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PR Helps Raise Venture CapitalYesterday

Wanna talk (yet again) about the ROI of Social Media & PR?

Let’s ask the startup companies who rely on the VC community’s support.  Did PR help them net funding?

A survey sponsored by BIGfrontier Communications Group asked 300 U.S. startups that had received funding within the past 3 years about the role of PR in their fund-raising efforts.

According to a PRWeek story that ran today, the new study showed that:

• Startup companies that engage in PR campaigns are 30% more successful in getting funding within one to three months than those that don't.
• Forty-four percent of the respondents who used PR outreach received funding in the one-to-three-month time period versus 14% of those that did not.
• Seventy-eight percent of respondents who said PR helped in their funding efforts are planning to use some of their VC dollars for additional PR.
• Ironically, the survey also found that only 18% of the 300 startups surveyed had a PR program in place during the funding process.

Of the 82% of startups who did

What is Techmeme Telling Us?Yesterday

A lot of PR people I know – particularly those affiliated with the tech and social media industries – make frequent daily visits to Techmeme.  What is Techmeme?  Here’s their “ABOUT TECHMEME” blurb:

“At this moment, the hottest stories in technology are scattered across dozens of news sites and blogs.  That's an awful lot of sites for anyone to check.  Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page. It's auto-generated through a news-picking software system, so updates occur around the clock.”

In a recent email to his subscribers, the ever-helpful, often-brilliant Sam Whitmore of Mediasurvey performed an analysis of the changes that occured over the past year at Techmeme’s Leaderboard, the meme minder’s top 100 sources.  Sam analyzed snapshots of the Leaderboard on October 1, 2007 versus October 1, 2008.  Here’s a look at the Top 10:

1. TechCrunch (still at the top)
2. CNET News (up from 5th)
3. Silicon Alley Insider (up f

ROI for Social Media Marketing: It's ComplicatedNovember 17

At a recent Social Media Breakfast in Boston, Harvard Business School associate professor Andy McAfee had this to say about the age-old Return On Investment (ROI) question:

“There is not enough ROI for figuring out ROI.  It is an intellectually bankrupt exercise.”

Got that?  McAfee is not saying that measurement is not important, he suggests instead that it is simply not worth the trouble!

To be clear, when McAfee talks about the challenges in determining ROI, he is referring to Info Tech spending, as laid out in two posts published back in 2006.  According to McAfee, the sum of his argument was succinctly laid out in his Harvard colleague Bob Kaplan’s seminal “

Motrin Moms: When Social Media AttacksNovember 17

By now you are probably aware of this past weekend’s twitterstorm over the Motrin commercial that outraged mombloggers and momtweeters.

Here’s the original ad:

And here’s just one example of the storm of protest that erupted:

Jeremiah Owyang did some great analysis of the firememe and concluded “It’s not likely to cause enough of impact search engine results for ‘motrin,’ be a mainstream press story, or cause damage to stock price … Over time, these search results may fade away...”

While he’s no doubt right, a Google search on “Motrin” today (Monday)turned up two high-profile results related to the controversy, at the top and bottom of the 1st page of results.

Top of results page:

Bottom of results page:

God Bless the Moustachioed Tweeple of MovemberNovember 13

As I wrote about last month in the “Mo’ Marketing” post, we’re working with Canadian Club Whisky to promote awareness of men’s health issues, through their sponsorship of “Movember.”

We created a Facebook app that allows you to slap a “mo” on your friends’ FB profile pics, which has been fun.  And just for kicks I’ve asked my Twitter pals to add a moustache to their own Twitter avatars … with hilarious results!

I am hoping to send some small prizes, at random, to the tweeps who are willing to disgrace their Twitter profiles through the month of November for a good cause. 

It’s not too late, if you want to join the fun!  Use the Movember Facebook app to create a moustachioed picture. Do a screengrab (in Windows, CTRL + PrtScrn). Paste to Microsoft Paint. Cut & save the newly-mo'd avatar pic. Re-save as a jpeg to your desktop and then add to your Twitter Profile in place of your old avatar.

Then, be sure to let me know, eithe