Ford’s Explorer Reveal – Unlike the other links that are in this post, this links to a Facebook page. Ford, who is always pushing the social media envelope, revealed the Explorer on Facebook.  The content trickled live onto the page throughout the day. This is pretty cool and came out cleaner than I originally thought it would when it was first reported a few weeks ago.  Seriously how awesome is Mike Rowe?

Can Internet Buzz Actually Hurt Sales? – The buzz around the Old Spice videos won’t die. This post doesn’t beat a dead horse but brings up a honest assessment of why the campaign is not transitioning to direct sales – You can’t polish a turd. Now that statement alone brings the article into the top 5 of the week. I liked the campaign, but I am already an Old Spice customer, as I like the smell.

The clash of the social media know-nothings – Now this article is has a lot of great points as to what we should look for in social media marketing as well as what we should avoid in the snake oil section, however that is not the beauty of the link. The comments are. I don’t think I have seen this many insightful nuggets on a topic in a while. Definitely peep it out.

Should Levi’s disclose sponsorship of viral video? – Scott Stratten makes a great point in this post on this viral video making its rounds across the Web. While the video is pretty cool, it seems disingenuous now as the video was sponsored by Levi’s. Now this was not disclosed in the video, but should have been. What do you think?

A new chapter in personal brands – This article from Jason Falls addresses the move of Frank Elliason from Comcast to Citi. Now while people moving jobs are nothing new, Frank was the face of Comcast. The humanization of this brand if you will, that will surely be missed. Unlike most people leaving a company, the general public liked Frank as he empathized with their problems and helped them get their issues resolved. This is something that companies will have to look at as the space continues to evolve.

Image – Nextup

Now let me start by filling you in with a secret, when I was a kid I thought I was Batman. My grandfather was the Commissioner and I would only answer as Batman while tooling around in my cape. I watched every Adam West episode and remember all of the obscure villains – King Tut or Bookworm anyone?  If that doesn’t suit your needs of calling me a geek, I rock a Batman insignia belt buckle every day.

Part of the reason that the 71-year old character fascinates me almost 30 years later is because he is an imperfect character. Aside from his personalities being day and night, Bruce Wayne has a void that is filled by each one of the villains that he squares off against.

That imperfection is something that each of us have with ourselves. We often try to fill this void with our activities and careers. Social networks are currently one of the most popular mediums people use to embrace that elusive part of their personality. Think about the Dark Knight’s common foils listed below. Do you or someone you know fit the bill?

The Joker – Before Heath Ledger, the Joker was a trickster who used clown gimmicks to commit his crimes. While he was still a criminal, his smile made it hard to hate him. In the social sphere this jester looks for ways to get his messaging across while having a good time. Many of these individuals also use comedy or sarcasm to build an audience. Here is a list of folks that fit that mold.

The Riddler – The Riddler may be the most intriguing villain in Gotham City. He’s a brain who loves to manipulate people. You know the type, snarky but gets what he wants every time. His joy in the space is making things happen the way that they want to, others; well they can heed this tweet.

Penguin – Well, I am not sure where I am going with this one. The Penguin was a freak who rode umbrellas; penguin painted submarines and had an army of penguins. Despite his odd stature, the Penguin is the ringleader. This social personality can be seen setting up TweetUps or other get-togethers offline with their online friends.

Catwoman – Of course, I saved the best for last. Catwoman was the biggest thing missing from Bruce Wayne’s life – A beautiful and exotic woman, who also happens to be twisted. Social media outranks porn in terms of online activity and one out of eight marriages met via social networks. So if you are looking for something meaningful, you can find it on the Web. How many of your friends are dating someone they met online?

There is a plethora of other characters I could mention both good and bad. Do you associate with any of the ones mentioned or are you a different inhabitant of Gotham?

I must be getting old. My weeks are running into one another. After three years, I finally succumbed to the pressure to get a smart phone. I like it but not addicted, yet; had a great conversation about monitoring services with Jason Mollica and am happy to say that I will officially have my wife back full-time after she takes the bar next week. How was your week, any big weekend plans? I’ll be in Atlantic City tomorrow capping off two visits in two weeks to the Garden State. The ranting has worn me out, so here is this week’s edition of Five for Friday.

Social media turf wars: are marketing and PR on a collision course? – This is a great article and conversation around the budding (if not all-out) feud between marketing and public relationships in the social media space. What side of the coin do you think would win in a blood match?

Using social media right for you – This may be my favorite post from Danny Brown yet. Not only does it address the pundits who shout you are doing it wrong but also offers a holistic view of the space as it looks to expand its reach to the masses.

Twitter Report: BP and Obama Oil Spill Sentiment by the Numbers – I am fully aware that I am a geek and that numbers excite me. This piece from Brian Solis takes a look at the sentiment over the duration of the BP fiasco for both the president and the polluter. It is really interesting to see the graphics tying the pair together.

Dr. Pepper Facebook Blunder Is Latest in a String of Risky Promotions – Well there are times when pushing the envelope is a good thing. Most time negating risks gives a bright green light. I just don’t know what the folks at Dr. Pepper were thinking using verbiage around 2 girls 1 cup on a Facebook app. As a consumer brand that has kids digging it, you were bound to get something like this article. Seriously who can honestly say they didn’t know what 1 Cup implied?

How to tell a journalist from a blogger – now this article is included for two reasons. The first is that it is well written and made me smile, but the real reason is that while it offers great points there is also a line in the sand drawn. Here is what a journalist is | here is the rest. I agree with a lot of it but wonder what happens with citizen journalism in this equation. What do you think?

Image – Journyl

This post originally ran on PR Breakfast Club earlier in the week. However I wanted to share to readers of this site who may have missed it.

My near 10 years in the public relations industry has taught me a lot. Despite these constant new lessons, there is one exercise that needs a refresher every now and then – overcoming skepticism. People in corporate hierarchies are used to dealing in dollars and cents not equated ad value or having a clip book thud.

The looks of disbelief and folks asking what we do all day is irksome. So it baffles me when I read posts and hear people talking/positioning social media in a way that will only open it up to skepticism.  Things like engagement, understanding the community, we need to be in the space and if we’re not there we lose ground with the competition, are common statements. While I agree with many of them, without substance they breed skepticism.

If you are confused, let me clarify. Social networks are a powerful communications tool that should be managed by communications professionals, however unlike traditional PR, offer hard metrics to present to executive to show real value.

So how do you overcome this? By setting goals that you can tie back to the business. Now there is no right or wrong thing to track and measure that can be tracked back to your work. Some basic units to measure could be direct sales via a specific landing page or coupon brought into a store; or you can measure traffic coming to your site from social networks and tracking that back to registered leads.

Aside from those metrics, you can pull up equated net promoter scores, social influence marketing score and conversation share (I blogged about what each is here). Using these metrics along with the ones above can show the ebbs and flows of sales and traffic correlating to the social currency that you are building. If you don’t find value in these metrics or want some other measurement methods, check out some of the great insights from fellow PRBC writer Rebecca Denison.

If you don’t believe it can be done, look at the micro-industry that was build around personal brands like Peter Shankman, Chris Brogan and Perez Hilton. They have all made a living off of their usage in the social space – you can do the same for your company. Trust me, I work in the space every day and have seen results.

At the end of the day you will have to find what works best for you. Once found stick with it and make it work, because at the end of the day, companies look at all ventures on a dollars and cents level.

So you have two choices, to position warm and fuzzy rainbows and unicorns or pull a Jerry Maguire. For me, I would rather be like Randy Moss – straight cash homey – than trying to sell a fairy tale. And if you can’t show value to your company in the space, they will find someone who can.

Also if you aren’t active in the social side of things, but are looking for relevant metrics on PR, I’d suggest checking out KD Paine’s measurement blog.

Image – Lissie Loo – Flickr

As frustrating as it is, MLB does do things right every now and then – and we aren’t talking about inviting Chris Berman to call the home run derby, that falls into the frustrating category.  For example, over the weekend, I saw a marriage between a great game and one of my current passions, social media.

Now you don’t need to hand me a cold compress, the ole ballgame has embraced social media in a cool way with their new MLB.com Pulse.

Much like having your finger on the pulse of a trend, MLB’s version gives a social wrap up of each of the night’s game by combining video, Tweets and score updates.  The tool is a dream for a geek². Not only is there a social graph of what’s happening in real-time to gauge the buzz of each team, but also shows the stats and video to go along with the buzz.

So with these graphs in hand, I applaud the crew in the league offices that embraced social media to bring the sport to the wired masses. Now if only they would start letting their videos be embedded.

Do you think other leagues will take the copycat approach to this innovation or will they ignore social media and hope that they can keep it away from their games?

Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love – For some reason I have been on a Fast Company kick lately, maybe it’s just that they keep putting out odd but intriguing pieces like this one. I am no scientist but this seems pretty cool. If social media is like falling in love, than it is pretty easy to see why we all get so addicted.

What’s at Stake for Consumers in Today’s News Trust Gap? – Trust is something that we often take for granted. This goes for large companies to your friend down the road. Our society is built on trusting things before making a purchase – however with the media saturation that we currently have, there is some disconnect in what we trust. This is a great article on how we can work to bridge the gap.

Social media failure: examples from the travel industry – With any burgeoning industry, there will be countless wins and also countless fails used as case studies. In social media, the wins have been very highly touted and the failures have kind of been skirted under the rug. Unfortunately for the travel industry, their snafus have been complied into an article – worth checking out as a cautionary tale.

The rise of fake PR and how to manage it – With BPGlobalPR grabbing all the headlines as the top spoof account on a social site, fake PR is bad. Not just for companies but for all of us who work in the PR industry. Gumshoe offers some good tips (and cartoon) about ways to combat fake PR.

Not Right Now – I am sure that by now you have heard plenty of reasons that companies don’t want to invest in social media. It probably frustrates you to hell when you get this kind of response from the C-suite, but Danny Brown feels your pain. In this post he mocks the answer and gives some answers.

The use of children in this commercial alongside an older banker with ice cream for one, and not the other hammers home a strong message that companies need to balance in the social Web – the value of the followers.

Which is more valuable new or existing? I would argue that they are equally important. With the existing building a stronger bond with the brand and the new ones getting a good start to the relationship.

What say you?

The first is from Richard Edelman and looks at public engagement in a number of ways, while the second is on how brands evolve with social media. The final presentation is aptly dubbed steal our playbook. They are quick studies and hopefully you can pull some useful nuggets from them.

So before I drop the week’s edition of Five for Friday on you, I will ask that you send some well wishes to my pal Kate Ottavio. Kate is competing for the crown of Miss Connecticut this weekend and I’d like to see if we could send some good vibes her way to help her win. She has told me that kidnapping a judge was out of the question since there is no fan voting. Now with that out of the way, even though the week was a good one, I am looking forward to the weekend. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be heading out early for a road trip to Citi Field to check out the Mets’ new digs with some tailgating beforehand. Any big plans for you? Here’s this week’s edition of Five for Friday.

Pitches, Not Rolodexes, Matter – In this post, Heather Whaling (@prtini) uses a real-world example of using skill in pitching to land a client over someone with “everyone on speed dial). This is a must read and something that we should all take into consideration as we look to hone our craft.

Saving Chevrolet Means Sending ‘Chevy’ to Dump – My boss passed this along on Tuesday morning. Now while I am no brand expert, the move still shocks the hell out of me. Chevy is as American as apple pie and well you would expect it to be something that stays (especially given its place in our lexicon). We’re in a day and age where things are being shortened like KFC and FedEx, why go for the long drawn out name?

Social Media usage worldwide: Australia / Brazil lead the way – If I were to name social media consumption by country, Australia and Brazil would not be on the top of my list. But then again, numbers have never been my strength. But the numbers look more from other past surveys and this makes sense.

Putting the I in Social Media – We all know that there are no I’s in team, but did you know that there are four I’s in Social Media? We all know that I can’t count, but Danny Brown puts four I’s in a row to make a great case for things to ask yourself before entering the space and making it happen.

Social Media Can’t Save Your Business – Zach Cohen makes a lot of good points in this piece. While the target is really the small business owner it also applies to larger businesses as well. Social media is something that is a support the business medium, not an end all be all silver bullet.

Also since Smirnoff has taken down the Bros Icing Bros site, here are some of the better YouTube videos of the meme.

This also makes it harder to sell to the higher ups that it is good for your company.

I saw this video early this morning on my Twitter feed and wanted to re-post as it offers up 50 great tips on making the microblogging platform work for you.

Some of my favorite tips included:

• Talk first, sell second
• Don’t Spam
• Don’t Keep your eggs in one basket