5 April Fool’s Hoaxes That Equaled Great PR

Some companies try it, and totally wipe out, but a good April Fool’s joke can help promote goodwill towards your business. As long it’s put forth with good intentions, and doesn’t hurt anyone, it can be great PR. Here are five businesses that got it right. (Read more…)

Public Relations and Marketing – What’s the Difference?

A man walks up to a woman at a party and says, “I’m great in bed.” That’s marketing.

The man’s friend walks up to the woman at the party and says, “He’s great in bed.” That’s public relations. (Read more…)

Public Relations at the Local Level

When people think public relations, they think of slick PR pros courting journalists or holding press conferences in front of national media. But the truth is that most businesses and organizations are relatively small, relatively localized entities. (Read more…)

Can Public Relations Pros Prevent Blogs from “Brand Hijacking”?

The purpose of a personal blog is to provide a forum where its writer can complain, praise, and pontificate. A lone personal blog is one of perhaps millions out there, but like everything else out there on the internet, what’s written on even a personal blog has a sense of permanence. As anyone with a website knows, drawing traffic to a new property is a difficult proposition. Most people who read my personal blog seem to be one-time visitors. (Read more…)

Thorough Research Can Lead to a Public Relations Coup

Several years ago when I was covering the dot-com bubble, a German magazine featured me in a story. “The Harbinger of Death,” the writer called me, noting that if I wrote about a company there was a good chance that said company was on its way to the grave. “The Harbinger of Death” is back, but these days I’m an analyst, studying corporate executives who disastrously borrowed money against the stock they own in their company. (Read more…)

PR Media Coverage

It’s easy for public relations firms to overestimate the impact of media coverage. Unless you land your client on the cover of Time or the front page of the New York Times, it can be disheartening to see how little impact a single piece of media coverage brings. My own history with media coverage is an example of how difficult it is to quantify the benefits of media coverage in the public relations world. (Read more…)

Can You Explain Public Relations Basics to the Public?

I had an eye-opening conversation over the weekend with a friend of mine from Germany. She was surprised to see PR Fuel on my new business cards. When I explained it to her, she came back with a rather odd response: “So, public relations is like headhunting?” After about an hour of fielding questions about public relations, I came to the startling realization that many people don’t really understand how the PR industry really works. (Read more…)

Learning from Public Relations Disasters (and Triumphs)

Public relations disasters (and triumphs) come in all shapes and sizes, and from all corners of the country. Here’s a look at a few of each, along with a few tips to help you avoid the disasters — and repeat the triumphs. (Read more…)

Poor Customer Service Can Lead to PR Headaches

A wave of relief washed over me after I called the customer service line of Dow Jones. After three months of paying for a subscription, I had only received two issues of the weekly publication to which I had subscribed. The customer service agent at Dow Jones was courteous, changing the delivery method and extending my subscription for three months, free of charge. This kind of excellent customer service is rare, which is surprising considering that customer service experiences are directly related to how the public views a company. Poor customer service can quickly snowball into a public relations nightmare, as evidenced by the snafus of two large corporations. (Read more…)

Learning from a Century of Press Releases

On October 28, 1906, the Pennsylvania Railroad issued what is believed to be the first press release. The release was the idea of the company’s outside public relations counsel, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, and it revolutionized how companies and organizations delivered information to the public. And modern-day public relations professionals can still learn plenty from the story of that very first press release. (Read more…)