Author Archive

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

2/1: Can You Be Both a Tactician and a Counselor? (PRWeek): Research among CEOs and line-of-business executives reveals that the single-most common criticism of communications professionals is that below the CCO level the function is primarily occupied by tacticians. A common result: when divisional or business unit leadership meet to discuss strategy, the PR person — perhaps other than the CCO — is often left out.

1/31: Extend Social Media Beyond Communications and Marketing: We’ve seen many companies struggle with the question of who “owns” social media. In one sense, you are communicating to customers, so it must be a marketing function. But, isn’t marketing usually “paid” and communications “earned?” If so, most social media profiles are “free,” so it must be a communications function! Well, we’ve seen the most successful social media companies embrace both and use cross-divisional teams to find manage the space.

1/28: Crowdsourcing, Innovation, and … the Home Shopping Network?: Anyone who watched the President’s State of the Union address this week may have noticed the many times he used the word “innovate” throughout his hour-long speech. The morning after, many op-eds complained that for all the talk of “out-innovating” the rest of the world, the President didn’t provide any concrete examples of how he envisioned America achieving this. According to a new article on Mashable, 2011’s focus on driving innovation may have an unlikely leader in the Home Shopping Network (HSN), as their new crowdsourcing project suggests.

1/27: A Case for Social Media Access at the Office: It’s an oft-discussed question in many IT departments and beyond: should employees have unrestricted access to the internet (including all the social networking they can get their hands on) while at work? A recent SocialCast report suggests that there might just be a productivity bump to be had from such access.