It’s time for another dip into the PR Fuel mailbag. This time we answer some questions from PR Fuel readers, including public relations professionals, who are dealing with some serious issues: a threatening ex-employee, a shaky merger, a recalcitrant journalist, and a strange resume request. All this, plus some public relations web sites to add to your browser’s bookmarks. 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
I read an article about local government using the threat of budget shortfalls to close a popular and much-needed public service. The writer referred to it as a Washington Monument Strategy. I had never heard that phrase before but a Google search showed it along with the phrase Washington Monument Syndrome being used a bit lately. Read More
A post on Kevin Dugan’s Strategic Public Relations blog (http://prblog.typepad.com) recently caught my eye. Dugan discussed an article longtime online marketing genius B.L Ochman highlighting ten “examples of sites, campaigns, and companies that are crying out for blogs.” The article got me thinking, once again, about how companies are missing the blogging boat. To this end, I’ve come up with my own list of five industries that are not capitalizing on the public relations opportunities presented by blogs. My hope is that my ideas will perhaps help foster some creative thinking about how your company or clients can use blogs as effective public relations tools. Read More
No matter the size of your business or organization, there will always be critics. How you respond to these critics — publicly and privately — is very important. Writing a correction letter to a newspaper or magazine is often the easiest (and cheapest) public relations strategy when responding to critics. Read More
What is a brand, anyway? It seems like it is a mysterious “something-or-other” that isn’t marketing, isn’t PR, isn’t advertising. So if we know what it isn’t, shouldn’t we also know what a brand is? Read More
Every public relations professional dreams of developing a campaign that puts his or her company’s tag line on the lips of the entire world. However, the tried and true rules of continuity, consistency, and even practicality don’t always apply when it comes to international or cross-culture campaigns. Read More
It’s no secret eReleases works with newspapers. Many of our subscribing journalists are from newspapers. Many of our customers have received print in local and nationwide newspapers alike. I like newspapers. I still subscribe to my local newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, as well as to the Wall Street Journal. Read More
These days it seems like everyone I know in the public relations game is looking for a new job. If nothing else, the sheer amount of people I know looking for a change in the public relations industry–I honestly believe that about 50 percent of the PR reps I know are looking to change employers–signals that PR vets and newbies alike are feeling less secure about their actual responsibilities as the definition of “public relations” continues to evolve. Read More
Over the past decade, I’ve been yelled at by many people, and in many capacities. As a journalist, I had CEOs, public relations consultants, and lawyers heaping verbal abuse on me every week. Every one of those incidents served to remind me that people have different ideas of what is appropriate behavior, be it in the privacy of one’s home or in the workplace. Emotions ride high when money or one’s image is on the line. Read More