AllinaComm

I’ve known about Marketing Over Coffee for some time but never got around to listening for various reasons (think time). Too bad for me. This is a great podcast for anyone in marketing, whether you do it traditionally or focus on web-based marketing.

MoC is a conversational, weekly show, about 20 minutes long, so it doesn’t gobble up too much time, hosted by John Wall and Chris Penn, two guys who know of what they speak.

Lots of practical, actionable information. Lots of references to very useful resources. Of course, a lot of the talk is Web/PR/Marketing 2.0 related, but if you aren’t into the 2.0 part of our business, you’re quickly finding yourself behind the curve.

Give MoC a listen. It’s well worth your time.

Katie Delahaye Paine, arguably the queen and chief disciple of PR measurement (Katie’s blog), has published a new book on the subject entitled Measuring Public Relationships.

Shel Holtz, co-host of my favorite PR/New Media podcast, For Immediate Release, has reviewed the book and posted a 12 minute podcast of that review. Take a listen.

 

 FIR Book Review - Measuring Public Relationships [12:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Media monitoring firm, Custom Scoop, has a terrific website called Media Bullseye about all things media, new and otherwise, that a communicator might want to think about. You can subscribe to the Media Bullseye RSS feed if you like, but they have now published the first of what they promise will be a quarterly magazine called Media Bullseye that collects their pick hits from the previous few months on the web site. The first issue focuses on reputation.

You can subscribe via email and they’ll mail you the hard copy, or you can download a pdf of the magazine.

My favorite article in this issue are Establishing Reputation Online and Throwing Out the Social Media Rulebook.

What the . . . . . ? No, really. The folks that bring us snail mail (the paper stuff in mailboxes) have a neat little free publication aimed at marketers called, wait for it, Deliver.

The not so subtle goal of the pub is to get marketers not to abandon direct mail as part of their marketing mix, so most of the articles include case studies and tactics that include mailing. But there’s also some neat take-aways from many of the articles, including one in the March issue on health care marketing.

Worth a read.

The USPS will give you a subscription for free, and, not surprisingly, they will deliver it to your mailbox. But, you can also download the current and past issues in text and pdf files from the website.

Check out the link below for the health care marketing article that’s excerpted from the March issue.

 Deliver "The Best Medicine": Download

From Jaffe Juice:

Friday Fun - How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

Let’s see how many responses we can get.

Q. How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. It depends - is it a physical or a virtual lightbulb?
A. Actually I wrote a blog post about it last week…
A. You expect me to answer this in 140 characters or less?
A. A wise crowd
A. The community will decide
A. You’ll need to buy my book to find out…
A. I have no idea but I hope they Qik, uStream or ooVoo it live…

More in the comments (on Jaffe Juice)

If you want to write a “search-engine friendly” news release (and you should if you write news releases), take a look at this two-page tip sheet from Shift Communications, a Boston and San Fran PR firm. Lots of good suggestion that are easy to integrate into your writing…

4. Use the most popular keyword phrase in the headline, which carries the most weight with search engines, as well as in the body of the release and in hyperlinks.

and a few that take a bit more effort…

12. Include rich media content such as images and videos that will augment search engine pick up in places such as Google Images or Google Video. Be sure all media?rich content is appropriately tagged with keywords.

Press releases optimized with keywords and hyperlinks have been proven to increase traffic to websites, improve search engine rankings and secure greater coverage in the media. These tips can help you maximize the value of the work you’ve already done writing your release.

Once you get the message out, then it’s about trust. So who do people trust. Forrester Research analyst and blogger Jeremiah Owyang (Web Strategies by Jeremiah) has a great (and detailed) post on trust. Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers)

While you’re at Jeremiah’s site, look at another post, Castles, Towns, and Missionaries, on the three models he sees marketers adopting in social media.

Thanks to Amy Phenix and Kim Dutcher who forwarded an email from Jim Bulger who passed along (are you following this?) a link to a report from the California HealthCare Foundation on social media and healthcare.

You can find the report in downloadable pdf form here. Worth a glance to gain a slightly better understanding of how our patients/customers and getting information on which they  make healthcare consumer decisions.

The report also has links to many more useful online resources in the appendices.

ADOTAS, an Internet advertising and media industry publication, reports on four new studies that show advertising in podcasts is three times more effective than online advertising and seven times more effective than TV advertising.

The studies showed embedded advertising in online shows and podcasts were highly effective methods of boosting brand awareness, usage intent and positively impacting brand perceptions across four product categories: TV programming, cars, financial services and digital imaging.

The studies results include:
• Average unaided ad recall of 68%
• Average aided ad recall of 89%
• 73% average increase in likelihood to use/buy vs control group
• 69% having a more favorable view of advertiser due to ad exposure

The whole article is available to read online here.

Still trying to figure what Twitter is all about. You’re not alone. But, while you’re scratching your head, other folks are moving ahead using Twitter.

You haven’t heard of Laura Fitton and her company Pistachio Consulting? Me either, until I read blogger Shel Israel’s recent interview with this communications entrepreneur—a former stay-at-home mom who in the last year went from zero to social media hero.

Fitton’s success is the result of Twitter.

Read the whole article on Ragan.com here.

This item on Ragan.com chronicles how Northern Trust has structured CEO blogging on the company’s intranet. Interesting take on a structured and programmed CEO blog that appears to meet employees’ desire for the access to the executive that employees desire.

“We did an internal communications audit and through that employees stated they wanted to hear more from senior executives,” said Diane Treuthart, VP and director of internal and corporate communications for Northern Trust. “They also wanted to hear more about the bigger picture, the strategy and how their jobs related to key issues.”

Key attributes of the Northern Trust CEO blog:

• Integral - “The blog is just one part of an internal communications strategy for [Waddell] that was developed as a result of the audit,” Treuthart said. “But the blog itself is a very important part because it’s a two-way communications vehicle that really provides [Waddell] with an opportunity to hook up with employees around the world.”
  
• Integrated - Developed in conjunction with the overall internal communication strategy stressing “cascading, consistent messages” from top down, the blog is a focal point internally. It takes center stage on the company intranet, and employees are reminded via e-mail when a new blog has been posted.
• Interactive - Employees actually reciprocate Waddell’s communication. “People do post comments, and Rick does personally respond to them,” Treuthart said. “And some of the questions can be rather pointed.” But there is a catch for employees who wish to comment on Waddell’s blog—their comments are moderated. “We review people’s comments before posting,” Treuthart said. “But they’re almost always appropriate since people’s name and titles are listed on the comments.” Still, despite being moderated, employees continue to read and comment upon Waddell’s blog. In fact, Treuthart said two recent posts about vacation time were particularly well-received by employees around the world.

The following box is from that article:

Ragan.com article link

Alternate link when free article access expires

This clip from the March 17 For Immediate Release podcast discusses a white paper published by Deloitte Consulting entitled “New Media and the 2008 Campaign Season.” The clip and the white paper concisely lay out the business case why companies ignore New Media at their own peril.

 

 Brand in a Web 2.0 world [5:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 New Media and the 2008 Campaign Season: Download

New to wiki’s? Don’t quite understand how they work and why they can make your life easier? Take a look at these links for simple explanations that even a former radio/TV reporter can understand.

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english - A cute video. Watch this one if your lips move when you read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki - Wikipedia, the granddaddy of all wikis, on what a wiki is.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/what-is-a-wiki - Sitepoint’s article on what a wiki is.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2006/07/07/what-is-a-wiki.html - A detailed explanation of wikis and what the business applications might be, from O’Reilly, the tech publisher.

Wiki definition from the guy who invented them:
The simplest online database that could possibly work.
-Ward Cunningham

This is the Wall Street Journal article Amy mentioned in the Wednesday meeting about nonprofit hospitals.

Nonprofit Hospitals, Once For the Poor, Strike It Rich

Also this WSJ Health blog item.

On Top of Tax Breaks, Nonprofit Hospitals Reap Big Profits

Shel Holtz comments in this excerpt from For Immediate Release, March 13, 2008, on a Wall Street Journal article, What to Do About Online Attacks.

 

 What to Do About Online Attacks [9:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download