Twitter English, MySpace English, Business English

A colleague sent me a link to an article in the Washington Post pondering in a rather amusing way about e-mail decorum. The author does so by deconstructing and attempting to "decode" an e-mail thread that includes recipients irrelevant to the conversation, and is protracted by the default "reply to all" action most people take when participating in such threads. Much has been written about e-mail etiquette in the past, so I won't elaborate on the article too much. One...

Social network funny

When you have 5 minutes to take in some comic relief, this is must see 'net video! (Hat tip to Tom Foremski via Twitter.)

Why Stop at Twitter? Try Thunkit

As an advance guard for our clients in the social media world, I am doing my best to try the various communication vehicles so we can advise them appropriately. So I'm not only in Facebook, but I also ventured into Twitter last week. Watching the stream of thoughts, quips, to do lists being checked off, and links being shared on the web by bloggers, journalists and some of my colleagues, it occurred to me that the next step is shared...

Taking Responsibility

My son’s teacher sent me an email and was upset that my son wasn’t prepared in class with the magazine he needed for class. My son claimed she never gave him the magazine (only to find it in his locker later), and then proceeded to advise her to “keep extra copies in class in the future.” We had to explain to our son that he needs to take responsibility for his actions and apologize for not being prepared in class....

Is it truth or is it Polito-speak?

I'm begininng to reach election fatigue -- probably not unlike many Americans about now. Trying to truly understand the results of the Pennsylvania primary win for Hillary Clinton and whether it is meaningful at all or creates doubts about Barack Obama's ability to win in the general election, as today's WSJ piece seems to suggest, is quite tough to figure out. I listen to news reports. I read blogs. I chat with people. Talk about missed messages. I have to...

Things we can afford to forget -- PR Edition

Steve Baker at BusinessWeek sent out a tweet yesterday asking what things, such as phone numbers, we can now afford to forget. He posted his responses on his blog. My first thought was television station numbers and how to use a card catalog. Other things mentioned were paying bills by mail, street directions and spelling. This got me thinking about how things have changed in PR and what we can afford to forget. Here's some of mine: how to write...

Dogbert's Guide to Press Releases Next?

I had to chuckle this morning when I read the Techdirt post about Scott Adams decision to allow his audience to get in the act of finishing some of his Dilbert comic strips on the Dilbert website. Eventually, this will extend to filling in the text of the whole cartoon. While there are no official plans to publish any of the results, Adams seems curious to see what pops out. Techdirt refers to it as Adam's venture into crowd-sourcing. It...

What Warrants Business Press Coverage?

It's an age-old question... How do I get into the [Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, USA Today...] "fill-in-the-blank" business publication? Having just returned from a series of meetings with our clients, I had a number of discussions about this very topic. And given it's such an important one, I thought it would be useful to offer some of the insights we regularly share through a short business press FAQ. Q. Who merits a meeting with the...

All you ever do is pitch, pitch, pitch

"I have introduced myself. You have introduced yourself. This is a very good conversation." No truer words were uttered than those from the lips of Katsumoto as he was speaking to Lt. Algren in the movie The Last Samurai. Maybe Katsumoto was really a PR person and he didn't realize it. So, when I ran across two blog posts, one from Byte and Switch's Mary Jander and another from c|net's Charles Cooper in the past 24 hours, they served as...

It's All In How You Say It

We encounter a lot of companies that work very hard to convey their value propositions to target audiences in an impactful way. And it's our role to ensure that these messages are delivered effectively and that they generate press coverage. As a former journalist, I pride myself in being more cynical than your regular PR professional about content-free corporate messages. My mind tends to shut down when I hear too much fluff in one sitting. And companies seeking press coverage...