Last night, I (along with some colleagues) had the privilege of speaking about social media with a group of PR students at the University of Tennessee. In one part of our talk, we shared a list of helpful tools we use to manage social media, monitor brands, spread information, discover opportunities and track results.

(A guest post by Matt Cheuvront) :: “Personal Branding” has become an idea I wish I could delete from my memory. I get it, really I do – I understand that, especially in this day and age of technological innovation and public communication, we need to consider the things we do and say, and realize that our information is not private online. But we have gotten so caught up in this concept of Personal Branding that it’s starting to take control of our…

I read an article on Gawker today that said New York Times reporter Raymond Hernandez, who covers members of Congress from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, is dating Shrita Sterlin, the communications director for Rep. Edolphus Towns, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn…and I got to thinking: Is it ethical for a reporter to date a PR pro if the reporter covers the same topic(s) the flack is pitching?

Earlier this week, Forbes wrote an article calling out Ted Murphy of Izea Entertainment for paying bloggers to write good reviews of his clients’ products and services. The first line of the article even refers to Ted as a “scam artist”. So what are these “scams” that Ted pulls? He engages bloggers to write reviews for clients like Kmart, Hewlett-Packard, SeaWorld, Sears and Dirt Devil, and he pays them up to [...]

In today’s Web 2.0 world, everyone has a voice and word-of-mouth is more powerful than ever. Of course, you can’t please everyone all the time, but it’s important for companies to recognize that they at least need to care about their customers, otherwise something like this will happen…About a year ago when musician Dave Carroll flew United Airlines [...]

Last week, I blogged about the three reasons why companies shouldn’t cut out their PR budgets, regardless of a poor economy. After writing the post, I got to thinking about PR as a field…and how maybe, sometimes we PR pros just need to be a little better at what we do to prove that we’re worth a part of that budget.
In a world where traditional PR (media relations) is dead, we PR pros are learning that we either need to step up – or fall down. Now I can’t say …

After doing a review a few weeks ago on HARO, I came across this very insightful blog post from Ragan’s PR Daily. And here is the article copy, in its entirety (with permission from Ragan’s of course): A list of dos and don’ts for PR pros contacting journalists on Peter Shankman’s free service [...]

A couple days ago, an article began circulating about how a survey found profitability at public relations firms dropped nearly 21% in 2008. – Which of course is no surprise considering the recession we’ve all been living in for the past year and a half. However, what troubles me is the idea that when companies find the need to cut costs, PR is one of the first things to go. Why?
In a down economy, you need PR -  more than ever! While I understand sometimes PR doesn’t translate directly to …

This week, I wanted to shed some light on a new tool for PR pros which released in private beta this week: BuzzStream for PR and Social Media! I’ve had some time to test out BuzzStream, and I’ve found it very useful for managing relationships with media contacts and bloggers and keeping track of online buzz [...]

This week, I wanted to feature an invaluable PR tool that I’ve been using for quite a bit now – Peter Shankman’s HARO (aka “Help A Reporter Out”). It’s been around for a little while, but I’m sure there are still a lot of PR people out there who have yet to discover it. Plus, with the recent revel of a HARO rip-off, I wanted to bring some light to the subject to ensure [...]