Category Archives: John Trader

Why Brevity in PR Will Get You Noticed

PR: The land of content and the home of the brevity.

I thought that perhaps it might be a good time to visit the subject of brevity in PR. We live in a world with increasingly strict space limitations and tightened engagement protocols to grab attention. From writing content to posting tweets to email media pitches to blog posts to writing news releases, the maturation and digitization of the Information Age has spawned an enormous number of people vying for attention and doing everything they can to be noticed. Continue reading

Inspiration: Keeping Your Inner Child Close at Hand

I recently wrote a blog post about the death of Andy Rooney and how PR and social media pros would be wise to learn the art of storytelling by observing how he had the innate ability to take the simplest of topics and weave a creative story that taught us a lesson about life.

I had the opportunity on Tuesday to participate in ConnectChat where our Editor-in-Chief Nathan Burgess touched on many topics surrounding the PRBreakfastClub blog including a brief discussion on how the blog comes up with story ideas. A transcript of the blog can be found here.

Jason Mollica pointed out during the chat that often times inspiration for a blog post comes from odd places and as PR and social media practitioners, our observation skills must be keen and sharp because you never know when an event, encounter or news story will spur us to cultivate it into a post where we can draw a parallel to our profession. Continue reading

Put Away the Toys, It’s Now Time to be Accountable

‘Tis the season for predictions. I always enjoy this time of the year, reading and listening to what industry professionals and talking heads project will be the hot topics for the next year and what everyone should be looking at and concentrating on for success. I have read a lot of articles that speculate what themes and strategies are front and center for 2012 and where we can expect the market to turn. Most of what I have read seems spot on, like Affect’s 2012 predictions that: Continue reading

Unintentional PR – Bane or Boon?

I have to admit, I’ve never heard of the game Words With Friends. That is until Tuesday. Actor Alec Baldwin was kicked off of an American Airlines flight earlier this week after a flight attendant asked him to turn off his cell phone which he was using to play the game as the plane was waiting to taxi for takeoff. The actor refused and subsequently he was booted from the flight but not before proceeding to go on a tirade, slamming a bathroom door and later posting derogatory tweets about American Airlines on Twitter using a vindictive hashtag (#nowonderamericanairisbankrupt) to express his “outrage” at what us normal citizens would call “proper protocol” on an airline. Continue reading

Privacy in Social Media – The Next Hot Button Issue?

In case anyone missed it, on Tuesday of last week the FTC settled their eight-count complaint against Facebook alleging they “misled users about the use of their personal information.” Essentially the FTC was claiming that Facebook had knowingly made changes to their privacy settings in December of 2009 that automatically made aspects of user’s profiles public by default without their permission.

At issue is the inability for Facebook users to have control over who sees their private information (name, picture, city, gender, friends, etc.) and who doesn’t. Twitter has also been a Target of the FTC, and settled a similar case back in June of 2010 for failing to safeguard user information.   Continue reading

Finding Your Inner Andy Rooney

I was saddened by the death of Andy Rooney. The world lost a cultural media icon with his passing and for those of you who knew him and followed his work, a part of you may have been left empty too. Rooney gave the world a long and distinguished 70 year career as a war correspondent, writer, producer, and journalist but was undoubtedly best known for his 3 minute essays at the end of the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” where he constantly pointed out life’s unspoken truths or subtle lies. The quintessential “curmudgeon,” Rooney often touched our lives with his prose and opinions, got us thinking about controversial topics and frequently struck a chord by discussing taboo topics or subjects that no one wanted to talk about like why no one speaks in an elevator. Continue reading

Book review: “The Real Truth About Social Media” by Eric Harr

I recently finished reading Eric Harr’s energetic new book, “The Real Truth About Social Media: Confessions of a Social Media CEO.” The book details how the social media revolution has permanently changed the dynamic of modern communications and the theories behind why businesses should embrace the shift to help modernize their strategies and tactics to match the shifting tide of customer culture.

I found it to be an excellent summary of the core social media ideals that businesses should understand and adopt to help their transition into a communications era that is widely considered essential to thrive in for business. The book is mainly geared towards skeptics, naysayers and those reluctant to try social media, help them understand just how important the platform is to leverage and how it simply can’t be classified as a “passing phase.” Continue reading

The NBA’s Desperate Need for PR Damage Control

Ah yes, pro sports. So deeply embedded in the fabric of our culture, pro sports in America have an immeasurable impact on so many things in our society. Sports can lift a nation with tales of tragic youth turned pro athlete superstar or cast depression on our psyche like how we all felt after watching the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Japan in the World Cup Finals.

Relationships are forged and destroyed by sports. National and regional collective moods often rise and fall with the results of teams and individual efforts. Cities, towns and states can reap billions of dollars in revenue from pro teams in local markets.   Continue reading

Netflix….Hello? McFly?

Oy. Where do I even start with this PR debacle? For those of you living under a PR rock, the online DVD rental/streaming movie service Netflix has been stumbling and bumbling their way through a series messy PR blunders that stretch over the course of the past year. You remember Netflix right? They’re the company that arguably put Blockbuster and other movie retailers’ bricks and mortar businesses in a coffin, single handedly revolutionizing the DVD/movie streaming market with their service.

Seemingly overnight they changed the way we consumed movies with their near genius marketing strategies and business model leaving many people (*ahem* Blockbuster) twisting in the wind and kicking themselves that they didn’t have the foresight to see the paradigm shift in home movie delivery. But their communications strategy? Uh, hello – McFly? Continue reading

PR and “Pressing the Flesh” – Does Physical Presence Count Less than it Used to?

I’ve been getting out more lately. Out meeting clients and prospects at User Conferences and Trade Shows. Out making new contacts, engaging people in conversations and learning more about what makes customers and prospects tick within the vertical markets that we serve.  I’ve been out “pressing the flesh.”

A few years back I was the PR Manager for the State of Maryland’s two 529 college savings plans. If you are unfamiliar with a 529 college savings plan, basically it’s a financial savings investment vehicle with special tax considerations and incentives, designed to encourage saving for children’s future college expenses. My job as the PR Manager for Maryland’s plans was to make sure that:

#1:  the value of saving for future college expenses was top of mind for parents (and grandparents)
#2:  Everyone understood exactly how Maryland’s two 529 college savings plans worked,

It wasn’t an easy task. Continue reading