Tag: best practices

Animate Your Infographics to Maximize Your Reach

In today’s media landscape, there’s no such thing as “too much content.”  The amount of platforms, outlets, and opportunities for getting your message seen and heard is enormous, and it’s crucial that brands take notice and stay ahead of the game.   As both the Boy Scouts of America and Scar from the Lion King advise, “Be Prepared.”  It’s best to always be ready with content (especially visual… Read more »

"What do you do?" Defining the undefinable career in Public Relations

I have come to terms with the fact that my parents will never be able to confidently explain to their friends just what it is that I do. The conversations often go something along the lines of: “She works in PR.” “Oh, what’s that?” “It’s something like advertising.” It’s okay Mom and Dad, I still love you. I’ve been having this conversation with clients a lot… Read more »

4 Tips for Getting Work Done – Anywhere

Here at Matter, our team of 80 plus employees works out of four main offices: the Newburyport headquarters, Boston, Providence and Portland, Oregon. In addition to those four offices, we also have other small offices that team members work out of, and we all share the need to occasionally work from home, especially since most of us are located in New England and road conditions can… Read more »

Apathy Interrupted: How Smart Marketing Wins

Once upon a time, a movie camera was invented. What would follow were silent movies, movies in black and white, movies in color, movies with sound, special effects and eventually even 3D movies. There would be cult classics, box office biggies, busts, rom coms and everything in-between, and there would be public relations efforts for each one. These days there seems to be a new multi-million… Read more »

Krafting A Crisis Communications Response

How would you like to be Stacey James these days? For the uninitiated, James is the Vice President of Media Relations for the New England Patriots, a position he’s held for twenty years.  He’s been here through the really bad times, through three Super Bowls wins and two heartbreaking losses, through the very public and very messy Bill Parcells-Robert Kraft divorce, through Spygate and more.  He’d… Read more »

Matter Communications Green Lights Broadcast Video Production

Last night, Matter Communications held an open house to celebrate our tremendous growth and show off our new broadcast production studio. With an energetic turnout, business colleagues walked our expanded halls, decorated with client successes and accolades, and chatted up Matter execs on why this agency is so special. My take? It’s a special agency because Matter is listening. We haven’t expanded into graphic design, video… Read more »

Pitch Please!

The art of the pitch – it can be delicate and precise like threading a needle, to something much more direct and forceful, like demolishing a wall with a sledge hammer. Regardless of your style, if you are going to get into PR, you should enjoy breaking down the walls and building relationships with the media. As PR Snoop Dogg (Snoop Lion does not exist to… Read more »

PR People: We Know Enough to be Dangerous

              Public Relations was not my first career choice, or so I thought. I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer, in fact I took the LSAT not once but twice, but the universe it seems had different plans. Now I find myself in a career where I represent my client’s best interest in the court of public opinion – sound familiar?  I often find… Read more »

Act Like a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to listen to Bob Woodward, of Woodward and Bernstein Watergate scandal fame, speak on his career and his thoughts on politics. Woodward shared stories about his journey to become such a recognized investigative journalist, highlighting his methods and techniques for getting information from sources and getting a solid story. But what could a public relations professional possibly learn from… Read more »

NYC dinner parties, joggling and PR

An article by New York Times writer Nick Bilton hit home, (well, PR home) recently.  Bilton’s Oct. 14 piece, “Disruptions: Seeking Privacy in a Networked Age” referenced a dinner party he hosted at which many of his guests (including Om Malik) were posting to social media sites, all while noshing on pulled pork tacos and clinking glasses filled with red wine. And what ended up happening?… Read more »

5 Twitter tips for PR pros

Though resistant at first, over the past few years I and the rest of the folks at Matter have come to embrace Twitter as an incredibly useful, powerful — and sometimes even fun — vehicle for connecting and communicating. Some of us would even go so far as to say we love Twitter now. Along the way, I’ve learned to keep the following tips in mind,… Read more »

One man's "lazy" is another man's "smart"

Gawker is one of my favorite blogs to read – it’s snarky, it’s fun, it’s informative and usually it’s right on the money. The other day though, I was a little surprised to read an entry on “The Laziest Journalists on Twitter.” In the post, Ryan Tate called out BusinessWeek’s Douglas MacMillan, WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro, Wired’s Priya Ganapati and Fortune’s Jessi Hempel, calling them lazy for… Read more »