From the Internet tools file: a "press release grader" that will tell you whether your press release will be an effective marketing tool. Powered by HubSpot, an Internet marketing company, the "press release grader" will "evaluate your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score. This score...
I came across the perfect "welcome kit" item for journalists becoming PR people: "dark side" t-shirts. For those who haven't heard: journalists like to think of PR as "the dark side" in comparison to their noble pursuit of truth and the shining of...
You know the boom times are over when it "bankruptcy PR" becomes the newest market niche for PR agencies. PRWeek reports that "retailer Mervyns is working with Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher for communications support during its Chapter 11 filing," which the company made on Tuesday. ...
When you think of Fox News, you may think of some of its positive attributes, such as its take-no-prisoners style and its obvious commercial success. Chance are, though, that you do not think of Fox News as one of the world's premier news organizations. You probably do...
One of the classic struggles in PR is the courtship process between PR agencies and their potential new clients. The client, who needs the services and will pay the bills, wants to reduce his/her risk by learning as much about what the agency will do for them before starting...
You've probably heard about the "Long Tail" theory of the web -- that instead of needing to rely on big hits, businesses on the web could expect to see a trickle of steady business as people in need of their products or services used the web to find them. But...
Crisis communications experts like to say that every organization is going to have a crisis sooner or later, and that in fact, the underlying reasons for your crisis are probably already festering in your organization. Larry Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, likes to point...
Here's a cheat sheet for your blogger relations program. If you follow these steps you'll have a lot more success and will be well on your way to establishing a credible voice for your company or client in the blogosphere: Start With Research -- Every Blog Has:...
A lot of people are still struggling with the notion of whether blogging is something that they will have to do in order to remain competitive. In general, I believe the answer is a qualified 'yes.' I don't think you've got to create a journalistic blog (like...
When you're in PR, it's easy to get lost in the day-to-day dramas, crises and opportunities, and to lose sight of big picture. The name for that big picture is "reputation management." Essentially, reputation management is everything you do over the long-term to protect, enhance and burnish...
There's always been a steady stream of media types transitioning into PR, but these days, it seems like a flood. Yet despite the fact that journalists and PR people have close professional links, that doesn't mean it's easy for journalists to make the switch to the other side. It's like...
Do you know the fundamental building blocks of a solid internal PR department? Matt Broder, VP of External Communications at Pitney Bowes, shared his perspective on a PR Management Roundtable webinar this week. The five elements are: Ownership and accountability: ask yourself what parts of the communications...
Sometimes, your internal audiences can be the most important "public" for your public relations efforts. After all, if your own people don't know what's going on, and can't accurately communicate the company's messages and positioning, how can you expect outsiders to get it? But how do you...
It's not everyday that our friends at the New York Times offer press release writing tips, but they did so today in a story headlined, "Need Press? Repeat: 'Green,' 'Sex,' 'Cancer,' 'Secret,' 'Fat'" The Times took as a starting point a press release about the alleged toxicity...
It's been awhile since a viral video has made the rounds online as fast as the Gatorade "ball girl" video above. Cool use of viral video, but here's my question: the Gatorade branding is so subtle, does it work? If the idea is just to get us talking about Gatorade...
You know that at some point, you're going to have to start producing video about your company for the web. It's actually a lot easier than you think: you need a digital camcorder and video editing software and then someplace like Youtube to upload it to. ...
There has always been a steady stream of media people making the career transition into PR. But with the serious financial and business model problems plaguing most major media, journalists who once looked down their noses at what they call "the dark side" are starting to think that things might...
Here's a follow-up on Monday's Catching Flack post about whether it's better or worse for PR that bloggers are now being offered journalism training from the Society of Professional Journalists. The vote so far on the poll: 14 for trained bloggers, 3 for untrained. I was glad...
Blogs are the Wild West of new media opportunities for doing PR. Unlike old media, run by journalists with decades of experience and set ways of doing things, blogs are in their infancy, and even the ones run or written by former old media journalists are more or less unburdened...
Leave it to a lawyer-turned-journalist to be the one to take the bait and use the Scott McClellan tell-all as an opportunity to rip the PR industry. I told you this would be one of the consequences of McClellan's sell out. It happened on CBS Sunday Morning...
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