Archive for the Tips Category
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Heart racing, palms sweating… no, you’re not having a heart attack. You’re pitching your first story as an intern or entry-level pro. Whew! it can be nerve wracking, for sure. Through a good process, you can feel prepared and confident in your delivery. Know “why.” What’s the point of the media relations effort? What’s the big picture? How does this release, this pitch fit into what the client/company wants to accomplish? It’s ok to ask. You’re not just “smiling and dialing,” asking why can help you craft a better pitch, but also helps you understand the business of public relations and the media relations function. Know the story. Understand not only the primary story, but all the potential angles. You may not be able to pitch the primary story to every editor (in fact, you probably can’t). Create, refine and refine again your media list. An awesomely targeted and strategically... Continue Reading
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January, schmanuary. The real “new” year for those of us who are students and teachers is September. So as we all gear up to head back to the classroom, it’s time to set some new (school) year resolutions. SWOT Yourself Take an objective view – well, as objective as possible – about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal. Strengths: What are you good at? What kinds of activities are a natural fit for you? Weaknesses: What areas are more difficult for you to master? I’m not going to say “what can you improve on?” because that’s not always an effective use of your time. But are there specific skills that you need to add to your repertoire? Particularly tactics or skills that you want to learn? I highly recommend a book called StrengthFinder 2.0. Take a little online quiz and get back your top 5 strengths.... Continue Reading
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We’re kicking off another year at the University of Oregon. I’m not teaching social media-focused classes this term, but I always encourage my students to tweet and use a hashtag for the course. This term you’ll likely see #J350 and #J453 tags from students. Because the classes aren’t social media oriented (although certainly infused), I don’t take time to “teach” Twitter. But I’m not under the illusion that it’s intuitive and doesn’t need to be demonstrated. It’s been awhile since a did a post with resources and tips for those new to the microblogging platform, so here you go! Some of my favorite resources on Twitter basics Twitter 101 for Business: Written by the folks at Twitter, this guide is a terrific how to on using Twitter professionally. For journalism students, you really do have to think about all social media in that way. You’re a professional communicator and all... Continue Reading
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This is a quick tip, but an important one. See tip 1 on feedreaders, 2 on creating a process and 3 on using twitter, too! If you’re in communications – get a smart phone. For real. It doesn’t have to be an iPhone. Just get a smart phone. A quick scan of Twitter or Facebook, a timely update to your Tumblr or blog, even being able to handle an urgent situation are all possible from the palm of your hand. Knowing I can “hear” if someone is talking to me (or a client) saves me a ton of time. It’s also not all about social media specifically, but for generally being productive and saving myself time. Applications I use to help: Twitter for iPhone Tweetdeck for iPhone (yes, I use 2, I monitor a bunch of accounts) Facebook with all the Pages for which I’m an admin bookmarked. Tumblr for... Continue Reading
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Bloglines, my first feedreader, announced this week that it would shut down October 1. If one can feel nostalgic about something like that, I certainly did. The spokesperson said that the “writing was on the wall,” that most people were getting their news from Twitter & Facebook. I’m not going to disagree that more people are indeed doing so, but I don’t think the feedreader is dead. At least not for people who work in communications. You can’t possibly get all your news from Twitter and Facebook. However, you also can’t subscribe to every blog on your topics of interest. Using the two tools in a complementary way will help you stay in the know and also save you time. Find the right people to follow It’s important to find the opinion leaders and influencers for you on Twitter. There’s a lot of noise, so be smart about who you... Continue Reading
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The cost of social media isn’t in the hard costs, it’s in the time costs. Creating a process for yourself will help save time and also make social media activities a part of your routine. If you missed Tip #1, check out my advice on setting up an RSS Feedreader here. I find it challenging to share my personal process because I’ve developed it over more than four years. So take what you think will work and modify the rest to work for you. The point is to have a process, not replicate my process. My process basically breaks down into three categories – making time to track, time to write and time to play. Time to Track You’re doing all this great monitoring with your feedreader, but you have to give yourself time to track – time to read and browse your feeds, your Twitter stream, your Facebook news feed.... Continue Reading
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I look back on the last 4-ish years of blogging and am amazed at how much I’ve learned. I’ve shared a lot of that here on this blog, but a lot has also been from tons of smart people in my industry. I often find myself sharing the same posts on certain topics over and over. In case you don’t want to go digging through my archives and those who I recommend following, I’ve put together this list of some of my favorite posts. Enjoy! Blogging Creating a Compelling Blog Post: A Checklist (me) Beautiful Blog Posts Have Great Bone Structure (me) Twitter Twitter for Business (Twitter) Split-Second Decisions: My Twitter Follow-Back Tips (me) Finding Friends and Building Your Network on Twitter (me) LinkedIn Using LinkedIn: A Primer (me) General Five Ways to Support Your Favorite Fan Page (Verve) How to Use Social Media Guide (TechnoTheory) An Introduction to Social Media... Continue Reading
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I’ve noticed a new tactic with spammers lately… they are awfully complimentary of your content, your blog and your writing style. Flattery is hard to resist, I know. So here are some tips for keeping the spam out of your comments section. If the comment seems to be over thesaurus-ized – common words turned into $5 words that aren’t quite used right – you’re probably looking at spam. If the comment could be related to any blog, any post, anytime? It could be spam. If the commenter asks about your fabulous layout and how you did it – yup, spam. (I fell for this one, hard!) If you’re not sure, check the possible inputs on the comment form for consistency and legitimacy. Individually, they might not raise any red flags, but combined can tip you off: Name: By itself this might not be a problem one way or another, unless... Continue Reading
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An email floated around a couple of weeks ago about free premium Prezi accounts for educators. Always game for the next shiny new tool, I decided to give it a shot. I had a presentation coming up for Local Food Connection 2010 that I was going to have to start from scratch on Keynote, so why not give Prezi a try. I watched the tutorials, viewed some other people’s Prezis and poked at one for a while. Honestly, the blank canvas was terrifying at first. I’m a very linear thinker, I guess. I need outlines and plans and things in order. I had a hard time visualizing all the parts of the presentation (not literally, of course). However, just last week, I had listened in when Professor Deb Morrison lectured to the Gateway to Media class on creative process and mind mapping.I decided a mind map might just do the... Continue Reading
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Recently, I was (very!) honored to be included on Valerie Maltoni’s list of 100 PR People Worth Following. Because Valerie is so widely read and clearly well-respected, my Twitter follower count jumped by about 350 – 400 people in the course of three days. I enjoy meeting new people through Twitter and I genuinely try to follow back people who look like they would add value to my experience there. It took several days for me to go through the profiles of each new follow (the only ones I skipped were brands I was not interested in, spambots, etc.). I didn’t necessarily learn anything “new,” but going through so many profiles, there were a few lessons that were really highlighted by this experience. So you want a follow back? Here are my tips: Include your location: I am much more likely to follow you back if you’re in my neck... Continue Reading
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