Keith Trivitt

PRBC’s Social Media Guru On Kenneth Cole’s Twitter Fiasco

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Kenneth Cole could really use my social media guru skills!

Today on PRBC, we launch a new series called “Ask the Overpriced Social Media Guru, “where self-professed social media experts will weigh in periodically with advice about hot-button PR, marketing and social media issues. We hope to charge $500 per hour for your reading time with this new service …”

Dear Overpriced Social Media Guru:
What does last week’s disastrous tweet from Kenneth Cole portend for the future of social media use by companies and executives? Will they ever learn the mistakes of their colleagues?

Twitterized in Tacoma

Dear Twitterized in Tacoma: Continue reading →

Maddie Grant

Internal Fame & Influence: Talk Radio

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You may be aware that there is a big debate going on in the social media blogosphere about “influence”. We’re all familiar with the mantra that we should be out there leveraging influencers in our communities in order to get the word out about our causes, brands or services… and that makes total sense from a generating-word-of-mouth point of view.

But hold on. If you’re trying to do this, and you don’t actually know who your industry influencers are (perhaps because you’re not really immersed in your own open community, or because your community is too large or public-facing to be able to list your champions in an organic way), and you’re looking at some tools out there that purport to measure influence…. maybe you’re starting to think “this is not as easy as it sounds.” Maybe you’re starting to think that influence is not about how many followers someone has on Twitter. Maybe you’re starting to think that “influencer scores” are totally meaningless for your goals and objectives. Continue reading →

Cortney Rhoads Stapleton

Insight for Budgeting B2B Marketing and PR Efforts in 2011

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Now that it’s February, there are several trends emerging regarding what B2B companies will focus their marketing and PR efforts on in 2011.  The contribution of the B2B Practice Group of the Worldcom Public Relations Group, the world’s largest network of independent PR firms, is a collection of insights shared among partners in North and South America.  Through a roundtable discussion, a few trends emerged about the direction of the Public Relations profession in 2011: Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt, Marie Baker, Nathan "PRCog" Burgess

The Daily: Friend to PR or Just Another Set of Reporters?

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With Rupert Murdoch’s much ballyhooed iPad-only daily newspaper, The Daily, now up and running, it’s time to consider its potential impact on the PR industry. Below is a series of thoughts and insights from various PRBC bloggers that we curated via e-mail conversations Wednesday.

Keith Trivitt: The Daily is like any other new publication that comes out: It’s incredibly exciting to see the new product, particularly the flow of news, who’s writing what, the columnists, etc. I’m a news junkie, so I love finding new publications.

As for the PR value of The Daily … eh, only time will tell. That’s waffling, I know, but we have to keep in mind that right now, it’s only available on the iPad (though reports have it soon branching out to other tablets and e-readers eventually), it’s not searchable on Google and the iPad still hasn’t reached a critical mass. Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

The Persuasive Power of … Uncertainty?

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I recently listened to a fascinating, but somewhat counterintuitive, interview on the powers of persuasion via the Harvard Business Review podcast. In it, Stanford marketing researcher Zakary Tormala details findings of his recent study on influence and persuasion from experts and non-experts. What was of particular note was this eye- (and ear-) catching finding: experts who offer a degree of well-timed uncertainty when trying to persuade or influence others are often more successful in their impact than those who bloviate or come across as all-knowing.

Interesting . . .

As Tormala explains it, when someone who is considered an expert, whether that be a newspaper movie critic, a restaurant reviewer or even a CEO, displays a degree of uncertainty or humility in their speech or writings, people often listen to them more. It’s part of the surprise factor, Tormala notes, and it works, despite being counterintuitive to almost everything we think about persuasion. Continue reading →

Marie Baker

Snow Day PRBC-style

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For those of you that are enduring what seems to be the never-ending onslaught of snow, then you are probably becoming increasingly familiar with the “snow day.”

Perhaps you live in the suburbs and all forms of public transportation have been shut down – or, maybe schools are closed and you have no childcare back up – whatever the case may be, you find yourself in quite the snowy predicament.

Yet, even when Mother Nature comes screaming, we still need to work. What does this mean? It’s means working from home.

As some of us here at PRBC find ourselves snowed in and forced to work from home, we thought we would put all of our heads together and share our best tips for getting the job done…even on a snow day. Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

Coulson Resignation Isn’t Death Knell for Journalists-Turned-PR Pros

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Talk waxes and wanes throughout the year in the PR industry about what makes a good public relations professional, who can rightly lay claim to being a part of the profession (Are digital PR gadflys who seem to do more for to boost their own personal brands than those of their clients really PR pros?) and what’s next for the profession.

One area that has taken up a significant portion of that discussion in recent years has been journalists coming over “to the dark side” (as they would put it) and working in PR. While Bad Pitch Blog and its ilk tend to take a dim view of reporters seeking to make an honest living by doing honest work in PR, the general consensus in the business seems to be that so long as they understand the basics and respect our work, journalists are welcome to our ranks.

But can this trend go too far? And if so, what might that look like? Continue reading →

Marie Baker

Location-Based Marketing for Newbies

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I’m first and foremost a publicist, but as you know these days, we need to know a lot of stuff. I spend most of my energy focusing on trends in public relations and social media, and I understand the basic gist of mobile marketing, but it’s definitely an area I’m a bit fuzzy on.

Why do I need to know about mobile marketing? Well, when you are strategizing and creating campaigns for your clients, you need to think about the “big picture.” I’m not a developer by any means; however I do need to understand the basic concepts about what would work for my clients.

Last week I attended a fantastic panel “What’s Hot in PR: Brand in the Hand — How Location-Based Marketing is Shaping the Future,” sponsored by AWNY. The panel included the likes of Jack Bamberger (Apps Savvy), David Berkowitz (360i), John Puterbaugh (Nellymoser), Jared Hopfer (Mobext) and Barri Rafferty (Ketchum). Continue reading →

…..a chance to start the day off right.