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PR Communications

John Cass, a marketer, writes about corporate blogging, PR, marketing, social media, and the Internet

Transforming Government OnlineYesterday

After seeing this white paper on transforming online government, produced by the Federal Web Managers Council, I was thinking that some of the expected resources put towards employment might go towards more community managers for Government sites. I was also thinking that the Government like business will have to build an infrastructure for engagement. Check out the article on Personal Democracy, especially with two of the suggestion efforts recommended by the group:

Engage the public in a dialogue to improve our customer service

Ensure the public gets the same answer whether they use the web, phone, email, print, or visit in-person

Internal Communicators Use Semantic TechnologiesYesterday

Currently, many large companies have some difficulty with thinking about how to monitor social media to understand what their customers are discussing as it relates to their company and industry.  Often the reluctance to make use of such business intelligence is because there is an understanding that it takes time to analyze the volume of content within social media.  Yet if a company does not start the process of building a monitoring system for social media, there are potential crisis communications dangers for a company, here’s two recent examples:

Target received a response about one of their ads, and their response was to state that Target does not consider bloggers to be part of the media. The statement generated more consternation amongst bloggers than the Target ad, but both succeeded in creating a lot of publicity for the issues with the ad and Target’s lack of knowledge in how to deal with Target.

Motrin posted an ad that was offensive to many Mothers. The ad did not get pulled until the following week, demonstrates the importance of being on 24/7.

Even with an understanding that social media should be monitored, companies are unsure about where to start. I’d suggest internal communicators are in the perfect place to shepherd

Companies Lower Drug Development Costs Through CollaborationJanuary 6

Snapshot: Competitors that collaborate on technology evaluation for the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries have the opportunity to lower healthcare costs for all. Trust was only established between the competitors because of peer interactions within a private social networking community.

Eric Glazer, VP marketing for Cambridge Healthtech Associates (CHA)* and DSEC managing director recently told me how The Drug Safety Executive Council (DSEC), a group of drug safety executives, developed a collaborative technology group. The group does not collaborate on new drugs, but the viability of new technologies that test the safety of new drugs.

The collaborative technology evaluation group puts a different spin on the concept of using social media to crowd source customer ideas and suggestions for innovation. Instead competitors come together to research the viability of new technologies in order to evaluate the worth of a new technology for determining the safety of new drugs.

Drug safety officers want to determine if a new drug that is in development is going to sufficiently improve patients’ lives, and not kill or injure them. A drug company will abandon development of a drug if the company determines the new drug is going adversely affect a patient. Safety technologies that can help predict the likely adverse

SNCR Study On Dell, Comcast & MoreJanuary 2

Earlier this year I wrote two case studies for the Nuance study on customer care and brand reputation for the Society for New Communications Research as part of my role as Research Fellow.

The two case studies were about Dell and Comcast.

Dell’s case study was an update and outline of the work Dell has completed in social media over the last few years, I attempted to focus on what infrastructure they built and timelines. And the Comcast case study was on their 2008 entry into the world of social media monitoring and response, the study covers the Michael Arrington twitter incident.

SNCR published the full report and case studies; you can purchase the report or download a free pdf online.

Thanks to my colleagues: Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Paul Gillin, John Cass, Susan Getgood, and Francois Gossieaux for their help and participation in the report.

Thanks to Richard Binhammer at Dell and Frank Eliason at Comcast for their help in the preparation of the case studies.

Semantic Web Companies In BostonDecember 30 2008

As my interest in web 3.0 grows I thought I'd create a list of semantic web companies in the Boston area.

Affiliate Media Network, Inc. Colin Britton

Cambridge Semantics Inc. Sean Martin, Founder, President, and CTO

ClearForest

Clinical Semantics Group

Echo Nest

Information Extraction Systems, Inc Win Carus, Founder and President

Invention Engine

Jarg Corporation  Michael Belanger President

Metatomix

OpenLink SoftwareKingsley Uyi Idehen