Author Archive
That pain in your butt and leg may be piriformis syndrome
Posted by: | Comments
In Provence, France, I smiled for the camera but I was in intense pain
I was on a plane trip to France in 2001 when it first happened – sitting there in coach, halfway over the United States, I felt pain and numbness of my entire right leg, from ankle to mid-butt. By the time we landed in Nice, I was almost in tears. Our weeklong vacation was marred by the constant, irritating pain I felt – it kept me up at night, and I couldn’t enjoy our sightseeing. I dreaded riding in the little European car we had rented. The return flight to Phoenix was no better, even with a change of planes in New York City, and it took me several days to recover from the pain.
Flash forward a few years – while working full-time in 2006 for a client here in Arizona, the pain returned. My right leg felt so numb that I kept turning to look at it closely in the mirror at home, expecting to see blue, purple or even green veins from the sensation that there was no circulation in the entire leg. But the leg looked normal. I could not find a comfortable position to sit or lie down. The pain increased over the next Read More→
Too much focus on SEO and content?
Posted by: | CommentsCan anyone argue that the buzzwords for 2009 and 2010 aren’t “search engine marketing,” “search engine optimization,” and “content, content, content”?
Frank Strong has written a nice post on writing for search engines and optimizing your client’s online presence. Adding links and using key words are some of the tips he offers to help you be more “findable” on the web.
Have we forgotten the other critical aspects of PR, however? I wrote my book, “Press Releases are not a PR Strategy,” to counteract the prevailing thought that issuing press releases at periodic intervals was all there is to a PR strategy. In that vein, I would like to see equal emphasis on the other components of a successful PR campaign that often get little mention. They involve research (studying up on an individual blogger’s style, reading books and articles on a particular industry) and outreach (meeting with reporters and bloggers for coffee or as part of a press tour or trade show). We immerse ourselves in content, and forgot to surface every now and then to focus on other strategies.
PR is such a complex field. It’s not just content, and it’s not just press releases.
Photo courtesy of dyoz
Are PR professionals afraid of the “New Rules”?
Posted by: | Comments
If you haven’t read “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman Scott, you’re missing out on a top guide on how public relations has changed and “how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing” to reach your buyers directly. You can find the book at his website www.webinknow.com or from Amazon and other online bookstores.
I re-read the book this past weekend (the revised 2010 edition), and there’s one section that I didn’t feel represented PR professionals properly – or, at least, not the PR professionals I know, most of whom are in Arizona. In chapter 7, “The New Rules of News Releases,” he writes that “many PR professionals have a fear of the unknown. They don’t understand how to communicate directly with consumers and want to live in the past, when there was no choice but to use the media as a mouthpiece….I also think there’s a widely held view about the purity of the press release as a tool for the press. PR professionals don’t want to know that hundreds of millions of people have the power to read their releases directly. It’s easier to imagine a closed audience of a dozen reporters.”
The book is brilliant and has helped completely change the way we look at public relations. I don’t think he has quite captured the issue here, however. Granted, he travels a lot more than I do and talks to way Read More→
Confessions of a closet introvert
Posted by: | CommentsOne of my favorite blogs, www.repmanblog.com, posted recently about “introverts making a go of it in professions dominated by extroverts.” Blogger Steve Cody admits that he has taken improvisation and stand-up comedy to get over his innate shyness.
How many of us in public relations are actually introverts and not extroverts? In her post this winter about her shyness, blogger Dushka Zapata writes that “according to the Meyers [sic] Briggs type indicator, an ‘extrovert’ and an ‘introvert’ are defined based on where they get their energy. An extrovert is ‘energized by the outer world of people and things’ and an introvert is ‘energized by the inner world of thoughts and ideas.’”
This difference must be what makes some of us PR people gravitate towards writing (my favorite) and some of us towards event planning (would rather have a root canal). What part of PR do you hate? That will probably tell you a lot about which side you fall on, introvert or extrovert.
Graphic from http://myers.team-technology.co.uk
First newspapers, now the U.S. post office
Posted by: | Comments
Whenever there is a revolution, something is often left in its wake, and that apparently is the U.S. postal service.
In the words of the US Postmaster General, Jack Potter, there has been a macro change in society and all posts around the world are challenged by the diversion of hard copy to electronic medium. Unlike other postal services in other parts of the world, the USPS is constrained by regulations and cannot expand into other areas. Facing a huge mountain of debt, they are proposing that delivery on Saturdays be eliminated. Another likely possibility is a significant hike in postal prices after 2010.
While the speed and convenience of electronic delivery are well understood, nothing quite captures the thrill and quaintness of receiving a handwritten letter. Perhaps the USPS will eventually privatize somehow. I would hate to see this element of American society disappear, but as I watch teens and twentysomethings with their individual smart phones, I don’t doubt that 30 years from now when my generation has gone, our modes of communication will be housed in museums as curious oddities.
The benefits of a digital age on press releases
Posted by: | Comments
I was contacted by www.prmoment.com, which analyzes UK coverage of the world’s leading brands, to offer my perspective on the effects and impact of the digital age on press releases.
I believe that its impact has been mostly positive. Press releases in particular are now shorter, full of interesting multimedia components, and much easier to disseminate to segmented audiences. My prediction is that press releases will evolve in the next five years and will be called something else, and the traditional format we love to hate will finally dissolve. The combined brevity and complexity of such social media tools as twitter will continue to force PR professionals to craft more highly condensed pieces of information in an ever-widening array of formats to please individual audiences.
You can read the full article here, and find out what other highly regarded pundits are predicting.
Many social media books are just re-hashing Alvin Toffler’s 1970 theme, and that’s good
Posted by: | Comments
Does this sound familiar? “…a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse.”
This is the theme of many new social media books on the market now – the disruption of society, the inability to adapt, the loss of the industrial age as replaced by the information age as replaced by an even faster information age.
Yet, Alvin Toffler wrote these words as long ago as 1970, when his groundbreaking work “Future Shock” was published. He points out that “for most Peace Corps men (a bit dated gender reference there!), in fact most travelers, have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not.” Read More→
Use Twitter to help break a story
Posted by: | CommentsDon’t forget that social media tools such as Twitter are helpful for reaching the circles of influence on your target demographic. Search Engine Marketing Specialist Anthony Kirlew has the guest post today about his experience helping a friend see the journalistic benefit of Twitter:
Anthony Kirlew
Recently, I was speaking with a friend who is looking to launch a new website for his business. He is extremely sharp when it comes to business but he is not fully dialed into the Web or social media. His new business is an RV Park, so he immediately told me that he did not think that his audience would be on Twitter, due to the demographics. I assured him that having a presence on Twitter may be more valuable to him than he might initially expect.
First, I told him that I could do some searches for him to find out if (and what) people were tweeting about RVs and RV Parks in the area he is looking to launch, and if so, what they were saying. I also mentioned that lots of journalists are on Twitter and Read More→
Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
Posted by: | CommentsAs more and more “citizen journalists” go online via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media, there is greater likelihood of typos and misspellings. In the online world as opposed to traditional media, there are no formal editors to proofread work. Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
Peter Faur
My friend Peter Faur of Phoenix-based “Right Point Communications” and I are of like mind. In his blog, RightPoint, he writes about communications and includes a helpful grammar tip at the end of every post. I asked him to provide his input on grammar and spelling, and he shared with me this guest post:
___________________________
“The Miami Herald’s ombudsman, or reader’s advocate, recently asked a veteran teacher to review the Jan. 18 edition of the newspaper for grammatical errors. He was shocked that Elaine Kenzel found 133 errors. Read More→
Blaming the luger not such a good PR strategy
Posted by: | Comments
Photo found at www.boston.com
Henry Blodgett has an interesting post on the Olympic committee’s take on the unfortunate death of the Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. After an investigation, they are laying the blame on Nodar. As Blodgett puts it:
“In other words, Nodar’s death had nothing to do with the fact that, because of the track design, he was going 90 miles per hour (15 mph faster than older tracks), had only a few milliseconds to “make correct entrance into curve 16″ after exiting Curve 15 (which the lugers have dubbed the 50-50 curve on account of your odds of exiting it without crashing), and then flew out of a track that, with a small nod to safety, could easily have been covered with netting, Plexiglas, or higher walls and not flanked by immovable steel poles.” Read More→
