As you probably know, Dan Englander and I started Mass Innovation Nights about 18 months ago. What you might not know is that Mass Innovation Nights is more than just a monthly event to launch new products. It has been a sandbox in which we frequently experiment with new social media marketing and online marketing techniques, especially Twitter techniques (Twechniques?).
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Cambridge’s Conduit Labs was just purchased by west coast Facebook gaming company Zynga. The deal, announced yesterday, was partially reporter just over a week ago by Scott Kirsner in a tweet after he heard about it while standing on line for ice cream at Fenway — setting up, as Nabeel pointed out, one of the best puns in journalism ever.
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Summer is either the best or the worst time for getting anything done in the business world, depending on whether you talk with a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type.
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I went on vacation last week and when I got home the mailman delivered a big stack of newspapers, magazines, and of course, bills and junk mail. (Surprisingly little of the last category, maybe it is time for a resurgence in the direct mail industry.) The mailman also delivered a subtle statement on the value of the print media.
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Yesterday morning, I was a guest at the Waltham IBM Innovation Center for their 15th Anniversary. (Full disclosure, Joe Perry and the Waltham IBM Innovation Center team have provided Mass Innovation Nights with a free site for our monthly product launch events.) The IBM Smarter Planet program was a highlight and a feature of the day’s program and I was glad to take a deep dive into it as an example of a well-done corporate strategy program.
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What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas if you choose to share all the gory details.
There’s been plenty written on maintaining a professional image online. Dozens, probably hundreds, of articles urge young people to think about how their social media profile stacks up when a potential employer looks at what’s available online. But what if you are hiring people to represent your company online through social media?
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I used to be a PR bigot — PR was better, faster, stronger than all other types of marketing. Then the World Wide Web happened.
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This morning The Boston Globe published Scott Kirsner’s 10 Tips for Attracting a Following on Twitter. Recommended reading for my social media marketing students — several of the folks quoted are ones I spend time with in person and on Twitter. I’ve been asked previously to publish my tips (I usually give these to my classes as a handout.) So, here they are — warning, it’s a long long list, and it is focused on people who are just getting started.
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Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what a reporter wanted to write? Well, you can know, if you look at the editorial calendar.
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When sleep doesn’t come right away, I often watch movies on TV, catching bits and pieces of them, rarely watching a movie from start to finish. Hence, it often takes months before I see all of a movie, if ever. I’ve seen snatches of the 2008 film Bottle Shock, the mostly true story of how Napa Valley took on the French wine industry in 1976. It makes for an entertaining take on the vintner wars, even when you know it was shot from a unabashedly patriotic view.
I see it as an interesting public relations story.
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Yes, yes, there are media databases and it is possible to start this kind of a project using one but frankly, you are just going to have to go back through it and do this work anyway. Plus you are paying big bucks for that database access and the temptation is to not do the research to confirm that the names that turn up are really your best targets. (And then you can find yourself in the embarrassing situation of contacting someone who “stopped covering that beat 6 months ago” or “When I said I write about finance, I meant personal finance”.)
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I spent a couple of hours yesterday hanging out in Harvard Square waiting for my older son to finish a Boy Scout merit badge “camp.” I did what I usually do when I have time on my hands, headed for the bookstore. (In this case, the Harvard Coop.) I had a list of books that I have been meaning to pick up and random browsing in a bookstore is one of my favorite hobbies — not an inexpensive hobby. I picked up Chris Brogan’s book, Social Media 101, which I knew from reading his blog was a collection of blog posts. The book is (supposedly) intended for people who are still a little unclear about social media. But I still bought the book. (There’s another blog in my future about the book itself.) Why? Because I read books for inspiration.
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