Is the practice of sending traditional press releases still viable, or even enough? More and more people are turning to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg for news. The power of online and digital social networking is bar none. Hence, companies and even more so, PR outfits, have to rethink their strategies and adapt to new realities.

What is a SMR?

In the U.S., companies like Cisco System, Kodak and the European arm of General Motors, began experimenting with social media news releases since 2007.

A social media release (SMR) is like its traditional cousin but much, much more concise and includes social media capabilities i.e. bookmarking networks, contextual tags, the ability to track and host conversations, and links to other social networks. (more…)

The disputes between journalism and the Web have gone on for some time. From journalists vs. blogger debates to accusations by the newspaper industry that Google is stealing its content, it is fair to say that the Internet has changed the field of journalism as we know it.

The system that journalists ran on for so long is being transformed. In an era of citizen journalism, do the traditional rules of reporting still apply? We spoke to Michael Yiannakis, a News Editor at the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, for his thoughts. (more…)

You’re about to outsource your online marketing to an external vendor. How can you get the best out of the client-vendor relationship? How do you close the gap between their understanding of your business needs, and yours?

We speak with Angela Chiu, who has worked for advertising/digital agencies in Asia and New York, and who is now the Interactive Marketing Manager of Vision Care, Johnson & Johnson. She gives us her views from having worked on ‘both sides of the fence’.

Q: How do you get the best results from working with digital marketing agencies?

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Have you benchmarked your website against your competitors yet?

We thought we would compare the online traffic of some of the world’s top management consultants, accounting / audit firms and consumer research companies. These include the likes of Accenture, Bain, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Frost & Sullivan, McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Synovate and TNS, to list a few examples.

There are many sites such as Alexa, Compete, comScore, Hitwise and Nielsen Online that claim to provide reliable benchmarks of site statistics. (more…)

Online social media is here to stay.

Facebook is the most popular global social networking site, as confirmed by Nielsen research.  In May 2009, it had 144.3 million unique visitors. Twitter is also becoming very popular, having jumped from 1.2 million unique visitors in May last year to 18.2 million this May. And Linkedin is exceptionally popular with job seekers and recruiters.

Have professional service firms joined the online social circuit? Which tools are they using? Are Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin their top choices? Do they use these channels and tools mainly for recruitment purposes or do they also target clients?

To answer these questions, Manifesto reviewed 47 websites including those of Accenture, BCG, Capgemini, Deloitte, Grant Thorton, IBM Global Consulting, Mckinsey, Nielsen, TNS, Synovate.

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