Tag Archives: bloggers

Get Coverage Where Your Customers Are

Rolodex Filled with Business CardsAs communications professionals, we all have our “holy grail” of coverage. Maybe it’s the Wall St. Journal or the New York Times. It could be Vanity Fair or Pop Sugar. Maybe it’s Spin or Maxim. But does the pursuit of a clip to put in a frame come at the expense of pursuing solid coverage in smaller trade or audience-specific outlets?

The importance of trade press and niche outlets is hard to argue against. For every TechCrunch, there  is a Commercial Construction & Renovation Magazine. Keeping this in mind, I was intrigued when I saw a tweet from somebody that I respect that he was compiling a media list for an upcoming announcement.

So, I called up Allen Stern, who is the founder of Cloud Contacts, which scans, transcribes and connects your business cards on social networks, email services and CRM systems about how he approaches PR. What makes Allen’s perspective valuable is he is also the founder and editor of Center Networks, a news blog that focuses on start ups and Web apps.

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Welcome to Our World

Checklist and pencilDuring the #prbc Ragan panel, I brought up the point that the line between a blogger and marketer will continue to blur, and you will start to see more bloggers taking a stab at becoming publicists/marketers.

As this trend continues – which I have a feeling it will – everyone is going to have an opinion on the subject. Can bloggers be publicists? Should companies stick with PR firms?

I’m not saying that bloggers shouldn’t be marketers or they can’t be publicists, but I do think a select few might need some insight. So, what’s the reality you may ask? Well, being a publicist/marketer isn’t as easy as it looks. Continue reading

No Room for Error

Perplexed ManRecently, TechCrunch featured a post about an e-mail they received from a PR firm, which the publicist obviously didn’t mean to send. To summarize, the firm accidentally left an internal exchange at the bottom of the e-mail that discussed the actual art of pitching TechCrunch.

Since I started out in the PR industry, I’ve quickly seen more and more publicists get blasted throughout the interwebs for their mistakes. Granted this public exhibition of PR faux pas has made communications professionals more aware and cautious about what they send out for mass consumption. One could also argue that at the same time, it’s made us totally terrified. Continue reading

Is it Time to Introduce Analytics to E-mail Pitching?

Businessman with graphI don’t usually write about the more tactical, day-to-day issues of PR and marketing, choosing instead to focus on the delicate work-life balance, thinking like an entrepreneur and why I think it’s OK to not have a traditional PR background. But today, bear with me for a bit, as I’m going to get pretty tactical on something every PR and marketing professional uses probably every single day of their jobs: the e-mail pitch.

Ahh, yes, the infamous “pitch.” Loathed by many, MANY, but in today’s smart phone-obsessed world, about as important as ever in terms of driving successful media outreach for brands and organizations. I won’t get into the whole debate about whether e-mail pitches should or should not be used, but there were a couple of interesting points I wanted to hit from Cone’s main points in the article on about how we can all make our e-mail pitches a bit more refined and increase the rate that our e-mails to bloggers and reporters will A) get opened; and B) actually get us some type of response. Continue reading

Your Social Media Idea in a Sentence

If you didn’t know already, the PRBC has our very own Facebook Fan Page. Every Friday, we ask everyone a random question in a series called “Fun Facts Friday.” Last week we just finished up presenting our 35 ideas about social media in 30 minutes, so we asked you to share your one social media idea in a sentence.

Here is what a couple of you had to say: Continue reading

From the Toy Fair Frontlines

Today we have a special guest cross-post from Stephanie Azzarone, founder and president of Child’s Play Communications.

This week marked the 107th American International Toy Fair, a major industry event held in New York City. I had the opportunity to moderate a panel there titled, Connecting With Moms In Social Media — Blogs, Twitter and Facebook, featuring toy companies and mom bloggers.

Speakers included Barb Rentschler (Chief Marketing Office, K’NEX),

Dell Monson (Senior Director of Marketing, Hidden City Games), Kimberly Coleman (Blogger, Mom in the City) and Melissa Chapman (Blogger, Real Moms Guide, Kids in the City, WCBS-TV).

What made this presentation successful was that it presented perspectives from marketers on the one hand and bloggers on the other. I thought I would share a few highlights here: Continue reading

Yes, Virginia, Your E-Mail Pitches Do Still Make a Difference

Global MarketI’ve written before about my belief that the near constant bashing of media relations has to stop, and how yes, despite how much I love social media and how much I believe in the true good of what it is doing in the PR and marketing business, there still is a time, place and relevancy to traditional PR tactics, such as developing strong relationships. Today, I’m going to give kudos to another one those of traditional tactics that the “gurus” love to bash, but if done right, can still have a major impact in our business: the e-mail pitch. Continue reading

We’re Growing the Family (Tree)

TreeOver the last five months the PRBC founding members and contributing bloggers have had the absolute joy of bringing you nearly 250 posts on the things that impact all our lives — PR, Social Media and everything else that touches on the various communications arts we all get to call our day (and sometimes night) jobs.

After some thought, we’ve come to the realization that you, our devoted readers need more — more variety of specialty, experience, geographic diversity, and everything else that makes each of us, as a person and professional, unique. Continue reading