A newly-published white paper on blogs from PR agency group Edelman and marketing intelligence firm Intelliseek explores the importance of blogging for public relations and marketing, and provides a first-of-its-kind directory of influential bloggers, segmented by industry. The report, Trust MEdia: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard (22-page PDF available for download from both […]
Category: Marketing
It’s all happening in France
In February, I wrote about what some French newspapers are doing with blogs – Le Monde with its reader blogs and Libération with its journalists’ blogs. Last month, there was news that VNU France launched a consumer blog portal, following its launch of blogs for its journalists across Europe. Tech publisher 01Net also launched a […]
The Dutch company where everyone’s a blogger
Fredrik Wackå posted a great report today about Macaw Nederland, a Dutch technology company and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, whose 110 employees all blog. Fredrik says: At Macaw all employees have their own internal blog. They get it when they get their network, intranet and e-mail account. Not only do they have blogs – they […]
GM: Poster child for the executive blog
Since General Motors began the GM FastLane Blog in early January, it’s attracted considerable attention from business communicators. That attention has been sparked by who the bloggers are – senior corporate executives, starting with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. The blog’s been under a continuous spotlight with a great deal of ongoing commentary and opinion […]
Interview: James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Open Source Marketing – April 12, 2005
In this first of our new series of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, separate from our "Hobson & Holtz Report" bi-weekly podcasts, Shel and I enjoyed a 35-minute conversation with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore about open source marketing. Download the conversation here (MP3, 14.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it […]
Just because you could doesn’t mean you should
Are character blogs – a topic that’s producing lots of discussion at the moment – worthwhile or not? It seems to me that a polarization of strongly-held views is emerging on something that isn’t really worth spending that much time on unless everyone is talking about the same thing. For instance, the link above is […]
Scoble’s boss moves to Skype
Via Constantin Basturea, news that Robert Scoble‘s boss at Microsoft, Lenn Pryor, is leaving the company to join Skype. In a post in his blog yesterday, Pryor talks about his reasons for leaving Microsoft and what he’s expecting to see at Skype. He concludes his lengthy post with these words: […] I can’t wait to […]
Firefox blush at browser protection ad
CNET News: The Mozilla Foundation passed on using a condom-themed poster to tout its Firefox browser, but volunteers want to revive the ad to emphasize the software’s security features. And here’s the Firefox poster that isn’t going to run, at least for now (click on it for larger image): Why isn’t it running? Because it […]
GM blog stays on track
Yesterday, General Motors announced its financial results for the first quarter this year, reporting a net loss of $839 million compared to a net profit of $1.2 billion for the same period last year. It’s interesting to see the focus in media reporting about yesterday’s announcement – “GM posts worst results in 13 years”, “GM […]
Do people hate Oracle?
In an analysis in The Register, Philip Howard of Bloor Research discusses the database market and how vendors like IBM, Computer Associates and Microsoft are targeting Oracle and seeing weaknesses in the latter’s marketing (among other things). He says: […] Is it because [competitors] (and others) see weaknesses in Oracle? I don’t see how Oracle […]
Why every company should blog
I’ve just been reading the drafts of the four interviews that Shel Israel posted in the past few days on The Red Couch, the blog that’s the focal point for developing the book on blogs that Shel and Robert Scoble are writing. Those interviews are with Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun Microsystems; Bob Lutz, Vice […]
Top brands on the net
BBC News: eBay is the top brand name on the net, according to calculations by net monitoring company Envisional. It scored the highest in terms of how positively it is perceived on the net, compared to McDonald’s which had the most negative perception online. Envisional says the top ten brands – selected from the FTSE-100 […]
Will Paris’ podcast have character?
I’ve heard this already described as a ‘character blog’: Podcasting is hot. But it just got hotter. Paris Hilton invites you to join her on "The Paris Hilton Podcast — Countdown to House of Wax," beginning on April 29. Join Paris and friends as she shops, parties, poses and publicizes in the days leading up […]
Tips and tricks for corporate blogging
The cover story about blogs in last week’s Business Week (magazine cover date today, 2 May) has been widely commented on in blogs around the world. For instance, a Technorati search of blogs that link to the cover story shows over 170 blog posts so far. Even more interesting, though, is seeing the conversation thread […]
Integrating blogs with PR and marketing
First there was Business Week featuring Steve Rubel in their cover story on blogs last week, complete with full-page photo. That feature evangelizes blogs, exploring the business perspective in quite a different way to other recent mainstream media reporting, and in a far more relevant way for the business reader. Today, the Wall Street Journal […]
High expectations for final Star Wars episode
Just over a week to go until Star Wars Episode III Revenge of The Sith opens! Lots of pre-reviews are appearing around the net, nearly all highly positive commentaries about this final episode in the Star Wars saga. This comment from a review by the Daily Telegraph on Saturday sums it all up well: The […]
Interview: Mark Elbertse and Hans Mestrum, Tulip Computers – May 11, 2005
In this latest in our series of For Immediate Release podcast interviews – complimentary to our regular "Hobson & Holtz Report" bi-weekly shows – Shel and Neville enjoyed a 24-minute conversation with Mark Elbertse, Chief Executive Officer, and Hans Mestrum, Trendwatcher, of Tulip Computers NV headquartered in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. Our conversation centered on Hans […]
Podcasting: Adding the human and informal touch
Some say it’s a revolution that will change radio broadcasting and people’s listening habits for ever. Others say it’s a fad that’s of limited appeal and use beyond geeks and enthusiasts. Whatever anyone says, you’d have to admit that something that, in just eight months, has rocketed out of nowhere and today got big companies […]
IBM creating an army of evangelists
Silicon Valley Watcher: Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company. Tom Foremski’s report today in Silicon Valley Watcher makes for very interesting reading. He says IBM’s plan comes hot on the heels of […]
RSS as the self-contained information experience
Following my post a few days ago on getting more from your RSS feed, in particular on using Feedburner’s new Total Stats Pro service, I read a very interesting report on ClickZ about RSS advertising. In the report, ClickZ managing editor Pamela Parker interviews Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo to discuss his company’s experimentation with advertising […]