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Be careful with those “green” products in your house. A new study indicates there’s a very strong chance they aren’t what they seem. The study found that more than 95 percent of roughly 5,000 consumer products in the U.S. and Canada that claim to be green are committing at least one sin of greenwashing. (Greenwashing is the act of misleading consumers about a company or products environmental claims.) The good news is these incidents of greenwashing are decreasing, according to th…

“We’ve all visited a social media channel for a company or organization we like, and all we get is the sound of crickets,” writes author and entrepreneur Aliza Sherman. “There’s nobody there except friends, fans, and followers, who are either posting into a vacuum or who have stopped paying attention but haven’t yet unsubscribed.” Yep. How do you get your channel off life support? Follow these six tips . — Matthew Royse

The American Heart Association’s Jacksonville, Fla., office is seeking an experienced public relations/media relations professional to develop and implement communication plans. Read more about this job.

A report from the Labor Department said that employment of PR specialists is expected to grow by more than 66,000 jobs (24 percent) from 2008 to 2018, helping make the job one of the 50 top careers of 2011, according to U.S. News and World Report . “This is one job that demands confidence for success, and an extroverted personality doesn’t hurt,” the magazine said. It noted that the median salary for PR specialists last year was $51,960 and that the stress level associated with the job is &#8…

Hackneyed, self-centered ‘excitement’ deflects focus from your real target—your customer.

Ever get a nod from a social media guru that drives your blog’s traffic through the roof? Feels good, doesn’t it? Problem is your target audience was bored by the post. So stop pandering. “The type of blog post that might get you a lot of ‘bloggerly love’ may not be (and probably isn’t) the kind of blog post that gets people to buy whatever it is you’re selling,” Hugh MacLeod wrote for Copyblogger . “Traffic and influence are great. It’s lovely …

Every year at this time pro tennis comes to Canada. However, this year Tennis Canada, the organization that oversees the game North of the Border, has adopted social media to try to better service its community of fans. They launched a Youtube Channel, a Flickr account, and Facebook page. The one problem: Twitter. While American players like Andy Roddick and Serena Williams love the service, Canadian players remain hesitant about embracing the 140-character world. — Jackson Wightman

Join online communications expert Shel Holtz for a webinar filled with examples and step-by-step instructions on how-to tag content, how-to distribute releases to social media outlets, and more.  Read more about this webinar.

The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, a nonprofit professional membership association, seeks a public relations associate to assist in the development and implementation of public relations programs that promote the society, its members, chapters, technical committees, events, and initiatives.  Read more about this job.

Canadian business loves being social. According to CTV : “A new report by Bank of Montreal based on a survey of 427 firms indicates [one-third] of them are using the relatively new technology to help their businesses. Three-quarters of those companies using social media said making connections in the virtual world was very helpful in the real world as well.” About a third of the firms surveyed who are active in social use it for listening, about a third use it to build brand equity, and about…

Which brands won the most valuable coverage in the third quarter? General Sentiment calculated dollar values of mentions in traditional and new media to determine this list. The top three are Apple, Google, and Microsoft.  Check out the rest.

The relationship between PR and marketing is like the one between three-dimensional chess and checkers, Mark Naples, the managing partner of a communications strategy firm, wrote on iMedia Connection. (PR is chess.) “Well-designed public relations is extremely difficult in any vertical,” he said. Naples offered 6 PR “facts” for marketers. (He uses the word “facts” loosely, since his No 1. “fact” is, “The press release is dead.”)

From ‘literally’ to ‘360-degree turns,’ pitfalls abound.

Wednesday was World AIDS Days. To raise money for families in Africa and India afflicted by the disease, singer Alicia Keyes recruited celebrities to  go silent on social networks until fans had donated $1 million to Keyes charity, Keep A Child Alive. Sure, it’s a nauseating way to carry this out, but it’s for an important cause. Unfortunately, it appears the promotion isn’t working. So far, fans have donated a little more than $160,000 . Time for a new strategy, celebs?  Rela…

About time someone invented this. It’s called ToneCheck, and it checks your e-mails’ tone like a spell-check. “ToneCheck is supposedly capable of identifying the emotional definition of words and phrases in order to help end users improve the clarity of their communication,” TechCrunch reported. Lymbix, a Canadian company, created the tool, which is now available for Microsoft Outlook.