The big news yesterday was Amazon’s acquisition of online shoe retailer Zappos, a company known for its social media marketing prowess. The CEOs of both companies used social media to communicate with their employees about the deal. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote a blog post explaining the sale; Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recorded a video message for employees of both companies—while apparently ignoring the calls from reporters. Annoyed, perhaps, at the way Zappos and Amazon communicated the deal, FastCompany mocked Bezos in a “live blog” of his video message.
MediaShift’s Simon Owens asked how PR professionals can identify the "Who's Who" of bloggers in their clients' niches? “And once they've identified them, how do they approach them for coverage?” Owens sought the answers—and finds some.
Reynolds American, the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, is hiring a manager of digital communications. This person will manage content and make recommendations on design and navigation of a variety of parent and operating company websites and intranets; monitor and advise management on selected social media discussions on public affairs issues of interest to the company; and provide general writing and other support for internal and external communications. Read more about this job.
Muck Rack is a very useful Web site that catalogues all the journalists on Twitter. Now the site is offering a “one line press release service.” Here’s what you do: Type a brief press release—130 characters max, with links—into a Twitter-looking box and hit submit. It then appears on a press release page on the site and on the Muck Rack Twitter feed. Here’s the rub: It costs $1 a character with a $50 minimum charge. That’s a $50 tweet! Am I missing something or is this a bit of a stretch considering Twitter is, you know, free? Pepsi has signed on for the service. Stay tuned …
“For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing,” Claire Cain Miller wrote for The New York Times. “It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.”
PR management firm Vocus said it lost $343,000, or 2 cents a share, in the second quarter, compared with a profit of $5.7 million, 30 cents a share, one year earlier, when it was helped by a tax-related gain. The company’s revenue grew by 10.4 percent, to $21.1 million, thanks in part to the addition of 203 new subscribers in the quarter. Vocus has 3,761 subscribers, including AirTran Airways, Deloitte & Touche and the National Hockey League.
A recent survey from Pew Internet found that 69% of Americans have used the Internet to cope with the recession. “They hunt for bargains, jobs, ways to upgrade their skills, better investment strategies, housing options, and government benefits,” the report said. What did they do in the 1930s to cope with the depression—talk to people face-to-face? Yeesh.
“That I’m pursuing an MBA surprises most PR people,” Dan Wool wrote for Valley PR Blog. “They inevitably ask: why? Then, the follow-up is usually: why not a PR, Communications or Journalism degree? Okay, second question first: For one, I have a Comm. degree. I also feel like I’ve earned the equivalent of a PhD in PR from 18-plus years of daily practice. To me, despite the excellent programs at ASU and elsewhere, any higher learning pursuit in PR would be purely academic and probably not as challenging. That’s just not very me.” Wool gave three specific reasons for choosing an MBA program.
Who knew Twitter CEO Biz Stone had the sensibility of a junior high boy? In response to David Letterman calling Twitter a “waste of time,” Stone blogged: “That's generally how Twitter was characterized in 2007 so Dave's only two years behind—we'll give him a little more time to catch up.” Think Steve Jobs would ever say that publicly?
Ready for a healthy dose of Manhattan PR gossip? Ali Wise, the director of entertainment PR at Dolce & Gabbana, who you might remember from her arrest weeks ago for allegedly hacking into interior designer Nina Freudenberger's voicemail account, has broken her silence on the Twitter airwaves. She recently tweeted: “‘Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.’ Oscar Wilde.” Also, New York magazine said last week that she might get her own … wait for it … reality show. And why not? As Oscar Wilde once said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
Grasshopper.com, a telephone service for entrepreneurs, recently changed its name from GotVmail.com—“and it's become a classic case study in well-done rebranding and high-quality blogger outreach,” wrote marketing consultant Andy Sernovitz. He broke down the six steps to this outreach program, including step no. 1: “[Grasshopper.com] mailed a buzz-worthy gift to bloggers—a bag of ready-to-eat chocolate covered insects.”
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