All posts by PRCog

Friday Five (+5)

Happy Friday!!

Every now and then we like to give the readers a chance to rediscover a post, or discover one they may have missed.  Since we’re busy doing our billing right now (as you probably should be), we’ll give you a summer favorite, the Friday 5.  But since it’s been a few months – it’ll be a Top 5 posts of the last 90 or so days.

As always, in no particular order, except alphabetic, your favorite posts from the last Q(uarter): Continue reading

The Next Big Thing

We don’t buy things just because they’re on sale at a good price. There’s a need, or a sufficient want for the cost and benefit received from an item.

We don’t clean our plates when served food merely because the food is there. We are hungry and fulfilling that need for the health and wellness of our bodies, and hopefully there’s also some pleasure in that process.

We don’t use tactics or techniques in our marketing endeavors just because they exist and are the ‘Next Big Thing.’ We have (or set) goals and implement strategies that, if appropriate, use these tactics to assist in achieving those goals.

Then again … Continue reading

You’re doing it wrong….

Wrong WayWe’ve all seen the horrible horrible examples of things done wrong in the digital world.  You know the things I’m talking about – bad policies, bad designs, just bad bad bad stuff.  Below, you’ll find my own list of the worst of the worst and those of some other contributors crowdsourced from Twitter.  Do chime in with your own net horror stories 🙂

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Podcast with PRBC Editor & Publisher

MicrophoneGood Mornin’ All –

Recently I had the chance to sit down (at least I was sitting) with Farrell Kramer over at the Talking Communications Podcast and discuss a variety of communications topics – social media, blogging, PR and how this very blog came about.  It’s a pretty good listen (if I do say so myself), so if you’re at all interested in my two cents on a variety of topics and some history of the blog head on over.

~ Cog, E&P

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Are We Doing it to Ourselves?

Portrait of a Well Dressed Woman Posing with a Lamp on Her HeadOur business (or as I usually call it, “the biz”) is now, and may always have been, at a cusp. Our job functions are spreading farther and wider (and depth frequently becoming thinner and thinner, like so much marshmallow fluff on a fluffernutter) that what we’re actually here to do, what we’ve been trained to do and gotten experience in, suffers greatly in quality and uniqueness.

Is it any wonder our families, and even clients sometimes, have no real idea of what we do when our education and training contradict our duties? That we’re here trying to provide strategic guidance on communications and image issues yet simultaneously diminishing the value of our own masthead through our actions?

Based on the war stories I hear (yes, for some reason your employees complain to me), tweets I see, and cv line items from prior jobs it seems increasingly we’re taking on the role of customer service agent (or at least appearing to), clerical support staff for clients (in non-media contexts), and the “occasional” other job that has nothing to do with our core skills of communications. Continue reading

Dreaded Auto-DM #Fails

Two people balancing on envelopes; letters flying between themWe’ve all gotten them – those dreaded auto direct messages – Those automatically generated messages that you get as soon as you follow a new person on Twitter.  I am guilty of having used them for about a week around 18 months ago, until I realized it was a pretty crappy way to interact and didn’t actually save me any time or anything else.

Yet, no matter how much we all complain about them they seem inescapable.  Hoping to cast a spotlight on this wretched behaviour I’ve compiled, with the help of some friends, some of the most rude, bizarre, and simply unexplainable auto-dms we’ve received — all neatly categorized for your reading pleasure…with the occasional editorial comment from me… Continue reading

We’ve been Nominated & Friday’s 5 (+3) • 18 June 2010

Letter V

For those of you haven’t caught it, PRBC has been nominated in Arik Hanson’s PR Readers’ Choice Awards for Up and Coming Blog. Take a look at the list in that category (and the others) for some great blogs and vote for your favorites.  I’m not saying I’ve got a favorite in the Up and Coming group – but if you vote for us I might send you a Unicorn :).

And with that, kick up your heels and enjoy our Top 5(+3) posts from this week (based on pageview and in alpha-order). Cheers!

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Bizarro Social Media Land

Man holding elephant (Digital Composite)Imagine for a moment Bizarro Social Media land.  If the folks who dreamt up Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. had taken that alluring left turn instead of going straight on with their vision and concocted (or Cogcocted) something entirely different than the fertile playgrounds, erm – rather platforms, we’ve got today.

Under these horribly delicious and highly inconceivable conditions we might have ended up with sites like…

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