Generated by All in One SEO v5.0.1.1, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site.

# Dave Fleet

Exploring life at the intersection of digital, marketing and communications.

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://davefleet.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Top ten non-fiction book recommendations from 2022](https://davefleet.com/2023/01/08/top-ten-non-fiction-book-recommendations-from-2022/) - I've been an avid reader for years. Each year I set myself a target for how many books I want to read and last year was one of my most prolific as I finished 52 books across the 52 weeks of the year. As we head into 2023, I thought I'd summarize ten of my
- [The Power of Prebunking: Managing Disinformation in the Social Media Age](https://davefleet.com/2023/01/05/the-power-of-prebunking-managing-disinformation-in-the-social-media-age/) - The traditional approach to dealing with disinformation has been to debunk it after the fact. Research shows prebunking it may be more effective.
- [Introducing the Social Media at Scale Series](https://davefleet.com/2013/02/11/social-scale/) - As social media continues to establish itself as a bona fide communications function and as companies continue to increase the scale of their social media programs, they're running into a new set of problems. These problems go beyond the 101 "which channel is right for us" decisions, and onto more advanced dilemmas. How do you
- [Social Media at Scale: Organizing Global Social Media Teams](https://davefleet.com/2013/02/11/social-scale-organizing-global-social-teams/) - One of the most fundamental questions in running a social media program at scale is, “how do I organize it”? There’s some good material out there on this. Jeremiah Owyang, in particular, wrote about this some time back from a functional perspective; this provides a good starting point but didn’t consider the geographic and cultural
- [Burger King Twitter Hacking: Take A Chill Pill](https://davefleet.com/2013/02/18/burger-king-twitter-hacking-chill-pill/) - Burger King's Twitter account was hacked today, with the hacker turning the company's Twitter page into an offensive mock-up of a McDonalds Twitter channel. An hour and fifteen minutes later, the account was suspended, but not before the news spread across the social media fishbowl at lightning speed. As often happens, a huge amount of basement
- [From One to a Million: Managing Social Media at Scale](https://davefleet.com/2013/02/28/million-managing-social-media-scale/) - What if you had to re-examine your assumptions around social media? What if, instead of thinking about conversations in ones and twos, you had to think about them in thousands and tens of thousands? What if you had to manage dozens or hundreds of properties, and millions of fans? What would change? Last weekend I
- [Choices and Lessons](https://davefleet.com/2013/03/17/choices-lessons/) - Chris Brogan's latest weekly newsletter was around the subject of choice. You can read it over on his site, too, if you like. In it, he talks about the importance of remembering that you have a choice, and that a negative impulse 'in the moment' can lead you away from the path you want to
- [15 top tips for a successful PR career](https://davefleet.com/2013/04/15/15-top-tips-successful-pr-career/) - One of the things I enjoy most nowadays is having the opportunity to speak to the future leaders of the PR profession when they're starting out. One of the questions I often get asked is "what tips would you offer to get ahead in this field?" Now that spring has sprung (at least, it's trying
- [Thoughts on Boston](https://davefleet.com/2013/04/16/thoughts-boston/) - I don't know what I'm going to write here today; I just know that I need to write something - to get it out of my head - after the horror of yesterday. Close to home Explosion at the Boston Marathon Like many people around the world, I stood glued to reports of the terrible
- [Should "they" be allowed to use social media? Who are "they"?](https://davefleet.com/2013/08/06/allowed-social-media/) - So Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad is using Instagram to paint a more rosy picture of his presidency than the civil war-torn images we see every day in the news. Images of Al-Assad at official meetings, visiting school kids and at a wounded person's hospital bedside are clearly intended to humanize the president, as are the numerous
- [Where were you when the power went out?](https://davefleet.com/2013/08/14/power/) - Ten years ago today, the power went out across the Northeast and Midwest US and across Ontario, Canada. Wikipedia tells me it was the second most widespread blackout in history at the time. It took two days for many people to get their power back. Licks Hamburgers in Barrie I remember exactly where I was
- [Content Calendars Aren’t Evil – They’re Just Abused](https://davefleet.com/2013/10/15/content-calendars-arent-evil-theyre-abused/) - My friend Jeremy thinks content calendars are evil. I disagree: I think content calendars are useful tools, but they’re consistently and brutally abused to the point where they can seem evil. Content calendars are here to stay Like it or not, content calendars aren't going anywhere any time soon: Most companies are still trying to break
- [How Lean In got me thinking](https://davefleet.com/2013/12/05/lean-in-thinking/) - If you haven't read Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, you probably should. It's an entertaining and insightful read that raises as many questions as it answers about the challenges women face in the workplace. It mixes research with anecdotes, and does so in an easy-to-read style that is self-deprecating and insecure enough to avoid crossing
- [Marketing, community, support or all of the above?](https://davefleet.com/2014/03/01/marketing-community-support/) - Something has been gnawing at me for a while, and after a great conversation over brunch with Ferg Devins today I'm feeling inspired to throw this out there. "When I was your age..." Source: halfpastawesome.com I first got into "social media" somewhere around eight years ago - first for my own interest and then -
- [Internet Trends for 2014 Report is a must read](https://davefleet.com/2014/06/02/internet-trends-2014-report-read/) - Every so often you stumble across a report that contains so much insight that it's futile to try to digest it all in one sitting. The latest annual Internet Trends Report from Mary Meeker, venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, is one of those, and it's a must-read for those of us in digital
- [Presentation: The Power of Loyalty in Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2014/06/04/presentation-power-loyalty-social-media/) - This afternoon I was pleased to have the opportunity to present at Sprinklr's Social @ Scale event in Toronto, as part of an impressive lineup of speakers featuring Mitch Joel, Keith McArthur, Di Gallo, Mathieu Legace and Tara Hunt. In my presentation - entitled The Power of Loyalty in Social Media - I posited that social
- [A Privacy-First Digital Marketing Landscape](https://davefleet.com/2021/01/26/privacy-first-digital-marketing-landscape/) - We are in the midst of seeing a privacy-first digital marketing landscape emerge, and that landscape is – mostly – our fault.
- [Digital is facing a Trust Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2021/01/21/digital-facing-trust-crisis/) - Amidst the gloomy outlook from this year's Trust Barometer report, there are four significant implications for digital marketers and communicators
- [The risk of building your social media house on someone else's land](https://davefleet.com/2021/01/11/risk-building-your-social-media-house/) - Now is the time for brands to invest in their own properties. This doesn’t mean stepping back from social media, but it does mean ensuring that that activity drives some kind of long-term benefit.
- [Four theories on the declining trust in Canadian social media](https://davefleet.com/2016/02/04/theories-declining-trust-social-media-canada/) - Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my seventh Edelman Trust Barometer launch event in Toronto. This year's results are some of the most interesting I've seen, highlighting a disparity in trust amongst what we call the "informed" public and the mass population, and the ongoing failure of businesses to live up to the expectations that people
- [Reflections on the changing digital agency environment](https://davefleet.com/2016/02/16/reflections-changing-digital-agency-environment/) - We live in interesting times in the digital agency world – a time of constant change in our business landscape that provides both immense opportunity and a real threat to the survival of agencies that fail to adapt. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this landscape over the last year or so. I’ve
- [Four Lessons on Resiliency from Butch Vig](https://davefleet.com/2016/08/02/lessons-resiliency-butch-vig/) - Butch Vig is a legendary musician and producer, who has had a huge impact on the music industry. He's worked with some of the biggest names in alternative music (he produced Nirvana's Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, etc.) and himself is a member of the successful band Garbage. I recently listened to an interview that Vig did
- [A Digital Lens on the U.S. Election](https://davefleet.com/2016/11/09/digital-lens-us-election/) - One day after the U.S. election and the dissection of the reasons for the outcome is well underway. Richard Edelman, in a thoughtful town hall meeting with our global team today – and now captured on his blog – laid out a communications-focused lens on what happened, as well as some well-reasoned ideas on what
- [My Team Makes Me Uncomfortable – And That’s A Good Thing](https://davefleet.com/2017/10/17/team-uncomfortable-good/) - A lot of people ask me what has kept me at Edelman for this long, and I tell them all the same thing: the people.
- [(Nearly) 10 Reflections and Lessons from 2020](https://davefleet.com/2021/01/03/nearly-10-reflections-and-lessons-from-2020/) - I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions but this year I found myself reflecting on what I’ve learned and what I can do better.
- [Not your grandparents' social: The ongoing evolution of social media](https://davefleet.com/2017/12/04/ongoing-evolution-social-media/) - Social media has driven momentous change in the business world over a little more than a decade. It has changed the way companies communicate, the way they operate, and the way they connect with people. However, as we look towards 2018, social media itself has changed drastically since its inception and it is a far
- [In Search of Hiring Excellence: Choosing the Best from the Best](https://davefleet.com/2018/03/27/search-hiring-excellence-best/) - Building a successful team is one of the most important things you do as a manager, but it is also one of the most challenging. People are hard – and interviews aren’t always the best ways to get a real sense of the person - but in many cases that is what we have on
- [(Social Media) Strategy: Lessons from the Trenches](https://davefleet.com/2020/05/28/social-media-strategy-lessons/) - I’m fortunate to have benefited from a number of strong mentors and leaders who have supported me or taken a chance on me throughout my career (thanks to Melissa Thomson, Howard Jones, Terry Fallis, Joseph Thornley, Tristan Roy and others). I recognize the massive impact those people had on my life, and do my best
- [Paternity Leave in a Pandemic](https://davefleet.com/2020/08/04/paternity-leave-in-a-pandemic/) - Today is my first day back in the “office” after a completely surreal three months of paternity leave. This was my second such leave, after I took time off in 2018 with our first-born (I wrote at the time about the conflicting emotions I felt about going out on paternity leave). This time things were…
- [The Fear, Self-Doubt and Infinite Rewards of Paternity Leave](https://davefleet.com/2018/10/10/fear-selfdoubt-infinite-rewards-paternity-leave/) - This past weekend Canadians celebrated Thanksgiving, and for me it was a special one as this was our first Thanksgiving since welcoming our son to the world. It was also my first weekend after returning to work from three months of paternity leave. When our son was born I made the decision to take some
- [Lessons along the road: 5 career pointers for new graduates](https://davefleet.com/2018/04/04/lessons-road-5-career-pointers-graduates/) - I recently had the honour of speaking at Seneca College's "Make it Happen" event for about 400 of their marketing students. I was asked to talk for a few minutes about my own career path and achievements, but there are few things I'd like to hear less than someone like me droning on about my
- [Where has Dave been?](https://davefleet.com/2013/02/02/where-is-dave/) - Wow, it's been a long time since I posted here. In fact, I've only posted four times in the last seven months. I got to thinking it might be helpful to explain why. Six months ago, I started to transition into a new role at Edelman. For Edelman's largest global clients, we have what we
- [Remembering Michael O'Connor Clarke](https://davefleet.com/2012/10/14/remembering-michael-oconnor-clarke/) - Michael O'Connor Clarke passed away this morning, sadly losing his battle with the esophagael cancer that he was diagnosed with this summer. I knew Michael both as a friend and as a colleague. From memory, I believe we first met online in 2007, through social media channels that were a shared passion between us. It
- [Forrester says social doesn't drive online sales, and why that's fine](https://davefleet.com/2012/09/28/forrester-email-search-drive-online-sales-social/) - Research recently released by Forrester entitled "The Purchase Path of Online Buyers in 2012" indicates that email and search dominate the online space in driving online sales. Social media, says the report, drives less than 1% of online sales. As reported by Marketing Pilgrim: Paid search matters most for new customers Email matters most for
- [Blogger relations - you're doing it wrong](https://davefleet.com/2012/08/15/blogger-relations-wrong/) - I don't usually write posts outing other PR folks, but a pitch I received this morning from another PR agency roused my blogging tendencies from their slumber. Here's how it read: From: [...]@gmail.com Sent: Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 3:02 AM PR Firm [...] Sends Small Businesses to the Top of Social Media for $790 Per
- [Six essential shifts in social media strategy](https://davefleet.com/2012/06/08/essential-shifts-social-media-strategy/) - We’ve reached a critical point in the evolution of social media as a business tool. Gone are the days when the GMOOT (Get Me One Of Those) approach will get you anywhere – simply having a Twitter account, or a Facebook Page, isn’t enough. We’re at the point of social media saturation, and something’s got
- [7 Steps to Planning Better Presentations](https://davefleet.com/2012/05/16/7-steps-planning-presentations/) - As we approach the end of the Spring conference season, and in the run-up to BlogWorld New York, I got to reflecting on how my approach to presentations has evolved over the last while. Preparing a presentation for a conference is no mean feat (I'd estimate I spend at last 30 hours on each presentation
- [Communication is about what they hear, not what you say](https://davefleet.com/2012/04/24/communication-hear/) - If you think you've conveyed something but the other person hears something completely different, is that their fault or yours? Recently a friend of mine posted a photo on Facebook: As pithy and humorous as it was, I disagreed. Strongly. From my perspective the onus is on you to consider not just the words coming out
- [Book Review: The Social Media Strategist](https://davefleet.com/2012/04/09/book-review-social-media-strategist/) - "Page turner." Not words you usually expect to associate with a social media book. For anyone who is looking for a solid primer on social media within corporations, though, those two words perfectly describe Christopher Barger's book The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out. In case you aren't familiar with
- [I Am Terrific! A Lesson in StoryBranding](https://davefleet.com/2012/04/05/terrific-lesson-storybranding/) - Note: I don't run many guest posts here, but I found the piece below really interesting. The following is a guest post by Jim Signorelli. Let me know what you think. If you've gotten past the title of this article (and many don't) you're obviously intrigued. How could anyone expect to sell anything this way?
- [Want to get better at social media? Ask "Why?"](https://davefleet.com/2012/03/30/social-media/) - Social media practitioners: want to get better at your job? Learn one word: Why? Used well, asking "why?" can help you get to the bottom of almost any problem, push your colleagues to explore new options, and force a new level of honesty in decision making. I've just started reading Christopher Barger's book The Social
- [Facebook Timeline for Brands: Curation and Palpitation](https://davefleet.com/2012/03/08/facebook-timeline-curation-palpitation/) - Lots of attention has been put on the new Facebook Pages layout since fMC, with people displaying differing perspectives. The usual suspects have already released their pieces on how to prepare for Facebook Timelines. My friend Jay Baer says it betrays small businesses. We, meanwhile, see it as giving brands a new way to tell their story as communications
- [Where does content fit in Facebook's new marketing model?](https://davefleet.com/2012/03/05/content-fit-facebooks-marketing-model/) - While marketers everywhere seem to be focused on Facebook Timelines for brands, the latest changes to Facebook's advertising model represent just as significant a change for brands - if not even more so. How so, you ask? Let's start by A marketer's journey on Facebook: from engagement to advertising Facebook has a saying that, "this
- [Trust in 2012: 4 Implications for Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2012/02/02/trust-2012-4-implications-social-media/) - Edelman recently released the results of its 2012 Trust Barometer survey. Given the events of the last year, it's hardly surprising that trust is decreasing pretty much across the board. That is, except in Canada. Results of the 2012 Canadian Trust Barometer Today we announced the Canadian results of the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer at
- [Dx3 Presentation: Blogger Relations - Getting the Insiders Onside](https://davefleet.com/2012/01/30/insiders-onside-presentation-dx3/) - Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a revised approach to blogger relations, to a packed room at the inaugural Dx3 Canada digital trade show. Following the presentation, several attendees reached out to me asking that I post the presentation online. So, here it is. Getting the Insiders Onside - Communicating with Bloggers and
- [Seven Social Media Insights on CES](https://davefleet.com/2012/01/18/social-reflections-ces/) - By now you've probably had more than your fill of analysis from the many, many products and announcements revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Now that I've had a few days to decompress, I thought I'd do something slightly different and provide a few insights from a social perspective. CES is not a social
- [My 2012 Reading Challenge: 36 Books](https://davefleet.com/2012/01/09/2012-reading-challenge-36-books/) - For the last two years I've set myself a challenge - one I adopted from Julien Smith - to read at least 26 books per year. That's one every two weeks. In 2010 I managed 26 books; last year I managed 32. Stand-out books for me last year included: Fiction: The Hound of the Baskervilles A
- [Six important shifts for social media in 2012](https://davefleet.com/2011/12/31/important-shifts-social-media-2012/) - It's hard to believe we're about to tick over to another calendar year. So, as usual, I got to thinking about the shifts I think companies need to make in their social media activities in the next year. These aren't necessarily trends that are already happening (although I'd like to say they are), but they're
- [Search Engines Are A Conduit, Not A Source](https://davefleet.com/2011/12/21/search-engines-conduit-source/) - Let's get this out of the way: Search engines are a key part of communications nowadays. Take a look at your website analytics and it'll be clear - there's no avoiding it. Search engines usually drive a significant proportion - if not the majority - of traffic to companies' websites. However, I'm tired of seeing
- [Should you let social media conversations direct your business?](https://davefleet.com/2011/11/22/social-media-conversations-direct-business/) - Here's a question for you: Should you let conversations in social media direct your business? If you've worked in the social media space, that seems like a pretty straightforward "yes", right? I mean, we're always talking about how listening and responding is critical. What if we ask the question a couple of other ways: Should
- [Five ways to improve your social media measurement](https://davefleet.com/2011/11/21/improve-social-media-measurement/) - We're past the point where a "get me one of those" approach to the latest social shiny object is a viable approach. As business use of social media continues to slowly mature, measurement is becoming more and more important to justify the investment in social activities. Last week I spoke on a roundtable on Practical
- [What Gets You Up In The Morning?](https://davefleet.com/2011/11/14/morning/) - Every so often it's helpful to reflect on why your job matters to you - why you put in all the effort, passion and commitment you do. For me, one of those moments came last week when I read this post by my colleague Rob Clark (which I'm re-publishing here with his permission). I've worked
- [Book Review: The Social Customer](https://davefleet.com/2011/10/31/book-review-social-customer/) - The Social Customer is one of the best books I've read on practical uses and implementations of social media marketing. Given that I've read a fair number of them over the last few years, that's saying something. The author, Adam Metz, takes the reader through a straightforward, easy-to-read summary of the concept and potential for
- [You're Not a Strategist - You're a Punk](https://davefleet.com/2011/10/20/strategist-punk/) - I'm constantly astonished at how many people looking to get into agencies describe themselves as a "strategist" and think that by doing so, they can now avoid all of the work they don't want to do. Whether it's planning and budgeting, client project execution or measuring the outcomes, some people seem to think that by
- [Content Is King At BlogWorld](https://davefleet.com/2011/10/20/content-king-blogworld/) - I'll be speaking at BlogWorld LA in a couple of weeks, along with my good friend Jeremy Wright, on the topic of blogger relations - how to identify people, how to approach them and how to avoid the mistakes of others. I had a chance recently to chat with DJ Waldow, who recorded this video
- [Return On Influence Can Return From Whence It Came](https://davefleet.com/2011/10/05/return-influence-return/) - The Harvard Business Review recently published a post entitled "Return on Influence, the New ROI". In it, the author suggested that marketers consider the use of "Return on Influence" as a metric for measuring social media activity. What is this metric, you ask? To quote the post: "Divide the total revenue generated via social efforts by
- [Three Ways To Wag The Long Tail Of Content](https://davefleet.com/2011/10/04/ways-wag-long-tail-content/) - I was glancing at my blog traffic stats the other day, and noticed something that made me sit up and take notice - after three years, the most-viewed post on this site continues to be the opening post in my good communications planning series, with over 125,000 views. What's more, the traffic to this post
- [7 Tips For Getting Legal Approval on Social Media Programs](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/27/7-tips-legal-approval-social-media-programs/) - I don't think it matters which form of communications you work in; "legal" often seems to be a pain point. It's not surprising -- their job is to manage risk for the organization, and public-facing communications activities (especially two-way ones) naturally offer an element of uncertainty. There's a natural tension between the two. Last night
- [Lies, Damned Lies and Mis-understood Statistics](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/21/lies-damned-lies-misunderstood-statistics/) - Earlier this week, All Facebook featured a post on a report by DDB and OpinionWay examining the reasons that Facebook users "unlike" brand pages. The key findings, as reported by All Facebook (the report appears to have been taken down from SlideShare, so I can't link to it): The brand was no longer of interest to me
- [Two Ways To Quickly Improve Your Communications Plans](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/19/ways-quickly-improve-communications-plans/) - I've worked in communications for a while now, and one thing I've noticed -- consistently -- is that the same two elements of communications plan get overlooked time and time again: Objectives Strategy These almost always get sacrificed in favour of the bright, shiny part of the plan: tactics. What's more, your objectives and strategy
- [You Never Know](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/16/you-never-know/) - It's all too easy to shoot your mouth off sometimes - to pass judgement and get a quick dose of attention and reaction from others - without thinking carefully of the consequences. Just remember - you never know: Who might be your boss one day Who might interview you, or review your resume, one day Who
- [Video: Thoughts on Social CRM for Small Businesses](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/14/video-thoughts-social-crm-small-businesses/) - Social CRM is a hot topic right now. As companies' use of social media tools begins to mature from a pure marketing focus to more of a social business focus, the various use cases of social CRM are gaining more attention from practitioners. In fact, I'm in the middle of reading a book on social
- [A Simple, Effective Way To Boost Your Creativity](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/08/simple-way-boost-creativity/) - Want a quick way to improve your creative output, at work and at home? Carry a notebook with you at all times. Carrying a notebook is a habit I've fallen into and out of over the years, but I've noticed that when I do, my creative output soars. Right now I'm rocking a Moleskine notebook, and
- [4 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Content Strategy](https://davefleet.com/2011/09/07/4-ways-improve-content/) - Lots of people spend lots of time nowadays thinking about how to build up channels/audiences/communities (choose your buzzword as appropriate) through social channels. Relatively few, however, seem to apply similar rigor to the process of communicating with those people after the fact. With a few degrees of variation, most people will suggest you look at
- [You Don't Need To Know Everything](https://davefleet.com/2011/08/29/you-dont-need-to-know-everything/) - I recently took on a new role within Edelman (it's a good thing, don't worry), and as a result have begun working with a new team - once again, spread across different offices. Last week, I made a trip down to our DC office to meet with several of them. You know what I did down
- [Book Review: Social Marketing to the Business Customer](https://davefleet.com/2011/08/22/book-review-social-marketing-business-customer/) - Despite all of the books out there about social media, most of them are pretty generic or focus on end-user 101s. So, when I heard about Social Marketing to the Business Customer (by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman), I picked-up a copy straight away -- because I think the marketplace is desperately in need of solid
- [Newsflash: PR is Not Easy, Cheap or Quick](https://davefleet.com/2011/08/16/newsflash-pr-easy-cheap-quick/) - As I continue to work towards my challenge of reading 26 books in 2011 (an aside: I'm up to 18 right now - two ahead of schedule), I recently finished reading Michael Crichton's book State Of Fear. Within it, one section got my attention, and neatly illustrates why so many people think PR is cheap
- [The Top Misused Words in PR](https://davefleet.com/2011/08/12/top-misused-words-pr/) - Ragan's PR Daily published a post yesterday listing their top 10 words often misused in press releases. Their list: Quality Unique Innovation Official Exclusive Breaking Never/ever Revolutionary Literally Social I'd have to agree with most of those. It feels like every new product that is launched claims to be "revolutionary" or "innovative", and "social" is
- [Thoughts on Disconnecting](https://davefleet.com/2011/08/10/thoughts-disconnecting/) - You may have noticed that things have been quieter than usual here recently. If you didn't know, two weeks ago I got married and as I type this, I'm sitting on a plane on the way back from two blissful weeks spent completely offline on honeymoon in Italy. At the Colosseum in Rome While many
- [Eight Tips for Scaling Social Customer Support](https://davefleet.com/2011/07/18/tips-scaling-social-customer-support/) - David Armano noted in a recent Harvard Business Review post on social business that listening to conversations is a valuable step but only the beginning: "The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing "social"." Online customer support is one of the key trends confronting companies as they embrace social business and look to interact with their consumers
- [11 Things I Wish More People Knew About Me](https://davefleet.com/2011/07/08/people-knew/) - If you didn't already know, I'm a huge Amber Naslund fan. Her latest post, over at the Brass Tack Thinking blog, focuses on the things she wishes more people knew about her, and it got me thinking. As Amber notes, and as I've found, social media enables immensely valuable connections and relationships, but it's all
- [Smart Location-Based Marketing By Home Depot](https://davefleet.com/2011/07/03/smart-locationbased-marketing-home-depot/) - Update: Sigh -- turns out Ben was just larking around -- my dreams are crushed. Still, even though this was a prank (#DammitLucier!), this is the sort of things that retailers who are starting to play around with location-based loyalty marketing should be considering. Just saw this photo on my friend Ben Lucier's Posterous site
- [Criticism is Good](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/28/criticism-good-2/) - Yesterday I published a post (ok, fine, a rant) about people who sling unconstructive criticism at others and the effect it has. Several people seemed to take that to mean that I think all criticism is bad, or that we should avoid commenting on other posts. That's my fault - I buried this line way
- [Armchair Quarterbacks: Don't Be That Troll](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/27/armchair-quarterbacks-throwing-stones-glass-houses/) - A quick thought (or ten) for anyone who is thinking about armchair-quarterbacking someone else's PR or social media execution without anything constructive to add... When you criticize things from the outside, you: Don't be this guy. 1. Don't know what actually happened. You know what you read in blogs, in the papers, etc. You don't
- [Startups: No, You Don't Need To Hire A Social Media Expert](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/16/startups-hire-social-media-experts/) - My eye was caught this weekend by a post from Francis Tan, asking whether startups need to hire social media experts. His key points: First things first: Agreeing with Peter Shankman that startups should focus on generating revenue Customer satisfaction: Startups need to ensure customer satisfaction when people interact with your company, whether through social
- [Five Reasons You Should Go To The Next Third Tuesday Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/15/reasons-tuesday-toronto/) - I just had a conversation with my old boss Joe Thornley about how excited I and a few others on the Edelman Toronto team are about the upcoming Third Tuesday Toronto event with Ontario's Ombudsman Andre Marin. Joe suggested I blog about the event; I thought I'd go one better and give you five reasons
- [Cartoon: Corporate Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/14/cartoon-corporate-twitter/) - This made me chuckle. Recognize this picture? (via the brilliant tomfishburne.com)
- [Infographic: The Cost and Benefit of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2011/06/06/infographic-cost-benefit-social-media/) - Check out this infographic - the first thing I've seen really trying to put a number on the true cost and return of social media activities. Is it perfect? No. Is it an interesting kick-off point for a discussion? Certainly. What do you think of it? Source: Focus. (Good to see Danny Brown referenced in
- [The Little Give](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/30/little-give/) - Today I'm veering a little way from my normal topics - while I generally write about communications, social media and the like, I thought you might like a little insight into life at Edelman; specifically, one of the cool employee engagement initiatives we have here in Canada. The Little Give The Little Give is a
- [Compete Responds To Criticism](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/25/compete-responds-criticism/) - Last week I voiced some concerns around the traffic numbers that Compete.com reports for websites. My primary concern was that, after seeing nearly a 90% variance between their numbers and those from Google Analytics on my own site, I couldn't trust that their numbers for other sites would be correct. This is important, as we often
- [Is Share of Voice a Useless PR Metric?](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/24/share-voice-useless-pr-metric/) - This is a guest post by my Edelman colleague Rob Clark Sometimes you say a word too many times in a row and the word slowly begins to lose meaning for yourself. It becomes foreign gibberish and you begin to wonder if you're pronouncing this thing correctly or if it was ever really a word at
- [Compete.com Doesn't Compete](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/18/competecom-compete/) - I can't take it any more. For years I've suffered in (relative) silence, while we've continued to use a tool that doesn't seem to reflect any form of reality, yet no-one seems to say anything about it. I need to ask: Why do people still use Compete.com? Case in point Let's take a look at
- [Don't Be Fooled By Last-Click Analysis Of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/16/fooled-lastclick-analysis-social-media/) - Forrester recently published a report entitled "The Purchase Path of Online Buyers." Normally I'm a fan of Forrester's reports, but this one left me scratching my head. The report looks at transaction data from 15 clients of a marketing agency (let's ignore that built-in bias, and convenient product placement in the recommendations, for the sake
- [The Non-Review Review: The Now Revolution](https://davefleet.com/2011/05/02/nonreview-review-revolution/) - A quick confession for you: about six months ago I snagged a pre-release copy of the book "The Now Revolution," by my friends Amber Naslund and Jay Baer. I quickly read it, absorbed it and loved it. Then I got busy... really busy... and failed to find time to write a review of the book.
- [Book Review: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/28/book-review-the-monk-who-sold-his-ferrari/) - I read a lot of business books - you know, the kind focused on how to market, or plan, or manage better. So, when I started to read Robin Sharma's "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari," I wasn't sure what to expect. A couple of things to know about "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari":
- [Yeah, Well Your Agency Is Killing Unicorns](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/26/agency-killing-social-media/) - Daniel Stein recently wrote an attention-grabbing post over at Digiday entitled "HypeBusters: PR Agencies Are Ruining Facebook." His basic argument: PR agencies are boring and uncreative, and their attempts at engagement are doomed to fail. The right people to manage Facebook pages are, apparently ad agencies. Guess which he works for. I'm not going to
- [Monday Morning Reads: Social Pre-Teens; Ebert's New Voice; YouTubian Politics](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/25/monday-morning-reads-social-preteens-eberts-voice-youtubian-politics/) - Three pieces for you this Monday morning: an interesting look at how educators are grappling with pre-teen adoption of social media and how to safeguard them as they do so; a moving presentation from Roger Ebert about the impact that technology has had on his life, and a Democratic Representative delivering a presentation in the
- [Why And How To Scale Social Business Programs](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/14/tips-scaling-social-media/) - As time goes on we're seeing a rising trend toward social customer support, largely driven by three forces: Companies are observing high-profile brands successfully executing social support programs and want to realize those benefits As more and more companies engage in marketing programs through social media, customers are using those two-way channels to demand support
- [Three Forces Driving Social Customer Support](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/13/forces-driving-social-customer-support/) - We've discussed, many times, the importance of the ongoing trend towards the integration of various communications forms in social media - the fact that you can't just put "social" in a bubble and expect it to perform without support from other media. Awareness of this is slowly growing as social media activities mature within organizations
- [Why You Should Tweet During a Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/12/tweet-crisis/) - Ever have one of those frustrating conversations with your colleagues during an emerging issue, where you're trying to figure out whether acknowledging an issue online will defuse it or spread it? You know, the one that goes something like: A: "Have you seen all the chatter about this issue online? We should get out there
- [The Greatest TED Talk Riposte Ever Posted](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/11/greatest-ted-talk-riposte-posted/) - This post was meant to be a regular "Monday Morning Reads" post, but then I found myself writing something a little more in-depth on one piece so I scrapped the rest. Enjoy... A colleague of mine recently drew my attention to a TED Talk by Morgan Spurlock (you know, the guy behind Super Size Me
- [Monday Morning Reads: Digital Reputation, Facebook Tutorials, Speed up Blogging](https://davefleet.com/2011/04/04/monday-morning-reads-digital-reputation-facebook-tutorials-speed-blogging/) - In this week's Monday Morning Reads: digital reputation management; a plethora of Facebook tutorials; how to speed-up your blogging; turning Google's April Fool's joke into a reality and an interesting Quora discussion on Craigslist's longevity. Enjoy. New York Times: Erasing the Digital Past Interesting post on digital "reputation managers" who help their clients stay out
- [Disclosure And Facebook's Social Plugin](https://davefleet.com/2011/03/22/disclosure-facebooks-social-plugin/) - A few weeks ago Facebook introduced its new Comment Box plugin, allowing companies and individuals to connect comments on their owned properties to their Facebook presences. At the time, while reviewing the business implications of the new Facebook plugin, I wrote: "There’s lots of potential for confusion, and controversy, when people realize their comments don’t
- [SXSW 2011: Strong on Networking; Less on Content](https://davefleet.com/2011/03/17/sxsw-2011-strong-networking-content/) - I just arrived home from South by Southwest Interactive after six days down in Austin, Texas. Given that my voice has pretty much deserted me after numerous days trying to have conversations in overly noisy places, I thought I'd get some of my thoughts on the conference down on "paper" for you. Networking Mecca SXSW
- [How To Engage On Sites Using Facebook's New Commenting Plugin](https://davefleet.com/2011/03/08/companies-engage-facebooks-commenting-plugin/) - Facebook recently introduced a new version of its Facebook Comment Box Plugin, allowing website owners to integrate their commenting functionality with their Facebook presence. We've already looked at the pros and cons of the Facebook commenting plugin for businesses considering implementing the plugin on their sites. Today, let's take a look at what the implications
- [Facebook Commenting Platform: Pros and Cons For Businesses](https://davefleet.com/2011/03/02/facebook-commenting-platform-pros-cons-business/) - Facebook has announced a new version of its Comments Box plugin - its social plugin that enables Facebook-connected commenting on a website. In this post we'll take a look at some of the apparent benefits and risks of this new feature for businesses. Facebook's Comment Box plugin Among the features Facebook has revealed: Social relevance
- [Monday Morning Reads: Churnalism, Bubble Bursting, Influence Limits](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/28/monday-morning-reads-churnalism-bubble-bursting-influence-limits/) - Happy Monday! A varied bunch of posts and stories this week, from PR's effect on the media (or is it just lazy journalism?), to avoiding getting caught when the social media "bubble" bursts, to reputation management, influence and lastly a couple of Google stories to round things out. Let's get to it! The Guardian: Churnalism
- [Improve Your Effectiveness With Workarounds That Work](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/22/improve-effectiveness-workarounds-work/) - You know those books that you want to buy for everyone you know, because you know everyone will get something from it? Workarounds That Work (WTW) is one of those books. Written by Russell Bishop, a colleague of David Allen (of Getting Things Done fame), WTW leads the reader through a series of both theoretical
- [Monday Morning Reads: Mobile Apps; LoTR Revisited; Funky SEO](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/21/monday-morning-reads/) - Lots of really interesting reads in the Monday morning reading hopper this week: a look at why dictatorships would be unwise to cut Internet access; several pieces on the latest in mobile applications; a new take on the Lord of the Rings and a couple of neat videos. Enjoy. WSJ: Smart Dictators Don't Quash the
- [Win A Ticket To The Art Of Marketing Conference](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/18/win-ticket-art-marketing-conference/) - (This contest is now closed. It's worth skimming the comments here anyway, though, for some great reading ideas!) Want to see Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, Avinash Kaushik and more speak, all in one day? Then the latest Art of Marketing conference in Toronto is for you. Held on March 7 in Toronto, the event features:
- [5 Tips For Managing The Email Deluge](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/17/5-tips-managing-email-deluge/) - Ever find yourself thinking, "I need more email"? Ever feel disappointed because you don't get enough in your inbox? I didn't think so. Personally, I get between 200-300 emails a day, as many of you likely also do. That's enough email to completely paralyze you if you can't deal with the volume effectively. You could
- [Book Review And Interview: Common Sense Leadership](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/16/book-review-interview-common-sense-leadership/) - Common Sense Leadership. by Garth Johns, is unlike many of the books I've read recently. For one thing, Garth is a local author - working for the Regional Municipality of Durham. For another, the book clocks in at just over 130 pages, making it one of the quicker reads I've had recently. What's more, the
- [Trust Barometer Reveals Need For Mature Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/15/trust-barometer-reveals-mature-social-media/) - Yesterday I was privileged to attend the Toronto launch of the Canadian results of Edelman's 2011 Trust Barometer survey with my employer, Richard Edelman. This year, even more than in recent years, I find the results of the survey fascinating from both traditional and digital communications standpoints Trust in 2011 The broad findings of this
- [Monday Morning Reads: TweetDeck, Black Hat SEO, Facebook Pages](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/14/monday-morning-reads-tweetdeck-black-hat-seo-facebook-pages/) - Happy Valentines Day! Lots to cover in this week's reads - TweetDeck, link farming, Facebook newsfeed and the new Pages layout; social media in emergencies and a few networking tips to round things out. Enjoy. TechCrunch: UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross' Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck Twitter has benefited immensely from a thriving developer ecosystem.
- [Weekly Reads: Facebook, Marketing Trends and Social Media's Effect on Stereotypes](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/07/weekly-reads-egypt-psychographics-trends-engagement-guides/) - Alongside my ongoing book reading challenge, I start off every day by reading the latest goings-on in the public relations, social media and tech blogosphere. As part of my new approach to creating content, I'm going to begin curating the best for you. Each Monday, I'll kick-start your week's reading by sharing some of the
- [25 Suggestions For How To Use Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/02/25-suggestions-twitter/) - Twitter sent an email around to users yesterday, giving four suggestions for getting the most out of Twitter in 2011: Follow your interests: Follow the people who share your passions Get specific: Follow your favourite leagues, teams, players, writers etc Don't panic: Search for hashtags and relevant accounts during emergencies to stay informed Return to
- [How Will Social Captchas Affect Facebook Connections?](https://davefleet.com/2011/02/01/social-captchas-affect-facebook-connections/) - Facebook is experimenting with enhancing security around user accounts through a socially-enabled login process. Essentially, instead of seeing disguised words, users will see photos of their "friends" and be asked to identify them. This new mechanism, PC Magazine tells us, will only be shown if Facebook detects unusual activity on your account (for example, logging
- [20 Social Media Trends for Business in 2011](https://davefleet.com/2011/01/27/20-social-media-trends-business-2011/) - 20 Social Media Business Trends in 2011 View more presentations from Dave Fleet. One of the great things about working in the digital space right now is observing the many changes constantly occurring. This week, I had an opportunity to pull together some of the key social media trends I'm seeing for a presentation at
- [47 Books For Your 2011 Reading List](https://davefleet.com/2011/01/17/47-books-2011-reading-list/) - Looking for books to populate your reading list for 2011? Here are a few to think about. Last year I set myself a challenge: reading a book every two weeks throughout the year (I actually managed one more than that). I also reached out to you - the readers of this site - for suggestions
- [Your Brainstorms Suck](https://davefleet.com/2011/01/15/brainstorms-suck/) - Brainstorms are one of the most fun parts of the communications planning process. You get to remove restrictions from your mind, pretend there are no limits and be as creative as you like. The trouble is, most brainstorms suck. Huh? Most brainstorms focus entirely on tactics... on coming up with ideas in whatever way you
- [10 Social Media Lessons From Home Improvement](https://davefleet.com/2011/01/04/10-social-media-lessons-home-improvement/) - If we're connected on Twitter or Facebook, you may have noticed me posting a lot about the renovations we're currently conducting on our new house. In a brief moment of downtime, I started thinking about the social media lessons you can learn from the process of renovating a house. I came up with ten -
- [Drive. Learn. Commit.](https://davefleet.com/2011/01/01/drive-learn-commit-2010/) - I have so many thoughts running through my head about 2011 right now, it hurts. First, though, I want to look back and reflect on the 2010 that was, for me, a huge year. To use Chris Brogan's three-word approach in hindsight, I could characterize my 2010 with drive, learn and commit. Drive I don't often get
- [HOW TO: Read 26 Books A Year](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/26/26-books-year/) - Late in 2009, Julien Smith's fantastic approach to reading inspired me to set an ambitious target for this year: to read one book every two weeks throughout the year. I even published my target list of books so people could hold me to account. Well, the year is almost up and despite a crazy year, I'm
- [5 Ways to Digitize Santa](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/24/digitizing-santa/) - It's nearly time for Santa to round up those reindeer and hit the skies for another round of gift-giving. A couple of years ago, in the spirit of the season, I put out some suggestions on how Santa could fix-up his PR. This year, I got to thinking what I'd do to digitize Santa. 1.
- [A New Approach](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/21/approach/) - A large part of what we do for many digital clients involves managing content and community for their online properties. However, in this case the cobbler's son (my blog) has gotten to the point where he has no shoes. For the last several years, I've focused on writing long-form content for this site. Each post
- [Don't Put All Your Social Media Eggs In One Basket](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/20/put-social-media-eggs-basket/) - So, a rumour says that Yahoo is shutting down Delicious... or not. Cue a mass exodus as many people, including myself, look for ways to back-up thousands of bookmarks they've saved over the years. They also look to backup their photos on Flickr, as people realize that site may not be a sure thing after
- [Are You Ready If Wikileaks Targets You?](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/06/ready-wikileaks-targets/) - Wikileaks creator Julian Assange has announced that his site is now going to begin to focus on businesses. Apparently the first target, early next year, will be a major American bank. Is your company ready to handle the crisis if an organization like Wikileaks decides to focus its attention on you? The list of organizations getting blindsided
- [Why Paying Bloggers For Posts Changes The Game](https://davefleet.com/2010/12/02/bloggers-money-posts-game/) - There's been a lot of debate back and forth around bloggers (generally mommy bloggers, although they're certainly not the only ones) receiving direct payment for posts over the last little while. The latest post to catch my eye was a controversial piece over at Mom Blog Magazine entitled Why PR People Get Paid And You Don't.
- [When your Customers Become an Issue](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/30/customers-issue/) - All my life I aspired to own a particular car brand. Where I grew up, there weren’t many around (it wasn't the most affluent area) and I’d always loved the way they looked. So, I set my sights on owning one. Now that I’m in a position where I’m considering which car to get, I
- [9 Criteria For Selecting A Social Media Agency](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/29/criteria-selecting-social-media-agency/) - A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about 8 factors to consider when selecting a "social media expert." Looking back now, I can see how my approach has evolved and matured since then. What's more, as I've spent more time on the consulting side, my focus has shifted from self-identified "experts" to agencies.
- [[Personal] Proud of my Brother](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/26/personal-proud-brother/) - I usually keep this blog to work-based content, but I'm making an exception today. My brother Simon lives with learning disabilities. Cornwall Council, which offers programs to help people in his situation find work, just produced this video about him. I have a tear in my eye right now. I couldn't be more proud of
- [5 Steps to Thinking More Socially About Communications](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/22/5-steps-thinking-socially/) - Like it or not, “digital” is becoming a part of more and more marketers’ jobs. The implications of this are broader than just tacking-on another channel to an existing marketing plan – developing digital approaches require a shift in mind-set from traditional channels, whether they're owned, earned or paid. Here are five ways to begin
- [Live-Blogging Mesh Marketing #mm10](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/17/liveblogging-mesh-marketing-mm10/) - Edelman (my employer) is a long-time sponsor of Mesh and Mesh Marketing. As part of our activities for Mesh Marketing, our team is using ScribbleLive to live-blog the event for people who couldn't be there. Here's the feed:
- [A Closer Look At The New Radian6 Engagement Console Features](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/17/closer-radian6-engagement-console-features/) - Earlier this week I posted a review of some new features Radian6 has incorporated into its online dashboard. Today we'll take a look at some additions rolled-out to their Engagement Console tool. The changes to functionality are four-fold: Extensibility User roles and permissions Improved search functionality Shared macros Extensibility The latest version of the console
- [Digging-in to the new Radian6 Dashboard Improvements](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/15/diggingin-radian6-dashboard-improvements/) - Last week, Radian6 announced a whole raft of improvements to their platform and to their engagement console. Our team uses Radian6 for many clients, and I've used the tool for several years now, so I thought I'd take some time to dig into the updates and distill the key improvements for you. This time around:
- [Cooks Source: How to Avoid an Unnecessary Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/08/cooks-source-avoid-unnecessary-crisis/) - Situation: When food writer Monica Gaudio discovered that Cooks Source magazine had lifted an article she'd written and printed it in the magazine, she emailed the magazine to inquire about how it had come about. When the editor of the magazine asked what she wanted, Gaudio told the. she wanted an apology and a $130
- [5 Take-Aways on Social Media and Politics](https://davefleet.com/2010/11/02/5-takeaways-social-media-politics/) - Discussion around my recent post on some alleged unethical social media use during Toronto's mayoral election got me thinking around some broader topics that have emerged recently. Without further ado, here are five thoughts on themes I've seen recently. 1. People who try to tie social media success or failure alone to campaign results are
- [Unethical Social Media at its Worst: Rob Ford's Fake Twitter Account](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/30/unethical-social-media-worst/) - The Globe and Mail, Maclean's magazine, CTV, the Torontoist and blogTO all ran stories in the last day, alleging that staff of Toronto's newly-annointed mayor elect, Rob Ford, used a fake Twitter account to deceive a voter into handing over incriminating materials during the campaign. According to the reports, Ford was recorded offering to buy prescription
- [Facebook Strategies: Content Over Creative](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/29/facebook-strategies-content-creative/) - Are you focusing your Facebook investment in the right place? The immensely smart Jay Baer directed my attention to research conducted by Jeff Widman of Brand Glue, who found that 99.5% of comments on his clients' status updates come from peoples' newsfeeds, not from the pages themselves. Interesting, right? As Jay notes, this means that a
- [Win a Ticket to The Art of Management in Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/28/win-ticket-art-management-conference-toronto/) - We're well into the Fall conference season now, and there are some great events coming up in Canada - UnGeeked Toronto (this week) and Mesh Marketing (which Edelman sponsors) are two great examples. Another conference that caught my eye is the Art of Management - a conference focused on management and innovation, rather than my
- [Book Review: Accidental Genius, by Mark Levy](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/26/book-review-accidental-genius-mark-levy/) - When I first received an email from Beth Harte, asking if I'd be interested in checking out a book on writing, I have to say I hesitated. However, having now finished Mark Levy's Accidental Genius, I have to say it's proven to be one of the most compelling reads so far this year. Accidental Genius
- [Trust (or Lack of it) and One-Way Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/25/trust-lack-oneway-social-media/) - Last week I wrote about the biggest challenge digital communicators face. However, it's far from the only one; in fact it's one of many. One of the big emerging challenges right now is that, after a few years of PR agencies leading the way, we're seeing advertising agencies throw their hats into the ring for social
- [Using Social Media to Protect Your Reputation](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/23/social-media-protect-reputation/) - Reputation management through social media is a hot topic right now. In fact, digital crisis communications was the topic of one of the best panels I saw at Blogworld Expo last week (more on that panel soon). With that in mind, I thought you might like to hear an interview I just did with Andrew
- [The Biggest Challenge Digital Communicators Face](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/14/biggest-challenge-digital-communicators-face/) - Let's chat about the biggest challenge I think digital communicators on the agency side face nowadays. It's not measurement It's not integrating channels in their programs It's not thinking strategically while selecting tactics Don't get me wrong - all of these are significant and important challenges. However, there's a bigger one that over-arches all of
- [Video: Dave Fleet On Communications Trends And Joining Edelman](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/12/video-dave-fleet-communications-trends-joining-edelman/) - Many of you know that about six weeks ago I joined Edelman's Digital team. Soon after, I sat down with my new boss, Sylvain Perron - to chat about my career path so far, my thoughts on some key communications trends and the reason I made the move to Edelman. What do you think -
- [How To Manage Your Time In A PR Agency](https://davefleet.com/2010/10/06/managing-time-pr-agency/) - If you work in PR you probably find yourself pulled in myriad directions on a constant basis - especially if you work on the consulting side of the industry. This can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you're new to the industry. So, I thought you might find it helpful to know a few of the
- [Digital Communications Conversations Continue To Evolve](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/29/digital-communications-conversations-continue-evolve/) - The maturation of the conversation about social media-driven PR continues. As the “digital communications” industry (read: somewhere in the intersection of owned, earned and paid media) grows beyond the niche and towards the mainstream, the conversation at the leading end of the industry is shifting more and more from the “why” to the “how”. Brian
- [Book Review - UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/24/book-review-unmarketing-stop-marketing-start-engaging/) - If you’re a regular Twitter user, Scott Stratten can be hard to miss at times (ok, always). The self-proclaimed “Jedi for social media,” with a big online mouth and an even bigger following, Scott provokes strong reactions from people. I’ve known him for a while and, while I always enjoy sparring with him, I consider
- [Privacy Is About Control, Not Anonymity](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/22/privacy-control-anonymity/) - Seth Godin says you don't really care about privacy: "If you cared about privacy you wouldn't have a credit card, because, after all, they know everything you spend money on. And you wouldn't use the phone, because somewhere, there's a computer scanning what you say. What most of us care about is being surprised. You
- [Do Facebook Fans Really "Like" You?](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/13/facebook-worth/) - They like you, but do they really like you? I just returned from Podcamp Montreal, where I attended several thought-provoking sessions which I'll write about over the next little while. One of those touched on an interesting question: If someone "likes" your company on Facebook but hasn't tried your product, what is that worth? Not
- [Interview: Aaron Goldman - Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/09/interview-aaron-goldman-marketing-learned-google/) - Aaron Goldman is the author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google (affiliate link). Before declaring free agency earlier this week, Aaron was the founder and principal at Connectual, where he put lessons learned from Google to good use in digital marketing consulting and matchmaking. As part of a blog tour celebrating the
- [Time To Evolve How We Target Social Media?](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/07/time-evolve-target-social-media/) - How many times have you read something like this in a digital communications plan? "One in three of our target audience is using Facebook. So, we recommend creating a Facebook page for this program." As social networks become more and more prevalent, we're at the point now that almost every client brief appears to point,
- [Is "Social Media" Hurting Social Media?](https://davefleet.com/2010/09/02/social-media-hurting-social-media/) - Is the term "social media" hurting strategic communicators in the digital space? Before you tell me I'm crazy, stop and think for a second. Plenty of people have wondered about the term before (Google "social media term" and you'll find a 2007 post from Jeremiah Owyang on the topic) but I'm thinking of this from
- [Confidentiality And Agency Life](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/31/confidentiality-agency-life/) - As you may know, I've recently begun a new job at a new agency (Edelman, for the record). In doing so, I moved to an agency that represents competitors of past clients. While I've taken this in my stride, several people have now raised questions about confidentiality with me - enough that I think it's
- [Are You Creating Social Media Scorched Earth?](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/30/creating-social-media-scorched-earth/) - "In too many cases, the "best practices" espoused by digital agencies are less about "serving the community" and more about driving a rush of new fans, without much thought re: how to keep those fans engaged on a LONG-TERM basis." -- Todd Defren As corporate spending on social media-based communication continues to rise, I'm beginning to
- [Change, Change And More Change](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/25/change/) - The last few years have been wonderful for me, both personally and professionally. I've lived happily with my girlfriend, Caralin, for several years now, and I've enjoyed a rewarding career that has so far brought me more opportunities than I could have possibly hoped for. Today, I'm happy to announce the next step in both
- [Personalities, Policies & Problems: Companies and Employees 2.0](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/24/personalities-policies-problems-companies-employees-20/) - The annual ritual is upon us - the submissions for next year's South by Southwest (SXSW) are posted and the voting process has begun. (Actually, it began a little while back but - you may have noticed the silence recently - I was away on vacation) This year I've thrown my hat in the ring
- [When Agencies Can't Be Transparent](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/12/agencies-transparent/) - When approaching clients on objectives to begin social media, agencies focus on three overarching areas: consumer trust, brand engagement and transparency. Is this the approach of all agencies? No, but it can be a starting point to figure out specific end goals. Transparency can come in a few forms: the form of humanizing the brand; the
- [Book Review: Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh](https://davefleet.com/2010/08/03/book-review-delivering-happiness-tony-hsieh/) - When I think of examples of companies known for successful adoption of social media tools, a few names always come to mind - Dell, Radian6, Freshbooks... and Zappos. (On a related note, all of those companies have gained a reputation for good service via social media - a topic for a future post, perhaps...) So,
- [Altimeter Report Provides Facebook Page Guidelines, Benchmarks](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/28/altimeter-report-facebook-page-guidelines-benchmarks/) - In the latest of a series of practical and helpful resources for marketers, Altimeter Group has released a free report entitled The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing. The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing The report, based on input from 34 industry vendors and consulting agencies, outlines - you guessed it
- [Writing - Critical For Communicators, But It's Not Everything](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/28/writing-critical-communicators/) - Liam Fitzpatrick wrote a controversial post earlier this month, saying that he thought writing skills are over-rated for communicators: "To be honest I don’t think being a good writer matters – I’ve met plenty of great comms people who couldn’t write to save their lives and I know a few fantastic writers who I’d never
- [57 Social Media Policy Examples and Resources](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/26/57-social-media-policy-examples-resources/) - Over time I’ve found myself doing more and more foundational work for organizations looking to dip their toes into social media. One of the key elements of this work, in my opinion, is creating a social media policy that fits well with the organization’s goals, culture and risk tolerance. But where to start? As it
- [The Challenge - And Risk - Of Ad Agencies' Growing Interest In Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/20/challenge-risk-ad-agencies-growing-interest-social-media/) - Too much has already been written about the recent Old Spice foray into social media. However, one aspect of the campaign has escaped most commentary - the firm - Wieden + Kennedy - is an ad agency. Not a PR agency, or a social media agency. An ad agency. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal
- [Social Mediators 9: Using Social Media to Promote Book Publishing](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/13/social-mediators-9-social-media-promote-book-publishing/) - In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Joe Thornley and I talk with Terry Fallis about how he and his publisher, McClelland & Stewart, are using social media to find and cultivate a fan base for Terry’s novels. Also up for discussion this week: Social media adoption still isn’t universal among communicators.
- [50 Great Apps for Your iPad](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/12/50-great-ipad-apps/) - Wondering what apps to install on your iPad? Here are 50 of the apps I've installed on mine. Take a look, and add to the list in the comments. Business/Productivity Pages - Word processor. Sadly, not very compatible with MS Word (go figure) but suffices. $9.99. Keynote - Presentation tool. While I haven't tried this
- [Sysomos Acquired By Marketwire](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/05/sysomos-acquired-marketwire/) - In recent months we've seen several interesting moves within the social media monitoring/social CRM space. Company Acquired by Date Techrigy Alterian July 2009 Filtrbox Jive Software January 2010 Buzzgain Meltwater February 2010 Biz360 Attensity April 2010 DNA13 CNW Group April 2010 Scout Labs Lithium Technologies May 2010 (Note: CNW Group is a 76design client. Thanks to
- [Correlation/Causality Confusion](https://davefleet.com/2010/07/05/correlationcausality-confusion/) - As the social media space slowly matures, we're starting to see more and more reports released by companies offering insight into the ebbs and flows of peoples' behaviour online. Not surprisingly, these reports are pretty popular - they possess two desirable attributes: They offer easy-to-digest, soundbite-sized nuggets of information - perfect for short-form media such
- [Book Review: Engage!](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/28/book-review-engage/) - When I put together my reading list for 2010, I included Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by the prolific Brian Solis as one of my 2010 "must reads." Surprisingly, though, it turned out not to be the first of his books I read this year. The good folks over at Wiley sent me
- [Earthquake: Canadians Turn to Social Media Instead of Diving for Cover](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/24/earthquake-canadians-turn-social-media-diving-cover/) - Yesterday afternoon at 1:41pm EDT, a 5.0 magnitude earthquake shook Quebec and Ontario and it looks like people ran to Twitter instead of diving for cover. Once again, social media beat traditional media to the punch (as if this is news nowadays), although mainstream outlets were quick to report the news shortly thereafter. We did
- [It's A Small World](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/18/small-world/) - Last September I had a chance encounter in Montreal. I was in town for PodCamp Montreal, walking along the street to meet up with Julien Smith and a bunch of other folks, when I bumped into my ex-housemate. Turned out she'd decided to take a random trip to Montreal and by a bizarre coincidence we
- [Mobile Commerce On The Rise... Fast](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/17/mobile-commerce-rise-fast/) - Electronics marketplace Retrevo this week released a new study suggesting that mobile shoppers have doubled since February. According to the company, 20 per cent of US consumers have purchased something from a retailer using their cell phone. While this isn't a surprising trend, the fact that mobile commerce is growing so quickly is somewhat surprising.
- [Social Mediators 8 - What Do You Want From A Conference?](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/16/social-mediators-8-conference/) - In this week's
- [Sysomos Audience Moves Towards Measuring Social Media ROI](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/15/sysomos-audience-moves-measuring-social-media-roi/) - Social media ROI is a hot topic right now, as social media begins to (slowly) mature. The purists who insisted that the conversation alone was and end, rather than a means, are diminishing in volume and a more rational, approach is emerging balancing the revolutionary aspects of social media with those that are simply evolutionary
- [Social Mediators 7 - Eqentia - Social Media Monitoring Tool For Enterprises](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/09/social-mediators-7-eqentia-social-media-monitoring-tool-enterprises/) - Eqentia is a social media startup headquartered in Toronto, Canada. In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Eqentia’s CEO and Founder, William Mougayar, joins Joe Thornley and me for a discussion about Eqentia, what it does, who it's aimed at and future plans for it. Eqentia is positioning itself as a team-based knowledge dashboard that can be managed by
- [Why I'm Writing This On An iPad](https://davefleet.com/2010/06/02/writing-ipad/) - When the iPad came out I was vehemently against the idea of getting one, for several reasons: No multitasking No flash video No USB I railed against the device online, I said similar things on the Social Mediators show and I argued against getting one privately. How things change. I'm writing this post on my
- [Four Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Sucks](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/25/reasons-social-media-marketing-campaign-sucks/) - Listen; engage; develop. That’s the three-step approach we recommend companies take when it comes to approaching social media marketing activities for their organization. While you’ll hear nuances in terminology and small differences in approach, you’ll see thought leaders in our industry take a similar approach. Brian Solis, for example, talks about “listening, observing and learning”
- [Forrester Outlines Seven Things Your Organization Must Do Because Of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/12/forrester-outlines-organization-social-media/) - Forrester analyst Augie Ray posted a list of seven things he recommends organizations do to avoid the recent problems of Nestle and United Airlines. The list makes for interesting reading: You must be proactive: Nestle knew the palm oil/deforestation issue could blow up, but did nothing about it until it did You must improve customer
- [Why Facebook's Community Pages Could Give Brands Headaches](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/10/facebooks-community-pages-give-brands-headaches/) - A couple of weeks ago I received a worried call from a friend working in PR for a large company. Her opening question went something like: "What the heck are Community Pages on Facebook, and why is there one for my company?" Community Pages 101 Facebook's Community Pages are an initiative from Facebook to create
- [How To Ruin (Or Build) Your Personal Brand](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/07/ruin-build-personal-brand/) - A little while back I was invited to keynote at a young professionals' event in Hamilton, on the topic of personal branding. I presented at the event this morning, and thought I'd post it here for you, too. Rather than taking a single view on the presentation, I shook this one up a little by
- [Adapt Your Social Media Channels To Fit Your Capacity](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/04/adding-place/) - It's a common dilemma in social media - so much to create, so little time. I've written before about how compulsive social media can be; how, even when you're rushed off your feet, it can feel like you should be doing more to feed the beast that is your blog, or Twitter, or Facebook, or
- ["Millenials In PR" Debate Goes Both Ways](https://davefleet.com/2010/05/03/millenials-pr-debate-ways/) - In recent days, several smart people (Bill Sledzik, Todd Defren... and again, Ryan Stephens) have written posts either addressed to or about millenials - loosely defined as people born between 1980 and 1995. I've watched these posts with great interest, for several reasons: I've hired several to work on our social media team I work
- [Next Is Now](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/30/next-is-now/) - I don't usually write about client work, but I'm pretty psyched about this video we produced for Rogers so I'm making an exception. The video features some of the coolest stats and facts we could find about the changing world of communications technology and really – I think – captures the sense of acceleration that
- [Courtyard Restaurant In Ottawa - Doing It Right](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/26/courtyard-restaurant-ottawa/) - Warning - I'm about to talk about my dinner. Bear with me - there's a point... Ever had one of those experiences when you just thought that someone really nailed "it," whatever "it" is? I had one of those yesterday. I flew to Ottawa yesterday ahead of a presentation I'm giving at a Canadian Medical
- [Altimeter, Web Analytics Demystified Release New Research On Social Media Measurement](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/23/altimeter-web-analytics-demystified-research-social-media-measurement/) - Measurement is one of the most interesting areas within social media right now. Not only is effective measurement critical to demonstrating results in an emerging space, but sophisticated measurement can offer valuable insights to shape communications strategies, both online and off; proactive and reactive. This challenge is being compounded as the social web expands beyond
- [Book Review: Historical Tweets](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/22/book-review-historical-tweets/) - Ever wonder what Isaac Newton might have said if Twitter had been around in his time? How about Alexander the Great or Billy the Kid? Well, in case you were wondering, here they are: "Took an hour to get that bird crap out of my hair. Think I'll change it to "apple" when I tell
- [Social Mediators 6 – Living with the iPad; Living with less PR podcasting](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/20/social-mediators-6-living-ipad-living-pr-podcasting/) - In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Terry Fallis, Joseph Thornley and I talk about some of the limitations of the iPad and changes to two of the longest running PR podcasts – Inside PR and For Immediate Release. Joseph thinks that Steve Jobs has made a mistake with the product by limiting its usefulness for content creation. I think
- [Clay Shirky On The New Media Environment](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/12/clay-shirky-media-environment/) - I'm getting a little bit Tumblr-esque here with a short post - I'm going to let the video do the talking for me. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the media landscape - how owned, earned and paid media fit together, and how organizations can best use them to communicate with their
- [Thornley Fallis Seeking A Senior Communications Consultant](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/09/thornley-fallis-seeking-senior-communications-consultant/) - I recently posted about several jobs we're filling at Thornley Fallis Communications and 76design. We've filled the account coordinator and consultant positions, but business is booming and we have another new position - for a Senior Consultant in our Social Media practice. The successful applicant will: Play a central role in Thornley Fallis’ social media
- [A Dark Future For Journalism - The Editorial/Ad Wall Is Down](https://davefleet.com/2010/04/05/dark-future-journalism-editorialad-wall/) - Several weeks ago we received a presentation from a major Canadian newspaper publisher entitled "New Approach to Media Relations for PR Consultants." In it, the presenter outlined a new process available for PR folks pitching their clients' work. While I couldn't attend at the time, I obtained a copy of the deck and got a thorough
- [Shift From Self-Driven To Issue-Driven Social Media Listening](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/31/shift-selfdriven-issuedriven-social-media-listening/) - Are you focusing on the wrong things in your monitoring program? Yesterday, I was impressed to discuss the following assertion from a company we're hoping to work with, regarding their monitoring program (paraphrased below): "We don't just want more reading material; we want something that adds value to what we do." This one statement evolved
- [Cut Companies A Break](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/29/cut-companies-break/) - Are you perfect? Most companies aren't either. They don't get everything right - in product launches; in marketing; in pricing or in any area where people are involved. They certainly don't get everything right in social media. The big difference for them is, when they get things wrong in social media, people often shout it loud
- [Join Our Team At Thornley Fallis Communications](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/23/join-team-thornley-fallis/) - [Update: we're not just hiring PR folks. We're hiring designers and developers, too] [Update: The two positions below have now been filled.] The recession is well and truly over and we're firing on all cylinders. In fact, we need more cylinders to keep up with the work that's coming in. So, we're hiring. Want to
- [Seven Reasons Your Company Needs To Prepare For Crises](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/23/reasons-company-prepare-crises/) - Does your company have a communications plan for when it gets hit by a crisis? Chances are, you don't. Time and time again I've seen organizations plow ahead with communications programs that focus on generating proactive results, but do little to prepare for the flip side. In the last few days we've seen another example
- [Does Online Customer Service Encourage Dissent?](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/16/online-customer-service-encourage-dissent/) - One of the highlights of South By Southwest for me so far was the Customer Support in a 140 Character World panel with Caroline McCarthy (CNET), Frank Eliason (Comcast), Lois Townsend (HP), Toby Richards (Microsoft) and Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter). With a wide-ranging conversation tackling many different aspects of online customer support, I found it fascinating.
- [Book Review: Switch - How To Change Things When Change Is Hard](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/15/book-review-switch-change-change-hard/) - Every so often, a book comes along that somehow boils really complex topics down to such a concise form that you wonder why no-one thought in that way before. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Dan and Chip Heath, is one of those books, combining theory from change management and persuasion
- [Radian6 Launches Real-Time Monitoring And Engagement Console](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/10/radian6-real-time-monitoring-engagement-console/) - Radian6 has announced a new tool that has the potential to be a paradigm shift in how companies manage their social media monitoring programs. The Radian6 Engagement Console combines two of the best tools out there - Tweetdeck and Radian6 - in an Adobe Air-based desktop tool. In doing so, the console makes radical improvements
- [FourWhere Mines Foursquare For Venues, Tips](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/09/fourwhere-mines-foursquare-venues-tips/) - This morning, social media monitoring and analysis provider Sysomos launched a new service, FourWhere, which mashes-up Foursquare and Google Maps to show the places visited by Foursquare users and see the tips that they've left. Frankly, I'm surprised that Foursquare doesn't already have this feature itself - this would be a nice addition to the
- [Evolving the Social Media Marketing Ecosystem](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/08/evolving-social-media-marketing-ecosystem/) - In January this year I put forward my thoughts on the social media marketing ecosystem in which we operate in 2010. It looked like this: While this relatively complex model is great to help shape the thinking of organizations wrestling with a plethora of products, it's also a little complex for organizations without those massive
- [Social Mediators 3 – Privacy and Personal Brand](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/04/social-mediators-3-privacy-personal-brand/) - In this week's Social Mediators, Joe Thornley, Terry Fallis and I discuss our take-aways from two recent social media events in Toronto. I was impressed by presentations given by Brad Buset, Miranda McCurlie and Dave Bradfield at PodCamp Toronto 2010 in late February, highlighting privacy and the impact of what we share online. My take:
- [Book Review: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion](https://davefleet.com/2010/03/02/book-review-influence-psychology-persuasion/) - When I pulled together my reading list for 2010 (side note: two months down, four books read. Rawk!), there were a few different types of books on the list: New books I wanted to check out Fictional books to lighten the load Older books highly recommended by others Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert
- [Work/Life Balance... or Blend?](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/24/worklife-balance-blend/) - How do you think about your approach to your personal time management? A couple of years ago I heard something on the Manager Tools podcast that made me sit up and think - that you shouldn't think about "work/life balance," but "work/life choice." Their message was that you have control over how you use your
- [Social Mediators Episode 2: Are You Always One Of Us?](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/22/social-mediators-episode-2/) - In this week's episode of Social Mediators, Joe Thornley, Terry Fallis and I discuss work/life boundaries. Specifically, are you always "one of us?" Should a company have any domain over its employees once they leave the office? This was prompted by a heated debate over our company's new online communications policy over on MetaFilter recently.
- [Hanging Out With 900 Friends At PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/22/hanging-900-friends-podcamp-toronto/) - This past weekend, roughly 900 people came out to attend PodCamp Toronto 2010. Since joining the organizing team for the event in 2008, I've seen PodCamp Toronto grow from a couple of hundred early tech adopters to a large, diverse group of people from all along the adoption curve. This year more than perhaps any, the
- [Four Lessons From PleaseRobMe.com](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/19/lessons-pleaserobmecom/) - The social media scene has been buzzing this week with stories about PleaseRobMe.com, a new site which aggregates publicly shared posts from shiny new location-based service Foursquare. The aim of the site is to draw attention to the risks posed by posting your current location publicly. While the way the site goes about things is deliberately
- [Seven Ways To Get The Most Out Of PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/16/ways-podcamp-toronto/) - This coming weekend - February 20-21 - social media enthusiasts from coast to coast will descend on Toronto for PodCamp Toronto 2010. For the third year in a row, I'm part of the organizing committee, although a busy day job means I've taken a back seat this year. Every year this weekend makes up one of
- [How You Can Help A PR Pro Out](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/15/pr-pro/) - A few weeks ago, Arik Hanson and Valerie Simon contacted me and a few other PR bloggers with an idea - an event where we collaborate in some way to help out those in the profession who've lost their jobs over the last year and who are on a search for their next gig. With
- [Do The Old Timing Rules Still Apply For Media Relations?](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/10/timing-rules-apply-media-relations/) - When I first got into media relations, a few pitching best practices were hammered into my head on a regular basis. For example: Know who you're pitching and what they're after Tailor your pitch Don't bcc a "mailing list" of pitch recipients (pitchees?) Don't pitch journalists when they're on deadline When it came to print
- [Customer Service In The Age Of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/09/customer-service-age-social-media/) - Yesterday I spoke with City News' Kris Reyes about the challenges businesses face in customer service in the age of social media. In Toronto we've seen numerous recent instances of "citizen journalism" highlighting problems at the TTC - a TwitPic of a TTC worker sleeping; a video of a bus driver's unscheduled coffee break in the
- [Launching The Social Mediators Video Podcast](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/08/launching-social-mediators-video-podcast/) - Today we're launching the Social Mediators video podcast. Each week, Joe Thornley, Terry Fallis and I (three guys who, as Joe says, should never be on camera!) will chat about social media and its intersection with communications, organizations and society in general. As Joe put it on his site: "We’re always on, always connected. How are
- [Use Social Media To Make Them Feel Special](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/05/feel-special/) - 80+ tweets, dozens and dozens of Facebook wall posts and numerous private messages. That's all it took (along with some kind and hilarious from my co-workers) to make me feel truly special on my birthday yesterday. Are you doing this kind of thing for your customers? Are you taking a few seconds (or minutes) to
- [More Journalists Prefer Bulk Email Than Personalized? Huh?](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/03/journalists-prefer-bulk-email-personalized-huh/) - Last week saw the launch of a campaign entitled "An Inconvenient PR Truth," aimed at trying to weed-out some of the black sheep in the PR family. Many of us in the profession have been arguing for similar practices to those advocated there for a while. While the campaign's approach raised my hackles somewhat, the
- [Charlie Brooker Shows Us How To Report The News](https://davefleet.com/2010/02/01/charlie-brooker-shows-report-news/) - A little light viewing for you. You may have already seen this - if so, watch it again. Otherwise, take two minutes to watch it. It's worth it.
- [A Bittersweet Moment](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/29/bittersweet-moment/) - When I joined Thornley Fallis Communications in 2008, I quickly found myself paired-up with an account coordinator as we began to build-out our social media practice. Over the following months we worked closely together on pretty much every project I touched, and despite both being extremely stubborn we found we worked well together. I also
- [The World Won't End Without Your Tweets](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/28/world-tweets/) - Social media can be a compulsive beast. It's easy to feel a 'need' to keep putting out content through your various channels; no-where is this more true right now than on Twitter. I've written about that topic before, and I've also discovered the importance of unplugging occasionally. So, what to do when a client feels
- [Win A Ticket To The Art Of Marketing Conference](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/27/attend-art-marketing-conference/) - We're heading into conference season again soon, with a whole slew of events including Social Media Week (next week), PodCamp Toronto (Feb 20-21), SXSW Interactive (March 12-16) all coming up in the next six weeks or so. One event that's caught my attention several times is the upcoming Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto on
- [31 Books To Live Your 2010 By](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/26/books-live-2010/) - A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my 2010 reading challenge - reading 26 books over the next 52 weeks - and asked for your help in fleshing-out my reading list for the remainder of the year. I've now pulled together the suggestions of people who commented, to form my 2010 reading list. On
- [Book Review: Feeding Frenzy](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/25/book-review-feeding-frenzy/) - A couple of months ago I read a compelling post from Gerald Baron - aka the guy behind Crisisblogger, one of my must-read sites. The post described a book named Feeding Frenzy by Jon Harmon as "one of the best crisis management books out there." That's high praise from a man with his own book
- [eBook on 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/21/ebook-2010-content-marketing-trends-predictions/) - Want to get some insights into what some of the smartest people in marketing are thinking 2010 holds in store? Along with nearly 40 other smart folks including Radian6's David Alston and Tipping Point Labs' Andrew Davis I contributed my thoughts to this eBook of content marketing trends and predictions published by Marketo and ClickDocuments. Check it
- [Jeremy Wright Joins Thornley Fallis/76design](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/19/jeremy-wright-joins-thornley-fallis76design/) - Yesterday was an exciting day for us at Thornley Fallis/76design. Yesterday we welcomed Jeremy Wright onto our team. Apparently hashtags have a gang... For those of you who don't know Jeremy, he was until fairly recently the CEO and co-founder of b5media, the well-known blog network. Since then he's plied his trade as "digital hitman"
- [Strategies In The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/19/strategies-2010-social-media-marketing-ecosystem/) - A few days ago I blogged my thoughts on the shape of the social media marketing ecosystem as we enter 2010. The key aspects of the system from my perspective were: The lines have truly blurred. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between different forms of communications, especially when considering the online space. Successful
- [A Simple Way To Win Your Customers' Loyalty](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/18/simple-win-customers-loyalty/) - I'm going to tell you a story about my weekend. Bear with me - it goes somewhere... A tale of service This weekend Caralin and I flew down to New York to see our favourite comedian Eddie Izzard at the Madison Square Gardens. I'd heard great things about the Roger Smith Hotel from people like
- [Avoiding Social Media's Own "Ad Equivalency Value"](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/13/avoiding-social-medias-ad-equivalency/) - For years, the PR profession has struggled with effective measurement of its earned media activities. The uncontrollable nature of earned media means that, for example, you can't guarantee that your URL, your key messages or even the overall theme of your pitch will be included in a story. We balance that out with the increased
- [My 2010 Reading Challenge: 26 Books](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/12/2010-reading-challenge-26-books/) - As my life has gotten busier and busier over the last few years, my reading has suffered as I increasingly found myself prioritizing other things over it. On New Year's Eve, I read an inspiring post by Julien Smith where he describes how he manages to read a book every week. Essentially, in the same
- [The Discomfort of Improving](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/07/discomfort-improving/) - Warning: This post involves self reflection. If you're looking for PR or social media best practices, check back in a day or two when normal service will resume. Change can be tough. Change at home; in our personal lives; with our families. Changes at work is no different. Perhaps the most difficult change, though, is
- [The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem](https://davefleet.com/2010/01/04/2010-social-media-marketing-ecosystem/) - Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran recently posted an insightful breakdown of some of the differences between owned media, paid media and earned media. Given the ongoing convergence I'm seeing between different communications disciplines which I'm seeing on a daily basis, this got me thinking. The thought process ultimately led me to sketch out my take
- [Book Review: Social Media Marketing For Dummies](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/31/book-review-social-media-marketing-dummies/) - A few weeks ago, I received a request to review Social Media Marketing For Dummies (affiliate link) from a publicist at publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. To be honest I was dubious about the book, but name of the author - Shiv Singh, Vice President and Global Social Media Lead at Razorfish - caught my eye, so
- [Are Spammers Getting Smarter?](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/29/spammers-smarter/) - If your blog gets any remotely significant amount of traffic, you've probably experienced problems with comment spam. Right now, I have just over 2,100 comments in my spam queue thanks to the Akismet WordPress plugin. You might think that with that many comments caught in my spam filter, the software was doing a good job.
- [Top 10 DaveFleet.com Posts Of 2009](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/28/top-posts-2009/) - 2009 has been quite the year for this site. Traffic rose by more than 140 per cent from 2008, and RSS subscriptions rose by more than 225 per cent. Those stats mean little on their own; however the effect was to enable some fascinating conversations to take place here over the last twelve months. Here
- [Where's The Line With Location-Based Apps and Privacy?](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/26/line-locationbased-apps-privacy/) - Loic Le Meur wrote yesterday about My Tracks - an application for Android phones which uses your phone's GPS chip to track your location in real-time. Along with location, you can use it to look back later at things like your elevation, distance and speed. This isn't the first app to offer this kind of
- [Merry Christmas!](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/24/merry-christmas/) - The holiday season is upon us, complete with over-indulging, over-spending and (with any luck) a little over-celebrating. While the Thornley Fallis offices are open today, by the end of tomorrow I expect to have collapsed onto the couch, groaning at the sheer volume of food Caralin's mother has somehow forced into me. For many people
- [Seven Reasons You Should Care About Disclosure on Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/22/reasons-care-disclosure-twitter/) - A tweet from Eden Spodek caught my eye the other day: "Am I in the minority in thinking consultants should disclose when tweeting about clients?" Now, I've written about disclosure plenty of times in the past, but given the recent introduction of disclosure rules by the FTC down in the US (check out Louis Gray's
- [Six Ways To Silo-Bust Your Communications](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/21/ways-silobust-communications/) - We're into "2010 prediction season, and there are plenty of social media buzzwords being thrown around." "Real-time," "location-based," "convergence" and "augmented reality" are a few that stand out for me. I'm going to throw a new one into the mix; one that has been my mantra for a while, and which (I think) should frame
- [Are We Seeing A Growth In "McDonalds Marketing"?](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/17/growth-mcdonalds-marketing/) - Cheryl Andonian (aka Momblebee) suggested in a comment that Michael Arrington's "McDonalds content" issue I wrote about yesterday goes beyond news and content, and affects marketing as a whole. She says: "This “McDonalds” issue is larger than just news and content. It is affecting creative work as well. Talented and trained professional freelance writers, graphic designers
- [McDonalds Content and Social Search](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/16/mcdonalds-content-social-search/) - Michael Arrington wrote an interesting post recently about the ongoing evolution in the news business. Referring to "the end of hand crafted content" as he sees it, Arrington speculates that, just as "old media" complained about the emergence of "new media" such as TechCrunch, the "new media" will soon begin complaining about the next generation
- [Book Review - Trust Agents](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/09/book-review-trust-agents/) - For the past little while I've been slowly working my way through Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, written by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan. I've now finished it so, without further ado, here's my take on this New York Times bestseller. The Good It's needed - As
- [SocialScope Incorporates Foursquare, Twitter Lists](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/08/socialscope-incorporates-foursquare-twitter-lists/) - SocialScope, the BlackBerry app billing itself as "a mobile inbox for your social networks," has released a new version (v0.9.5.81-0) of its beta application. The primary changes in the new version: Foursquare integration (now alongside Twitter, Facebook, Flickr) Twitter lists If you aren't aware, Foursquare is a location-based social network combining geographic context with gaming
- [Business Week Says "Beware The Snake Oil"](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/07/business-week-beware-snake-oil/) - I've long railed against the widespread growth of so-called "social media experts" - in particular, the people who believe that a Twitter account is enough to qualify you to offer advice to companies on how to adopt social media. Now, Business Week has stepped-in on the topic, with a piece entitled "Beware Social Media Snake
- [Social Media: Anti-Social, Or An Opportunity For Influence?](https://davefleet.com/2009/12/01/social-media-antisocial-opportunity-influence/) - "Are sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube making it easier for customers to hate you?" This was the question posed by Timothy Taylor in a Globe and Mail story entitled "anti-social media" yesterday. Using examples such as product faults (he cites Dell's exploding batteries, although I think they were made by Sony...) and contest results (Nissan
- [Review: Sysomos Social Media Monitoring Tool](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/30/review-sysomos-social-media-monitoring-tool/) - I've explored many social media monitoring tools over the last few years. This week I added to the list when I received a demo of Sysomos - a Toronto-based company launched in 2007. Along with Radian6 and the Alterian-acquired Techrigy, Sysomos is one of the well-known players in the monitoring landscape right now. Sysomos' offerings
- [Reach Matters - Even In Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/25/reach-matters-social-media/) - "It doesn't matter how many people you reach; it's who you reach that matters." We hear this kind of statement thrown about all the time in social media circles. The idea is that you don't need to have a massive following to have influencer or get results. Following closely behind we usually hear something like
- [Social Gaming Hitting A New Level](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/24/social-gaming-hitting-level/) - Last week, Microsoft rolled out a new update to its Xbox 360 dashboard. Among other changes, the update added Twitter and Facebook functionality to "Gold" users of its service. CNET tells us that "millions" are already using these new services. The new add-ons allow users to do the usual things that you would expect to
- [Conflicted About Ad.ly](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/23/conflicted-adly/) - Browsing through my Google Reader feed this evening, a story in the New York Times caught my eye. The story was about ad.ly - a relatively new service that pays Twitter users to insert advertisements into their Twitter stream. In the piece, Brad Stone gives a reasonable outline of the service, which counts "celebrities like
- [Welcoming A New Colleague](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/17/welcoming-colleague/) - I'm pleased thrilled to welcome Andrea Pietkiewicz to the Thornley Fallis team. Andrea joins our social media team this week, bringing with her over 12 years of agency experience with companies such as BBDO and Cossette. I'm a firm believer that the lines between the communications disciplines are blurring. Public relations agencies no longer compete against
- [15 Ways PR Agencies Can Help Companies With Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/16/15-ways-pr-agencies-companies-social-media/) - As social media has grown in acceptance within companies over the past few years, one debate never seems to go away - whether agencies should be involved in social media communications, or whether the only way to maintain an "authentic voice" is for companies to undertake it all themselves. Agencies can help Not surprisingly (given
- [Foursquare's Potential For Hyper-Local Marketing](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/13/foursquare-hyper-local-marketing/) - In recent weeks, I've become fascinated with the location-based social network Foursquare. While I've been using location-based apps on my Blackberry and iPod Touch for a while (Google Maps is a good example), Foursquare is the first service that has made me stop and think about the potential of hyper-local marketing on mobile devices, not
- [The Huge Potential Of Location-Based Apps](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/10/huge-potential-locationbased-apps/) - The growth of smart phones - from a consumer perspective, the iPhone in particular but also Blackberries - has really driven mobile apps into the limelight at a faster rate than almost any technology out there recently. Over the last couple of years, and especially the last few months, we've seen mobile applications vault more
- [Putting A Face On The Faceless Organization](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/09/putting-face-faceless-organization/) - Companies with faceless brands have some of the greatest opportunities in social media. I've written on this topic before - there are several reasons why the opportunities are so great, but one stands out: the bar is set low for them. No-one expects to see them reaching out and engaging with people; when they do,
- [Book Review: Six Pixels Of Separation](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/05/book-review-pixels-separation/) - As I mentioned recently, I've been working my way through the book/audiobook of Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation for a while now. Well, I've finally finished it... here's my take... The Good Well-written - Six Pixels of Separation is written in Mitch's usual friendly, candid style. Though the 270+ pages of content took me
- [Think "Over Time," Not "Point In Time"](https://davefleet.com/2009/11/02/think-over-time/) - A hypothetical scenario for you: your communications director comes to you and tells you that thanks to their department's activities, there were 200 mentions of your brand online, of which three quarters were positive in tone. Is that good news? Is it bad? My answer: I have no idea. Why? Because there's no context. Context,
- [Be Wrong](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/29/wrong/) - I'm going to take a guess and say that around 5-10% of what I write on this site misses the mark. Maybe I'm wrong about something, or I write something to which people don't relate, or I write badly. I know when this happens because on those posts I'm deafened by the silence in the
- [When Search Can Make Or Break You](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/26/search-break/) - It's hard to argue nowadays that search isn't important. It's not often, though, that you see a real-world product completely base its advertising around it. Check out these ads for the movie 2012, being launched on November 13: No website on either of them - just an instruction to "Search: 2012." If the website for
- [Where The Personal Brand Falls Short](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/23/personal-brand-falls-short/) - The concept of the "personal brand" is still quite controversial. Not in whether it's possible to build a significant personal brand (it clearly is), but in whether it's the right thing to do. Over the past few years we've seen lots of people develop strong personal brands through social media, and levered those brands to
- [Think Media, Not Medium](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/20/media-medium/) - I just downloaded the audiobook version of Mitch Joel's book "Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone." I bought the hard copy of the book two months ago when it was first released. So why get the audio version too? Books just don't work for me any more. I love books.
- [Corporate Social Media Policies Ebook](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/19/corporate-social-media-policies-ebook/) - Earlier this year I published a short series of posts on how to go about creating social media policies for your organization. I've now pulled the essence of these posts into an ebook on corporate social media policies, to make the content even easier to reference when you're working on these documents for your organization.
- [Thornley Fallis Is Hiring](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/06/thornley-fallis-hiring/) - Want to join the Thornley Fallis team? We're hiring a senior Consultant to join our Social Media practice. We're growing. Over the last while, we've added four new members to our team at Thornley Fallis/76Design. We've welcomed a new Creative Director, a new Executive Producer of our Video practice (which is itself a new entity), a new
- [Mainstream Media Still Matters](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/02/mainstream-media-still-matters/) - It’s easy to jump on the “mainstream media is dead” bandwagon. Journalists are jumping ship, outlets are fragmenting and readership is, in many cases, down. What’s more, it’s what a lot of the “cool kids” are saying so it must be right… right? But here’s the thing – your local newspaper still probably has higher
- [A New Look For DaveFleet.com](https://davefleet.com/2009/10/02/davefleetcom/) - I’m re-launching DaveFleet.com today with a new, sleeker look and feel and a whole load of new functionality. The big changes include: Professional: The old site was built from a template when one man (me) and his dog read my posts. The new design was created by my colleagues at 76design. I hope you’ll agree
- [Your Social Media Presence Needs Substance, Not Just Style](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/30/social-media-substance-style/) - "Twitter" isn't a communications strategy. It isn't even a social media strategy. As a company, having a Twitter account doesn't even set you apart from the pack any more. As social media's golden-child-of-the-moment heads into the trough of disillusionment, we're going to see more and more people vocalizing the same thing; Jennifer Leggio said it succinctly today:
- [Face-Off: Twitter Apps For BlackBerry](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/29/twitter-apps-blackberry-faceoff/) - If you're anything like me, you probably find it easy to burn a lot of time on Twitter. It's addictive - you get into a conversation and before you know it, it's 10 or 15 minutes later. One of the ways I get around Twitter overload is by doing a lot of my tweeting from
- [PostRank Analytics: Missing Link Between Social Media Engagement And Web Analytics](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/24/postrank-analytics-missing-link-social-media-engagement-web-analytics/) - I love Google Analytics. Google's free tool offers easy-to-use analytics perfect for small or mid-sized businesses, is easy to install and, perhaps most importantly, is free. Unfortunately, in the world of social media, analytics focused on your own site can only tell you so much. They leave a gap and, for companies involved in online
- [Brands In Public: A New Reputation Management Tool](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/23/brands-public-reputation-management-tool/) - If your company matters to people, they are talking about you. There's nothing particularly new about this; this has been the pattern for hundreds of years. However, one difference with the advent of social media tools is that people are now able to talk to dozens, hundreds or thousands of other people instead of the
- [What's Your Motivation In Social Media?](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/21/motivation-social-media/) - "Why are you here?" This was the question that social media potty mouth smart guy and best-selling author Julien Smith asked in a thought-provoking session at PodCamp Montreal this weekend. Julien gave us three options: You Them The Game You If you're into social media for you, you're in it to better yourself. Perhaps that's
- [Build Your Social Media Strategy With Rocks and Sand](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/18/social-media-strategy-rocks-sand/) - Social media is taking off right now. It's all over the traditional media; there are books on it being released in every direction, and everyone seems to be on at least one of the various social networks, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or any other. Meanwhile, from a business perspective it feels like every
- [Do People Really Care About PR Disclosure? And Why It Still Matters](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/15/people-care-disclosure-matters/) - Do people really care about disclosure by PR agencies when it comes to activities for their clients? I don't mean those of us in the fishbowl or in the PR industry, but the average person on the streets. Do they really care if a company's representatives are in-house or contracted? Do they care if a
- [Feeding The Social Media Beast](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/11/feeding-social-media-beast/) - Ever felt a "need" to be active on Twitter? Do you feel guilty for not publishing to your blog for a few days? Sometimes there can almost be a compulsion to keep feeding your social media accounts. Go away for a week and watch your blog plummet down the AdAge Power 150, your visitors fall
- [Scaling Issues In Social Media Monitoring](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/09/scaling-social-media-monitoring/) - Radian6 recently introduced a few new features to its social media monitoring platform. The company explained them well on the Radian6 blog so I won't go into details, but in a nutshell: You can change font sizes on widgets You can segment trend charts by media type, language and region You can now copy and
- [Interactive or Engaged?](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/08/interactive-engaged/) - (This is a guest post by Valerie Merahn Simon. For more about Valerie, check out her bio at the end of this post.) I recently came across a press release about a new social media initiative taken by a large restaurant chain. A highly regarded advertising agency was responsible for the successful initiative, which resulted
- [Five Things PR Folks Can Learn About Social Media From Advertising](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/03/pr-folks-learn-social-media-advertising/) - We in the public relations industry seem to love to look down upon those on the advertising side of the communications industry when it comes to social media. They don't get conversation, we tell ourselves smugly. They think in terms of one-way information pushing, not two-way dialogue. Stop and think for a minute, though. Regardless
- [Commenting Makes You Sexy](https://davefleet.com/2009/09/01/commenting-sexy/) - Ok, that's not really true, but it does make me happy... One of the main reasons I write this blog is the interaction I get to have with the people who read it. I love hearing your thoughts. I love when you tell me I'm wrong, or point out things I haven't thought of. Basically,
- [The Power Of Video](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/30/power-video/) - Note: This post takes a slight tangent from my usual social media focus. Bear with me - normal service will resume shortly... In our hyper-connected, always-on world, the vibrating of your phone can result in an almost pavlovian-like response. There's almost a fear that if you don't see emails the moment they come in then
- [14 Key Skills & Attributes For New Public Relations Professionals](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/25/14-key-attributes-public-relations-professionals/) - Public relations has changed significantly over the last few years. Even if you don't buy into the idea that online communities and relationships are part of the public relations function, it's hard to deny the rising importance of blogs, the gradual decline of traditional media and the impact that online conversations can have on brands.
- [Astroturfing Online Reviews: 3 Reasons It's A Bad Idea](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/23/astroturfing-online-reviews-3-reasons-bad-idea/) - TechCrunch reported yesterday that they had obtained evidence that a PR firm had "a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client’s applications." As a PR professional, this is extremely disheartening to me. I guess on some level we all
- [A Quick Social Media Analysis Of The Toronto Storm](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/21/quick-social-media-analysis-toronto-storm/) - If you lived anywhere in Southern Ontario or were paying attention online last night, you'll likely know that the Toronto area experienced a brief but violent storm early yesterday evening. What made Torontonians sit up and notice was the dozen or so tornado warnings issued for the area as the storm rolled in. For a
- [Why Spam PR Pitches Won't Go Away](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/20/spam-pr-pitches/) - Yesterday morning I received an email pitch. Nothing particularly exciting about that; it wasn't the first pitch I received yesterday and it certainly wasn't the last. It wasn't tailored and it wasn't addressed to me but it was on topic. I noted that it was for an ebook on social media marketing and set it
- [Does Social Media Make PR Agencies Obsolete?](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/18/social-media-pr-agencies-obsolete/) - A fascinating discussion arose during Journchat Live in Toronto last night: Does social media let everyone act as their own PR agency? No. It doesn't. More than publicity Public relations is much more than just pitching reporters. It's event organization; it's issues management; it's media training; it's strategic planning; it's internal communications. In our company
- [Five Communications Implications As Twitter Enters The Trough Of Disillusionment](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/13/five-communications-implications-twitters-enters-trough-disillusionment/) - Earlier this week, Gartner released its latest Hype Cycle report showing the state of various technology trends. Some of the trends on the rise at various stages of the cycle include augmented reality, Internet TV, Web 2.0 and corporate blogging. One noticeable point, however: microblogging is about to cross into the trough of disillusionment. Of
- [Make Their Lives Easier](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/12/lives-easier/) - "It doesn't matter. People are lazy." A friend of mine informed me of this last night when I tried to sell her on (what I think is) a cool new online tool. It was a powerful reminder that it doesn't matter how cool something is - if it isn't simple and easy then people just
- [The Importance of Downtime](https://davefleet.com/2009/08/11/importance-downtime/) - If you didn't notice, my site has been quiet for the last week. That's because, for the last nine days, I was on vacation in Cape Breton on Canada's east coast (yes, the picture below is me a few days ago). While I was away, I unplugged completely - no Internet; no BlackBerry; not even
- [Social Media Agencies and Transparency](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/30/social-media-agencies-transparency/) - On Tuesday, Rachel Kay asked a thought-provoking question during a Twitter Q&A with fellow PR practitioner Sarah Evans: How involved can an agency get in a clients SM execution & remain transparent? In my view, agencies can get involved in every aspect of clients' social media execution without sacrificing transparency. I say that not just
- [Enough With Misusing Social Media ROI, Already](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/28/social-media-roi/) - I'm a little tired of abusing the term "ROI" - giving it new meanings just so they can say they're measuring it. "Return on Interaction"... "Return on Engagement"... enough already. Breaking news: ROI may well not matter for your social media program. (Edit: At least, not as a direct, immediate metric.) Except this isn't breaking
- [Do Damaged Brands Have More Opportunities In Social Media?](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/27/damaged-brands-opportunities-social-media/) - Do problems with your brand mean more opportunities in social media? I spend a lot of time thinking about how companies can use social media tools to enhance their communications efforts. Some involve a new take on traditional outbound or inbound marketing. Some are conversational, building relationships rather than "selling." Some focus on customer service
- [Coordinate Multiple Twitter Accounts With CoTweet](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/23/coordinate-multiple-twitter-accounts-cotweet/) - If you work on a multi-person social media team, you've likely encountered issues coordinating responses to online conversations. You'll spot a mention of your company and reply to it, only to find that another one of your colleagues has already replied, or that there was a reason they hadn't done so. Tools like Radian6 accommodate
- [Set Yourself Apart In The Tough Times](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/22/set-tough-times/) - Seth Godin wrote an interesting post yesterday about "winning on the uphills" that really resonated with me. The crux of the post: "On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety. The best time to do great
- [One Person Does Not Equal "Everyone"](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/17/person-equal-everyone/) - A couple of months ago I wrote about the challenge that communicators face in recognizing that we are not the same as our audiences. A similar dilemma sits alongside that for communicators engaged in social media: one person does not equal a majority. Just as the fact that you think something doesn't mean everyone does,
- [Public Relations People And Bloggers Can Work Together](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/15/public-relations-people-bloggers-work-together/) - Marketing Vox featured a thought-provoking post yesterday entitled "PR Blackout Challenges Mom Bloggers to Return to Basics." To boil the post down, it summarizes a call by mommy blogger community MomDot for a PR blackout this August. As they put it: "...our site, and many others, are inundated with hundreds, if not thousands, of product requests
- [In Defense of the Devil's Advocate](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/14/defense-devils-advocate/) - One of my favourite parts of agency life is getting the chance to collaborate with a bunch of really smart people on a daily basis. Whether it's my colleagues (who I learn from every single day) or clients, every day sees at least a couple of discussions from which I learn something completely new. In
- [Does Self-Promotion Really Equal Community-Building?](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/08/selfpromotion-equal-communitybuilding/) - "Community" is a popular buzzword nowadays, even more so since the explosion of social media. But are we really using it the right way? Think about the most high-profile proponents of social media. The people you think of likely have large followings and significant engagement with their work. Now, ask yourself - does that mean they
- [Think PR People Don't Need Math? Think Again](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/06/pr-people-math/) - Public relations folks aren't generally very good at math, according to their reputation, anyway. They're creative people, you see? They work magic with words; they build relationships with people; they persuade people. So what if they're no good with numbers? I argue: it matters. A lot. Here are just a few of the tasks that
- [8 Talking Points On Twitter Follower-Building Tools](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/03/talking-points-twitter-follower-building-tools/) - Earlier this week I wrote a post about follower-building services on Twitter, warning about the dangers and how people may perceive you if you use them. It felt a little bit like preaching to the choir. Amy Mengel made an excellent point in the comments to that post: "Unfortunately the people on Twitter who promote
- [Anti-Brandjacking Basics: 10 Profiles To Claim For Your Company](https://davefleet.com/2009/07/02/antibrandjacking-basics-10-profiles-claim-company/) - Have you taken the basic steps to prevent people from hijacking your company's brand? Or have you left the door open to it happening right now? I've been thinking a lot about brandjacking fortunately. Fortunately, I've been thinking about it in terms of prevention rather than having to fix it. Brandjacking is a broad term,
- [Twitter Follower-Building Services – Gain Numbers, Lose Respect?](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/30/twitter-followerbuilding-services-gain-numbers-lose-respect/) - As time goes on, it feels like more and more people are feeling the allure of Twitter follower-building services. Look at their follower numbers one day and they have a few hundred, and a couple of days later they're up to several thousand. It's easy to see the allure of this. You have the ego
- [The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/29/the-volume-personalization-trade-off/) - The trade-off between volume and personalization is an ever-present dilemma in public relations. If, as I do, you subscribe to the notion that one of the best ways to build loyalty is to develop a relationship with people, then you've likely hit the point where you have to make a trade-off between the number of
- [Scribnia Helps You Discover And Review New Blogs](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/26/scribnia-helps-discover-review-blogs/) - A little while back, a few people drew my attention to Scribnia. I glanced at it at the time, but unfortunately I didn't have a chance to dig too deeply. In a way I'm glad that I didn't, as since then I've watched it grow into a very useful tool and I think my opinion is
- [Feedburner and FriendFeed: FailBurner](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/25/feedburner-friendfeed-failburner/) - Feedburner is probably one of the most-used services available for bloggers. Its RSS analytics, promotion and advertising features have made it a staple of many peoples' blogging toolkits. FeedBurner was also a first mover in the market, enabling it to attract a large number of people before viable competitors appeared. Thanks to its purchase by
- [Community Alone Isn't Enough](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/23/community-enough/) - One of my favourite roles to play (and one that likely annoys my colleagues the most) is that of devil's advocate. I try to constantly question the things that everyone takes for granted, because one day things will change. It happened to many traditional PR folks, and if we don't keep a close eye out
- [You Aren't Always Right](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/18/you-arent-always-right/) - As our team does more and more online outreach on behalf of our clients, I'm increasingly coming to realize that you can't expect to "win" every debate. Interestingly enough, "you" in this case can refer to either side of the discussion. Companies - you don't have to win As a communications pro, with inside knowledge
- [TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop: Racing To The Bottom?](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/17/tweetdeck-seesmic-desktop-racing-bottom/) - Twitter was buzzing last night as the latest version of free Twitter client TweetDeck was launched, to fairly universal acclaim. Mashable has a detailed run-down of the new Tweetdeck features, and a good comparison of the new version with its closest competitor, Seesmic Desktop. In a nutshell, the big-name new features are: A new TweetDeck
- [Is The State Of The Twittersphere Declining?](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/16/is-the-state-of-the-twittersphere-declining/) - On June 10 HubSpot released its second State of the Twittersphere report. The report looks at information collected from over 4.5 million Twitter accounts over the last nine months. Their conclusion: "…many of the accounts on Twitter aren't actually using it all that much." The report found that: 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL;
- [25 Questions To Make Your Social Media Workflow Work For You](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/15/25-questions-to-make-your-social-media-workflow-work-for-you/) - You've pulled together a social media team, you've set your objectives, you've developed an integrated communications strategy that combines online and offline communications, and you've won the buy-in you need to start to engage online. The first part of your system should ideally be listening, after which you can begin engaging in online conversations and
- [If It Walks And Quacks Like a Duck...](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/12/walks-quacks-like-duck/) - ...then everyone else will think it's a duck. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you say. You can throw out your corporate messaging all you like, but regardless of what you say, people just don't believe you. You can tell people that your product is great, but if people keep having problems your words won't matter.
- [Which Podcasts Have Inspired You?](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/10/podcasts-inspired/) - One of the things I like best about listening to podcasts is the ability to find insightful, thought-provoking content that I might otherwise have missed. Tonight I managed to get out for my first decent run since racing in the Cabot Trail Relay a few weeks ago. While out pounding the trails for what felt
- [Five Levels Of Social Media Responses](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/08/five-levels-social-media-responses/) - You've leapt onto the social media bandwagon. You've dived headfirst into the murky waters of Twitter. You've used a few other cliched sayings along the way, too. Suffice it to say, you're monitoring what people are saying about you and you're starting to respond to them. Maybe you're using free tools like Google Alerts, Twitter
- [Emotion doesn't trump reality](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/03/emotion-trump-reality/) - In recent months I, along with many other people, have voiced concern about the influx of "social media experts" with no real background in communications but a strong enthusiasm for social media tools. We've worried publicly that they lack real-world experience and strategic communications insight and that these two things will lead to their failure
- [Vote in the PR "Readers' Choice" Blog Awards](https://davefleet.com/2009/06/01/vote-pr-readers-choice-blog-awards/) - Over the last few months I've enjoyed getting to know Arik Hanson. Arik's a communicator from Minneapolis (which, I just realized, is further north than Toronto - go figure...) who's a smart guy but, just as importantly, is a nice guy too. A couple of weeks ago, Arik came up with the concept of the PR
- [Social Media Is Becoming A Commodity](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/29/social-media-commodity/) - Anyone can do media relations. Anyone can pitch a journalist. Some people can even do it well. However, no-one in their right mind is going to hire your firm because you pitched a straight media relations campaign to them because everyone is pitching it. Social media is fast becoming a commodity, just like media relations. A
- [There's Nothing Magical About Social Media Principles](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/28/magical-social-media-principles/) - We often hear how social media is "different" - how it changes everything about your communications. How you have to throw the old rules out the window when launching into social media tools. I respectfully disagree. Too many "social media experts" treat these kinds of principles as though they separate social media from other forms of
- [Is This Your Agency/Client Relationship?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/27/agencyclient-relationship/) - On a lighter-than-usual note: Agency folks, does this video seem familiar? Fortunately, we're blessed with clients who aren't like this. Hat tip to Todd Defren.
- [Want Me To Write About Your Stuff? Don't Lie In Your Pitch](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/27/write-stuff-lie/) - I receive several pitches each day. In general, even if I don't write about what they're pitching, I welcome the approach. A few days ago, however, I received this email: subject: I'd like to know your opinion Hello, My name is […]. I'm a […] student at […]. I writing you because I'd like to
- [Does Your Organization Have Multiple Personalities?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/21/organization-multiple-personalities/) - Whether you like it or not, your customer service is now part of your company's public relations. In reality it has always been that way but now, with the variety of online tools that let individuals have a louder voice, many more people can hear about your customer service successes and failures. Customer service is
- [Rethinking "Influencers"](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/20/rethinking-influencers/) - Who are the influencers in your market? Are they the top-of-mind attention grabbers, are they the lower-profile up-and-comers, or are they the long tail, the people with relatively few readers but who make up a good chunk of pages 2+ in Google's search results and who, in time, could develop a sizeable following? I ask because I've
- [Where Are The Experts?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/19/experts/) - The people on the leading edge of social media have, in general, avoided referring to themselves as experts. It's partly due to modesty, and partly because everyone who calls themselves an "expert" gets widely mocked as a douchebag in the social media egosystem. I got a trackback today from a post by Marc Meyer, noting that
- [BackType Connect - Good... Too Good?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/15/backtype-connect-good-too-good/) - Over the last couple of years, it’s become harder and harder to track conversations about your site online. Tools like Google Blogsearch and Google Alerts are great for tracking links from other blogs, but as micro-blogging tools like Twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Tumblr and their like emerged people started to post links in ways that are
- [Five Tools For Drinking From The Firehose](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/14/drink-firehose/) - Over the last few weeks I've presented to a number of groups around '101' social media topics - how to get started, practical pointers, and ethical issues in social media. People often express shock at the sheer volume of tools and information out there in social media. It can be overwhelming, for sure. So how
- [Social Media Policies For Your Company: External Policies](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/11/social-media-policies-company-external-policies/) - In my last post we explored the policies that companies should consider internally, within their organization, when getting started in social media. This time we'll take a look at the social media policies that organizations might consider posting publicly, for everyone to see. There are two: Comment moderation policy Interaction policy Comment moderation policy Comment
- [Social Media Policies For Your Company: Internal Policies](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/08/social-media-policies-company-internal-policies/) - Your organization is dipping its toe into the social media pool, but you know you need the right policies in place to set the stage. Where to start? In this post I'll outline, at a top level, three internal policies that you should consider when your organization is getting started in social media: Blogging policy
- [Getting Started: Social Media Policies For Your Company](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/07/started-social-media-policies-company/) - Is your organization looking to get started with "this social media thing?" If so, alongside the thinking you should be doing about culture and top-level support, organizational policies should be one of the things you think about first. Next week I'm delivering a workshop on "Building A Solid Foundation: Social Media Policies, Best Practices And
- [Forget The Statusphere. How About The Egosystem?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/06/forget-the-statusphere-how-about-the-egosystem/) - Earlier this year Brian Solis commented on the trend of people moving from participation on blogs to engagement through micromedia tools like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and so on. The next day he posted a piece on TechCrunch: With the popularity and pervasiveness of microblogging (a.k.a. micromedia) and activity streams and timelines, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and
- [Disagree With Me](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/05/disagree/) - One of the reasons I write so frequently here is that I love reading your take on things. Sometimes I'll write about things I know something about; other times I'll write about things I'm not so sure about. Regardless, the most rewarding part is reading the comments (even if they have been slow recently -
- [I Don't Care When You Joined Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/04/care-joined-twitter/) - A couple of big old-media events boosted Twitter's profile over the last few weeks (ever notice how social media tool success is often still measured by traditional media coverage?). First, Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to see who reached one million followers first. Shortly after that, Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter. The storm of media coverage over
- [Where's The Line With Twitter "Spam"?](https://davefleet.com/2009/05/01/line-twitter-spam/) - Do you find it helpful when people link to their latest content on Twitter? Tweetstats says I've posted an average of about 25 tweets per day since September 2007. In the last few months, I've averaged over 40. Each weekday, one of those tweets is usually to my latest blog post. The question is, does
- [Social Media Needs Shades Of Grey](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/30/social-media-shades-of-grey/) - Social media operates in shades of grey. The more I think about our application of these new tools to communications and marketing, the more I realize that things aren't black and white. Ghost blogging is grey. Online personas are grey. The rules are grey. Why should you care? Because your approach should be no different.
- [Swine Flu Showing The Best - And Worst - Of Social Media In A Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/29/swine-flu-showing-worst-social-media/) - I've written and presented in the past on potential uses of social media in crisis communications. In the past, it's been about the potential uses. In the last few days, though, we've seen some of the best - and worst - potential uses of online tools (social and otherwise) to communicate with the public in
- [Cluetrain Plus 10: People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/28/cluetrain-10-people-recognize-sound-voice/) - As part of a project to mark the tenth anniversary of the seminal social media book The Cluetrain Manifesto, Keith McArthur organized a project to have different people blog about each of the 95 theses within the manifesto. I'm writing about thesis number five. For context, here are the four preceding these: Markets are conversations. (Christopher Locke)
- [Youth Vs Adults: Strong Ties/Weak Networks](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/27/youth-adults-strong-tiesweak-networks/) - The kids are all about social media. They're publishing content, streaming video and Twittering wildly. Right? Wrong. Just as social media practitioners use and view these tools differently to the general population, we need to remember that young people use these tools differently to us. They're informed about the tools but while they're highly active
- [Is The Customer The Target?](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/24/customer-target/) - Every so often I read commentary in traditional and social media circles critiquing particular companies' public relations efforts. The targeting of the effort is a common target for those pieces, with a common refrain being, "do they know where their customers are?" Here's something useful to remember: The customer isn't always the immediate target. Companies
- [The Ostrich Approach Doesn't Work](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/23/ostrich-approach-work/) - There's been plenty of commentary around the Dominos pizza videos recently. For some insightful commentary, check out posts by Jessica Levco, Shel Holtz and, for a wonderfully succinct take on the lessons learned, Gerald Baron. One important lesson from this, in both traditional and social media forums, is this: The ostrich approach doesn't work. No,
- [Fast-Tracking to Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/22/fasttracking-twitter/) - Back in February I mused about the apparent greater willingness of companies to sign up for Twitter than to start blogs. I'll go one further now - I'm starting to see companies skip blogging entirely and go straight to Twitter. Companies like Fairmont Hotels are by-passing blogging entirely and starting to engage with Twitter as
- [Wisdom Of The Crowd Or Idiocy Of The Crowd?](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/21/wisdom-crowd-idiocy-crowd/) - Last night I attended a presentation by Tom Purves entitled How "Augmented Reality" and the Mobile Web Changes Everything. One part that stood out for me, and really got me thinking, was the issue of how applications can leverage the "wisdom of the crowds" rather than being the victim of the "joke of the crowds."
- [Talking Twitter With CityOnline](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/20/talking-twitter-cityonline/) - One of the great things about social media tools is that they let you connect with people you'd otherwise never meet. One of the people I've gotten to know and like over the last little while is fellow Brit Danny Brown, founder of the 12 for 12k challenge. We finally met face-to-face at PodCamp Toronto
- [Social Media Baby Steps Don't Have To Be Difficult](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/17/social-media-baby-steps-difficult/) - Yesterday evening I gave a presentation on "Maximising Social Media for Business" to a diverse group of communicators with the Halton-Peel Communicators' Association. As I moved through the presentation, I saw signs that people might be getting a little overwhelmed by the volume of information and tools I was throwing at them. My message to
- [Aston Martin Brandjacked On Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/16/aston-martin-brandjacked-twitter/) - Aston Martin joins a long list of people and organizations to have been brandjacked on Twitter. A fake account, AstonMartin, has attracted a reasonable (though not huge) following while posing as an official account. My attention was drawn to it when the account retweeted one of my posts about a recall of older car models
- [The Communicator's Challenge: "We" Are Not "They"](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/16/communicators-challenge/) - Last week I briefly touched on a big issue that, on reflection, is the bane of communicators across various disciplines: Communicators plan activities to reach our key audiences. However, we often don't represent those audiences. We may not be the same demographic as the target audience. We may not have the same interests, or hobbies,
- [Higher Volume, Different Approach](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/15/higher-volume-approach/) - Plenty of people have written recently about the recent influx of people to Twitter and how this is changing their perception of the service. I've given my take on it - essentially, that Twitter is what you make it - if you don't like what you see, change it. Still, the fact remains that with
- [PR Isn't The Enemy](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/14/pr-enemy/) - Once again, the last couple of weeks have seen the public relations industry dragged through the mud by a high-profile blogger. This time it was Robert Scoble, first via Blog Talk Radio then again on his own blog. Naturally plenty of other people piled-on, although few were even remotely constructive. I could go through Scoble's
- [Misleading Magpie Ads = Unfollow](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/13/misleading-magpie-ads-unfollow/) - A while back there was a minor uproar around the launch of Magpie, a Twitter-based service that offered to pay users in exchange for placing ads into their Twitter stream. Fast forward a few months - this weekend Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick published an alarming post looking at some of the companies that have chosen to
- [Join The Thornley Fallis Team](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/08/join-thornley-fallis-team/) - Thornley Fallis Communications is growing, and not just in its health care team! We’re looking for a social media-savvy consultant to join our Toronto team. Why join us? We’re seeing more and more clients ask for social media as part of an integrated strategic communications approach. You’ll get to work with some of the best
- [Social Media Monitoring - Disturbing Or Useful?](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/08/social-media-monitoring-disturbing/) - Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a thought-provoking post today over at Read Write Web, looking at social media listening platforms like Radian6 and their role in companies' online outreach. I found Marshall's take surprising. Talking about his experience with Comcast representative ComcastBill responding to one of his tweets, he says: "An extensive machinery of tracking, delegation and
- [New Research Provides A Social Media Reality Check](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/07/research-social-media-reality-check/) - CNW Group and Leger Marketing today announced the results of new research into social media use in Canada (disclosure: CNW Group is a client). The research provides a useful insight into social media trends along with some of the challenges that social media faces, but also sheds an interesting light on the differing perspectives between practitioners
- [A Little Shortening Goes A Long Way](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/07/shortening-long/) - As micro-blogging services like Twitter, Brightkite etc grow, URL services are becoming a central part of every social media junkie's toolkit. However, as Danny Sullivan pointed out recently, not all URL shorteners are created equal. Your URL shortening service can detract from your online marketing, or it can enhance it. If you use the TinyURL service
- [Expectations Can Make Or Break You](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/06/expectations-make-break/) - I mused publicly earlier today about two recent mis-steps by high profile figures, and why the blogosphere came down like a tonne of bricks on one of them and not the other. As I was doing so, the answer came to me: Expectations are critical. People have lower expectations of TechCrunch than they do of
- [Walk The Walk](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/02/walk-walk/) - After attending Wired Wednesday in Toronto tonight, I had the pleasure of having dinner with Saul Colt and Rayanne Langdon from Freshbooks. As I was heading home afterwards, I reflected that Saul and Rayanne are a great example of walking the walk in marketing. Saul gave a great presentation tonight on community building, where he repeatedly
- [The Lines Are Blurring](https://davefleet.com/2009/04/01/lines-blurring/) - The lines between public relations, marketing and advertising are blurring. This likely won't be news to anyone who has followed this space for a while, or who works in the agency business, but it's something I've thought about a lot recently. A few things spurred this thinking: 1. We recently pitched a potential client with
- [Public Relations Is Not A Right](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/31/public-relations-right/) - Does everyone deserve public relations representation? Every so often a story comes along - the recent saga around the mother of octuplets, for example - that raises the question of whether PR firms should exercise discretion in the clients with whom they choose to work. The same question gets raised for tobacco companies, oil companies, nuclear power companies
- [Six Lessons From The Ghost Twittering Saga](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/30/lessons-ghost-twittering-saga/) - Last week, I wrote a post about an a-list blogger (Guy Kawasaki) who used ghost writers on his Twitter account. The reaction to that post has been thought-provoking, to say the least. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the whole episode, as a client put it, was watching the ripples go out from my post.
- [What's In Your Social Media Toolkit?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/27/social-media-toolkit/) - You can think of social media as a set of tools that organizations can use for a variety of purposes - customer service, branding, promotion, relationship-management, etc. Just as with any toolkit, you're not going to use every tool every time. Sometimes the hammer fits, but if you're trying to measure something the hammer is pretty
- [Pitching - Like Throwing A Stick For A Dog](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/26/pitching-throwing-stick-dog/) - Michael O'Connor Clarke mentioned a great analogy for pitching to me when we were chatting at work today. He says pitching is like throwing a stick for a dog. Michael actually wrote about this years ago from a slightly different perspective; I'll try to put a new spin on it. Confused? Let me explain. In
- [Don't Like What You See? Fix It](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/25/fix/) - Over the last little while I've seen numerous people complaining about how some social media tools are becoming "too mainstream" for their liking. For them, as more and more people join services like Facebook and Twitter, they lose their relevance and usefulness. My response: Social media tools are opt-in, so if you don't like what you
- [Governments Experimenting With Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/24/governments-experimenting-twitter/) - As Twitter experiences almost exponential growth (Nielsen estimates 1,382 per cent year-on-year growth from in website users alone), I'm seeing a rapid growth in corporate use of this emerging communications tool. Companies like Zappos, Dell, JetBlue, Comcast and others have done a great job of providing customer service, establishing relationships with their customers and putting a human
- [Guy Kawasaki Discloses Ghost Writers, Defuses Issue](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/23/guy-kawasaki-discloses-ghost-writers-defuses-issue/) - I've written several posts on ethics and ghost blogging recently, so it's hardly surprising that when I spotted a post suggesting one of the biggest names in social media has other people write under his name, I paid attention. Bottom line: Guy Kawasaki, creator of Alltop and Truemors, has three other people writing through his Twitter
- [MicroPlaza - Your Personal Micro-News Service](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/20/microplaza-personal-micronews-service/) - Over the last couple of days, I've spent some timechecking out MicroPlaza, the latest in a long line of services that have sprung up around Twitter. The difference between this one and most of the others? This one is useful. Summary MicroPlaza aggregates all of the links tweeted by the people you follow. Every time one
- [A Brief History of the Web](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/19/history-web/) - Courtesy of Microsoft comes this amusing "Net History" video - "from bleeding GIFS to pointless status updates." To be honest, some parts of this video annoy me, but the 'gentleman' is just so... British... Since when does Microsoft do funny videos?
- [What's Your Code Of Ethics?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/19/code-ethics/) - Bruce Weinstein, in a Business Week column, suggests that along with energy, health, technology and other "Czars," we need an Ethics Czar. What's more, he suggests that that Ethics Czar should be you. I've written a few times in the past couple of months about ethics in social media. Whether it's ghost blogging, so-called "experts" coming
- [Retweets Welcome](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/18/retweets/) - Mitch Joel says ""I'll tweet that" is the ultimate insult." The gist of Mitch's argument is that "tweeting" takes almost zero effort - you push a few buttons, hit enter and it's done. A few months back, people would perhaps write a blog post about what you said, which took much more commitment and could
- [Where Will You Be This Year?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/17/upcoming-speaking-gigs/) - I'm no A-list jet-setter, but I'm speaking at a several events over the next couple of months. In case you're in the area, I'll be speaking at the following events: April 16 - Halton-Peel Communicators Association - Topic: Maximizing Social Media for Business April 25 - PodCamp London - Topic: Ethics in Social Media April 27-30 -
- [Why Autofollow on Twitter?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/16/why-autofollow-twitter/) - Ever wondered why do people use automated services to follow people back on Twitter? I have. I've heard lots of different reasons given, almost none of which make sense to me: They feel some kind of obligation to reciprocate when someone follows (do you subscribe to all of your blog subscribers' blogs?) They want others
- [Are Social Media Rules Defined By Transgression?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/13/social-media-rules-defined-transgression/) - It feels like every week we see another company or organization launch itself into social media, only to get beaten down by the blogosphere. Last week it was Skittles; this week it's Facebook redesigning its site (again). But where do rules to which we hold these companies come from? Listening to an old episode of
- [News Release Vs. Press Release](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/12/news-release-press-release/) - A few days ago, I mused publicly on Twitter that the term "press release" was outdated and that "Anyone (especially PR people) who uses the term "press release" needs to update their vocabulary." This isn't a new topic - as people pointed out during the ensuing discussion it's been around for a while, yet I keep seeing
- [The Bigger Picture On Public Relations](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/11/bigger-picture-public-relations/) - Marketing guy Seth Godin published a post yesterday entitled "The difference between PR and publicity." In it he says: "Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always
- [The Fees Debate - Time, Value or Performance?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/10/fees-debate-time-value-performance/) - What's the "best" fee structure system for public relations agencies? A little while after starting my consulting career at Thornley Fallis Communications, I had an interesting conversation with Terry Fallis about the pros and cons of the different ways agencies charge fees. Several months later, I had a similar conversation with Joe Thornley as I
- [MSNBC vs. AIG's Public Relations Agencies](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/09/msnbc-aig-public-relations-agencies/) - If you didn't catch it, last week MSNBC's Rachel Maddow tore a strip off AIG for having a "list" of PR firms on its roster. As Maddow put it, "We're paying the bill for PR firms to spin us?" Here's the clip: As juicy as this clip is, I do feel the need to point
- [Q&A With Marcel Lebrun - Part Two: Radian6 And The Marketplace](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/06/marcel-lebrun-radian6-marketplace/) - Yesterday I posted the first half of my Q&A with Marcel Lebrun, CEO of Radian6. Today I'm giving you the second half, looking more generally at Radian6 and its place in the "listening platforms" market. Q: What features do you think set Radian6 ahead of the competition? A: It really depends on the client since
- [Q&A With Marcel Lebrun - Part One: Radian6's New Features](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/05/marcel-lebrun-radian6-features/) - Earlier this week I posted an analysis of new features that Radian6, a social media monitoring company, released over the last weekend. That same day Marcel Lebrun, CEO of Radian6, left a very lengthy but equally helpful comment on my post. As a follow-up to that post, I had a chance to ask Marcel a
- [Objectives First](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/04/objectives/) - A while back I wrote a series of posts on communications planning. One of the most popular posts within that series, which still gets a few hundred views per week, was on one on setting communications objectives. As I said at the time: "As the old saying goes, you need to know where you’re going
- [Is There Still A Personal/Professional Line?](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/03/personal-professional-line/) - "I feel a client should respect the fact that a personal Twitter or Facebook account is different from when your meeting with them or representing their brand." - Marcus Andrews in a comment An interesting division became apparent last week when I asked "Who are you online?" Of the different people who commeted, roughly half
- [Test-Driving The New Radian6 Features](https://davefleet.com/2009/03/02/reviewing-radian6-features/) - Radian6 really got its groove on this weekend, with a whole raft of new changes that close the gap with its competition in some areas and set it ahead in others. I'd had a heads-up that some of them were on the way, but this weekend was the first time I'd had a chance to play
- [National Post Covers PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/28/national-post-covers-podcamp-toronto/) - Reporters from the mainstream media like the Globe and Mail and the CBC, like Mathew Ingram and Angela Misri, aren't just attending PodCamps now; they're covering it them, too. PodCamp Last Saturday, during the first day of PodCamp Toronto 2009, I took some time out and spoke with David Lipson, a reporter for the National
- [Who Are You Online?](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/27/online/) - Who are you when you're online? Are you yourself, or are you someone else? I had a conversation with my colleague Kerri Birtch last night about how we behave online in relation to how we behave in real life. We agreed that we both do our best to be the same "person" in online forums
- [Make Life Easy](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/26/make-life-easy/) - I want to tell you a story. A few days ago I had dinner with a friend at a restaurant in downtown Toronto. We had stellar service from the waiter at the restaurant and my friend, who picked up the check (thanks!) left a hefty tip for him. The waiter then pointed out a website
- [Key Points From FacebookCamp Toronto 5](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/25/key-points-facebookcamp-toronto-5/) - Over the last couple of years, Facebook has developed from an interesting, promising social network startup to a true powerhouse. Interest in the site has grown exponentially and every move it makes is closely scrutinized. Given this, I was excited to attend FacebookCamp Toronto 5 on February 24. First up on the night was Facebook
- [Why Ghost Blogging Is Wrong](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/24/ghost-blogging-wrong/) - A few months ago, following a presentation I gave on ethics at Centennial College, I wrote a post on the ethics of ghost-writing in social media. This past Sunday I decided, on a whim, to present a very similar session at PodCamp Toronto. At that session, Leesa Barnes, a fairly well-known person in the Canadian social
- [PodCamp Toronto 2009 - Bigger, Better?](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/23/podcamp-toronto-2009/) - I'm at the end of an exhausting but wonderful weekend. PodCamp Toronto 2009 was held over the last two days and, as an organizer, it was an immensely rewarding experience. I'll have posts on various topics from this year's event throughout the week, so I'll keep this post brief. First, a few interesting points about PodCamp
- [No to Auto DMs](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/20/auto-dms/) - Over the last couple of weeks I've seen more and more discussion about "auto DMs" on Twitter. "Auto DMs" are direct (private) messages automatically sent when someone follows an account. Some people have chosen to use these to thank people for following; others have taken it a step further by using auto DMs to encourage
- [Reality Check on Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/19/twitter-reality-check/) - Twitter is everywhere right now. It's in the news; it's all over the blogosphere; it's the latest celebrity toy. I know I'm a big fan of it, and I certainly write about it a lot. On the flip side, despite exponential grown in recent months, only a tiny proportion of people use Twitter. Yet every day
- [Be Careful What You Save](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/18/careful-save/) - Be careful what you save in Delicious. To be a little more specific - be careful how you save things in Delicious. *Social* bookmarking Delicious is a social bookmarking tool. This means that, while Delicious is great for replacing your bloated "favourites" list in your browser, there are also sharing features built-in. This is helpful
- [8 Small Steps To Improve Client Relationships](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/17/small-steps-improve-client-relationships/) - We've all experienced the client (internal or external) who, for some reason, you just can't satisfy. It's frustrating – you deliver excellent results but they're never happy. Sometimes you can put this down to poor expectations management on your part, especially if you've played the "yes man" role up until that point (e.g. "Yes, absolutely,
- [Macro, Not Just Micro](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/13/macro-micro/) - In a digital world where more and more focus is (rightly) being placed on analytics and measurement, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the big picture. Focus less on the trees – remember to think about the forest too. Take this blog, for example. If I glance at the daily analytics for this
- [Be Careful What You Put In Writing](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/12/careful-writing/) - Ian Capstick wrote yesterday about an online bust-up between National Post technology reporter David George-Cosh and marketing consultant April Dunford on Twitter. All of the gory details are over on Ian's site; I'm not interested in piling-on to either side of this. However, it does raise one very important reminder, which I coincidentally posted on
- [Sort Your Digital Presence Out!](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/11/sort-digital-presence/) - This post stems from a conversation I had with Ed Lee tonight (we agreed). Before anyone gets all upset, I'm a big advocate of social media… in the right situations… with the right foundations. This post is about those foundations. Ever been in a meeting with a colleague, friend or client who has an idea
- [The Power of Pith](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/10/the-power-of-pith/) - Media relations is a funny business. So often we talk about how we need to find serious, substantial stories to pitch to reporters, and it's true. In general, you're much more likely to generate interest with something newsworthy than with fluff. Sometimes, though, fluff works. Why? Timing - There are certain times of the year
- [3 Steps To Better Objectives](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/09/3-steps-to-better-objectives/) - "Increase sales" isn't a good objective. Neither is "increase web traffic," or "increase awareness," or "more customers." Why? Because you have no way of measuring success. If you can't measure success, then what use is your goal? I have to bite back a visceral reaction whenever I see vague goals in a communications plan. They're
- [What's Your Focus?](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/06/focus/) - Something useful to remember: That's my focus. Every time I write a post I think about which of the segments in those two areas I'm writing for. Sometimes I'll stray (I'm human), but that's where I come back to. What's your focus?
- [8 Questions to Ask Your "Social Media Expert"](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/05/8-questions-to-ask-your-social-media-expert/) - Ike Pigott wrote an excellent post today for Media Bullseye about the pack mentality emerging on Twitter. More specifically, he wrote about the glut of "whizkids" appearing out of nowhere and positioning themselves as social media consultants or experts: "…we have a glut of people selling their expertise on how you should handle "the Twitter
- [Blogging vs. Twitter - Commitment and Effort - Another Perspective](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/04/blogging-twitter-perspective/) - I recently received an excellent comment on my recent post Blogging vs. Twitter: A Different Kind of Commitment from Doc Kane (@dockane on Twitter), principal of Chicago-based Roscommon - a marketing, communications and PR professional writing services agency. Thoughtful and insightful, I thought it really drove the discussion forward. His view: the difference between blogging and Twitter isn't
- [Rethinking Blogger Relations](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/03/rethinking-blogger-relations/) - Is blogger relations worth it? Is the ROI sufficient to justify the investment? I've written a few times in the past about blogger relations, from a range of angles - from the tactic in general to the practicalities of pitching bloggers to the results from a blogger's perspective. However, I recently got to thinking about it in a
- [Blogging vs. Twitter: A Different Kind of Commitment](https://davefleet.com/2009/02/02/blogs-vs-twitter-different-commitment/) - Talking with Michael O'Connor Clarke the other day, we both commented on a trend we've both observed recently: Corporations seem to be much more willing to sign-up for Twitter than they are to set up blogs. We're seeing companies big and small signing up for Twitter; from Ford, General Motors, Southwest Airlines and Dell to smaller
- [YOUR 40 Top People To Follow on Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/31/people-follow-twitter/) - My "40 PR-Related People To Follow On Twitter" post yesterday got quite the reaction – both in terms of traffic and conversation. I was thrilled to see the number of people who responded, recommending other people, and happy to observe that I was already following many of those who were recommended. Bizarrely, as it turns
- [40 PR-Related People To Follow On Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/30/40-pr-related-people-to-follow-on-twitter/) - Over the course of today I saw (and partook in) several conversations on Twitter around people giving up on Twitter itself because they couldn't find interesting people to follow. In some cases, people complained that they could only find 'social media' and 'PR' people on Twitter. Unfortunately (perhaps), I'm one of them so while I
- [Don't "Message" Me](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/29/message/) - Remember the time when the standard response to any media question was to repeat essentially the same line over and over again? I certainly do - I spent several years working in government communications, where Q&As essentially parroted the same answer back (yes, "parrot" is a verb for the duration of this post), largely regardless
- [The Cost Of "Free" Tools](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/28/cost-free-tools/) - At the risk of flogging a dead horse here, I want to address something that I keep hearing from people who don't seem to understand the way social media outreach and engagement works. Social media isn't free. Mitch Joel wrote recently that "there is a cost to free." He was talking about the costs of
- [When Can We Start To Say "Expert?"](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/27/when-can-we-start-to-say-expert/) - Since getting involved social media a few years ago, I've consistently shied away from describing myself with one word: Expert. I've also avoided using the word to describe others. Not only have I shied away from using the word, I've been pretty harsh on the people who have used it. Plenty of other people have
- [ReviewMyWeb: Free SEO Competitiveness Tool](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/26/reviewmyweb-free-seo-competitiveness-tool/) - Almost a year ago, I took a spin through HubSpot's Website Grader – a free online tool that rates your website against a whole raft of search engine optimization (SEO)-related factors. Since then, it has stood as one of the better free tools around for analyzing your website. The other day I received an email
- [Live-Blogging Breaking News - A Good Idea?](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/23/live-blogging-breaking-news/) - Yesterday morning, at roughly 10:45am, a gunman opened fire in a subway station in downtown Toronto. That incident alone was guaranteed to generate news interest; however one newspaper's coverage caught my interest. The Globe and Mail newspaper used Cover It Live (which I've used in the past) to live-blog its coverage following the shooting, complete
- [Blogs Aren't Inherently Trustworthy](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/22/blogs-arent-inherently-trustworthy/) - Back in December, Forrester set off a bit of a blog storm when Josh Bernoff reported that consumers trust company blogs less than any channel. I paid attention to it at the time, but decided not to weigh-in at the time. Today, however, I listened to the latest episode of the Shill podcast where, amidst
- [Flight 1549 On Wikipedia: 90 Minutes; 176 Edits](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/21/flight-1549-on-wikipedia-90-minutes-176-edits/) - On January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 made a crash landing in the Hudson River in New York after experiencing a "bird strike" (which, as Eddie Izzard points out, is really more like "engine suck"). Fortunately (and surprisingly), no-one died as a result of the incident, but it made headlines around the world. Alongside
- [Social Media Reading For Traditional Communicators](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/20/social-media-reading-for-traditional-communicators/) - Social media is increasingly changing the landscape for professional communicators. Whether you work in internal communications, crisis management, strategic PR, or any number of other disciplines, it's hard to deny the influence of social media tools on our work. For long-time practitioners, it's natural that these tools can be overwhelming. Some people like Shel Holtz,
- [Back To Pitching Basics](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/16/back-to-pitching-basics/) - Despite having a set of guidelines on how to pitch me positioned prominently on my site, I continue to receive poorly targeted and poorly-written pitches on a daily basis. I've written in the past about some bad pitches and some really bad pitches I've received, and given my advice on those pitches. This time, though,
- [Do You Get Social Tool Fatigue?](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/15/do-you-get-social-tool-fatigue/) - A few weeks ago, Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang announced that he was taking a 20 day hiatus from Twitter. This Tuesday, CIO Magazine's C.G. Lynch described how, while social media tools may have improved his writing, he needed to turn them off in order to actually write: "Without those tools, I might have not
- [Twitter Follow-Back Fail](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/14/twitter-follow-back-fail/) - I've just crossed 2,500 followers on Twitter; double the number of people who read this site. I follow roughly 680. That means I follow roughly a quarter of the people that follow me. I'm no A-lister (I'm many thousands of followers and a large ego short of that). I'm a communications professional, not a professional
- [Present.ly – Internal Microblogging Just Got Better](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/13/presently-internal-microblogging/) - Last September I wrote about Yammer, a Twitter-like "microblogging" service designed for internal use by organizations. At the time I decided I liked it, describing it as "Twitter behind the firewall… and turbocharged." Issues with Yammer We tried Yammer out for a while, and I revisited the tool about a month later on this site
- [When Editing No Longer Helps](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/12/when-editing-no-longer-helps/) - Whether you work in communications in a corporation, an agency, a not-for-profit or the public sector, you've probably encountered people who don't know when to stop editing. Editing is one of the most important stages of the writing process. With even one round of editing you can see drastic improvements in quality. You can see
- ["We Should Do Something In Social Media"](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/08/we-should-do-something-in-social-media/) - Every so often a client (or potential client) will come to us and say something like, "We think we should be doing something in social media." Whether it's social media monitoring, a podcast series, blogger relations, community building or a fully-integrated campaign, they've heard that social media is the thing to do and they want
- [Avoiding The Dark Side Of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/07/avoiding-the-dark-side-of-social-media/) - If you look at social media as a collective group of instruments, the exciting part is that it's, well, social. The discussion; the interaction; the dialogue is the game changer here. Unfortunately, all too often the tone of discussion fails to live up to its potential. Just today, the Globe and Mail (re)stated its policy
- [Customer Service Is Public Relations](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/06/customer-service-is-public-relations/) - If you think about it, your customer service function has always had an element of public relations to it. Every touchpoint with your customers has the potential to either build loyalty or breed dissatisfaction. Nowadays, though, the people you please or infuriate with your customer service have the means to give voice to that sentiment.
- [Why Podcasting Is Like Photography](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/05/podcasting-business-photography/) - Daniel Steinberg's guest post on Chris Brogan's blog this Saturday got me thinking. He noted: "we don’t know what podcasting really is any more than we know what photography really is." When you think about it, podcasting as a communications medium has a lot in common with photography. Niches - while they don't need to
- [Internet Withdrawal Symptoms](https://davefleet.com/2009/01/02/internet-withdrawal-symptoms/) - Happy New Year, everyone! I've just arrived back in Toronto after spending the Christmas season out of town with Caralin's parents. You may have noticed that this site has been quiet over the last few days. About six days ago, Wiarton was on the receiving end of some very strong winds that brought-down the 25
- [Twitter And Authority-Based Search - No Thanks](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/29/twitter-and-authority-based-search-no-thanks/) - Loic Le Meur and Michael Arrington are calling for Twitter to add authority-based filtering to its search function so that people can filter results based on the number of followers a person has. My response: No thanks. I don't see how this will hurt anyone who doesn't want to use the function, so I don't
- [My Top Twelve Posts Of 2008](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/27/my-top-twelve-posts-of-2008/) - My life, and my career in particular, is drastically different now compared to this time last year. If numerous comments from other people are anything to go by, this site and the posts I write are very different now too. Looking back over all 220+ posts I've written this year, you really can see my
- [If I Were Santa's Public Relations Guy...](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/24/if-i-were-santas-public-relations-guy/) - For such a high-profile, influential figurehead, Santa's PR could really use some work. I mean, the merchandising is pretty neat but there's a lot more potential there. So... here's what I'd suggest if I were running Santa's communications. Set some objectives Every year, Santa does the same things. Naughty/nice list, requests from kids, Christmas Eve
- [Journalist Source: Canada's HARO](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/23/journalist-source-canadas-haro/) - Over the last few months I've found Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out service to be an invaluable source of potential media leads. The service allows journalists to submit queries, which are then emailed out in one of three daily emails from the service to an ever-expanding list of 'sources' who can browse the queries,
- [Criticism Is Good](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/22/criticism-good/) - Over the last few days I've seen several "social media" figureheads take a distinctly anti-social approach to feedback they've received online. I take a pretty dim view of that response to criticism: If you're someone who experiments on the leading edge of something, be prepared for criticism. What's more, remember that criticism isn't necessarily a bad
- [Are You A Buffler?](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/19/buffler/) - A few weeks ago I posted a list of my top ten most irritating PR phrases. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from Melanie Seasons (@mseasons on Twitter) from the UK online PR agency onlinefire. Melanie introduced me to a new verb: Buffle - a contraction of business and waffle. Apparently nearly half of the respondents to
- [A Message To Non-PR Folks: We're Not All Like This](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/18/message-nonpr-folks/) - John Biggs at CrunchGear and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch both wrote in the last day about a nasty encounter they had with a public relations person (I would normally say professional, but...). I'm not naming the person here - that's not my style - but I'm disgusted enough to link to posts where you can find
- [Embargo This...](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/18/embargo/) - "Death to the embargo," says Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch. Until further notice, one of the most widely read tech blogs will no longer honour embargoes. I have a bit of a beef with embargoes, especially when they're used improperly (more on this later), but Arrington comes at this from a different angle: "One annoying
- [Social Media Isn't Anti-Social](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/17/social-media-isnt-anti-social/) - Someone suggested to me recently that social media people are, well, anti-social. That they seem to spend all their time in their parents' basements, and that they have no social life. Really? Last night - a Monday night, I might add - I watched 650 social media "nerds" cram into a nightclub in Toronto for
- [Focus Or Fail](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/16/focus-or-fail/) - The ever-thought provoking David Armano wrote earlier this month about the "paradox of please," where he clearly and simply made the case that businesses need to focus to be successful. While Armano's post primarily focused on focusing product and service design, the same principle applies to communications. Few parts of a communications plan are more
- [Pragmatism Over Purism](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/15/pragmatism-over-purism/) - When I first got into social media, I was a purist. By that I mean I would evangelise for companies to go out, do their own engagement online and build their own relationships. Every time. Without fail. Over the last year or so, however, I've developed into more of a pragmatist. Like it or not,
- [Survey Sheds Light On Canadians' Views Towards Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/10/survey-sheds-light-on-canadians-views-towards-social-media/) - A new survey released today shows that Canadian business leaders plan to invest more in social media in 2009, while increasing numbers of Canadians see social media tools as important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands. Increased social media spend planned by marketers The second annual Social Media Barometer survey, conducted by Pollara
- [Are Media Channels Diverging Or Converging?](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/09/are-media-channels-diverging-or-converging/) - While looking over the new Vancouver Sun website recently (congratulations again on the redesign to Kirk Lapointe and his team), a blog post by Pamela Fayerman on the Sun's Medicine Matters blog caught my eye. Fayerman's post, entitled Health and medical blogs; what interests you?, offers a couple of interesting thoughts on the changing nature
- [Bring Twitter Onto Your Blog With Chat Catcher](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/08/bring-twitter-onto-your-blog-chat-catcher/) - If you're anything like me, and you're sometimes frustrated by trying to track conversations about you all over the web, you may just love Chat Catcher. What's Chat Catcher? Chat Catcher, as it turns out, is a service developed by Shannon (of course) that uses Twitter Search to scan Twitter for people linking to your
- [6 Tips For Engaging Online](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/05/6-tips-for-engaging-online/) - If you're new to the social media "scene," it can be scary (just ask the folks at Motrin). For a company used to "controlling the message" through carefully crafted news releases and press conferences, engaging in it can be even scarier. Here are six tips to help that engagement go a little more smoothly: Disclose
- [5 Lessons About Self-Promotion In Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/03/5-lessons-about-self-promotion-in-social-media/) - A little storm-in-a-teacup erupted online today around a press release issued by Matt Bacak. The release was almost comically self-promotional, evidenced by the headline: "The Powerful Promoter Promotes Himself Straight to the Top of Twitter - Matt Bacak Achieves Another Social Networking Milestone" Quoting the release: "Anyone can call their promotional abilities 'powerful' but I
- [The Danger Of Ego Services on Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/02/the-danger-of-ego-services-on-twitter/) - This weekend I received a direct message from someone on Twitter asking why I'd unfollowed him. He was a little upset that I'd decided to stop listening. How did he find out I'd unfollowed? Qwitter. Qwitter is a service that lets you know every time someone unfollows you and tells you the last message you
- [Twitter Spam Doesn't Work](https://davefleet.com/2008/12/01/twitter-spam-work/) - I've never really understood the mindset behind spamming. I get why it works, but it still boggles my mind that people do it. Especially in new forums like Twitter. There's a big difference between media like email, where spammers can push their messages out to millions of people and let sheer numbers do their work,
- [WordPressDirect: Spam, Dirty Spam](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/28/wordpressdirect-spam-dirty-spam/) - Do you have the desire for a blog but not the time, ethics or talent to do so? Try WordPressDirect. WordPressDirect (it's a no-follow link, BTW) is a spam blog generator. You pick a theme, plug in a few keywords and let it go to work creating a fake blog for you. It searches YouTube
- [What Are Your Expectations?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/27/what-are-your-expectations/) - As I wrote back in February, expectation management is important in all areas of your work: "A failure to match what people expect with what they get can be disastrous for your brand. Don’t make promises that you can’t keep." That post was focused on managing and meeting customer expectations, but what about clients and
- [Top 10 Most Irritating Phrases In PR](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/26/top-10-most-irritating-phrases-in-pr/) - Oxford University recently compiled its list of "top ten irritating phrases," as reported by The Telegraph (side note: 2703 comments at time of writing!): At the end of the day Fairly unique I personally At this moment in time With all due respect Absolutely It's a nightmare Shouldn't of 24/7 It's not rocket science It's
- [What If People Say Bad Things About You?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/25/what-if-people-say-bad-things-about-you/) - Steve Rubel did a great Q&A session at last night's Third Tuesday Toronto meetup. I often find myself disagreeing with Rubel, but I thought most of his answers were right on the money yesterday. I could write a week's worth of blog posts on the various issues raised by the session, but I'll quickly focus
- [SearchWiki: Six Implications For Public Relations Professionals](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/24/searchwiki-six-implications-for-public-relations/) - Google recently announced SearchWiki, a way for people to customize their search results by promoting, deleting, adding and commenting on search results. I see six implications of this change for digital public relations and marketing professionals if this becomes a popular feature: Another place to monitor Increased customer interaction Control by the customer Advantage goes
- [I Want This](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/22/i-want-this/) - A little bit of weekend fun – I spotted this on Shel Holtz's blog today. Suddenly I feel like I'm in the middle of Minority Report: Screw Second Life; I want this.
- [How Rich Is Your Communication In A Conflict?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/20/how-rich-is-your-communication-conflict/) - Have you ever thought how the different media you use to communicate can give different results? Do you think about the tools you use to communicate with people before selecting which one to use? Conflict isn't always a bad thing. Constructive conflict leads to better ideas, better teamwork and better productivity all-round. However, conflict can
- [13 Ways Social Media Can Improve Your Career](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/19/13-ways-social-media-can-improve-your-career/) - I write a lot about how social media can help companies to engage better with their customers. Today, though, I'm taking a different tack and thinking about how social media can improve your career. Here are twelve thirteen ways that I can certainly say social media has helped my career already, and can help yours
- [Are You Remembering Your Target Audience?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/18/are-you-remembering-your-target-audience/) - When you come up with a communications plan or a cool new initiative, do you think about your target audience or do you focus on the bright shiny ideas? Every morning when I get up I switch on CBC News Morning. Every morning for the last few months, without fail, I'm confronted by this ad
- [Quality Matters](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/17/quality-matters/) - When you finish a piece of work, are you willing to put your reputation on the line for it? I hope so, because that's what happens. Every time you finish a piece of work, your reputation is on the line. Hand over exceptional work and your reputation will improve. Hand over sloppy work and it
- [A Poorly Thought-Out Sponsorship?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/15/a-poorly-thought-out-sponsorship/) - The Globe and Mail newspaper reports today that at the launch of Waste Reduction Week, hundreds of schoolchildren were given souvenir bags containing bottled water from Nestlé. To their great credit, the students reacted badly to the Nestlé promotion (Nestlé Waters Canada sponsors the Waste Reduction Week). They wrote to both the recycling council, the
- [The Ethics of Ghost-Writing in Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/13/the-ethics-of-ghost-writing-in-social-media/) - Last night I co-hosted a session on social media ethics with Michael O'Connor Clarke at the Talk Is Cheap 2 conference in Toronto. Ethics is always guaranteed to generate discussion, as much of it comes down to where you draw your own personal line in the sand. To my delight we had a standing room-only
- [Should Principals Really Do Media Clippings?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/12/should-principals-really-do-media-clippings/) - In a recent episode of Inside PR, one of the excellent podcasts I mentioned yesterday, the panel members talked about the importance of senior executives in public relations agencies continuing to do the "grunt work." I meant to phone-in a comment but kept forgetting and decided, in the end, to write about it here instead.
- [Top 12 Communications, Marketing And Social Media Podcasts](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/11/top-12-communications-marketing-and-social-media-podcasts/) - I'm a podcast junkie. I listen to them whenever I'm outside, and I get through a lot. It helps that I run marathons, so I spend an hour or two on the trails most nights and have plenty of time to listen. If you're into PR and social media and you're new to podcasting or
- [Eight Tips For Difficult Client Conversations](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/10/eight-tips-for-difficult-client-conversations/) - Kerri Birtch, our latest hire in the Toronto office of Thornley Fallis, wrote a post on the PR Girlz blog recently talking about the art of consulting from the perspective of a new account coordinator. One of Kerri's more insightful thoughts: ...it’s not nearly as easy as some might think. Here’s why: We work for
- [How Often Do You Question Assumptions?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/07/how-often-do-you-question-assumptions/) - We began a brainstorming session at work yesterday by going over a list of a potential client's strengths – community presence, relationships with suppliers, and so on. Part-way into the discussion, I stopped and asked, "are these really their strengths?" The potential client gave us that list of strengths; people had assumed that they were
- [Integrated Communications -  Not Social Media - Won The Election](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/05/integrated-communications-not-social-media-won-the-election/) - Jennifer Leggio wrote today that Obama won the election - not social media: I believe the big snake oil spotlight shines down upon us brightly — and justifiably — whenever we try to credit social media with a success that isn’t really a rightful success for it to claim. The 2008 election, and President-Elect Barack
- [Five Tips For Pitching Me](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/04/five-tips-pitching-me/) - As time goes on and the number of readers of this site slowly grows, I'm receiving an ever-increasing number of pitches from people hoping that I'll write about their product, service or news. Very few of them are any good. Occasionally I receive a good pitch. Sometimes I'll even write about good blogger outreach. On
- [Practical 101s: Tips For New Twitter Users](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/03/practical-101s-tips-for-new-twitter-users/) - This post is a follow-up to my recent "Getting Started on Twitter" post. If you're looking for a step-by-step guide to setting-up an account and using Twitter for the first time, I suggest you start there. So, you now have a Twitter account and you're raring to go. But what do you do? This post
- [What's Your Favourite Tool For Monitoring Conversations?](https://davefleet.com/2008/11/01/whats-your-favourite-tool-for-monitoring-conversations/) - I've been thinking a lot about social media monitoring recently. I'm presenting on the topic at a couple of upcoming conferences, and I'm spending an increasing amount of time working in this area in my day job. As conversations become increasingly fragmented – blogs and discussion boards/forums are no longer the only source of discussion
- [Which Sites Are You Deeply Engaged With?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/30/which-sites-are-you-deeply-engaged-with/) - Last month, Yahoo and ComScore released the results of a joint research project which showed that our of an average of 85 websites that people visit each month, people are really only "deeply engaged" with about 1.5 of them. The article got me thinking about the sites that I am really engaged with; the sites
- [Practical 101s: Getting Started With Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/28/practical-101s-getting-started-with-twitter/) - If you're into social media, you've probably heard of Twitter. Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social media tools around right now; in fact the Wall Street Journal just declared that "Twitter Goes Mainstream." As the WSJ article says in its lead paragraph, "One of the hottest technologies in Silicon Valley is also one of
- [Social Media Outreach Won't Work For Everyone](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/27/social-media-outreach-wont-work-for-everyone/) - Here's something to consider: engaging in "the conversation" won't be right for every organization, at least at first. Facebook isn't a panacea for your company. Blogging may not change everyone's perceptions of you. Twitter could be a light-year away from where you are now and, believe it or not, it may not be where you
- [Branding Won't Solve All Your Problems](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/25/branding-wont-solve-all-your-problems/) - Seth Godin wrote today about a couple of big companies that have re-branded themselves recently, with some scepticism: I guess the punchline is: take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead. Sad but true: many
- [Twitter As A Business Continuity Tool?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/24/twitter-business-continuity-tool/) - My ex-colleague Lara Torvi sent me a Government Technology article yesterday entitled "Twitter is a Continuity of Operations Tool, State Agency Discovers." The gist of the article is that the Washington State Department of Transportation, alongside using its Twitter account for mundane things like traffic alerts, is using Twitter to ensure continuity of operations in
- [A Quick Public Service Announcement](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/22/a-quick-public-service-announcement/) - If you're reading my site, I expect you already know how to avoid phishing emails. However, just in case you don't, check out the latest CommonCraft "plain english" video from Lee & Saachi LeFever. Excellent as always (and the yay/boo is back!).
- [Forrester's New Technographics Data - How Do Canadians Measure Up?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/21/forresters-new-technographics-data-how-do-canadians-measure-up/) - Forrester recently released an updated set of data for their very useful technographics profile tool. What's a technographics profile? Forrester's tool divides consumers into six groups along a "technographics ladder." The tool is based on consumers' social behaviours and on techniques detailed in Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li's book Groundswell (which I have not yet
- [Integrated Social Media > Stand-Alone Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/21/integrated-social-media-stand-alone-social-media/) - Jennifer Leggio wrote a post for ZDNet.com yesterday entitled "Social media consultants: snake oil or value add?" Her conclusion: "Overall, while there are a lot of consultants selling snake oil, the pushiness of the salesman should not scare companies off of social media completely. It can be a tremendous — and free — resource for
- [Practical 101s: Social Bookmarking With Delicious](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/20/practical-101s-social-bookmarking-with-delicious/) - As people move more and more of their lives online, it gets harder and harder to stay organized. Where was that great article you read the other day? What was that great blog you read? What was the name of that cool tool you found? Of course, you could save everything in your browser's favourites
- [Capturing Canada's Social Media Case Studies](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/18/capturing-canadas-social-media-case-studies/) - Dave Jones, the man behind the PR Works blog, the Shill podcast and (when he remembers) the Inside PR podcast, has created a new Web 2.0 Examples in Canada wiki to capture Canadian social media case studies. The new wiki perfectly fills a gap in the social media space that has existed for a while
- [Yammer - Useful To You?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/17/yammer-yay-or-nay/) - About a month ago I wrote about Yammer, the "Twitter behind the firewall" service that won the top prize at this year's TechCrunch50 conference. At the time I wrote: I expect Yammer’s success in any particular company to be determined by organizational culture, how it is implemented and whether people actually use it, rather than
- [Practical 101s: Google Reader And Persistent Search](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/16/practical-101s-google-reader-and-persistent-search/) - As a public relations professional, it is your responsibility to be aware of the coverage your projects are getting. This applies whether you work on the agency side, the corporate side or in government. One of the easiest ways to keep track of this is through persistent searches. What is persistent search? Persistent search allows
- [Practical 101s: What Do You Want to Know?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/14/practical-101s-what-do-you-want-to-know/) - One of my favourite things about working at Thornley Fallis is the conversations we have about social media, digital marketing and online communications on a daily basis. Not just in our offices (although there are plenty of those too), but also as a group, around the meeting room table. We have them all the time
- [Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/13/government-20-best-practices-wiki/) - Given my former life in the Ontario government, I was recently thrilled to see a new effort by Mike Kujawski - the Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki. As Mike says: Every workshop or conference I speak at, I am asked the same first question by most public servants: “Who else is doing this in government?”.
- [If you want to reach younger voters, you have to... use the tools they're using.](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/12/if-you-want-to-reach-younger-voters-you-have-to-use-the-tools-theyre-using/) - The title of this post is a quote. Not from a social media evangelist, but from Peterborough riding NDP campaign communications director Jeff Bergeron. Canadian political parties are still a little wary of social media tools (the Conservative Party of Canada, in particular, was criticized for the lack of interactivity on its Facebook group, although
- [Are You Reading The Top PR Blogs?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/11/are-you-reading-the-top-pr-blogs/) - I just came across another useful list of the top PR blogs out there, pulled together by Matthew Watson. The list, culled from the Ad Age Power 150 list, takes all of the blogs with "PR," "publicity" or "public relations" in their title, so my site isn't on there right now but it still represents
- [ROI: Why Social Media Will Grow](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/10/roi-why-social-media-will-grow/) - If you haven't seen this video from Gary Vaynerchuk, well, you need to. Gary eloquently explains why advertising in traditional media is falling and why advertising in social media is growing, and will continue to grow: measurable return on investment. Layer that on top of the methods for measuring other outcomes in social media, which
- [Four Questions To Ask Before Suing Bloggers](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/09/four-questions-to-ask-before-suing-bloggers/) - TechCrunch's Michael Arrington wrote recently about a company that has sued TechCrunch "out of spite," laying into the people filing the suit using words like "absurd" and "frivolous" while threatening a countersuit. Unlike Arrington I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to talk about the merits of individual cases. In fact, I'm going to
- [Yes, Some Social Media Programs Will Fail](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/07/yes-some-social-media-programs-will-fail/) - CNET News reports that Gartner analyst Adam Sarner thinks half of social media campaigns will be classified as failures. News flash: that goes way wider than social media campaigns. Roughly 60 per cent of restaurants fail within three years (Business Week) 50-54 per cent of small Canadian businesses fail within three years (Industry Canada) 70
- [PodCamp Toronto 2009 is a Go!](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/05/podcamp-toronto-2009-is-a-go/) - PodCamp Toronto 2009 is now officially scheduled for February 21 and 22, 2009. What's PodCamp Toronto? PodCamp Toronto is an unconference on podcasting and social media. Unconference? Huh? An unconference is a free, community-driven event where anyone can sign up to present. Amateurs, pros, newbies and veterans are all welcome! Where is it? As with
- [Twitter As A Hyper-Local Emergency Information Tool?](https://davefleet.com/2008/10/02/twitter-as-a-hyper-local-emergency-information-tool/) - Twitter has many features that give it potential as an information provider. Information is real-time, it's available through multiple devices and Twitter can make that information scale to large audiences easily. However, very few services are taking advantage of the potential of these features right now. That's understandable – Twitter has a history of instability
- [What Does The Agency Of The Future Look Like To You?](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/30/what-does-the-agency-of-the-future-look-like-to-you/) - Sapient, a business consulting and interactive services firm, recently released the results of a US-wide survey that asked corporate Chief Marketing Officers what they wanted from their advertising and marketing agencies over the next year. Here are the top ten results: Greater knowledge of the digital space. More use of "pull interactions." Leverage virtual communities.
- [Anatomy of a Bad Pitch](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/30/anatomy-of-a-bad-pitch/) - As time goes on and more people start to read my site (welcome!) I'm receiving more and more pitches from firms and other PR agencies. That's fine with me - I'm in the business and I appreciate why pitching is necessary. Unfortunately, many (most) of the pitches I receive are the kind of pitches that
- [Social Media Is Like Running A Marathon](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/27/social-media-is-like-running-a-marathon/) - I've written before about how social media is like distance running. That was all about the long preparation that's involved. I'm shooting for a sub-3 hour time tomorrow in the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, so I thought I'd riff a little on how you can also compare social media to the marathon race itself. You need
- [Wario Land: Shake It - Drops My Jaw (And The Screen)](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/26/wario-land-shake-it-drops-my-jaw-and-the-screen/) - I just watched a new promo for the Wii game Wario Land: Shake It. You have to check this out - it's one of the most creative approaches I've seen to an ad in a long time. The screen shot definitely doesn't do it justice - check out the video here. (Hat tip: Greg Kumparak)
- [Different Types of Engagement](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/25/different-types-of-engagement/) - I've noticed what I think is a trend in the ways people engage with me on this site: If I write a short, focused post, or one with a clear call to action, it gets comments. If I write a controversial post, it gets trackbacks. If I write a long list or thorough analysis piece,
- [Think: Strategy](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/24/think-strategy/) - It's all too easy, especially in the world of public relations and social media where there's a shiny new tool every week, to lose sight of the big picture and focus in on tactics. When someone asks you for ideas about something, where do you start? Do you instantly get the creative juices flowing and
- [My Podcamp Montreal Dashboard](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/19/podcamp-montreal-dashboard/) - I've had a couple of conversations at work recently about using iGoogle to pull feeds together. To test the waters, I've created an iGoogle dashboard for my time at Podcamp Montreal this weekend so I can stay on top of things. The dashboard includes: Twitter search for the terms "montreal," "podcamp," "pcmtl" and "podcampmtl" Custom Twitter
- [See You At Podcamp Montreal](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/18/see-you-at-podcamp-montreal/) - I'm heading out to Podcamp Montreal tomorrow evening… I can't wait! I'm looking forward to catching up with folks like Julien Smith, Mitch Joel, Adele McAlear, Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis, but I'm equally looking forward to meeting people like CC Chapman, Mike Kujawski and David Usher for the first time. Speaking of Julien Smith,
- [Yammer - Twitter Behind the Firewall... and Turbocharged](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/17/yammer-twitter-behind-the-firewall-and-turbocharged/) - If you follow the bright new shiny object brigade, you probably already know about Yammer, the company that takes Twitter's concept and applying it to corporate communications. Yammer won the top award at the recent TechCruch50 conference, and has already accomplished what Twitter has so far failed to do: it has a business model. We've
- [What Do YOU Want To Hear From AideRSS?](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/15/what-do-you-want-to-hear-from-aiderss/) - The first Third Tuesday Toronto of the new season is tomorrow night. We're thrilled to be joined by the good folks from Waterloo-based AideRSS. I'm excited for two reasons: Firstly, because I like AideRSS' PostRank as a concept, I like what I see the team doing and I'm looking forward to hearing what thy have
- [Six Tips For A PR Agency Newbie](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/15/six-tips-for-a-pr-agency-newbie/) - After a couple of months in my new job and with some work under my belt I'm still a newbie, but I'm starting to find my feet in the agency business. I posted my thoughts on the differences between corporate and agency communications on my first day at Thornley Fallis. Since then, I've also learned
- [Ubiquity Changes The Way You Surf The Internet](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/10/ubiquity-changes-the-way-you-surf-the-internet/) - A couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of buzz about Ubiquity, a new Firefox extension released by Mozilla Labs. Rather than following the sheep mentality and writing about it at the time, I decided to take it for a test drive first before posting. Bottom line: if you get used to it, Ubiquity
- [Third Tuesday Toronto Season To Kick-Off With AideRSS](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/08/third-tuesday-toronto-season-to-kick-off-with-aiderss/) - I've written a couple of times previously about AideRSS, the Waterloo, Ontario-based RSS filtering service. Now you can hear directly from the people behind the tool. On September 16, the new Third Tuesday Toronto season will kick-off with Ilya Grigorik, Co-founder and Chief Technology Office, Jim Murphy, VP Development, and Melanie Baker, AideRSS’ Community Manager,
- [WebAnywhere Brings Convenient Internet Access To Blind People](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/07/webanywhere-brings-convenient-internet-access-to-blind-people/) - Here's a topic we don't consider often enough: accessibility. Specifically, web accessibility for visually impaired users. There are more than 38 million blind people worldwide who rely on screen readers to access the Internet. However, screen readers aren't cheap and unless you use them yourself, you probably don't have one installed. This makes using someone
- [Are Twitter Conversations Dying?](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/04/are-twitter-conversations-dying/) - Over the last month or two I've noticed a sharp decline in the amount of conversation occurring on Twitter. People are still using the service, for sure (witness the number of tweets about McCain's "ground noise and static" comment, in reference to protesters at the Republican Convention, within seconds of the comment for proof). However,
- [BackType Plugs A Hole In Online Monitoring Systems](https://davefleet.com/2008/09/03/backtype-plugs-a-hole-in-online-monitoring-systems/) - BackType, a new service by Canadians Christopher Golda and Michael Montano, finds and aggregates comments from across the web. One of BackType's most obvious features is the ability to create an account and "claim" your comments to provide a complete picture of your commenting activity across the web. Once you've done that, you can "follow"
- [Feedburner, You Cut Me Deep](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/29/feedburner-you-cut-me-deep/) - Joe Thornley wrote earlier this week about his disappointment with Technorati, the once-market-leading tool that has fallen out of favour. He also reached out and nudged a few of us to give our thoughts on "social media tools with which they once had a warm and deep relationship with that has now lapsed." A bunch
- [Google Reader and Delicious: Personalized Search Engines](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/26/google-reader-and-delicious-personalized-search-engines/) - Everyone I know uses Google to search for things online. I do the same thing on most topics. When it comes to communications, marketing or social media, though, I have two other resources I search before going to Google's main search. Google Reader I have two main communications/marketing/social media folders in my Google Reader: A-list
- [7 Lessons From Maple Leaf Foods' Crisis Communications](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/25/7-lessons-from-maple-leaf-foods-crisis-communications/) - Toronto's Maple Leaf Foods has been front and centre in the Canadian media over the last week after being linked to the illness and death of several consumers. This weekend, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Public Health Agency of Canada determined that a strain of listeria bacteria afflicting the consumers matched the strain identified
- [PR Does Not Equal Publicity](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/24/pr-does-not-equal-publicity/) - In recent post entitled "Jason Calacanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company" in Silicon Valley Insider, Jason Calacanis gives ten tips on "how to do PR" yourself: Be the brand; Be everywhere; Always pick up the check — always; Be a human being; Bond with journalists; Learn how to
- [Why Christie Blatchford Won't Blog](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/22/christie-blatchford-blog/) - Christie Blatchford wrote an excellent piece in Thursday's Globe and Mail entitled, "I'm not blogging this, mark my words." Her article is basically a rant about the challenges of blogging in Beijing, of the challenges of journalists blogging and of the effects that new media tools like blogs and podcasts are having on journalistic quality.
- [Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods Video: It's Just That Good](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/21/electronic-arts-tiger-woods-video-its-just-that-good/) - Every so often I come across something from a company that just blows my mind. This is one of those times. I'm a little behind the ball on this one, but it's still worth highlighting. Last year (August 2007), a user took a video capture of a glitch in Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods '08 game
- [Why Your Small Business Needs To Get Online](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/20/why-your-small-business-needs-to-get-online/) - No matter how small your business is, if you don't have an online presence you're missing a huge opportunity. I'm currently helping to organize an outdoor event in Southwest Ontario for a client. I needed to find a company from whom we could rent a large tent for the event. Where to start? Google, naturally.
- [Twitter Becoming A Source, Not Just News](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/19/twitter-becoming-a-source-not-just-news/) - Is Twitter moving beyond being a news story and towards becoming a credible source for them? Not too long ago I got excited whenever I saw Twitter mentioned as the subject of a news article. Recently, though, I've noticed an increasing number of mainstream news articles using Twitter as a source rather than a subject.
- [Social Media Breakfasts Coming To Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/17/social-media-breakfasts-coming-to-toronto/) - Joseph Thornley and the Third Tuesday Toronto organizers are bringing Social Media Breakfasts to Toronto. Bryan Person founded the concept of Social Media Breakfasts in August 2007 as an event where social media experts and newbies alike come together to eat, meet, share, and learn. Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new-media fanatics, and online
- [How Might Friedman's Flat World Affect The Public Relations Industry?](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/14/how-might-friedmans-flat-world-affect-the-public-relations-industry/) - I recently finished Thomas Friedman’s best-selling book The World Is Flat. In one chapter, Friedman suggests that as globalization continues, jobs will migrate from Western countries to developing countries. For example, many American accountants already outsource their work to Indian firms. Friedman suggests that for many, the only way to prevent this will be for
- [CNW Group Unveils The CNW Social Media Release](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/13/cnw-group-unveils-the-cnw-social-media-release/) - Disclosure: CNW Group is a client of my employer, Thornley Fallis. However, I have had no involvement with their account to-date and I have not been asked to write about this topic. These opinions are mine alone. If you’ve read this site for a while, you’ll know that my interest in social media releases goes
- [Starbucks: Good Move Or Poor Brand Management?](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/11/starbucks-good-move-or-poor-brand-management/) - Update: Chris Clarke has written a response to this post pointing out that the store is being renovated at the moment and that Starbucks is providing the coffee gratis. While this post is about my reaction as a passerby to this scene and I think there are still lessons to learn, I say "bravo" to
- [The Rise and Fall of Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-twitter/) - A light-hearted moment amid the seriousness: this video, posted on TechCrunch, is a wonderful parody of Twitter’s reliability problems. The clip is taken from the movie Downfall – a serious movie on a very serious topic. As the original post says, though, “Just remember, it’s not about Hitler. It’s about Twitter.” Still, turn your speakers
- [Citizen Journalists Break Toronto Explosion Story](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/10/who-says-citizen-journalism-isnt-important/) - I got home from my run today to see a Twitter message from Jeremiah Owyang about an explosion and subsequent large-scale evacuation in Toronto’s north end. Yes, through the wonderful power of the web, the news traveled down to San Francisco and back up to me. A tremendous demonstration of the power of online communications,
- [10 Easy-To-Avoid Grammar Mistakes](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/09/10-easy-to-avoid-grammar-mistakes/) - I’m going to get all Grammar Girl on you here. Bear with me. I’m not a grammar saint, but I’m nerdy enough to both laugh and nod my head at Eats, Shoots and Leaves. As a communications guy, it helps. A few basic grammar mistakes have started to really bug me. I've see them more
- [Strategic Communications Planning - A Free eBook](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/06/strategic-communications-planning-a-free-ebook/) - Between May and August 2008 I published a series of posts on strategic communications planning based on my experience over the past few years. Due to popular demand (and prodding from the likes of Ed Lee, Ryan Anderson, Robert French and Karen Russell) I've compiled the thirteen posts into an eBook for your downloading pleasure.
- [Valuable PR Advice From Chris Brogan](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/06/valuable-pr-advice-chris-brogan/) - Chris Brogan has posted some excellent advice for PR pros working in the digital space entitled "What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know." To summarize Chris' key points: Social media is different to the traditional media environment, but you have a lot to gain from exploring this space. Get to know people before
- [Four Lessons From Twitter's Spam/Customer-Busting Episode](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/04/four-lessons-from-twitters-spamcustomer-busting-episode/) - If you're a Twitter user, you may have noticed a storm in a teacup erupting over the last few days. On August 1st, Dave Delaney, a friend who I finally met in person at PodCamp Toronto this year, found his Twitter account suspended for no apparent reason. As it turned out, seven people eight people,
- [Could SEO Devalue News Releases Even More?](https://davefleet.com/2008/08/01/could-seo-devalue-news-releases-even-more/) - On a recent episode of Marketing Over Coffee, Christopher Penn and John Wall mentioned something that made me stop and think – the idea of people issuing news releases for the Google juice. Too much jargon That idea worried me. To be more specific, the possibility of too much search engine optimization (SEO) in news
- [Orderit.ca Delivers Excellent Proactive Customer Service](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/29/orderitca-delivers-excellent-proactive-customer-service/) - Orderit.ca is a Toronto-based food delivery service. The service lets you order food from a wide range of restaurants in the Toronto area and have the food delivered to your door. A food delivery aggregator, if you will. Last Sunday, as Caralin and I were settling down for a quiet night in, we ordered a
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 13 - Evaluation](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/28/write-good-communications-plan-part-13-evaluation/) - This is it – the last stage of preparing your communications plan – evaluation. As with several parts of this communications planning series, the stage at which you write this part of your plan is fairly arbitrary. I recommend you turn your mind to it after, not before, you finish considering your analysis, objectives, strategy
- [Newspapers: A Growth Business?](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/27/newspapers-a-growth-business/) - I just stumbled across an news release from last month entitled World Press Trends: Newspapers Are A Growth Business. With a headline like that, you bet I read it! According to the World Association of Newspapers, newspaper circulations world-wide rose 2.57% in 2007 and 9.39% over the last five years. The source of this data,
- [Where Do We Go From Here?](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/25/where-do-we-go-from-here/) - As I've just wished this site a happy first birthday, I've decided to take this opportunity to consider what I can do to improve it. (Image: Caralin baked my blog a cupcake) I'm turning this one over to you. What do you think? I'll take these ideas, mash them up with my thoughts, and see
- [13 Tips From My First Year Of Blogging](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/24/13-tips-from-my-first-year-of-blogging/) - Today marks the one-year anniversary of my blog. I’ve had this site for years longer, but this is the one-year anniversary of signing up for Blogger (which I used back then) and officially starting to blog. 201 posts later, I’m feeling as inspired as ever. The Best So Far Here are my personal favourites from
- [Ready, Aim, Fire - 2 Ways That Poor Planning Can Hurt You](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/22/ready-aim-fire-poor-planning-hurt-you/) - When someone asks you to help communicate an initiative, what do you do? Do you immediately find yourself coming up with cool ideas about how to gain attention and generate coverage? It feels good to do that, right? It certainly impresses non-communicators - “oh, we could do a media event for the launch, podcast this
- [How Will You Grow Today?](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/21/how-will-you-grow-today/) - Since starting my new position at Thornley Fallis Communications recently, I’ve experienced a new kind of pressure – that of accounting for all the time I spend at work. I’m adjusting to that new pressure pretty well so far and finding that it keeps me accountable to myself as well as to the company. As
- [AideRSS Google Reader Extension – Filter Your Reading, Easily](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/20/aiderss-google-reader-extension-filter-your-reading-easily/) - AideRSS, the excellent free RSS filtering service, just made their service even more accessible with a new Google Reader Firefox extension. This is the first application to be based on AideRSS’ newly-released Postrank API. The AideRSS Google Reader extension makes it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff in your RSS subscriptions by integrating
- [Many Computers; One Life – How I Synchronize My Information](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/16/many-computers-one-life-how-i-synchronize-my-information/) - Keeping your life in sync can be a real problem. You have your professional contacts and your friends, your work calendar and your personal schedule, tasks you’ve been assigned at work and things you need to do for yourself, and so on. It’s nigh-impossible to keep your work and home lives separate, especially if you
- [From Corporate To Agency - Reflections On My First Day In A New Job](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/15/from-corporate-to-agency-reflections-on-my-first-day-in-a-new-job/) - Back in June, I announced that I was leaving the Ontario government to join public relations agency Thornley Fallis Communications as a Senior Consultant. Today was my first day in my new job, so how did it go? Bottom line: I loved it. The day flew by and, from start to finish, my new colleagues
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 12 – Budget](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/13/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-12-budget/) - A caveat: This post is written from a corporate standpoint, and likely differs greatly from an agency perspective. If you have a different take, let me know in the comments. Unfortunately, even the most basic communications approach comes with costs attached. In a corporate communications plan, the budget section details these. Catharine Montgomery rightly points
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 11 - Issues](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/12/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-11-issues/) - You’ve planned-out your announcement to perfection – your objectives, your strategy, your tactics. Your communications plan is almost complete! But what if something goes wrong? Issues management is all about catching problems before they become crises. Your communications plan should help you to prepare for that. It’s rarely possible to anticipate everything that may come
- [Don’t Believe Everything You See](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/10/dont-believe-everything-you-see/) - File this in the “oh, not again” file… Multiple newspapers including The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times and NYTimes.com published a photograph of Iran’s recent missile test today. The photograph shows four missiles moments after their launch. The problem? It appears only three missiles were launched. Below are two photos, taken from roughly the
- [Molson Gives A Crash Course In Relationship-Building](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/06/molson-gives-a-crash-course-in-relationship-building/) - Every so often you see something that makes you sit up and think, “wow, these guys are on the ball.” I saw that from the folks over at Molson this week. Brew 2.0 A few weeks ago I received a pitch from Molson’s PR firm inviting me to an event called “Brew 2.0.” As the
- [Why Social Media Is Like Distance Running](https://davefleet.com/2008/07/04/why-social-media-is-like-distance-running/) - Believe it or not, social media has a lot in common with distance running. I should know; I’m a little obsessive about both of them. As I’m currently between old (Ontario government) and new (Thornley Fallis) jobs, I was fortunate enough to be able to head up to Georgian Bay recently for a bit of
- [You Know You Need Media Training When...](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/28/you-know-you-need-media-training-when/) - Courtesy of my soon-to-be-colleague Bob LeDrew comes this video of RyanAir CEO Michael O'Leary at a news conference. As Bob says: "The miracle is that nobody's called for his resignation yet! I'm stunned. The Guardian, for example, merely put it in their quotes of the week." Enough said, really.
- [How To Set Up A Simple Online Monitoring System](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/25/how-to-set-up-a-simple-online-monitoring-system/) - (brand name OR product name OR executive name) AND company name Use the advanced searches in Technorati and Blogpulse to give yourself more options You don't need to use all three blog search tools - I used all three to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. If, however, you want to just use one
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 10 - Tactics](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/24/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-10-tactics/) - "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." - Peter Drucker You know your goals; you know what you're saying; you know who you're talking to. You need to decide how to say it. How are you going to reach the audiences you've selected? Staged It may help if you think
- [The Best 10 Minutes You'll Invest Today](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/23/the-best-10-minutes-youll-invest-today/) - Chris Brogan gave a ten-minute 'jolt' to the audience at the Podcasters Across Borders conference yesterday. If you're interested in social media, take the time to watch it - it's the best 10 minutes you'll invest today. A favourite quote of mine: “Communities are not banks. Marketplaces are banks. Know the difference.” As I said
- [Take-Aways From Podcasters Across Borders](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/22/take-aways-from-podcasters-across-borders/) - No creative thinking from me here; just a few great take-aways from this weekend's Podcasters Across Borders conference: Podcasts "Podcasts are NOT radio shows. The medium is different, therefore its effects are different." -Jay Moonah "Rule #1 tell people you have an Internet Radio Show, not a podcast. It's amazing how many people don't really
- [Early Adopters](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/22/early-adopters/) - A useful reminder from Sylvain Grand’maison's presentation at Podcasters Across Borders - right now, we're all early social media adopters. While the increasing mainstream coverage of tools like Facebook and MySpace may be a sign that we're moving beyond the introduction stage and into the growth stage of social media tools, from my perspective we're
- [Did Facebook Traffic Outgrow MySpace Last Year?](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/21/did-facebook-traffic-outgrow-myspace-last-year/) - The web has been buzzing over the last few days about Facebook passing MySpace in worldwide traffic recently after the release of new Comscore figures, but did Facebook pass MySpace a while ago? Google just announced Google Trends for Websites - a new feature of Google Trends that, rather than just looking at search trends,
- [Podcasters Across Borders - Live Chat Back-channel](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/21/podcasters-across-borders-live-chat-back-channel/) - I'm in Kingston for the Podcasters Across Borders conference this weekend. For those of you that couldn't make it, Christopher Penn has set up a back-channel chatroom. Here it is:
- [New Internet Guidelines For Civil Servants: A Step In The Right Direction](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/20/internet-guidelines-civil-servants-step-direction/) - UK civil servants have a new set of guidelines for working online, and they're actually good! The Guardian reported yesterday on a new set of guidelines released for British civil servants, laying out how they should interact with people on the web. The new guidelines were revealed in a Parliamentary question on June 18. On
- [FriendFeed Isn't The Next Google - It's Just The Next... FriendFeed](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/19/friendfeed-isnt-the-next-google-its-just-the-next-friendfeed/) - Steve Rubel says FriendFeed could be the next Google. I think he might want to step outside his bubble and reconsider. Wait - what's FriendFeed? That question, right there, my friends, is why I think Mr. Rubel is wrong. First, though, a little on FriendFeed in case you don't know much about it. FriendFeed
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 9 - Messages](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/16/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-9-messages/) - Your analysis is done, you've figured out your communications strategy and you know who you're targeting. It's time to craft your messages. But where do you start? Your key messages help you draft all your products down the road when you're executing your communications plan. They'll help you stay on track and make sure you're
- [5 Top Online Photography Resources](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/15/5-top-photography-resources/) - There's an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it applies to new media too. Presentation is an important part of a good blog post. An appropriate, good quality photo can add context and interest to your post (and humour, too, if you like). It can be hard, though, to track
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 8 - Announcement](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/14/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-8-announcement/) - This is the eighth post in a series exploring how to write a good communications plan. By now we've set the stage, established our objectives and strategy and chosen our audiences. Now, at last, it's time to think about our announcements. Announcement In your written plan, the announcement itself is a pretty brief section. It's
- [Metallica Update: Post 'Em All](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/12/metallica-update-post-em/) - A quick update on the Metallica situation - as I wondered in my earlier post about the Metallica/blogger review situation, it looks like this was a giant mis-communication that blew up in the band's face. Metallica released a statement on their website: "...once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe,
- [Metallica: ...And Censorship For All](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/11/metallica-and-censorship-for-all/) - Metallica has done it again. Forget going after people pirating their music; this time they've gone after people writing about it... after inviting them to hear it. The Story So Far Here's how the story goes: Metallica representatives recently played tracks from their upcoming album to a bunch of critics/bloggers/journalists (depending on whose take on
- [Building Blog Readership: No Shortcuts. Content.](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/10/building-blog-readership-no-shortcuts-content/) - I spotted a question on LinkedIn today about how to increase traffic to your site. The person posing the question threw out a couple of ideas - social bookmarking and link strategies, for example, and a few people answered with a tip or two. Most of the tips, while valid to a point, missed the
- [Globe And Mail Ends 'Insider' Subscriptions - All Articles Now Free](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/09/globe-and-mail-ends-insider-subscriptions-all-articles-now-free/) - The Globe and Mail newspaper, a rare hold-out in the age of free online content, removed the shackles from its website last week. As of May 31 all of the Globe's columnists, horoscopes, puzzles and more were available for free. Honestly, I'm surprised it's taken them this long. Their competitors - the Toronto Star being
- [Study Examines The Impact Of PR On News](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/09/study-examines-the-impact-of-pr-on-news/) - Courtesy of the Cardiff School of Journalism comes a fascinating study on the link between PR and news. The researchers set out to study the British media to discover how much journalists rely on PR and the wire services. To anyone who is aware of the changes going on in the mainstream media right now,
- [It's Time To Grow](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/06/its-time-to-grow/) - It's with a mix of sadness, nervous anticipation and excitement that I can tell you I am leaving the Ontario government and moving on to pastures new. Since moving to Canada in 2003, and joining the government in 2004, I've had the privilege and good fortune to work with some wonderfully smart and creative people
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 7 - Audiences](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/05/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-7-audiences/) - This is the seventh post in a series exploring how to write a good communications plan. At this stage we've finished our analysis of the situation, set our objectives and decided on a strategy. Now it's time to decide our audience - in other words, who we're speaking to. Audiences Think back It's time to
- [14 Plugins To Improve Your WordPress Blog](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/03/14-plugins-to-improve-your-wordpress-blog/) - Wordpress is one of, if not the, leading blogging platform at the moment. It's also an Open Source project. This means that anyone can contribute to its development. There are thousands of WordPress plugins available, to do almost anything you can imagine. However, this can get a little daunting. Here are 14 plugins I currently
- [Plurk - Ooooooh Another Shiny New Twitter-Like Thing!](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/02/plurk-ooooooh-another-shiny-new-twitter-like-thing/) - Twitter (when it's up) has been lighting up today with talk of yet another shiny new toy for people to play with - Plurk. Plurk? Yes, you read it right - Plurk. Plurk describes itself as: A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the
- [HubSpot's Press Release Grader - Rate Your Press Release](https://davefleet.com/2008/06/01/hubspots-press-release-grader-rate-your-press-release/) - HubSpot's Press Release Grader is a free tool that aims to help you improve your press releases. You may remember HubSpot from their Website Grader tool, which I reviewed back in April (I was late to that one - it's been around for months). Press Release Grader is a simple, free tool that analyzes your
- [Social Media In Plain English](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/31/social-media-in-plain-english/) - Lee LeFever has produced another of his fantastic "...in Plain English" series of videos - Social Media in Plain English. While not as succinct or eloquent as some of the previous videos, this is still a great intro for people who are new to the social media scene and is well worth a watch. If
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 6 - Strategy](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/29/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-6-strategy/) - This is the sixth in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. Last time around we moved from analysis to planning and looked at setting your objectives. This post looks at establishing your strategy. Now that you've figured out the objectives for your communications plan, you know where you're going.
- [WestJet Shows The Value Of Providing Friendly Service](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/26/westjet-shows-the-value-of-providing-friendly-service/) - It's always a pleasure to write good things about a company. Today I'm pleased to do this for WestJet. On May 23 I flew on Westjet flight 651 out to Halifax on my way to run the Cabot Trail Relay in Cape Breton (which went really well, by the way - our team, Cardio Arrest,
- [Mesh Day 2 - Live Blog](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/22/mesh-day-2-live-blog/)
- [Live-Blogging Mesh Day 1 - What Did You Think Of CoverItLive?](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/22/live-blogging-mesh-day-1-what-did-you-think-of-coveritlive/) - I tend to live-twitter conferences etc. It's fun, it's interactive and it keeps a good record of the event for my future reference. However, Twitter's reliability recently has been... well... awful. During the introductions to the opening day of Toronto's Mesh Conference yesterday, I suddenly thought: "What happens if Twitter goes down (again) today?" On
- [Live-Blogging Mesh 2008](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/21/live-blogging-mesh-2008/) - Live Blog: Mesh 08 (05/21/2008) Powered by: CoveritLive Close 9:26 davefleet - Stuart MacDonald is up on stage intro-ing Mesh 2008. Looking forward to a great conference. 9:27 davefleet - Check out mesh.sweetceasar.com for an awesome Mesh schedule app for your blackberry 9:29 [Comment From Colin McKay]I like Stuart's pants - he doesn't have to
- [A Quick Thought On Online Privacy](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/21/a-quick-thought-on-online-privacy/) - A quick thought, prompted by Colin McKay at last night's Third Tuesday Toronto event (with Katie Paine, Marshall Sponder and Marcel Lebrun), on online privacy... People who are part of the social media community know that when you put something online publicly, it gets indexed by search engines and is effectively 'out there' for people
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 5 - Objectives](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/19/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-5-objectives/) - This is the fifth in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. The last post covered how to examine your stakeholders; this time we're moving from analysis to planning, looking at your objectives. Objectives As the old saying goes, you need to know where you're going before you can know
- [Street Art To The Next Level](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/18/street-art-to-the-next-level/) - I just found this video through Chris Brogan's site. This is incredible. I don't know what to call this kind of art. Next-generation graffiti perhaps? Regardless, imagine the work that had to go into it. Enjoy. MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
- [If You Allow Comments, For Goodness Sake ALLOW Comments](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/17/if-you-allow-comments-for-goodness-sake-allow-comments/) - If you're going to encourage your clients to interact with you, for Pete's sake do it right. I was talking to a fellow communications professional this week when she mentioned a recent effort her employer had undertaken. They posted a series of videos on YouTube giving their perspective on a high-profile issue and opened comments
- [Why Apple Doesn't Need Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/15/why-apple-doesnt-need-social-media/) - Apple has a pretty well-known disdain for social media. Despite being the one company that, more than any other, raised awareness of podcasting and gave the music industry a kick up the ass with iTunes, Apple is dismissive of social software. The company discourages employee blogging. It sued some of its biggest fans. It shut
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 4 - Stakeholder Analysis](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/12/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-4-stakeholder-analysis/) - This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. Last time we examined how to paint the broader picture through your environmental scan. This time we'll look at your stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder Analysis This is the last of your initial 'setting the stage' sections. You've already looked
- [Experimenting With Mobile Video](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/11/experimenting-with-mobile-video/) - Mobile video is growing in popularity. A few years ago we couldn't imagine recording video from our phones; now, a growing number of services let regular people create videos at the touch of a button. A little while back I got a new Blackberry Pearl so, for the first time, I had mobile video at
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 3 - Environmental Scan](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/08/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-3-environmental-scan/) - This is the third in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. Over the next few weeks we'll take detailed look at each of the sections in a communications plan. Each time I'll give my perspective and ask what you think. My aim is for us to work together to
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 2 - Context](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/06/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-2-context/) - This is the second in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. Over the next few weeks we'll take detailed look at each of the sections in a communications plan. Each time I'll give my perspective and ask what you think. My aim is for us to work together to
- [Chapters Indigo Shows How To Handle A Product Recall](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/05/chapters-indigo-shows-how-to-handle-a-product-recall/) - I've written occasionally about companies that have messed-up their issues management, so it's nice to write occasionally about a company that got it right. I received an email from Canadian book retailer Chapters Indigo this afternoon. I'm part of the company's iRewards loyalty program, so this is nothing new. Normally I delete the emails after
- [Nine Inch Nails Continues To Shake-Up The Music Industry](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/05/nine-inch-nails-continues-to-shake-up-the-music-industry/) - Radiohead's release of In Rainbows may have been a "one-off," but Nine Inch Nails has gone and done it again. And again. And again. Already this year, the band released their latest album, Ghosts, online in a variety of formats, invited fans to create visuals for the album and released another new song, Discipline, free
- [How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 1 - An Overview](https://davefleet.com/2008/05/03/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-1-an-overview/) - Update: I have now completed this communications planning series and have republished all of the posts as a free strategic communications Planning eBook. Is there such a thing as an ideal communications plan template? What would it look like? I've spent most of the last few years surrounded by communications and marketing plans (comm plans,
- [Five Tools To Base Your Online Life Around](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/28/five-tools-to-base-your-online-life-around/) - I've written before about my social media life and the tools I use, but which of those are the most useful, and why? Here are the five tools I base my online presence around, and why I think you should too. Google Reader I "subscribe" to several hundred blogs. Every day I go to one
- [Toronto Transit Commission Strike: A PR Disaster](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/26/toronto-transit-commission-strike-a-pr-disaster/) - Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) workers walked off the job at midnight last night after rejecting a tentative agreement with the city. It goes without saying that transit strikes are tough on everyone. However, you do need some level of public support. Setting aside the issues being negotiated, the Amalgamated Transit Union has turned this into
- [Case Study: Using Social Media On A Small Scale To Raise Money For Charity](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/23/case-study-using-social-media-on-a-small-scale-to-raise-money-for-charity/) - I'm a fanatical runner. I'm not particularly talented, but my dedication to my training enabled me to qualify for the 2008 Boston Marathon on April 21, 2008. The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon and one of the world’s most prestigious road racing events. Besides the Olympic trials and the Olympic marathons, Boston
- [Deliciously Revealing Bookmarks](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/16/deliciously-revealing-bookmarks/) - Del.icio.us is an awesome tool, plain and simple. It lets you easily access your bookmarks from any computer, take advantage of other peoples' reading and even track topics over time. I've written before about six great ways to make your life easier with del.icio.us. Today, though, I'm warning you to be careful what you bookmark.
- [Twitter To Finally Find A Business Model?](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/15/twitter-to-finally-find-a-business-model/) - Is Twitter close to finally introducing something resembling a business model? The blogosphere is buzzing today with talk of Twitter adding ads to its posts. Rumour has it that Twitter will be introducing ads into peoples' Twitter streams. This would mean that after every 10, or 20, or however many posts, users would see an
- [Twitter Clouds - What Do You Write About?](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/14/twitter-clouds-what-do-you-write-about/) - What do you write about? Tweet Clouds, an created by John Krutsch and Jared Stein, lets you answer that question. The tool creates a "tag cloud" - a visual representation of what you write about - for your Twitter posts. More common words are displayed in a larger font, so it's easy to see your
- [American Airlines' Reputation Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/11/american-airlines-reputation-crisis/) - American Airlines has received a lot of negative attention recently. In January a snowstorm in Chicago caused the cancellation of numerous flights. This week the airline cancelled over 3,000 flights (more than 600 today alone) to conduct wiring checks on the planes, stranding more than a quarter of a million passengers. To add to the
- [Four Different Uses For Four Different Networks](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/10/four-different-uses-for-four-different-networks/) - How do you use the different social networks you're part of? Do you use them all in the same way? I got to thinking today about how I use relatively similar services in very different ways. Take social networks, for example. I'm a member of a bunch of them. I don't have time to use
- [Expand Your Twitter Network With Two New Services](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/09/expand-your-twitter-network-with-two-new-services/) - Finding interesting people to follow is one of the biggest challenges for new Twitter users. It really helps to have people there whenever you log on, to answer questions, solve problems and generally communicate with. Without a community to participate in, posting to Twitter can be like a tree falling in a forest. Two tools
- [Website Grader: One-Stop Search Engine Optimization Analysis](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/08/website-grader-one-stop-search-engine-optimization-analysis/) - Website Grader is a free search engine optimization tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of your website. Provided by Hubspot, the service looks at over 50 factors and provides you with a score that ranks your site alongside all of the other sites it has assessed. Just input your website's address and (optionally) a few
- [6 Ways To Make Life Easier With Del.icio.us](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/07/6-ways-to-make-life-easier-with-delicious/) - Since I started using it regularly about six months ago, del.icio.us has rapidly become one of my most-used tools. If you haven't started using the service seriously, I suggest you do so. Here's a quick primer (skip to below if you're already a pro): Obviously, if you like, you can just use del.icio.us to save
- [M.Utterz.com Takes You All The Way... Almost](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/05/mutterzcom-takes-you-all-the-way-almost/) - Utterz, the multimedia service that lets you post video, audio, pictures and text to your blogs and social networks, has just launched a mobile site, m.utterz.com. According to the announcement, the mobile site "...really completes the circle of mobile Utterz features: you can now create, view, share and manage your multi-media posts all from your
- [Does Social Media Have A Glass Ceiling?](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/03/does-social-media-have-a-glass-ceiling/) - Is there a gender bias in the social media scene? Eden Spodek recently put out a call for women involved in social media to speak up and be heard, and got some traction with it. Her point: "women in the social media space aren't getting as much recognition as they should." Her post, along with
- [43 More Top Social Media Tips And Tools](https://davefleet.com/2008/04/01/43-more-top-social-media-tips-and-tools/) - Back in January I posted a list of the 42 top social media tips and tools I came across over a six-month period. This is an update with 43 more I've found over the last few months. Analytics/Measurement Tools: 13 Tools For Tracking Discussions in the Blogosphere Your RSS reader may give you information, but
- [Are You A New Media Douchebag?](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/30/are-you-a-new-media-douchebag/) - A moment of comic relief... This video, in the style of Lee Lefever's Common Craft videos, made me laugh. It's a nervous laugh - I fall dangerously close to this definition of a "new media douchebag." I fail on a few accounts though: I have a "real" job I don't hate enough things I'm as
- [Scoble's Dead Wrong About Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/27/scobles-dead-wrong-about-twitter/) - Robert Scoble wrote a post a few days ago saying that the secret to Twitter is following a lot of people: I’ve gone through stages with Twitter. At some point I thought it was important to get lots of followers. But lately I’ve been telling people that the secret to Twitter isn’t how many followers
- [Auction!!!](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/25/auction/) - If you've followed this site recently you'll know that I have been working towards an auction to raise money to support cancer research. Well, we did it! Keith Burtis' custom-designed and -made ornament is complete, Tommy Vallier's coding wizardry is done and it's time for the auction. Bidding will open 9am EDT on March 25
- [Beyond The Bubble - Real-World Uses For LifeStreams?](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/24/beyond-the-bubble-real-world-uses-for-lifestreams/) - I spent some time recently reflecting on all these new online services, and their real-world uses. Not just services that I've written about like FriendFeed and SocialThing! but a whole bunch of the tools that I use. Here's my dilemma: to a large extent, I'm inside this thing we call 'the bubble.' This makes it
- [Cancer Research Fundraiser - Ornament Complete!](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/23/cancer-research-fundraiser-ornament-complete/) - A quick update on the auction we're holding as part of my Boston Marathon cancer research fundraiser - Keith Burtis has finished the ornament! The Story So Far If you haven't been following this story... On April 21, 2008, I will run the Boston Marathon for the first time. As I do so, I will
- [Why SocialThing Trumps FriendFeed... And The Rest](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/21/why-socialthing-trumps-friendfeed-and-the-rest/) - Lately, I've noticed a growth in aggregation tools. For me, SocialThing leads the way. Last October I wrote about my concerns with the incredible number of social media tools out there. Rather than diving into more and more tools, I wrote that I needed to find tools that would bring all my information flows together.
- [Cancer Fundraiser - Auction Update](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/19/cancer-fundraiser-auction-update/) - Last Saturday I announced that as part of my Boston Marathon cancer research fundraiser, my friend Keith Burtis is designing and creating a beautiful piece of woodwork that we are auctioning off to the highest bidder. At the same time, Keith posted pictures from the first stage of creating the piece. I mentioned that I'd
- [Another Killer Twitter App?](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/19/another-killer-twitter-app/) - This post is a little out of the ordinary for me. I'm floating an idea to see if it would work or not. I often do this via Twitter, but this one's a little more than 140 characters. Twitter Organizer Dave Jones posted a note on Twitter the other day that sparked a few thoughts
- [How To Post To Multiple Utterz Accounts From One Phone](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/18/how-to-post-to-multiple-utterz-accounts-from-one-phone/) - Utterz is an excellent service (currently in open beta testing) that lets you create multi-medias post in voice, video, picture and/or text, right from your mobile phone, or online. Like Twitter, Utterz lets people subscribe to your posts. Unlike Twitter, however, people can reply via any media, regardless of what was in the original post. Very cool.
- [8 Questions To Ask Before Using YouTube As A Communications Tool](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/16/8-questions-to-ask-before-using-youtube-as-a-communications-tool/) - As communications professionals, it's very easy to get caught up in the hype and excitement about all the new online communications tactics we have available to us today. YouTube is a great example. It's tempting to view tools like this as a silver bullet for our communications woes. YouTube used to be primarily a great
- [Another Social Media Miracle?](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/15/another-social-media-miracle/) - One of my highlights of PodCamp Toronto 2008 was meeting Keith Burtis and his lovely fiancee Michelle Miszewski. I was fortunate to play a tiny part in Keith's social media miracle, I had the pleasure of introducing them during the opening remarks at PodCamp and I've stayed in regular contact with Keith since then. It
- [Changing Nature of Content](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/12/changing-nature-of-content/) - The nature of content online needs to shift to match with the changing nature of the overall Web. Steve Rubel wrote today that the future is web services, not web sites. This gels with what many people have been saying for a while now. Mitch Joel, in particular, has talked about widgets a lot. While
- [Reality Check On Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/11/reality-check-on-twitter/) - It's time to stand up and call "bullshit" on people who say Twitter is replacing blogs. Don't get me wrong - I love Twitter. I use it more than any other social media tool, I have a lot of connections on there and I get a lot out of it. But it's not replacing blogs
- [First Impressions of PRX Builder Social Media Release Plugin](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/10/first-impressions-of-prx-builder-social-media-release-plugin/) - There's lots of interesting stuff going on with social media releases right now. First, we have the news from last week that IABC is sponsoring development of standards for this new format. Business Wire and PR Web have already jumped on-board. Today, on a different scale, we have a new tool to help practitioners implement
- [Twitter... In Plain English](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/06/twitter-in-plain-english/) - Ever struggled to explain Twitter to someone? Or, if you're not using it, wonder why other people rave about it so much? Twitter describes itself as a tool "for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing." That description is true, but not comprehensive or particularly
- [IABC Takes The Lead With The Social Media Release](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/05/iabc-takes-the-lead-with-the-social-media-release/) - The social media release has taken another step towards the mainstream. In a move that caused a bit of an online stir this morning, IABC announced that it is taking a lead in the push to develop standards around the social media release. The organization issued both a social media release and a traditional release
- [Enough With Blogger Strategies!](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/04/enough-with-blogger-strategies/) - I attended an event recently where I had the pleasure of chatting with a number of executives about social media. All a-buzz with buzz words The 'in' term seemed to be "blogging strategies" - "we need a blogging strategy for what we're doing..." While it wasn't the time or the place for a lecture on
- [Edelman's Trust Barometer 2008 - Social Media Rising; Word of Mouth Still King](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/02/edelmans-trust-barometer-2008-social-media-rising-word-of-mouth-still-king/) - This week I was lucky enough to attend the Canadian launch of Edelman's Trust Barometer 2008 - Edelman's ninth annual survey on trust and credibility. The survey looked at the trust patterns of "opinion elites" in 18 countries - defined as people who: Are college-educated Report a household income in the top quartile of their
- [What Is RSS?](https://davefleet.com/2008/03/01/what-is-rss/) - RSS (Really Simple Syndication) can be confusing if you know little about it. Other people blather on about "subscribing," "feeds," "readers" and the like, while you have no idea what they're talking about. If this describes you, you're in the right place. You can find definitions for "RSS" everywhere. Feedburner has a page on it;
- [Access CNW: A Good Step Forward](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/29/access-cnw-a-good-step-forward/) - I have to give CNW Group credit for trying (if you don't know, CNW Group is Canada's largest news wire service). In the last little while they've repeatedly impressed me with their efforts in the social media space. With the help of clued-in employees like Parker Mason, CNW keeps cropping up in my social media
- [A Fresh(Books) Approach to Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/26/a-freshbooks-approach-to-social-media/) - I headed out to the latest Third Tuesday Toronto tonight to learn about how Michael McDerment and FreshBooks is using online tools to promote its business. (Full disclosure: FreshBooks sponsored last weekend's PodCamp Toronto, of which I was a co-organizer) As the event invitation stated: Mike McDerment, entrepreneur, Internet marketing expert, and blogger has
- [GovCamp Toronto?](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/25/govcamp-toronto/) - I came from this weekend's PodCamp Toronto buzzing with ideas. The most promising? GovCamp. A quick Google search shows that others have had the same idea. GovCamps have been held in several countries in the last couple of years. I think public servants could benefit from an event in the PodCamp vein where they could
- [How Online Tools Enable My Cancer Fundraising](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/25/how-online-tools-enable-my-cancer-fundraising/) - PodCamp Toronto helped me to step back and acknowledge the importance of the online tools I use. I've written about the tools I use in general before but today I'm writing about the tools I'm using for one project - my effort to fight cancer using online tools. This project revolves around using a series
- [PodCamp Takes Toronto By Storm](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/24/podcamp-takes-toronto-by-storm/) - PodCamp Toronto 2008 hit Toronto with a vengeance this weekend. Roughly 300 bloggers, podcasters, public relations pros, 'social media' experts and more descended on Ryerson University in downtown Toronto for two days of all things interactive, and many more watched the event live online from around the world. A few highlights for me: Saturday Chris
- [Update From PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/23/update-from-podcamp-toronto/) - Mobile post sent by davefleet using Utterz. Replies.
- [Using Social Media To Support Cancer Research](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/21/using-social-media-to-support-cancer-research/) - In November 2007 I launched an (ongoing) experiment to develop a “best-practice social media 101 training program” using online tools. Today I’m launching another experiment. This one’s more personal. While the last idea experiment worked with the online community to develop a resource for everyone’s benefit, this time it has a wider goal – helping
- [5...4...3... Days To PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/20/543-days-to-podcamp-toronto/) - The wait is almost over! Just three days to go until PodCamp Toronto 2008 hits Toronto. Almost 400 people are now registered for the event, which is shaping up to be an awesome weekend. I'm presenting in two sessions, one on each day: On Saturday morning I'll lead a session on Social Media in a
- [Why Business-To-Business Companies Need To Act More Like Business-To-Consumer Companies](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/20/why-business-to-business-companies-need-to-act-more-like-business-to-consumer-companies/) - There's been a lot of talk recently about companies' reactions to fans' online activities. Target, Ford and Hasbro have all been on the receiving end of many bloggers' wrath following their responses to these activities (rightly or wrongly, depending on the situation). Hasbro, in particular, seems to be having a hard time getting its message
- [The Importance Of Meeting Expectations](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/18/the-importance-of-meeting-expectations/) - The Globe and Mail published an interesting article recently entitled Build your brand - but don't forget to deliver an experience (needs subscription). The article relates how, by not fulfilling its promises to a customer, an auto dealer turned that them from "a walking brand builder for the manufacturer" into a dissatisfied customer. The article
- [International Olympic Committee Allows Beijing Athletes To Blog](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/16/international-olympic-committee-allows-beijing-athletes-to-blog/) - The International Olympic Committee has ruled that athletes at the Beijing Olympics will be allowed to write about their experiences during the games. They're referring specifically to blogs. If you're not familiar with blogs, in this context they're essentially journals that are available on the web. According to the BBC, this is the first time
- [I'm Done With Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/15/im-done-with-social-media/) - "Social media" is out. So is "microblogging." No more "social bookmarking" either. What am I talking about? Clear writing. Plain language. I'm not pulling the plug on all this stuff. However, I am going to start to write about it in terms that the average person on the street can understand. Out with the old,
- [What PR Pros Can Learn From Gamers](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/12/what-pr-pros-can-learn-from-gamers/) - Can we get communications pointers from computer games? The New York Times recently featured an article looking at how there's a growing trend in computer gaming away from intensive graphics, complex storylines and immersive dialogue and towards simple games that allow people to interact with each other. "Paradoxically, at a moment when technology allows designers
- [Why Measurement Is Important](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/11/why-measurement-is-important/) - "The things that get measured are the things that get done. Companies measure the stuff they care about." So simple yet so powerful and so true. This is a quote from a recent episode of the excellent Manager Tools podcast, and it has big implications for communications folks. Sure, there are a lot of barriers
- [PR Web Takes The 'Social' Out Of Social Media](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/07/pr-web-takes-the-social-out-of-social-media/) - In the lead-up to PodCamp Toronto 2008, we're issuing a news release with details of the event. Given that it's a social media event, we decided to issue a social media news release.For those of you who may not be familiar with the basics of social media releases, we intended our release would differ from
- [Thoughts on Mitch Joel's take on Ford/Scrabulous](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/06/thoughts-on-mitch-joels-take-on-fordscrabulous/) - My thoughts on Mitch Joel's take on the Ford Mustang and Scrabulous controversies recently. Generally spot-on in my view. Note: recorded half-way through a 22km run, so (a) the audio is bad and (b) I'm out of breath.
- [Social Media News Release: An EXTRA Tool, Not A Replacement](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/02/social-media-news-release-extra-tool/) - It's been over 18 months since Todd Defren released his template for a new news release format and over that time the a healthy debate has raged over the idea. Recently, Maggie Fox's crew over at the Social Media Group released Digital Snippets, their own take on the format, re-invigorating the debate. I love that
- [Social Media Training Wiki: How Did We Measure Up?](https://davefleet.com/2008/02/01/social-media-training-wiki-how-did-we/) - In mid-December 2007, I established three objectives for the Social Media Training Wiki: More than double the number of site members by the end of January 2008 Double the number of contributions by the end of January 2008 No existing pages with content placeholders by the end of January 2008 Results Well, it's the end
- [Case Studies? Anyone?](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/31/case-studies-anyone/) - For all the talk of openness, transparency and community in social media, there's one thing missing. Case studies. Social media is still an emerging area, and it's moving at light speed in many areas - video and mobile, to name two. However, the lack of fleshed-out examples of success has bothered me a lot recently.
- [Low-Brow Reporting From The Globe And Mail](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/30/low-brow-reporting-from-globe-and-mail/) - Referring to this story in the Globe and Mail. Technorati Tags: journalism,tabloid,communications,plan,Globe and Mail,sensationalist
- [Will Pate Talks About PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/29/will-pate-talks-about-podcamp-toronto/) - Will Pate has been a technology entrepreneur and community builder since co-founding his first business, Infinity BBS, in elementary school. Since then he has co-founded Raincity Studios, a Vancouver-based new media design, development and web marketing firm and has worked at Flock and on a project called Mazava. He is currently the Community Evangelist at
- [Don't Make Perfection The Enemy Of Good](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/29/don-make-perfection-enemy-of-good/) - Technorati Tags: social media,web 2.0,marketing
- [How To Use Twitter Packs -- And Twitter -- Successfully](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/28/how-to-use-twitter-packs-and-twitter/) - Twitter can be pretty intimidating. To people just starting out following few people, and with few followers of their own, it can seem like their words are disappearing into the ether. After a few days of broadcasting into silence, those people drift away having never realized the immense potential of this tool. I recently wrote
- [Twitter Packs, Tweetmeme and Releasing Social Media Metrics](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/28/twitter-packs-tweetmeme-and-releasing/) - Technorati Tags: tweetscan,twitter packs,metrics,social media,seesmic
- [How Do You Define 'Media' In A Crisis?](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/26/how-do-you-define-in-crisis/) - I recently witnessed the government's emergency management operation in action when flooding in the Ontario community of Huntsville left roughly 120 homes under 5 feet of water in early January. I was the communications guy at the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre. While we never moved from a monitoring role, it was fascinating to see things
- [Why Are You So Afraid Of Conversation?](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/22/why-are-you-so-afraid-of-conversation/) - A quick thought. I'm currently working my way through Joseph Jaffe's book 'Join The Conversation.' I've just finished Chapter 10, "Why are you so afraid of conversation?" which was written entirely by members of the online community via a wiki. The chapter contains an insight from Mitch Joel that illustrates why I think he's one
- [Fact-Check Before Blogging](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/21/fact-check-before-blogging/) - In the last little while I've seen a few worrying slip-ups in the wonderful world of the blogosphere. First up, on December 30, 2007 the Washington Post reported that the Recording Industry Association of America sued a man for copying his own CDs onto his computer. With a story like that, it's not surprising that
- [Busting The Myth Of 'Viral' Strategies](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/19/busting-myth-of-strategies/) - "...and we'll produce a viral video, too." I've heard this way too often in the last year. I cringe every time. I usually bite my tongue and accept that the person is saying it through ignorance. One time, having a bad day, I spoke up: "Sorry, but I don't think you can say it's going
- [5 Weeks To PodCamp Toronto 2008](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/19/5-weeks-to-podcamp-toronto-2008/) - 172 attendees... (and counting!) 26 sessions... (and counting!) 5 weeks remaining. And counting. Just 35 days until PodCamp hits Toronto for the second time and things are heating up. Registrations grew 20% in the last week alone and we're signing up new sponsors every day. Today we're thrilled to announce four new sponsors: Marketing Over
- [AlertMap: Cutting-Edge Emergency And Disaster Information Tool](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/17/alertmap-cutting-edge-emergency-and/) - If you're even remotely interested in emergency information, check out AlertMap. This disaster-focused mashup pulls together data from some 600 sources to provide an amazingly valuable service. The tool, from a Hungarian non-governmental organization, is an exceptional source for up-to-date worldwide disaster information . AlertMap displays 55 categories of emergencies and disasters from fires, to
- [YouTube As An Effective Crime-Solving Tool](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/16/youtube-as-effective-crime-solving-tool/) - Crimetube? Every so often I hear cool stories of the creative ways people use new media to solve problems. This one is particularly cool. A friend of ours recently discovered that another driver had hit his parked car and taken off without leaving his details. Fortunately, our friend had parked where he did because he
- [42 Top Social Media Tips And Tools](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/14/41-top-social-media-tips-and-tools/) - Over the last six months or so I've come across hundreds of useful tips and tools online. Rather than keeping them to myself, I thought I'd share a few of them with you. I've grouped the list "Tips" and "Tools" under eight categories: 1. Analytics/Measurement2. Blogging3. Micro-Blogging4. Miscellaneous5. Mobile/Telephony6. PR/News Releases7. Search/SEO8. Social Bookmarking Analytics/Measurement
- [Twitter: How Do You Find People To Follow?](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/13/twitter-how-do-you-find-people-to/) - Many people struggle with the idea of Twitter. The idea of posting 140-character updates for the world to see seems shallow and the idea of following other peoples' updates seems creepy. Why would you want to follow people you hardly know, anyway? This is especially true when people explain it badly. As my Twitter-bud Jennifer
- [Facebook Applications Aren't Always Your Friends](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/11/facebook-applications-aren-always-your/) - I came across a worrying article today at online security site Fortinet. The post (also picked up by Help Net Security) details how a rogue Facebook application allegedly dupes users into installing the infamous "Zango" adware/spyware and inviting friends to do the same. Zango disputed the claim, saying the application was nothing to do with
- [PodCamp Toronto 2008 Looking For Sponsors](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/09/podcamp-toronto-2008-looking-for/) - PodCamp Toronto 2008 (Feb 23-24, 2008) is looking for sponsors! If your organization wants to position itself at the forefront of the social media space, or just to expose itself to thought leaders in PR and marketing, you should consider sponsoring PodCamp. Last year over 300 people attended the unconference. Is It Worth It? Here
- [Ten things that will change your future... And The Trends Within](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/07/ten-things-that-will-change-your-future/) - As I twittered a few days back, the Sydney Morning Herald recently published an article titled "Ten things that will change your future," looking at "what you need to know to survive the next decade." The list The Chumby (http://www.chumby.com) Microblogging (http://www.pownce.com; http://www.jaiku.com; http://twitter.com) Everyblock (http://www.chicagocrime.org; http://www.everyblock.com) 23AndMe (http://www.23andme.com) Peer-To-Peer Lending (http://www.kiva.org) Mob Rules (http://www.rheingold.com)
- [Analyzing Twitter Usage](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/06/analyzing-twitter-usage/) - I came across an interesting tool the other day - Twitter Stats - provided by Brad Kellett. The tool is a web-based adaptation of code by Damon Cortesi, who produced a tool to grab stats from a user's Twitter feed and aggregate them to show overall stats. The tool looks at: Tweets per hour of
- [Stop Using Views To Measure YouTube Success](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/03/stop-using-views-to-measure-youtube/) - Measurement is a hot theme right now. Lots of smart people are writing about it regularly and Joseph Thornley (also a smart guy) is even organizing a social media measurement roundtable. Here's a measurement issue that's bugged me for a while. I keep seeing and hearing people citing video views as a critical success measure.
- [8 Things You Didn't Know About Me](https://davefleet.com/2008/01/03/8-things-you-didn-know-about-me/) - I got double-tagged with the "eight things you didn't know about me" meme today by Collin Douma and Eden Spodek. In fact, Collin tagged two of my blogs so I guess I'm triple-tagged. I figure that not responding wouldn't be very... well... social, so here goes. Fact 1: I Run, But It Isn't Always Fun
- [Five Free Online Social Media And Public Relations Courses](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/31/five-free-online-social-media-and/) - Education Portal (via Lifehacker) recently featured a list of Universities offering free online university courses. Digging through the list, there are woefully few courses on PR and social media. However, I've picked out a few specific courses that PR and social media folks may want to check out: Social Media New Media Literacies (Massachusetts Institute
- [Social Media Training Wiki Building Momentum](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/29/social-media-training-wiki-building/) - In the days since my last update on the social media training wiki (on December 19), I've noticed a shift in momentum. Compared to the previous 10-day period: Site visits and page views are up by over 800% Bounce rate is down 12% Unique visitors are up over 750% Average time on site is up
- [Top Ten Less Well-Known PR/Marketing Blogs](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/24/top-ten-less-well-known-prmarketing/) - In the last few days, a couple of people twittered about clearing out their RSS feed subscriptions. This got me thinking: there's a fairly well-known set of major blogs out there. Most people in this space know about Jeremiah, Shel, Todd, Neville, Shel II, Scoble, Steve Rubel, Mitch et al, but what are the undiscovered
- [Twitter: Conversation Starter](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/21/twitter-conversation-starter/) - The Halton Catholic District School Board stirred up controversy this week when it banned Phillip Pullman's fantasy book "The Golden Compass" and two other books in the "His Dark Materials Trilogy." According to a board statement, "Philip Pullman's trilogy of atheistic ideology, carefully couched within the realm of fantasy for young readers, is in direct
- [How Not To Deal With The Media](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/20/how-not-to-deal-with-media/) - Newfoundland paper 'The Telegram' recently published an article detailing an email trail between Newfoundland journalist Craig Westcott and Elizabeth Matthews, the Director of Communications for Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams. Check out the article - it makes very interesting reading. Matthews has blacklisted Westcott for a while due to his criticism of the Premier.
- [Social Media Training Wiki: An Update](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/19/social-media-training-wiki-update/) - Just over a month ago I threw out a challenge to the online PR community: [...] As a community, let's develop a best-practice social media 101 training program. Let's create a one-day, scratch-the-surface program that will help employees who are new to this social media thing to find their feet. Let's put it out there
- [3 Reasons Why Live-Blogging (And Twittering) Is A Good Thing](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/17/3-reasons-why-live-blogging-and/) - I just want to take a few moments to give my thoughts on a debate that has bounced around a bit recently - whether or not live blogging is a good thing. Doug Haslam wrote a great post recently for Media Bullseye, looking at both sides of the issue. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson also
- [Loss Of Control Is A Myth](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/16/loss-of-control-is-myth/) - I often see "loss of control of the message" cited as a barrier to entry into social media for companies. Today, I'm here to say that loss of control is a myth. Traditionally, communications has always been about message control: Carefully crafted soundbites Carefully staged events Carefully choreographed photo-ops. All of these aim to keep
- [Spokeo - Cool or Creepy?](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/14/spokeo-cool-or-creepy/) - Spokeo (www.spokeo.com) is a very interesting new tool that allows you to track your contacts' activities over 30-plus different social media sites.The site makes a point of speaking to privacy concerns, but does it go too far? Is this a very cool tool, or is it too close to privacy invasion? Mobile post sent by
- [Canadian ISP Rogers Hijacking Web Pages](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/12/canadian-isp-rogers-hijacking-web-pages/) - Rogers stirred up a storm this week with revelations that it is splicing its content into other companies' webpages. All of the reports I've seen have referred to this under the banner of "net neutrality." For those of you that don't speak geek, here's the basic gist. Rogers is, in essence, forcing customers to view
- [The Power of Twitter](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/11/power-of-twitter/) - Musing about the power of Twitter to enable companies to get quick feedback about their products or ideas.Mobile post sent by davefleet using Utterz. Replies. mp3
- [How Jaiku Can Succeed: End Those Walled Gardens](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/10/how-jaiku-can-succeed-end-those-walled/) - Jaiku generated a lot of interest this October when it announced its acquisition by Google. Suddenly Jaiku accounts were in high demand (not least because they shut off non-invited registrations). Around this time, along with many others, I decided to find out what the fuss was about and explore Jaiku (I also wanted to be
- [Utterz/Seesmic - What's The Business Use?](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/09/utterzseesmic-what-business-use/) - Utterz and Seesmic are the hot new thing right now. While they're both still in testing (Utterz is in beta and Seesmic is in alpha), a large number of social media types are using them regularly. These tools are very cool. Mobile looks to be the next big thing for the web, and these guys
- [Sean Moffitt Buzzes About Word Of Mouth](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/06/sean-moffitt-buzzes-about-word-of-mouth/) - I had the pleasure of attending a recent presentation by Sean Moffitt of Agent Wildfire to a speaker series event at work. I've followed Sean's blog for a while, so I was excited to meet him and hear his thoughts on word of mouth marketing. I wasn't disappointed. I live-blogged Sean's presentation; unfortunately my fingers
- [Event Write-Up: Richard Binhammer (RichardatDELL) Speaks At Third Tuesday Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/05/event-write-up-richard-binhammer/) - Richard Binhammer, aka RichardatDELL, dropped by Third Tuesday Toronto today for a fantastic presentation about the work Dell is doing in the social media space. I live-blogged the conversation, along with Connie Crosby (see our feeds here and here). To illustrate my perspective going in - I was on the receiving end of Dell's old
- [A Day In My Social Media Life](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/04/day-in-my-social-media-life/) - A little while back I wrote about my social media life and my excitement (and despair) at the number of social media tools I use. At the time, I posted a rapid-fire description of a day in my life. I thought I'd take a moment to take a slightly more thorough look at how new
- [Dear Santa 2.0: My Social Media/PR Christmas List](https://davefleet.com/2007/12/02/dear-santa-20-my-social-mediapr/) - Santa Claus North Pole, HOH OHO (sorry Aussies) Canada December 2, 2007 Dear Santa 2.0, I've been good this year... I really have: I've started two new blogs I've tried really hard to stop lurking and get more involved in this social media thing. In fact, I tried so hard that I found it hard
- [Facebook Beacon - A Debate](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/30/facebook-beacon-debate/) - I had a great email conversation with a couple of colleagues at work today about the furor over Facebook's Beacon application. With their permission, I'm posting the conversation here (with their names removed) for your thoughts: Subject: Facebook Beacon ME: The latest in a loooong series of stories this week about Facebook's Beacon system: http://valleywag.com/tech/your-privacy-is-an-illusion/does-facebook-hate-christmas-327664.php
- [Hyperlocal Media Coverage Of California Malibu Fires](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/27/hyperlocal-media-coverage-of-california/) - While researching my presentation for the recent Talk Is Cheap unconference, I came across a fantastic post by Mark Glazer. Alongside discussing the response of media outlets to the first set of fires, Glazer noted the lack of hyper-local coverage of the fires. What many people who are evacuated really want is simple information on
- [RichardatDell Visits Third Tuesday Toronto](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/26/richardatdell-visits-third-tuesday/) - Richard Binhammer, aka RichardatDell, will speak at a Third Tuesday Toronto (which I'm quickly realizing is possibly the most arbitrary name ever) on December 4. Richard is one of the key figures behind Dell's emergence from Jeff Jarvis's Dell Hell as a social media-savvy company, and his insights into Dell's social media efforts should make
- [ING Direct's Tentative Social Media Effort](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/26/ing-direct-tentative-social-media/) - I received an email today from ING Direct. Normally their emails go straight into my trash folder, but this one caught my eye. This one advertised a contest leveraging social media. The Canadian Superstar Saver Search (try saying that three times quickly) is straightforward - create a video explaining the creative ways you save money,
- [Now Is Gone: Your Boss Needs This Book](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/25/now-is-gone-your-boss-needs-this-book/) - If you (or your boss) find yourself confused, apprehensive or unsure about delving into the world of new media, then Now Is Gone is for you. Communications professionals are in the middle of a tumultuous period. The Internet has done more than just change the way people buy goods or play games; it has changed
- [The Shameful Strategies Behind Many Viral Videos](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/22/shameful-strategies-behind-many-viral/) - TechCrunch posted a very interesting guest post today by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, who talks about the tactics his company uses to drive people to view videos on YouTube. Greenberg co-founded The Comotion Group, a "viral marketing" firm. He boasts that in the past three months he's achieved 20 million views for his clients. However, I'm
- [CaseCamp Toronto 6 Write-Up](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/20/casecamp-toronto-6-write-up/) - Case Camp Toronto 6, held tonight, featured a series of fascinating presentations. I live-tweeted the event, along with Joseph Thornley (here), Connie Crosby (here) and Wayne MacPhail (here) - together we managed a pretty good summary of the event. I've stolen memories from all of the above to generate this post. Mobile Marketing for Levis
- [Moving On - My New Role](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/19/moving-on-my-new-role/) - After several great years in the Ontario government's Cabinet Office, the time has come for me to move on. I've mentioned the new job a few times recently, but I've waited to talk widely until my new colleagues were informed. Well, that cat is now out of the bag so here goes... Background The last
- [Why I Worry About "Social Media Strategy"](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/18/why-i-worry-about-media-strategy/) - I'm a little worried at how I've seen the term "social media strategy" thrown about recently. I'm starting to overhear things like, "we're also working on a social media strategy." I worry about this. A lot. I think I worried aloud about it four or five times during my 20-minute session at Talk Is Cheap
- [Social Media and Crisis Communications: My Talk Is Cheap Presentation](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/16/social-media-and-crisis-communications/) - Following-on from my last post, last night I presented a session on the crossover between social media and crisis communications at the Talk Is Cheap unconference. I spoke in particular about the 2007 California Wildfires and how social media could have been used more effectively (while appropriately) in that situation - in essence a longer,
- [Talk Is Cheap - A Stunning Success](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/16/talk-is-cheap-stunning-success/) - Last night I attended the Talk Is Cheap social media unconference hosted by Gary Schlee and his students at Centennial College in Toronto (I presented too, but more on that in a later post). In my view, the event was a rousing success. Over 200 people registered (about 25% more than the organizers expected) and
- [Using Social Media To Create Social Media Training](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/12/using-social-media-to-create-social/) - Communications training courses on traditional strategies and tactics just don't cut it any more. The ever-increasing rate of change on the Internet, and its emerging impact on media consumption, means organizations need to seriously consider offering social media training to their employees. This environment, along with a few well-documented faux-pas by PR practitioners, has had
- [Talk Is Cheap Unconference - This Thursday](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/12/talk-is-cheap-unconference-this/) - The Talk Is Cheap unconference is less than a week away! Organized by Gary Schlee (who writes the A Class Act blog) and his class from Centennial College, the event is this Thursday, November 15, in Toronto. It promises to be a great night for PR professionals interested in finding out more about the world
- [Wetpaint: Merging Wikis With Discussion Forums](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/11/wetpaint-merging-wikis-with-discussion/) - I just discovered Wetpaint - a free wiki-hosting site that fully integrates a discussion forum into every wiki. This site is very cool - it produces great-looking sites and has already attracted big names like CSI: NY, Food & Wine magazine, fuse.tv and Mythbusters as clients. According to a recent release, Wetpaint currently hosts almost
- [Public Relations Professionals Need To Get The Basics Right](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/09/public-relations-professionals-need-to/) - In the wake of the ongoing bad PR pitches storm, I had a *slap forehead* moment this week when I (finally) realized the problem isn't just about public relations professionals not 'getting' blogger relations. It's not about people upgrading their skills to deal with this new media environment. This is about public relations professionals getting
- [Fan-sumers, or MyFace? Facebook's Social Ads](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/07/fan-sumers-or-myface-facebook-social/) - Jeremiah Owyang, through twitter, drew my attention to Facebook's announcement today of its latest advertising product - social ads. Essentially, brands can now get their own profiles just like individuals. Users can sign up as 'fans' of those brands (update: hence Jeremiah's coining of the term "Fan-sumer"), and can then share information about those brands
- [Nightcap with Giovanni Rodriguez](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/06/nightcap-with-giovanni-rodriguez/) - A giant hat tip to Joseph Thornley for organizing another Third Tuesday Toronto event tomorrow night. This promises to be a real treat. As Joseph puts it: Giovanni is a leading pr blogger, a principal in The Conversation Group social media consultancy and a Research Fellow and Advisory Board member of the Society for New
- [PR Squared's Blogger Relations Bookmark](https://davefleet.com/2007/11/01/pr-squared-blogger-relations-bookmark/) - Todd Defren posted a great Blogger Relations Bookmark on his PR Squared blog today. The bookmark is, in part, a response to the storm that Chris Anderson kicked-off this week with his "Sorry PR People: You're Blocked" post, where he named and shamed people he felt had emailed him inappropriately. I only want two kinds
- [5 Keys To Creating A Cutting-Edge Online Newsroom](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/30/5-keys-to-creating-cutting-edge-online/) - What should an online newsroom look like? I've spent a fair bit of time in the last few days researching the current state of online newsrooms. I've looked at the private sector and the public sector, both within Canada (federal, provincial and municipal) and internationally. My conclusion: most organizations aren't using their newsrooms effectively. From
- [Podcamp Toronto 2008 - February 23-24, 2008](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/28/podcamp-toronto-2008-february-23-24/) - Jay Moonah, of Uncle Seth and the Online Music Marketing podcast, announced today that registration for Podcamp Toronto 2008 is now open. The conference will take place February 23-24, 2008 at the Rogers Communication Centre at Ryerson University. If last year's lineup is anything to go by, this should be an amazing couple of days.
- [California Wildfires - Using New Media to Communicate In A Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/23/california-wildfires-using-new-media-to/) - Immediacy is one of the great things about new media/web 2.0. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the coverage of the devastating wildfires down in California recently. I'm fully aware that crisis communications must focus on traditional channels - TV, radio, print - in today's media environment. However, quick and responsive new media tactics
- [My Social Media Life And Why Walled Gardens Don't Work](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/21/my-social-media-life-and-why-walled/) - While out running recently, I re-listened to a Six Pixels of Separation podcast during which Heidi Miller talked about the social media overload in her life. I got to thinking about how I feel about social media overload and the implications it has for the tools I use. I first dipped my toe into creating
- [Information R/evolution](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/19/information-revolution/) - Check out this amazing video on how the Internet is forcing us to adapt the way we organize, find and indeed think about information. I don't like to gush about things, but this is cool. What's more, it's true. Hat tip: Ed Lee from Blogging Me Blogging You. Thanks Ed.
- [Interview: LearnAsOne Founder Steve Heyes](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/18/interview-learnasone-founder-steve/) - LearnAsOne is a new charity set up to fund new schools and support their running costs throughout the developing world. I recently had a chance to ask Steve Heyes, founder of LearnAsOne (and an ex-roommate of mine from university) about his thoughts on social media, how he's using it to promote his organization and the
- [5 Questions From 'New Media' Newcomers](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/14/5-blogging-questions-from-new-media/) - I attended an IABC seminar this week where Cyrus Mavalwala and Joseph Thornley explored the transition from 'old' to 'new' media. Joseph structured his presentation around some interesting questions posed by the audience. Five questions in particular captured my attention, so I thought I'd share my perspective on them: Why Should I Care About Blogging?
- [Talk Is Cheap - Toronto PR Unconference](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/11/talk-is-cheap-toronto-pr-unconference/) - Gary Schlee, professor of Corporate Communications and Public Relations at Centennial College, today announced Talk Is Cheap, "a social media unconference for corporate communications and public relations folks." The conference takes place the evening of November 15 at The Centre for Creative Communications, a campus of Centennial College. For more information, check out details of
- [Thoughts On FacebookCampToronto2](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/09/thoughts-on-facebookcamptoronto2/) - I attended FacebookCampToronto2 tonight at Toronto's wonderful MaRS building. Surprisingly, much of the content was marketing-related, which was a pleasant surprise - I expected it to be very technical. I live-blogged the event on Twitter, but in hindsight here are a few of the moments that stood out for me: Roy Pereira from Refresh Partners:
- [Panel Discussion: "Is The News Release Dead?"](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/07/panel-discussion-is-news-release-dead/) - Last Thursday I attended a panel discussion, organized by my department, entitled "Is The News Release Dead?" We had a great mix of speakers: David Jones, Senior VP at Fleishman-Hillard April Lindgren from the Ryerson University School of Journalism David Wolmsley, National Editor at the Globe and Mail The panel members provided an interesting mix
- [Support Builds For Social Media News Releases](https://davefleet.com/2007/10/03/tod-maffin-calls-for-social-media-news/) - CBC's Tod Maffin wrote today about his frustration with the traditional news release: There’s the lead paragraph, followed by some bullshit quote from a senior executive (”I’m pleased to announce the blah blah blah…”) and then usually a string of meaningless brand names… er BRAND NAMES… and no real sense of the news value or
- [Runners' Lounge - Social Networking For Runners](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/30/runner-lounge-social-networking-for/) - A new social network for runners, the Runners' Lounge, launched this Friday. Social networking sites are the perfect forum for runners - running is a social activity, it's easily accessible, it has a large number of passionate participants, and its community thrives on exchanging resources. As the site states: Runners' LoungeTM is a social running
- [Porsche Spins Its Wheels... Into Trouble?](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/26/porsche-spins-its-wheels-into-trouble/) - Porsche got reasonable coverage of its recent announcement that it will cut its Canadian prices by 10 per cent over last year to compensate for the strong Canadian dollar. "We cannot ignore our customers and dealers in Canada who can look to the U.S. and recognize a substantial price difference," said Peter Schwarzenbauer, president and
- [How To Lose Your Credibility: Talk About "Hits"](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/24/how-to-lose-your-credibility-talk-about/) - I read a transcript of a media event at work the other day, and one exchange between a reporter and the event's speaker caught my eye. Reporter: You said there are 140,000 hits on the xxx website. Is there indication that xxx is kind of catching on with the public? Speaker: ...The website is growing
- [Privacy Commissioner of Canada Launches Blog](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/23/privacy-commissioner-of-canada-launches/) - Canada's government has gone 2.0. Ok, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. Federal government websites - of which there are many - are still stuck firmly in 1.0-land (and even that is generous). However, in what I see as a highly significant move, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently launched its own blog.
- [The Importance Of Grammar In PR Blogs](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/19/importance-of-grammar-in-pr-blogs/) - How important is grammar on blogs? I listened to the latest episode of Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation while out on my run the other day. One thing that Mitch said about spell-checking your blog caught my ear: "...there was this spirit of blogging that was sort of just 'visceral and get it out
- [Twitter: More Than Just An Online Water Cooler](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/16/twitter-more-than-just-online-water/) - Where does Twitter go from here? Having resisted for some time I just signed up this week. I'm already hooked. As great a social networking tool as it is, though, I think Twitter's potential business spin-offs will be even better. I recall Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, on For Immediate Release, describing Twitter as an
- [Twitter With Me](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/14/twitter-with-me/) - My social media education continues; I've signed-up for Twitter. If you're interested in my musings, feel free to add me (davefleet). I'm curious about how this will work. I've often thought that Twitter works well for interactive ad agency-types, but might not work so well for those of us in less cutting-edge environments where the
- [Finding The Middle Ground With Social Media News Releases](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/11/finding-middle-ground-with-social-media/) - Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications posted last week about "The End Of The Social Media Release." He's tired of the format being 'special' and wants to see it become the norm. I'm not sure this is an ideal goal. I love the social media release format. In our technology-driven world, pumping out release after old-fashioned
- [iSorry - Apple's Handling Of The iPhone Price Issue](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/08/isorry-apples-handling-of-iphone-price/) - Steve Jobs stirred up a storm this week when he announced a $200 price reduction for the iPhone just two months after its release (see the video here) Not surprisingly, Apple's early adopters, who paid full price for the iPhone not long ago, weren't too happy. Importantly for Apple, early adopters also tend to be
- [Has Online News Killed The Friday Afternoon Announcement?](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/06/has-online-news-killed-friday-afternoon/) - Last Friday, Google announced that it would start hosting material from several large news agencies, including Associated Press, Canadian Press, the UK Press Association and more, through Google News. Not surprisingly, this has been a little controversial - the announcement raised concerns that this change will take traffic and revenue away from other online news
- [The Double-Edged YouTube Sword](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/04/double-edged-youtube-sword/) - Events in Ontario's political world brought the effects of new media on public relations into focus yesterday. Up front: Once again, this isn't a political blog - I value my job. So, I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this. You can find the two sides to the story here and here, and
- [Google - Love Them Or Hate Them?](https://davefleet.com/2007/09/03/google-love-them-or-hate-them/) - It's fashionable nowadays to rant against Google. Bashing Microsoft used to be the in thing, but it's passé now; all the cool kids are Google-hating. I'm going to be the uncool kid in the corner saying, "hold on a minute." I'll admit it, Google sets itself up for the abuse. As the Internet leader (for
- [Making The Best Of A Photo Op](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/28/making-best-of-photo-op/) - A story by Paul Berton in the London Free Press, titled "Making the best of a photo op," caught my eye recently. I try to shy away from government-related posts to avoid conflict with my day job, but I think this is useful advice regardless of whether you're in government or not. This is my
- [Blog Moving To A New Home - Fleet Street PR](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/26/blog-moving-to-new-home-fleet-street-pr/) - Just a quick note - I've moved my blog to a new address - FleetStreetPR.com. Be sure to update your bookmarks! Thanks to Michelle Sullivan (blog and work site) for having the idea for the new name at the Geek Dinner last week.
- [Video Game Ads: Think Carefully](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/24/video-game-ads-think-carefully/) - Advertising within video games is a hot topic right now. As video games become more and more mainstream, they become more attractive as advertising vehicles. Spending on ads in video games is expected to grow 33% a year over the next three years, to roughly $1bn by 2011. This isn't a new topic - a
- [Good Times At The Geek Dinner](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/22/good-times-at-geek-dinner/) - I went to my first Geek Dinner Toronto (got to love the name!) tonight. What a great gathering of 60 or so marketers, communicators, advertising execs, pr professionals, bloggers and podcasters!. I love situations like this, so I really enjoyed the opportunity to get out there and meet some other Torontonians involved in this community
- [A Bad Pitch And Some Simple Tips For Getting It Right](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/21/bad-pitch-and-some-simple-tips-for/) - A little while back I received my first pitch as a blogger, which was very exciting for a newbie like me. As a communications professional, I'm perhaps more open to pitches than some other people. I'm open to being pitched. At the same time, I have some idea of what a pitch should look like.
- [The Front Fell Off](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/16/front-fell-off/) - Forget media training - here's a great video parody of a CEO in full damage control mode, courtesy of comedians John Clarke and Bryan Dawe. Enjoy: (Thanks to David Griner, via Presurfer, for drawing my attention to this)
- [Utah Mine Collapse - A Communications Crisis](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/16/utah-mine-collapse-communications-in/) - Unless you've had your head in a box recently, you know about the Utah mine collapse and the desperate search for six miners trapped inside. The owner of Crandall Canyon mine, Robert Murray, isn't known for being shy, and this is no exception. The outspoken Murray has been front-and-center since this crisis began. A lot
- [BooneOakley's Innovative Mailing System](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/14/booneoakleys-innovative-mailing-system/) - BooneOakley has generated a lot of good coverage with its innovative approach to delivering its response to the RFP for the Saucony shoes account. Rather than mailing-in its bid, the company dispatched three staffers to run the document in to Saucony's office and blog about it (fittingly, the final leg of the run, completing the
- [Word Of Mouth Genius](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/14/word-of-mouth-genius/) - This is genius: As part of a new ad campaign for Carlsberg, Saatchi & Saatchi went around London dropping £5,000 in £10 and £20 notes. Each note had a removable sticker reading, "Carlsberg don't do litter. But if they did it would probably be the best litter in the world." When's the last time you
- [Simple Principles For Great Podcasting](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/14/simple-principles-for-great-podcasting/) - I'm a podcast addict. Right now I have more unlistened-to podcasts than my poor MP3 player can physically store - over 200 at last count - despite getting through 15-20 every week. So, despite not podcasting myself (I think I talk enough already), I feel like I have some justification in identifying what makes a
- [Across The Sound iPhone Sponsorship - A Useful But Extreme Experiment](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/10/across-sound-iphone-sponsorship-good/) - Joseph Jaffe has created some waves recently with his offer of sponsorship of his podcast in exchange for an iPhone. This novel approach to monetizing a podcast is pretty controversial. Basically, on episode #83 of Across The Sound, Jaffe offered sponsorship of an episode of the podcast to the first user that sent him an
- [Are Companies Missing The Point Of Social Media, Or Is Facebook Missing An Opportunity?](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/10/are-companies-missing-point-of-social/) - The web is full of story after story right now about companies cancelling their advertising on Facebook because of their potential association with dubious content. In the latest move, Reuters reports: "The British government has halted its advertising on the social networking Web site Facebook over concerns about how its ads are displayed" I listened
- [CBC's Blogging Guidelines - A Step Too Far](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/05/cbcs-blogging-guidelines-step-too-far/) - As reported on the Inside the CBC blog, the CBC seems to be cracking down on the online activities of its employees (thanks to Joseph Thornley at Pro PR for flagging it on his blog): Any CBC employee who wants to start a personal blog which "clearly associates them with CBC/Radio-Canada" now requires their supervisor's
- [YearlyKos Convention: Senator Dodd Confronts Bill O'Reilly](https://davefleet.com/2007/08/03/yearlykos-convention-senator-dodd/) - Just a quick thought. Check out this video of Senator Chris Dodd calling Bill O'Reilly out on his real agenda for criticizing the YearlyKos Convention and the US presidential candidates that are attending. This reminds me a little of Jon Stewart's infamous interview on CNN's 'Crossfire' (transcript here) that resulted in CNN cancelling Crossfire. Is
- [Media Pitches - Tips From The Other Side](https://davefleet.com/2007/07/31/media-pitches-tips-from-other-side/) - Media pitches are a big part of any significant announcements, but have you ever wondered if we're doing them well? If we're drawing journalists into our stories, or driving them away? If we could pitch more effectively? If you have, check out this Inside PR podcast where the hosts, David Jones and Terry Fallis, interview
- [Facebook: Where's The Line?](https://davefleet.com/2007/07/29/check-out-this-blog-post-by-pat-walters/) - Check out this article by Pat Walters at the Poynter Institute, talking about Facebook and what's in it for journalists. While Facebook is, itself, becoming the news (see here, here and here for just a couple of recent stories), Walters asks -- what can the social networking site do to help journalists with 'regular' news
- [Democratic Debate... Or Branding Genius?](https://davefleet.com/2007/07/26/democratic-debate-or-branding-genius/) - Mitch Joel wrote on his blog this week that the real winner of the recent democratic presidential debate wasn't a candidate, but was YouTube. I completely agree. You've got to admit, Monday's debate was marketing genius. Almost all of the reporting (and blogging) I've seen on this has been about the companies, not the candidates.
- [A Cautionary Tale](https://davefleet.com/2007/07/24/cautionary-tale/) - Here's an interesting article from the BBC website discussing the possibility of identity theft with data from Facebook and other social networking sites. Not exactly groundbreaking, but a good reminder - be careful with what you post online!
- [TV's Moral 'Standards'](https://davefleet.com/2005/01/01/tvs-moral-standards/) - Cast your mind back a bit. Almost a year ago (February 1, 2004), Janet Jackson apparently shocked the world with her revealing performance with Justin Timberlake at Superbowl XXXVIII. The incident dented the careers of the two stars, and the impact is still being felt through TV censorship now. Funny - although I was watching,

## Pages

- [Contact](https://davefleet.com/contact/) - You can reach me in a bunch of ways. The most obvious is email: You can also reach me through: LinkedIn Twitter (username: davefleet) Facebook Flickr (username: dave_fleet)
- [Privacy Policy](https://davefleet.com/privacy-policy/) - Who we are Our website address is: http://davefleet.com. What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from
- [Pitching Tips](https://davefleet.com/pitching-tips/) - If you're about to pitch me, I have five guidelines for you (plus one for luck): Know what I write about Know where I live Remember my name Write to me personally Use the 'to' field in your email Bonus: Get to know me first #1: Know what I write about I write about social
- [About](https://davefleet.com/about-dave-fleet/) - Who Is Dave Fleet? Dave Fleet is Executive Vice President and National Practice Lead, Digital at Edelman. In practice that means Dave leads Edelman’s 60-person Canadian digital team across Edelman’s Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa offices. Dave has spearheaded the transformation of Edelman Canada’s 60-person digital team into a fully-integrated digital marketing group providing

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://davefleet.com/category/uncategorized/)
- [101](https://davefleet.com/category/101/)
- [201](https://davefleet.com/category/201/)
- [301](https://davefleet.com/category/301/)
- [Agency life](https://davefleet.com/category/agency-life/)
- [best practices](https://davefleet.com/category/best-practices/)
- [blogger relations](https://davefleet.com/category/blogger-relations/)
- [blogging](https://davefleet.com/category/blogging/)
- [books](https://davefleet.com/category/books/)
- [branding](https://davefleet.com/category/branding/)
- [career](https://davefleet.com/category/career/)
- [case studies](https://davefleet.com/category/case-studies/)
- [communications](https://davefleet.com/category/communications/)
- [communications planning](https://davefleet.com/category/communications-planning/)
- [consulting](https://davefleet.com/category/consulting/)
- [crisis communications](https://davefleet.com/category/crisis-communications/)
- [customer service](https://davefleet.com/category/customer-service/)
- [ethics](https://davefleet.com/category/ethics/)
- [event planning](https://davefleet.com/category/event-planning/)
- [events](https://davefleet.com/category/events/)
- [facebook](https://davefleet.com/category/facebook/)
- [facebookcamp](https://davefleet.com/category/events/facebookcamp/)
- [Google](https://davefleet.com/category/google/)
- [govcamp](https://davefleet.com/category/events/govcamp/)
- [government](https://davefleet.com/category/government/)
- [how to](https://davefleet.com/category/how-to/)
- [issues management](https://davefleet.com/category/issues-management/)
- [jobs](https://davefleet.com/category/jobs/)
- [location](https://davefleet.com/category/location/)
- [management](https://davefleet.com/category/management/)
- [marketing](https://davefleet.com/category/marketing/)
- [measurement](https://davefleet.com/category/measurement/)
- [media](https://davefleet.com/category/media/)
- [media relations](https://davefleet.com/category/media-relations/)
- [Mesh08](https://davefleet.com/category/events/mesh08/)
- [MeshMarketing](https://davefleet.com/category/events/meshmarketing/)
- [micro-blogging](https://davefleet.com/category/micro-blogging/)
- [miscellaneous](https://davefleet.com/category/miscellaneous/)
- [mobile](https://davefleet.com/category/mobile/)
- [monitoring](https://davefleet.com/category/monitoring/)
- [morals](https://davefleet.com/category/morals/)
- [musings](https://davefleet.com/category/musings/)
- [MySpace](https://davefleet.com/category/myspace/)
- [news release](https://davefleet.com/category/news-release/)
- [PAB08](https://davefleet.com/category/events/pab08/)
- [personal](https://davefleet.com/category/personal/)
- [photo ops](https://davefleet.com/category/photo-ops/)
- [pitching](https://davefleet.com/category/pitching/)
- [podcamp](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/)
- [podcampmtl](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/podcampmtl/)
- [podcamptoronto](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/podcamptoronto/)
- [podcamptoronto2008](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/podcamptoronto2008/)
- [podcamptoronto2009](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/podcamptoronto2009/)
- [podcamptoronto2010](https://davefleet.com/category/events/podcamp/podcamptoronto2010/)
- [podcast](https://davefleet.com/category/podcast/)
- [politics](https://davefleet.com/category/politics/)
- [pr](https://davefleet.com/category/pr/)
- [privacy](https://davefleet.com/category/privacy/)
- [public relations](https://davefleet.com/category/public-relations/)
- [search](https://davefleet.com/category/search/)
- [smnr](https://davefleet.com/category/smnr/)
- [social bookmarking](https://davefleet.com/category/social-bookmarking/)
- [social media](https://davefleet.com/category/social-media/)
- [social media monitoring](https://davefleet.com/category/social-media-monitoring/)
- [social media newsroom](https://davefleet.com/category/social-media-newsroom/)
- [Social Mediators](https://davefleet.com/category/social-mediators/)
- [social networks](https://davefleet.com/category/social-networks/)
- [socialmediabreakfast](https://davefleet.com/category/events/socialmediabreakfast/)
- [spin](https://davefleet.com/category/spin/)
- [statistics](https://davefleet.com/category/statistics/)
- [strategy](https://davefleet.com/category/strategy/)
- [tagging](https://davefleet.com/category/tagging/)
- [third tuesday](https://davefleet.com/category/events/third-tuesday/)
- [Thornley Fallis Communications](https://davefleet.com/category/thornley-fallis-communications/)
- [tools](https://davefleet.com/category/tools/)
- [training](https://davefleet.com/category/training/)
- [trends](https://davefleet.com/category/trends/)
- [Twitter](https://davefleet.com/category/twitter/)
- [unconference](https://davefleet.com/category/unconference/)
- [utterz](https://davefleet.com/category/utterz/)
- [video](https://davefleet.com/category/video/)
- [web 2.0](https://davefleet.com/category/web-20/)
- [web statistics](https://davefleet.com/category/web-statistics/)
- [Weekly Reads](https://davefleet.com/category/weekly-reads/)
- [wikis](https://davefleet.com/category/wikis/)
- [word of mouth](https://davefleet.com/category/word-of-mouth/)
- [writing](https://davefleet.com/category/writing/)
- [youtube](https://davefleet.com/category/youtube/)
- [BlogWorld](https://davefleet.com/category/events/blogworld/)
- [content](https://davefleet.com/category/social-media/content/)
- [Social at Scale](https://davefleet.com/category/social-media/social-at-scale/)
- [disinformation](https://davefleet.com/category/crisis-communications/disinformation/)

## Tags

- [101](https://davefleet.com/tag/101/)
- [2008](https://davefleet.com/tag/2008/)
- [accessibility](https://davefleet.com/tag/accessibility/)
- [adoption](https://davefleet.com/tag/adoption/)
- [advertising](https://davefleet.com/tag/advertising/)
- [agencies](https://davefleet.com/tag/agencies/)
- [agency](https://davefleet.com/tag/agency/)
- [aggregator](https://davefleet.com/tag/aggregator/)
- [AideRSS](https://davefleet.com/tag/aiderss/)
- [AIG](https://davefleet.com/tag/aig/)
- [Alexa](https://davefleet.com/tag/alexa/)
- [alipolicies](https://davefleet.com/tag/alipolicies/)
- [altruism](https://davefleet.com/tag/altruism/)
- [analysis](https://davefleet.com/tag/analysis/)
- [analytics](https://davefleet.com/tag/analytics/)
- [Andrea Reimer](https://davefleet.com/tag/andrea-reimer/)
- [announcement](https://davefleet.com/tag/announcement/)
- [assumptions](https://davefleet.com/tag/assumptions/)
- [Aston Martin](https://davefleet.com/tag/aston-martin/)
- [astroturfing](https://davefleet.com/tag/astroturfing/)
- [auction](https://davefleet.com/tag/auction/)
- [audience](https://davefleet.com/tag/audience/)
- [audiences](https://davefleet.com/tag/audiences/)
- [authenticity](https://davefleet.com/tag/authenticity/)
- [authority](https://davefleet.com/tag/authority/)
- [auto-dm](https://davefleet.com/tag/auto-dm/)
- [auto-responder](https://davefleet.com/tag/auto-responder/)
- [BackType Connect](https://davefleet.com/tag/backtype-connect/)
- [best practices](https://davefleet.com/tag/best-practices/)
- [billing](https://davefleet.com/tag/billing/)
- [blog](https://davefleet.com/tag/blog/)
- [blogger relations](https://davefleet.com/tag/blogger-relations/)
- [bloggerrelations](https://davefleet.com/tag/bloggerrelations/)
- [blogging](https://davefleet.com/tag/blogging/)
- [blogs](https://davefleet.com/tag/blogs/)
- [Bob Goyetche](https://davefleet.com/tag/bob-goyetche/)
- [bookmarks](https://davefleet.com/tag/bookmarks/)
- [books](https://davefleet.com/tag/books/)
- [Boston Marathon](https://davefleet.com/tag/boston-marathon/)
- [brand](https://davefleet.com/tag/brand/)
- [branding](https://davefleet.com/tag/branding/)
- [brandjacking](https://davefleet.com/tag/brandjacking/)
- [Brian Person](https://davefleet.com/tag/brian-person/)
- [Brian Solis](https://davefleet.com/tag/brian-solis/)
- [Bruce Weinstein](https://davefleet.com/tag/bruce-weinstein/)
- [budget](https://davefleet.com/tag/budget/)
- [business](https://davefleet.com/tag/business/)
- [business continuity](https://davefleet.com/tag/business-continuity/)
- [cache](https://davefleet.com/tag/cache/)
- [Canada](https://davefleet.com/tag/canada/)
- [cancer](https://davefleet.com/tag/cancer/)
- [cancer research](https://davefleet.com/tag/cancer-research/)
- [career](https://davefleet.com/tag/career/)
- [CBC Spark](https://davefleet.com/tag/cbc-spark/)
- [CES](https://davefleet.com/tag/ces/)
- [charity](https://davefleet.com/tag/charity/)
- [Charlene Li](https://davefleet.com/tag/charlene-li/)
- [Chat Catcher](https://davefleet.com/tag/chat-catcher/)
- [Chris Brogan](https://davefleet.com/tag/chris-brogan/)
- [Christmas](https://davefleet.com/tag/christmas/)
- [city tv](https://davefleet.com/tag/city-tv/)
- [cityonline](https://davefleet.com/tag/cityonline/)
- [clear writing](https://davefleet.com/tag/clear-writing/)
- [client](https://davefleet.com/tag/client/)
- [client agency dynamic](https://davefleet.com/tag/client-agency-dynamic/)
- [clients](https://davefleet.com/tag/clients/)
- [cloud](https://davefleet.com/tag/cloud/)
- [cluetrain manifesto](https://davefleet.com/tag/cluetrain-manifesto/)
- [cluetrainplus10](https://davefleet.com/tag/cluetrainplus10/)
- [CNW Group](https://davefleet.com/tag/cnw-group/)
- [Colin McKay](https://davefleet.com/tag/colin-mckay/)
- [com.motion](https://davefleet.com/tag/commotion/)
- [comment](https://davefleet.com/tag/comment/)
- [commenting](https://davefleet.com/tag/commenting/)
- [commitment](https://davefleet.com/tag/commitment/)
- [commmunications](https://davefleet.com/tag/commmunications/)
- [Common Craft Show](https://davefleet.com/tag/common-craft-show/)
- [CommonCraft](https://davefleet.com/tag/commoncraft/)
- [communication](https://davefleet.com/tag/communication/)
- [communications](https://davefleet.com/tag/communications/)
- [communications planning](https://davefleet.com/tag/communications-planning/)
- [community](https://davefleet.com/tag/community/)
- [community management](https://davefleet.com/tag/community-management/)
- [Compete](https://davefleet.com/tag/compete/)
- [Comscore](https://davefleet.com/tag/comscore/)
- [ComScore0](https://davefleet.com/tag/comscore0/)
- [conflict](https://davefleet.com/tag/conflict/)
- [consumer electronics show](https://davefleet.com/tag/consumer-electronics-show/)
- [content](https://davefleet.com/tag/content/)
- [content marketing](https://davefleet.com/tag/content-marketing/)
- [conversation](https://davefleet.com/tag/conversation/)
- [CoverItLive](https://davefleet.com/tag/coveritlive/)
- [crisis communications](https://davefleet.com/tag/crisis-communications/)
- [criticism](https://davefleet.com/tag/criticism/)
- [crowdsourcing](https://davefleet.com/tag/crowdsourcing/)
- [culture](https://davefleet.com/tag/culture/)
- [customer service](https://davefleet.com/tag/customer-service/)
- [customerservice](https://davefleet.com/tag/customerservice/)
- [cybersquatting](https://davefleet.com/tag/cybersquatting/)
- [danny brown](https://davefleet.com/tag/danny-brown/)
- [Dave Delaney](https://davefleet.com/tag/dave-delaney/)
- [Dave Fleet](https://davefleet.com/tag/dave-fleet/)
- [Dave Jones](https://davefleet.com/tag/dave-jones/)
- [David Armano](https://davefleet.com/tag/david-armano/)
- [David Jones](https://davefleet.com/tag/david-jones/)
- [David Lipson](https://davefleet.com/tag/david-lipson/)
- [delicious](https://davefleet.com/tag/delicious/)
- [design](https://davefleet.com/tag/design/)
- [digg](https://davefleet.com/tag/digg/)
- [digital](https://davefleet.com/tag/digital/)
- [disclosure](https://davefleet.com/tag/disclosure/)
- [discussion](https://davefleet.com/tag/discussion/)
- [Dominos](https://davefleet.com/tag/dominos/)
- [Doug Walker](https://davefleet.com/tag/doug-walker/)
- [ecosystem](https://davefleet.com/tag/ecosystem/)
- [Ed Lee](https://davefleet.com/tag/ed-lee/)
- [Edelman](https://davefleet.com/tag/edelman/)
- [Eden Spodek](https://davefleet.com/tag/eden-spodek/)
- [editing](https://davefleet.com/tag/editing/)
- [effort](https://davefleet.com/tag/effort/)
- [ego](https://davefleet.com/tag/ego/)
- [egosystem](https://davefleet.com/tag/egosystem/)
- [election](https://davefleet.com/tag/election/)
- [emergency management](https://davefleet.com/tag/emergency-management/)
- [engagement](https://davefleet.com/tag/engagement/)
- [engaging](https://davefleet.com/tag/engaging/)
- [enterprise](https://davefleet.com/tag/enterprise/)
- [ethics](https://davefleet.com/tag/ethics/)
- [evaluation](https://davefleet.com/tag/evaluation/)
- [event planning](https://davefleet.com/tag/event-planning/)
- [events](https://davefleet.com/tag/events/)
- [expectations](https://davefleet.com/tag/expectations/)
- [expert](https://davefleet.com/tag/expert/)
- [experts](https://davefleet.com/tag/experts/)
- [facebook](https://davefleet.com/tag/facebook/)
- [fake](https://davefleet.com/tag/fake/)
- [fbcamp](https://davefleet.com/tag/fbcamp/)
- [fbcto5](https://davefleet.com/tag/fbcto5/)
- [FeedBlitz](https://davefleet.com/tag/feedblitz/)
- [Feedburner](https://davefleet.com/tag/feedburner/)
- [flickr](https://davefleet.com/tag/flickr/)
- [flight 1549](https://davefleet.com/tag/flight-1549/)
- [focus](https://davefleet.com/tag/focus/)
- [follow](https://davefleet.com/tag/follow/)
- [follower](https://davefleet.com/tag/follower/)
- [following](https://davefleet.com/tag/following/)
- [For Immediate Release](https://davefleet.com/tag/for-immediate-release/)
- [Forrester](https://davefleet.com/tag/forrester/)
- [Foursquare](https://davefleet.com/tag/foursquare/)
- [Francis Wooby](https://davefleet.com/tag/francis-wooby/)
- [free](https://davefleet.com/tag/free/)
- [Freshbooks](https://davefleet.com/tag/freshbooks/)
- [FriendFeed](https://davefleet.com/tag/friendfeed/)
- [ghost blogging](https://davefleet.com/tag/ghost-blogging/)
- [globalization](https://davefleet.com/tag/globalization/)
- [Globe and Mail](https://davefleet.com/tag/globe-and-mail/)
- [goals](https://davefleet.com/tag/goals/)
- [Google](https://davefleet.com/tag/google/)
- [Google Reader](https://davefleet.com/tag/google-reader/)
- [Google Trends](https://davefleet.com/tag/google-trends/)
- [government](https://davefleet.com/tag/government/)
- [grammar](https://davefleet.com/tag/grammar/)
- [guidelines](https://davefleet.com/tag/guidelines/)
- [Guy Kawasaki](https://davefleet.com/tag/guy-kawasaki/)
- [HARO](https://davefleet.com/tag/haro/)
- [Help a Reporter Out](https://davefleet.com/tag/help-a-reporter-out/)
- [hiring](https://davefleet.com/tag/hiring/)
- [hohoto](https://davefleet.com/tag/hohoto/)
- [how to](https://davefleet.com/tag/how-to/)
- [HR](https://davefleet.com/tag/hr/)
- [HubSpot](https://davefleet.com/tag/hubspot/)
- [Hudson River](https://davefleet.com/tag/hudson-river/)
- [hyper-local](https://davefleet.com/tag/hyper-local/)
- [identity](https://davefleet.com/tag/identity/)
- [IE8](https://davefleet.com/tag/ie8/)
- [iGoogle](https://davefleet.com/tag/igoogle/)
- [Ike Pigott](https://davefleet.com/tag/ike-pigott/)
- [images](https://davefleet.com/tag/images/)
- [influencer](https://davefleet.com/tag/influencer/)
- [Inside PR](https://davefleet.com/tag/inside-pr/)
- [InsidePR](https://davefleet.com/tag/insidepr/)
- [Instagram](https://davefleet.com/tag/instagram/)
- [integrated](https://davefleet.com/tag/integrated/)
- [integration](https://davefleet.com/tag/integration/)
- [internal](https://davefleet.com/tag/internal/)
- [internal communication](https://davefleet.com/tag/internal-communication/)
- [International Olympic Committee](https://davefleet.com/tag/international-olympic-committee/)
- [internet](https://davefleet.com/tag/internet/)
- [investor](https://davefleet.com/tag/investor/)
- [IOC](https://davefleet.com/tag/ioc/)
- [iPad](https://davefleet.com/tag/ipad/)
- [issues management](https://davefleet.com/tag/issues-management/)
- [Jaiku](https://davefleet.com/tag/jaiku/)
- [jargon](https://davefleet.com/tag/jargon/)
- [Jason Falls](https://davefleet.com/tag/jason-falls/)
- [Jay Moonah](https://davefleet.com/tag/jay-moonah/)
- [Jesse Brown](https://davefleet.com/tag/jesse-brown/)
- [job](https://davefleet.com/tag/job/)
- [jobs](https://davefleet.com/tag/jobs/)
- [Joe Thornley](https://davefleet.com/tag/joe-thornley/)
- [Joseph Thornley](https://davefleet.com/tag/joseph-thornley/)
- [Josh Bernoff](https://davefleet.com/tag/josh-bernoff/)
- [journalism](https://davefleet.com/tag/journalism/)
- [Journalist Source](https://davefleet.com/tag/journalist-source/)
- [Julie Rusciolelli](https://davefleet.com/tag/julie-rusciolelli/)
- [Julien Smith](https://davefleet.com/tag/julien-smith/)
- [KD Paine](https://davefleet.com/tag/kd-paine/)
- [Keith Burtis](https://davefleet.com/tag/keith-burtis/)
- [kris reyes](https://davefleet.com/tag/kris-reyes/)
- [lawsuit](https://davefleet.com/tag/lawsuit/)
- [leadership](https://davefleet.com/tag/leadership/)
- [Lee LeFever](https://davefleet.com/tag/lee-lefever/)
- [legal](https://davefleet.com/tag/legal/)
- [lifecycle](https://davefleet.com/tag/lifecycle/)
- [lifestream](https://davefleet.com/tag/lifestream/)
- [Linkedin](https://davefleet.com/tag/linkedin/)
- [links](https://davefleet.com/tag/links/)
- [list](https://davefleet.com/tag/list/)
- [listening](https://davefleet.com/tag/listening/)
- [Live Mesh](https://davefleet.com/tag/live-mesh/)
- [live-blogging](https://davefleet.com/tag/live-blogging/)
- [location](https://davefleet.com/tag/location/)
- [Loic Le Meur](https://davefleet.com/tag/loic-le-meur/)
- [magpie](https://davefleet.com/tag/magpie/)
- [mainstream](https://davefleet.com/tag/mainstream/)
- [Malcolm Gladwell](https://davefleet.com/tag/malcolm-gladwell/)
- [management](https://davefleet.com/tag/management/)
- [Managing the Gray](https://davefleet.com/tag/managing-the-gray/)
- [Maple Leaf Foods](https://davefleet.com/tag/maple-leaf-foods/)
- [Marcel Lebrun](https://davefleet.com/tag/marcel-lebrun/)
- [Mark Blevis](https://davefleet.com/tag/mark-blevis/)
- [marketing](https://davefleet.com/tag/marketing/)
- [Marketing Over Coffee](https://davefleet.com/tag/marketing-over-coffee/)
- [marketings](https://davefleet.com/tag/marketings/)
- [Marketwire](https://davefleet.com/tag/marketwire/)
- [Marshall Kirkpatrick](https://davefleet.com/tag/marshall-kirkpatrick/)
- [math](https://davefleet.com/tag/math/)
- [Matt Bacak](https://davefleet.com/tag/matt-bacak/)
- [McCain](https://davefleet.com/tag/mccain/)
- [measurement](https://davefleet.com/tag/measurement/)
- [media](https://davefleet.com/tag/media/)
- [Media Bullseye](https://davefleet.com/tag/media-bullseye/)
- [Media Driving](https://davefleet.com/tag/media-driving/)
- [media relations](https://davefleet.com/tag/media-relations/)
- [meetup](https://davefleet.com/tag/meetup/)
- [Mesh](https://davefleet.com/tag/mesh/)
- [Mesh08](https://davefleet.com/tag/mesh08/)
- [mesh09](https://davefleet.com/tag/mesh09/)
- [meshmarketing](https://davefleet.com/tag/meshmarketing-2/)
- [messages](https://davefleet.com/tag/messages/)
- [messaging](https://davefleet.com/tag/messaging/)
- [metrics](https://davefleet.com/tag/metrics/)
- [Michael Arrington](https://davefleet.com/tag/michael-arrington/)
- [Michael O'Connor Clarke](https://davefleet.com/tag/michael-oconnor-clarke/)
- [micro-blogging](https://davefleet.com/tag/micro-blogging/)
- [microplaza](https://davefleet.com/tag/microplaza/)
- [Microsoft](https://davefleet.com/tag/microsoft/)
- [Mike Kujawski](https://davefleet.com/tag/mike-kujawski/)
- [miscellaneous](https://davefleet.com/tag/miscellaneous/)
- [Mitch Joel](https://davefleet.com/tag/mitch-joel/)
- [mobile](https://davefleet.com/tag/mobile/)
- [mobile commerce](https://davefleet.com/tag/mobile-commerce/)
- [Molson](https://davefleet.com/tag/molson/)
- [mom bloggers](https://davefleet.com/tag/mom-bloggers/)
- [mommy bloggers](https://davefleet.com/tag/mommy-bloggers/)
- [monitoring](https://davefleet.com/tag/monitoring/)
- [MSNBC](https://davefleet.com/tag/msnbc/)
- [National Post](https://davefleet.com/tag/national-post/)
- [Neil Gorman](https://davefleet.com/tag/neil-gorman/)
- [Nestlé](https://davefleet.com/tag/nestle/)
- [news release](https://davefleet.com/tag/news-release/)
- [newspapers](https://davefleet.com/tag/newspapers/)
- [Nora Young](https://davefleet.com/tag/nora-young/)
- [Obama](https://davefleet.com/tag/obama/)
- [objectives](https://davefleet.com/tag/objectives/)
- [Olympic](https://davefleet.com/tag/olympic/)
- [Ontario](https://davefleet.com/tag/ontario/)
- [outreach](https://davefleet.com/tag/outreach/)
- [PAB08](https://davefleet.com/tag/pab08/)
- [pab2008](https://davefleet.com/tag/pab2008/)
- [Pamela Fayerman](https://davefleet.com/tag/pamela-fayerman/)
- [Parker Mason](https://davefleet.com/tag/parker-mason/)
- [participation](https://davefleet.com/tag/participation/)
- [Paul Gillin](https://davefleet.com/tag/paul-gillin/)
- [pclo09](https://davefleet.com/tag/pclo09/)
- [pcmtl](https://davefleet.com/tag/pcmtl/)
- [pcto09](https://davefleet.com/tag/pcto09/)
- [pcto2010](https://davefleet.com/tag/pcto2010/)
- [performance](https://davefleet.com/tag/performance/)
- [persistent](https://davefleet.com/tag/persistent/)
- [persistent search](https://davefleet.com/tag/persistent-search/)
- [personal](https://davefleet.com/tag/personal/)
- [personal branding](https://davefleet.com/tag/personal-branding/)
- [personas](https://davefleet.com/tag/personas/)
- [Peter Shankman](https://davefleet.com/tag/peter-shankman/)
- [phishing](https://davefleet.com/tag/phishing/)
- [photography](https://davefleet.com/tag/photography/)
- [photos](https://davefleet.com/tag/photos/)
- [pitching](https://davefleet.com/tag/pitching/)
- [plain language](https://davefleet.com/tag/plain-language/)
- [plan](https://davefleet.com/tag/plan/)
- [planning](https://davefleet.com/tag/planning/)
- [plugins](https://davefleet.com/tag/plugins/)
- [Plurk](https://davefleet.com/tag/plurk/)
- [podcamp](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamp/)
- [PodCamp London](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamp-london/)
- [podcamp montreal](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamp-montreal/)
- [PodCamp Toronto](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamp-toronto/)
- [podcamptoronto](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamptoronto/)
- [podcamptoronto2008](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamptoronto2008/)
- [podcamptoronto2010](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcamptoronto2010/)
- [Podcasters Across Borders](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcasters-across-borders/)
- [podcasting](https://davefleet.com/tag/podcasting/)
- [policies](https://davefleet.com/tag/policies/)
- [politics](https://davefleet.com/tag/politics/)
- [Pollara](https://davefleet.com/tag/pollara/)
- [positioning](https://davefleet.com/tag/positioning/)
- [Pownce](https://davefleet.com/tag/pownce/)
- [pr](https://davefleet.com/tag/pr/)
- [practical 101](https://davefleet.com/tag/practical-101/)
- [present.ly](https://davefleet.com/tag/presently/)
- [presentations](https://davefleet.com/tag/presentations/)
- [press release](https://davefleet.com/tag/press-release/)
- [Princess Margaret Hospital](https://davefleet.com/tag/princess-margaret-hospital/)
- [Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation](https://davefleet.com/tag/princess-margaret-hospital-foundation/)
- [privacy](https://davefleet.com/tag/privacy/)
- [PRobecast](https://davefleet.com/tag/probecast/)
- [professional](https://davefleet.com/tag/professional/)
- [Profilactic](https://davefleet.com/tag/profilactic/)
- [proofreading](https://davefleet.com/tag/proofreading/)
- [public relations](https://davefleet.com/tag/public-relations/)
- [public relationships](https://davefleet.com/tag/public-relationships/)
- [publicity](https://davefleet.com/tag/publicity/)
- [quality](https://davefleet.com/tag/quality/)
- [question](https://davefleet.com/tag/question/)
- [questions](https://davefleet.com/tag/questions/)
- [Qwitter](https://davefleet.com/tag/qwitter/)
- [Rachel Maddow](https://davefleet.com/tag/rachel-maddow/)
- [Radian6](https://davefleet.com/tag/radian6/)
- [random](https://davefleet.com/tag/random/)
- [Rayanne Langdon](https://davefleet.com/tag/rayanne-langdon/)
- [readership](https://davefleet.com/tag/readership/)
- [recommendations](https://davefleet.com/tag/recommendations/)
- [recruitment](https://davefleet.com/tag/recruitment/)
- [reporting](https://davefleet.com/tag/reporting/)
- [representation](https://davefleet.com/tag/representation/)
- [reputation](https://davefleet.com/tag/reputation/)
- [research](https://davefleet.com/tag/research/)
- [resources](https://davefleet.com/tag/resources/)
- [responding](https://davefleet.com/tag/responding/)
- [return on investment](https://davefleet.com/tag/return-on-investment/)
- [retweet](https://davefleet.com/tag/retweet/)
- [review](https://davefleet.com/tag/review/)
- [ReviewMyWeb](https://davefleet.com/tag/reviewmyweb/)
- [Rob Lane](https://davefleet.com/tag/rob-lane/)
- [Robert Cialdini](https://davefleet.com/tag/robert-cialdini/)
- [Robert Scoble](https://davefleet.com/tag/robert-scoble/)
- [ROI](https://davefleet.com/tag/roi/)
- [RSS](https://davefleet.com/tag/rss/)
- [rules](https://davefleet.com/tag/rules/)
- [Ryan Anderson](https://davefleet.com/tag/ryan-anderson/)
- [Saachi LeFever](https://davefleet.com/tag/saachi-lefever/)
- [Sam Cabal](https://davefleet.com/tag/sam-cabal/)
- [Santa](https://davefleet.com/tag/santa/)
- [Saul Colt](https://davefleet.com/tag/saul-colt/)
- [screen reader](https://davefleet.com/tag/screen-reader/)
- [Scribnia](https://davefleet.com/tag/scribnia/)
- [Sean Moffitt](https://davefleet.com/tag/sean-moffitt/)
- [search](https://davefleet.com/tag/search/)
- [Search Engine](https://davefleet.com/tag/search-engine/)
- [SearchWiki](https://davefleet.com/tag/searchwiki/)
- [Seesmic Desktop](https://davefleet.com/tag/seesmic-desktop/)
- [segmentation](https://davefleet.com/tag/segmentation/)
- [self-censor](https://davefleet.com/tag/self-censor/)
- [self-promotion](https://davefleet.com/tag/self-promotion/)
- [SEM](https://davefleet.com/tag/sem/)
- [semantic web](https://davefleet.com/tag/semantic-web/)
- [SEO](https://davefleet.com/tag/seo/)
- [Seth Godin](https://davefleet.com/tag/seth-godin/)
- [Shannon Hilchie](https://davefleet.com/tag/shannon-hilchie/)
- [Shannon Whitley](https://davefleet.com/tag/shannon-whitley/)
- [Shill](https://davefleet.com/tag/shill/)
- [Shill podcast](https://davefleet.com/tag/shill-podcast/)
- [shortener](https://davefleet.com/tag/shortener/)
- [silos](https://davefleet.com/tag/silos/)
- [Simon Chen](https://davefleet.com/tag/simon-chen/)
- [Six Pixels of Separation](https://davefleet.com/tag/six-pixels-of-separation/)
- [skills](https://davefleet.com/tag/skills/)
- [Skittles](https://davefleet.com/tag/skittles/)
- [SMART](https://davefleet.com/tag/smart/)
- [snake oil](https://davefleet.com/tag/snake-oil/)
- [social](https://davefleet.com/tag/social/)
- [social at scale](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-at-scale-2/)
- [social bookmarking](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-bookmarking/)
- [social crm](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-crm/)
- [social media](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-media/)
- [social media monitoring](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-media-monitoring/)
- [social media news release](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-media-news-release/)
- [social media release](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-media-release/)
- [social media transparency](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-media-transparency/)
- [Social Mediators](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-mediators/)
- [social networks](https://davefleet.com/tag/social-networks/)
- [socialmedia](https://davefleet.com/tag/socialmedia/)
- [SocialThing](https://davefleet.com/tag/socialthing/)
- [sociographics](https://davefleet.com/tag/sociographics/)
- [spam](https://davefleet.com/tag/spam/)
- [Spark](https://davefleet.com/tag/spark/)
- [speaking](https://davefleet.com/tag/speaking/)
- [Spokeo](https://davefleet.com/tag/spokeo/)
- [sponsorship](https://davefleet.com/tag/sponsorship/)
- [stakeholder](https://davefleet.com/tag/stakeholder/)
- [Starbucks](https://davefleet.com/tag/starbucks/)
- [statistics](https://davefleet.com/tag/statistics/)
- [statusphere](https://davefleet.com/tag/statusphere/)
- [Steve Rubel](https://davefleet.com/tag/steve-rubel/)
- [strategic](https://davefleet.com/tag/strategic/)
- [strategy](https://davefleet.com/tag/strategy/)
- [stumbleupon](https://davefleet.com/tag/stumbleupon/)
- [support](https://davefleet.com/tag/support/)
- [survey](https://davefleet.com/tag/survey/)
- [swine flu](https://davefleet.com/tag/swine-flu/)
- [sxsw](https://davefleet.com/tag/sxsw/)
- [synchronize](https://davefleet.com/tag/synchronize/)
- [Sysomos](https://davefleet.com/tag/sysomos/)
- [tactics](https://davefleet.com/tag/tactics/)
- [Talk Is Cheap](https://davefleet.com/tag/talk-is-cheap/)
- [target](https://davefleet.com/tag/target/)
- [targeting](https://davefleet.com/tag/targeting/)
- [teams](https://davefleet.com/tag/teams/)
- [TechCrunch](https://davefleet.com/tag/techcrunch/)
- [technographics](https://davefleet.com/tag/technographics/)
- [Technorati](https://davefleet.com/tag/technorati/)
- [Terry Fallis](https://davefleet.com/tag/terry-fallis/)
- [The World Is Flat](https://davefleet.com/tag/the-world-is-flat/)
- [Third Tuesday Toronto](https://davefleet.com/tag/third-tuesday-toronto/)
- [Thomas Friedman](https://davefleet.com/tag/thomas-friedman/)
- [Thornley Fallis Communications](https://davefleet.com/tag/thornley-fallis-communications/)
- [Tim Coyne](https://davefleet.com/tag/tim-coyne/)
- [time](https://davefleet.com/tag/time/)
- [tips](https://davefleet.com/tag/tips/)
- [Todd Defren](https://davefleet.com/tag/todd-defren/)
- [Tom Purves](https://davefleet.com/tag/tom-purves/)
- [Tommy Vallier](https://davefleet.com/tag/tommy-vallier/)
- [Tonia Hammer](https://davefleet.com/tag/tonia-hammer/)
- [tool](https://davefleet.com/tag/tool/)
- [tools](https://davefleet.com/tag/tools/)
- [Toronto](https://davefleet.com/tag/toronto/)
- [Trafcom News](https://davefleet.com/tag/trafcom-news/)
- [traffic](https://davefleet.com/tag/traffic/)
- [transparency](https://davefleet.com/tag/transparency/)
- [trends](https://davefleet.com/tag/trends/)
- [trust](https://davefleet.com/tag/trust/)
- [TVO Search Engine](https://davefleet.com/tag/tvo-search-engine/)
- [Tweetdeck](https://davefleet.com/tag/tweetdeck/)
- [Twhirl](https://davefleet.com/tag/twhirl/)
- [Twitter](https://davefleet.com/tag/twitter/)
- [twitter tools](https://davefleet.com/tag/twitter-tools/)
- [twitter tweetdeck](https://davefleet.com/tag/twitter-tweetdeck/)
- [Ubiquity](https://davefleet.com/tag/ubiquity/)
- [US Airways](https://davefleet.com/tag/us-airways/)
- [usability](https://davefleet.com/tag/usability/)
- [utterz](https://davefleet.com/tag/utterz/)
- [Valeria Maltoni](https://davefleet.com/tag/valeria-maltoni/)
- [value](https://davefleet.com/tag/value/)
- [Vancouver Sun](https://davefleet.com/tag/vancouver-sun/)
- [Veritas](https://davefleet.com/tag/veritas/)
- [video](https://davefleet.com/tag/video/)
- [water](https://davefleet.com/tag/water/)
- [web](https://davefleet.com/tag/web/)
- [website](https://davefleet.com/tag/website/)
- [Website Grader](https://davefleet.com/tag/website-grader/)
- [Weekly Reads](https://davefleet.com/tag/weekly-reads/)
- [widgets](https://davefleet.com/tag/widgets/)
- [wiki](https://davefleet.com/tag/wiki/)
- [wikipedia](https://davefleet.com/tag/wikipedia/)
- [WordPress](https://davefleet.com/tag/wordpress/)
- [WordPressDirect](https://davefleet.com/tag/wordpressdirect/)
- [workflow](https://davefleet.com/tag/workflow/)
- [writing](https://davefleet.com/tag/writing/)
- [Yahoo](https://davefleet.com/tag/yahoo/)
- [Yammer](https://davefleet.com/tag/yammer/)
- [youth](https://davefleet.com/tag/youth/)
- [youtube](https://davefleet.com/tag/youtube/)