AndaPR

Yahoo! announces it is teaming up with Facebook to essentially recapture Yahoo news that’s shared by users within the Facebook community… with the new Facebar.

Consumers of Yahoo News have been sharing information and links via Facebook for years. So the integration just formalizes activity that has been happening organically. The difference is the addition of a feedback loop, where Yahoo! users will then see the Yahoo news and related activity — that has been shared by their friends in Facebook — on their Yahoo! pages.

The good news… unlike Facebook changes, which are imposed, the Yahoo! Facebar will be optional and require linking to your Facebook page.

Will the advent of the Yahoo! Facebar finally lead to success in the king of content’s determination to become more social?

The announcement was made at the F8 Developer Conference hosted by Facebook, where Facebook announce significant and as always controversial changes to the their platform, turning it into what looks and feels like Storify on steroids.

PR and Marketing are often used interchangeably. While they are related and overlap, they are two different disciplines.

So… this post was inspired by a party I went to last night to celebrate an author / friend’s third publishing deal. Congratulations to Andrew Lam! You can check him out at www.redroom.com/author/andrew-q-lam

I had the opportunity to chat with a very creative artist / musician / accountant who posed the question, “What is the difference between PR and marketing?”

I have to admit, I found it quite refreshing! With all the fuss around social media, I just don’t get that question any more. So here’s is a quick refresher for those of you who’ve wondered the same.

The basics of PR and Marketing

On PR…

From a strategic standpoint, the focus of PR, aka public relations, is on creating sentiment, awareness, and understanding about a product, service or issue. It is generally used, in part, to influence what an audience knows or understands.

More concretely, PR tactics include activities which:

• Generate news
• Create ‘buzz’
• Position
• Reinforce the brand

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Are you on Twitter? As a journalist, freelance writer or editor, Twitter is the place to be. It has become like a toll-free, express lane for news. That said,it can also be a time suck if used without a strategy and purpose.

For those needing a refresher: The ‘microblogging’ tool allows users to communicate in 140 characters. It’s like texting, but instead of connecting with people in your phone book, users have access to the millions of people around the Internet. It has been one of the most widely used news and social media tools, in the world!

Whether you have been using Twitter for some time, or are preparing to send out your first tweet, there are a few things you want think about, which are just as basic and important as the Who, What, When, Where and Why of traditional journalism.

Following are a few slides from a presentation I conducted this Spring in Chicago to give you something to think about when using Twitter (and related management tools like TweetDeck, Twitterrific and HootSuite) more efficiently and with a purpose.