What’s in a PR Plan? 5 Key Elements of a Comprehensive PR Strategy

PR is usually seen as a sling shot approach to generating more awareness and ultimately more sales (or customers)…and the measurement tool used is usually based on how many media hits or feature story placements are secured. When that doesn’t happen, it’s back to the drawing board…but the truth is that PR is much more [...]

How to Get the Most Out of Press Releases

People get so caught up in the news release when the truth is that most are poorly written, are filled with so much self puffery and very little news, and/or sent to the wrong people who can’t do anything with the release in the first place. Small businesses especially fall for the belief that press [...]

20 Point Crisis Communications Checklist for When Disaster Strikes

The last few weeks of 2011 saw an astonishing number of public crisis arise at corporate giants, colleges and universities, and even well respected brands. When they needed a plan the most, many of these organizations failed and severely bruised their reputation, public humiliation, and sometimes even sales. The truth is that is not about [...]

Why Your Press Release Doesn’t Get Noticed

The last thing a reporter/journalist needs is another press release and a poorly written one at that. From my guess and judging by the number of press releases I see published across news wires on a daily basis, my guestimate is that a journalist receives anywhere from 50-200 press releases in their inbox on any [...]

Epic Failure for Sony PlayStation’s PR Crisis

Last week’s hacking of the Sony PlayStation online network and Sony’s subsequent reactions (or non-reaction) is a complete failure in Crisis PR Management 101. A few things Sony got absolutely wrong that makes me wonder who’s managing their Crisis PR department: Sony waited a week before releasing a public statement regarding the hacker attack. With [...]

Sign of the times? New York Times Charging to Read Online

It was inevitable, and we knew it was coming. Citizen journalism, downsizing, social media takeover, Kindle, less print more digital…it was the sign of the times. A sign that print media was changing and changing fast. With less eyes on print and more online, newspapers and magazines alike had to think fast. How do we [...]