SVAMA November Program on Social Media Public Relations

Last week Thursday evening the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) held an event in conjunction with the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) on the topic of utilizing social media technologies (blogs, podcasts, RSS, and the like) successfully in an integrated public relations campaign.The moderator was Mike Manuel from Voce Communications and the author of the Media Guerrilla blog.Mark Coker from the Dovetail PR agency was a panelist, as were Brian Warren of OuterJoin and Jeff Rubenstein of Sony Playstation (USA).My sincere thanks to these gentlemen for their participation!The topics discussed ranged quite greatly and reflected the diverse nature of all the attendees. They covered, how does a tech-unsavvy person get into this (just get out there and start typing) to how do I justify online PR activities to reluctant decision makers who also happen to handle budgets (by integrating Web 2 technologies into a fully integrated comm strategy that includes time-proven media vehicles).The event was a great success with over 100 attendees from both organizations and the public at large. Adobe Systems hosted the event in their LEED Certified building. They offered a great conference room and a great spread of food and refreshments.In full disclosure, MarketCulture Strategies has a deep interest in the SVAMA as two of our team (including myself) are members of the board. I find my participation in the group to really help me stay on top of current marketing issues, which I think is extremely important here in Silicon Valley. Moreover it provides great networking opportunities. Over time I can see the organization being mentioned a lot on this blog.