For our Stamford BNI (Business Network International) Visitor’s Day I created two email blasts that were sent separately over the preceding two weeks.

I used MailChimp to manage our list of invitees (collected from our membership over the year) and to send/track the email blasts themselves. With a highly targeted list like this one, we expect a high open rate but for August a 58% is not bad.

In the past I’ve recommended the poor man’s online reputation manager was to use Google Alerts with Social Mention. Google today expanded Alerts with a new feature to your Dashboard called Me on the Web (located right under the Account info). This works much like Alerts where you can be notified about “mentions” on a weekly, daily, or real-time but the really nice touch is that you now have an easier way to remove unwanted information about yourself from Google Search. Learn more reading this post by Google’s Product Manager Andreas Tuerk.

New online support community DivorceCandy offers content and services to help divorcees move on and stay positive. Leveraging social media as an integral part of their PR initiative, we created this Twitter  Revamp, Rejuvenate and Rebuild Sweepstakes that invited people to tweet their “life after divorce” stories for a chance to win prizes pertinent to the cause. The sweeps ran for 3 weeks in April with one winner per week. It generated over 500 entries, drove thousands of visits to the website, and grew Twitter followers into the triple digits.

B2B PR expert Wendy Marx and I discuss Web 2.0 trends and the rise of personal branding in today’s job market on her Fast Company blog.

After speaking at a small business conference about viral marketing, I was pulled aside by Albert Maruggi of The Marketing Edge for an impromptu interview on the subject. The lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Stamford is nice but the acoustics are something to be desired during a mid-day conference so I apologize in advance for the audio (though Albert did a fine job cleaning it up).

Albert has over 25 years of marketing and PR experience under his belt and his podcast series is one of the longest running (perhaps the longest). You can hear my whole interview on his blog.

I’ve been doing a lot of speaking engagements on viral marketing and so it became imperative to come with some promotional material. I don’t get to do a lot of print work but this was a fun piece. The reactions I get are great. And no, that is not me sneezing.

Friends Beyond The Wall, an organization that provides pen pal services to inmates (yes, you read that right), commissioned me to create this Flash movie to promote awareness about second chances within the Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Specifically, the New York Theological Seminary graduates who have been denied paroles. Apparently, the reasons for these denied paroles had more do with State politics than the inmate’s prison record. It is pretty easy to assume the worst of people sent to prison but regardless of your views, the spirit of these men who push themselves to be better human beings despite the reality of their circumstance is indeed impressive.