Creating community: one of the biggest missing pieces in the marketing and PR puzzle. Whenever we present our accelerated marketing plans, we always talk about creating, building and nurturing a community.

In plumbing the depths of my experiences archive, I remembered this presentation I created four years ago. Dual cast to a live audience in the room and over the Internet, the presentation covered the five keys to creating your customer community. First posted in 2008, here’s the outline with …

Three out of four marketing and PR workshops for IAPD IPRA went well: lots of space, time and room for conversation. When I saw the room for my Social Media Sampler presentation, I got a bit concerned. Fifteen minutes before I was set to start, it was already almost full. When the crowd started spilling out of the room, I offered to record my presentation for playback.

While the audience here is parks and recreations agencies, much of the information …

Next week, I’m honored to present four programs at the IAPD/IPRA [Illinois Association of Park Districts - Illinois Park and Recreation Association conference]. Thanks so much to Jessica Alexenko of the Lisle Park District for booking me to speak at two workshops and two breakout sessions. We started talking about the conference almost a year ago and just last week I met several people at two different events who told me how much fun I would have at the …

It’s almost the end of the year, so I decided to take a look back, review and wrap up my top 12 posts.
This tidy bundle fits into a 34 page social media marketing, PR, twitter collage ebook, which you can download here.

How I chose my top marketing, social media and PR posts . . .

True or False?

Based on traffic.

Number of comments.

Ranking by keyword.

Read popularity.

Highest retweets.

If you answered false to all, then you are right! Each post was selected …

Thanks to Steve Stokes of Stoked Studios for covering Social Media Club Chicago‘s first anniversary event on October 22, 2009. Many people asked about how they could watch the video of the panel discussion about community and social media – click here to go the video.

SMC Chicago President, Jeff Willinger of RightPoint Consulting moderated the panel discussion. Thanks so much to our panelists: Ramon DeLeon of Domino’s Pizza, Sarah Evans of Sevans Strategy, Gerald [and Olivia] Haman of Solution …

Coming up on October 30 in Lombard, Illinois . . . here’s a press release about an event that’s expected to draw over 500 people and 50 exhibitors. Need a business to business social networking or social media marketing strategies speaker? We released new about the expo via PRWeb.

Social Media Talks Buzz Up Lombard Chamber Business EXPO

Lombard, Illinois October 16, 2009 — Successful businesses know that one of the best places to network is a chamber of commerce business EXPO. …

Let’s take inventory, okay? Get out a sheet of paper. Make three columns. Label one “group,” a second “connected” and the third “disconnected.” Connected means plugged in online via twitter, Facebook and Linked, etc. Disconnected means analog or email only.

Now, list all of your groups in three categories: business, social and peripheral.

In each column, check either connected or disconnected.

What do you come up with? How connected are the groups you care about?

You, yes you, can be the catalyst to getting …

How do you commune with your community?

Recently, a client asked how we develop our social media marketing strategies. Our approach is based upon our Marketing Transformations Process, a 10-step program that results in an accelerated marketing plan. Today, I’m sharing an outline with you to get your input. While this is more of a checkpoint list to get started, I’m thinking about how the layers can morph into real communities.

Social Media Marketing Strategy 20 Step Strategic Marketing Approach

1. Capture …

It’s almost unbelievable – only 81 out of the Fortune 500 companies have public-facing corporate blogs.

Is it me or does 16% sound impossibly low?

This stat is a key finding of a new research study, “The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and Steady” conducted by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Research Chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial …