Why I F***ing Love Twitter

A chat with IRG

I spoke with my friend Steve Melfi who works at IRG, The Investor Relations earlier this week about PR & Social media. It was fun. Check it out here.

Thanks Steve!

My blog is 1 year old today

Today is the one year anniversary of this blog. I'm not much for talking about how far I've come with it, what I like, what I don't. Let's just look to the future.

Also, for those readers that do come back ever so often. Thank you!

PR Agency Social Media Check In: Burson-Marsteller

About: Burson-Marsteller is a leading global public relations and communications firm whose knowledge, strategic insights and innovative programs help drive strong corporate and brand reputations for its clients. We provide our clients with strategic thinking and program execution across a complete range of public relations, public affairs, advertising and other communications services. Through our proprietary research, we lead the industry in knowledge of and insights into the relationship between communications and the reputations of companies and their CEOs. These learnings are applied to our many and varied corporate clients.

Social Media Sites on Corporate Website:

• The Burson-Marsteller Blog
• Twitter-@BMGlobalNews - news and insights from Burson's network.
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Flickr
  

Client/s Using Social Media to Enhance Campaign/Brand:

• SAP China: implemented a community blog in which people could maintain individual blogs on SOA topics.
• Transforming Chichen-Itza from Virtual Wonder In Second Life to World Wonder: Targeted Second Life residents to communicate to target audiences the wonders and history of Chichen-Itza in a way that would generate votes, drive traffic and awareness from travel/lifestyle media.

Other Cool Social Media/Digital Assets from Burson-Marsteller:

• Separate Burson Digital Practice (where most of the social media links are hosted) Burson Digital is described as developing "communications strategies around social media/community, online reputation management, interactive experience design, digital business management, and mobile marketing on behalf of corporations, consumer brands, government agencies and other large organizations."
• Digital Perspectives Blog.
• Separate Twitter: @BMDigital (*Note the account is private and blocking updates and seems to be empty)**EDITORS UPDATE- Burson responded on Twitter. The new account is @BursonDigital.
  

Summary: It's mostly there. Burson has the basics in place with all of the major networks covered and they have good content filling it up. (Although-what is up with the @BMDigital Twitter?) While they don't have a digital front man like Edelman does, they encourage a full digital team to lead the way in the social media space. In looking at the case studies, I was hoping for more recent work, but who knows the reasoning for why those case studies (some back to 2007) are featured. They're still good but I'm guessing Burson has done some killer stuff since then. I really like the Digital Perspectives Blog (may also be the fact that I follow Dave Ambrose's work as well.)

Do you know or work for an agency doing great things with social media with their clients AND internally? Do you work for the agency featured? Leave suggestions in the comments!

One Pitch Two Pitch Bad Pitch Blue Pitch

I'm not one to call out bad pitches. I'm against those lists of bad PR people and all the bad they've done. Having written a few bad ones in my early days, you have to give space to make mistakes and learn. (In fact: I had a pitch I wrote almost 2 years ago read out loud at dinner the other night. It was horrible, but a good laugh and I'm thankful my emails don't look like that anymore. One day I'll post it. Maybe.)

Anyway, reading this article in Gawker (of all places) makes me just cringe. There's one thing about pitching a publication that isn't right for the story. You may be stretching the interest of the publication and think they may like your news...they may not.

But really? Pitching a news announcement about how to avoid pregnancy to a gay publication? Common sense folks. It's like pitching a "Top 10 Ways to Lose Weight This Summer" to a publication about Eating Disorders.

Read the full story here.

Looking for more bad pitches? (I urge you to read these as a learning tool, not to ridicule. You're not perfect either.) Check out The Bad Pitch Blog.