StevenSilvers.com

Is your social media agency into social media?

Marketing cage-rattler and blogger B.L. Ochman had the audacity to suggest that companies shouldn’t hire social media experts that aren’t “thought leaders” in using social media themselves.

This generated an immediate protest from one agency executive who said they don’t need to show their expertise in social media to prove they get it.  “For an agency to build a large community of followers,” she wrote, “is more difficult than for a marketer as they don't really offer anything to the general public.”

This “we don’t sell to the public” line is an old, specious defense by ad agencies that avoid spending their own time and money on the products they want other companies to buy in mass quantities. 

It rings even less true given social media’s supposed game-changing capacity to build business.
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Associated Press story says media hoaxes work

AP television writer David Bauder expands on the “frightening message” that media hoaxes like Balloon Boy and the fake press conference in which activists reversed the U.S. Chamber’s position on global warming are increasingly successful publicity tools.

At least, we think it’s AP television writer David Bauder.
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Internet scammers run like pigs to the Swine Flu trough

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs reports that spammers and scammers are working overtime to profit from public fears of a Swine Flu epidemic.

Just days after the first headlines, more than two percent of all Internet spam tried to get people to click on hundreds of new Swine Flu-labeled sites selling everything from "survival guides" to fake prescription drugs.
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Free advice about social media

Here's a short "white paper" outlining some tools and tips to manage a broad social media presence for you, your company or client. Compliments of media directory and monitoring company BurrellesLuce.
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Inside Denver's economic development machine

Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation's new blog gives an inside look at how the region's business community works to attract new employers and investments.

"Clark's Cone of Silence" is named for Metro Denver EDC honcho -- and decent electric guitar player -- Tom Clark, who is referring to the old Get Smart gag about a big transparent cone that was supposed to keep conversations confidential but didn't.

"We've also learned that this mechanism doesn't work," Tom said in an announcement.  "So we thought, let's give people outside of our 'Cone of Silence' an inside look at not only what we do every day in economic development, but more importantly, why we do it."
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Newspaper business sections going extinct

Following a trend among the nation's struggling newspapers, the Washington Post is doing away with its stand-alone business section.

An internal memo published on Politico.com says the newspaper will fold business news into the A section.

At least eight daily newspapers around the country have made similar moves this year. The LA Times eliminated its separate business section in January.  Here in Colorado, the Denver Post moved business news inside the B section, except on Sundays.   The paper also recently added a gossip column that runs four times a week next to top business stories.

Publishing experts say local newspaper business sections never generate much advertising revenue in large part because they are often beat to stories by online and national media.
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Most popular media sites for bloggers

TechCrunch compiled this list of the 50 media sites that bloggers link to most. The top ten sites:

1. YouTube
2. New York Times
3. BBC News
4. CNN.com
5. MSN
6. guardian.co.uk
7. Washington Post
8. Yahoo! News
9. Reuters
10. Los Angeles Times

(Thanks to The Media Is Dying, a very good media junkie Twitter feed.)
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An official blog management process

If you're wondering what to include in your organization's social media strategy, take a look at the pragmatic evaluation-and-response approach outlined in this U.S. Air Force Blog Assessment Chart:

Click here for a PDF version of this chart.

Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Scatterbox blog makes the list

The AdAge Power 150* ranks Scatterbox by Steven Silvers as one of the top 30 PR-focus blogs in the U.S., and one of the top 50 worldwide.

All I can say is thanks. With 188 million blogs out there, I'm honored by the interest and time you've given my little corner of the Internet.

Keep those comments and links coming to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

And keep an eye out for my new blogzine, ReputationAssets.com, launching in early 2009.

Happy New Year.

Steve
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* Thanks to Matthew Watson of From PR to Eternity blog for slicing and dicing.