Month: July 2009

Bloggers are people, too

Earlier this month, Matt posted on the proposed FTC guidelines regarding marketing and endorsements as they relate to bloggers and online media. Last week’s BlogHer conference in Chicago served as a platform to continue to look into blogging ethics and PR professionalism.

The Power of PR

From all the emails, phone conversations and pitches a publicist makes in a day, it’s very rewarding when a client calls to say that they received direct results from a media placement – whether it appeared online, in print, or on television. But it’s not often a client from the non-profit sector calls to say they received a $25,000 donation from a business they have never solicited or even heard… Read more »

Job requirement: creativity

I’ve read that Frank Lloyd Wright soaked himself in creativity, sourced from the beauty surrounding him. There is no doubt he found inspiration in the landscape as well as from his choice in furniture, artwork, and some say the company he kept. PR practitioners are tasked with being creative everyday. Our proposals need to stand out to new business prospects, our plans must strike the right… Read more »

Managing personal vs. professional social media interactions

There is an ongoing debate in our offices about whether it is best for us, as professionals, to maintain one, unified social media presence, or to draw a distinct line between our personal and professional interactions, particularly when it comes to Facebook profiles. It makes for interesting discussion because, as communicators, we strive for transparency in our work. We build relationships with our colleagues, our clients… Read more »

Pitching TV the EZ Way 2

Now that you know about LNS, below are best practices and tips for working with an LNS outfit. If your client is holding or sponsoring an event (ribbon cutting, award ceremony, sporting event and the like… not a detailed or in-depth story) that you would like have covered, LNS should be your first call. There are a couple of keys in pitching an LNS outfit.

Give It Value

Back in April, C.G. Lynch wrote about finding a balance between personal and the professional content when using Twitter. While discussing the difference between personal and private, he quotes Kirsten Dixson, “As an example, you don’t want to write that you’re ‘going to the gym,’ but it might be nice to say, ‘I just set a goal to run a marathon.’” The quote has stayed with… Read more »

Pitching TV the EZ Way

Many of my old contacts in the television world are now looking for jobs, have been absorbed into government media relations positions or are changing titles and helping television transition into this new video age. It is the third group that has been a wealth of valuable information on new ways to get television coverage for clients and events. Many stations are trying to keep it… Read more »

Lights! Camera! PR!

Last month Cisco released a study forecasting that video will overtake 90 percent of consumer IP traffic and 64 percent of mobile IP traffic by 2013. While the company’s $590 million acquisition of Flip Video in March likely colored their findings, the increasing popularity of video cannot be denied. As a PR guy well-educated in the declining readership of print media, this report got me thinking… Read more »

Push vs. pull – helping our clients engage using social media

As the discussion of the use of social media in our field continues, a recent article on Ulitzer caught my attention with more commentary on exactly how social media strategies fit into the work we do on behalf of our clients. The article describes how social media further blurs the lines between traditional PR and marketing with a “push vs. pull” analogy.

NYT on the gray areas between blog reviews and paid endorsements…

There’s been quite a bit of buzz lately about the FTC’s proposed guidelines regarding marketing and endorsements related to bloggers and online media in general. We’ve been closely tracking it since many of our clients pursue coverage on blogs, especially since consumers increasingly rely on third parties and their peers to give no-nonsense product reviews before they make a purchase.

I'm Pretty Sure I'm Gonna Miss Newspapers

As a certified “old school kinda guy” (my tastes in music, movies, books and on occasion, clothing all hearken back to a better time) it should be no surprise that I am saddened over what’s being described as a slow, painful and inevitable death for the newspaper industry.

How can journalists use Twitter?

I was on the phone recently with a senior reporter from one of my client’s top-tier trade publications, and we were talking about Twitter. It turns out that his publication has a Twitter feed, but the reporter doesn’t have his own account or contribute to the pub’s feed. He claimed that he didn’t know what he’d use it for, but was still a bit intrigued by… Read more »

"I Get More Emails in an Hour Than I Get Voicemails in a Year"

A few months ago, an editor I was pitching suddenly stopped replying to my emails after a lengthy back-and-forth exchange. We’d been talking about scheduling an interview with one of Matter’s clients for more than a month, and just as it looked like the interview would happen, she vanished.