In this episode of PRobecast, Justin Martell, Caitlin Smith, Josh DeStefano and Amanda King all join me in talking about how social media has changed trademark defense for companies, Pinterest for men, and using Facebook to supplement a job interview.

Trademarks coming down hard on the little guy – Trademarks and patent laws have been in the limelight in the past year or so, with Apple and Google (just to name the most popular lawsuits) working hard to defeat the other. However, social media has been the channel many startups have used to “shame” larger companies. For example, Bo Muller-Moore, a T-shirt maker in Vermont, said shaming resulted in thousands of dollars in financial support. He received a cease-and-desist letter from Chick-fil-A Inc. over his use of the slogan “Eat More Kale” in September. Chick-fil-A’s slogan is “Eat Mor Chikin.” Mr. Muller-Moore created a Facebook page and an online petition that has several thousand supporters—including the governor of Vermont. He also added a “donate” link to his website, and has raised more than $10,000 to defend himself, he said. While the use of social media has not caused any (known) cases of the big guy losing to the little guy, could it still happen? What do you think?

Piggybacking on Pinterest – Pinterest’s boards tend to show pictures of shoes, nail designs, coveted products women choose. But for images of more “manly” items like cars, tattoos and bacon, soon you will be able to go to Dartitup.com, which is expected to launch in the spring. It is one of several start-ups from entrepreneurs hoping to piggyback on the recent popularity of Pinterest—even though that site isn’t yet making any money. The number of visitors to three-year-old Pinterest, which lets users create online scrapbooks to share images of projects or coveted products, has increased tenfold over the past six months, according to comScore. Roughly 68% of the website’s users are women and they account for about 85% of its content, the research firm said. Dartitup founders Brandon Harris, 27 years old, and Michael Byrne, 26, admit they aren’t sure how they are going to generate revenue for their male-oriented version of Pinterest. There is also Gentlemint.com, a photo-sharing site launched last month by Brian McKinney, 33, and Glen Stansberry, 28, of Lawrence, Kan. Gentlemint’s logo is a man’s face with a monocle and handlebar mustache. Anyone can look at Pinterest’s success and want to piggyback, and it’s true that the market for this type of thing is dominated by women. Will Pinterest for men be as successful?

Facebook profiling for jobs – Job Seekers: Are you going on a job interview? The chances are good your profile will be “stalked” by your interviewer. Interviewers: Do you want to know how that applicant you just interviewed will actually perform on the job? Check out his or her Facebook profile.That’s the advice of a new study from the Northern Illinois University, the University of Evansville and Auburn University. The researchers recruited a group of four Facebook-savvy human resources professionals and students to evaluate the Facebook profiles of 56 users. The four perused each of the profiles for about 10 minutes each before grading them according to the so-called Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism). Six months later, the researchers compared the evaluations of the 56 users’ work supervisors and found a strong correlation for traits including intellectual curiosity, agreeability and conscientiousness. The evaluations are, of course, subjective, but job seekers shouldn’t necessarily worry that they need to clean up their Facebook profile. For instance, Don Kluemper, one of the authors of the study, says that contrary to popular belief, a picture of you partying won’t necessarily hurt your chances of getting hired. “I don’t think a picture of someone holding a beer adversely affected them, but [a picture of you] being drunk in a ditch somewhere might be a negative,” he says. Not surprisingly, pictures and references to traveling signaled openness to new experiences and adventurousness, while the number of friends you have indicates extroversion.

We chose the Facebook profiling story as this week’s PR Power Ranker winner. Using Facebook to supplement a job interview will only become more popular, and as younger generations who use Facebook will learn, the internet is a public place. Caitlin mentioned you should never put anything up that you’d be embarrassed about, and Justin reminded us that the same people who are hiring us also are likely to use Facebook, which has both advantages and disadvantages.

Who would you have voted for?

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Mashable, patents, Pinterest, Start-ups, Trademarks

Share/Save

Some people watch the Super Bowl for the game; others watch it for the commercials. In fact, the commercials are one of the biggest draws of the Super Bowl, especially for the non-sports fanatics of the world. The hype surrounding the 10 second teaser of the Ferris Bueller inspired Honda commercial has been phenomenal. TV-goers immediately took to Twitter to dissect, speculate and rate the clip. It spread like wildfire over the Internet and through social media networks.

Realizing how social media has changed the way fans enjoy the game, Mullen, Radian6 and Boston.com are sponsoring Brand Bowl 2012, a social media event that will analyze the Twitter commentary and rate the most popular and disastrous Super Bowl commercials. The virtual event at BrandBowl2012.com will feature an up-to-the-minute stream of tweets about Super Bowl commercials to determine which brands are the most and least effective. The brands will be ranked based on volume (who has the most/least chatter) and sentiment (who has the most/least positive and negative comments).

Were you always picked last in dodgeball, baseball or soccer? Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to be recruited to play in the Brand Bowl. The power to rank commercials you liked best, or least, is in the palm of your hand – or really, fingertips!

For those of you who plan to tweet your opinions about this year’s Super Bowl commercials, include the hashtag #brandbowl or reference a specific commercial in your tweet. The tweets will be streamed live on Boston.com during the game.

Brands are beginning to realize the influence the armchair advertising critics of the world have in the social media realm. The savviest brands are recognizing the power of social media and are releasing their commercials before the Super Bowl to build buzz online, and are orchestrating large-scale social media campaigns to maximize the impact of their multi-million dollar investments.

Will you be participating in Brand Bowl 2012?

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Boston.com, Brand Bowl, brands, commercials, Giants, Patriots, Super Bowl, Twitter

Share/Save

It’s a new year, which means our content pipelines and social media strategies are in full swing. Because it’s a new year, we’re also looking for inspiration. And if you are too, it might inspire you to try something you’ve never done in social media before. The two we like right now are Twitterchat and social media monitoring tools.

Twitterchats, Tweetathons, T-chats, Tweetups, whatever you want to call them, require a 100% team effort. If done right, they can greatly increase web traffic, improve organizational transparency, increase your Twitter followers, and build up or improve your community. It may be hard to convince your client this is a great thing for visibility, but all evidence points to success.

Since I’ve wanted to organize a Twitterchat for months now, I went searching for the best way to go about the task. I found a step-by-step blog from The Blue Key Campaign, which spent a week promoting and organizing its first one. The first step, of course, is that you need an established community. If there’s no one there to participate, where will your responses come from?

I mentioned before that this effort requires input and time from every team member. In our agency case, we’d need the PR team plus our clients, in order to answer questions in the format they arrive, whether it’s Twitter @reply, DM, or email. My hope is that once everyone gets on board, we’ll see results for our clients and as an agency. If you’re looking for a way to start a Twitterchat, check out Blue Key Campaign’s steps. They are as detailed as they come!

Have you ever tried a Twitterchat? What were the results? What would you do differently next time?

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: community, PR, Social Media, Twitter chats

Share/Save