PR has been a priority for most major corporations whether they retain a team inside or hire an agency outside of the business. “According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. …” In some cases PR specialists were some of the first to embrace social media, in other cases PR specialists have stuck to their more traditional means of fostering relationships with key media in respective areas of print, radio, television and used the news wires to distribute their press releases with follow-up to their ongoing contacts to whom they have formed relationships. Read the rest of this entry »

We have been in many client meetings over the last few weeks as everyone now needs to be using social media and is furiously finalizing their budgets and marketing plans for 2010. In one of the discussions with a team member, we talked about how many large businesses still have no understanding of how to leverage social media, but have decided to get engaged. Further to that, they have decided (in many cases) that they are going to apply a minimal budget, hire some interns and run it internally. The other option is to use the agency that manages their traditional work and have them manage their social media marketing. What is the outcome? Just ask Toyota about the response to their recent Yaris campaign.
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In the last couple of weeks I have been talking to several potential clients about how they can integrate social media into their marketing mix and how will they determine whether it is beneficial or not. Linkedin is turning out to be very beneficial for me as I connect with businesses both here and abroad and find ways for us to partner with one another. The article below provides the most superb overview regarding social media and measurement steps. I got this from Ed Stilava who posted the article on Linkedin—a social media community for professionals—and he got it from  Econsultancy Digital Marketers United. It is this vast net of engagement with like minded people, who can share an infinate amount of info relevant to YOU, that can then be shared as I am doing with this post. That’s what makes social media so powerful.
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