Wednesday, April 22, 2009

'Social Marketing' Guru Larry Weber Joins Twitter

It's a big day in the Twitter-verse... social marketing guru Larry Weber has posted his fifth Tweet today, having joined the service in mid-April. Larry runs the W2 Group, founded Weber PR, and is the author of "Marketing to the Social Web." Sixty-two followers so far.

This must mean Twitter is going to be important one day soon...

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Does Larry Weber Get the Social Web?

Back when the first edition of Larry Weber's book "Marketing to the Social Web" was published in 2007, I noted that he didn't have a blog.

Now, there's a second edition out, and still, Larry has his minions blogging about the book on his behalf, and shooting YouTube videos for him.

After a quick glance today, it seems that Larry has no Twitter account, no Facebook account, and no MySpace account. (There are other Larry Webers on MySpace and Facebook, but not the famous social media guru.)

I guess it's possible to really understand this stuff in the abstract, without really using it?

Here is Larry's first YouTube video, to promote the book. Does this count as social media, or is it really just a TV commercial?

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Saturday, October 6, 2007

Racepoint employee posts comment as fake Fake Steve Jobs

Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications has an interesting post detailing the dust-up over the fake Fake Steve Jobs.

Apparently, an employee at Waltham-based Racepoint Group, a PR firm, posted a comment to a blog, pretending to be Fake Steve Jobs. Racepoint represents the One Laptop Per Child Project, and this Racepoint employee, Kyle Austin, couldn't resist jumping in to defend OLPC, in Fake Steve Jobs' voice.

Valleywag has more.

Incidentally, Racepoint is part of Larry Weber's W2 Group, about which I posted yesterday. Here's a quote from Larry Weber's recent book, in which he criticizes Wal-Mart's use of fake bloggers to improve the retailer's rep:

    The harm it does to a company's reputation when the deception is revealed (which happens sooner than ever on the Web these days) cannot be offset by any short-term gain in sales or publicity.


I agree. To Racepoint's credit, VP George Snell took responsibility for the mistake on the company's blog.

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Friday, October 5, 2007

Larry Weber and the Case of the Phantom Blog

I was meeting with an entrepreneur today, and Larry Weber's name came up.

Weber is the PR guru who started The Weber Group, now Weber Shandwick, one of the world's biggest PR firms (and a unit of the Interpublic Group.)

This entrepreneur mentioned that he thought Larry had a blog. I bet him $100 that Larry doesn't have a blog.

Larry, do I win?

Even though Larry published a book this past summer called, "Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business," I think the guy does not have a blog.

Even though Larry writes on page 23, "Senior executive blogs ... can help establish industry thought leadership," I think the guy, now chairman of the W2 Group, does not have a blog.

Even though one of the companies within the W2 Group, Digital Influence Group, touts its ability to help companies go "out on the web to engage in conversations in the blogosphere and communities," I think the guy does not have a blog.

Digital Influence Group does have a blog, but it's not written by Larry.

Is this a case of the cobbler's children not having socks? (Larry is well-known for his penchant for baring his ankles.)

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