Cision, a global provider of media monitoring, research, distribution, and evaluation services for the public relations profession, has released an informative new tip sheet, available for free download, titled: Using Twitter to Become Part of the Conversation – How Twitter can become a Key Element of your Communications Effort. 

Their top three tips:
1. Get in the game
2. Choose your friends 
3. Listen closely

Melitta

Could ‘the Conference Bike’ be the solution to effective meetings we’ve been waiting for?

    
Melitta

Article on Tech Crunch on alternatives to Google:

Pipl.com: People Search Engine So Good, It Will Scare Your Pants Off

Google may be good at many things, but people search is not one of them. For that you’ll have to use a more specialized search engine. Spock and Wink (merged with Reunion.com) are the people-search destinations most TechCrunch readers could probably name off the top of their head. However, slowly but surely—and mostly, very quietly—a new player has been making serious headway in this search vertical, and it’s name is Pipl.com.

Going by ComScore’s December numbers, Pipl is leading in the US with 557K unique users to Spock’s 260K, but is trailing internationally with 1.35M uniques to Spock’s 2.38M. How has Pipl pulled this off? Matthew Hertz, the company CEO, tells me it’s mostly word-of-mouth. It’s a simple answer but it rings true. Just take it out for a spin and you’ll see why—it’s just good. In fact it’s so good it’ll probably scare some people’s pants off when they see what information it is able to—legally—drudge up.

It produces not only links to all of your profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr. It finds mentions of your name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes “quick facts” about the person. For instance, a search for “Roi Carthy” turns up quick facts like these:

Roi Carthy is an Israeli-based entrepreneur and startup consultant…
Editor’s note: Roi Carthy is currently writing for TechCrunch…

For those interested in learning more about Social Networks and how they could help you do business online, a new book by Bill Ganz: ‘Belonging to Networks’, is now available for free download at: www.fasttrackonlinemarketing.com .

The digital book contains Ganz’s preliminary research into the power of social networks and is available ahead of his full book titled: ‘The Art of Engaging the Audience in an Online World’, which is due to be launched at the end of 2009.

Melitta

Employee Engagement is a term that is being used ever more frequently in communication circles but, being an internal communications concept, it can be difficult to learn from the experience of other organisations. However the British Civil Service has just made its Employee Engagement plans and fact-sheets available publicly as it develops a cross-government approach to employee engagement – a useful point of reference for anyone interested in EE.  

Engagement is also the latest topic discussed on the Melcrum blog, as Chris Gay, EE specialist, shares her insights into How to create an engaged employee from day one. She points out that companies can do a lot more to create a positive relationship between new hires and the organisation, not least by actively using their natural excitement during a holistic induction process. 

Melitta