Todd Grossman – VP Sales, MultiVu
Todd begins by Introducing to YouTube, and online video media. The VNR is dead, he declares. He’s right, of course (VNRs as a tactic had been on life support anyway), but where’s the news here? New media are certainly exciting, but I think we need to transcend this “aw shucks” paradigm when it comes to new technology. It exists. It’s awesome. But our industry doesn’t have time to gawk at the spectacle.

That’s not a knock on Todd, who does a good job keeping us up to date, but a general industry observation.

Faye Shapiro – “Why PR Needs a New Narrative”
Stepping in for Jim Sinkinson, Ms. Shapiro declared earned, unpaid media to be up for grabs. Public Relations managers are being retitled Chief Conversation Officers, she informs us. That is just the sort of thing that social networkers love to make fun of. She declares that this is a brand new direction for PR. Is this true? Does a change of tactics (wholesale thought they may be) constitute a new direction? Are the fundamentals changing? I’m not sure that’s a settled question.

“The Art of the Story: Finding the Heart of Drama”

By Kevin Sawyer - Media Relations Specialist

By all accounts, Barack Obama had the Democratic presidential nomination in the bag two weeks ago. All he had to do was come close in states like Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, and coast to Denver this summer. But his campaign made a serious miscue. While floundering in Ohio, Obama’s campaign challenged Hillary Clinton to quit if SHE lost in Ohio. Big mistake…

It used to be that success in American politics consisted of a series of turning points. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, Fireside chats, and the “Checkers” speech all consisted of a politician seizing a moment to elevate his cause. Nobody saw them coming, and nothing was the same after.

Today, if a prominent politician schedules a major event, news venues will analyze the speech from every angle before it has been drafted. Social networking sites will come to a consensus about what he or she should say, and the politician will speak against the backdrop of a plethora of expectations, against which even the most successful speech has the potential to fail. Many will watch the speech on YouTube days later, reading and contributing comments as they watch.

By Jessica Cameron-Ruud - Account Coordinator

As a fairly new person on the M&O team, I’ve had the advantage of learning from some of the best in the business. The learning curve I’m quickly working to overcome is how best to navigate the constantly changing digital marketspace to reach our target audience online.

I recently attended a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Event ‘Conversations about the Future of Advertising”, which really got me thinking about how to embrace the shift to digital communications and online marketing. Offering up some valuable insight to help marketers determine how best to navigate the digital marketspace, we can find new ways to expand our connections and reach our target audience online.

Here are 3 tips to embrace the digital revolution in your business:

Live the Life. Only through trial and error with various digital communication channels such as Google, YouTube, Face Book, Digg, etc. can you define what approaches work and what approaches don’t. A marketer that understands how to interact with others in social communities online is more likely to understand the preferred language and tone used among community members.

Steve Rubel recently made reference to a ranking of PR blogs in the form of a Social Media Index. The actual listing and ordering of blogs according to various criteria was posted at Edelman’s Europe CEO blog, SixtySecondView.

Our SEO firm’s blog, Online Marketing Blog was included in each permutation of the list using a wide variety of criteria. I have yet to see so many different criteria used in any other ranking of marketing or PR blogs. That includes the AdAge Power 150 and Onalytica’s ranking of the most influential blogs, both of which include TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

Such lists always attract a bit of scrutiny and criticism, as they should. It keeps them honest or outs them as otherwise.

Today starts the 2007 Media Relations Summit in Washington D.C. and it should be a great event. Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit is the largest media relations event in the world and Mike Yanke from our public relations firm is there today attending sessions and doing some inaugural blogging.

I will be flying in tonight and will be speaking on Monday afternoon in a session about integrating search engine optimization and social media to extend public relations efforts. My co-panelists will be Jamie O’Donnell from SEO PR and Sally Falkow from Expansion Plus. SEO and social media in the context of online PR is hot right now and I expect the session to be well attended.

I’ve written an outline of what I’ll be presenting on over at Online Marketing Blog in a post called, “Leveraging Social Media and SEO for Public Relations“.