Paulson Makes Himself Available and Controls the Debate
Say what you will about the current financial mess on Wall Street, you have to credit Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for making himself fully available to the media despite the crushing responsibilities and obligations he must have. He was on four Sunday talk shows yesterday and did countless other media appearances and press conferences over [...]
Do You Spend Enough Time Crafting Your Email Subject Line?
It should be obvious that your subject line is the single most important element of an email. Do you take the time to think about what it says, or do you just dash off the first thing that comes to your mind? Here are some tips for writing better subject lines: Keep it short: people [...]
This is Not the Time to Cut Back on PR
An already shaky economy seemed to be getting worse this week with the Crisis on Wall Street. While the financial turmoil may not hit companies and consumers immediately, it’s more likely than not that the ripple effects of this crisis will be felt far and wide. When that happens, bosses will start looking for ways [...]
Journalist Offers Bite-Sized PR Tips
If reading PR tips in blog items like this takes too long, you should check out Rafe Needleman’s ProPRTips. He offers PR tips in bite-sized chunks that look like they came from Twitter. The reason they look like “tweets” is that, in fact, they are tweets. Needleman started offering his PR tips on Twitter and [...]
SoCal Train Wreck: PR Takes Fall for Telling the Truth
On Friday, an LA commuter train slammed into a freight train, killing 25 people. On Saturday, the PR person for the Metrolink train system said publicly it appeared that the passenger train’s engineer was at fault for the crash. On Sunday, her bosses issued a statement saying her pronouncement was “premature.” On Monday, she resigned. [...]
PRSA Pulls Publicity Stunt to Promote PR Ethics
I was a little surprised to get an urgent email in my inbox from PRSA (of which I am a member) saying, “NO MORE LIPSTICK: PRSA Formally Challenges McCain and Obama Campaigns.” What?!? The email explained that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the dominant trade organization of the profession, “has submitted formal challenges [...]
Who’s Media Training These Guys?
Another day, another “negative repeat” from a Presidential candidate. Today it’s John McCain on “The View”: Joy Behar brought up two of his recent ads against Mr. Obama… “We know those two ads are untrue, they’re lies,” she said, and yet at the end of each, Mr. McCain’s voice says he approves of those messages. [...]
Round One of the PR Battle Goes to McCain
There’s no doubt that since John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the Republican ticket has generated an incredible amount of buzz and positive momentum. And there is also no doubt that McCain has been winning the PR battle: getting his messages out, getting Obama off message and responding to McCain’s charges, [...]
How to Spam Check Your Press Releases
Here’s a tool you need to add to your PR toolkit ASAP: a free automatic content-checker that you can use to test your outgoing email before you send it to see if it is likely to get caught in a spam filter. This tool is essential if you are sending out a lot of email [...]