I am Joseph Jaffe

In early April, my husband and I attended the Blogger Social in New York. This was a great event, meeting all these great bloggers.

What was extra special is the support that this community provides to one another. As part of the last night dinner, a donation was given to the Frozen Pea Fund, a non-profit organization to fight cancer.

This organization was inspired by Susan Reynold’s fight against cancer. I briefly met Susan at the Blogger Social but didn’t fully realize that this was the same person behind the Boobs On Ice blog, which chronicles her experiences and recovery.

So why am I wearing a “I am Joseph Jaffe” name tag? It’s because I’m really Joseph Jaffe in drag - you decide! But seriously, this all started when Joseph Jaffe didn’t attend the dinner (rumor is he was sick?). So a couple of folks decided to “auction” off the name tag for the charity. And in ever more marketing brilliance (I was at the table with Cam Beck and Geoff Livingston when this idea was hatched), the name tag has been making appearances all over.

The catch? Anyone photographed with the name tag would then donate $25 to the Frozen Pea Fund. Now this has inspired a flickr group and a rumored site… Cam, where is it?

What does this demonstrate? The true power of community. Technology is giving us the ability to meet new people and forge new friendships. In person events like the Blogger Social provide an opportunity for these bonds to become stronger in person. Yet, the true power doesn’t lie in the applications we use - blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. (granted they help us expand our communities) - rather it’s in the people we meet and get to know.

PR Meets Marketing Weekly Articles: May 2, 2008

 

You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed. If you feel that you have an article that would fit in the weekly articles, leave a comment and I’ll check it our for the following week’s digest. Enjoy.

 

Permission Please – Mark Goren of Transmission Marketing highlights how he was automatically subscribed to Marriott Hotel newsletters without his permission. The comment stream is interesting regarding the needs of business and person perspective. However, I side with Mark on this one. There are better ways to ask for permission. Supplying an email for a “confirmation notification” isn’t the same as asking to receive frequent emails about your company, promotions and other marketing stuff.

 

From a Blogger to You – Chris Brogan writes a great post about why bloggers aren’t journalists. He also provides great tips for pitching him and the topics that he likes to discuss. Key point – make a blogger feel special, whether with beta invitations, previews or free schwag.

 

So You Want to Pitch? – Jason Falls provides a great post on how he would pitch bloggers. By writing a fictional blog pitch, Jason provides actionable tips for contacting bloggers and probably getting results as well.

 

Engaging Employees –Anna Farmery posted about how to engage employees as most of the conversation is about engaging customers. Well, employees ARE customers too. I think companies take this for granted until it’s too late.

 

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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter

I have a page about how to pitch a blogger, but I’m realizing that this goes beyond pitching bloggers vs. traditional media. It’s how do we pitch people in general?

 

The traditional standards still apply: get to know the person you’re pitching, understand his or her preferences for pitching, and make sure you’re pitching something relevant. The questions now is, which is better? Twitter, facebook, linked in, RSS feeds, etc.

 

I’ve seen a lot of writing around new ways of pitching. In a first of a series of postings, I will look at different ways to “pitch” reporters and bloggers. For this issue, it’s how people are using Twitter for media outreach and relationship building.

  

Twitpitch: I read about this on Read/Write Web regarding Steve Bowd, a consultant. Consider it the online version of an elevator pitch. With only 140 characters, there’s only so much bullsh*t that a company can give. It forces you to be succinct and get to the point. Steve’s initial experiment is now the only way he wants to receive pitches.

 

Conference Conversations: In an email exchange with Chris Parente, he highlighted how his clients were able to get in front of journalists by following key analysts and reporters at the RSA Conference via Twitter. Chris was able to keep his client updated on issues being discussed and debated during the show, which helped their client be smart in front of key influencers. I see this being a huge trend, especially in early adopter/technology conferences.

 

Follow Key Influencers: Connected to “conference conversations,” I recommend that you start following key influencers now. This way, you can familiarize yourself with the person’s personality and topics of interest. It’s also an opportunity to participate in conversations with the analyst or reporter, especially when they ask a question. You never know when one of these mini-conversations becomes fodder for a blog posting or article. Just don’t get caught in the trap of trying to follow everything 24/7.

 

Update - Create Your Own Conversation: TechCrunch wrote about an interesting use of Twitter for a project wine tasting via Twitter. The company identified key twitterers, sent them some bottles of wine, and invited them to taste the wine and provide feedback online. What made this work? Making sure that the wine tasting conversation ocurred on a specific day and time. And I assume the wine tasted good as well.

 

What about you? Have you used Twitter for media/analyst relations? If so, share your stories below in the comments.

 

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PR Meets Marketing Weekly Article: April 24, 2008

You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed.

 

If you feel that you have an article that would fit in the weekly articles, leave a comment and I’ll check it our for the following week’s digest. Enjoy.

 

E-Mail Marketing – According to eMarketer, don’t underestimate email. Relevancy to your audience is key to the success of email marketing promotions and offers.

 

Delicious Measurement – Courtesy of measurement maven, KD Paine, I found this article about how delicious can be used for measuring PR. I do use delicious to track my personal blog postings and company information. This posting reminds me I should look into them more closely.

 

Persistence Counts – Mr. Tom Pick underscores the importance of persistence when pitching bloggers. Great tips for getting through to key bloggers and getting their attention. Note to self – add to page about pitching bloggers.

 

ROI of Online Press Releases – Larissa Fair of The Buzz Bin provided a summary of a survey regarding the ROI of online press releases. I have to agree with Larissa, I’m little surprised that the main goal of the release was to reach media. Frankly, press releases should be to reach your target audiences – media find out about your stuff when you contact them =)

 

What’s the Trend? – TechCrunch has a useful post about apps to help find trends in Facebook walls and Twitter. This is useful for getting a sense of what people are writing about and tracking it. Wonder when someone will combine Google with these other apps for one big trending application?

 

Customer Approved – Golden Practices provides some useful tips on how to get those tricky customer testimonials. What I usually do is offer to draft a quote for customers, but it’s based on what they’ve told me over the phone. I like some of the approach and will file this away for my next customer call.

  

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Twitter Experiment: Why Follow?

 I usually follow people on Twitter that have something to say and is related to my career. I always found it interesting when people just followed everyone.

So when this twitterer recently “followed” me, I was intrigued. he or she (I’m assuming she due to the image) is trying an experiment. She is trying to figure out how many people just blindly follow people without checking out the content of twitterer.

When I last checked, this person was following over 5900 people with 155 reciprocating.

This raises an interesting question about the psychology of following. When I first started Twitter, I felt that I had to follow everyone who followed me. Otherwise, I would be dissing someone.

Now I don’t necessarily follow everyone - I just don’t have the brain power to process that many people. I will also occasionally unfollow folks who haven’t really participated in conversations.

I think it’s key to recognize that social media can increase one’s social network. Just remember, you can only create a nework that YOU’RE comfortable with. YOU create the network. It doesn’t create you.

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