Questions to ask our clients about social media

I suppose this is in the spirit of the trusted advisor conversations we've been having...Scott Hepburn, who works for the PR Store contributed this post on Amber Naslund's blog about how to turn the tables on your clients that are asking about social media. Some good questions here that we can probably use.

The Personal Brand

I thought this interview with Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester by Shel Israel was worth sharing with you. Shel is working on a new book about Twitter, and interviewed Jeremiah in preparation for the chapter on personal brand. If you aren't following Jeremiah, i'd highly recommend it. He's as savvy as Robert Scoble, and talks at a level that all of us can understand.

What Clients Want from Their PR Agencies Regarding Social Media

This is a really great article by Jennifer Leggio (based on survey data I might add) about what clients want from their agencies regarding social media. I think this reinforces the previous post from the analyst at Forrester, but few agencies are really walking the walk.

Agencies need to walk the walk

This is a great post from Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester. If agencies are going to be pitching social media/Web 2.0 to clients they better have experience using it themselves. I love this part of the post in particular:

"I asked the VP of Marketing, Paula Drum (a social media buyer and decision maker) of HR Block if she would hire an agency that wasn’t using the tools, and she said “no."

Six ways to make Web 2.0 work

An interesting report from McKinsey Quarterly about how companies can make Web 2.0 technologies work for them. Over the course of time they have interviewed about 50 "early adopters" of this technology and have distilled those thoughts into six key criterion for success.

Importance of Listening, Part 2

Continuing on the theme of the importance of listening...this time from Matt Dickman. This post outlines how to create and then execute a listening plan. He makes the case, as do many social media "experts," that listening before engaging is one of the most critical steps to success. The graphic associated with this post, while basic, is definitely instructive of how the social media process should evolve.

Is social media changing communications or not?

A fascinating debate is developing in social media: Social media is changing the foundations of public relations versus social media is just another vehicle to deliver a message (the fundamentals are still the same. You get two posts for the price of one today. The first is from Bill Sledzik from Kent who argues that much of what we see in social media is PR 101. The second is from Amber Naslund who argues that social media is indeed changing how PR is practiced. Where do you fall?