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 »
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 »
In the wonderful world of public relations we write a lot. From press releases, to pitches, to tweets and Facebook posts, to blogs – we write it all. Most of this writing is tailored to styles that aren’t our own. AP Style. Client’s preference. Socially acceptable tweet format. The point is, PR people are super creative, but you don’t always see that in our public writing…. Read more »
Last night, a few of us had the pleasure of attending Pub Club of New England’s Boston’s Media Best event at the Museum of Science. This event featured an elite group of panelists: Jon Chesto – Boston Business Journal Walter Frick – BostInno Paul McMorrow – Boston Globe and CommonWealth Magazine Frank Quaratiello – Boston Herald Cara Rubinsky – The Associated Press The reporters discussed the… Read more »
After pitching a particular topic for X weeks, months or even years, PR professionals can start to feel as though they’ve reached an unavoidable road block. You’ve hit every outlet under the subject’s umbrella, pitched every relevant contact with every reasonable angle you can come up with – and now finding a new, creative direction feels like squeezing water from a rock. It happens to the best of… Read more »
One of my first PR jobs was a firm that held a large company outing every year. Along with the cookout and music came a fairly competitive set of athletic events. Employees engaged in tennis, horseshoes, lacrosse, darts – just about anything that you could keep score at. The centerpiece, however, was the softball game. Custom T-shirts were made for every edition of this sports classic. … Read more »
Peter Shankman makes all the right moves. The guy is brilliant and, if you’re in PR, you can’t help but know that he has a cat named Karma and, when he’s not jumping from an insane altitude, he’s training for an Ironman. Oh, and he’s the founder and CEO of a PR/journalism game-changing company called Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
One of the things I love about working at a PR agency is no client is ever the same. There are always new challenges, new pitches and new strategies to be deployed. Though our clients often have products to be launched and reviews to be secured, recently I’ve had the pleasure of working on an account in which our team must rely on the expertise of… Read more »
Ever heard the saying “ignorance is bliss”? Of course you have. We all have. Some people even run a little too far with the idea. But that’s another rant for another day. I’ve always thought of PR professionals as the wizards behind the curtains. We exist exclusively behind the scenes, preferring to go unmentioned, monitoring from afar, feeding key messages to spokespeople and strategically delivering inside… Read more »
This time of year is brutal. We’ve hit Reality Check Season here at Matter. In addition to the regular, end-of-year PR stresses of chasing reporters and stories, staying on top of the latest holiday trends, and planning for the New Year ahead, we fine PR pros subject ourselves to something called metrics.
As newsrooms at print newspapers continue to shrink, we’re seeing an increased use of syndicated content in place of locally-written coverage. In addition, there are some topics that simply no longer have a reporter devoted to them, or have one reporter as opposed to two or three. For example, the Providence Journal no longer has a reporter assigned to reviewing consumer electronics. If, as a PR… Read more »
“Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!” That headline from Tom Foremski’s story in Silicon Valley Watcher in February of 2006 was my first introduction to social media press releases (SMPRs). It’s been three years since I came across that piece and I’m still not sure traditional news releases are completely dead.
