I'm back

• • No Tags

… and where have I been, you ask?

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in my office. The world was in order. Business was good. All was fine. When….

One of our consultants walked into my office, closed the door and said, “I have bad news. I’ve accepted a job with a competitor.”

These aren’t words that an employer ever wants to hear. But they are words that we all will hear sooner or later. And when we do, we have to be ready to put in the extra effort to meet the expectations of clients and honour commitments made to them.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. And, as I approach the Easter long weekend, I’m feeling a real sense of accomplishment that we met all of our commitments and kept our clients smiling and satisfied.

And by the way, if you are an experienced public relations consultant working in the Ottawa region, I know of a great public relations firm that is hiring. If you are interested in applying to join our team, email your résumé to me at joseph.thornley[at]gmail.com.

Inside PR Podcast launched

• • No Tags

Terry Fallis and David Jones have launched a new podcast, Inside PR, a weekly podcast on the state and future of public relations. Terry and David are President and Vice-President respectively of Thornley Fallis Communications. (I work there too!)

In their inaugural podcast, Terry and Dave say that want to “take a look under the hood” of public relations. They plan to cover “everything from agency life to the tarnished and dubious reputation of our industry.” The guys say they will talk about “what it takes to succeed in our world and also the latest techniques and best practices.”

In their first episode, topics covered in depth include the newly formed Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms, the upcoming Web2.0 mesh conference in Toronto and a new philosophy for media training.

Inside PR should prove to be an interesting perspective on PR from two of Canada’s most thoughtful public relations practitioners. Congratulations guys!

Cabinet Ministers Who Blog?

• • No Tags

Neville Hobson tells us that David Miliband, Britain’s Minister of Communities and Local Government, has started to blog. His blog is tied into his Ministry’s website. So, he is clearly posting as the Minister, not as a Member of Parliament.

In Canada, where we changed federal governments early in the year, we have several Members of Parliament who are bloggers. However, the one blogger MP who became a Minister in the new government, shut down his blog within days of entering Cabinet. His final post said, “I think this is going to have be my last blog entry for some time. As the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration I’m coming to realize that blogging just might have to take a back seat to Ministering.”

It’s refreshing and positive that Miliband is willing to open his policies and actions as a Minister to debate in the blogosphere. If only the Canadian government would follow this lead. (Highly unlikely given the government’s moves to reduce the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s access to Cabinet meetings and Cabinet Ministers.)

Does anyone know of other Minister-level bloggers in any Canadian provincial governments or in any Parliamentary democracies elsewhere (Hello Australia)?

PubSub Problems

• • No Tags

Media Orchard has pointed out that the PubSub stats are wildly inaccurate.

I noticed a few weeks ago that ProPR’s own stats on PubSub were wonky. In fact, PubSub stopped registering any entries or outlinks on February 24.

I wrote to PubSub about this and last week received the following response:

Hi Joseph:

We have pinpointed the problem.

Thank you for alerting us to this issue with LinkRanks. You have indeed stumbled on a problem with our rolling historical data, which are maintained in separate tables to help off-load our database. Somehow an error has snuck into those tables. We plan to just rebuild those convenience tables from our daily information and the error(s) you are seeing with historical counters should go away. This will take about a week to fix

We are also currently experiencing high loads as a result of explosive growth. Thus, some inlinks may not show up as expected. We are working hard to solve the problem and expect to have it resolved as quickly as possible.

Regards,

Steven

Constantin Basturea’s PR List is a great way to help build a sense of community. But to do this, it has to be based on reliable traffic stats.

Let’s hope that PubSub is able to resolve this problem – and quickly.

Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

• • No Tags

I’ve come across a couple post that I found very useful in understanding how to optimize my WordPress blog.

DYI Search Engine Optimization
Soup to nuts advice from Lorelle on WordPress covering the basics of optimizing code, keywords and extending through promotion and analysis of site traffic and competitors.

Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips
Nifty coding tips for better permalinks, page titles and post titles from seventeen year old(!) Fintan Darragh

Are there other sources of useful advice on SEO for WordPress that you would recommend?

FeedDemon 2.0 is released

• • No Tags

FeedDemon 2.0 has been released and can be downloaded as a free trial off the FeedDemon site.

I’ve been using FeedDemon for almost a year and I love it. It allows me to organize my feeds into groups, post directly to del.icio.us, email and save entries. Version 2.0 also synchronizes feeds with Newsgator Online, allowing me to switch freely between my office and home computer, knowing that my feedreader will reflect all of my recent feedreading and subscription activity, regardless of which computer I last used. Views can be easily be formatted to reflect personal tastes through and intuitive interface.

Congratulations to Nick Bradbury for a great job on this upgrade.

mesh me in Toronto, May 15 and 16

• • No Tags

I’ve just registered to attend mesh.

mesh is Canada’s Web 2.0 conference, being held in Toronto on May 15 & 16. You will hear from thought leaders, connect with peers, and get a better understanding of the impact of new developments online. mesh brings together people who are passionate about the potential of the Web to change how we live, work and play. Meet the next generation of Web ideas, leaders and companies at mesh.

Some great speakers: Om Malik, Michael Geist, Tara Hunt, Paul Kedrosky, Steve Rubel, Jason Fried, Andrew Coyne, Chris Messina, Amber MacArthur, Stewe Boyd and David Crow.

Should be a great conversation. So, if you’re in or near or able to get to Toronto on May 15 and 16, let’s mesh!

Thanks to David Jones for the heads up.