Don't Just Complain, Do Something
Social Honeycomb
With all the complaints we hear from bloggers receiving bad pitches from PR pros not yet well-versed in the best ways to approach social media, how often do they try to help the person out rather than just complain? Amanda Gravel, who has the benefit of being both a PR pro and a blogger, decided to just ring up the person behind a recent bad pitch, and the experience ended up being positive for them both. "We ended up having a great conversation about the how difficult it is to always make the right decisions when reaching out to bloggers and we discussed some better approaches. I let her know that with me, if I'm on an outreach list, but she isn't totally sure that her news is a puzzle-piece fit for me and my blog, to just say so and be honest. I told her not to waste any minutes of her busy day writing out a big flowery pitch and including paragraphs of information. Just tell me honestly why you're reaching out, let me know what the news is and give me a few short bullet points with things like links so I can find out more before I write back."

Big Move for Crayon's Scott Monty
Social Media Marketing
Big congratulations from all of us here at Media Bullseye to our friend Scott Monty. Scott has been serving as consigliere for Crayon, and has just announced he'll be moving on to head up social media efforts for Ford Motor Company. They couldn't have made a better selection, congratulations go out to Scott. "Now I'll have the opportunity to work with another talented team of communications executives at Ford, as well as Maggie Fox and the Social Media Group, who have been so successful in launching Digital Snippets with Ford."

Twitter vs Spam
Naked PR
With all the problems plaguing Twitter lately and all the reasons to complain about the service, I hadn't even thought about the potential for yet another reason to worry: spam. Jennifer Mattern points out that should spammers overtake the service, which is already shaky when dealing with traffic and overuse, Twitter might just fold completely. Here's hoping her prediction doesn't come true! "I'm not naive enough to think these things aren't already happening. I'm absolutely certain they are. I just think the recent buzzing in certain audiences says it's going to increase. Do you think Twitter would be ready to handle it? Do they have the resources currently to deal with massive spamming if it does occur (as in being able to spot it and delete the accounts efficiently)?"

On Message
ProBlogger
There are plenty of different problems that can start plaguing a blog. Dwindling numbers of posts, poor writing, dull content, etc. But what about your niche? Writing about one specific topic can add a lot of success to a blog, and Darren Rowse reminds bloggers not to stray off topic, lest you disappoint your readers. "Some bloggers make the mistake of starting out with a niche that is so broad that they can't keep up with it without burning out - in these cases I'd advise focusing down on one aspect of the topic. Some bloggers choose a niche that is so narrow that they can't find enough to say on the topic - these bloggers need to broaden their focus."