There’s been much talk, recently, about the best ways for marketers to engage members of the Twittersphere. This is understandable given the (more than) considerable growth of the famous microblogging service over the past year and a half. In the scramble to achieve success using this hot new medium, many marketers have lost time and dollars trying to decipher the magical algorithm. Bloggers, however, remain a mainstay of the intelligent marketer’s arsenal.

Gerri Elder is a one-woman force in social media. When she’s not busy with her nearly 5-year-old son, Gerri maintains a healthy and active following on Twitter as AbsolutelyTrue, which is also the name of her popular blog, and was briefly the number one Digger last month–one of the few women to have accomplished such a feat. Gerri’s active on Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Mixx.

Chances are if you are a company, you have an online presence – even if you’re not the one that has created it. Consumers are alive and active online and are, in all likelihood, talking about your company. Companies need to be proactive in managing their online presence and a vital component of this is an interactive PR campaign.

Interactive PR is the use of online tools and technologies like: search engines, social bookmarking, new media relations, and blogging, to disseminate information about your company online. Allowing you to communicate directly with the general public, consumers, and potential prospects.

The following are key elements of any successful interactive PR campaign:

One thing that this blogathon has made very clear, the hardest part of writing is getting the initial inspiration to pick up your pen and put it to paper (or fingers to keyboards). I’ve always known that inspiration is very important in my writing – from University papers before through to blog posts today.

I don’t need much more than a glass of wine for stories to just roll out of me as if they are just all lined up on the back of my tongue just waiting for the red flag. This holds relatively true for sitting down and writing. Small things will not distract me- often I need them to keep me focussed. Nails being filed becomes my lullaby, ticking fans my zen and the constant tapping of someone’s pen on a desk is a tropical breeze of focus.