I’m in grading mode this weekend. My “grading” includes two categories. My classes: the assignments I’m grading on one’s that I’ve required. Often I kick myself in the butt for having complicated assignments of multiple pages, rather than making it easy on myself. But then I remember how ill-prepared I felt at my first job (or...

I love labels. I dig categories. Classifications? Groupings? You bet. This is why I was so interested in Kami’s post about the seven categories of social media today on Communication Overtones. She has created seven neat categories to encompass everything from publishing platforms (Blogger, etc.) and social networks (MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn) to...

This post is a letter from my mentor, Leslie Habetler, to some of her crisis planning and management clients. With her permission, I’m reposting it here. As I watch this unfold, I thought it might be helpful to point some things out that would be helpful if you ever face such a situation (in any scale). First it is obvious they have a crisis response plan...

The Dells, the GMs and even the Marriotts are not the norm when it comes to corporate blogging. In fact, a small percentage of Fortune 500 companies have an external blog. Todd Defren at PR Squared posted recently about his chat with Fortune 500 marketers asking very basic questions about blogging. The good news, he says, is that they are interested and...

Edelman released its annual Trust Barometer survey results in early February. I’m always fond of nicely defined and clearly labeled categories. Categories provide a nice heuristic for linking new information with what we already know. Based on seven years of research, the agency is able to draw some conclusions and segment influencers into...