Tag Archives: twitter

Media Training: The Forgotten Part of Client Service

All too often, we see CEOs put their foot in their mouths. Remember Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ “apology” last year? Or how about former BP CEO Tony Hayward and his “relatively tiny” Gulf oil spill comment? These types of words cannot only stain a chief executive; it can also hurt a company. In the cases above, both Netflix and BP suffered mightily.

These types of instances are very preventable though. One of the things that are often forgotten about in our PR planning is media training. Continue reading

Fine Tune Your Social Focus

I’m old enough to remember the days of bringing a Walkman into my bed at night to try and listen to baseball. On the clearest of nights, I could hear the radio home of the Chicago Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and sometimes, the Boston Red Sox from my New Jersey bedroom. However, most times, I’d have to deal with plenty of static and interference.In our social media world today, we have the same issues. While we can “hear” some of the most influential PR/social media/marketing folks, we still need to get through the “static” to actually listen. Why? Our Facebook and Twitter streams are clouded with too much noise and clutter that affects what we take in.

So, how can we better listen and engage our followers? Here are five tips to fine tune your focus on social networks. Continue reading

You Are The Most Valuable Product On The Internet

Much has been made of Google’s unified privacy policy that went into effect last week. In my Twitter feed, I saw the usual suspects; threats of dumping all Google products, enraged people shouting about how Google is out to take over the world, you know, a whole lot of this. Perhaps these people are unaware of how commerce on the Internet works. This is always a good reminder for us as PR pros, and for our clients. The number of companies that collect your data for their own marketing purposes or for their partners is astronomical. However, let’s rundown a few of the major names to put this in perspective: Continue reading

Building Relationships Through Marketing

How many times have you heard it: You need to grow your followers and fans on social platforms to foster trust and growth of your brand.

Maybe you are sick of hearing this, but it’s very true. Someone who I have enjoyed following on Twitter and her blog for a while now is Mari Smith. She recently published the book, “The New Relationship Marketing.” If you didn’t believe the italicized sentence above, you will by the time you finish Mari’s book. Continue reading

5 Ways that Bloggers Are Like the Cool Kids in High School

I went to a great presentation this week by @jaykrall on Blogger Relations. He talked in depth about how PR pros can seek and engage bloggers with their brand. Great speaker if anyone is looking for one.

One thing he said is that bloggers know other bloggers. I guess I never really thought about it but of course they do. The challenge is breaking into that group. There are many similarities between bloggers and the cool group in high school. Continue reading

Google’s Privacy Issue Isn’t Really an Issue

Over the last few days, I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading about Google’s new privacy policy. It has received some positive and negative views. Privacy, to many, is a premium; we don’t want our information shared or sold to anyone. Of course, I enjoy privacy, too.

Here’s a (not so) little secret, though. When you log onto Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., your information is out there. You signed up for a Gmail account or to have a Twitter profile, you understood there was a risk. So why so many complaints about your privacy being infringed upon? Because we all need something to take issue with nowadays. Continue reading

You’re Doing Twitter Chats #Wrong When…

Providing counsel on Twitter, and sometimes specifically Twitter chats, frequently falls in our laps at the request of clients.  While we’ve all seen the ‘best practices’ for these things, there are of course, worst practices.  Some of my top ones, as well as those of some contributors, are below.  What are some of the worst practices you’ve seen?

You’re doing Twitter wrong for clients if you: Continue reading