Photo courtesy of Jon Hanson via Flickr

 For a while now, I’ve been writing about how public relations professionals can use social metrics such as links, comments and votes on social news sites to determine which blogs and sites represent the most influential voices on a particular topic. 

It’s easy to get mired in the muck of all these numbers. So Cision Media Research Director Valerie Lopez and I will use a metaphor to illustrate how these metrics relate to each other in a free webinar on social media measurement next Tuesday, March 16 at 1 p.m. CST.   Read it all..

Photo of Yangshuo County, China courtesy of adrileb via Flickr

Over the holidays, I read Tom Friedman’s excellent book on the convergence of climate change, globalization and overpopulation, “Hot, Flat and Crowded“. It was particularly impactful to read while visiting my wife’s parents in the UK, where fuel-efficient cars and homes are, as Friedman says, “the norm, not the news”. But the part of the book that got me thinking about the future of public relations had to do with the greening of China. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of austinevan via Flickr

Yesterday, a British Parliament committee called out UK politicians and civil servants in general for their overuse of jargon. In a report, the committee complained that in politics, technical terms are often used to “hide the fact that the speaker or writer doesn’t really understand what they are writing or talking about.”

Effective communications professionals know to avoid the clutter and confusion that jargon brings to news releases and pitches. Now more than ever as we try to reach individuals through social technologies who may not be familiar with all our favorite terms of art, it pays to simplify our language. But just as importantly, we need to avoid hiding behind words with amorphous meanings when we discuss communications itself. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of ToastyKen via Flickr

In North America and much of Europe, the combination of government-protected free speech and nearly nonexistent barriers to entry in online publishing has created an environment in which companies get punk’d by bloggers and other online influencers all the time. As we’ve said here many times, communications professionals have a responsibility to learn how best to respond to storms of controversy surrounding their brands on the social Web. But since it’s Thanksgiving in America this week, let’s take a moment to think about how lucky we are to have this challenge.

Let me explain what I mean. Read it all..

Dan Wons

The questions I am getting asked a lot these days (aside of course from why is IT trying to ruin my life) are all about Windows 7.  When are we going to upgrade, should I be running Windows 7, what do you think of it, etc.?  When it comes to Windows 7, I am a believer.  From my initial tests, it performs well, is stable, and I like the interface.  The popup preview of open windows on the taskbar is awesome!  There are however, a number of things to consider before deciding if running Windows 7 is right for you. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of Matti Mattila via Flickr

It won’t be long before your favorite bloggers begin offering their predictions for the social Web in 2010, and this one could rank near the top of any such list: as more social content is indexed by search engines, we’ll all start finding reviews and comments from our acquaintances first, and from everyone else second. But what will that mean for public relations professionals? Read it all..

Dan Wons

This post was written by Dan Wons, Vice President for Network & Infrastructure at Cision US. It is part 3 of a 3-part series.

One of the more frustrating things that IT departments do to users is prevent them from having the proper rights to install software on their own PCs.  This is done for two reasons—awareness and protection.  Read it all..

1. Tweetup Goal.   Why do you want to host a tweetup? Do you want to continue to get to know your community and target influencers on a deeper level? Gain more recognition for your brand? Introduce some of your fans, friends and followers to each other? Maybe host a party for the launch of a new store, gallery or product? There are myriad reasons to hold a tweetup, but know your goals beforehand so you can tell your higher-ups exactly what they’ll be getting out of this investment. Read it all..

Dan Wons

This post was written by Dan Wons, Vice President for Network & Infrastructure at Cision US. It is part 2 of a 3-part series.

 Anti-virus (AV) software is used to protect your PC from malware – which can be defined as any malicious software designed to unknowingly infect a users PC in the form of a virus, worm, trojan, spyware, adware, etc.  You can learn more on Wikipedia than you ever probably wanted to about the ills that lurk on the Internet.  Any user of an infected PC knows the result of this software is a huge headache.  If you are lucky, the computer can be cleaned (if not by your AV software than another tool).  Those less fortunate generally need their PC rebuilt from scratch.  Read it all..

Photo courtesy Tina White Lights via Flickr

Lots of people are talking about Twitter’s new List functionality. In a feature long overdue, Twitter now allows you to divide up the people you follow into manageable chunks, based on topics, geography or anything else you like. The idea is similar to Facebook Lists, which we’ve covered here before. Playing around with Twitter Lists, it seems like a useful way to organize your contacts (if a little buggy at first). Still, there’s an aspect of this that’s attracting less attention but is just as important: Lists come with dedicated URLs that you can make public, providing a big opportunity for search engine optimization. Read it all..