How do things become ‘viral’ on the Internet? And what exactly do we mean by ‘influence’? Marketing and PR people want their messages to spread in the most effective and efficient way possible, and so these questions have received a great deal of attention, particularly in recent years, as we’ve seen the rise of ‘viral memes’ on the Web. This …read the rest of this article

On the one hand, I am obviously and unashamedly biased. I run a network for the digital industry. I believe that digital people are the cleverest, most capable, most focused and honest that the media industry has to offer.
On the other, crikey, there are an awful lot of digital folk working in PR nowadays. And digital outfits that ‘do’ PR. …read the rest of this article

I never quote Seth Godin. I find his stuff far too happy-clappy for my comfort zone (ach- another americanism!) Yet here I am: Seth on America choosing Neil Armstrong as their ‘moon landing guy’:
NASA did what many organizations do when picking someone to act as company spokesperson. They avoided risk, played it safe and chose someone who wouldn’t make a …read the rest of this article

Update: Had a good chat with Daryl Wilcox, and it looks like we’ve come to a sensible compromise that will allow Tim to do his job and Response Source to maintain its purity. All’s well, etc.
My staff writer at NMK – Tim Hoang – works for the PR company, Rainier, as well. That’s always something we’ve made very clear. I …read the rest of this article

Just struck me, in a not-entirely-artificial way, that if you are interested in PR and the Web, as per the last post, then you ought to come to the event we’ve organised at NMK on Tuesday next week (20/11/07), ‘Clients in the Wild‘. There are about ten tickets left at this point, I understand. Click the link back there ( …read the rest of this article

I’ve always been a bit of a sceptic about Second Life (posts passim, and I mean in its utility as a marketing vehicle for brands), and I won’t pretend otherwise despite a day of inspiration and intelligence at the Virtual Worlds Forum. Yes, I now understand a bit more about why brands have been investing in the network and …read the rest of this article

StoryCrafter, Edelman’s version of a social media press release service, has attracted a fair amount of attention. There’s no lack of good comments already out there, but the subject’s interesting to me, so I thought I’d pitch in too.
First a round-up:
Social media press releases are designed to give journalists and bloggers the elements of a release in a mix-and-match format. …read the rest of this article

Opening the WoM Communications conference, Steve Barton of Keevil Barton Kershaw [now defunct] talked about the reasons word of mouth matters more than ever. He cited research that states we receive over 3000 messages a day about products and services (source unknown, but I can believe it. Here is some info). We’re not able to process that amount of input, …read the rest of this article