AP Style Book iPhone App A Failure In Digital Content Pricing
This week the Associated Press released an iPhone application for its popular Stylebook. The AP Stylebook as it is most commonly referred to is the standard for reference for journalists and those in communications. While it is really great to access to the Stylebook digitally on the go, the pricing structure is wrong. At $28.99 the iPhone application is the most expensive way to purchase the Stylebook, more than the print or standard online version. This type of pricing isn’t forward thinking. It is charging for another way to access the information. Why not charge a flat price to get a copy of the book, internet subscription and iPhone application access?
Pricing aside, the Associated Press is also missing a major opportunity to crowd source future entries. Currently you can make notes in the iPhone application, personally for words or situations that aren’t included in the current listing. Why isn’t the AP seeking out this data from everyone to help build a better and more relevant reference guide for the future?
Nielsen: Time Spent On Social Networks Has Tripled
Recently Nielsen reported that in the past year Americans, have tripled the amount of time that the spend online in blogs and social networks. Those numbers may not be surprising, but the increase in online advertising spending in the chart above are pretty staggering. Online advertising has seen a lot of growth in a tough economic year, and reason would say that this data points to 2010 as a potentially huge year for the online advertising industry.
Does Social Media Show Journalistic Bias?
The Washington Post is in the news today when it comes to social media. The news organization’s made some noise with the release of employee social media guidelines. The big news here is the viewpoint that the Washington Post has taken on the impact of social media on journalists objectivity. The Washington Post goes as far to say that who journalists follow on Twitter can demonstrate bias and perceived conflicts.
The bottom line here, is that the Washington post can not control employees social media behavior in totality. If they limit how their journalists use the social web it will only hinder their reporting ability by putting them away from potential sources. I Understand the Washington Post’s need to remain as objective as possible, but this seems to have been a step too far.
Social Fresh: Social Media's Business Implications Take Spotlight
Monday about 230 people came together at the Holiday Inn in Downtown Charlotte, NC for the Social Fresh conference. The event brought in attendees from across the U.S. including representatives from major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Bank of America, and Rubbermaid. The day was jam packed with great speakers and panels far too many to mention in my recap. However, I have some great video and reaction from the event to share. More »
Talking Social Media and B2B at Social Fresh
On August 24th, I have the opportunity of join a talented group of speakers at the Social Fresh conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The event focuses on educating attendees on social media’s application to business and features speakers from Rubbermaid, Best Buy, Ripple6 and more.
I will be moderating a panel about Social Media for Business to Business organizations. The panel will include Nathan Gilliatt of Social Target, Jeff Cohen of SocialMediaB2B.com and David Thomas of SAS. We are going to be focusing on tangible takeaways that B2B companies can start implementing right away in their business. We will be addressing monitoring, social CRM, selling social media to your boss, and will discuss strategies that have worked for other B2B organizations.
If you are planning to attend the event I look forward to meeting you!
I will report back next week with highlights from our discussions as well as my takeaways of the conference overall.
An Introduction To Social Media For Food Business Owners
This morning I was very lucky to have the opportunity to speak to a group of food business owners whose businesses range from grits milling to barbecue sauce manufacturing. It was a very engaged group with thoughtful questions. I gave a 20 minute presentation as an introduction to social media for food business owners with a focus on setting up a monitoring social media monitoring system.
Here is a video of the majority of my presentation. (See links below the video)
Important links mentioned in the above video:
Twitter Brand Engagement: Best Buy's Twelpforce
Best Buy announced that it is going to use Twitter to answer customer’s electronic questions through it’s Twelpfroce twitter account.
This idea isn’t new. Answering customer questions on Twitter has been done for a while now and made famous by Comcast. With most cases, including Comcast the questions came from current customers who had accounts and a team of Comcast employees would look up their account to determine the problem. With Best Buy the scale is much larger. They are trying to help anyone with a consumer electronics question and have developed an system to allow employees from across the country to respond to these questions.
What is the point? From a branding stand point Best Buy is striving to become/remain the consumer electronics expert. It is hard to think of a more wide sweeping approach to do display this attribute that constantly answering questions in real-time for everyone to see.
This is a bold move and if they can make the experience genuine and not feel like spam it can be a huge success.
Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history
Many people talk about the shift in media that has happened with the raise of the Internet and the social web, but none do it with the clarity and examples in the way Clay Shirky does in this video from TED.
Social Media Key Factor In Purchasing For Online Moms
Recently the folks over at E-marketer released new survey results stating that 34 million moms were active online. While that is a big number a more important stat comes from a deeper graph.
Take a look at the graph above. Referral from friends or family is the second most important source of information for mothers when making purchases. Think about that number in a different way, that is not just the people moms know personally. Social media is causing everyone to redefine who they trust and who they even consider friends. People now consider someone a friend who they have never even spoken to on the phone, let alone met in person. This means almost anybody can be an influencer.
How does this change the way you market to moms?
Howard, Merrell & Partners Wins 8 Raleigh Public Relations Society Awards
Last night the Raleigh Public Relations Society held its annual Sir Walter Raleigh Awards dinner and celebrates the organization’s 50th anniversary. The Sir Walter Raleigh Awards honor outstanding public relations work in the Triangle area. The competition recognizes firms of all sizes for excellence in the field. Last night the Howard, Merrell & Partners public relations team took home many top honors!
Howard, Merrell & Partners earned the following awards:
Total Communications/Community Relations Campaign
Organizational Identity/Promotion:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD
Miscellaneous Special Events:
CORDURA® Brand Scavenger Hunt – SILVER
Special Event:
Butterball Grand Opening – HONORABLE MENTION
Public Relations Writing
Opinion/Feature Writing:
Butterball Op-Ed – HONORABLE MENTION
News Release:
Humanities Center ASC Conference – SILVER and BEST IN DIVISION
Publications
Open Category:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD and BEST IN DIVISON
The HM&P PR team would also like to thank Peter Shankman for an inspiring and thoughtful speech at last night’s dinner. It was a great event thank you to everyone who helped to make it possible!
