PR 2.0 — One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content. Indeed, we are programming the social web around our brand hub and as such, we’re required to capture attention and also hold it through the introduction of engaging dialogue, interaction, and the introduction of relevant information packaged and published as social objects...

ADVERTISING AGE — I remember as the brand management director for Lucent Technologies we worked hard to maintain a flexible yet consistent brand identity. The work from Landor won just about every creative branding award there was and the brand management team won the APQC Best-in-Class award. In those days, if a group misused the brand we said they "went rogue." We meant they deviated from the standard. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that corporate branding has gone rogue and the cause is social media. Here's why...

SOCIAL MEDIA B2B — For all blogs, content is king. Between status meetings, financial reports, marketing planning and sales team ramp-ups, however, creating regular B2B blog content can be daunting. "5 Types of Posts to Feed Your Business Blog" was a Hubspot blog post that compared five very different types of food to the different types of content that best populate a business blog. Author Rick Burnes maintains that between spinach posts (longer posts that showcase your expertise) and roast posts (in-depth posts that require research and showcase data and analysis), all bloggers need some raisin bran...

MACK COLLIER.COM — Recently, a ten-year veteran of company blogging said he was throwing in the towel on his company blog.  So when Joel on Software goes up in smoke, does that mean that it’s finally time to pronounce that company blogging is dead? Hardly. What it means, is that there are now a LOT more companies blogging. And unfortunately, that also means that there are a lot more very crappy company blogs out there. But a well-written and positioned company blog is just as effective now as it was 10 years ago.  Probably moreso.  The key then, as now, is to create a company blog that your customers will actually read...

MEDIAPOST — Whatever happened to crowd-sourcing? Crowd-sourcing, user-generated content, consumer-generated content: these were huge buzzwords from 2004-2008. Every brand was talking about the consumer's impact on a brand's ability to convey appropriate messaging. Viral marketing was all the rage, with marketers touting their ability to harness the power of the consumer to create cost-effective, impactful solutions. Then along came Twitter and Facebook. Social media became the darling of the moment, and crowd-sourcing became a casualty of growth. Guess what! The UGC space and crowd-sourcing are still very much alive and kicking (to quote Simple Minds), but...