This event on Wednesday, Mar. 3, will feature proven strategies straight from the front lines of PR — no pie-in-the-sky advice, no theory, we’re talking real advice for real PR pros. Speakers at this event come from all around the industry — from in-house communicators to agency PR pros to journalists explaining how they want to be pitched. This day of training will give you hundreds of ideas, tips and strategies for your company, your agency and your career. PRSA is co-hosting the event, which will take place at Con Edison headquarters in New York. Learn more.
So did bloggers get busy Tuesday — the day the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines on blogger sponsorships went into effect — disclosing the payments and freebies they’ve received from companies? Not really. “Most of what's been disclosed is small-time, slapdash or downright stress inducing,” Ryan Tate wrote for Gawker Media’s Valleywag blog. It appears many blogs disclosed their connections to companies before Tuesday, presumably when the FTC first announced the guidelines two months ago. “The others,” Tate wrote, “either aren't aware of the regulations or believe the federal government will be no more diligent regulating bloggers than it was regulating financial institutions. A reasonable bet.” Tate provided a roundup of some of Tuesday's disclosures. Related Advertising Age “The marketers and agencies that spoke with Advertising Age reporter Billy Bush “said the new rules would not deter them from any social-media or celebrity-endorsement efforts.”
Just in time for the holidays, a list that will either bolster your argument about why your company needs a blog or make you feel worse that — despite evidence to the contrary — your executives will always think blogging is a fool’s errand.
On Twitter, the three most retweeted words are “you,” “Twitter,” and “please,” according to research by marketer Dan Zarrella. “This means, whenever possible, you should talk directly to your readers,” Zarrella wrote on Copyblogger. Meanwhile, the least retweetable words are “game,” “going” and “haha.” The lesson: Don’t laugh at your own jokes — let someone else do that.
The gang at PRBreakfastClub kicked off its new feature, “Pitch Me,” where job-seeking PR pros record themselves pitching … themselves, with a video showing Paige Holden, a senior account executive with Bliss PR, interviewing Holly Grande, a recent college grad and current intern at Edelman’s D.C. office. This interaction is similar, if not identical, to a real entry-level interview Holden would conduct. It’s a great learning experience for PR pros, experienced or novice.
Toymaker Mattel is seeking a public relations specialist to join its team of PR professionals. The company, based in El Segundo, Calif., is recruiting three public relations specialists, who will be responsible for maintaining regular contact with trade, entertainment and consumer journalists covering the toy industry and ancillary industries, in order to pitch or discover story ideas for coverage. Read more about this job.
It’s the top question on the minds of many Twitter users: How can I expand my influence? On his blog, Knowledge Enthusiast, Matt Royse, a marketing communications consultant, offered 10 suggestions for growing one’s influence on Twitter.
Zappos, an online shoe retailer, started running Nike product videos on its Web site — and these aren’t your father’s Web videos. The videos are clickable, which means viewers can roll their mouse over a shoe, highlight it and then click the shoe. This action will take viewers to a product landing page, where they can add the item to a shopping cart. Brian Kalma, a director of Web strategy at Zappos, told Clickz that sales conversion is not the aim of the videos. “Right now, we are just learning how our customers are going to interact with them ... We are not only trying to sell product, but we are attempting to convey culture as well,” he wrote. Related PR 2.0 PR pro and author Brian Solis explores the proliferation of online video.
After skydiving for the first time, Alex Aizenberg, a PR pro with Weber Shandwick, decided the (insane) act of leaping from an airplane is similar to social media. He offered five reasons why and promised five more to follow.
How about this hullabaloo over Tiger Woods? Every PR pro worth his or her weight in press releases has commented on how the pro golfer — and highest paid athlete in 2008 — should respond to the media frenzy surrounding his one-car accident and alleged marital infidelity. Meanwhile, two of the companies that employ him as a pitchman, Gillette and PepsiCo, have indicated they will not dump him. Woods has earned about $770 million in endorsement cash between 1996 and 2007, according to MediaPost. Related Corporate Hallucinations Here’s a humorous take on the Tiger Woods scandal from former Ragan staffer Steve Crescenzo.
Rupert Murdoch owns several newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, and he has threatened to establish a pay model for all his newspaper sites, effectively locking down the news. Arianna Huffington owns The Huffington Post Web site, which, by aggregating news, is effectively stealing content from newspapers — at least that’s the way many newspaper editors see it. Murdoch and Huffington met in a cage match Tuesday — actually, they both spoke at a conference on the future of journalism, hosted by the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s Huffington’s take on it, and WSJ’s report on the conference.
AOL runs more than 80 Web sites, with a full-time editorial staff of about 500 and roughly 1,500 freelance writers. Gawker obtained an e-mail that explains what AOL editors expect from writers, that is, what kind of story pitches it wants to receive. Interesting reading — especially if you want to pitch AOL Web sites.
You know the tweet. Someone posts a message that's so self-congratulatory or maybe an obnoxious quote and you've had enough. Sorry, pal, you're unfollowed. What kind of tweets make you unfollow someone?
Graduation season is over, which means college grads are either in the workforce or looking for work (or maybe none of the above). What advice do you have for budding communicators in today's harsh hiring landscape?
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