commbasics

I can't quite say August was dead, but I wasn't hearing much from anyone out there.  Lots of meetings getting postponed, lots of writing, lots of editing, lots of thinking.  I was up until midnight last night finishing editing the DAC audio interviews when the emails, Facebook and Twitter messages started coming in.  As of now, I'm tentatively scheduled to give seminars on social media practices to Central Valley businesswomen, Northern California pastors, and SF Peninsula real estate professionals.  What about the tech companies?  Oh they're still trying to figure out if they need to get into social media at all.  Either that, or they are jumping in like they were killing chickens (heard that phrase over the weekend and thought it was incredibly appropriate). Last week I visited the Twitter offices because you can't find an email address, phone number and name of anyone in the marketing and PR departments without a presidential or...

Interesting tweet to day on Karen Bartelson 's Twitter page.  She ponders a survey's question on how much Synopsys will spend on social media this year.  She calls the question a "non sequitur since most of social media is free?" That is a common misconception, but mostly because most people discount the human cost of social media AND they have a limited understanding of what social media actually is.  Let's deal with that last one first.   Social media is any medium that elicits a response from the audience through the medium.  Funny thing is, if a newspaper publishes a letter to the editor on a topic that paper covered, that means the newspaper is a non-electronic social medium.  Radio and television call-in shows also qualify.  Take another step up to email.  If you respond to a piece of spam -- even if it's to pass it on to someone else -- that makes your email a social medium.  Your website ...

Time Magazine had an article this week on " How to save your newspaper " and guess what?  They said dependence on advertising is a stupid way to run a newspaper. Duh.   So someone else is going to have to foot the bill for real news.  It may be the reader, or it could be sponsored, objective content.  What part of this are we not getting?

Last year I wrote that I'm totally committed to the concept of social media  especially as it relates to technology startups.  I said then that I had not taken a traditional PR client in a year and could not recommend anyone hire anyone else to do traditional PR anymore.  Some readers gave me a thumbs up and others asked if I was feverish.  It is a significant step forward for a former traditional journalist turned PR pro to take, especially one who can smell the social security checks coming over the hill, but I meant it. Sometimes you have to be careful what you say because you will often be asked to back it up at some point. That happened to me and my little PR firm, VitalCom, this week.  As of 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, VitalCom's vital signs ceased after a lengthy illness.  One client has changed it's commitment to traditional PR and is considering a social media platform at a significantly lower cost, and the one client we had that was ...

A big problem the VC community has right now is that they don't know what they don't know.  The VComm Venture Faire was developed, using a large dose of social media, to give them a little bit more information they didn't have.  Like what? Conventional wisdom:  With the media dying, the best way for them to find potential companies is to go to the venture meat-market events with dozens of companies presenting information that the VCs know is useless and presented poorly.  Why do they believe that?  Because everyone believes that.  It's not the greatest process, but it's the only one we got.  Right? What they don't know:   There is always another way to get the job done.   Someone just has to do it.  Doing the job like everyone else doesn't make it any better.  Going another way may not make it better, but there's a chance it might. VComm didn't bring a ton of companies in front of the ...