Video Interview with Jon Swartz of USA Today
To kick off 2012, don't miss this interview with Jon Swartz of USA Today - it's an inside look at his methodology, his use of social media for story ideas and his predictions for the new year. Read full post »
Video Interview with Giles Fraser, Co-Founder, Brands2Life and Oriella Network
On a recent trip to visit our long-time partner Brands2Life in London, I had a few minutes to catch up with Co-Founder Giles Fraser. Don't miss this exclusive video interview discussing the latest in global communications. Read full post »
"The Way"
What is it about "The Way"? In the last few weeks I have heard a lot of people talking about "The HP Way". There's the "Horn Group Way". And then there's “your way or the highway.” But seriously, what is "The Way"? It’s a series of processes. A culture. An approach... Read full post »
Facebook Ad Unit Kicks Off Advertising Week
It's 10 am, I've had two cups of coffee and two pieces of pandesal. I am ready for Advertising Week. Inevitably, this is a big news week for advertising technology, and kicking it off is Facebook with its new premium ad unit that will be sold direct. ClickZ points out, from... Read full post »
20 Thoughts for 20 Years
...I've actually had more than 20 thoughts in 2 decades but here are the ones that have come back the most often as friendly reminders and occasionally, to haunt me. Enjoy. 1. If you don't have a plan, you don't know where you are going. Have, and share a vision, make... Read full post »
"Duck Hunting" with Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher
This week I'm pleased to share a recent video interview from our Innovator Series with Tom Foremski, Editor of Silicon Valley Watcher. http://vimeo.com/24227420 Horn Group Innovator Series - Tom Foremski, Editor of Silicon Valley Watcher from Horn Group on Vimeo. In this clip, Tom talks about how being a CMO is... Read full post »
Social Media Infiltrates the Newsroom and Optimism Returns to Journalism According to Fourth Annual Oriella Study
This morning, we launched our annual Oriella Digital Journalism Study. This is the fourth time we have carried out the project since launching in 2008 and this year’s study yielded the most interesting results to date. A key trend was the extent to which social media has infiltrated the newsroom. For... Read full post »
Video Interview with Ann Winblad, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
In this week's Innovator Series interview, I talked with Ann Winblad, Founder and Managing Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco. Horn Group Innovator Series - Ann Winblad, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners from Horn Group on Vimeo. What I admire about Ann is how... Read full post »
David Moore on 24/7 Real Media and the Future of Internet Marketing
This week I'm proud to share a recent interview with Dave Moore, Founder, Chairman and CEO of 24/7 Real Media. Horn Group Innovator Series - David J. Moore of 24/7 Real Media from Horn Group on Vimeo. I've gotten to know Dave over the last several years and he's been a... Read full post »
Can Austin Sustain SXSW Interactive? Please, I Hope So…
I’m recovering this morning in Austin, Texas, coffee in hand, after spending the past several days hiking downtown Austin to soak in as much of the South by Southwest Interactive experience as possible. And I’m exhausted. SXSW celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with another 30-40% growth in Interactive attendance. That’s... Read full post »
3 Tips to Help Build Your Brand with Online Video
In the second part of our series on online video, we have compiled our top three tips to help marketers and communicators build their brand with video. Check out our video below, and if you are interested in exploring what video can do for your brand, give us a call today!... Read full post »
4 Reasons to Add Online Video to Your Marketing & Communications Strategy
Hello and welcome to Horn Group's new series on online video best practices! At Horn Group, we know seeing is believing and we’re big proponents of using video to get messages across. Our Interactive Design practice even has a specific focus on creating compelling videos to help clients maximize audience engagement.... Read full post »
How Social Tools will Change the Enterprise
Last week, a few of us from the Horn Group attended GigaOm's Net:Work conference and enjoyed a spirited session with Marc Benioff being interviewed by Victoria Barrett. Marc's focus was squarely on the impacts of social tools in the enterprise and specifically how Safesforce.com is using their own tool, Chatter, to... Read full post »
Changing Reading Habits Mean New PR Tactics
PR pros should recommend their clients add “like” buttons next to coverage their company hosts in the online newsroom. Read full post »
Timing Your Facebook Outreach; It Does Matter
When should you post Facebook content for a client? A recent study by Vitrue, as reported by Mashable, answers this question. Read full post »
More on OMMA Global - Arianna Huffington's Keynote
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend Arianna Huffington’s keynote speech at OMMA Global. Huffington appeared in front of a packed house to start out day two of the conference. Huffington started out with some best practices she has deployed in the short five-year history of Huffington Post. Transparency is... Read full post »
Blogs, Apps and Paywalls -- Top Trends from Survey of 774 Journalists
Today the Oriella PR Network published our third annual study looking at the impact of digital media on journalism internationally. It’s our biggest study yet – with almost 775 respondents in 20+ countries across Europe, the US and Latin America taking part. We found that digital media have hit the mainstream... Read full post »
Content does not equal news
Joe Ciarallo from mediabistro.com featured an interesting question in PR Newser today: What if only PR pros from Massey Energy were reporting on the West Virginia mining disaster? The question came from Bill Sledzik, associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Kent State University. It's a critical... Read full post »
Horn Group Panel Event: Surprise! You're a Media Company!
Every company has to have social skills--in both senses of the word." -- Karen Wickre, Google There's been a swell of conversation lately to the effect that organizations have become media companies. But what does this mean? And how should organizations approach this evolution? We convened a group of people who... Read full post »
Brand monitoring: What we can learn from the Nestle-Facebook crisis
It had to happen sooner or later. Activism has gone digital. Late last week, Greenpeace activists "brandjacked" Nestle's Facebook Fan page in an effort to pressure Nestle to stop sourcing palm oil -- an ingredient in many of their food products -- from producers who, they allege, are contributing to rainforest... Read full post »
SXSW10: Three ways of looking at your audience
Three panels, three completely different ways of looking at public speaking. I intended to stop first at the WIRED panel at 12:30, but was intercepted by a young woman with a handmade flyer at the Pepsico podcast lounge. Just before I hurled it into the trash, I noticed that it announcied... Read full post »
SXSW10: Charlene Li on Open Leadership
Say goodbye to the bright, shiny object. Social technologies are no longer a foreign land. "I call it a culture of sharing," says Charlene Li, founder and partner at Altimeter Group. "It's become frictionless for us to share things with each other." The culture of sharing has changed many things in... Read full post »
Privacy and Publicity: SXSW10 Keynote with Danah Boyd
I'm here at the South by Southwest opening keynote address. It's a full house for Danah Boyd, social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The subject: privacy and publicity. Boyd is an ethnographer who spends a good deal... Read full post »
SXSW10 - Social Media Analytics
What are social media analytics? And how do I get them? Margaret Francis of Scout Labs joins Blake Robinson of Attention PR to give us a state of the union on metrics. Their first question: Basic metrics: what the f--k is going on? This gets a wry laugh from the audience.... Read full post »
SXSW Day One - Content Strategy: What's in it for You?
It's a packed room here at South by Southwest Interactive--to talk about what? Content Strategy. And what is content strategy you may ask? And why should you care about it? Consider this. Over the next several years, your brand will become--if it isn't already--an overwhelmingly online experience. You know this, which... Read full post »
Tips for Managing Social Channels in a Busy Life
I was busy before the social world came on the scene. In my role, I need to be present offline and online. How can a CEO or virtually really any executive be present online consistently, in a meaningful way, and where? I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I try and... Read full post »
Social Newsroom Launched!
Today we launced a new social newsroom on horngroup.com. It aggregates content, news and industry insights from Horn Group and our clients in a gallery format. We included social commenting functionality on every page to encourage community response and discussion. We're certainly not the first to build a social newsroom --... Read full post »
Hanging at The Hangar at Altimeter Group
Shannon and I spent the evening at the Altimeter Group open house last night, where Deb, Jeremiah, Ray and Charlene debuted The Hangar, a physical space intended to bring together the ecosystem of emerging technologies, thought leaders, business and service providers to innovate and bring new ideas to life. To me,... Read full post »
After the social media frenzy...what's next?
In the movies, we know something big is about to happen when 1) an animal stops in the forest, cocks its head and listens intently; 2) a character walks into a darkened room without turning on the lights; or 3) the music swells. In real life, however, we rarely if ever... Read full post »
Global Trends in Social Media -- Destination: Germany
Next stop on the map is Germany as I interview our partners about social media trends around the world. Stephan Fink, and his team at Fink & Fuchs, has always impressed me with his passion for our trade and the notable results of the firm. Similar profile to ours -- mid-sized... Read full post »
Global Trends in Social Media -- Destination: Spain
A few weeks ago, Susan Etlinger and I were conducting a Social Media Boot Camp for our Oriella PR Network partner agencies which started a great conversation about social media trends outside of the US. There is so much discussion, particularly between agencies and communicators, on social media here in the... Read full post »
Tell Mama: Reaching the Digital Mom Online
If you consider that according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 75% of American women use the Internet, it should come as no surprise that it's become a mainstay for the American mom--to handle family finances, shop, research and connect with friends. Yet despite the prevalence of moms online,... Read full post »
Web 2.0 Expo 2009: Why Social Media Marketing Fails
Time moves so quickly that it's easy to forget that social media is still incredibly new for many, many organizations. Was it only six years ago that Tim O'Reilly and a rag-tag group of media junkies developed the concept of Web 2.0? In human years, that's about the age of your... Read full post »
Are we that far off from a Twaper?
Several newspapers took advantage of the April Fool’s holiday today by publishing stories that claimed that the publications would now be publishing news exclusively through Twitter. One local newspaper, North Carolina’s Mountain Xpress, even went so far as to load a Twitter feed onto their homepage that is still being updated... Read full post »
Social Media: Measure Twice, Cut Once
I recently attended the 2009 Social Media Building Blocks Conference, sponsored by Reality Digital, here in San Francisco. I was really impressed with the great lineup of speakers presenting at the conference, including MTV Networks and the Sundance Institute (Robert Redford was unfortunately not in attendance), who talked about many of... Read full post »
Immersing in Social Media: How Much is Too Much?
Horn Group has been recognized as an agency that "gets it" when it comes to developing a social media strategy for our clients. However, as a PR professional, I’ve recently been thinking about how to develop a social media strategy for ourselves as well. It’s easy to identify the benefits of... Read full post »
Informal Twitter Poll: Follow Management, Mr. Tweet are Top Priorities
Horn Group weighs in on the top Twitter Apps and gets some insight from Mr. Tweet. The results are in! A few weeks ago, Horn Group conducted an informal poll of our Brass Tacks readers – asking for your input and insight on the best Twitter apps, sites and services. Productivity... Read full post »
Twitter: Filtering Value from Noise
Horn Group’s Ben Billingsley and Joe Ciarallo go back and forth on the real value of Twitter. Ben: Thanks for sharing the Columbia J-School podcast: Twitter for Journalists, or everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter, but were afraid to ask. I have to say, many of the industry executives... Read full post »
Vote on Your Favorite Twitter Apps, Sites, and Services
At Horn Group, we’re crazy about Twitter. But we’re also going crazy just trying to wrap our heads around all of the sites, apps, and services that have grown out of Twitter-mania. So here's the million-dollar question: just as micro-blogging has moved to the mainstream, what Twitter-inspired sites and services have... Read full post »
ExpertCEO Makes it Less Lonely at the Top
Horn Group talks to Ken Ross, CEO of ExpertCEO, about how his network of resources helps other CEOs navigate through complex business issues and weather an unpredictable economy. HG: On the ExpertCEO network, senior executives can ask questions, pose scenarios, solicit input—quickly and in confidence—via an online exchange with other professionals.... Read full post »
Connecting the Dots: Using Social Media to Connect with Consumers
Hi, my name is Sabrina and I’m a social media junkie. There, I admit it. Anyone who knows me knows that I am truly passionate about social media’s impact on society. On a personal level, I can’t imagine heading to a new restaurant without first reading its review on Yelp. I... Read full post »
Social Media Jungle at CES, Part One
I spoke today at CES at the Social Media Jungle produced by Jeff Pulver. If you haven’t been following these, they’re a series of events designed for journalists, bloggers, marketers, PR people, technologists, business people—anyone, really, who’s interested in and/or already practicing social media. Jeff continues to host them in cities... Read full post »
The Twitter Chronicles: Lessons Learned
Think about it. A CEO walks up to a smaller competitor and says “let’s get married.” The other guy says, “Let’s talk.” While this actually happened to Kayak CEO Steve Hafner – chronicled by Sramana Mitra in Entrepreneur Journeys – not all relationships are this easy to establish. Let’s take the... Read full post »
When Tweeting, Do You Distinguish Client Versus Personal Interests?
An interesting conversation sparked up today in response to this tweet of mine: Buddy Media (client) whitepaper: What Advertisers Need to Know About Branded Social Media Applications" http://bit.ly/nW0h Another blogger, and fellow PR pro, messaged me asking, "Just noticed your use of (client) by the way for client-related "tweets". SOP for... Read full post »
PR People: Speak Up and Heal Thyself
A few weeks ago, Horn Group and Girls in Tech hosted an open discussion about the future of PR. In the end, we probably raised more questions than we answered. Here's the biggest one: is social media killing PR? I think its closing some doors and opening others. Frankly, if my... Read full post »
Is Social Media Killing PR?
I'm not sure which of the famous posts--Scoble, Arrington, Calacanis--and the responses from Steve Rubel, Brian Solis and others, planted the seed. Several of us were sitting in an office one day talking about where PR is going, and the fact that in all the noise about the so-called death of... Read full post »
Buddy Media CEO: "We Don't Show Up and Say 'Here's What We're Selling You'"
One of the great things about social, or "new" media, whatever you'd like to call it, is the ease and speed at which it can be created and distributed. For example, take this video interview we recently set up with client Michael Lazerow, CEO of social media application agency Buddy Media... Read full post »
Dude, Where's My Customer?
Nobody at the Conversational Marketing Summit could agree on what "engagement" means. Today, the term under debate was "media company." What is a media company anyway? Is it a publisher? Does it sell advertising? I didn't hear a whole lot of consensus during the Next Wave of Social Media panel hosted... Read full post »
Metrics: Will it Blend?
I caught some of Federated Media's Conversational Marketing Summit yesterday. My pick for can't-miss session? The Super Metrics: Data that Matters in Conversational Media. The premise-that "the space is littered with disparate and discordant data points, methodologies, tracking and reporting tools" couldn't be more timely. Get ten people in a room... Read full post »
Tyson Foods: Using social media to mobilize communities
Here's a fantastic use case for the power of community to do amazing things. Tyson Foods, the world's largest poultry company, is sponsoring a hunger relief initiative aimed at providing a source for all hunger and poverty-related data. Yesterday, they put up a blog post challenging readers: they would donate 100... Read full post »