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  • Pucker up for some linky love!


    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.

  • Reseach Complement: Second Life Travel Journal

    Nick Cummings, one of my honors college advisees, is writing this thesis on issues around Second Life and social media. To accompany his research, he’s keeping a “travel journal” of his avatar (Whymog Troglodite) on his blog: Mass Communication in Second Life.

    Check it out!

  • Facebook Users May Surprise You

    Because most of my readers here are students, I’m talking to you.

    College students do not even represent a majority of Facebook users, as you may think. Because, here’s the thing, the world doesn’t revolve around college students. Facebook has purposes beyond sharing party pictures.

    I know you may find that shocking, but, believe me, it’s true. For those who may think that’s silly, here’s some data from Forrester Research (a leading tech research firm that looks at online and social media trends).


    By the end of 2007 75% of users will be outside college.


    56% of users are female and 12% have children under the age of 16. And only 12% are full time students.

    How does this change the way you think about Facebook and how you might use this tool to communicate with your target audiences? And how might it change the way Facebook views itself?

    For the reset of the slides click here.

  • The Fine Art of Casual Writing

    Creating compelling copy for your target audience is tough! If you’ve ever had to do it, you’ll relate to this video.

  • Green With Envy: Social Media Conference at UGA Convenes Today


    The University of Georgia Connect conference convenes today. You can follow the sessions online here.

    The line-up at the conference is stellar. You can view it here. There are plenty of ways to follow along: Flickr, Twitter and the blog.

    Congrats to Karen Russell and Kaye Sweetser for putting together what looks like a terrific conference!

  • Maxwell PR: Talent, Comradery and Creativity Rolled into One


    As part of my fall teaching schedule, I’m spending a lot more time in Portland than I have in a long time. I teach every Thursday from 1 pm – 9 pm and then spend Fridays in client meetings. It’s a rough schedule, but one of the pleasures is being able to also spend time getting to know some of the Portland agency folks.

    Yesterday, I had a chance to spend lunch with the talented team at Maxwell PR. A boutique agency with a team of ten (and growing), Maxwell PR represents some terrific clients including: Castor & Pollux, Kettle Foods, Travel Oregon and Portland Walking Tours among many others.

    The night before my lunch visit, Maxwell PR took home several awards from the Portland Spotlight Awards, including the award for best Web site and two merit awards for media relations and media kit. And, best of all, my superstar student (and longtime friend) Laura (Bishow) Herbert, pictured, took home the New Professional Award of Excellence. Yay!

    Thank you for hosting me, Maxwell PR. You’re doing amazing work and have a terrific team.

  • Linky Love


    Well, class is back in session and my Advanced Writing students are back to blogging. Here’s a chunk of posts from my feeds that I found interesting this week:

    Death of PR: I’ve been a little lax on keeping up with my feeds the last couple of weeks. Apparently there’s been a little firestorm around this topic. I found Kyle’s post insightful without the back story. [More from Murphy’s Law with links to other posts on topic.]

    Closing Day in Atlanta: About lame city (and product) slogans and what makes a good one.

    Forward Podcast: Personal Branding for Students and Young Professionals. If you don’t have Forward Blog on your feed reader yet, add it. Now.

    Chysler’s Social Media Helps Drive Comms in Wake of Strike: From PR Week – an article about the labor-focused site that Chrysler used to reach employees, journalists and the general public.

    Ways to Grow Your Business? Piss off the Moms? Not!: Post from Susan Getgood about the ban on Facebook of pictures of breastfeeding moms.

    Off Target: Target’s social media marketing agency making some missteps – three strikes!

    NOSO Project: In deference to those low-tech’ers who are hating this assignment…

    How to Tell Your Story to Gen Y: a little older than a week, but very interesting.

  • Where’s PR?

    branding elements
    Built by Kolbrener, branding experts

    This is gorgeous. Love it! Where’s PR? C’mon… it already has two letters, no abbreviation necessary.

    Where would you put it?

  • Southwest Airlines Eerily Similar to Christian School Principal

    At least twice in the last month, Southwest Airlines has kicked women off of flights because they were wearing “inappropriate” attire. Huh?

    Oh, surely that means they were wearing a bra like a shirt (a la Sue Ellen Mischke in the Seinfeld episode “The Caddy”).

    Nope. Apparently it means dressing like this:

    And this:

    Kyla Ebbert is the first young woman who was pulled off a plane, lectured and then sent back to her seat humiliated and disgusted. The Southwest Fashion Police struck again the following week with Setera Qassim.

    I went to private Christian schools through fourth grade and was a teen with a very strict father and this reminds me of the rigid dress codes of those days. What’s next? We must kneel before we board the plane to ensure our skirt hems touch the ground.

    Southwest is occasionally in the news for things like this. The only response regarding the Kyla Ebbert situation initially was a terse statement that they take act swiftly on customer concerns. In Kyla’s case, apparently her money was not as valuable as that of the person who complained.

    However, to Southwest’s benefit, there was an update on their blog where they allowed comments to run the gamut on both sides of the issue without removing, moderating or closing. And the airline is apologizing to Kyla Ebbert “in typical Southwest fashion” (which means, in addition to a personal apology to Ms. Ebbert, having a “mini-skirt sale” on fares.).

    What do you think?

  • National Tie Your Story to a Trend or Event Day

    September is Hispanic Heritage Month. September 8 is International Literacy Day. And the 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

    So what?

    National and international observance are a great way to help tell your organization’s story. It’s just a little hook on which you can hang your pitch or press release.

    As with all pitches, make it relevant and make it interesting. Just because the 22nd of September is Elephant Appreciation Day, doesn’t mean you have something valuable to add to the community conversation.

    Need some ideas?
    International Observances from Wikipedia
    National Health Observances
    Holiday Insights

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