Gaming - 80s Bands Launch Songs Through

New use of Gaming...Rock bands launching new singles through games

True to their rock 'n roll roots, '80s metal bands Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe will be using music-oriented video games to launch their latest tunes. This week, Def Leppard is launching their new single "Nine Lives" through Guitar Hero III and Mötley Crüe is releasing "Saint of Los Angeles" via Rock Band, with both songs available for download through Xbox and PlayStation systems. Also Guns N' Roses launching new single - hooray!!!

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Nike Mobile Text Promotion

Nike PhotoiD: Taking customization to a new level, Nike PhotoiD recently launched a mobile campaign which allows customers to pick colors from the real world to be incorporated into their Nike Dunks. Consumers need only to snap a photo with their mobile phones, then text it to a special number, whereafter Nike will take the two most dominant colors from the photo to incorporate into the Dunks. Unfortunately, the service is currently only available in Europe, with no word on a US launch yet

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Building Your Online Presence on a Tight Budget

Kristi pointed me to this online disucssion today. Peter Panepento, Beth Kanter, and Jonathan D. Colman hosted an online discussion about building online presence. In light of all we've been learning, this was a great discussion. I suggest following all the links that Beth gave, in particular. She seems to be a font of knowledge.

If you're internal to our network, you can see an MS Word version at: \\heart.org\nationalcenter\Departments\Projects\PMOProjects\Social Networking\Research\2008-0714 online discussion.doc

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Red Cross and the Art of Listening

Kristi Miller asked me to pass this item on to you.

It is a post from Beth Kanter, and inluces social media ROI case study slam panel at 08NTC: ROI of Listening, from Wendy Harmon of the Red Cross. Just click the title of this post to reach it, or click here.

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Michael DeBakey, Rebuilder of Hearts, Dies at 99

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: July 13, 2008

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, whose innovative heart and blood vessel operations made him one of the most influential doctors in the United States, died Friday night in Houston, where he lived. He was 99.

From the NYT

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Random Questions

First time blogging on this site and wanted to pose a question to this talented group. I have a great opportunity to pursue. Basically a reputable vendor we work with in advocacy is offering a social networking append service similiar to how an email append would work. We provide our list and they match it to social networking sites like Facebook and provide us that contact information. They are testing/demoing the new service for 3,000 records free and would offer a discounted rate if we continued our relationship. The question is if we are pulling a sample does it make more sense to pull highly engaged advocates or less engaged advocates? And our plan is to track this information back into our database with the outreach being to send them info about our most timely campaign as well as link them to existing user created networks. I was also interested on thoughts for more fully using this info.

Finally just an interesting fact to share. We recently promoted the blog we created at Lobby Day in our e-newsletter and I think our advocates are "lurkers". Click thru tracking shows this was the most popular link with over 3,000 click thrus, the next highest was in the hundreds. So in our case I think its being patient and being ok with readership at this point and not freaking out that posts and comments are low.

Clarissa

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Writing Style for Print vs. Web

This is a great article. Sorry it is a little old, but quite relevant.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, June 9, 2008:
Writing Style for Print vs. Web

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ECC Google Map

Here's a cool map created by our Merrilee Sweet for her team.


View Larger Map

It needs some tweaking, but it took her all of 1.5 hours to set up, and she has very little technical knowledge.

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Gained a lot of weight? Just rent your wardrobe.

In a world where you can rent purses, it was a matter of time when someone figured a way to rent out clothes too. If you’ve lost a lot of weight, or gained it (most of us), and are convinced that losing that 10, 20, or 50 pounds is just a matter of time, why buy new clothes figure – just rent them. You won’t need them too long right?

Get your rentals here.

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Social Networking metrics

Social Media Metrics by Steve Latham of Spur Digital after the break...

| View | Upload your own

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How Can Your Organization Avoid Drinking the Web 2.0 Kool Aid?

Beth Kanter and friends (see comments) have started listing questions an NPO should ask before diving in to the social networking pool. Check it out. Sounds similar to the draft guidelines we have developed. I would love to hear your answers to some of these questions. Are there any questions you would like to add?

As for my self, I think there needs to be something about community engagement. How is your org engaging communities? Are you doing all you can to communicate? Do you need to do more?

Update: The be-the-media site listing the questions is a WIKI. I just added my questions about community. Very cool.

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