monitor them.
It is relatively painless, requires minimal investment (The tools are free, it just takes time) and provides you with potentially valuable insight. These conversations have always been going on. Now there are just more of them and they can have quicker impact.
We need to use every appropriate tool in your repertoire. Your competitors are.
Posted by Mark McClennan on October 19, 2007 at 2:30 PM
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