Originally posted on lifestory2010.com.
Just as digital has transformed other industries, such as photography, travel and retail, so too has it impacted health. People seek out digital outlets for health information. Who among us doesn’t head right to Google (or Bing or Yahoo!) to query a health-related matter? For consumers and professionals alike, health care begins at search, which puts online information and properties front and center.
That means many people rely on our clients, and on us.
They rely on us for [...]

People used to conduct business through conversation, discussing the weather, family and politics before finally bartering their way to a deal. Not so today. The book The Cluetrain Manifesto is based around the concept of markets as conversations and says the most important feature of the Internet is that it allows people to have conversations directly.
The book was the first that encouraged businesses to move from “What does my website need to look like?” to “How can we use online [...]

Originally posted on lifestory2010.com.
As Euro RSCG Life’s first-ever chief digital officer—and one of the newest members of the network’s team, having joined just a few months ago—I’m charged to further the “digital at the core” philosophy across Life.
There is much to work with: Life was one of the early pioneers in digital health-care marketing, having built the first brand website for Pfizer’s Lipitor in 1998, and it continues to build an enviable list of digital firsts.
Today, as the pace of [...]

Social media monitoring is high on everyone’s agenda. Technology companies have been quick to respond (they always are; they’re the guys who gave us CRM and Y2K, remember!). They’ve now introduced tools that do everything from capturing conversations to segmenting them by sentiment—negative, positive, neutral.
The way I see it, though, the real challenge for brands is not capturing conversations but doing something about and with them. This is not as simple as it sounds.
Social media conversations often relate to the [...]

Social media have helped corporations, retailers and small brands make a name for themselves and maintain sales during one of the toughest economic times ever. But it’s also had a significant impact on the entertainment industry, making unlikely stars and also highlighting flaws in some seemingly perfect icons.
YouTube is probably the best case study of how social media can create and deflate celebrity. Lonely Girl 15 was a realistic but fictional video docu-series that had everyone believing Lonely Girl’s life [...]

I found out this week that a friend of mine died. At age 35, I’m too young to start reading the obituaries; I found out by reading his thread on Facebook.
I’ve reported in the past that each day, I experience something truly phenomenal through social media and networking—but I never even considered that I would experience this, at least not this early in life.
“P”* lived in Dallas and was one of my more than 350 friends on Facebook, spread across [...]

I’ve worked with bloggers for some time now, and I even discuss work with them during off-hours so I can constantly improve on my strategies. One thing I’ve noticed that many bloggers have in common: pet peeves having to do with PR professionals. Some are so common they shouldn’t even be occurring, but our industry will always have those who choose to not evolve. So here, gleaned from my research, is a list of eight PR pet peeves:
8. Proofreading, or [...]

This is the third in a series of three.
My last two posts addressed social media, present and future. The social media thought leaders we spoke with also had some notions about the social Web’s global impact:
George Gallate, global chairman, Euro RSCG 4D:
“Social media has made fundamental changes to the community. Huge effect on children all around the world.”

This is the first in a series of three.
We just finished conducting one-on-one interviews with some of the brightest minds in the social Web. Here are some of their insights, which we shared with our general managers yesterday in Paris. Check in tomorrow for more of what these leaders have to say.
B.L. Ochman, president, Whatsnextonline.com:
“For big corporations, this stuff is still very scary…. Anyone who is a consultant must tackle fear.”
“A lot of companies should take their websites down, because [...]

As I’ve been traveling and researching the ways people socialize online around the world, I’ve been interested in the differences in users’ attitudes and behaviors. This is a case where the old adage “Think globally, act locally” rings true. It’s not just about various venues for social networking (for instance, Facebook in the U.S. versus Orkut most everywhere else); it’s about fundamentally different expectations and approaches to navigating the social Web.
As British tech-trendspotter Tom Smith put it in a presentation [...]