Recently I was watching a news story about several women who had fallen prey to a man with a fake Facebook profile. I often wonder how people fall for these scams, but as I watched it, I could see how it could happen – the man seemed genuine and “normal.” In fact, I have found myself believing in people that I’ve met online only to find out later that they’ve been less than truthful.

This scares me, because while I think I am relatively intelligent, and it’s my job to be online all day everyday where I come across every imaginable scam you can think of, I have been duped by “online personas.”  So if I can be tricked, what chance does my mother have online….or even scarier, my kids?

Our client, Location Labs, recently introduced something that I am hoping will help. I do not normally blog on client news, but this addresses something very important to me. Location Labs’ new suite of family safety services service, Safely, helps parents better protect their children. Their newly launched offering, Safely Social Monitor, makes sure their children are using Facebook in a safe manner.  You will be able to use this to see what your children are interacting with most on Facebook and what photos they upload.  Yes, you can do that by going to their Facebook page, but how many of us forget to look through email, or texts, much less have time to stalk them on Facebook.

But using Social Monitor, parents can get alerts when their children are tagged in photos or when they do other activities, like posting inappropriate words or phrases. And, they are able to do this with a dashboard that allows parents to visualize the data easily, without having to sign into Facebook.

I know many people think of this as stalking their kids and don’t want to do it, however, as a daily user of social media, the things I have seen make me very concerned about what could happen to my kids if I am not diligent.  Personally, I think it’s irresponsible as a parent not to do anything in my power to monitor their social media activity closely.

What do you think? Would you use a service like Safely to monitor your kids, or do you think it’s a violation of their privacy?

In about five minutes time, you can be set up on NutshellMail and choose how often you receive an aggregated e-mail delivery of your most important messages across networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Why is this important? Because one of the biggest frustrations or roadblocks we hear about from businesses who want to include social media into their marketing mix is lack of time. It’s time consuming to log into each network and keep up with not only your replies, but the topics that are of interest to you and your business. NutshellMail makes it easy – you see all your network activity in one snapshot. And I love that I can reply across networks directly from the email. Other options let you see who your new followers are – or who stopped following you – which can be helpful in analyzing what content is compelling and what isn’t.

I’d love to hear what you think. It’s free and easy – so if you try it, please share your thoughts. And stay tuned to Constant Contact – as you know, they also offer Email Marketing, Online Survey and Event Marketing – as they plan to add more social media marketing tools that will help small businesses and organizations easily execute the most effective and successful marketing programs possible.

For more information, check out the video below or details on Slideshare.

Social Media Marketing Made Simple for Small Businesses – VideoTechnorati Tags: effective marketing tools, small business, social media marketing, Constant Contact, NutshellMail, SMB, social media,

Powwownow – Europe’s largest free conference call provider launched today in the U.S. and unveiled its first iPhone app. You can download it for free here, or at the iPhone App Store or on iTunes. We’re at Think Mobile in New York City today and celebrating the launch with a fun contest where we’re giving away three iPads. Folks here are having fun with our “Powwownow app rap” video contest - check them out (including, embarrassingly, yours truly – although I can’t win!) and click here to learn how to enter for your own chance to win through April 23.

HealthLeap – a free and effortless way for patients to schedule health appointments (ex: doctors, dentists) and stay on top of their health. In turn, it also empowers doctors who want to increase their visibility and interactivity among a new breed of Internet-savvy patients in a measurable and effective way. The net net – HealthLeap makes  scheduling appointments a breeze for the patient, and helps doctors to showcase their practice, extend their brand awareness, fill available appointments and last minute cancellations, and more. Read the full news release for details.

Also today, client St. Louis Children’s Hospital launched their first “Kid Cam” production, where an eight-year-old brain tumor patient turns the tables on his caregivers and examines them to provide an inside look at the SLCH hospital experience. The goal of the video is to offer more personal insight into the hospital from a kid’s perspective so that others in the same situation understand they are not alone. The footage shows some of of the patient’s scarier moments – like accessing the port used to deliver chemotherapy medication – as well as lighter moments such as visits from the music therapist and the adorable therapy dogs. Watch now:

Our newest client, WaveMarket, launched their Veriplace Developer Community “LocationNation” last week, as well as a Developer Contest, awarding two cash prizes of $5,000 and iPads for all second place finishers. The contest encourages developers to create location-based services and applications that can be deployed across the Veriplace platform and remotely locate over 150 million phones in the U.S. Prizes will be awarded for Best location-aware Advertising or Marketing, Best Social app, Best Enterprise app and Most Innovative. The contest runs through July 1 and winners will be announced on July 26. Check out the contest site for details.

In “One Company’s ROI Tally for Social Media,” Reality Digital’s CEO Cynthia Francis says calculating return on investment starts with understanding what you want to accomplish. She includes a breakdown of investment vs return, including:

• Total investment for social media programs (including technology costs and PR agency hours): roughly $3,000 per month
• Total sales leads generated in April, May and June: 72
• Average sales leads per month: 24
• Average cost per sales lead: $125
• Lead conversion to sales opportunities: 11.1%
• Lead conversion to closed deals: 1.4%

In “What’s your Twitter ROI? How to measure social media payoff,” our client John Stevens, director of corporate content and communications at Litle & Co., says the company has seen “six-figure revenue come in because of the connections made through social media.” He discusses the need for firm ROI figures and future decisions around using public sites such as Twitter or building proprietary systems.

What’s your return been on social media investments to-date? Do you expect the ROI to increase, decrease or remain the same in the next 6-12 months? How are you using social media in your business? CMOs and marketers, what kind of help you do plan to enlist for PR, social marketing and advertising in the next year? Please take our survey – it’s only two questions and we’d love to hear from you. Thanks!

A cost-effective alternative to more traditional alarm systems, SimpliSafe allows you to pay as you go – no long term contracts – and you own the system. Therefore, you can take the system with you when you move. Best of all, it doesn’t even require a landline or internet connection to reach their 24/7 emergency dispatch center. For more information, visit their website or connect with SimpliSafe on Twitter.

When asked why they chose PerkettPR, CEO and co-founder Chad Laurans said, “PerkettPR brings a great combination of traditional media experience and social media savvy that will help us spread the word about SimpliSafe. Word of mouth is already a big factor for us and with PerkettPR’s help, we aim to drive awareness to new levels.”

We’re extremely excited to help SimpliSafe extend their brand awareness and community – stay tuned!

I was especially interested in the presentation by Martin Murray who handles media relations for PSNH – better known as @PSNH on Twitter.

With the ice storm that hit on December 11, 2008, the word quickly got out that @PSNH was on Twitter and followers increased by 1,700% as customers were seeking answers and comfort in knowing that others were dealing with similar situations and that @PSNH was listening and responding.

As a customer of PSNH, I was very impressed with the organization’s use of Twitter to communicate with its customers during one of the biggest ice storms in the company’s history. The treacherous storm knocked out power to more than 320,000 residents across the state – including mine – for six very long days.

I also found it interesting that, along with Twitter, PSNH has also adopted other social media tools to engage with and communicate with customers – using Flickr and YouTube to share pictures and videos, as well as setting up a Facebook fan page.

In the video clip below, Martin sums up how the customer experience has changed significantly with PSNH’s adoption of Twitter. Instead of private one-to-one phone conversations with a customer, PSNH is now able to share and include others in those discussions publicly – getting more information out to more people.

PSNH video:

John Daly and The Boston Police Department (BPD), known as @Boston_Police on Twitter, are also not strangers to social media. They were the first city police department to have a blog and with their Text a Tip program, people can text their anonymous tips. It wasn’t until recently that John decided to get the BPD onto Twitter to use it as a public information tool.

Check out the video below where John talks about how they are utilizing Twitter, as well as their plans for integrating it into their 911 Center to use as an early warning detection system – cool stuff!

BPD video:

Both The Boston Police Department and PSNH saw an opportunity to improve communications with the adoption of social media technologies. The results have proved that it is indeed a smart move – doing so has helped both entities to connect with the public and their customers on a more personal level. They can now include customers in the discussions at hand – no other communications method can offer the same results.

P.S. – The next New Hampshire Social Media Breakfast is scheduled for April 17^th at 8am.

Combining social media technologies and fashion, Inside The Tents “was born to provide a fresh look into the very exclusive Bryant Park Tents during Mercedes Benz Fashion week. As more and more independent new media journalists are getting access into behind the scenes of the most fabulous fashion event of the season, they share with the world news and observations usually left to selected group of magazine editors.”

This unique effort aggregates feeds from various social media communities and applications such as Twitter, Flickr, live blogging and video streaming, “sometimes getting ahead of the traditional media to bring the latest trends to the fashion aficionados around the web.”

If you can’t be there live for this to-die-for fashion event, be sure to follow Inside the Tents for everything fashion coming out of Bryant Park in this coming week. Tecchies may find it of interest as well – it should be fun to see social media in action outside of the traditional business world.

Also open to the public – and useful for any small business owner who desires to learn more about email marketing – the workshop will demonstrate how easy it is to design and execute email campaigns to drive customer loyalty and interaction, increase sales and build long lasting, positive reputations. Participants will learn best practices for  building a quality list, increasing email open rates, encouraging readers to take action, and analyzing click-behavior to improve results.

Boston’s Restaurant Week features 3-course lunches and dinners for $20.08 and $33.08 respectively, at more  than 200 restaurants in and around Boston.  Bring your appetites August 10 through August 15, 2008  & August 17 through August 22, 2008.

Visit the unofficial guide to restaurant week for more details.

The  Power of Email Marketing: Restaurant Edition
Boston  Public Library
700 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
August  4, 2008, 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Click here to register

We’re also continuing our trend of on site interviews – we’re interested in turning the camera on reporters, bloggers and entrepreneurs. Have a new technology to tout? Opinions on the social media landscape? Insights on the future of tech? Please share them with us and we’ll feature them here post-party. We look forward to seeing Boston’s best!

Thanks to Brian Balfour and Jay Meattle for organizing the event.

SXSW 2008: Mzinga from Download Squad on Vimeo.

[via downloadsquad.com]

PerkettPR client Mzinga announced today that it is acquiring Prospero, a fellow Massachusetts-based social media platform builder. Both companies excel in the creating white-label social media platforms that allow companies to create feature-rich online communities. This merger clearly places Mzinga in the spotlight as the leader in business oriented social networking. The true question lies in how this will affect other white-label providers in this space.

Notable social media bloggers such as Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Scott Monty have already posted on the merger and shared their views on what the future might hold in this space. What is your take on the future of white-label social media platforms or even social media for corporations in general? To help answer that question, leaders from the newly formed Mzinga along with PerkettPR and Topaz Partners will be hosting a Twitter-based Q&A session throughout today (Monday, March 3rd).

Feel free to follow and converse with any of us on Twitter:

Mzinga/Prospero: Aaron Strout, Jim Storer, Colin Browing, and Heather Strout
PerkettPR: Jeff Glasson, Lisa Dilg and our corporate presence
Topaz Partners: Doug Haslam and Sandy Kalik

Additional Reading:

TechCrunch – More Consolidation in the White Label Social Networking Space: Mzinga Acquires Prospero

Mashable – Mzinga Acquires Prospero to Grow Online Community Solutions Sector

ReadWriteWeb – Enterprise Community Provider Mzinga Swallows Prospero

CenterNetworks – Mzinga Raises $32.5 Million and Acquires Prospero Business Social Networking Platform Provider

Aaron Strout, Mzinga – Red Letter Day

Jim Storer, Mzinga – Following the Mzinga/Prospero News

Colin Browning – Social Media: Working Behind The Scenes

Tech PR Gems – What do you do when a social media client has big news?

This event is a great example of social media companies actually putting social media tools to use and engaging in conversation to benefit the community. We look forward to chatting with you. See you in the Twittersphere!

Sermo continues to revolutionize healthcare. The discussions held, and decisions made, within the community positively impact not only physicians, but the patients they care for and the pharmaceutical companies that want to forge a safer and more productive future through a more efficient exchange of knowledge and resources. Sermo is a Web-based community where physicians share observations from daily practice, discuss emerging trends and provide new insights into medications, devices and treatments.

“And since physicians have never before been able to talk with a unified
voice in such impressive numbers, sharing observations and insight
about treatments, drugs, devices and biologics, we expect Sermo to
continue to rock the pharma marketing world for some time to come.”

We couldn’t agree more! We are extremely proud of this award, thankful for such an interesting and savvy client, and excited to share even more interesting developments about Sermo in the year to come. Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Palestrant, Founder & CEO; Gina Ashe, CMO; Greg Shenk, Director of Communications and the entire team at Sermo! What a year!

Nominations are only open through tomorrow, December 12, so log on and list your favorites now. The Crunchies Committee will then choose five finalists from the submissions and voting will start on December 13 and last for approximately one month.

If you are looking for some inspiration on who to vote for, check out some of PerkettPR’s clients nominated for selection this year:

Conduit ; “best international start-up” – community toolbars

Moola.com ; “best time sink site,” “best consumer start up” and “best international start up” – the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Rewards Game (MMRG)

Ezmo ; “best consumer start up” and “best international start-up” – social music sharing

Sosius ; “best business model” – free online collaborative workspaces

Here’s some additional background on the awards from the Crunchies blog:

“Together GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch are pleased to announce that nominations for the inaugural 2007 Crunchies Awards are now open.

We created twenty award categories to recognize the year’s most innovative technical, creative and business accomplishments of key companies, products and people. We hope you’ll agree that the award categories are good reasons for celebration and fit for a proper ceremony.

We invite you to submit your favorite companies and products for consideration. Read the official rules. Nominations will be open through midnight pst Wednesday, December 12. Finalist voting will open Thursday, December 13 and run for approximately one month before the awards ceremony on Friday, January 18 in San Francisco.”

Other interesting companies who won or were finalists in their categories include Care.com – a new place to find a baby or pet sitter; SheSpeaks – a national network of women who share their feedback and influence products, services and issues on the world around them; and The Baby Planners – a concierge and consulting service that caters to the needs of expectant parents.

It was great to see a variety of regions represented by the winning companies – from coast to coast, interesting emerging start ups and tenacious executives are profiled. For a full list of winners and finalists, visit The Stevie Awards.

First, we are looking forward to the launch of CollegeWeekLive – the biggest virtual college fair ever with over 10,000 students, parents and guidance counselors attending, including many from Europe, Asia, and Africa.

CollegeWeekLive enables students to “visit” multiple colleges in just two days – they can connect with current college students, guidance counselors, admissions experts and more in a live, interactive environment. The event is geared toward enhancing the process of choosing a college that’s best for the student – all from the their home computer. It will feature many great sessions to help today’s college-bound student make better choices. For more information, check out the agenda.

Over 75 colleges from over 35 states are signed up to-date, including Air Force Academy, Bentley, Central Connecticut State, Northeastern University, Tufts University, University of Buffalo, University of Texas and more.

Secondly, on Friday we will be at TechCrunch Boston MeetUp at Estate in Boston. We will be helping clients Moola and Mzinga launch – please stop by and see what they are all about. They will both be providing demos and some interactive fun as well.

If you are a reporter, blogger or analyst covering social networking, online gaming, advergaming, online collaboration or community, and would like a pre-launch briefing to learn more, please email me at chris[at]perkettpr.com.

If you are attending the party, please stop by the PerkettPR Martini Lounge and find out what all the buzz is about. More details coming later this week. See you there!

Follow us – @PerkettPR – on Twitter – for live updates and interviews from the party!

With the average student-to-counselor ratio in US high schools at 315:1, students could use some additional guidance around which colleges to visit, what questions to ask and even what current students have to say about their experience. But touring campuses takes a good deal of time and money – both the student’s and their parents. Enter CollegeWeekLive, a one-of-a-kind virtual event produced next month by our client PlatformQ that provides an opportunity to visit more colleges in two days than many students would have the opportunity to before graduation.

CollegeWeekLive is free for students and will be an interactive two day conference held online. Students can visit interactive booths, talk to guidance counselors and even follow along as current students provide a peek into campus life. Sessions include topics such as “Key Factors in College Admissions Today” and “How to Win a Sports Scholarship,” as well as lively student panels from students around the nation. To-date, participating universities include notables such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the University of Virginia, University of Mississippi – Ole Miss, University of California – Irvine, University of Connecticut, UMass Boston, Northeastern University, Tufts University, Air Force Academy and many others. Stay tuned as the list grows daily.

Take a virtual tour to learn more – CollegeWeekLive will be held November 13th and 14th from 3:00 p.m. EST to 11:00 p.m. EST.

We all know that social networking is changing the way people communicate. This simple proposition is now on the radar of many businesses – how can we harness such information, how do we monetize it and how can it help us to become a better business? Many still don’t “get it” and too many still dismiss its potential to truly change business. (As even Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff indicated in his comment to our October 9 post). As today’s Sermo news indicates, the powerful impact of the transparent and efficient exchange of knowledge – doctors on Sermo openly discuss issues, trends, treatments and more – can be applied to real issues.

Sharing such information on Sermo, physicians have access to the most topical medical data available – enabling them to make better fact-based decisions, faster – in a way never before made possible. Ultimately, patients will benefit from the positive impact of such important collaboration.

Read more on the partnership at The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Financial Times, Bloomberg.com and Sermo.

Constant Contact has met success by keeping a laser focus on a few simple guiding principles: outstanding customer support and easy one-to-many communications. The company’s email marketing and online surveys are not only easy-to-use and customize, affordable and effective, but the customer service is outstanding. The company’s support personnel is readily available in various ways – via phone, email or chat and it also provides a comprehensive online Learning Center that covers tips and tricks and announces schedules for webinars, regional training events and more.

Today’s future-thinking Web 2.0 community could learn a lot from Constant Contact – simplicity, easy access (try the product free for 60 days, no strings attached) and customer service still rule, even in an era of “do it yourself” technologies. Just ask the company’s more than 130,000 small business customers.

Congratulations!

Sunday’s Boston Globe had an interesting article on the tech industry and its future among the recession fears. One interesting note was how some of the “survivors” have been the what-some-might-consider “less sexy” cousins of all the Internet darlings, “Indeed, the infrastructure and enterprise products scorned by Internet highfliers early in the decade – from data storage equipment to accounting software – have become platforms of growth and stability in today’s technology economy.”

Several of our clients echo that sentiment as they continue to move forward with innovative, useful technologies that are key drivers to the growing tech sector. While not quite the “media darlings” as many yet-unproven Web 2.0 companies, they are solid, growing companies with innovative products and services, real customers – and revenue.

Judging from today’s news alone – coming from such clients as Lightstorm Networks, Sycamore Networks, Gotuit and more – solid, continued growth continues to sustain the economy – with companies solving real problems for real, paying customers. We are proud to work with this generation of tech leaders – although we do kind of miss all those fun dot com names such as pets.com, furniture.com, vote.com and more. Maybe there was something about such simple, obvious names that contributed to the downfall… simple names = too simple of an idea backed by too much money, perhaps?

Check out today’s news and let us know what you think. Is there a tech bust looming?

• Gotuit – video navigation and search leader signs Fox Reality Channel, the only all-reality, all-the-time network; check out The Fox Reality Channel Really Awards 2007 now to watch last year’s awards ceremony and vote for the Most Memorable Reality TV Star for 2007
• Lightstorm Networks – new Carrier Ethernet Silicon player emerges
• Q1 Labs – network security management company sponsors a SANS Network Security Lunch & Learn
• Sycamore Networks - (NASDAQ: SCMR) – a new Intelligent Multiservice Switch from one of the market’s longstanding leaders in intelligent networking solutions for fixed line and mobile network operators worldwide