Coleman Unlimited LLC

Business networking website Linkedin.com now has an events function, which is a great step to really becoming a competitor to Facebook. For all of us who have ever worked in associations, this feature makes the pulse jump a tad! You can add an event and then link your participation to it, as a speaker, organizer or attendee.

I think this will be an excellent feature for many groups. I already want to start adding the monthly luncheons for my local PRSA and NFPW chapter. Plus, it will give me a reason to log on to Linkedin more often.

The thing that I see that’s missing is the ability to invite others to your events, like Facebook does. Also, the events that show up are auto-selected, rather than something you choose. But no matter what the bugs, this is a great new feature.

I imported all of my contacts into Linkedin (which I’ve been intending to do for about 6 months). Now, after the holiday, I plan to let it rip and so how many of my business associates I can connect with through the site.

Check out the new Linkedin events feature (there’s even a video). And while you are there, connect with me.

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My local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sent me an interesting story in their news email blast. The headline read: “City threatens blind woman over unpaid 1-cent bill.”

Uh-oh, I thought: PR disaster. Some auto-billing mechanism is creating a havoc.

Sure enough… The city of Attleboro, Mass. sent a nastygram to a 74-year-old blind resident threatening a lien on her house if she didn’t pay her water bill balance of 1 cent.

To make matters worse, the city was unapologetic and blame-focused when questioned by the newspaper. My mouth actually dropped open when I read the city’s spokesperson’s statement on the whole mess.

Read and be in shock: City Collector Debora Marcoccio said, “My question is, how come it wasn’t paid when the (original) bills went out?”

Yeah, how dare an elderly blind woman mess up her payment by a cent!

I was appalled as a communicator. How hard is it to apologize? The spokesperson only needed to say that the city’s water billing system has faults and that they would immediately settle the account, forgiving the 1 cent mistake. An apology supplemented by swift action would have saved the day.

The homeowner pointed out that paying the bill would cost her 42 cents just for the stamp. Not only does the city of Attleboro look like its made up of a bunch of jerks, but it’s also being made a laughingstock by the national AP newswire.

What a kind word–and action–would have done to save this city’s reputation in this situation.

Read the full article.

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Every once in a while I come across a post on the web that is so valuable that I have this urge to print it and save it somewhere in a vault of “important informaton.” However, these days, I am retraining myself to save the link or if I must print it, print it to a PDF to put in my database.

Yesterday, thanks to a Twitter post from Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out, I read a post on the 10 Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists on mashable.com. I love this post, and I’ll probably be spending some time tomorrow checking out all these tools.

The list includes Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out, as well as tools like PitchEngine and ReportingOn. I was especially excited to see Media People Using Twitter and Twellow, because I find Twitter’s search functionality difficult to use.

Why are these tools so wonderful? Because accessing the right people for an effective PR pitch can be an expensive and time-consuming job–not easy for those of us with smaller budgets. However, this enables us to get great, well-written information into the right hands. I guess I’m becoming a bit of a social media junkie.

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I recently read an article in the ASAE Communications Section Newsletter about an association offering a new conference… one hitch: they had no marketing budget.

What did they do?

According to Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, his association used new media to inexpensively and effectively promote their conference.

Della Rocca’s conference marketing tips include:

• Set up your conference’s website using a free, self-hosted blog system. Check out IGDA’s conference website.
• Encourage subscriptions to RSS feeds on your site. This will keep your members updated without having to do as many “push” marketing emails.
• Post your content on other blogs. Have staff members share information about your event by posting and commenting on other relevant blogs.
• Examine and use your site statistics. You can find out who is linking to your blog and what keywords they are searching for on Google by examining your blog statistics.

The article also suggest recruiting attendees to post articles about your event as it is going on–either on your blog or on their own blogs. Other areas to think about: establishing a Facebook group for attendees and recording videos and posting them on Google video or YouTube.

By the way, the IGDA’s conference was a sellout.

The great thing that I see about these ideas are that they are something association staff can do in-house or they can outsource to a marketing or tech vendor. My husband’s company often helps out groups with their meeting promotion sites, but most haven’t gotten quite this techy yet.

I hope that RSS will catch on soon with association members; I know it would have saved tons of emails at my last association.

Access the full ASAE article here.

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