Posts by: admin

On LinkedIn’s 10th birthday – 10 tips to optimize your page

On May 8, 2013 By

It’s hard to believe that everyone’s favorite professional networking site is celebrating its 10th birthday. But, unlike your probably awkward 10-year old tripping over their own feet and trying to figure out who they want to be when they grow up, LinkedIn –at 225 million users– has firmly established its place in the social media [...]

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Responding to tragedy – What brands (and brand marketers) sometimes forget: social networks are communities, not just channels.

On April 16, 2013 By

In the immediate wake of yesterday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon, at least one prominent social media marketing expert, Chris Brogan, questioned the notion that brands should suspend or alter their social media activities when tragedy occurs. Striking a similar chord, tech blogger Chris Pirillo — who has built [...]

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Putting the ethics back in PR

On April 11, 2013 By

Let’s face it, PR doesn’t exactly have the reputation as being the most ethical of professions or having the most ethical workers. And, the profession that’s all about trying to influence public opinion hasn’t done much on its own behalf to change this. According to the Continue Reading →

Carnival of horrors

On March 15, 2013 By

It’s been a bumpy ride for Carnival cruises for the last couple of years. The company has found itself in the news far too often — and it’s not because of its stellar performance on their part. Carnival Cruises Lines’ not so Triumphant, not so much Splendor and Costa Concordia (owned by [...]

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Is it ever OK to publicly dispute a product review?

On February 28, 2013 By

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently and very publicly challenged the fairness and accuracy of an unflattering New York Times test drive of his company’s Model S electric sedan, a number of observers wondered aloud whether it was a wise move. As the old saw goes, “never pick a fight with someone [...]

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A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter

On February 12, 2013 By

I’m still amazed at how many CEOs and executives are still not on social media. Even more shocking is the percentage of people who are on social media who have no idea how to use it. I found myself making social [...]

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How Sorority Life Prepared Me for PR

On January 11, 2013 By

Haha, super funny. Now that you’ve got those underwear-around-the-ankles jokes out of the way, can we move on?

Great.

It never occurred to me how much being in a sorority actually prepared me for a career in public relations until we did an  internal professional development session around new-business pitches. I found [...]

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Extending Your PR Reach With Targeted Keywords

On January 9, 2013 By

When Universal Orlando went to unveil The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 2007, they didn’t take out a $10,000,000 Super Bowl Ad or even a $10,000 Google PPC ad campaign. Instead, Cindy Gordon, VP of Marketing at the Orlando resort, did what is becoming more and more common these days to [...]

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Storytelling’s long goodbye

On December 6, 2012 By

There’s a lot to be said in favor of the rise of new media and the democratization of journalism. We get our news from more sources, with a greater variety of perspectives, than ever before. We get it faster, if not always more accurately, than we [...]

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8 Steps to Optimize Your Content for Search and Social

On November 15, 2012 By

“Advertising is just renting the space. Content marketing is owning it.” — Arnie Kuenn

More and more, businesses are seeing the value of content marketing as an advertising tool and a way to position themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries. Content is the currency of the web. Buyers need content [...]

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When Hashtags #Fail

On October 9, 2012 By

At $100 – $120K a pop, a promoted hashtag is a terrible thing to screw up. Yet, it happens more often than you might think. Companies start out with the well-intentioned idea of promoting a benefit of their brand, only to have their hashtag “hijacked” by tweeps sharing negative sentiments, usually driving more engagement and [...]

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PR Challenges Old and New

On October 5, 2012 By

From time to time, I like to do some soul-searching on my career and profession to date, in which I consider my current role, and how it has evolved since I jumped into the business in the late 90s — has it ALREADY been THAT long??

I guess I should preface this with the following: [...]

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Can Apple Still Amaze and Delight Without Surprising?

On September 13, 2012 By

Apple fans are spoiled. For many years now, the company has delivered cutting-edge products that amaze and delight customers, if not always tech pundits.

Until the death of co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, one of the highlights of an Apple event was the trademark “one more thing” [...]

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Why Social Media Doesn’t Begin and End with Sales

On September 5, 2012 By

I’m still shocked every time I hear social media managers talk about measuring ROI based on new sales. I wasn’t aware that Facebook and Twitter were sales tools. That’s not to say that they can’t help generate more leads, but if you’re looking for a quick fix, you’re in the wrong place. [...]

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Corporate Social Media Isn’t for Interns…

On July 27, 2012 By

 …and 7 Quick Tips to Help the Right People Run It

Few businesses would argue against having a presence on social media. Unfortunately, far too many organizations — even in high-tech or cleantech industries — treat social media as a marketing afterthought. How do we know? In new business meetings over the past [...]

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Agile Engagement, from the Mouths of the Experts

On July 19, 2012 By

I have long considered the concept of agile engagement, and what it means to me as a PR professional increasingly moving into the social media realm. As time goes on, it becomes a larger part of my day-to-day role.  So, it was with great interest that I listened in on a recent PR [...]

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10 Tips for Perfecting PR Pitches

On June 20, 2012 By

Pitches are an integral part of PR, yet a surprising number of professionals don’t know what makes a pitch successful. They are often left wondering why a particular journalist never takes a briefing. In search of the best pitching advice, I attended a few seminars on the topic and compiled a list of what media [...]

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Measuring the True Value of PR

On May 22, 2012 By

Whether you work in a PR agency, or as an in-house communications professional, one of the biggest challenges in our field of work is demonstrating an accurate ROI for PR services.

As a long-time PR pro, I am sometimes too close to what I do to easily boil the results of [...]

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PV America: Continuing My Love Affair With Solar

On April 12, 2012 By

I love conference season, particularly, solar conference season. There’s something about all the sunny looking exhibits and eager new technologies that just makes me smile.  Last year, at Intersolar, companies competed after expo hall hours in a “Battle of [...]

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Skittles, Hoodies and Arizona Iced Tea

On April 4, 2012 By

By now, I’m sure you are all familiar with the Trayvon Martin story (in case you’ve been in hibernation for the last month you can read all the details here) and that his body was found with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona Iced [...]

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Sound Off Podcast: Communications Around the Acqui-Hire

On March 28, 2012 By

Sterling Communications Account Supervisors Scott Smith and Devin Davis sat down to talk acqui-hires. With a series of these happening in rapid succession recently – including Google’s Continue Reading →

Lies in the service of the truth? Or just lies?

On March 20, 2012 By

Mike Daisey is a liar.

He may not see it that way, but no reasonable person can hear or read the misrepresentations and outright fabrications in his stage act, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” without concluding that he has a problem with the truth. A rather [...]

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Identity Theft: It’s Not Just for People Anymore

On March 15, 2012 By

We’ve all been educated about the dangers of personal identity theft and steps to take to avoid it, but few people, including myself, know about corporate identity theft. In fact, I didn’t know it happened to businesses until I heard a program [...]

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What’s the Most Important Quality in a PR Professional?

On March 8, 2012 By

What do you look for when looking for a PR consultant or agency? Most of us would imagine that we would want expertise in our area of work (technology, consumer products, hospitality, etc.). As a PR practitioner, that has always been what I believed companies were looking for when they hired. When reading about what [...]

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How the Internet Changed Life as we Know it

On February 17, 2012 By

Looking back fifteen years or so, I remember the first hints of what would become the Internet as we know it today. Back then, I was a young twenty-something attending Sacramento State University, majoring in Psychology, when a forward-thinking professor of mine decided to require the class to use email (then completely text-based) to communicate [...]

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5 Steps To Becoming a Good Spokesperson

On February 13, 2012 By

As any company will realize, speaking with the media is inevitable. There is, however, a big difference between just talking to the media, and actually getting your point across in a way that will build lasting relationships, garner positive coverage and convince journalists that you are a good resource for them in [...]

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How Path Got it Right

On February 9, 2012 By

You may have heard of Path, the mobile-based startup with a fascinating premise: basically, it does what we all thought Facebook would do – keep us connected to our close friends and family.

The company, which, interestingly enough, was started by a number of high profile former Facebookers (Facebookees? [...]

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Battle of the Sexes: Social Media

On February 2, 2012 By

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about how men and women differ. Specifically, I was curious about how men and women interact through social media. What are the differences? In my quest for answers, I pulled some research to show a few basic trends in how men [...]

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CES: Dead and Buried? Don’t Hold Your Breath

On January 20, 2012 By

Having just returned from CES, I’m surprised to see the “CES is dying” coverage.

This seems to be due, in large part, to Microsoft pulling out of the show.

Is the show changing? Absolutely. Is it the powerhouse it once was? Perhaps not. Is it going away by 2015 [...]

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FedEx, You May Want to Send Yourself a New Image, but Ship it UPS

On January 12, 2012 By

I’m sure by now most of you are familiar with the FedEx delivery fiasco that went viral on December 21, 2011, showing a FedEx employee delivering a computer monitor by throwing it over the fence instead of ringing the doorbell. Unfortunately, for the delivery man and [...]

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