Strategic Public Relations

Back to School | Marketing’s a Journey vs. a Destination | Social Media is Organic | Four Links | 08.27.08

1) Pros, Profs, Students – Join PR OpenMic | PR Open Mic
With more than 2,000 members, PR Open Mic is focused on “preparing the next generation of PR practitioners by enabling interaction with people from around the world in this community network.” They already have members from 140+ colleges & universities from over 40 countries. Regardless of where you’re at in your career, you should head back to school.

2) How long will it take my marketing to work? | Duct Tape Marketing
”I know you need customers, I know you need more business, but marketing is not an event, it’s a business long practice. >snip< Done properly, it is likely going to take six months to a year for you to see the kind of long term momentum that you want.”

3) Are you expecting too much from your marketing? | Drew’s Marketing Minute
Drew builds on John Jantsch’s riff and adds: “If you're not in it for the long haul, you probably shouldn't do it at all.”

4) Social Media is Organic | The Daily Lark
Dell’s Andy Lark on launching a blog: “success correlates closely with the willingness of the communicators to take risk and embrace the spirit of the medium. And that means letting go.”

Like a motorway. uploaded by CMP73
tags | PR OpenMic | social media | marketing

Social Media Helps Stand Up To Cancer

Jeremy Pepper snapped us out of our navel gazing recently with a well-deserved question. “Can Social Media Do What It Claims?”

One of the more exciting opportunities for social media is how it can enable non-profit organizations to boost awareness and support for their causes with powerful stories. Rather than a .org telling you how your support will help someone, the very people you are helping can show you.

So when I saw Tara Met Blog’s request via Peter Shankman’s HARO service, I was excited to participate in a project that will help answer Pepper’s question.

What Do You Stand For?
According to Tara: "My colleagues and I came up with the idea of showing a bunch of images of people holding signs that say why they are standing up to cancer…and why they are tired of this disease affecting their life and taking life. Thus, showing how we are all affected by cancer. After all, no one is immune to the effects."

To be clear, all I did is take a picture telling my story and send it in. The video below is the powerful result of Tara’s efforts.

This is one part of an effort for Stand Up To Cancer (SUTC) that culminates with a telethon on September 5th. You can get involved here. SU2C does not answer Jeremy’s question yet, but I suspect they’ll be able to show that social media can move the needle.

tags | SU2C | Stand Up To Cancer | social media | consumer-generated media

Blogger Blocks the Bad Pitch Blog

Last week there was a snafu at Blogger and a robot mistakenly identified a lot of blogs as being spam. Blogger claims to have fixed that problem.

Then on Monday, the Bad Pitch blog was locked out. Nearly a week later, we’re still waiting to get access. Somehow it’s fitting I’m alerting you via my Typepad blog.

PR Week Competition
One of the first posts we need to publish will congratulate Vove Nation for their win in the PR Week blog competition. Both of our blogs had more votes than anyone in the first round of competition (A and B) so far. It's hard to be anything but thankful for all of the folks who voted for us. And losing to folks like Josh Hallett and Mike Manuel at Voce Nation is easy to accept.

Nothing is Free
It’s hard being patient waiting for a human at Blogger to correct a robot’s mistake. And it’s been impossible for me to find a phone number or email to an actual Blogger employee. In the meantime, Blogger has our data…our posts, our code – everything.

Find us on Facebook
While we figure out our next move, we created a fan page for the Bad Pitch blog on Facebook to keep in touch with folks.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | bad pitch blog

2011 Trendspotting for the Next Decade: BOOK REVIEW

Richard Laermer’s 12th book* is, to quote Nettie Hartsock, “a decadent read.”

The book is also now 100 percent FREE as Laermer and McGraw-Hill are offering full access to the book for gratis.

“The World is Flat” author Thomas Friedman started giving his book away recently in iPod-friendly audio installments as a way to promote his next book.

These unconventional examples of open-source publishing are just one facet of the new and creative approaches being taken to promote books today.

Serialization of Content
One of the trends Laermer details in this 300-page, fast read is serialization. Technology like iTunes and TiVo are making content more fluid to keep up with our time-starved attention spans.

Even his book reads more like a blog with 77 chapters and plenty of sidebars. You can dive in and out based in your interests.

One of the reasons I most enjoyed 2011 is that I did not agree with everything Laermer suggests in his book.**

That said he does provide insight into how society, religion, media, technology and even language/communication skills are all changing. More than just trends, Laermer gets the reader to think about what it all means. 2011 looks towards a bigger, more important picture. You may see it differently, but this book helps you expand your focus.

Bottom Line?
As my cover shot shows, 2011 is a good summer read. You should check it out…and not just because it’s free.

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*Full Disclosure: I write the Bad Pitch blog with Richard Laermer and he gave me a review copy to read.

** Among the items I disagree with in the book includes Laermer’s posit that McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign was a failure. For different reasons, I think it was a success. The sing-song audio branding used with the I’m Lovin’ It tagline helped McDonald’s spend less on advertising as those ads were more effective.

tags | trend | marketing | book | branding | 2011 | Richard Laermer

The Power of the Infographic

Visual thinking is something I’ve been tuning into more and have been starting to express here. This infographic, via Karl Long, sums up why.

There is a lot of information here, but you get the idea pretty quickly. And ultimately this can become a poster to raise awareness or even a reference of sorts.

For more on visual thinking, I recommend Information Aesthetics for a left brain perspective and Post Secret for some right brain inspiration.

Vote in the PR Week Best Blog Competition

Keith O'Brien just announced a PR Week best blog competition that is making headlines.

PR Week is pitting 32 industry blogs against each other -- tournament style.

Vote for the Bad Pitch blog. Click here, then scroll down to the four graphs/charts and click on Bad Pitch blog until it stays bold – you can actually see your vote getting counted. And please do so before end of day, Tuesday, August 5th.

Bad Pitch Blog is my other blog. It focuses solely on media relations and even managed to win a Bronze Anvil award of commendation from PRSA recently.

And if the contest seems a little high school in nature, keep in mind this is back to school season. This video clip best captures how I view the competition.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | good pitch | bad pitch | bad pitch blog | PRWeek

Online vs. Offline Reading | Friday Flickr Fix | 08.01.08

From the “kids get off my lawn!” department:

It bugs me when people treat social media as a final destination. Social media is part of a circuit that’s completed through personal interactions. Terms like lifestreaming imply that someone’s whole life is online. And, well, it’s not.

This adds to my growing concern around online’s unintentional negative impact. Take reading for example. Part of my attachment to print media is nostalgic. And I realize that the newspaper industry’s failure to evolve its business model is bringing its current pains.

But Andy Lark points us to an article noting how we read can impact our critical thinking.

Back to my nostalgia, and the point of this post…at the Mercantile Library’s First Annual Cincinnati Blogger convention, I spoke with the library’s Executive Director, Albert Pyle, about the demise of the card catalog.

While computer tracking of the books is more efficient, card catalogs offer the reader a form of discovery and I’m told sometimes contain more information about each book than most library computer systems.

The Mercantile Library cannot afford to keep its card catalog as up to date as they would like. And as a result Pyle levels a challenge to anyone that feels passionate about the card catalog system. “If you like it so much, then use it.” Point taken.

As we lose tactile experiences like the card catalog and print media, do we lose (discovery, an extra level of information) as much as we gain (efficiency, accuracy)? Or am I just showing my age?

Card Catalog – Use it or lose it uploaded by prblog
tags | public relations | PR | media