The key to catching a reporter’s eye? Pitch like one
Ragan.com’s Jessica Levco shares five useful tips to keep in mind when pitching reporters gathered from Danielle Cass, communications manager for Kaiser Permanente

Social media war rooms (and why you need one)
This iMediaConnection post by Ari Newman provides valuable advice on being prepared to act when a media crisis strikes.

What to Do When a PR Disaster Strikes Your Startup
This ReadWriteWeb post by Audrey Watters continues the theme of online crisis management and highlights the highs and lows of Blippy’s response to their recent media woes.

Why Small Businesses Fail on the Web
Abe Mezrich from Didit shares this episode of Marketing Obsessions on MPDailyFix.com featuring Jason Teichman from Register.com who discusses where small businesses fail with their online digital presence.

Social Media Marketing Overload? Some Tips for Startups

4 Reasons Why PR Agencies Are Taking Over Social Media
Jason Keath provides great food for thought in this post that provides four concrete reasons why PR will eventually rule the social media space for big brands and of course, we have to agree!

How web analytics can help you avoid a PR disaster
Eran Savir, co-founder and VP business development at Kampyle, explains the importance of pursuing and maintaining a high level of customer service and interaction in the online space.

The Engaged User: Bridging Your Web Site And Social Networks
JanRain CEO, Brian Kissel expands on the importance of ensuring there’s a strong bridge between your online social presence and your corporate website that can enable users to become strong proponents of your products, services and content.

Hubspot’s Foursquare Cops
Hubspot’s new video spoof of the TV show “Cops” made its debut this week and is definitely worth a watch.

CEOs Say: How To Be An Executive Blogger
Good stories and advice for CEOs looking to blog or just to become better bloggers.

10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets
Did you know that your Tweets aren’t really searchable forever? ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez shares 10 ways to back them up.

Five ways to help your CEO embrace social media
A little post from “down-under” that gives some advice on how to get the top brass on board with your social media strategy.

Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
Om Malik shares his point of view on why Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed is not about Twitter but more about Google.

With PR on the Rise, Here’s a Refresher Course in the Basics (picked by Lisa Dilg)
Jonah Bloom from AdAge shares this quick PR refresher course for marketers and business owners who still think PR is “dead.”

Have blogs overtaken mainstream media?! (picked by Greg Wind)
This pick is actually a set of links to the New York Times “Timeswire” site and the recently re-vamped Newsweek site. Both mainstream media outlets have taken on a very “blog-ish” looking format, which could very well be the one change that these sources need to make the transition complete.

To tweet or not to tweet? For execs, that is the question (picked by Johanna Cappello)
Is Twitter for you? It seems executives fall on both sides of the fence and some are even perched at the top. This Boston Business Journal post profiles several Beantown area execs and their take on the subject.

Twitter Feels the Fail for Changing Its Feed (picked by Michelle Stevens van Kriedt)
There was certainly no shortage of blog posts on Twitter’s recent decision to change its “@reply” functionality. The sudden change brought an onslaught of Tweets and posts that made it the “meme” of the week. Here’s NPR’s take on the situation.

Introducing the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management (picked by Jeff Glasson)
ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick announces their first premium report for businesses (written by Kirkpatrick and a team of four). Dive into the post to see what the report offers. At $299, it seems like a great deal when compared to other sources of reports that we’ve seen on the subject.

5 Ways TurboTax Is Reinventing Tax Day With Social Media
Rohit Bhargava of the Influential Marketing blog shares 5 ways that Intuit is leveraging social media to help reduce stress for TurboTax users during tax time.

“Social Media” is hype. “social media” is real.
While tons of companies are still struggling with how Social Media fits into their marketing strategy, Damien Basile of the Cause=Habit blog helps readers cut through the hype of it all and see it’s not really as complicated as it seems.

Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say
The decline of print media and the rise of “citizen journalism” via blogs is raising a red flag with the FTC. Michael Bush from AdAge.com shares new information on some new potential guidelines that will apply to bloggers and online writers who are compensated to promote or review products.

A Video of Google’s Data Center
Here’s a rare look look inside of Google’s new container-based data center. I had to throw this in just for the “cool geekiness cred.” Get your geek on!

Making Social Media Work (for your business to business marketing)
David Libby from the Inspiring Dialogue blog shares 5 tips to help B2B companies start getting their social media efforts working better for them.

Leading by Example
Scott Monty (head of Social Media at Ford) shares two stories that show how some simple gestures from CEO Alan Mulally have gone a long way to help build long-lasting relationships with a few customers.

Video – Participation Marketing, Social Media and Teams
Sports Marketer, Jason Peck shares the basics of Alan Rosenpan’s take on “Participation Marketing” and why it matters to pro sports teams and other businesses alike.

Feedly Mini Updated: Now with More Twitter and FriendFeed Interaction
If you’ve taken the plunge into social networking and are an active user of Twitter, FriendFeed and Google Reader, then you might be interested in taking a look at Feedly. Its a nifty little plugin for Firefox that not only allows you to more easily share blog posts back out more easily, but also allows you to see how many other people have shared it in Google Reader or Digg. It even tellls you how many people have had conversations about the post on FriendFeed – neat! This post from Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb gives a great overview.

Report: Social Media Challenging Traditional Media
Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb summarizes some interesting stats on the adoption of social media tools found in the most recent report from Universal McCann. These interesting findings could be useful for marketers to consider when going through the process of developing a social media strategy.

Listening: An Action of Proportions
The process of listening is one of the most important things you can do increase your chances of success before engaging with online communities. Geoff Livingston shares some incites on the topic from the SNCR NewComm Forum, as well as a video clip of Shel Israel who adds to the discussion.

Social Media Identity: Personal vs. Professional
One of the first obstacles that social media newcomers often face is how to (or whether to) separate their personal and professional online identities. This post from the “I’m not actually a geek” blog touches upon the topic and shows how the ties between personal and professional identities change based on the size of your corporate organization.

People Who Like This Weblog May Also Like These Books
Break away from the computer screen with one of Brian Oberkirch’s book suggestions. If you like the content on his blog, then his book suggestions will not disappoint.

Overcoming key resistence to adopting social media
If your company still hasn’t adopted a social media strategy, then it might be due to one of the reasons listed in this post. However, Shel Holtz lends his expertise to show you why these excuses no longer hold water.

Personal Brand Statement Contest – Win The Full Issue 4
If you haven’t paid for a subscription to Dan Schwabel’s excellent Personal Branding Magazine, then this post will allow you to download a sample of the upcoming issue as well as enter into a contest to win the full version when it comes out.

Video Comments? No Thanks – 5 Reasons They Don’t Work
Earlier this week TechCunch launched the ability to leave video comments on blog posts as an alternative to a traditional text comment – courtesy of the new Seesmic plugin for Wordpress. At first, video comments seem to be hip alternative to typing, but in this post, Josh Catone clearly reveals a few downsides to adopting video comments on your blog.

del.icio.us as a PR measurement tool
Andrew Careaga of the Higher Ed Marketing blog gives some incite on a recent experience using the social bookmarking site del.icio.us as a measurement tool when keeping track of media coverage. His advice could also be carried over to similar tools like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.

Seven Types Of Highly Effective Corporate Blogs
In this post, Mitch Joel covers 6 styles of corporate blogs and provides examples of each. Does your company’s blog fall into one of these categories? Or perhaps one of these blog types will inspire you to get one started if your company still hasn’t joined the blogosphere.

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.”

1) Facebook/Microsoft – While the market was abuzz with a battle between Microsoft and Google over Facebook on Wednesday, a PR representative from Facebook “leaked” the deal by posting a new “friend” on her Facebook page. That friend just so happened to be Adam Sohn, who heads up global sales and marketing PR at Microsoft. ValleyWag – always the innovative thinkers – used this as enough confirmation of the rumors.

2) Your written PR pitches are on display – make sure they are quality! Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at Read/WriteWeb (and a consultant in new online software and marketing), highlights in a late Wednesday blog five PR pitches he’s recently received that not only had the opposite effect of grabbing his interest but, collectively, impassioned him to post them for critique on his blog – with names. Yikes.

The lessons here? Social media is by its very nature transparent – what you put out there can be reposted, repurposed and on display for anyone to research critique, link to and comment on – forever. Make sure you are sending quality communications that you can stand behind. Learn and abide by unspoken etiquettes of the communities, engage in using social media intelligently, and moreover, give reporters more than just “stuff” regardless of the vehicle in which you choose to communicate.

You’re busy, right? Imagine how busy they are – and how many pitches they have to read through in a day. If you want to connect, do it only when you know you’ve got something good – or maybe when you don’t want anything at all (old fashioned relationship building) – and give them quality, concise and personally relevant information (no one blasts generic email pitches these days…right??).