Tag Archives: public relations

Jeff Esposito

Enter the Leper Messiah

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I am pissed off. The PR industry has recently received one black eye after the other – and you know what? It’s our own damn fault.

Yes, I said it. The recent bad press for the PR industry (and individual practitioners) in TechCrunch, Forrester and the New York Times came from the work of horrible PR people. These ranged from bad pitches to scamming a small business.

That pisses me off even more than anything. Instead of being a source of news and information from the media – our industry is being looked at as nothing more than a bunch of snake oil salesmen.

While every industry has its share of bad apples, it seems like we’ve had more than our fair share. Sure bad news and our symbiotic relationship with reporters makes our follies easy fare to sell papers, but it’s still no excuse to promote shoddy workmanship.

So how do we fix this? Continue reading →

Jason Mollica

Defining PR – Is it Really that Hard to do?

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A recent post at Ragan.com caught my attention.  It was based on the premise that public relations has a definition problem.  According to the author, Frank Strong, if you ask 10 PR pros to define PR, you’d get 10 different answers.

Sadly, he’s right and that’s the issue.  Why are we having such a problem explaining what PR is? As Frank mentioned in his post, the Public Relations Society of America defines PR:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” Continue reading →

Dorothy Oliver Pirovano

Interest, Activity in Social Media Intensifying Across All Health Care Sectors

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A roundtable discussion of agency executives from the Worldcom Americas Region Health Care Practice Group indicated that interest, expectations and budgets for leveraging social media are increasing considerably across all sectors of health care clients, and budget increases are being instituted for 2011 programs.  Agency experiences – coast to coast – were almost universally the same.

Worldcom is the world’s largest partnership of independent public relations firms with 112 offices located on five continents. The Worldcom PR Group’s Health Care Practice Group has 50 members worldwide, all of which have a specialty in the market segment.  A dozen of the 20 Americas Region firms participated in the roundtable. Continue reading →

Nathan "PRCog" Burgess

The Juggling Act

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Line Up 2, a small, easy-to-learn game for the iPhone is one of my favorite iPhone apps for killing time.  It’s a very simple game that requires you to locate 3 or more blocks of the same color next to each other and tap them.  Simple right?  Rows continue to pile on from the bottom and if the top-most block hits the ceiling of the game screen your game is over.  As you advance in the game the rows pile on faster until you hit a certain score and then they slow down again.  Additionally, the longer the chain of blocks – the higher the score.  So if you see a very long chain forming as the rows pile on you have to determine if you should wait to get the most bang for your tap score-wise or if you should just tap tap tap along.  And did I mention you only get a set number of taps per round?

This simple game is a perfect analogy for the PR pro’s activities. Continue reading →

Tim Otis

Social Media Faux Pas: Even Easier Now to Commit Them

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It’s a given that involvement in social media demands us to be omnipresent. We need to be available and accessible to our friends and fans in all places at all times in order to respond to those who enter our world and want to get to know us. Developers have become keen on this by introducing scheduling and management tools like HootSuite and Tweetdeck, as well as some other “stand-in” devices. The constant emergence of new tools and updates makes it impossible to keep up, though. Along a learning curve paved with good intentions, we are likely going to commit some unintentional blunders, or social media faux pas. Continue reading →

Valerie Merahn Simon

You’re Invited: NYC #HAPPO HOUR

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In celebration of more than a year of using social media to leverage our networks and connect those in the PR industry who are seeking new jobs with those seeking new talent, the #HAPPO (Help a PR Pro Out) initiative is moving offline for a special opportunity to build relationships in person. As my #HAPPO co founder Arik Hanson recently wrote, “We’re taking HAPPO to the next level by organizing our first U.S.-wide live and in-person HAPPO Hour chat.”

Whether you are a job seeker, looking to hire, or simply hoping to meet some of your “Twitter friends” in person, I hope that you’ll join us For those in the New York metro area, I’ve been working with the other NY area #HAPPO champions (Tiffany Winbush, Deirdre Breakenridge & PRBC’s very own PRCog) and a team of volunteers to organize a casual event at Connolly’s pub. It will take place from 6-8pm on February 24th.

Here are a few quick tips to help you make the most of the opportunity to integrate social and face-to-face networking: Continue reading →

Justin Goldsborough

Do companies need a crisis plan or social media crisis plan? (Part 1)

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Without question, my favorite part about Twitter is crowdsourcing. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a passionate POV or a question I couldn’t answer, shared it on Twitter, and been amazed at others’ perspectives and how much I learned from my industry peers.

A couple of weeks ago one of these situations came to life. In the past year, I have seen more and more agencies and companies advocating for a social media crisis plan. And to be completely honest, I don’t get it. Social media is a channel. A crisis often affects your brand far beyond Facebook, Twitter or the blogosphere. In the end, your reputation lies in the hands of your customers and influencers. And those people don’t just live in a social media bubble.

Sure, a brand can employ social media to communicate in near real-time when a crisis strikes. And for most, that tactic will make sense. But isn’t it just one or a few pieces of the overall crisis plan puzzle? If you ask me, our PR peers too often sell social media crisis planning as a scare tactic because they know the social response is the part brands worry they can’t control. But on the other hand, social media does play a significant role in crisis communications these days, so maybe it’s just semantics and I’m getting all worked up over nothing? 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

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 →

Keith Trivitt

Corporate Disclosure Takes a Hit with Goldman-Facebook Deal

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The headline in The Wall Street Journal said it all: “Facebook Flip Riles Goldman Clients” A more apt headline, though, would have been: “Facebook Flop Exposes Goldman Disclosure Issues.”

Harsh? A bit, perhaps. But in reality, it’s likely closer to truth than fiction. For if anything over the past two weeks has shown us, let alone the past two years, it is that some large corporations continue to struggle with the modern standards of corporate disclosure and transparency, even with their own clients.

To be fair, Goldman has made a number of well-publicized attempts in recent months to thoroughly review its client services and its level of transparency with the public and government regulators. Just last week, the company unveiled a 63-page report that examined its business practices. Included in this report was a 39-point plan of action for ensuring ethical standards and best practices are utilized throughout its business. Continue reading →