For this week’s Coffee Talk I had the opportunity to chat with Alex Aizenberg, a successful PR professional, avid coffee drinker (just make sure it’s regular coffee with 2% milk), beard enthusiast and musician. I have gotten to know Alex through his rather entertaining Twitter stream, a nice blend of business and pleasure. I’m always learning something new from Alex as he is a savvy professional, currently working with one of the leading global public relations agencies, Weber Shandwick for 5+ years. I guess you could say he knows what he’s doing ;). In addition to PR, you can find Alex relaxing with his supportive wife, adorable dog, and playing on one of his eight guitars. Bet you didn’t know that A) Weber Shandwick has a house band named “Webster’s Sandwich” for an annual event called Agency Idol and B) that Alex has been the lead guitarist since the start! I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did and learn something new along the way. Continue reading
Tag Archives: social media
The Five Second First Impression
With college graduations fast approaching, I’ve found myself fortunate enough to be on the speaking circuit. Visiting a few college classes and clubs to impart (hopefully) some wisdom about working in PR, manage entry level career expectations and, when possible, offer some guidance for the job hunt. Among the endless string of seemingly trivial and questionably relevant content offered, has been the following platitude: You have five seconds to make a first impression. Continue reading
I’m Claiming ‘Information Overload’
I recently reached a breaking point with my desk where I was physically unable to continue working. Everything I touched hit something else and caused a landslide. I couldn’t see the desktop through the clutter. Not to mention the fact that my stupid. . .errrr. . .bountiful. . .lush. . .plant was shedding everywhere!
I called a ‘time out’ shut my TweetDeck, minimized my Outlook and began the seemingly arduous process of cleaning my desk. Not surprisingly, there were a few documents to be trashed and a couple of publications to pass along to the next reader. However, I was a bit stunned to find the largest clutter monster was the heap of articles, blog posts and news clippings that had peaked my interest, been deemed ‘must reads,’ and sunk to the bottom of the pile. As I collected the articles into a folder and took them to read that evening, I came home to an even greater surprise – Continue reading
Even If You Can’t/Won’t Engage, You Need to Monitor
It’s a common, and possibly over-analyzed, topic. One that has been discussed at nearly every social media conference I have attended. Yet, I’m going to broach the topic again. Should you engage in social media?
Instead of debating the pros and cons of engaging in social media, I’m going to take a slight detour. If you can’t or aren’t willing to engage, you at least need to monitor.
I think one of the largest misconceptions among organizations not involved in social media is that, if they don’t have a social media presence, nobody is talking about them. Continue reading
Who Do You Trust with Your Client’s Biggest News?
Despite all of my love for social media, digital communications, community engagement etc., something that is beginning to particularly strike me as a clear fact of 21st-century PR is that yes, media relationships do matter. A whole lot. And dare I say it? It does matter who you know. More importantly, how well you know/trust them.
Let me put this into a bit more perspective: Say you’re working on a pretty time sensitive client announcement that has a lot of moving parts (e.g. 2-3 parties involved with multiple executives/personalities and many different times zones), which requires you to be both confidential with how closely you hold the client announcement/information and also proactive enough so you obtain the desired outcome from the announcement with a little extra audience reaction thrown in from a good pre-announcement story or two. Continue reading
TweetDilution:Are you visible?
A few days ago a minor firestorm brewed over the importance of your (whether that’s you, your brand, your company, etc.) follower count over at Kate’s post. Everyone providing commentary had valuable input (in my opinion) and certainly each has a different goal, or at the very least different way of approaching the issue. One even found great pleasure at the hypothetical situation that an account would have more followers outside its target audience than inside of it because then at least there’d be confirmation you (or the account) was in-fact doing something right.
All of these conversations centered on how many followers the account itself has. There is another factor to consider in this formula to determine reach — How many people are your followers following? Yes, I’m serious. We’re talking TweetDilution people. Continue reading
Gosh, no! It’s not about the numbers!
I’m talking about Twitter here, people. Your follower count does matter. Admit it – it’s addicting and you want more.
In a recent post by Mack Collier titled “The fast food approach to social media,” he stated:
Getting 5,000 fans on a Facebook fan page is NOT a social media strategy. Getting 200 followers on Twitter is NOT a social media strategy. Facebook and Twitter are tactics used to execute a social media strategy, getting on Facebook and Twitter is not a social media strategy.
Mack worries that a shady agency or consultant will take any willing candidate who just wants a lot of followers and wants them now and that many assume follower and friend counts on Twitter and Facebook are the metrics to determine a successful social media strategy. Continue reading
40 Days 40 Nights without Facebook
Chocolate. Alcohol. Cheese. Cursing. Typical things that one would give up for Lent. I’ve tried to all of them for the full forty (read: forty-six when including Sundays) for Lent. In the Christian faith, Lent is to remind us of the temptation that Jesus endured in the desert from Satan. Lent is a time for us to give up one of our vices. I’m not religious. I go to church on the “important” holidays but this year I really wanted to give Lent a valiant effort. For the first time ever, I can truthfully say I survived Lent without cheating. I gave up Facebook. When people heard I was giving up Facebook there were a lot of questions: Why not Twitter? What do you miss most? Obstacles? Will you go back? etc. I can tell you this, life was better without Facebook. Continue reading
Why We Have Such a Crush on Twitter (and Not On Facebook)
It’s no secret PR professionals have an unhealthy relationship with Twitter. Despite the existence of countless other social networking platforms, including Facebook (which actually has much higher numbers than Twitter), people working in PR seem to naturally gravitate towards the micro-blogging service more than anything else. We give out our Twitter handles at networking events and print them on our business cards, which is especially interesting considering LinkedIn is probably the most professional social media platform out there. However, professionalism doesn’t have everything to do with it- Twitter is as much for creating friendships as it is for forming business relationships. So why are all of us flacks such hopeless (and I mean hopeless) Twitter fiends? Continue reading
How dare you denounce the gods!?
A recent tweet by a friend of mine struck me. She said something along the lines of “just because I don’t agree with So-And-So (big name social media guru) doesn’t mean I need to get privately burned via direct message.”
I approached her via DM explaining how every once in a while, I’d like to respectfully disagree with some of these PR and social media professionals we have collectively dubbed “gods.” Respectfully disagree as I would do with anyone else. But why haven’t I? Why can’t I?
Because: I would literally be stoned to death via 140 characters at a time by an overwhelmingly loyal band of lemmings. Yeah, I said it. Continue reading