Public relations is not just blindly writing press releases or pitching journalists, but a comprehensive strategy designed to promote your business. The following steps should help you determine whether or not your company has developed a comprehensive public relations strategy. (Read more…)

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…)

Online assistive technologies for the blind continue to evolve. Where people with low vision use screen magnification software to aid them in using web sites, the blind use screen readers. One of the most common-and free-screen readers is called JAWS. This software introduces each page to the listener and reads every word on the screen as well as information running behind the scenes. Here are some tips for optimizing your corporate web site for blind users and screen reader technology. (Read more…)

Organizations spend billions of dollars each year to create accessible homes, buildings, and public areas for the disabled. Yet many of these organizations fail to provide the same accessibility on their Web sites. (Read more…)

Design consistency is a must in print communications. But consistent style guides for web sites are as important as they are for an organization’s print publications and advertising materials. In addition to assuring grammatical and syntactical consistency for your web site’s text-based information, web style guides should include rules on technical aspects of the medium that affect usability and visitor satisfaction. Here are some things to consider when trying to develop a web style guide. (Read more…)

The internet is one of the most basic tools in the modern public relations toolkit, but when building your company’s online presence, how do you attract visitors who will virtually sit back and stay awhile, visitors who might possibly even return in the near future? By focusing on the consumer. Frequent users are attracted to the web because they see it as their own personal exploration tool and want to actively contribute to the global discussion and stay ahead of the information curve. They see themselves as being in control and no longer passive. The following are three questions you should ask yourself as you try to emphasize your online presence in your public relations strategy. (Read more…)

As a journalist, it wasn’t often that I listened to a public relations pitch. But then there were times when I was three hours from deadline and I still didn’t have a story. During one of those crunch times, I checked my voicemail and there was a new message from a public relations rep named Alyssa Shelasky, pitching me on a story that I would normally ignore. But Alyssa got me interested in a very easy way: she did her research. (Read more…)

It’s not difficult for a company with a small public relations department to attraction attention from local media. You might not think that same small company –- or even a small company without an in-house public relations department –- could also also attract attention from regional, national, and even international media outlets. But it’s easier than you might have assumed. The following tips can help you –- or your outside public relations firm — launch your company into the national spotlight. (Read more…)

By now most organizations — non-profit or for-profit, large or small — have added a web presence to their public relations efforts. It’s not enough, however, just to have a web site. Leaving it dangling out there in cyberspace like a forlorn little planet in a faraway galaxy is a mistake that’s far too common, even among those in the public relations game. Your web site can’t work for you unless you first work for it. The following tips will help you promote your web site easily and effectively. (Read more…)

As a web site consultant who focuses on the public relations role corporate web sites play, I’ve created the following quick tips for anyone to evaluate the public relations success of their web site. As you read this article, open your browser and see how your web site measures up. (Read more…)