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Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Moving for your career? A PR pro has tips for the adjustment

Relocating for your career usually sucks in a few ways. You show up somewhere, know no one outside the office, and have to rebuild your immediate network again. Rather than doing what we’d do — disappear into a bottle of vodka for months on end — you can take steps to overcome the pain of relocation. PR pro Melissa Gullickson, of Market Wave, just relocated from Las Vegas to Dallas, and she’s got some great ideas that can help you. Among them: “Order some media kits and lear…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

5 tips for owning a 10-minute (or less) interview

You scored a radio or television interview for your client or boss. Nice job. Thing is it’s about 10 minutes, which means you need to make sure your message is effectively communicated. How do you do that? PR pro Christina Khoury, a former book publicist, has five tips to help make that interview a success.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

4 perspectives to consider when measuring social media’s ROI

As marketers, we always look at the bottom line or the financial return of social media. However, Forrester analyst Augie Ray contends that you need to recognize the efforts beyond just dollars and cents. He suggests using a social-media-marketing balanced scorecard with metrics from four key perspectives. This will help you better judge your social media hits and misses. — Matthew Royse

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

How to avoid social media’s sophomore slump

Have you noticed the slump? You launch a Twitter feed and Facebook page, maybe you persuade your CEO to blog. It’s exciting. You attract some attention immediately — and then it goes quiet. The followers/fans stop coming; the comments slow; the enthusiasm fades. What happened? “Having now worked with over 400 companies … here’s our theory: Brands hit social stall points because they are using social media primarily to reinforce the existing ways they create value,&#8221…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

4 tips for revamping your online newsroom

Know where most journalists go when they visit your website? The online newsroom. Too bad lots of them are lousy. “I am amazed at how many companies merely post press releases with no multi-media content attached,” Priya Ramesh, head the social media practice at CRT/tanaka, wrote. “Seriously, wake up!” She explained four ways to enrich that newsroom .

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

BP reps refuse to answer questions at town hall with Alabama’s fishing industry

It seems town halls anger people, or (perhaps more likely) people are already angry when they arrive at town hall meetings and the host does a lousy job of answering their questions. At a town hall meeting for fishermen and women in Alabama to air their concerns about the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that could  decimate their industry, reps from BP — the company that leased the oil rig that exploded and sprang the leak — angered the attendees even more because they refused to respond …

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

8 social plug-ins for your company’s Facebook page

What are social plug-ins? They’re the Facebook icons that let people share with their friends what they like, have commented on, or shared. The like buttons and recommendations on Facebook are two examples of these social plug-ins. This blog post from Open Forum explains eight of these plug-ins and why they’re good for business.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

How is Carnival handling ‘vacation from hell’ reports?

Thousands of passengers poured off the Carnival ship Splendor on Thursday after three days stranded at sea without power. What was the reaction? “This is a vacation from hell,” a passenger told London’s Daily Mail . How’s the crisis PR been for Carnival? Not bad, actually. For instance, a CNN  story said passengers gave “mixed reviews” of the experience. It quoted one person as saying it was “fun.” Of course, another man told CNN the experience was &#8…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

2 outcomes companies can expect from social media

On The Daily Brainstorm blog, social media expert Chris Garrett posed this question: “Why would you use social media in your business?” Perhaps that question is bouncing around your office. Garrett provided a reasonable explanation, including two things you can expect if you effectively engage in social media. — Claire Celsi

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Small businesses that blog get 55 percent more Web site visitors

Rick Burnes at HubSpot crunched some data about small businesses that do and don’t have blogs. “The data was crystal clear,” he wrote. “Companies that blog have far better marketing results.” The companies that blogged had 55 percent more visitors, 97 percent more inbound links and 434 percent more indexed pages. Burnes explained the importance of these numbers.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

WTF is Tumblr — and why’s it important to PR pros?

Tumblr is EXPLODING. It has more than 8 million members, and it adds 30,000 new members daily. Don’t be the last to harness this incredibly powerful social media tool — a tool that PR professionals can use to form deeper connections with their audiences. You can learn all about Tumblr — and how PR pros can harness it — at the PR Daily webinar, How Tumbr will extend your company’s media coverage, expand its external audiences, and publish more content easier and faster . Find…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Edelman says of apology from Wrigley Field beer tosser: Good job

Big story in Chicago last week: a fan at Wrigley Field threw a full beer cup at Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino as he caught a fly ball. The beer tosser, 21-year-old Johnny Macchione, slipped out of the ballpark, which sparked a ridiculous manhunt. He turned himself in and apologized on camera. Gary Dunlap, senior vice president and head of the crisis and issues management group at Edelman, thinks Macchione did a pretty good job on camera. “He seemed sincere, which made him very credible…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

4 ways to be fascinating on social media

Want to become a subject matter expert for yourself or your company? Of course you do, says Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur and founder of Alltop.com. How do you make this happen? By sharing fascinating stuff with your followers on social media. Kawasaki offered four tips for finding this fascinating content. (Reading PR Daily wasn’t among the four tips, but it should be.)  

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

The pope’s PR guy: ‘You’re killing the brand, Benny’

Having worked in public relations, writer Matthew Archibald says he knows some of the rules. “You know who breaks all of them?” He asked. “Pope Benedict XVI. I’ve got to imagine that Pope Benedict’s PR man would be pretty frustrated with him about now if he had one.” Archibald imagined what a conversation between the pope and his PR man would sound like. Here’s an excerpt: “Another major point is your branding. I think you’re confusing the peeps &#823…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

21 social media-inspired Halloween costumes

Still looking for a costume for Halloween? Do you love social media? Maybe you want to dress up as one of your favorite social media sites. Here are  21 examples of people who did just that. Make sure to check out the marketer who drew her Halloween inspiration from Twitter.