Good Writing is a Recession-Proof Skill
If there was one thing, one thing that I could change about the PR industry, it would be the poor writing skills that are rampant in PR. It must be something about the people who are attracted to PR as a profession, because nothing else explains it. For an industry in which good writing should [...]
Brush Up on Your Interviewing Skills Before Job Seeking
It’s that time again — time to be a good interviewee. If you haven’t lost your PR job already, you very well might by this time next year [sorry to be a downer, but better safe than sorry].
Even if you haven’t lost your job, you might be looking around and thinking this is a good [...]
How to Get Great Local TV News Coverage
The Internet may have changed everything, but let’s face it, most Americans still get a lot of their news and information from local TV news. And the principles of getting local TV coverage remain the same:
Keep it simple and direct and relevant to the day’s news
Make sure — MAKE SURE — you have good visuals [...]
Bad Economy Becoming All-Purpose Excuse
Here’s your PR tip of the week: write yourself a page of new messages that include the phrase “because of the bad economy…”
As in, “Our revenues are flat because of the bad economy.” Or, “We have to lay off people because of the bad economy…”
Now, I’m not making fun of companies that are really having [...]
Are You Seeing Cutbacks in 2009 PR Budgets?
People are starting to make budgets for 2009 spending, and the conventional wisdom is that corporate spending will be cut, whether that company is starting to see actual business declines or not. We’re in that weird period of the cycle when there is more uncertainty than certainty, and so corporate bosses go into “better safe [...]
Obama’s Eloquence, McCain’s Lack of Authenticity, and Other Lessons From Election 2008
Finally, the 2008 Presidential election is history. I’ll leave it to others to comment on the political ramifications, of which there are plenty. Here’s a quick review of the communications lessons from this amazing race:
Barack Obama will be the most eloquent President in modern history. I’m no Presidential historian, but my knowledge of Presidential speeches [...]
Planning a Layoff? Better Plan a Blog Post, Too
There’s no hiding in the Internet era, especially if you are a company with a tech-savvy employee base. According to a very interesting article in today’s New York Times, companies are now being forced to write blog posts about things like layoffs as soon as they happen:
Blogging about staff cuts is particularly prevalent in Silicon [...]
Treasure Trove of Search Marketing Data for You
Here’s a shocker: Google is the dominant search engine, with 63% of all U.S. Internet searches in August 2008, and that’s up 6.5 percentage points from a year earlier. Google only has 58.6% percent of the worldwide search business however.
These facts come courtesy of Ad Age and its incredibly informative Search Marketing Fact Pack 2008. [...]
Welcome to the Neighborhood, Jack Flack
There aren’t many of us high-profile PR bloggers in the blogosphere, sharing our pearly wisdom on major platforms like BNET.com. So I’ve got to give a shout-out to Jack Flack (no relation), who is now blogging about PR as a contributor to the New York Times’ Dealbook blog.
Jack and I are working similar turf — [...]