PRos in Training

A fresh round of picks from this week in the ‘sphere. I choose posts each week for my students bloggers in my Advance PR Writing class. Each is required to write a response post to one of these in addition to one post of their choosing.

As usual some smart people are talking about interesting things this week.

From Communication Overtones:
Red Cross Uses Social Media Tools… – The Red Cross has rolled out some great tools to help keep people in the know and raise money for victims of the fires in Southern California. I hope at some point we’ll hear about the tools’ effectiveness.
Social Media 101: Five Tools You Can Follow From Your Desk – a terrific guest post to bring PR professionals up to speed on social media tools.

From PR Squared:
Owning It – A SHIFTer goofed up… publicly and was outed on Facebook. (Yes, that’s right, Facebook. ‘Cause journalists use Facebook. And you can pitch them there. See previous discussion about how Facebook isn’t just spring break party pictures anymore) Todd, your staff is lucky to have such a great mentor and whole-hearted supporter. We all goof. It’s part of learning and being human.

From Publicity Hound:
Ellen DeGeneres Could’ve Averted a PR Crisis – Advice for Moms and Mutts on how they should’ve handled this mess. What do you think?

From InfOpinions?:
Crowdsourcing II: DOs and DON’Ts of Online Reputation Management – Robert French gives his advice (3 DOs and 3 DON’Ts to be exact) about managing your reputation online. Relevant for students and professionals. How many of these are you doing?

From Caribbean Public Relations:
PR Model or PR Professional: Do You Have the Look? - Oh dear God. There’s a phrase “beauty queen PR” and people use it and know what it means. Oh dear God.

From Gaping Void:
More on Social Objects – this is how we share ourselves, and, according to Hugh, it’s the future of marketing. What do you think?

From the news this week:
Pullem’ Up? Sometimes Dallas Makes it Way Too Easy (blog from Houston Press) – The City of Dallas, Texas has erected several billboards aimed at getting young men to pull up their pants.