Make the Jump: MotrinMoms Backlash, Top 10 List du jour, Don’t be a Jerk

Just finishing up listening to a great teleseminar from the minds of @PRSarahEvans, @PitchEngine (Love the PitchEngine platform and if you are a PR pro and haven’t checked it out go do it now!), and @skydiver (Another one – HARO – free national media queries. Good for karma and for your clients!)

Motrin Moms Are Mad The hot topic of the night – and the weekend for that matter – has been the backlash around the MotrinMoms campaign. I’m not a mom – so admittedly I didn’t really understand the anger over the campaign. But what I did get immediately was that the campaign was built and targeted at those ubiquitous Mommy Bloggers – who didn’t like the campaign at all. So they twittered about it and blogged about it and this weekend it blew up. As of an hour ago – the MotrinMoms campaign was taken off the web. We’re still waiting to hear the corporate response. But as Peter Shankman of HARP noted, ‘‘Social media is just offering the ability to screw up much quicker to a much wider audience.” The good communicators realize that and use those same tools to respond – not sit back and watch the hurricane come ashore.

10 Best Tools Do you know how much I love Top 3, 5 or 10 lists!? As our opportunities to connect globally in a split-second increases exponentially  – the stress of figuring out what to ‘listen’ to and just how to engage gets increasingly difficult. I rely on my friends – both the Boise early adopters from the Twitter and TechBoise crowd – and my virtual friends I follow nationally on Twitter and LinkedIn – to guide me.

Sarah Evans is one of those peers whom I admire (and follow on Twitter and subscribe to her blog) and her post on  10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Pros and Journalists is a keeper that you should check out.  On behalf of clients – ranging from a Fortune 50 to a local start-up non-profit – I use the first two religiously.

How Not to be a Jerk on Facebook - Another guru whose thoughts I admire? Chris Brogan. You should love him too based on this headline. It’s a great article – and I would love to send it personally to some of the people spamming me this week on FB. New toys are fun. We all get excited when we finally grasp them. And as we try out the toys in this grand new toy box we’ll make mistakes along the way. But remember when you think about using the toys – just because you can – doesn’t mean you should

My favorite takeaway comment from tonight’s teleseminar (via Peter Shankman) ‘The three words you need to remember with the convergence of social media & PR – transparency – relevance – brevity.’

Looking forward to Monday’s PRSAIdaho meeting with CEO Jeff Julin. Hope to see you there!

- Jess