The Summer Week That Was:June 25 – 29, 2012

PRBreakfastClub weekly news wrap for PR Pros on social media, PR and advertising
Microsoft Buys Yammer

Thankfully, Friday has arrived. Setting aside for a moment the landmark Supreme Court decision that upheld Obamacare as truly the news story of the week (or perhaps the year, or even decade), let’s dip our toe into the PR, social media, and advertising pool for a look at some of the stories that caught our eye this week which you may have missed. Not necessarily listed in their order of importance, here are some stories that we felt were worth passing on to you, our loyal readers, as significant for our industry: Continue reading

SourceBottle: New Journalist, PR Resource Now Available

SourceBottle platformSourceBottle, a free online resource that’s designed to help journalists, bloggers and PR pros, is now available in North America. The platform helps journalists and bloggers find sources, while also giving PR pros an opportunity to help gain brand awareness on behalf of their clients. Continue reading

Mythbusting Creativity

The process of creativity isn’t glamorous. It’s simply about hard work, the management of emotions, and delayed showmanship. And it’s necessarily lonely. To want to be creative—truly creative—is to want to entertain, which is often depressingly opposite of being entertained.

– Eddie Smith, Practically Efficient.

There is no trick to creativity, no secret initiation or gnostic teaching to be revealed by invitation only. Continue reading

The Summer Week That Was June 18- June 22

It is summer and hopefully PR professionals are hitting up the beaches and enjoying some travel. I am sure that the cell phone is not far and the laptop is in tow but hey it’s an effort to relax and unplug.

Social media has changed the way that people are traveling and documenting their summer vacations. No longer are tourists spotted only by the cameras hanging around their necks and the maps in hand. They are now using their iPhone for a camera and documenting their entire trip through live tweeting or Facebook check-ins. Facebook recently released a list of the Most Social Landmarks based on this trend. Continue reading

Sensitivity Training is Key For Effective Interviewing Skills

"Jungle Bird" (Photo by Ron Chenoy, US Presswire)

Spurred by this week’s post over on PR Daily about when should a PR pro interrupt an interview, I was motivated to write something about last Sunday’s interesting and rather amusing interruption by “Jungle Bird” during the Bob Costas interview with U.S. Open Champ Webb Simpson. In case you live in a cozy apartment at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and missed this video clip, it is rather amusing.

Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z00nX1zqo4 Continue reading

Social Trial & Error: Easy (and Inexpensive) Tips for Identifying the Best Platforms for Your Brand

So your brand has a growing following on Twitter, your Facebook page has been up and running for a few years now, and you recently launched a Google+ brand page – but now what? While you can access certain analytics for each platform, there’s often a desire to answer the question “What can we do next?” and “Which platform is reaching my best customers?”  Continue reading

The Summer Week That Was June 11-June 15

Summer week that was June 11-June 15Friday has arrived—and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a happy hour. As you count down the hours until the weekend, why not pass the time with some of this week’s best web content? Trust me—the day will fly by. You can thank me later. Continue reading

Stop Telling Me What is Dying!

Bring out your dead!”  “I’m not dead.” “’Ere, he says he’s not dead.” “Yes he is.”

”I’m not.”

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail

How many times have we read about the end of times for Twitter and Facebook? Hundreds? Thousands? What ever the number has been, it’s getting a little exhausting.

The latest version of “social media Taps” was an analyst saying that Facebook would “disappear” in five to eight years. Eric Jackson, the founder of Ironfire Capital said, “…(t)hey are going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared. Yahoo is still making money. It’s still profitable, still has 13,000 employees working for it. But it’s 10% of the value that it was at the height of 2000. For all intents and purposes, it’s disappeared.” Continue reading