I’ve been publishing a monthly newsletter, Social Media News for the past several months and I thought it might be fun to create a podcast around the concept too.    It wraps up the most popular recent content from my blog and highlights news and trends from the social media and PR worlds.  Here’s a rundown of this first podcast:

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1. Introduction

2. Facebook pages: 8  success criteria;  Successful Facebook pages all have the same eight characteristics according to a study just released by the Altimeter Group, but about half  of the major brands on Facebook fail to make the most of all Facebook’s available social features to maximise their page’s impact.

3. Male PRs twice as likely to earn £50+:  Women make up 65% of the UK’s public relations profession according to the CIPR’s Annual State of the PR Profession Survey released this week. Yet men are more than twice as likely to earn a salary of more than £50,000, begging the question: “What gives?!”

4. Professional blogging for dummies:  a how-to guide on making money with a blog.  The book is full of helpful examples and featured articles with topic experts and bloggers who have built successful business demonstrate how to promote a business or build a blog-based business.

5. Blocking competitors on Twitter is total folly: Companies blocking competitors from following a Twitter feed in the hopes of gaining a commercial edge are kidding themselves.  And it’s clear that the company doesn’t really ‘get’ the whole ethos of  social networks, so one might wonder why it bothers at all.

6. Isle of Man’s Twitter top 10: What’s more important on Twitter?  Popularity? Influence?

The music featured in this podcast is by The Anybody. Connor Mercury’s new CD ‘Let it damn well hurt’ is available for download here.