Register for our New Keystone Business Development™ Webinar
When we talk to clients in the IT and Biotechnology industries, the most common question we are asked is “Can you help our company get to the next level?” What they are really asking is: “How can we boost our Business Development efforts?”
We have a great deal of expertise in creating Web2.0 PR campaigns that support Business Development initiatives. We build integrating campaigns that incorporate social networking for prospect list development, targeted emails, PPC campaigns, natural search engine optimization, content development, media relations, special landing pages and blogs, inbound linking, and webinars.
We have created a new one-hour webinar called Keystone Business Development™ that presents innovations in the application of Web2.0 PR to produce revenue momentum.
If you are interested in signing up for the webinar, then please provide your email address in the above Email Address box. You will receive an email with instructions on how to view and participate in the webinar.
Symantec Chairman and CEO John Thompson RSA Conference 2007
Thompson spoke about the growing popularity YouTube and community sites like MySpace and Friendster to demonstrate how the ability to collaborate online, work remotely and engage in more multi-party transactions is creating new business models for enterprises.
"What used to be clear lines separating enterprises and consumers have now become blurred as networks are extended to not only partners and suppliers but also, most importantly, consumers," he said.
Developed by Microsoft, ASP.NET AJAX represents a shift of traditional Web technology, allowing developers to quickly and efficiently create next-generation Web experiences built around personalization and interactivity. AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is often correlated with second major wave of user-driven Web sites, dubbed Web 2.0.
“We are excited that with Microsoft’s release of ASP.NET AJAX, we will be able to offer our customers the opportunity to create dynamic and innovative Web applications,” said Applied Innovations Senior Administrator Wayne Lansdowne. “Web 2.0, as it has been coined, ultimately redefines the Web as a distributed computing platform instead of a network for merely serving static content. The proliferation and standardization of new technology that enable this movement is critical to the future of the Internet.”
Developments in Web2.0 culture, techniques, tools and applications for PR, Business Development and the Enterprise. Analysis, context and some humor provided.
My mail box is building up nicely with Google alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en) on Web2.0 and Web2.0PR. Two hundred or so in all. Between the skiing and making onion dip I did manage to spend a few interesting hours reviewing that file. Mostly US based Uber bloggers lending their wisdom on the scene. In an attempt to capture a conceptual hierarchy of what is hot I'll be using the notes section of this blog to collect some of the best ideas.
A tagline is a type of branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product (like a film), or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product. Some taglines are successful enough to warrant inclusion in popular culture, often becoming snowclones.
Examples of famous movie/television taglines are:
Alien – In space, no one can hear you scream. Jaws 2 – Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Star Trek – To boldly go where no man has gone before. Love Story – Love means never having to say you're sorry. The X-Files – The truth is out there. Monty Python and the Holy Grail – Makes Ben Hur Look Like An Epic
Our's is "Marketing Momentum at All Points of Sale". It integrates with our nautical logo and is a pun. Are we not witty? .
Here are taglines used by Canadian biotechnology companies:
From the Desk of David Pogue: Wonkette's Ingredients for a Successful Blog
Thursday, July 27, 2006
"But, what's kind of neat or inspiring about
the blogosphere is that it's very American. The idea that someone could enter into a conversation, you know, based just on having an opinion and an argument. And it's a conversation that includes people who have real power in the world. I mean, that idea is very seductive."
In Harvard Business Review, Tuba Ustuner and David Godes point out that each stage of the sales cycle requires different social networks. .
Identify prospects: You need contacts who know different people in the target companies that would have an interest in the service you offer. Your contacts should know different people in lots of companies - not the same old gang of over contacted buddies. Ongoing networking is required over a broad playing field. If you are in sales or business development, consider a company approved personal blog. I am finding this blog very useful for rapidly expanding my network
Gain buy-in and upselling: You need contacts within a target firm who will invest time educating you on the company and introduce you to others in the organization who can be of help. This prospect network involves fewer people but with stronger ties. For upselling you need to find internal brokers who will provide contacts in their firm for further sales.
Create solutions: To land the account, you need to develop customized solutions. Try to mobilize a network of experts back in your own company who can work with the appropriate people in the target company - try to build an intraorganizational network.
Close: Call upon past clients who can act as references for decision makers. This takes precision to engage the correct person. Take care that they are not overused.
A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, videos or audio. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning adding an entry to a blog.
A survey published by Nora Ganim Barnes, from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Her report, Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere (PDF format, 60 pages, 1.32 MB) suggests that blogs will make or break your business.
more..... a great quote by Rupert Murdoch
"To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control."
The expression “public relations” was first used by Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, back in 1802.
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 --- July 4, 1826) was the third (1801 --- 1809) President of the United States, second (1797) --- 1801) Vice President of the United States, and an American statesman, ambassador to France, political philosopher, revolutionary, agriculturalist, horticulturist, land owner, architect, archaeologist, slaveowner, author, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia.
Many people consider Jefferson to be among the most brilliant men ever to occupy the Presidency. President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962, saying, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Achievements of his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The greatest impact happens when PR is integrated with Business Development processes from the top of the "Sales Funnel" to the bottom - the close. We see PR as overwhelmingly a sales function.
Support Strategic Business Development with PR Public Relations works best in the context of specific, strategic campaigns-- tactically employing off line and on line media effectively. The greatest impact happens when PR is integrated with Business Development processes from the top of the "Sales Funnel" to the bottom - the close. We see PR as overwhelmingly a sales function.
A campaign supporting strategic business development efforts is the cornerstone of what works – it is more that just a pitch to the media, but contains the need to think beyond and know what the media will want and present the story to them in such a way that they will want to use our information and write an article.
Grounded in Research Great medical clinics balance research and clinical practise. We are increasingly a research-based firm. We study and conduct our own research to bring our clients best practises and innovation. This is perhaps our greatest strength. We are particularly interested in the links between: PR, Digital Publishing and Business Intelligence.
In our research projects for cients, we can get questions answered that the client can't by using original market research to gain new insight into the market place from the PR firm's unique position.
The Result - Getting Meaningful Ink The effort ensures that your story influences your key audiences, the people you need to reach. Getting your story out to the people that help you – the industry analysts, the trade media, the newspaper and magazine editors – and have them become your company's evangelists. It is about implementing that strategy with the best timing and resources to get "ink" in the quality press that companies desire and benefit from. Building smart relationships – building a network of media that will help the company achieve its objectives is the basis of PR success.
The result is revenue momentum; specialized communications models that anticipate a company's needs and helps leverage public relations as a strategic business advantage.
Ideas on Project Based Business Blogs - Instant Knowledge Management for the Rest of Us:
- Use simple blogs to management projects. - Use postings as a bulletin board. - Seek feedback for validation. - Spread the word on your project - post your pictures, powerpoints, ideas, status, progress, issues. - Post analyses and comments to give your project credibility. - Start “trackback” conversations. - Include articles and background material. - Tell the underlying story you want the media to cover on the public pages. - Invite team members to share sensitive information on password secure pages.
the process of making changes to something established by introducing something new
the act of introducing something new: something newly introduced (The American Heritage Dictionary).
the introduction of something new. (Merriam-Webster Online)
a new idea, method or device. (Merriam-Webster Online)
the successful exploitation of new ideas (Dept of Trade and Industry, UK).
change that creates a new dimension of performance Peter Drucker (Hesselbein, 2002)
Often, in common parlance, the words creativity and innovation are used interchangeably. They shouldn't be, because while creativity implies coming up with ideas, it's the "bringing ideas to life" . . . that makes innovation the distinct undertaking it is. "Innovation, like many business functions, is a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline.
Types of innovation: business model, marketing, organizational, process, product, service, and supply chain.
Distuptive Innovation:
A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or product in the market. Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into lower-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at main stream customers who were ignored by established companies.
A disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as more expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks did for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has begun to replace film photography).
Disruptive technologies are not disruptive to customers, and often take a long time before they are significantly disruptive to established companies. They are often difficult to recognize. Indeed, as Christensen points out and studies have shown, it is often entirely rational for incumbent companies to ignore disruptive innovations, since they compare so badly with existing technologies or products, and the deceptively small market available for a disruptive innovation is often very small compared to the market for the established technology. Even if a disruptive innovation is recognized, existing businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of it, since it would involve competing with their existing (and more profitable) technological approach. Christensen recommends that existing firms watch for these innovations, invest in small firms that might adopt these innovations, and continue to push technological demands in their core market so that performance stays above what disruptive technologies can achieve.
RSS as Innovation:
The purpose of advanced technology development [is] to sustain established trajectories of performance improvement..." RSS has been widely adopted in several sizeable markets (e.g., weblogs, news syndication, corporate portals) and these markets will continue to demand improvements. From the perspective of established RSS markets, these will be sustaining improvements. However, it is likely that many of these improvements will address requirements of unrelated markets—say, for example, university library systems. From the perspective of unrelated markets, these will be disruptive improvements; that is, "all of a sudden", RSS will become an attractive alternative to existing solutions.
Blogs can play a big role in how companies find and retain talent. Emerging companies that might normally have a tough time positioning themselves as cutting edge places to work will use the transparency and reach of blogs to compete for top talent. Large company bloggers who establish a foothold as subject matter experts will find themselves increasingly called by potential employees.
Smart companies are turning their talent loose in the blogopshere to keep them motivated and engaged... and visible.
WIWNlogs for Technology companies draw their power from Social Commerce and other Web2.0 concepts
Social Commerce Blogs enable customers to collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them. This shrinks research and purchasing cycles by creating a single destination powered by the power of many. Social commerce facilitates "bottom-up" community development, in which membership is voluntary, reputations are earned by winning the trust of other members, and the community's mission and governance are defined by the communities' members themselves.
Social Commerce also has a political and aesthetic sense, acting as a kind of glue for a collection of inter-relations formatted by the blog environment. Understandings are shared with a common language.
One example is Yahoo!'s Shoposphere -a place to discover interesting and cool products thematically arranged into Pick Lists by other shoppers. Another is the Treonauts blog. Treonauts provides rich tips, tricks, advice and news about the Treo smartphone. Treonauts partnered with leading merchants to develop branded stores. The commerce partner maintains and fulfills all orders. Business is directly generated from the blog.
Between 1999 and 2002 the total volume of information published by the human race doubled and then doubled again in the next year and a half. - Businesses in North America waste one billion dollars a day in poorly organized meetings. - The average wired worker checks their email 23 times per day debilitating their productivity. - The human brain is designed to forget. Short term memory lasts only 20 seconds. The practice of trying to remember things is the number one source of anxiety today.
"A new medium arose, even one more powerful than broadcast, and its distribution economics favored infinite niches, not one-size-fits-all fare. The Internet's peer-to-peer architecture is optimized for a symmetrical traffic load, with as many senders as receivers and data transmissions spread out over geography and time. In other words, it is the opposite of broadcast.
Instead of the weak connection of the office cooler. we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together by affinity and shared interest....
These days our water coolers are increasingly virtual - there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected."
From: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
Book Review on Powells: A fascinating and groundbreaking study of business culture in the same vein as Malcom Gladwell's famous Tipping Point. With clarity and wit Anderson proposes that for too long have we suffered under the tyranny of the lowest common denominator, and that, in fact, "niche" culture is alive and well and the basis of an entirely new economic model. May every CEO — of companies big or small, digital or brick-and-mortar — open their eyes to the Long Tail. Recommended by Gary, Powells.com
Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities.
Broadly conceived, this term could encompass older media such as mailing lists and Usenet, but some would restrict its meaning to more recent software genres such as blogs and wikis. Others suggest that the term social software is best used not to refer to a single type of software, but rather to the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated communication that result in community formation. In this view, people form online communities by combining one-to-one (e.g., email and instant messaging), one-to-many (Web pages and blogs), and many-to-many (wikis) communication modes. In many online communities, real life meetings become part of the communication repertoire. The more specific term collaborative software applies to cooperative work systems.
Common to most definitions is the observation that some types of software seem to facilitate "bottom-up" community development, in which membership is voluntary, reputations are earned by winning the trust of other members, and the community's mission and governance are defined by the communities' members themselves. Communities formed by "bottom-up" processes are contrasted to the less vibrant collectivities formed by "top-down" software, in which users' roles are determined by an external authority and circumscribed by rigidly conceived software mechanisms (such as access rights).
The term also arose in the late nineties to describe software emerging out of alliances between programmers and social groups whose particular kinds of cultural intelligence are locked out of mainstream software. In this understanding of the term, the social is understood to also have a political and aesthetic sense, not simply acting as a kind of glue for a collection of normatively understood 'agents' whose inter-relations are formatted by software. What both positions share is an understanding that particular design decisions and the grammar of interactions made possible by each piece of software is socially significant. As the term has become more important to the computer industry, this earlier use of the term has often been edited out of memory
Tools for Online Communication Instant Messaging Internet Relay Chat Internet forums Blogs or Weblogs Wikis Social network services Social network search engines Social guides Social bookmarking Social Citations Social Libraries Social Shopping Applications Peer-to-peer social networks Collaborative real-time editing Virtual presence Virtual worlds and Massively-Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) Other Specialized Social Applications
My friend David Bradfield is joining the New York office of Fleishman-Hillard to set up a new interactive, digital and social media group. Here is a recent comment from his blog:
"From my perspective, every PR agency that offers "full service" should be learning about this space and embracing new opportunities to reach the niches. Social media, or whatever you want to call it, is an integral element of the future of PR. It's a neccessity.
PR and communication professionals have specialized for decades in generating coverage in "uncontrollable" media and other venues through relationships with influencers such as journalists, analysts and opinion leaders. It takes a true professional to understand what will add value and create a unique angle or perspective that makes an organization/product/service contextually relevant, timely and reliable.
In the new communication climate, understanding who's who online, what they write/talk about and providing information that is useful and adds depth or variety to their perspectice is key to successful public relations."
Here is some new thinking on the evolution of the Press Release from a recent conference:
Write directly to your audience - including all key micro-segments – when appropriate. With the new approach, write one release (or “releaselet” — mini-release) for each audience using words and concepts they personally relate to.
Take advantage of research resources like Yahoo and Google keywords tools or Wordtracker to find out what terms people are searching for and integrate them into your “release.” Ensure that the way you structure your release and the keywords it contains are in alignment with what people are actually searching for.
Incorporate links back to content on your site, or add multimedia and RSS features to add richness to and extend the reach and life of your release.
Publish more often, take advantage of cheaper distribution channels like your own site, blog or services like PR Web.
The Persian Royal Road was established by Persian kings, who set up way stations or caravanserai along the ancient Silk Road route across the Iranian Plateau.
The precise location of each confluence is determined with GPS receivers. For a successful visit, the visitor must get within 100 metres of the confluence point (using the WGS 84 datum), and post a narrative and at least two photographs to the project website. A visit, or attempted visit, which does not conform to these rules may still be recorded on the website as an incomplete visit. The project allows visits to confluence points which have been visited previously, and many confluence points in North America and Europe have been visited several times.
The total number of confluence points is 64,442[1], of which 21,541 are on land, 38,411 on water, and 4,490 on the Arctic ice cap. The project divides these points into primary and secondary confluences. A confluence is primary only if it is on land or within sight of land. In addition, at high latitudes only some points are designated primary, because confluences crowd together near the poles. Both primary and secondary confluences may be visited and recorded.
One way to think of the Degree Confluence Project is as a way of sampling the surface of the Earth.
A trade route is the sequence of pathways and stopping places used for the commercial transport of cargo. Trade routes can be land or water-based.
Which route was considered preferable (or not) for use by groups of merchants and their armed and logistical escort, depended on a number of background factors, including an overall political and economic situation in areas to be crossed, travellers' mode of transport, their navigation skills and knowledge of geography (and weather patterns), as well as on the actual ease, speed, safety and profitability of such journeys.
The English archaeologist Colin Renfrew and his colleagues first demonstrated that finds of obsidian, a black volcanic glass useful for sharp cutting edges before the Bronze Age, provided a uniquely sensitive indicator of Neolithic trade routes, because the trace-elements in obsidian are usually diagnostic of individual sources [1].
The first documented long-distance networks of caravan routes and shipping routes have been established approximately 4,000 BCE between the early-urban settlements in lowland Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). The shipping routes through the Persian Gulf found their major depot in the island of Dilmun. By the time of the early Roman Empire, sea-routes through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea can be traced in detail through several examples of the point-by-point coastal description called a periplus.
Exploration has existed as long as human beings, but its peak is seen as being during the Age of Exploration when European navigators travelled around the world.
In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of research (the other two being description and explanation). Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon.
The Park hypothesis states that intelligent alien civilizations do exist, but they have not colonized the galaxy because they don’t want to.
"Since the only intelligent civilization that we know of is our own, our experiences may provide insights into how intelligent aliens behave. We regularly have a debate over what to send to space. It is known as the humans versus robots debate, or the manned versus unmanned debate, or with a more accurate description it could be called the both-humans-and-robots versus robots-only debate. Now, if an intelligent civilization such as ours is having this debate, then it is possible that intelligent alien civilizations are doing the same thing. Of course, they wouldn’t call it a humans versus robots debate. From their perspective it would be an our-species versus robots debate, and from our perspective it would be an aliens versus robots debate. And like our intellectuals, their intellectuals may conclude that alien spaceflight is obsolete, and a robots-only space policy would be sensible, logical, and right. They would dismiss colonization as a hopeless fantasy."
This is an experiment in blog-base narrow casting.
If you have been emailed this blog entry please read it and leave a comment, if you are so moved. Social Software is a new topic that has gotten very hot this June and this is a chance to learn and join the conversation.
The rise of social software tools, services and ideas provides an historic opportunity to liberate people from the stultifying grasp of enterprise systems. Cheaper, better and faster are all possible, and that is an immense business opportunity for companies in this space. Blogging, wikis, social tagging, aggregation and syndication, IM, shared presence and lightweight group forming tools are increasingly being used within the enterprise, whether officially sanctioned or not, because they get the job done. But it is not just about different tools, it is also about a new relationship with information and people. It is about managing feeds and information inputs, not individual content items as in the old CMS model. It is about recognising and supporting the different interaction modes (synchronous, asynchronous) and models (read, edit, publish, comment, bookmark, etc.) that are required for different work contexts. It is about the importance of social markup of existing data and the creation of new layers of personal and group metadata.
Blogs are a way to share facts, ideas and opinions directly between people. This blog is run by the makers of Skype and our friends, helpers and partners.
We set up the Skype blogs to present our view of the world, business and technology. Not least, making Skype is an incredible journey and the blogs are a humble attempt to document and capture it. We find making Skype both demanding and fun — it used to be so in the beginning and continues to be.
We see skype.com and the blogs to be complementary to each other. On skype.com, you can find our product and service information, as well as the official company profile, jobs info and press releases. In the blog, we hope to capture a bit more dynamics of what goes around them all. It is important for us to know what the world thinks of Skype and we hope to contribute back to the discussion with the blogs.
There are many different category areas here, which you can browse by using the links in the “Categories” section in the righthand menu.
For in-depth info about what are blogs and blogging, see the Wikipedia entry.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. 
