How to Politely Delete Facebook Friends

by pathwaypr on June 30, 2009

Have too many Facebook friends? Do you know how to filter out “friends” that you don’t want to follow so closely without offending them? Nicholas Carlson in his recent post for Silicon Alley Insider provides an eight step approach to do just that. You can read his entire article “How to Filter out Facebook “Friends” “ here.

facebook
Creative Commons License photo credit: benstein

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Is NPR the Future of News Media

by pathwaypr on June 29, 2009

In Josh Catone’s recent article in Mashable “Why NPR is the Future of Mainstrem Media“,  he describes how National Public Radio (NPR)  “is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media.”

Catone reports that NPR now has 23.6 million people ” tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR’s ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they’ve managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts.”

Why has NPR been so effective at building its audience while the majority of media outlets are losing their audience? According to Catone the reason for its success lies in its three prong approach: a focus on local; a focus on social media; and a focus on obiquitous access.

NPR headquarters
Creative Commons License photo credit: NCinDC

By focusing on what is happening locally,  NPR fulfills a need that has been abandoned by most media.  Catone reports, “Focusing on local information is a very smart approach for two reasons. One, because as Schiller says, it fills a gap in coverage, and two, because many people feel that delivering and aggregating hyperlocal content will be an important part of the future of media. In 2007, Alex Iskold, the CEO of semantic web application company AdaptiveBlue, predicted the rise of hyperlocal information, indicating that extremely targeted local advertising could be the path forward for the ad industry.”

NPR has also built its audience by building a strong social media presence. NPR’s Twitter account has more than 780,00 followers and NPR has more than 400,000 FaceBook fans. In addition, NPR has more than 650 podcasts, nearly 20 blogs, as well as their own social community.

According to Catone:

Perhaps the most important aspect of NPR’s approach to new media, is that they have an organizational level commitment to allowing listeners and readers to access their content on their own terms. Schiller, who prior to joining NPR at the start of this year was the SVP-GM of The New York Times web site, told mediabisto.com that NPR aims to bring people access to content “online, mobile, whatever people want, podcasts — you name it — so that you have that same sense of the NPR experience wherever you are. As far as NPR.org — sure, I want the traffic to increase, but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this walled garden that is NPR.org.”

NPR’s ability to build its audience is certainly impressive especially at a time when so many media outlets are going under. What lessons can your organization learn from NPR’s success?

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How to Pitch to Angel Investors

June 28, 2009

In Brent Bowers recent New York Times article “In Pitching to Angel Investors, Preparation Tops Zeal”, Bowers’ writes, “For entrepreneurs hoping to land start-up capital from angel investors, here’s what two recent studies found: Don’t get carried away when you pitch your product because the investors may lose interest faster than you can say “almost [...]

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Best Business Books via Business Week

June 22, 2009

How is your summer reading going? Have you started? Today Business Week Online published “Reading List” an article chronicling a list of business book recommendations from a “bevy of prominent professors and business professionals and asked them about their favorite books, business or otherwise. Browse around and discover what made those books inspirational, instructive, or [...]

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Dartmouth Justifies Cost Via YouTube

June 16, 2009

Dartmouth takes just 2 minutes and 21 seconds to justify the cost of attending. Does it work? What can your brand learn from Dartmouth?

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Charlene Li on Future of Social Networks

June 16, 2009

SXSW09: The Future Of Social Networks
View more OpenOffice presentations from Charlene Li.

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Need to Organize Your Tweeps?

June 9, 2009

How many followers do you have on Twitter now? How many are you following? Do you know who you are following or who is following you? What causes some of your followers to stop following you?  Josh Catone writes today in “10 Twitter Tools to Organize Your Tweeps” in Mashable that if you are like [...]

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Lance Armstrong Reports on Lance Armstrong; What does it mean for your Brand?

May 28, 2009

Whether you applaud Lance for his media blackout or not what lessons can your brand take from his use of social media to stay in touch with his audience?

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Big Pharma Beginning to Join Social Media Party

May 18, 2009

Marissa Miley and Rich Thomaselli reported in Ad Age last week that “Big Pharma is lumbering into the digital realm, using a growing chunk of its $4.7 billion DTC dollars to reach patients and prescribers on blogs, Twitter and YouTube.”
While this might not seem newsworthy to most, according to the article “Big Pharma Finally Taking [...]

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Is your Brand Boring?

May 14, 2009

According to Josh Bernoff, senior analyst with Forrester and co-author of Groundswell (my favorite book to date on social media), there are two kinds of brands in the world–brands that people like to talk about and brands that people don’t like to talk about.
In his recent post “Social Strategy for Exciting (and Boring) Brands”, Bernoff [...]

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