Uncategorized

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Obama administration taps White House Blog to attack a car blog

After attacking Fox News for its coverage of the president, The White House Blog has now set its sights on a popular car blog, Edmunds.com , for its recent analysis of the Cash for Clunkers program, which suggested the program had no meaningful impact on car sales. Here’s the headline from a White House blog post on Thursday: “Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers.” Edmunds.com has responded, reported the Silicon Alley Insider blog . In …

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

County board votes down tweeting ban

Cook County, which includes Chicago, drew a line in the sand Tuesday. Board members struck down a proposed measure that would forbid commissioners from tweeting from the floor of a board meeting. “The overwhelming consensus from commissioners against the measure — which would have also banned sending messages during meetings from any communication device — was that it could violate the First Amendment right of freedom of speech,” reports the Chicago Sun-Times . The proposal was de…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Apple suffers ‘worst security breach,’ exposing 114,000 iPad owners

How will Apple and AT&T’s PR departments handle this one? Valleywag blog, a property of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo , the blog that bought the lost/stolen iPhone prototype, discovered the security breach that has reportedly exposed iPad owners e-mail addresses. The list of exposed e-mail addresses is exclusive, reports Valleywag. It includes many big names in media and even the White House. This story, which broke late Wednesday, will probably have legs as pundits, bloggers,…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Are you breaking these rules of grammar and language?

Sure, speed and brevity are important for certain social media applications, but that shouldn’t excuse lousy grammar. A PR pro has had enough of the grammar and language abuses and has highlighted several errors. “These are also those that will give away that your error is not a mistake, but rather an indication of some deeper problem.”

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

3 crucial ways to serve today’s wired buyers

Today’s consumers are “eager to use mobile devices to inform in-store decisions,” says Target’s Kris Roberts. Shoppers are turning to Foursquare and mobile apps, but the transformation is not as easy for retailers. Roberts cautions, “They continue to view online shoppers and customers at retail stores as two separate entities.” Here are a few tips to reach those “wired buyers.” — Susan Young 

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

11 worst tech ads of all time — do you agree?

Have you seen the  commercial for Logitech Revue Google TV unit? It’s a little strange, particularly the giant eyeball. “The spot is part of a long tradition of creepy, strange, inappropriate, and just generally bad tech commercials,” wrote Brian Heater, a senior editor at PCMag.com , on the  Gearlog blog. Heater polled PCMag staffers about the worst tech ads. There are some truly, truly awful spots on here,” he said. The Bill Gates-Seinfeld ad wasn’t that bad…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Mayo Clinic announces new social media network for healthcare communicators

If you work in PR, marketing, or internal communications, sit up and take notice. The Social Media Health Network is “a group dedicated to using social media to promote health, improve health care, and fight disease,” says Lee Aase , the head of social media at Mayo and a huge pioneer in the online healthcare revolution. Members of the network will learn best practices through conferences and webinars, and by sharing training materials and resources on a new member-only website. Mayo  an…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

10 Facebook laws every marketer should know

Trying to get started on Facebook? Already started but unsure how to proceed? Then you should check out these 10 laws from Nick O’Neill, author of the All Facebook blog. “Some laws will describe immediate actions you can take while others are broader,” he wrote.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Ahead of congressional hearings, Goldman Sachs launches PR blitz

A Senate subcommittee today will question Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman employee named in the Security and Exchange Commission’s fraud charges against the firm, about the company’s role in the financial crisis. As part of a PR campaign to defend its image, Goldman has hired Mark Fabiani, a “big player in the PR world with strong ties to top Democrats,” reported The Los Angeles Times . Goldman’s PR blitz has sought to poke holes in the SEC&…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

How to use Twitter for a product launch

TwitTip  is a website that aggregates all the top Twitter tools and provides examples of how to use them. The site explains that when launching a product, there are a number of free Twitter apps you can use to promote your launch, increase buzz, and measure the results. — Claire Celsi

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

PR gaffe? Goldman Sachs receives H1N1 vaccine

This week, BusinessWeek reported that about 13 of New York’s largest employers — including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup — received doses of the H1N1 vaccine that the companies had ordered. The article states that these companies received small doses for “high risk employees,” and the city’s health office said these companies did not receive preferential treatment. “It’s not that they received it over someone else, it’s that they placed an order … This i…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Yes, there is an app for that — but now what?

About 35 percent of U.S. adults have software applications on their phones, reports a new study by the Pew Research Center. As smart phones become increasingly popular, how are you thinking about these as a communication/marketing component of your branding? And once you have the right apps, what’s next? Read the full results of this report, The Rise of Apps Culture . — Allan Schoenberg

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Top 25 language and grammar mistakes

How many of these do you commit? “While it’s true that corporate communicators need to aim at colloquial language — we don’t want to be so colloquial that we assault our readers’ eyes with errors,” writes Daphne Gray-Grant, a former newspaper editor. Here one’s mistake: “Writing that something has ‘peaked your interest.’” Not correct. Know what is? Read the full story on Ragan.com .