Andrew Bruce Smith: escherman

9. Don't bother with a backup plan. If you need a live Internet connection to demo a site, don't bother making a screen shot of the site in case the connection doesn't work. That way, you'll be at a complete loss for words when the connection fails.

10. Don't practice. At all. Practicing a presentation out loud takes work and will make you look far too polished. Just wing it.

Good check list - points 9 and 10 in this BusinessWeek piece struck a chord

"My son had racked up nearly 2,000 incoming text messages, and had sent nearly as many. That means he was having more than 60 two-way communications via text message every day." Sue Shellenbarger

Newspaper people on Twitter

We list the "top of the twits" for newspaper titles (a-z) and people (a-z). Media UK runs a variety of services on Twitter too - not least, @mediauk - follow us!

	Followers	Following	Ratio
1. Jemima Kiss: Journalist, The Guardian	13,604	298	2.2%
2. Charles Arthur: Journalist, The Guardian	8,684	496	5.7%
3. Jack Schofield: Journalist, The Guardian	6,618	876	13.2%
4. Emily Bell: Journalist, The Guardian	4,642	304	6.5%
5. Bobbie Johnson: Journalist, The Guardian	4,411	895	20.3%
6. Tim Bradshaw: Journalist, Financial Times	4,106	1,350	32.9%
7. Shane Richmond: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	3,464	1,177	34.0%
8. Joanna Geary: Journalist, The Times	2,611	760	29.1%
9. Ian Douglas: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	2,237	1,958	87.5%
10. Ruth Gledhill: Journalist, The Times	2,034	1,965	96.6%
11. Chris Nuttall: Journalist, Financial Times	2,022	128	6.3%
12. Toby Harnden: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	1,825	425	23.3%
13. Steve Wollaston: Digital Editor, Sunday Mercury	1,727	1,902	110.1%
14. Harry Wallop: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	1,690	207	12.2%
15. Jo Wadsworth: Journalist, The Argus	1,562	1,920	122.9%
16. Sarah Hartley: Journalist, Manchester Evening News	1,502	348	23.2%
17. Gideon Rachman: Journalist, Financial Times	1,465	30	2.0%
18. Alison Gow: Journalist, Liverpool Daily Post	1,440	493	34.2%
19. Marc Reeves: Editor, The Birmingham Post	1,407	942	67.0%
20. Claudine Beaumont: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	1,298	277	21.3%
21. Justin Williams: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	1,202	476	39.6%
22. Will Lewis: Editor, The Daily Telegraph	1,078	52	4.8%
23. Sarah Ebner: Digital Editor, The Times	892	830	93.0%
24. Michael Bailey: Journalist, Norwich Evening News	809	1,511	186.8%
25. Samantha Shepherd: Journalist, Daily Echo	753	390	51.8%
26. Anna Arco: Journalist, The Catholic Herald	750	738	98.4%
27. Tom Scotney: Journalist, The Birmingham Post	736	470	63.9%
28. Luke Coppen: Editor, The Catholic Herald	707	597	84.4%
29. Sarah Booker: Digital Editor, Worthing Herald	689	847	122.9%
30. Paul Cockerton: Digital Editor, Lancashire Telegraph	597	586	98.2%
31. Jon Swaine: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	508	112	22.0%
32. David Ottewell: Journalist, Manchester Evening News	466	215	46.1%
33. Martin Beckford: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	463	139	30.0%
34. David Maclean: Journalist, The Shields Gazette	445	119	26.7%
35. Simon Donohue: Journalist, Manchester Evening News	417	376	90.2%
36. Jane Perrone: Journalist, The Guardian	386	164	42.5%
37. Edward Roussel: Journalist, The Daily Telegraph	382	53	13.9%
38. Ian Wylie: Journalist, Manchester Evening News	370	102	27.6%
39. Kat Brown: Journalist, thelondonpaper	287	182	63.4%
40. Jon Welch: Journalist, Eastern Daily Press	265	241	90.9%
41. Matt Cornish: Editor, St Neots News & Crier	238	306	128.6%
42. Sam Blackledge: Journalist, Surrey Advertiser	223	332	148.9%
43. Iain Hepburn: Digital Editor, Daily Record	222	317	142.8%
44. Dan Kerins: Journalist, Southern Daily Echo	192	158	82.3%
45. Amar Singh: Journalist, London Evening Standard	185	235	127.0%
46. Jonny Fordham: Journalist, Reading Evening Post	178	77	43.3%
47. Martin Smith: Journalist, Coventry Telegraph	174	71	40.8%
48. Steve Dyson: Editor, Birmingham Mail	166	7	4.2%
49. Jonathan Barnes: Journalist, Ipswich Evening Star	135	146	108.1%
50. Murray Kelso: Digital Editor, Worcester News	119	62	52.1%
51. Kevin Ward: Editor, Worcester News	118	64	54.2%
52. Tony Larner: Editor, Sunday Mercury	116	94	81.0%
53. Carolyn McCall: Editor, The Guardian	116	38	32.8%
54. Vicki Kellaway: Journalist, Liverpool Echo	95	181	190.5%
55. John McKie: Columnist, Daily Record	93	111	119.4%
56. David Brookes: Editor, Coventry Telegraph	92	18	19.6%
57. Maria Breslin: Station Manager, Liverpool Echo	81	11	13.6%
58. Tristan Harris: Editor, Bromsgrove Standard	65	61	93.8%
59. Miriam Phillips: Journalist, Dorset Echo	64	107	167.2%
60. Chine Mbubaegbu: Journalist, Reading Evening Post	60	69	115.0%
61. Martin Hamer: Digital Editor, Lancashire Evening Post	55	47	85.5%
62. Steve Carley: Journalist, Worcester News	50	9	18.0%
63. Tim Nixon: Journalist, Lancashire Telegraph	26	34	130.8%
64. Rob George: Journalist, Bromsgrove Standard	19	43	226.3%
65. Kate Whiteside: Digital Editor, The Westmorland Gazette	6	14	233.3%

Interesting to note that The Guardian occupies the top 5 slots!

I've posted a couple of blogs recently about the rise of the social media function and how BtoB companies can best leverage social media. A common theme has been the need for marketing to provide guidance, guidelines and infrastructure without stifling the power of this new channel to reach customers, prospects and influencers. To help with your journey, I've included below a list of social media guidelines that several companies have published:

• Adobe Acrobat Users: http://www.acrobatusers.com/blog_guidelines

Cisco: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/ciscos_internet_postings_policy/

Dell: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/policy/en/policy?c=us&1=en&s+corp&~section=019

Mayo Clinic: http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/guidelines/for-mayo-clinic-employees/

BT: http://richarddennison.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/bt-social-media-guidelines-mar09.pdf

eBay: http://ebayinkblog.com/2009/03/06/new-social-media-guidelines-for-reporting-company-information/

HP: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html

IBM: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

Intel: http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

SAP: http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/07/sap-social-media-guidelines-2009/#

Sun: http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp

Have any others to share?. . . Please comment below.

If email was a country, its 1.4 billion users would make it the largest in the world. Bigger than China, bigger than the populations of the USA and European Union combined.

247 billion emails are sent each day. That's one email every 0.00000035 seconds.

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, some 20 million emails entered cyberspace.

Every second, the world's email users produce messages equivalent in size to over 16,000 copies of the Complete Works of Shakespeare (assuming a 30KB average email size).

13.4 billion: the number of direct marketing dollars forecast to go on email in the US in 2009.

$583 billion: the return from that investment if you use DMA figures on email marketing ROI. That's four times the market value of Microsoft.

181: the number of marketing emails it would take to produce enough revenue to buy one share in Microsoft.

83,689,738,832,367: the number of marketing emails it would take to produce enough revenue to pay the US National Debt.

[Aside 1: When you see email stats like the above, you gain a new appreciation for the work of those companies and organizations managing email.]

[Aside 2: And when you consider that many of these emails are spam, you can understand why ISPs and others have bigger problems to worry about than whether legitimate marketing email is reaching the right destinat

A one-day social media whirlwind shows not just how a self-proclaimed geeky company with no PR knowledge emerged from anonymity to become a media darling. It also illustrates how social media is changing how companies make news and how public relations is practiced.

Around 10 a.m. CDT on Aug. 12, Ryan Kelly, the founder and CEO of market insights and analysis firm Pear Analytics of San Antonio, posted the following on Twitter: "The Twitter Study we mentioned at #bmprsa is now available: http://bit.ly/17htXE interesting results..." BMPRSA is a San Antonio PR and social media group that Kelly had addressed a few weeks before, mentioning the upcoming study.

Almost immediately after he posted the tweet, a friend from sales and marketing company Sales by 5 sent him a Twitter direct message: "Please let me know when you release it, and I'll send it to Mashable."

By 5 p.m. that day, Pear's study was featured on the front page of Mashable, one of the largest blogs discussing social media and technology. By 6 p.m., the study was the top two trending topics on Twitter. Later that evening, Kelly was interviewed by Robert Scoble, formerly of Fast Company and now an evangelist for Rackspace. And from there it went viral.

Do a Google search on Pear Analytics today, and you'll see some 500 articles from everyone from the BBC to CNET to NBC.com to outlets worldwide writing about its study. It's the sort of publicity a company would pay a big chunk of change to get.

Besides pointing out the phenomenal "make or break" quality of social media, there's a delicious irony to Pear's story. Its study's big news was that 40 percent of Twitter messages are what it cleverly called "pointless babble" with just 8.7 percent of tweets to be deemed of value with worthwhile news content.

Of course, without Twitter, Pear's study might have seen the fate of so many studies that end up unread and unreported. Nothing like soaring to prominence on a medium you're denigrating.

What's also fascinating about Pear's story is that the company followed none of the traditional PR practices. No press release. No outreach to media. No loud announcement.

So what's the secret to Pear's PR success?

"I can attribute its success to a few things," says Kelly, who was as surprised as anyone that the study took off. "I know nothing about PR. One, by analyzing the Twitter stream and categorizing the content, we did something no one else had done. Where, however, we really struck a chord was by labeling the most popular category, "pointless babble." I think if we would have named this something else, it may not have gone as far. Most of the news outlets used that phrase in their headlines.

"And lastly, I have to say we had a little luck that day in that no other major news happened that week—like Michael Jackson—that would have buried our news easily."

Wendy Marx is president of Marx Communications, an award-winning B2B public relations and marketing communications company. Contact her at wmarx@marxcommunications.com.

Why the Flip Camera Should Be in Your PR Toolkit

I’m biased.  We bought Pure Digital, maker of The Flip, back in March.  So stop reading if you like.  If you are still reading, here are my top reasons why the Flip Video Camera is great for any and all PR professionals.

1. Phenomenally good for media training.  I do a lot of media training and while I give my feedback for why an answer is good or has “opportunities,” the Flip doesn’t lie.  I take it into media training sessions and during the mock interview I record.  When I give feedback, I either go answer by answer on the video or I give oral feedback and then send the video via mail afterwards.  I think it has had a big impact in helping improve our media spokespeople…because, hey, everybody can improve, right?  And, seeing yourself on video gives you great feedback and practice when doing broadcast or company videos.

2.  Great for social media releases, blogs and even bubbletweet.  The beauty of The Flip is that it is VERY easy to use.  And compact.  And, idiot proof (i.e. limited to no training required).  We started using video in PR in earnest about two years ago.  We bought a nice HD camera.  We created a Cisco YouTube channel for our videos.  And we started embedding them in blogs and using them to visually tell our stories.  We love video at Cisco and these videos have been successful.  One drawback, however, was the availability of the camera…and then cameras.  Who has it, I need it, etc.  Now, with the Flip…we all have one.  We can always capture something on the fly or do a more formal, tri-pod assisted video.  It IS a part of our PR teams toolkit.  Further, now that we all have one it is also a part of our yearly objectives to USE it.  We all have to make at least one video a quarter and post it to our blog or otherwise use it in the furtherance of PR.  If you are with the media and you haven’t yet received a pitch from us via Flip video…WATCH YOUR INBOX…it’s gonna happen.

3. The media is using the Flip.  Everybody’s favorite Flip practitioner is, of course, Kara Swisher.  She’s prolific.  She’s funny.  She’s the master.  She’s interviewed everyone from Jonathan Kaplan (CEO of Pure Digital…creator of The Flip) to her son…to her mom...to Survey Monkey’s Dave Goldberg...to Steve Wozniak.  She points the cam at her subject, asks questions off camera and voila she’s got great content and a blog post. 

4. CAUTION: The Flip is MADE for Viral Video.  Okay, you can’t tell what is going to go viral, but having a Flip increases your chances of capturing video that may capture the attention of your audience.  Case in point: our CEO doing his now famous (infamous?) Duck Call.  Literally, I heard the duck call from my desk.  Grabbed my Flip camera and walked into his office and asked him to demonstrate for me.  I taped it.  Uploaded it.  Blogged it.  It now has nearly 18,000 views and was written about by Forbes, BusinessWeek, AllThingsD and more.  Was it a great leadership video?  No.  Was it a great video to show that we are a big company but can still be a bit goofy and have some fun?  Mission accomplished.

5. It teaches you to think VISUALLY.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?  Telling a story with pictures is not the easiest.  We didn’t all grow up in the television production business.  Utilizing the Flip enables you to THINK video.  What will look good?  What will be visually compelling?  Is the lighting good?  Is the sound good?  All these things are components of telling a good story.  Now that we all have Flips in our pockets we are learning more and more how to think about good visual stories.  And, while time will tell if this gets us more interest or more broadcast opportunities…this past quarter, we had much more broadcast than we’ve had in quite a while.  Could it be that we were added to the Dow?  Likely.  Could it be that we are learning to tell visual stories better?  Maybe.

And, finally, but certainly not completely:

6.  It is the BEST note taker in the world.  Ever have a conversation with someone and take notes on something you thought was a great idea and eloquently stated?  You then look at your notes and realize that either you transcribed them wrong or you can’t read your own writing.  That whiff of brilliance may have been lost.  Not with the Flip.  I ask to record the brilliant moment so that I can capture it for that point-in-time, brilliant talking point, message or whatever.  Works every time.

Enjoy your Flip.

Posted by John Earnhardt at 02:13PM PST

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Agreed. The Flip is a great device - the point about thinking visually is spot on.