Media used to be a solid thing: newspapers, TV, radio.
Now, with the Internet, and Web 2.0, it’s all beginning to blur. I’ve seen it. You’vve seen it. And now, someone has quantified it.
Ketchum and the University of Southern California Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center recently released thier survey results which says that media isn’t quite as solid as it used to be. And because of it, target markets are fragmenting.
Shannon Nelson (the other great PR Shannon, who happens to be from Pierce Mattie) tells us that education and creativity is key in helping PR firms and their clients reach these …read more

Happy new year everyone.
The other day on my free PR teleclass, someone asked me what my crystal ball had to reveal for the PR and publicity field in 2009. I thought you’d like to read my predictions:

It’s an exciting time in public relations, as the landscape will surely be evolving and changing.
And the one thing that’s going to impact publicists and public relations professionals is how more consumers (people in our target markets) will be interacting and shaping what we do. With instant responses via social media, PR folks can monitor and see reactions quickly – and if they are …read more

I appreciate your readership. And since it’s the season of giving, I’d like to give you a couple of public relations related gifts as well:

On December 30, I’ll be hosting a FREE teleseminar called “Three Steps for Free Publicity” at two different times, so you can pick the one most convenient to you. So check your schedule and see if you are available either at:

December 30  at Noon EDT, 9 AM PDT
December 30 at 8 PM EDT, 5 PM PDT

In ‘Three Steps for Free Publicity’, sponsored exclusively by ReadyTalk, you’ll learn the strategies I use every day for myself …read more

It’s the time of year when calendars start to crowd out the books and magazines in bookstores. But there’s a special kind of calendar that all good public relations professionals use – the editorial calendar.

Except for the year and the names of the months, these calendars bear little resemblance to the glossy hang-up calendars in the stores. No swimsuit-clad models, lush scenery, puppies, kittens or cartoons of Dilbert. Editorial calendars are usually bare-bones lists of upcoming issue topics and major features—or at least the cover stories or special sections. Not much to look at—unless you’re a PR pro trying to …read more

Chris Brogan recently told the story of a company who after a direct mail piece was delivered, their targeted market began discussing online.
It’s a great story about the power of social media and it’s effect on communications.
But reading this has made me realize, like all communication tools, there must be policies in place to assure that the ’slippery slope’ would never happen in the first place. This is especially true since a recent survey from PRWeek show that only 29 percent of CEOs believe that social media is important and useful in marketing.
PR policies? Really? Yes, really.
Just as you would …read more

A communications plan, like most business plans, has to anticipate that things might not go as planned.
If you can’t see the possible abrupt left turns for whatever project you’re planning, your plans are incomplete.
Why spend a lot of time and energy speculating on possibilities, when they most likely won’t happen?
Because the alternative sucks: realizing too late that you should have had a back-up plan.
Technorati Tags: business,communications,planning,strategy,public relations,contingencies

I’m going to teach a course on website content design, management and standards development. Any suggestions for a textbook, or suggested reading selections, online resources?
The focus will be on online content planning and management, with some discussion of standards, writing styles, and related info.
Any suggestions gratefully accepted. Just leave a comment.
Technorati Tags: business,communications,content management,websites,design,standards,skills,learning,education,course,online communication,teaching,white papers,sources,books

I dragged the family out to see the lunar eclipse Wednesday night. One kid was home sick all day, the other didn’t have pants on. Spouse is just getting over a nasty cold.
Still, there we were, standing at the end of our yard staring at an ochre orb thousands of miles away, marvelling at the transformation it undergoes when the lights go out.
Yes, it’s one of the colder nights of the year. No, I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I grabbed the uber Nikon Action BJ binoculars that zoom to 22X magnification. Spent about 5 minutes trying to get …read more

You can’t go to a communicators’ conference without bumping into a session on Crisis Communications Management. But how many people offer to help you prepare for a runaway success?
When  you do your scenario planning, include the possibility that you might wildly exceed all expectations.
 
Can your website withstand 30,000 extra visits in a morning? Can you get quick reprints of your collateral materials if demand is high? Will your frontline managers freak out if the product promotion drives crowds to your locations looking for the loss leader that you’re using to get new people in the door?
If you don’t know the …read more

For lawyers, the first rule is to never ask a question in court that you don’t know the answer to.
For politicians, the first rule is to never leave yourself only one option.
Rudolph Guiliani Giuliani and his campaign team forgot that rule, and it looks like it will cost him any chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee.
So much of politics is about negotiation, adapting to emerging situations and finding a scenario that, if it doesn’t look like a victory, at least doesn’t look like a defeat, either.
Instead of Barack Obama being the “roll the dice” candidate this year, it turned …read more