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Videologist Grant Crowell (@grantcrowell) discusses online display marketing, video marketing and dovetails into social media compliance.  

Topics discussed include:  

Ethical issues surrounding undisclosed online advertisingResponsibility Google has to distinguish between paid and unpaid search listingsLack of evidence on the credibility of paid contentEthics of sponsored content and inconspicuous disclosuresUse of mobile apps to move unclear and inconspicuous paid contentCelebrities that disrespect the FTC Dotcom disclosure guidelinesJournalistic ethical breaches in the newsroomBroadcast disclosure double standardsEthics of social media endorsements versus mentionsEthics of journalism versus entertainment

  Referenced Podcasts:  

SEO for PR Tools and Tips from Search Engine Land editor Danny SullivanState of Sponsored Content with Steve Rubel

  Bonus Content:  

FTC Dotcom Disclosure Guidelines [PDF] NY Times: Disruptions: Celebrities’ Product Plugs on Social Media Draw Scrutiny TechCrunch's Michael Arrington fired by AOL?

The dirty little secret about Kickstarter and Indiegogo was that you could contribute, but you couldn’t get equity because, at least in the US, it was illegal to solicit those types of investments direct to consumers.  

If you wanted to raise money for a business, there was a mountain of paperwork you had to file and compliance hurdles you had to clear before you could sell shares to individual investors.

Originally, these laws were put in place to protect individual investors from getting fleeced.  

Today, anybody can set up an options trading account and short the stock market. But before the internet, that was not the case. You had to go through a broker.

Why should crowdfunding be any different? After all, if you can contribute $20 for a t-shirt or a movie ticket, why not get a be able to buy a piece of the action as well?  

The JOBS Act was designed to change that.  And it has.  The SEC voted last week, under certain circumstances, to lift the ban on soliciting investment opportunities to unaccredited investors.  

In this episode, Daniel K. Stuart, California Attorney at Law at Manatt explains the JOBS Act, which provides a legal framework for people to invest in start-ups by crowdfunding businesses online, and discusses how the new rules could radically reshape the way startups raise capital.  

This interview was recorded just prior the July 10, 2013 announcement by the SEC that they’ve voted “to implement a JOBS Act requirement to lift the ban on general solicitation or general advertising for certain private securities offerings.”  

The SEC’s decision to lift the general solicitation ban could be a huge stimulus for grassroots fund raising for small businesses and a way for regular folks to get in on the ground floor of investment opportunities that were previously restricted to institutional investors and high-net worth individuals.

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This audio podcast is a presentation delivered by Top Rank Marketing CEO Lee Odden (@LeeOdden) on Friday June 28th at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in New York.

The session was titled:   Attract, Engage and Convert: Get Ahead With Content Digital Marketing and PR

In today’s fast moving search and social Web, content marketing flows in every direction throughout diverse platforms, formats and devices.

Now more than ever, creating content that influences growth in media and new business requires an integrated approach.

During this session, you’ll learn the Attract, Engage and Convert model, which can help organizations optimize the performance of their content-focused digital marketing and public relations programs.

Topics Discussed:

Understand the future trends in online marketing and PR

identify 3 Major problems with most content marketing and social media efforts

Present a new model for social content success everyone can understand: attract, engage, convert

Review of who’s doing it right: a case study in integrated marketing

5 best practices for 360 degree content marketing & digital PR

Tools for better content planning, management and amplification

Lee is the author of the book Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing.     “Lee Odden is one of the true thought leaders in an industry where you are not always sure who to trust. Well, you can trust this book to help take your online and content marketing to the next level.” — Joe Pulizzi – Founder, Content Marketing Institute  Lee also wrote a blog post about his presentation for the ComPRhension blog and posted another article about it on his own Top Rank Blog.

This is a recording of the luncheon keynote title "The Content Imperative" delivered at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference on June 27, 2013.  

The speaker is Steve Rubel (@steverubel) is Chief Content Strategist for Edelman - the world's largest independent public relations firm.

In this role Rubel is responsible for creating and cultivating best practices in content strategy and for piloting innovative media partnerships that blend paid, owned and earned strategies.

He serves as a strategic advisor to both the firm's Executive Committee as well as its clients.

While with Edelman Rubel has served in a number of senior advisory roles. He helped evolve both the firm's thinking and strategy around the rapid advance of social media and, more recently, disruptions in the broader media landscape.

As part of his remit, Rubel publishes regular reports that are based on in-depth interviews with executives and thought leaders in the media, technology and entertainment industries.

He also represents Edelman on the World Economic Forum's Media, Entertainment and Information Industry Partnership. Rubel is one of Edelman's most visible industry thought leaders. He has written a monthly column for Advertising Age since 2006.

Further, he was one of the first marketers picked to join the LinkedIn Influencer content network.

He is followed by 80,000 on Twitter.

Social Media Monitoring has been the focus of a podcast series released over the last few weeks in the wake of Google’s announcement they’ll be retiring Google Reader.

As the producer of an online social media monitoring course based on Google Reader, I’ve been intently evaluating free Google reader alternatives such as Feedly and Netvibes.  After an in depth evaluation of these two contenders, I also wrote a post comparing them for Venture Beat last Friday.

While Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which bundles Radian6, Buddy Media and Social.com, isn’t free, in the quest for thoroughness, I decided to include their offering on this evaluation to check in and see what’s new over there.

Radian6 is the monitoring and engagement module, Buddy Media is the publishing platform and Social.com (acquired by Buddy Media) as a way to manage paid social media campaigns. They’re currently in the process of integrating those three platforms seamlessly together.

What was most interesting to me about our conversation about CRM software, the primary business Salesforce is in.  Imagine the KPIs you could generate if they acquired a company like Quicken or Sage and integrated it with their CRM and Marketing Cloud products.  The, in my opinion, would a big data trifecta.

In this episode, Jeffrey L. Cohen, from the content marketing team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud and I discuss content marketing, social media monitoring, engagement  dashboards and big data analysis. Jeffrey is also editor at Social Media B2B (a blog I’ve written for in the past) and author of The B2B Social Media Book.

Social Media Monitoring Topics Discussed:

Top of the sales funnel lead generation content marketing

Brian Solis’s cluster funnel analogy

Understanding the content marketing agency funnel

Creating content that solves the customers problems

Using content marketing to make sales reps more productive

How to motivate service agents

Social media is always a hot topic

Integrating online sales and marketing through lead scoring

Winning purchase consideration through the best educational materials

Third-party semantic analysis products

Richard Binhammer’s social media avalanche analogy

Radian6’s social media monitoring features

Online hiring is not particularly new, but social media hiring is.   

After years working on the front lines of recruiting, Gerry Crispin saw a new potential in the Internet for hiring online. 

In 1994, he created CareerXroads which helps corporations of all sizes with career planning and placement, contract recruiting, executive search, recruitment advertising and human resource management.  

In this interview, Gerry Crispin discusses his most current Sources of Hire Report [PDF], which attempt to attribute the hiring of candidate to specific media channel, of which social is one.

The Source of Hire (SOH) white paper is a critique on how employers define and measure the talent supply chain pre-application.  

Photo by Heidi Fin on Unsplash

Do you know your legal rights to privacy on social media?   What about your social media privacy rights as an employee?   

If you're an employer, do you know what your employee's rights to privacy are, or are unknowlingly infringing on them?  

If you're not clear on personal privacy law and social media, you need to listen to this podcast. The 50 minutes you invest could save you your job or more than a million dollars in legal fees and punitive damages.  

Personal privacy and wired communications are particularly timely right now.   In the U.S., popular attention is fixed on the George Snowden leaked top-secret NSA PRISM surveillance program with Verizon.   I

n the case of the NSA collecting data from Verizon, what may be missing is probable cause or a specific threat says Tony Bradley (@bradleystrategy) in his Forbes article.    

Since the NSA is collecting the data without an intent to prosecute, it’s not a 4th amendment violation, Tony argues. But probable cause and intent to prosecute are not required to violate Federal privacy law. Find out why in this podcast.  

How does the device and the ISP you use to access the Internet impact your personal privacy rights, how do those rights vary from state to state, what are the risks of bosses “friending” subordinates and what are the legal limits protecting the privacy of your Facebook social graph?  Are there any at all?  

The 4th Amendment of the United State Constitution protects citizens against “unreasonable search and seizure” and the 14th Amendment has been interpreted as giving them the “right to be left alone.” But what does that mean for employees and employers?  And are there any explicit privacy guarantees that apply?  

Learn how to protect your personal privacy rights on social media in this in-depth audio recording of a discussion with James DeSimone (@vjdesimone), known as "Jim" to his friends, family and colleagues, about your personal privacy rights on social media.

Jim graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1981, earned his law degree from UCLA and was admitted to practice law in California in 1985. Since then, he has specialized in representing those whose civil and constitutional rights have been violated by corporations or government entities.  

Topics Discussed:  

How US employee personal privacy rights apply to social media communications.State laws prohibiting employers from demanding social networking passwords from employeesHow social media privacy rights for employees differ from state to stat?Legal issues surrounding the use of social media background checks in pre-employment recruiting and hiringPrivacy rights, equal employment opportunity rights and the Fair Credit and Reporting ActEmployees have the right to privacy on social media off duty?Use of social media policies to manage employees’ expectationsChallenges associated with segregating personal and professional identities on social media with new services like the Linkedin Contact iPhone App, which automatically adds all the your contacts on your iPhone to your Linkedin contacts page Are employers allowed to monitor their employees social media use at work by shoulder-surfing?Noel Canning vs. NLRB case on recess appointments and what it could come diffuse recent decisions by the NLRB over the right of employees to bargain collectively and organize to improve working conditions on social media. How your Facebook privacy settings impact whether or not your employer or a litigator can access your profile to verify statements or to check your background.Who owns an employee’s content or connections after they leave and why employers should state that contributing content is within the s...

On April 2, 2013 social media was officially deemed an acceptable venue for publicly traded companies to disclose material information to investors by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new SEC ruling on social media stipulates that before companies use social media for material disclosures, they must alert investors where they’ll be doing so in advance.  

In this interview, Glen Gilmore, author of Social Media Law for Business and principal at Gilmore Business Network talks about the impact and ramifications of the ruling for employers and employees.

The SEC Ruling on Social Media is particularly important to investor relations professionals, who are charged with distributing information that could impact their company's stock price. 

The SEC released Regulation Fair Disclosure back in 2000 to prevent institutional investors from gaining an unfair trading advantage over individual investors by requiring publicly listed companies to non-selectively release material information. 

Since then, companies have been complying with Reg FD by using paid newswire services like PR Newswire and BusinessWire to satisfy their nonselective disclosure requirements.  As would be expected, the SEC Ruling on Social Media prompted a defensive posture from the paid PR newswire services.

But if the SEC's Guidance on the Use of Company Websites for Corporate Disclosures is any indication, the new SEC Ruling on Social Media is unlikely to provoke a sea change in how listed companies disclose their news. 

In this interview, Glen discusses these and other issues that the new ruling on social media have brought into the limelight for investor relations professionals.

SEC Ruling on Social Media Interview Covers:

Caveats to the SEC Ruling on Social MediaIR industries response to the SEC Ruling on Social MediaPractical methods for giving investors advance notice to impending material disclosure via social mediaWill the new SEC guidance on social media spur more embedding of social activity on company websites?Implementation challenges of the new SEC social media rulingDoes the inclusion of tweets on Bloomberg terminals make Twitter a more or less risky venue?Navigating material disclosures between personal and branded social media accounts?Updates HR managers should consider making to their employee handbook as a result of this new social media ruling from the SEC.

Disclaimer: This interview is for general informational purposes only and should NOT be considered legal advice.  Please refer any legal questions you may have to an attorney from your jurisdiction.

Photo by Herve Kabla

Just how well does the broader human resources community get social media?

The answer to that question and many more about the state of social media in HR are revealed in this podcast.  

We talk to Tim Sackett (@TimSackett), EVP at HRU Technical Resources, a $40M IT and Engineering contract staffing firm and Recruiting Processing Outsourcers (RPOs) about a vareity of social media HR issues.  

Prior to joining HRU, he was Director of Employment at Sparrow Health System and before that he was Regional HR and Staffing Director at Applebee’s International and has served others in similar capacities. 

He’s split his career between recruiting and HR working for HR vendors and corporations.  

Topics Discussed:  

How is HR changing to accommodate social media in the workplace.Challenges of managing social media usage among staffers at Applebee’sOvercoming the operational challenges social media at workBusiness case for HR to manage social media usage in the workplaceSocial media compliance in an era of increased government regulationSocial media governance strategiesStrategies for educating large employee populations on social media literacy and complianceChallenges of social media training for HRCorporate social media policy fairness, employee recruitment and retentionRisks of Equal Employment Opportunity charges due to social media

Photo by Free To Use Sounds on Unsplash

News and social media monitoring remains critical to effective social media marketing.  Because if you don’t know what people are talking about, you don’t know what’s important to them or where to focus your efforts.

Since the announcement that one of the most popular social monitoring tools Google Reader will be discontinued on July 1, 2013, Feedly has emerged as one of the leading social media tools users should consider shifting to, signing up 3 million new users since in last month or so.

In this episode, Cyril Moutran, co-founder at Feedly, discusses the monitoring tools the web and mobile versions of their news readers offers including subscribing to raw RSS feeds, feed views, Facebook monitoring and Twitter monitoring.

Social Media Monitoring with Feedly

How far back Feedly goesSubscribing to Google News feeds via RSSSocial media monitoring latency issuesSocial media monitoring trendsSearch within RSS feeds and feed directoriesContent curation capabilities of FeedlyOptions for analyzing feed activityHow Feedly curates content based on social activityHow Feedly compares to FlipboardValue of discovery vs. chronology in feedsUsing Feedly social measurement featureHacking RSS feeds

With more than 3 million users, Feedly is an angel-funded start-up with 10 employees and a newsreader app for the desktop, iPhone, iPad and Android. 

The company has not figured out how to generate revenue yet, but they’re kicking around different premium service ideas that would be paid. But the free version is not going away.

“We’ll always have a free model,” says Cyril Moutran.