Public Relations
Great advice from Ted Demopoulos. Draw attention to your most popular posts. They have lasting value.
Over time, I’ve found that Ted offers practical advice that I find myself acting upon. But don’t take my word for it. Subscribe to his blog and read along with me.
Several months back I attended a blogger dinner in Chicago with Robert Scoble. During the discussion, Robert mentioned that he had just switched to a new blog aggregator, Google Reader. He talked about how it had helped him to manage and read the large volume of blogs to which he subscribed. He also mentioned a great feature that enables users to share items from blogs they’ve read so that others can also find these posts.
I’ve set up My Link Blog to share items through Google Reader that I find particularly interesting and think others might also find interesting. Please feel free to subscribe to it. I hope that you find useful information in the posts that I share.
The New Year is a fitting time to take the wraps off two new members of our social media community, Capital PR and The Talking Shop.
Capital PR has been started by the PR consultants in our Ottawa office. The Talking Shop is the personal blog of John Sobol of our 76design shop. I hope you’ll subscribe to both blogs and participate in their conversations.
On the other side of the ledger, we’ve also seen one of Our Community move into Our Alumni.
John Wiseman has decided to return to school in Halifax to complete his degree. John’s a smart guy and we benefited daily from his determination to explore the full potential of social media. We wanted to keep John with us. But it’s hard to argue with the long term benefit of completing university. So, we’ve moved John into our Alumnae. And the door’s always open. Maybe he’ll decide to rejoin us after he’s completed his degree.
So, here’s to 2007. Beginning with change. Sure to bring more.
OK. I couldn’t resist. I took the “Which superhero am I?” test.
And the results?
I am Superman
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You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
It’s the end of the year and our company is renewing our relationships with clients for the coming year. As we do this, I realize that one of the most worrisome things for me to hear from an account manager is, “Things are really great. The client has signed up for all the same programs in the coming year as they had last year.”
At first blush, this may sound like success, like a strong and healthy client relationship that has been extended for another year. But, when I hear this, the question I ask myself is, “Why are we dong the same thing as we did last year? Can’t we improve on last year’s program? Did we learn from last year and increase our knowledge, skills and value?”
And that’s the problem. If we retain clients to repeat programs, that’s a warning that we may not be advancing our own skills and knowledge or bringing the most creative, effective approach to our client’s challenges. And if that’s the case, it’s just a matter of time until the client starts to feel that our relationship is growing stale and begins to contemplate looking for fresh advice.
How do you keep relationships fresh and build on your past successes to do new and innovative things? Do you have practices, disciplines or exercises that you use to help you do this?
People who have been in meetings with me will tell you that the first thing I do after I sit down at the table is to pull out my BlackBerry or open my notebook computer and start to take notes.
I use the MS Outlook notes function to take notes in meetings, telephone calls and to jot down random thoughts whenever they hit me. This forces me to review what I heard and thought when I “clean” up the notes by deleting or saving them.
Very often, I find myself stopping on a point that may have been quickly glossed over in a meeting or conversation. Sometime, the participants in a meeting do not give the points the time or attention they deserve as different individuals with greater rank, ego or just need push the discussion to suit their own purposes. Other times, a clear connection with something else I’ve been thinking about or working on will jump out at me during my review. Or I’ll simply find that quiet contemplation of the notes allows me to find meaning and significance that I had previously missed.
Management guru David Maister also adopts a similar approach.
How do you ensure that you remember and think about what is important in each day? Do you have other exercises and habits that work for you?
Do you ever want to bookmark specific sections of Web pages for future reference? Google Notebook is a great way to save the exact sections that interest you along with links to where they originally appeared. You also can access them from any computer and share them with friends.
Tod Maffin discovered Google Notebook a while ago. And he’s posted a great how to video for anyone interested in seeing how Google video can be used for online research.
Thanks for sharing with the community, Tod. This is a great addition to your Secret Google Tips for Researchers series.
Wishing you a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday!
So, there I was, delivering a presentation on “Sustaining a Successful Blog: If You Build, Will they Come?” The crowd of approximately 30 attendees had each paid $2,000 to attend a two day conference on new media.
As I began my presentation, I asked a few questions to gauge the knowledge and engagement level of the audience. And of these thirty people who had paid a lot of money to hear my presentation on sustaining a successful blog – how many actually had a blog? None. Zero. Nada.
Note to self: Don’t overestimate the rate of adoption of social media. There’s a lot of curiosity. But it’s still early days.
What do you think? Is social media breaking into the mainstream? What is holding back broader adoption?
The success of the relationship between a client and a public relations firm can be predetermined by the expectations they establish at the outset. Having realistic and achievable expectations is an essential building block of strong relationships.
In this week’s Inside PR podcast, Terry Fallis and David Jones suggest five questions that a prospective client should ask a PR firm in order to determine if their fit is right. These five questions are:
Terry’s and David’s excellent discussion of this topic can be found in Inside PR #37. Worthwhile listening for both public relations consultants and prospective clients of PR firms.