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The primary goal for businesses and brands using social media is to raise awareness and generate exposure, according to this week’s survey of fans of the Sherrilynne’s PR & Social Media Training & Consulting Facebook page.  It’s a fact backed up in the Social Media Marketing Report 2011 published last week by the Social Media Examiner.
Fewer than half of businesses using social media see it as a means to generate sales leads, a finding consistent in both surveys.  This means that social media is seen as important for public relations, …

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Oh no!  Our friends at PR Moment have put together a jargon buster that includes the 12 most-hated phrases used in the public relations profession. I’m embarrassed to admit to using 11 of the 12.  A prize goes out to the first one who can name the only term from the list I’ve never been guilty of using (leave your guess in the comments).

Boiler plate
Blue sky thinking
Cross pollination/fertilisation
Digital native/immigrant
Grey beard
Heads up
Holding the ring
Moving forward
Quick and dirty
Reach out
Seed, share or amplify
Touch base

Click here to find out what these terms mean (and …

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There are plenty of social media monitoring tools out there, some free, others can be quite expensive. And,
although many are very clever, tests have shown that none can be trusted to accurately reflect and report on the sentiment of conversations online.  That’s because they lack one important feature that is absolutely necessary to do the job well…a human brain! That’s why I’m introducing Sherrilynne’s social media analysis.
Order now to find out who is saying what about your brand on the social Internet!

Is sentiment positive?
Is social …

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It’s that time of year again..time to look back over the past 12 months then to look ahead to the next year.  Here’s a summary of this blog’s most popular posts of 2010.
10.  Facebook profile, page or group? This post explains the various ways to have a presence on Facebook. People are really confused about the options and choices.
9. Free report: who’s talking about you in social media? This limited offer for a short social media sentiment analysis sure did prove to be popular.
8. How to handle feedback This post …

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Social media is top of the PR priority list,  according to a survey conducted by software company Vocus and researcher Deirdre Breakenridge.  A report entitled, Social Media Comes of Age is based on a survey of 508 PR and marketing professionals, was released this week.

“Organisations have found through monitoring that social conversations will occur with or without their participation,” said Breakenridge. “And, they’ve found small victories through experimentation this year and will focus on improving those results next year.”

Key findings:

60% of respondents said PR will be more challenging in …

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Just found (thanks to @JohnFMoore ) this excellent slideshow on the history of social media disasters.  It covers 37 major corporate screw ups that every brand can learn from.  Enjoy!
Social media Screw Ups – A History

View more presentations from Social Media Influence.

Other posts you might enjoy:

Social media gets the blame for PR disasters
Greenpeace V Nestle
Ignoring social media is folly

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Don’t overthink your social media efforts
Recently I spoke to a company who thought that they needed hundreds of folks participating in their social media marketing effort, like a grassroots political campaign.
Facebook CEO deletes controversial iPhone 4 posts.
For a CEO with a high profile such as Zuckerberg, that probably wasn’t the smartest of things to do. After all, journalists didn’t just write about Mark Zuckerberg making the claim, no, they wrote about the Facebook CEO dissing Apple.
Now, what’s the Radically Transparent way to nip this in the bud? Make an …

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I don’t usually foray into politics on this blog and I have no intention of doing it today either.  But spare a thought for the poor PRs who try to give Gordon Brown a helping hand.
More than a few of us in the profession struggle daily to make silk purses of our clients.  We train them.  We coach and advise them.  But when it comes to the essentials, they are who they are and we can’t change that.
With the UK election winding into the last fews days, it’s a …

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Image by BrittneyBush via Flickr

Seventy per cent of public relations and communications agencies cite social media as a major cause of communications crises, according to a survey conducted by Dynamic Markets, a research consulting firm.  A hundred senior PR professionals took part in the survey early this year which revealed:

24% said traditional media had ignited crisis situations
34% said bloggers had been to blame
24% said crises had started in online social networks
8% said discussions in online forums had been the root of crises

Half of all agencies had had client crisis management …

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My friend Susan Getgood is speaking on Tuesday’s Blogging with Integrity webinar, and I encourage everyone who is interested in learning what is best practice in terms of blogger outreach to check it out.
Susan and I worked together many moons ago when the dot-com trend was bubbling up, but she’s since gone on to become a leading voice in the marketing and communications blogosphere.
She is  co-founder and managing director of Blog With Integrity.  She blogs at Marketing Roadmaps and her first book, Professional Blogging for Dummies (Wiley) will …