Posts Tagged ‘liberate media’
Your Company Brand Or Your Personal Brand On Twitter?
June 17th, 2008
What’s better, promote yourself as an individual that works for a brand/company, or be the voice behind a brand/company?
Let me give you some examples of relevant Twitter profiles:
andymerch
Name: Andy Merchant
Location: Brighton
Web http://www.liberatemedia.com
Bio: Social media consultant for Liberate Media
seroundtable
Name: SE Roundtable
Web http://www.seroundtable.com/
Bio: The Pulse of the Search Marketing Community
xoost
Name: Xoost
Web http://xoost.com/about.php
Bio: Do you Search >100 times/day and you’d like to share your search skills? Xoost is the place for you! If you like join the BETA TEST PHASE!
I am the individual that works for a brand.
The second and third Twitter examples choose to promote their various brands through a user name and thumbnail.
What’s the best way to do it?
I could have quite easy had my username as Liberate Media and the Liberate Media logo as my thumbnail, but my feeling is that I would not have the same freedom of expression and speech if I was confined as a Liberate Media spokesperson. As an individual I am still linked to my brand/company and have its best interests at heart, but this way I have the freedom to create an online personality with the flexibility to go one step further than a corporate structure would usually allow me.
Tools such as Twitter have helped individuals linked to brands/company’s to grow beyond being just known as ’so-and-so’ who works for ‘whoever’, into recognisable figures with online authority that are best known for their online presence.
Take a look at your Twitter followers. Can you tell me who they work for? Most of them still have day jobs.
To follow me on twitter click here and I promise to follow you back!
E-Consultancy roundtable: Who owns online PR?
May 23rd, 2008
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to attend E-Consultancy’s quarterly roundtable event on the topic of Online PR.
I’m told it was the busiest it has ever been - clearly Online PR is a hot subject of discussion at the moment. The room was packed out with marketing and PR managers from a wide range of sectors including finance, technology, travel and publishing etc. In attendance on the agency side were myself, Simon Collister of Edelman, Drew Benvie of Hotwire, and Karl Havard of search agency Propellernet.
At the heart of the two-hour discussion was the burning question: “Who owns Online PR?”. Although we jumped around discussing related subjects such as research and measurement, budget and resouce allocation, to name but a few…the crux of the argument repeatedly came back to how we define Online PR, and ultimately who should own it.
One brand-side attendee summed up many people’s thoughts exactly: “Are you talking about sending out your views to your audiences who happen to be reading it in an online format rather than on paper, or are you talking about SEO? SEO is often treated as a different silo and managed by a different division, who are unaware of what the marketing department is doing. That is where the definition becomes a bit blurred.”
On the PR side, there thankfully seemed to be a conscenus of opinion that what we’re talking about here is PR- whether we’re defining it as offline or online. Online PR is no more than PR in the digital space.
From my perspective, social media is taking us back to the original cornerstone of PR - that being two-way conversation. There is a danger in continuing to segregate ‘Online PR’ as something separate, that should have separate ROI and budgets attached. This will continue to reinforce the problem of Online PR existing as an afterthought or bolt-on to wider marketing and PR efforts.
Surely it’s better than we focus on breaking down these silos, as has happened to a certain extent in the advertising industry, so that we can start to achieve a truly integrated campaign that shares the same objectives and strategy?
One search expert in attendance suggested online has outpaced the traditional PR agencies, with some trying to re-position themselves to grab this online concept, and make sure they portray that they know it. “When actually the digital agencies know the online mediums and don’t know PR, while the PR agencies know PR but don’t necessarily know the online mediums,” he argued.
At Liberate Media we’re taking a collaborative approach, forging partnerships with experts who offer complimentary services, e.g. SEO, but respect our strategic communications skills. By bringing essential new skills in-house, e.g. social media/technology expertise, we have also been able to evolve more quickly into a consultancy set-up to take ownership of online PR.
May 21st, 2008
At Liberate Media we’ve been tackling one of the biggest issues facing the PR industry today, the skills crisis.
We thought it might be helpful to overview our thoughts on the subject in a podcast, which we’ve used to identify a few of the problems and share some insight into how we’re dealing with the matter.
Let us know your thoughts on the subject.
To Listen or to down load the podcast click here
Business Podcasting Basics And Tools
May 14th, 2008
Today’s post is a little pre-empt for the forthcoming Liberate Media podcast.
A good few businesses use podcasting as part of there intergreated social media campaigns, below is a list of just a few available at the iTunes store:
Business Link (government body supporting SMEs)
Which? Podcast - Consumer Association
One heavy business podcast user is IBM, who use podcasting to brief distributed staff. Read more here
The great thing about podcasts is that they can be completed to a good standard on any size budget. If you don’t have much cash, but do have a little imagination and time, you can still achieve some great results.
The tools you need:
Audacity, is a free all singing, all dancing recording, editing and post-production solution for your audio podcast, this open-source programme has many helpful tutorials that can be found on the site.
TIP: If you want to save to the MP3 format you need the LAME MP3 encoder for Audacity, which i strongly recommend.
A paid-for alternative is RecordForAll which at $40.00 or around £20.00 provides great value for money, there’s also a nice and easy screencast to follow as soon as you open the site. Here’s what they say about it “RecordForAll makes it simple to record audio files, layer audio files and edit audio files for podcasting. Podcasters can record voices, or music files or other sounds”.
For more information and a beginners guide to podcasting, view this post, for more information on podcasting in general go to the Liberate Media resource/research page - podcasting section.
Liberate Media social media resource/research map
April 16th, 2008
Social media resource
The Liberate Media social media research/resources page is where we archive all our social media and web 2.0 resources/findings. There is a huge amount of resource to be looked at, so please feel free to dig around at your leisure.
Liberate Media is always keen to add to the social media resource with new posts, so please get in touch if you have something of value to add. - The resource map will be ever growing with new headings and links being added all the time.
The social media resource/research is very heavy due to large amount of archived resource, it takes a little while to appear, but please be patient, it’s well worth the wait!
To use the resource map simply hold the left mouse button down and scroll around until you see the section you want to look at. Click the bars next to the paper-clip to get a description of the archive, then click the paper-clip to get a list of posts in that resource.
To add the resource/research map copy and paste the code below into your blog:
<iframe id=”mapframe_id226″ name=”mapframe_id226″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:1px #B9B9B9 solid;” scrolling=”no” src=”http://www.glinkr.net/site_media/DebateMapClient/html/map_content.html?graphId=226″ height=”500px” width=”95%” ></iframe>
Second Life resource list - is it still a good place to build brand?
April 15th, 2008
As you know Liberate Media is a big believer in sharing, and today we will be passing on our in-depth Second Life research and resource list to you.
You will find enough resources here to decide weather Second Life is a legitimate and effective way of highlighting your company’s profile or not. Leading brands like Coca Cola continue to have a presence in this virtual world, but this doesn’t mean that they’ve got it right!
For me I’m still not sure, and you hear very little about Second Life these days! However, having said that Reuters has a Second Life news centre which is bang up to date.
Overview
Second Life Businesses
7 tips for real-world businesses in Second Life
Second Life: It’s not a game - Tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine
Five Rules For Bringing Your Real-Life Business Into Second Life
Coca Cola Launches Second Life Contest for New Coke Machine
Other Second Life posts
Lots to do in Second Life - events board
Mashables Second Life Tool Box
Virtual Worlds Poised to Become Valuable Work Tools
Video Tutorials - Second Life Wiki
SecondLife.com - 5 Worst Websites - TIME
Second Life Herald - virtual world news blog
C4 Second Lives - Find out more about the people living in Second Life
Twitterbox - a Twitter Client for Second Life
Second Life Profiles, the ONLY dedicated online community for Second Life players
We are always looking to add good research or resources to our research/resource archive - please let us know of other any other useful Second Life posts we can add.
We would also be interested to hear how your company is using Second Life and if you think it is still a useful brand building tool…
South Africa’s First Social Media Press Release - The Standard Bank Pro20 Series (cricket)
April 14th, 2008
You may or may not be aware that Liberate Media has been following the Social Media Press Release for some time.
Following my previous post Will the social media press release (SMPR) reach tipping point by the end of the year?, I was pleased to hear about the SMPR being used in other parts of the world aside from the UK and US.
South Africa-based Standard Bank has been using the release template as part of the Standard Bank Pro20 Series cricket tournament.
Read more about the release here.
I was bowled over (cricket pun!) by the release. It’s one of the best examples of the SMPR I have seen to date, and of course will be added to the Liberate Media research/resource page.
Click on the image to view the Pro 20 SMPR.
What I really like about the Kaboom SMPR is:
- The design: they have taken the colourful punchy format of the twenty twenty game and used it for the SMPR.
- The release is set out on a logical way: Quick facts followed by the multimedia assets and then the core information.
- They have some great quotes for bloggers/journalist to use.
- From the release you can follow Pro 20 conversation on Twitter and join its Facebook group.
It’s a really great effort, and for me, this has set the SMPR standard. It’s clean, well laid out and easy to follow.
April 8th, 2008
As you may be aware one of Liberate Media’s clients is Napster , originally a P2P filesharing service, now an online music store and subscription service.
The corporate identity of Napster is a cool headphone wearing cat:
Vs the imposter!
It kinda looks like the sassy, female, rogue equivalent to the Napster cat, don’t you think?
The xoost cat is the logo of www.xoost.com - a web search engine with a difference. The difference being all your searches are saved to your account, you can also socialize with other Xoosters on the basis of common search interests. Another feature is the ability to share your Xoost searches with your friends on other networks such as Facebook or Twitter.
I’m off now to let both cats out of their cages for a fight to the death…I’m rooting for the Napster cat!
Best weekly social media and web 2.0 news round up for week ending 4th April 2008
April 4th, 2008
We have been scouring the blogosphere all week for the best hot social media and web 2.0-related news and resources. We have also added new links to the Liberate Media resource/research page, - it’s a little slow to load but well worth the wait!
Twitter news/tools
twitter census – surveys for the twittersphere
How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients
Create a Twitter-like service in 45 minutes
Scoble is Dead Wrong About Twitter
tweetpeek - create a group for your Twitter feed
Blogging
The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs
Does Social Media Marketing Really Work for Most Blogs?
The 4 Things You Do That Turn Readers Off
Other social media news/tools
43 More Top Social Media Tips And Tools
38 Social Networking Sites For Your Mobile
Children flock to social networks
Build your own social Technographics Profile
Content Tagging: What Are Tags And Why They Are So Important For Web Publishers
Music fans prefer Wikipedia to MySpace
Facebook vs Asia’s Top Social Networks
Social media case studies
Blogger Relations Case Study: Mommybloggers
SEO
Who Has the Best Link Building Techniques?
Reputation
Essential guide to online Reputation Management
Please tune in next friday for the next weekly round up…
Best weekly social media and web 2.0 news round up for week ending 28th March 2008
March 28th, 2008
We have been scouring the blogosphere all week for the best social media and web 2.0-related news and resources. We have also added new links to the Liberate Media resource/research page,
Here is our weekly round-up:
- The Social Organization: Social Media Examples
- How to Breathe Life Back into Your Blog
- Analyze Your Web Traffic With Google Analytics: Video Tutorial
- Tweetburner: we allow you to keep track of what happens to the links in tweets shared with you, by you, by your friends and every other twitterer.
- Facebook Security Lapse Leaves Private Photos Exposed, Even Paris and Zuck’s
- Top 10 Twitter conversationalists - What’s their motive?
- What do you want from Social Media?
- The Ready, Fire, Aim, Reload Strategy for Social Media Success
- 38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management
- Sound Investments For Your Website
- Social Media Advertising Will Happen As Expected
- What Are The Benefits of Podcasting?
- 12 social media tools to find people online!
- Twitter is The New Facebook
- LinkedIn Business Directory: It’s Just Like Facebook
- Is Twitter where bloggers go to die?
- ADAGE POWER150: THE UK BLOGS
- Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons
Please tune in next friday for the next weekly round up…