Sincerely, Truly Yours…Or Are You?

Some email signatures are so ridiculous.  Why doesn’t anyone use ‘Yours Truly,’ ‘From,’ or ‘Sincerely’ anymore?  It seems like everyone tries to be lovey-dovey in a last attempt to create a bond with someone.  Honestly, some lines just make me want to vomit.

Here are some closing lines that I can’t stand and my interpretations of them:

Cheers
– Well I don’t know about you, but there isn’t any Bailey’s Irish Cream in my coffee this morning.  By the way, thanks for getting my after work drink in my head at 9 am.  Are you even from England? Cheerio, yo.

God Bless
– Unless you’re writing for the Chattanooga Christian Family Magazine, there is no reason to ever write this to someone.  Thanks for rejecting my pitch, but it’s okay! God will forgive you.

Best Wishes
– What is it, my birthday?  I really appreciate the thought, but my birthday is September 10th [Editor’s Note: That’s in a few days folks…be sure to wish CT the ‘Best Wishes’].  Are you being sarcastic and really don’t want to wish me a Happy Birthday?  Best wishes to you on finding another closing line.

Warm(est) Regards
– Warm? Seriously? Am I not good enough for Hot Regards?  You can only give me a moderately cooked regards? People, I like my apple pie warm and a la mode style, but not my regards.  Gee, thanks for using the half-way adjective when e-mailing me.  You could have at least heated my regards all the way. Are you trying to make me all cozy inside and ‘warm’ up to you?

Deepest Sympathies
– Wow, thanks for making me think of my dead family member while you were rejecting my e-mail to you.  Apparently rejecting an e-mail requires the same responses that are used to convey the message that your lover is dead and was hit by the NJTransit train.

K? –
Can you be any more of a snot? I got the message, and your attitude is definitely not appreciated after I just read through your junk that you sent me. Take your K? and shove it.

Queries! –
No shit, Sherlock.

As for me, I usually stick to a simple ‘Best’.  I’ll let you decide what word you want to add into the mix, whether it be ‘Best Thanks’, ‘Best Regards’, ‘Best Fun’, etc.  Every single closing line can be interpreted the wrong way, except for one.

However, someday I will use this line with every e-mail that I send – ‘May the Force Be With You…’

Share the lines you use, and I would love to hear ones that you hate!

Twitter Explanation: How to Explain to Your Spouse Why You Love Twitter

A good friend said to me: “Why would anyone be on Twitter?”  Mind you, he’s never been on Twitter and he doesn’t know a thing about it.  But he’s a successful lawyer and thinks he knows what’s what.

In reply, I’ve decided to come up with a list of answers for when someone asks you this question:

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You don’t know me!

No, seriously, you don’t. You might have a clue about the ballpark range of my age because of my photo here, you know where I work (because I’ve told you), and you know that I at least have a degree in Public Relations.

So why are you still reading this post? Who says I’m the authority here?

Allow me to explain the questions I pose . . . .

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This Week’s Top 5 Posts

Welcome to the conclusion of Week 1 of PRBreakfastClub.com.  It’s been a great week for us here and on #prbc.  We hope you’ve enjoyed our content, banter, and anything else you may have found of value (music, pictures, literature, fashion tips…whatever it may be).

In case you’re concerned you missed a crucial post this week, I present to you, in alphabetical order (because I like to keep a bit of mystery in all our lives) this week’s Top 5 posts.

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Your Copy Sucks: a flack writing workshop

Here’s the thing about writing: it’s on everything. Newspapers, TV shows, blogs, web sites, Twitter, e-mails, press releases, yogurt cups, bus terminal walls, billboards, handbills—all these things are covered in copy. And, like most things in this world, 90% of it is just terrible.

It’s a lifeless, mediocre attempt at grabbing and keeping our interest, of sparking our imaginations, of helping or guiding or moving us. But until the PR industry comes up with some sort of sci-fi helmet that we can use to just beam our pitches directly into the brains of the people we want to speak to, we’ll have to learn to be brilliant among all this flotsam that the unfortunate public has been exposed to.

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Ethics…you mean there are ethics?

ms. Campbell, who was kind enough to grace me with her xomapny at dinner last week along w/ ms. Vallejo and ms sena, recently brought us this blog post addressing ethics in our chosen profession — the great world of public relations in it’s various forms.
as in many other fields there are some bright lines that we dare nit cross. then there are those ethically grey areas. yes(!) — there can be ethically grey areas, not evwrythjng is black or white. these usually pop up when our own ethical rules for various areas of our life come into conflict and we must step up and make that decision of what/which is most important to us.
first let’s understand that ethics is diferejt than morality and differnt than legality. that could be (and is likely) the topic of thousands of blog posts (an dissertations). but for the purpose of separating the issues consider a physician in a state that does not permit assisted suicide.  certainly the doxtor’s priority is healing the sick, but in circumstances where that is a lost cause where does the physician’s duty lie — to his science to continue treating the untreatable or to end the suffering of his patient in any way he can.
certainly our own issues are rarely this dire but on a near daily basis we can potentilly confronted with issues where our various duties lie in conflict.
I do work with accounkng firms. not infrequently they’re called upon to present expert pinion on relevant topics.

This one’s in response (expansion) to a post from the lovely Ms. Campbell (@prsoapbox), who was kind enough to grace me with her company at dinner last week along with Ms. Vallejo and Ms. Sena. She recently brought us this blog post addressing the ethics in our chosen profession—the great world of public relations in its various forms.

As in many other fields, there are some bright lines that we dare not cross. Then there are those ethically grey areas.  Yes (!)—there can be ethically grey areas, not everything is easily placed on a black or white square. These usually pop up when our own ethical rules for various areas of our life (personal and professional) come into conflict and we must step up and make the decision of what/which is most important to us.

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What’s a Girl Like Me Doing Writing for a Blog Like This?

I’m sure all many of you are asking just that question—a former lawyer, banker, and hedge fund analyst who’s now running her own walkie-talkie rental company—what in the world is she doing writing for a PR blog?
Just a short while ago, when I decided to work on What’s Your Twenty, Inc. <http://www.twitter.com/WY20> full-time, I realized I was taking on a massive task—our walkie rental biz was primarily servicing the production industry, where my husband and our other partner have been producing for 10+ years. They already had their network. I decided I wanted to expand our clientele beyond production, into special events, meetings, fashion shows, trade shows, conventions, catering (colloquially, “events”), and anything else I could think of. I wanted to be huge. And quick. But I had a law and finance background. How in the world would I break into the events space? Let alone quickly? I first took stock of my local competitors—some are fairly large, but none are “branded.” They’re not involved in social media, they don’t have interactive websites, they don’t blog. I recognized a huge opportunity.
Enter my friend Stephanie Smirnov <http://www.twitter.com/ssmirnov>.
She’s the president at a really well-respected, top-tier PR firm in NYC. I think we got to know each other through common Twitter mom
friends (since we’re both moms to boys and we both work, we had a lot in common from the get-go). I started reading Stephanie’s blog
<http://ssmirnov.wordpress.com/>—a perfect entree into the PR world since she writes not only about PR, but also about mom stuff, popular
culture, etc.—I’d ease my way in. I liked what I saw. And so I started to follow some of the PR folks that Stephanie was following. One of those people was our own @PRCog.
But let’s back up for a moment. Around this time I began to realize that I’ve always been interested in public relations. I’ve been doing
my own personal PR since elementary school! (Get good grades and everyone thinks you’re a goodie two-shoes . . . you get where I’m going
with this). My job as my own personal PR manager became much more difficult (and ridiculously more important) in the highly political
worlds of law firm and i-banker life—you spend a large part of your day at jobs like that managing your reputation. You check and double
check the tone, substance, and syntax of your emails; you make sure not to make the “cc” instead of “bcc” mistake; you “pitch” to get on the
best deals for the best clients with the best colleagues; you manage your online reputation to make sure no incriminating pictures or stories or mentions ever pop up when someone Googles you; you network with the right people so that eventually you can get out of the job you’re trying so hard to keep but that you never really loved in the first place. Geez—I’d been doing this all along! And perhaps not everyone does . . . but I strongly believe that everyone should.
What’s Your Twenty is a start-up—I had exactly zero marketing dollars to spend, let alone money to hire a PR firm to help me launch my “brand.” So I decided I’d take on the task myself. I started chatting with @PRCog, continuing my conversations with Stephanie and many of the great flacks she’s introduced me to, and heard about this event called Masquertweet. For those of you who don’t already know, @PRCog is a real person who’s completely anonymous on Twitter. So he and a few other flacks put together a tweet-up for [mainly] PR folks where everyone was invited to wear a mask—sort of showing support for Cog’s [literally] masked identity. This was an incredible networking opportunity (and to boot, there was a charity tie-in with 12for12k <http://12for12k.org/>, which I always love), and so I went. All. By. Myself. [Note—Stephanie was awesome and introduced me to a bunch of amazing people before via Twitter, all of whom I’m now friends with IRL!]
It was at Masquertweet that I met many of the authors who write on this very blog. After the event, I started to read many of their blogs, and to read blogs written by other PR superstars who were recommended to me. I started to learn the lingo. I started to read articles. And I started to tweet about my PR studies with the original members of the PRBreakfastclub. I’m learning as I go—but already, I’m finding success (more about that coming soon—but suffice it to say, I’ve already gotten myself press!). And in my articles each week, I’ll try the best I can to teach you how to do PR for your own small business, too. You’re gonna love it.

I’m sure all many of you are asking just that question—a former lawyer, banker, and hedge fund analyst who’s now running her own walkie-talkie rental company—what in the world is she doing writing for a PR blog?

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