4 Ways Bloggers Differ From Reporters

You have to pitch bloggers differently than reporters. The marvelous Dave Fleet writes a lot about this topic, and Chris Brogan produced a terrific, straightforward post about blogger pitching recently. Here’s my thoughts on some advanced blogger pitching ideas and the key differences between bloggers and reporters. Influence is Made Not Born Guess how many […]

HARO Gets Serious About Crowd Sourced Journalism

Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the uber-simple brainchild of hyper-active, skydiving, PR wild child Peter Shankman has gone big-time. Born humbly as a simple way for reporters to connect with potential sources, HARO has grown to more than 50,000 participating reporters, with 150,000 people receiving three daily emails stuffed with requests for sources. Not surprisingly, […]

Attacking the Social Media Lynch Mob

Can we put down the pitchforks? For most of the past year, there’s been a barrage of blog posts bemoaning the social media gold rush, and the number of self-proclaimed experts that seem to propagate like pink eye in a kindergarten class. In fact, there was much hand-wringing a couple weeks ago when Mashable breathlessly […]

Social Media Plus Sucking Equals Success

Sometimes being wrong feels so right. Truth and candor are in short supply these days. Perhaps it’s always been this way, but it sure seems like there’s an awful lot of politicians, celebrities, and athletes that have been unmasked as liars and losers. Soon we’ll have someone taking steroids while cavorting with hookers and debating […]

Trey Pennington – The Twitter 20 Interview About Social Media and Humanity

Dr. Trey Pennington has a full plate. He has an active consulting practice, a forthcoming book called “Spitball Marketing”, a blog, an online radio show (the must-listen “Social Media Professor“), and a Facebook page. He’s also founded several Social Media Clubs world-wide, and is active in a bunch of local and South Carolina organizations. (He’s […]

Don’t Lose Your Social Media Joy

Jay Baer in an NAU Hockey jersey

Watching the mini-mites play hockey at today’s tournament in Durango, Colorado, it struck me that these kids play for the pure joy of it. They don’t care who wins, who scores goals, who gets to be goalie. They care about having fun, and what the post-game snack might be. And as social media matures, I […]

The World Really is Flat – Crowd Sourced Design Rules

I’ve finally collected enough of my Twitter 20 interviews (live interviews with social media luminaries, conducted on Twitter) to create an ebook. I re-read every interview, and picked out the highlights. The best, most intriguing answers. I then categorized the answers topically: brand communities, PR, content creation, social CRM, etc. The next big challenge was […]

New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam

If you use Twitter to “get rich quick”, “gains thousands of new followers”, or to learn “teeth whitening secrets” you might want to stop reading. If you’re as sick of Twitter spam as I am, you’re about to get very, very excited. The Awesome Power of a Single Tweet On September 11, 2009 I lamented […]