Category: General

Well after a few days away I’m back.  Nothing like a few days hard work to put things in perspective.

First up is a fantastic interview by Ben Silverman with Kelly Larabee the head PR at Skype.

I always find it fascinating to hear the opinions of other PR practitioners.  Kelly has some interesting thoughts.

“The basic rule with journalists is to assume that their not 100% focused on your single issue and to achieve the results you want and the beneficial story, you have to be able to provide perspective and deep context. In providing the back-story, you have to be honest, straightforward and willingly give insight to the opposition�s information and view � all without overly spinning as this time is the foundation of your credibility.”

Julie Daniel provides some useful tips on managing your inbox and boosting your productivity – something we can all do with. (Thanks to John Pocaro for the link).

“But, if your in-box makes your brain hurt, do yourself a favour� go through and delete the things you don�t need and file away the things you may want to refer back to later.”

On a related subject, Dan Gillmor re-iterates the importance of the e-mail subject line if you want to avoid the delete key. 

With Spam levels continuing to rise, the subject line could be the single most important element of successful e-mail marketing – focus on it!

Phil Gomes points to a story from the New York Daily News that reports Jayson Blair’s book has only sold around 1,400 copies.  Hurrah the purchasing public is getting sense!

Phil is also quoted in an article in eContent Magazine on how RSS can reduce information overload.

Gomes says, “RSS is incorruptibly opt-in. No one can force an RSS feed down my throat. I’ll simply unsubscribe.” The RSS model puts the subscriber in complete control of the subscription process. You only subscribe to the feeds you want, then you can unsubscribe by simply deleting the feed in your news aggregator.

Dan Gillmor, as most of you will know, is a very influential technology writer who hosts an incredibly popular weblog. He had over 3 million readers of his blog last year.

He also happens to be one of the most thoughful people on the impact new technology, such as weblogs and RSS, will have on journalism.

If you’re working in Public Relations his thoughts are hugely relevant.  While obviously the effects of new technology on journalism are important for media relations, these same technologies will also impact other areas of the PR profession from Internal Communications to Community Relations and beyond.

He is currently writing a new book called Make the News and in the best traditions of interactive journalism, he is requesting feedback on the book as he’s writing it.  He currently has four chapters online and is looking for readers to identify areas he’s missed or correct any factual errors.

Dan is eating his own dog food.

Take a few minutes to visit, read and participate. 

Thanks to the ever prolific Colin McKay over at Canuckflack for the link.

John Cass has an interesting post regarding the issue of negative publicity on the Internet.

In particular he looks at the fact that now you can quickly and easily (through web sites, weblogs and RSS) provide your own version of events.  Then, if or when a crisis or negative issue arises, people have a ready source of information reflecting your views.

I think one of the major reasons that the Internet and weblogs provide such a valuable PR avenue is that you can reach your audience directly and to paraphrase the Cluetrain, build conversations with them. If you can successfully cultivate that relationship with your audience, then you will be in a much stronger position should an issue or negative comments from a third party arise in the future.

Prevention is far better (and more profitable) than cure.

“I think that just as people can throw mud at you, you don’t have to wait for more. Companies that react quickly to bad publicity and crisis communications can mitigate such bad postings.”

Constantin Basturea has created an excellent aggregated RSS feed that publishes the latest postings from practically every PR blogger (except those without RSS feeds or those using Atom).

Unfortunately PR Opinions isn’t in there, like its author, its RSS feeds aren’t well formed 🙂

Check out the RSS feed it’s a useful summary – but don’t forget to come back here!

Blogrunner has published a list of the top 200 most popular reporters and bloggers on the Internet based on their publishing frequency and the number of in-bound links.

It makes for interesting reading.

After a lot of criticism that the index favors bloggers because of the frequency element, they’ve also released a second index which addresses the balance and favors the reporters.

Never has the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” been more applicable that it is to web-based statistics, which provide information very easily but not necessarily accurately.  However it’s an interesting list all the same.

 

PR Week has reported that Burson Marsteller won’t be taking legal action against the UK Observer newspaper for a story it published back in January on alleged shady lobbying practices.

Entrepreneur magazine looks at how to get a PR (read Publicity) campaign off the ground.

However the author’s claim that “Spending just a little bit of time each day on these seven steps will make you an expert in the PR arena” is perhaps a little disingenuous.

It’s not a bad introduction, but it’s hardly a Masters in PR…