Archive for January, 2007
1
Microsoft landed in the Wikipedia “dog house” for offering to pay a blogger to change Wikipedia entries about the company. Wikipedia has banned public relations agencies, campaign workers or others perceived as having a conflict of interest from editing Wikipedia entries. So, what is a huge multinational to do? Microsoft approached blogger Rick Jeliffe to review and edit entries that Microsoft sees as inaccurate. Microsoft: Lessons in How to Look StupidBattleground Wikipedia What would’ve been a better approach?... Permalink
0
Cover letters are hard.Templates typically suck and don’t fit a communications or public relations position, particularly an entry level one. Jay at Dumb Little Man has posted 100+ templates for cover letters. I’m sure you can find even one that works… This is a great cover letter for asking for an informational interview. One for advertising, but can apply to public relations, too. It’s that lead paragraph that gets you on the right foot. I’ll let you browse through the rest. Happy hunting.... Permalink
0
For my Adv. PR Writing & PR Campaigns students: Social Media Disease: For those of you sick of me saying “social media,” “blogs,” or, specifically, “blogosphere” – this t-shirt is for you. But, yeah, get used to it. Stikkit: Shareable post-it notes. Sign up for a free “nickname” and you can share your projects with teammates by inviting them to join. These are the coolest. We use them in my office. Project Management in a nutshell: From a graphic designer. GREAT tips… You’ll learn that this is one of the more difficult part of client work if you end up in an agency. Some helpful advice even for the PR Campaigns teams. Read it out loud: This blog from a Sr. VP at Edelman is a tremendous resource. This particular posts goes over one of the great tips for self-editing – reading your work outloud. Google Co-Op Search: From Constantin... Continue Reading
0
This is a guest post from Leona Laurie, Communication and Society Master’s student at the School of Journalism at the University of Oregon, part of my PR Campaigns class and all around cool chick. I love MySpace. I get teased for this a lot by my peers, but it has been the source of a lot of good things in my life, so I will defend it and my addiction to it. As a marketing dork, I get kind of drooly with lust when I think of all the ways in which I can access demographic data and members of a young target audience without paying for it. As a self-promoter, I love the ease with which I can alert hundreds of people at a time to my latest project or product. (Have you been listening to my radio show? Have you been reading my blog?) In the year and... Continue Reading
5
Last night, Todd Defren of Shift Communications joined my Advanced Public Relations Writing at the University of Oregon course via telephone to talk about the social media press release specifically and all things social media more generally. My students have been assigned a client for which they are creating a “virtual press kit” for the client’s online newsroom. One of the pieces they include must be a social media press release. So they had questions ranging from “what does this look like when implemented?” to “how do you control the chaos of social media?” Todd had five points – I hope I got these right – around why SHIFT initially came up with the template and its philosophy about PR’s role in social media. 1. The SMPR helps to democratize access. Company information should not be the exclusive domain of traditional media. Social media and the SMPR provide more access... Continue Reading
1
Sometimes for students, it’s difficult to understand how quickly a crisis can destroy your livelihood, your peace of mind, or even your life, and how important it is to have good counsel. Jonathan Bernstein, a well-respected crisis manager (and soon-to-be-guest in my Advanced PR Writing Class), represents a family with a story we can all imagine happening to us. This crisis, about child pornography images that 16-year-old Matt Bandy says he did not put on his computer. However, he’s being charged with a felony. You can see the full story on Matt’s Web site: www.justice4matt.com. And think about the question the header asks – how could you go to prison for life for images someone else put on your computer? And think about how you would fight for your life, your reputation and your future. In crisis management, we must deal with two “courts” – the court of law and... Continue Reading
Comments