Over the weekend, a molehill has started to become a mountain. Or, in the view of some, a mountain became an even bigger mountain.

SageCircle posted a claim that Forrester Research will restrict its analysts from having personally-branded research blogs, implying that the policy will reduce the risk of analysts building their personal brands before bolting from the firm, taking their audiences with them.

Use of social media has become second nature to many, but one look at the range of comments on the SageCircle post reflects how strongly people still feel about the dichotomy of personal/professional social media usage and the tension around a company’s ownership of a worker’s intellectual property. Cries of Big Brother, paranoia and censorship abound, tempered by other statements that it’s good business practice or simply a matter of whose servers hold the data.

Source: speedy2

Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t need to subscribe to TheMediaIsDying Twitter feed to know that thousands of journalists have lost their jobs in 2009.  Publishers’ loss, however, seems to be turning into vendors’ gain.  Companies can now bypass editorial review and hire celebrity journalists to publish on their own outlets.  At the recent CES show, for example, Nvidia hired Stephen Wildstrom, formerly BusinessWeek’s Tech & You columnist, to blog from its booth.  Meanwhile, another former BusinessWeek veteran journalist Steve Hamm accepted a position at IBM.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having started my career in journalism, I can relate to how painful it can feel for a reporter to deal with PR people. They can be overly demanding, pitch things that they know nothing about, and on top of that, pitch topics to reporters that are completely NOT relevant to the reporter’s beat – all major no-no’s in the PR industry.

However, there’s something more to working with the media than just doing your basic PR job right. As the landscape has shifted a bit, and we start to deal with entities outside traditional media (such as bloggers and influential customers) it is even MORE important to step it up in the niceness factor with these guys. Not only are you talking to a reporter who could end up writing a story about your company, you also could potentially be talking to the actual end-user who will ultimately buy your product – and well, that’s the bottom line to success.

We’ve all heard these tips before, but I think it is a good reminder to keep these things in mind as you work with reporters, influencers, bloggers, analysts, customers, etc. – these days, it could be anyone!!

Read the rest of this entry »

If I see one more quote claiming that all companies should jump into social media because its free…I’m going to poke my eyes out.  So when I read this morning’s post on the Future Changes blog I couldn’t help but share the insight.  The quote below…and the heart of the post succinctly depicts the issue with why people think social media is free…and why it is not.  A distribution channel or channel for engagement is only as good as the content being distributed or shared.  Yes the channels are free…the content…especially the most valuable kind is most likely not.  Thank you Stewart Brand.

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

You know you’ve made it when you’ve been regulated by the government

By Elisabeth Simmons Gettelman

On Monday, the FTC updated its guidelines for advertisers for the first time in almost thirty years. The rules aim to address the new world order and tackle everything from celebrities disclosing when they are paid to endorse a product to mommy bloggers accepting free goods in return for a review. While both have admittedly gotten out of hand lately (Heidi and Spencer, I’m looking at you), it will be interesting to see how everyone ends up interpreting the rather vague statements made in the report.

Eastwick has worked with many a mommy blogger for our clients in the past couple of years and it has been amazing to watch them grow in size and sophistication. We weren’t the only ones to catch on that they’re a powerful demographic, though, and now it seems that there are those admittedly only doing it for the free stuff. I won’t get into politics on company time, but I do look forward to a bit of Darwin’s Theory kicking in. Several of our favorites see it the same way, realizing this will give them some of the credibility they themselves crave among the land of 10,000 silly-named mommy blogs.

We’ll report more on if and how this ruling has affected working with these bloggers, but I think it is important to only work with those that are following these guidelines and wish to hold themselves to some level of journalistic integrity.

Now if only the government could do something about Jon & Kate…

Josh Hilliker

Intel, Intel, Intel… is it the unsung hero of effective B2B social media?

I’ll be asking that very question of Josh Hilliker, one of Intel’s key B2Bcommunity leaders and evangelists when he joins me on our podcast, Break through the Noise.

[Listen]

Until then, learn more about the man of the hour, in his own words:

Josh Hilliker is the Enterprise Evangelist / Community Manager for Intel®  vPro™  Expert Center, in End-user Platform Integration (EPI), part of the Digital Enterprise Group (DEG) within Intel.

In this role, he engages the Intel® vPro™ community as a champion and community advocate for the products, technologies, and Intel.

Josh joined Intel in 1995 within Information Technology, created the Internet / intranet and external e-Commerce help desks, established customer support, and paved the support path for future e-Business applications.

Read the rest of this entry »

Walter Cronkite

Eastwick Communications bids a fond farewell to Walter Cronkite, the quintessential anchorman and once most-trusted person in America.

He wasn’t the first anchorman, and only time will tell if he was the best, but he, more than anyone in recent history, personified respectability.

The landmark events he covered during his 46-year career as a journalist are too numerous to list; fortunately, we have a permanent record of each and every one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Heuer, Source: chrisheuer.com

It’s an unfortunate aspect of live as a grown up that sometimes you have to associate with people you don’t especially like.

That couldn’t be further from the truth with today’s Break through the Noise guest, Chris Heuer (and for that matter, this wife Kristie Wells, too).

He’s a genuine person who happens to be whip-smart when t comes to social media. And as a founder of Social Media Club, he really practices what he preaches.

[Listen]

Read the rest of this entry »

Harry McCracken, Source: HarryMcCracken.com

Today we’re thrilled to have Harry McCracken as our guest on our podcast, Break through the Noise.

I’m my opinion, Harry has one of the great Silicon Valley stories: Starting in the “traditional” media world to creating the blog Technologizer. I’ll be asking him about that part of his personal journal and a whole lot more.

[Listen]

Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Shankman

My guest on Break through the Noise this week may need no introduction as he’s already infamous to so many… (infampus in a good way, apologies to Mrs. Shankman)

So let’s go straight to hus bio, shall we? PR Week Magazine has described Peter as “redefining the art of networking,” and Investor’s Business Daily has called him “crazy, but effective.” Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you harness the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and make it work to your advantage.

That’s our man this week. Peter Shankman. We love to love him, if only for creating the infinitely useful HARO (Help a Reporter Out) which has seen his fame - and rumored wealth - grow.

[Listen]

Read the rest of this entry »