Brand Central Station

(From Bulldog Reporter’s PR University)
When:   July 21, 2010
Time:  1-5pm EDT
Location:  Online
Cost:  $ 695 (early-bird discounts available)

Half-Day Webinar for Communicators at Food Manufacturers, Beverage Producers, Grocery Stores, Kitchen Suppliers, and Specialty Food Retailers.  Moderated by renowned social media expert, blogger, consultant and trainer, Sally Falkow, APR.

Use advanced social media marketing strategies to skyrocket visibility and sales— frontline practitioners reveal how to build loyalty, website traffic, press coverage, client satisfaction and sales

In just one-half day, you’ll cover:

• Best practices for using Twitter as a food and beverage marketing tool
• Key elements every food or beverage online newsroom must have to boost press coverage and Google search ranking
• Which social media promotions work best to boost trackable sales now?
• How to create communities of evangelists for your food or beverage
• How to track online conversations and mentions of your product—and how to respond when you don’t like what you hear
• How to create a cost-effective social media strategic plan “step-by-step”
• A bad review on food and beverage websites and blogs: What you can and should do about it
• Cultivating food and beverage bloggers and websites: What works and what doesn’t
• How to decide which social media are most valuable for your product . . . and which you can ignore
• What should your online messaging strategy be—and how can you communicate it in just 140 characters?
• To blog or not to blog: How to assess blogging costs vs. benefits
• How to build a large and loyal following on Facebook
• Most effective uses of online video—and what you need (and don’t need) to produce your own
• And many, many more tips, tricks, trends and inside approaches

Hear and confer with communicators from General Mills, Campbell Soup, and other food and beverage brands like yours, as well as other social media experts, who will share their “war stories” and valuable lessons learned.

Register Now (Early-Bird Discounts Available)

How do you keep track of the conversations in the blogosphere that could mean the most to you? How do you locate the blogs that you should be keeping an eye on for you or for your client’s business?

Kami Huyse, at the Communications Overtones blog, provides some helpful links, advice and guidelines for doing just that.  If you’re in the reputation management business (as most PR firms are and many branding and ad agencies want to be), this is an essential post for you to read this week.

Thanks, Kami!

The first edition of the Adnews podcast was posted on August 19 and despite the best intentions of blogger Mike Delgado, we’re all still waiting for another installment. The Adnews blog has seen a little more action, but not much.

The premise of the podcasts might be problematic. In his first transmission, Mike explains that he’ll build a weekly summary of marketing stories derived from the usual industry sources. He’ll add some additional information gleaned from ad-oriented blogs and wrap everything up in under ten minutes.

To be truthful, by the time Mike has done his weekly wrap-up and posted it to his site, the news is so old that most of us who keep up on it may not have much interest in hearing him read it back to us.

Here’s hoping the delay in getting installment #2 of the Adnews podcast up is the result of Mike fine-tuning his concept and creating a truly unique voice worth tuning in to hear.

Good luck, Mike.

Colin McKay, the blogger behind the Canuckflack blog, provides 22 Immutable Laws of Blogging (with an appropriate hat tip to Ries & Trout).

My favorites:
#2 Half baked ideas are better than no ideas.
#15 Sympathy drives traffic.
#21 One comment is a fad; three trackbacks is a trend

and my personal fave …
#6 Intellectual plagiarism is rarely called out.

Thanks for the content, Colin.

PS – love the new look for the blog.