In New Orleans there is always news. From football to festivals, from Mardi Gras to music and from cuisine to crime the city is always buzzing. But things are not so easy in the Big Easy for PR pros.
There is a shift happening in the media landscape. The major daily newspaper is no longer going to be daily in just 30 days. The Times Picayune has been bringing the news to New Orleanians for over 175 years. The owners of the newspaper, have decided to cut down the distribution just three days a week and focus on digital.
In a city that is based on traditions and a rich history, change is not always embraced or accepted. There are yard signs throughout the city in front of homes and businesses demanding daily distribution. Many city leaders and notables have written open letters to the owners demanding they sell or reinstate distribution. Continue reading →
To practice public relations there is no board or exam. The practitioners are lumped in together- the good, the bad and the ugly. The Accreditation in Public Relations process is elective. You can choose to sit for accreditation or you cannot without any consequences. And if you pass there is no real effect on your job and you won’t get an extra zero on your next paycheck.
However, I just checked the mailbox and my official letter of passing has just arrived. There is something that feels so good about having three little letters behind my name that I can’t help but be excited.
The desire to take the APR has to come within. You have to want to go through the process to further your career and to separate yourself with the designation in the pool of resumes. Continue reading →
We have all heard of Spring cleaning and in the South, where I am from, we have freezer cleaning when it is hurricane season.(This basically means you use all of the items in the freezer so in case you lose power you don’t lose a lot of frozen items). Either way they are both dedicated times that you stop each year to focus on clearing out the clutter and reorganizing yourself.
While it is hard to stop in the PR world, summer is the perfect time to stop and clean up the shop. Add it to your Outlook calendar to save time for cleaning. Tackle those things that you wish you had time to do that would make life easier but you don’t have time to stop. Continue reading →
Being in PR means that you plan and execute events to perfection and no detail is forgotten. Each PR pro has their style for planning and how they work to get it all done. There is a recipe for event planning which includes a little creativity, a little OCD, a little leadership and a dash of caffeine. When you put it all together you get some pretty stellar events that PR pros pull of every day.
Behind the scenes of the seamless event that you have produced there is an army of details that get you through. Here are some of the secret ingredients that help PR pros pull off perfection: Continue reading →
There are many articles out there on how PR professionals should seek, contact and engage with bloggers. We are focused on building a relationship with bloggers and converting them into brand ambassadors for our client. We hope that they will write amazing posts about our clients and it will spread through the blogger world like wildfire.
But as PR pros have we stopped to think about what the bloggers want from us?
I am a mom blogger, crawfishtales.com, and I have had the opportunity to be on both sides of the pitch. This has given me insight that I have used to mold the way that I, as a PR pro, engage bloggers. I constantly remind myself that bloggers are receiving multiple pitches just like a reporter and that I need to make my pitch stand out from the others. The best pitches are the ones that are thorough and have thought through the pitch from the bloggers prospective. Continue reading →
Is it me or is PR not actually evolving and instead completely disappearing?
It’s safe to say that you can start calling all PR people “marketers.” Why? We’re all about marketing strategy now; we’re not just relating to publics but trying to learn how people tick, how they’ll be moved to purchase or pass along something – based on research and continuous analysis found in deep dives into social networks and by reading a vast amount of blog posts on the topic. The practice of PR has traditionally been built upon persuasion, but persuasion isn’t accurate. Continue reading →
The other day a client forwarded an email call-to-arms from his president urging Marketing, PR – and by extension us, I guess – to develop a nugget that best described the company’s “differentiators,” to win customers’ hearts and minds. “I have a better idea,” I fired back. “Let’s ask him. He’s the leader of this outfit and ought to know.”
I’m fairly certain that no member in good standing of a professional PR organization or advocate of the Stockholm Accords – you know, people with finely tuned sensitivities –would ever talk to a client like that, certainly not in response to a request from the CEO. Only an ex-journalist would be so brash. Having spent much of our careers wading through the guff churned out by government agencies, corporate PR departments, marketing dweebs and the leaders of both the free and less-than-free worlds, journalists have a low BS threshold and get down to business quickly. Continue reading →
Both the PR and media world have undergone great changes since I first got started in the field in the mid 1990s. When I first started off as a reporter, I spent several hours learning how to use the flywheel to resize photos. And just when I had that figured out, along came Photoshop, which made all that knowledge useless.
Today, change seems to be happening at lightning-fast speed. The advent of social media and the rapid demise of the print media have caused huge strains on PR practioners, who have to keep up with these developments. I am a technophile, but even I admit that sometimes it gets exhausting trying to keep up with the latest press release platform, social media fad or cell phone app.
Having said that, here are a few things that all PR rookies (and some old pros) need to be doing: Continue reading →
I have spent a lot of time reading about how birth order determines your personality.
Being a middle child, my personality has always been one of the peace maker and the bridge builder, which is why I want to call for a cease fire in the war between reporters and PR professionals.
Bashing PR professionals is getting quite passé. And at times it seems as trite as complaining about government workers. It’s easy to say government workers are slackers, but I used to work for the government and many government employees work very hard in a turbulent political environment. I just don’t see what can be gained from the endless sniping. For example, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington recently declared, “I don’t like PR people for the most part.” Nice. Continue reading →
As PR pros, it can be difficult to resist becoming an ambulance chaser. Sometimes, those big shiny openings to pitch a client are nearly impossible to resist. But what about the times when there isn’t an obvious point of entry? When you’re on your own to craft the story from inception to execution?
A recent survey by Middleberg/Ross revealed that 98% of journalists go online daily to generate story ideas and access information. Clearly, the web is working for them, and maybe for some of us as well. Over the past year, we’ve become increasingly familiar with hearing journalists site social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as sources for story ideas. My question is, where are the PR people getting their story ideas? Continue reading →
viagra from canada37422_28e50f7287_m.jpg” alt=”” width=”240″ height=”150″ />
Both the PR and media world have undergone great changes since I first got started in the field in the mid 1990s. When I first started off as a reporter, I spent several hours learning how to use the flywheel to resize photos. And just when I had that figured out, along came Photoshop, which made all that knowledge useless.
