Did you see the big social media news that broke Friday afternoon? Probably best to read up about how location-sharing site Blippy, which allows users to broadcast to their friends any and all of their credit card purchases, somehow managed to allow four users’ credit card numbers to slip through a public Google search.
This whole Blippy incident is an unbelievably epic fail, and frankly, not a good sign for the emerging, yet at times, controversial, location-sharing industry.
Here’s the explanation Blippy gave on its blog (from WSJ.com):
In a post on its blog, Blippy said the problem was “a lot less bad than it looks.” “While we take this very seriously and it is a headache for those involved (to whom we apologize and are contacting), it’s important to remember that you’re never responsible if someone uses your credit card without your permission,” the company wrote. Continue reading →
I recently went to an event with a friend who doesn’t work in PR. How odd (sarcasm) I ran into a number of my fellow PR practitioner friends. What dominated the next hour of our conversation in this group? Starts with a ‘P’ and ends in an ‘R.’ Take a wild guess.
My friend, to very little surprise, was exhausted by “oh my gosh, and then she tweeted this!” and “oh, that editor doesn’t like me very much because my client cancelled their event last-minute.” Admit it; we can be a tiresome crew.
So I thought: Why don’t we make a PRos Anonymous? For those who talk too much about their jobs as public relations professionals and are just generally obsessed. Continue reading →
In case you missed it, Ning recently announced it will be phasing out its free service to users–one of the core tenets of the platform since it launched years ago. There have a been a few interesting posts about the decision, including a great rant by Shel Holtz.
But, let’s set the actual decision aside for a moment. I’d like to take a closer look at how Ning communicated this key decision. In many ways, they could have improved their approach. But, instead of being critical, I thought we’d look at three PR lessons we can all learn from this experience: Continue reading →
We’ve all heard of the “good karma” e-mail. “Hi. This is So-And-So and I see you’ve recently been writing on topics X, Y and Z. I have clients in a number of related areas who might be able to serve as a source for you. Please let me know if I can ever be of any help…”
I love good karma e-mails. No pitching. No berating. Just an “I’m here to help.”
My co-workers and I like to take this to a new level. We are huge believers in helping journalists even when we hand them an expert who is not our client. We hold our relationships with journalists in very high regard. Continue reading →
With all of the buzz around the new Twitter “Promoted Tweets” (really, ‘sponsored tweets’), and how that will impact our viewing and tweeting and other fun times on the increasingly addictive platform, one facet of the new ad-based service that got a bit lost in the all of the buzz was the role this service may play in PR professionals’ lives, particularly the ability to utilize promoted tweets during reputation and crisis communications situations for clients in which it is imperative that an official viewpoint, messaging or news stays at the top of a relevant search-based (for now, until Twitter debuts ads within personal Twitter streams later this year, as it plans to do . . .) Twitter streams. Continue reading →
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 →
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 →
Ok, so I’ll admit it . . . I wrote this post a while back called “Give it Away . . . For Free!” sharing how free advice will ultimately pay off and bring good karma. And yes, I still stand by everything I wrote. But perhaps I’m seeing business bottom line with more of an ice cold eye than I once did.
On an episode of Kell on Earth, Kelly Cutrone struggles with people constantly asking for free advice, actually taking a cell phone call from the uncle of her daughter’s school friend. He inquired about his own business (whatever it was) and asked what he should be doing. But, Cutrone owns her own business (People’s Revolution) and she has to worry about paying her employees and getting food on the table for her seven year old daughter (oh, and paying for her country house in France…technicality). Constantly dolling out free advice sets her back in her day taking away valuable time from her paying clients. Continue reading →
As I spend more and more time gaining experience in the PR industry, and as I continue to befriend other flacks and get to know them professionally, I’ve managed to catch a “glimpse” so-to-speak into a wide variety of PR agencies. Large, small, public, private, corporate, and consumer, it’s astounding how different every firm is.
Unfortunately, as much as I get to know about all of the things that my acquaintances love about their companies, I also tend to see the negative side as I cross into the “confidante” territory. One unsettling trend that I’ve started to see more often is agencies who don’t value their employees and treat them as replaceable hit machines who are expected to treat their job as their entire lives. This is by no means the standard of the industry, but it’s something I see more than should ever be the case. Continue reading →
As a recent Financial Times article noted, companies are looking to spend more money in terms of marketing over the next calendar year. While we would love to say that a large piece of the pie would be allocated towards branding and public relations, we are realists and know that the money—for the most part—will go towards ever more advertising efforts.
And that is a damn shame. While advertising may be the flashy cog that looks good in media forms, what does it all mean? Your company is much more than a singing fish, talking baby or another gimmick. Sure you can name what companies are associated with the previously mentioned gimmicks. The question is, do you know what these brands really stand for? Continue reading →
Did you see the big social media news that broke Friday afternoon? Probably best to read up about how location-sharing site Blippy, which allows users to broadcast to their friends any and all of their credit card purchases, somehow managed to allow four users’ credit card numbers to slip through a public Google search.
