5 Must Top Skills for Today’s Marketing Professional

I originally started my career in public relations before moving into the marketing function. Throughout the years, there are several skills that  I’lve picked up that have been essential to my role. Here are the five key skills that I believe are a must for today’s marketing professional, in no particular order: Continue reading »

Selling Social Media to Your Organization

In the PR Group on LinkedIn (must be a member to view the discussion), some asked, “How do you justify fees to clients in an era of social media?” I believe many PR and marketing consultants have faced this as potential clients believe that social media is “free.”

I think there are two parts to this equation that we need to consider before answering the question, assuming that we’ve done the background work of evaluating target audience, prospect personas, and the channels where these individuals congregate.

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Five Tips for Launching a Memorable Start-Up Company

So you’re launching your company in a few weeks. You’re focused on getting the product to work. If you’re one of the lucky ones who was selected to launch and can afford to go to DEMO or Disrupt, you want to make sure that nothing fails. But whether or not it’s debuting at a conference or getting noticed, there are several things that start-up companies can do to prep for a successful launch.
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Three Tips for Crisis Management in a Social Media World

When I first started in public relations, one of the main issues we faced was the rise of corporate websites – if our clients should do it, how and why. And yes – that was many moons ago. Cable television was just emerging so news cycles were more predictable with three broadcast channels and a handful of national newspapers. Dictated by days(sometimes weeks) – not the hours, even minutes of today’s always-on world – PR professionals could more easily craft, confirm and implement crisis management plans on behalf of clients.

Fast forward several years – the rise of CNN, Internet and social media has systematically shrunk the response times for managing crisis. What used to take weeks and days, now requires real-time responses in hours, if not minutes. Otherwise, brands risk seemingly minor issues quickly running out of their control. Here are three tips for managing a crisis in an always-on, social media world.

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Get to Know Your Reporter Better – Three Tips

Media databases, such as Vocus and Cision, are great resources for finding reporters and bloggers who cover specific industries and topics. These databases helped augment the day-to-day research that practitioners did to identify, research and verify the best reporter for that particular news story or company.

While these databases have tremendous amount of information, not all of it is accurate or up-to-date. And this is where the problem begins. For companies and practitioners who rely solely on these resources, they cease to be “pr practitioners” and risk becoming “email spammers” as the pitches will be irrelevant and unwanted. Or much worse, being blacklisted by the very reporters they are seeking to reach.

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Three Tips on How to Pitch Bloggers

With my sub focus on virtual events, I’ve been receiving media pitches to attend these type of events. Inviting media and bloggers to attend your event – whether virtual or physical – is a great way to drive awareness of your event.

The challenge? Attending any event takes time out of a busy schedule and away from billable work. Like any media pitch, you have to clearly outline the benefits to entice the blogger or reporter to take time out to attend. This can be a keynote from a industry expert who rarely speaks, details of a research report being revealed for the first time or seeing how producers are using these solutions in innovative ways. Continue reading »

PR Blunders from Politics – Sarah Palin, Anthony Weiner and John Edwards

Over the past week, I’ve seen the stories develop over Sarah Palin’s interesting take on history, Anthony Weiner’s unfortunate pictures on Twitter, and the indictment of John Edwards. In each of these cases, I’m seeing classic PR mistakes that these two seasoned politicians (and yes, Sarah is a politician at heart) make. Here is my top five list of where these folks went wrong:

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