Reporter Tips on Email Pitches that Don't Work

Last week my colleague Mike Sullivan shared some great influencer relations tips for working with veteran reporters from Mike Gormley of VentureWire. This week my colleague Christine Simeone sent around another great post from Business Insider in which the reporter candidly admits she missed some news because the three email pitches she received from high tech PR people did not capture her attention. There are some great lessons to be learned and I thank Christine and Alyson Shontell (@shontelaylay) for...

Facebook: You Say Tuh-mey-toh, I Say Tuh-mah-toh

Yesterday, fellow LPPer, Ted Weismann, shared his thoughts on Facebook's covert email address change, and more importantly told us how to fix it. I don't mean to pile on but I can't help it because I'm so amused that Facebook is trying to turn this into a semantic discussion. I just read Nick Bilton's post on the New York Times Bits blog, "On Facebook, the semantics of visibility vs privacy." It borders on hilarious. A Facebook spokesperson told Bilton the...

Facebook Doing Its Best to Lose Trust of Its Users

Facebook didn't pick a good day to foist a change on all 901 million of its loyal users without asking. On an otherwise slow news day yesterday (only Microsoft overpaying for Yammer to compete), the big social media dust-up was how Facebook changed the email address that appears in everyone's Timeline profile to an @Facebook.com email address. The social media echo chamber was fired up for a few hours, and rightfully so. The background here is that two years ago,...

Social Media Targeting Comes to LinkedIn

The feedback from the majority of my clients that want to justify investment in social media today are very different than they were two years ago. They go something like this: The executive team does not understand the benefit derived from our participation in Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare. They see the effort and output but cannot make the connection back to traditional PR measurement metrics or any lead generation activity. They all know and understand LinkedIn. They feel there is some...

"What Were They Thinking?" Communications Awards Early Summer Edition

Toxic. Who knew that word would go viral? I guess Buster Olney of ESPN did when he wisely included it in a blog post about the problems in the Red Sox clubhouse that may be causing the former World Series champs to be slumping this year. Olney's comments have become the flavor of the week, with a series of articles, blog posts and radio pundit comments discussing and debating his "toxic" assertion, including the Red Sox themselves. In my humble...

Media Veteran to Budding Sources: Be an Expert, Be Accessible and Be Responsive

As PR practitioners, it's our responsibility to build and maintain relationships with members of the media. They're our bread and butter, and without these relationships it's far more challenging to seed the media landscape with our clients' stories. However, after we've introduced our clients to the media, it benefits these clients to also build and maintain those relationships as well. After all, the media look to PR reps as sherpas who pitch the initial story idea and make the introduction...

Has the Water Cooler Become Virtual Now?

In one of my first jobs, in a newspaper, we had a very busy watercooler in a small break area. The issues of the day would be discussed there. The gossip would be exchanged, stealthily. The sports teams' performances would be dissected. The hot TV show or movie of the moment would be analyzed. Typically a senior person walking by would disperse the crowd, which would reassemble later to continue the chatter. Break rooms and water coolers still exist, but...

Talking Storage with Jerome Wendt, DCIG: Part One

I had a chance to sit down with Jerome Wendt, founder and principal at DCIG, an analyst firm that is heavily focused on data center technologies, with deep roots in the storage industry. Jerome and I have known each other for years, and he was gracious enough to talk through areas of recent focus and provide a little more detail on the work he and others at his firm have been doing with the Buyer’s Guides. The following is the...

Corrections by Twitter, Menino Style

All of us in the communications business have seen the correction release or the "what he meant to say" statement by a press aide when an executive mis-speaks. But there's a new way to resolve a "doh!" moment, courtesy of Boston's beloved Mayor Menino. Just tweet your apology after you flub the names of the Boston Celtics you are trying to commend publicly. The fascinating thing is that Menino's flub and his Tweeted apology has piled up a ton of...

How Bloomberg Broke Through the Valley Echo Chamber at D

There were a number of interesting takeaways from the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference this week in lovely Rancho Palos Verdes, California. But the part that intrigued me the most was NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's addressing the crowd via video interview (due to an unexpected issue that prevented his travel). In his very candid and engaging interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, he deftly provided a real person view on the application of technology in government and...