A bear walks into a bar in Billings, Montana and sits down. He bangs on the bar with his paw and demands a beer. The bartender approaches and says, “We don’t serve beer to bears in bars in Billings.” The bear, becoming angry, demands again that he be served a beer. The bartender tells him [...]
{ 6 comments }
The legendary and (in)famous Trevor Cook from the major Sydney PR company Jackson Wells Morris has kindly allowed your humble correspondent to co-write a white paper for businesses with him, with the aim of explaining to businesses what this ‘Social Media’ thing is all about and showing them how they can join in the fun. [...]
{ 15 comments }
Robert French invited me to chat with some of his senior students this morning and, seeing as how I was up late at the SecondLife launch party for crayon, I overslept and was 45 minutes late! Gracious as ever, Robert had been keeping the students entertained by showing them SecondLife and discussing some of its [...]
{ 34 comments }
I recently was sent a link to Seriously Business, a new UK-housed business blog for entrepreneurs. Offering profiles on successful entrepreneurs and insights into social media (including a good read on the promotional implications Google/YouTube phenomenon), I recommend you go and check it out. I would recommend to Seriously Business, though, that they add a [...]
{ 8 comments }
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE Do you have feelings of inadequacy?Do you suffer from shyness?Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about White Wine. White Wine is the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions. White [...]
{ 14 comments }
Just a quick post, wondering if anyone else also has this challenge… I have used LiveWriter to compose a couple of posts, but the ‘focus’ keeps disappearing off LW when I’m typing and if I’m not looking at my monitor (as I often don’t because I touchtype) I don’t realise I’m not adding any words [...]
{ 2 comments }
Thank goodness there are sage heads like Shel Holtz around. The Edelman kerfuffle has been damaging enough to Edelman and his company, including Steve Rubel; let’s move on and conduct ourselves with grace and dignity, hey? After all, what does all the shouting communicate about the shouters? Oh, and good luck with crayon, Shel et [...]
{ 0 comments }
As the guest of Dr. Collette Snowden, I recently gave a presentation on my two favourite topics — employee comms and social media — to her PR students at UniSA. Here’s a pdf version of the ‘Death By PowerPoint’ show I gave. I had a great time and I understand that the students also enjoyed [...]
{ 18 comments }
In this week’s action-packed drama of global erudition, your favourite coffeeholics suffer an identity crisis.They also explain how they stop the earth from spinning off its axis and hurling itself into the sun, for which you may send expensive gifts and flowers in gratitude. In a move designed to infuriate the Cashflow Accountant in the [...]
{ 6 comments }
Okay, so here’s where I get all cranky… I’m testing out Windows Live Writer (beta) and using it to post about an altogether different package. Those who have long been meandering around my blog will remember that I was a huge devotee of RocketPost, until it started to do all sorts of weird things and eventually [...]
{ 8 comments }
Subscribe to my business communication newsletter and receive a FREE version of my highly-regarded report, 'Master the Art and Science of Twitter for Business' (that sells for $79)
Business Proposal Software - Accurately quote your business proposals, multiply your profitability, brand yourself as a top professional and close the sale. Proposal Kit helps you demonstrate that you are the right professional for your customers. Proposal Kit has been proven for over a decade as the mission-critical, easy, customizable and accurate solution for how to write a proposal.
Measuring the Impact and ROI of Social Media
Making Social Media Work for Your Business
Social Media: The New Communication Landscape - for Ark Group
How to get started with podcasting in your organisation - for Melcrum Publishing
Contributing author to:
Best practices in social media governance
How to use social media to solve critical internal communication issues
How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees - for Melcrum Publishing
How to use social media to engage employees - for Melcrum Publishing
These links open in new browser window
Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz and John Havens.
A belter of a book and a 'must read' addition to any communicator's bedside reading table if they are serious about introducing social media into their communication plans. It includes a fabulous chapter on transparency and business (hint: you want to photocopy it and give it to your CEO!)
Qualitative Communication Research Methods by Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor.
Not just a book for academics, it's chock-full of great ideas on how to effectively and efficiently research your employees, customers, the marketplace and other stakeholders
The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein.
A fabulous book that gives a clear, clean overview of what Twitter is and WHY you should be engaging with it. THEN it goes into depth with so many tips and ideas that they should have sold the book for twice the price!
Practical SEO Copywriting: a ‘must get’ book. My mate Glenn Murray has written a bottler of a new book on search engines and copywriting.
In a cunning twist of bizarre nomenclature, he’s titled it Practical SEO Copywriting. The cheeky little fox! It’s a DIY guide to writing online copy for both human readers AND for that 400kg gorilla we lovingly call ‘Google’.
The danger, Glenn quite rightly …err …writes is that focusing too much attention on all of the supposed SEO ‘tricks of the trade’ will make your copy all but unreadable by the human brain. You know, all that stuff bandied about by the so-called SEO (search engine optimisation) experts: keyword frequency, exact string versus individual words scattered across the page, page length, alt tags, header tags, and so on.
Not that this stuff isn’t important – it all is, and more besides – but Glenn argues persuasively that by far more important is the ability to write copy that people will actually want to read – and link to!
