Currently viewing the tag: "social media"

Will Your Sweepstakes Win You Committed Followers, or Fair-weather Fans?

On April 27, 2012 By

Last Friday, I caught tweets by two environmental reporters who seemed to cast a jaundiced eye on a sweepstakes launched by the Obama re-election campaign. The competition offers people that complete an online registration form the chance to win a ticket to a dinner attended by the president and hosted by George Clooney. [...]

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Sound Off Podcast: Social Media Privacy in the Workplace

On April 19, 2012 By

Sterling Communications Account Supervisor Scott Smith sits down for a chat with colleagues Tiffany Bryant, Jordan Hubert, and Lisette Rauwendaal, to discuss how many companies are increasingly evaluating potential job candidates, and current employees, by evaluating content on their Facebook, Twitter and other social network pages. In the wake of Continue Reading →

Hunting the Creative

On April 11, 2012 By

Here at Sterling Communications, we’re always discussing creative communications, be it advertisements, PR campaigns, media responses and the like. And, since we’ve recently joined the social media phenomenon that is Pinterest, we figured, what better place to share the creative campaigns we come across? Add a little friendly competition to the [...]

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Pinterest: the Next Social Media Frontier

On March 1, 2012 By

By now most brands have (or at least attempted) a presence on Facebook and Twitter. And many companies have added sites such as Delicious, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn to their social media repertoire. But what new social medium has risen so quickly that it’s seen site visits increase [...]

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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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Running “Deep,” Instead of Running Away

On December 22, 2011 By

“Chevy Runs Deep”

When GM auto company Chevrolet introduced this new slogan late last year, few knew exactly what it meant. According to Chevy’s advertising agency – Goodby, Silverstein & Partners – “Chevy Runs Deep” is meant to be used in such a way that it will solve past marketing problems faced by the [...]

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Social Media: The New Destination for Endorsements

On November 8, 2011 By

Elizabeth Olsen reminds you what film acting can be….

What movie critic said this? Wait, this endorsement actually comes from actor Alec Baldwin – in a tweet! And, the first time I saw this wasn’t even on Twitter, but in a print ad for the new movie, Martha Marcy May [...]

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The Role of Social Media in Activism

On October 25, 2011 By

We all know that the creation of the Internet and social networking sites have exponentially increased our ability to disseminate information; after all, they are real time mass information distribution networks, but they have also increased our ability to organize. Social media played an important role in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, which ultimately led [...]

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Occupy: the Media

On October 20, 2011 By

Over the past few weeks, I have been watching the Occupy Movement stories with interest, and maybe a little annoyance, after having been harassed in Reno by a mob of Occupiers this past weekend. But whatever my personal view on this, I am grateful for the First Amendment, which grants us the rights [...]

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Halloween Goes Social

On October 18, 2011 By

With the proliferation of social media, gone are the days of thumbing through a newspaper to find out about Halloween events, or browsing through a store to come up with ideas for a costume. People are flocking to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites more than ever to decide not only [...]

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PR for the PR Industry, Part II: Social Media

On October 13, 2011 By

Recently, my colleague Scott Smith blogged about how the PR industry itself could sometimes use a little PR. Today’s topic focuses on a related issue: social media for the PR industry.

As PR professionals, social media is becoming an increasingly larger part of our job, especially since nearly everyone is a [...]

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Out of Tune on Twitter

On September 13, 2011 By

Effective communication requires the ability to read a situation for social cues. I spent a good chunk of time over the weekend of September 11th watching the 9/11 commemoration ceremonies on TV and reading Twitter and Facebook posts related to the events. I was also witness to some ugly disagreements. When people hide [...]

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Would You Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Stop Talking?

On August 2, 2011 By

Social media is all about sharing. It offers many channels for those who like to talk about themselves and others, à la Mrs. Kravitz, the archetypal nosy neighbor on “Bewitched.” The person writing can’t see if his or [...]

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Can Google+ Out-Facebook Facebook?

On July 7, 2011 By

In my opinion? No.

On the heels of an “awesome” Facebook announcement yesterday (which turned out to be Skype integration – something MySpace announced back in 2007) and with a week of Google-plussing under my belt, I decided to take a look at Google’s latest attempt at social networking.

First blush: [...]

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Pitching in the 21st Century

On July 5, 2011 By

The days of hammering the phones to book meetings with reporters may not be long gone just yet, but they are dwindling. While the Internet and email have made our lives easier, they have also given us more ways to approach the media. Pitching reporters through email is nothing new, and today, most journalists and [...]

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Word-of-Mouth marketing best practice — make it easy!

On June 22, 2011 By


Asking friends for their recommendations remains one of the best ways to find and select businesses, music, movies, wine, etc., because you know your friends’ preferences and they know yours. Based on your mutual knowledge of each other a useful recommendation can be shared. Harnessing this type of interaction is [...]

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Evolution: The Social Media Age

On June 9, 2011 By

After devoting the majority of my last blog entry to vacillating between praise and criticism of the evolution of PR into what I defined as PR 1.5, I started thinking about one of the key elements that is facilitating that (r)evolution – social media.

I should say that early on in [...]

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How Today’s Number One Book on Amazon Started as a Dad’s Lament on Facebook

On May 12, 2011 By

Getting a child to go to sleep can be one of the most maddening tasks a parent faces, which is why this image from Facebook struck all the right nerves on my funny bone this morning.

(Warning: Clicking some of the [...]

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Can Social Media Determine the Outcome of the Kentucky Derby?

On May 12, 2011 By

Social media is a wonderful tool that allows us to capture the buzz and general sentiment of a snapshot in time.  Using the terms: “Kentucky Derby,” “Animal Kingdom,” injury, injuries, derby, hats, horse, jockey and race – I was able to analyze the general social media sentiment around the 137th Kentucky Derby using Continue Reading →

PR Hindsight: Does “BP” stand for Bungled Publicity?

On April 21, 2011 By

This article is part of an occasional series where Sterling Communications examines PR efforts that have missed the mark, and posits how things could have been done differently.

Before I joined Sterling Communications in 1998, I spent four years with a crisis management consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Many of [...]

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PR Hindsight: Trade Show Twist Turns to Twitter Tirade

On February 16, 2011 By

This article is part of an occasional series where Sterling Communications examines PR efforts that have missed the mark, and posits how things could have been done differently.

Why It’s Important to Set Expectations for Off-Site Media Meetings

To the dismay of trade show and conference organizers, there’s a growing [...]

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The Viral Campaign Your Viral Campaign Could Smell Like

On July 16, 2010 By

The Viral Campaign Your Viral Campaign Could Smell Like: Karianne Stinson of Sterling Communications shares her four tips to Old Spice up your brand.

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Fresh Ideas from Social Fresh Portland

On April 1, 2010 By

I was lucky enough to
win a ticket to the Social Fresh
conference in Portland on March 29. This conference is different than many I’ve
attended previously as it features people working in the trenches and highlights
what they do in social media day to day. Sure, there was [...]

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Hung up on social media ROI? What about the cost of NOT using social media?

On March 12, 2010 By

Last week I had the privilege of leading one of the working group discussions at PR + Marketing Camp here in Seattle along with Jeff Sandquist of Microsoft's Channel 9. A major topic of the day was social media ROI.  

Even though a Continue Reading →

The Dark Side of Social Media

On January 25, 2010 By

"Hey, bub. Those are some nice reviews ya got there. It would be a real shame if something was to happen to them. Say they was to fall down some stairs or, you know, disappear…"

Companies large and small are still struggling
to cope with the realities of a world [...]

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Happy TweetsGiving!

On November 25, 2009 By

What is Thanksgiving all about? Is it about stuffing yourself until you’re sure you’re going to explode, but instead you just go take a nap? Or maybe Thanksgiving is about the football – rooting and cheering for your favorite team until your voice is hoarse or playing your own game [...]

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Free Advice

On July 30, 2009 By

Advice to the 16 prospective journalism and mass communications students from the National Student Leadership counsel visiting Sterling Communications tomorrow.

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Embracing the Evolution of the PR Industry

On July 27, 2009 By

As we approach Sterling’s 20th anniversary at the end of August (BTW, how did THAT happen?), I’ve been reflecting on how PR has changed in the past two decades. For your reading enjoyment, here’s a quick look at the stark differences between PR in 1989 and PR in 2009:

1989:

Press releases were [...]

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Hang Tight

On December 10, 2008 By

Marketers remain reticent toward social-networking sites, and the recession isn’t helping. MySpace and Facebook attract more than 100 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., but the ad dollars aren’t following, and 2009 won’t be much better.

Traditional publications, [...]

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