Your PR Architect

I don't know how a startup PR company can claim to have 330,000 media contacts. Email addresses, sure. But I've been doing PR for more than 30 years, and I'd be stretched to say I actually know 10,000 media contacts. You need to earn those relationships, not merely collect a list of email addresses and shepherd them via software. That's what Cision does. By André Karwath aka Aka (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5  (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons But, when an ambitious company called  PR Zebra tweeted me and asked for "support" for their concierge-style PR business, I checked out their website, not just their thunderclap.it crowd-sourcing link. They promise you local, regional, and national coverage. And they've posted a few news releases, often for small business owners and entrepreneurs. They offer a three-tiered pricing strategy that's relatively affordable. Like a lawn service. Nothing wrong with this ap...

Update on my Paper.li experiment: A few weeks ago, I set up an online newspaper called PR Nomad. This exercise was enabled by Paper.li, which allows users to select content sources that auto-generate a daily compilation of articles on a topic of interest. And then, I pretty much left it to seek its audience. I wanted to see how auto-generated content refreshed, and whether it remained compelling. Whether I received nasty-grams or, worse, cease-and-desist orders. That didn't happen. However... It's now a few weeks later, and I noticed few headlines repeating as lead stories: puffery about Electronic Post Office Corporation investigating the possibility of becoming a Public Company. CIO white papers. Stuff you wouldn't find interesting, because I didn't find it interesting. So, I've performed a little housekeeping. PR Nomad will continue as a daily opus. However, I've blacklisted CIO Whitepapers and repeated pseudo-news about Electronic Post Office Cor...

Paraphrasing Ferris Bueller: this business changes pretty fast. And staying relevant is a big challenge, whether you're driving communications for a not-for-profit or a corporate organization. In that spirit, I've launched a daily e-newspaper, PR Nomad, on the paper.li platform. This comes out of a class I teach at St. Bonaventure University, so it's something of an experiment. The idea is to let paper.li aggregate content relevant to public relations, and see if it resonates. PR Nomad is free. I invite you to check it out here, and if you find it worthwhile, please consider subscribing, and sharing your opinions. Thanks.

By lululemon athletica [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons There's a bit of Twitter real estate that can help your organization or client create brand presence. And too often, it's just thrown away.  It's the "bio." That's what Twitter calls the 160-character summary about yourself or your company. One hundred sixty characters isn't much, but I'm often astounded how many organizations squander this real estate in unrelenting hyperbole.  Creativity's fine here. But jargon isn't helpful. Here's one example: BLANK BLANK, one of the nation's leading drug store chains, proactively empowers you in your pursuit of personal wellness. (Website) What does this mean? Should I expect the drugstore's employees to drop by and be my personal trainer? They sell vitamins, bandages, and personal beauty products. My pursuit of "personal wellness," such as it is, comes from diet, e...

Public relations pros once loved weekly newspapers, for several reasons: They often had more space for feature stories and were open to running accompanying photos. Eager young journalists wrote long stories about our clients. Many were delivered free or at modest cost. Unlike a daily paper, they lived in our home for a week. The daily, once read, was recycled in anticipation of the next day's edition. Most of this has changed. Weekly papers haven't fared much better than dailies as ad dollars have left the newspaper industry in favor of internet content. Dailies responded by trimming editorial staff and beefing up their online media presence. Weeklies rely more upon local advertisers and have a more modest business model, but their websites aren't a big destination for local news. By noebse via  Wikimedia Commonscontent.  We have two weeklies in our town. One has been locally written and published for years. Its design is a little dated, but I credit the own...