TV series are great! I love quite a few of them. But the major problem with them is that they are well, seasonal. While it’s fun to watch each episode, the long half-year (or longer) hault might be annoying, or just perfect for the audience to fall in love with another series. HBO’s True Blood already has a pretty hot spot to start it’s second season: summer of 2009, when most series I’m addicted to are long gone and fans are waiting for the autumn to come with new stories. But it’s been a while since the last episode and there’s a long wait till the summer.

So what can one do to keep fans close by, excited and crazy about your show? How about Twitter and blogs? There are quite a few Twitter accounts and blogs for the characters in the movie. Sookie is tweeting, Vampire Bill is too, and oldest and strongest vampire of the region, Eric Northman, is also tweeting quite fervently. Continue reading

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Whenever dealing with potential or existing customers, try to apply this simple rule: make sure you never, ever offend them. Because insults are not the best tool there is to get new business your way. Now that we’ve already remembered this simple rule, someone should really tell Ryanair! They apparently weren’t awake when this was taught…

What brought this on? A friend pointed out this intriguing story on Wired about Ryanair offending a blogger through comments. So what did the blogger do? He thought he had discovered a security leak and wrote about it. And later admitted he was too quick to expose a threat that wasn’t really there. Ryanair’s spokesperson admitted it was them spreading out the bad words. Don’t dream of an apology though, actually, here’s what they said, according to the same Wired article:

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Today is that very special day when Mirror Communications, PR and Marketing Agency, officially opens doors online. I’ve shared my plans earlier this year and it finally happened! There’s still plenty of work o be done, but we’re finally out of the construction site

But now that there’s a new PR and Marketing agency on the market, some people my stop to wonder: is there room for another one on the market?

Well, for a good one, there always is. And when it comes to PR strategies and effective marketing, these troubled economic plans do not require them, they strongly demand such services. For a million reasons: starting with the possibility of gaining quite some market share rather easy and finishing with the fact that employees, clients and partners need to know your company is doing OK, you’re there for them and you will provide the same excellent products and services, regardless of where the economy is headed.

But if these reasons are not enough, consider the following:

• Companies still don’t know how to focus on benefits, not features;
• Some people still believe scaring customers into buying what they sell is a good strategy;
• Having no PR at all is as bad as having some really bad PR;
• When you’re building your company’s image, taking breaks is out of the questions;
• Individuals, companies and entire countries still have big marketing and PR problems;
• Customers are lost every day due to poor post sales services;
• And there are still plenty of so-called marketers or PR experts that give the whole industry a bad name.

If you want your true identity to be reflected, your unique voice heard and to engage in wonderful and profitable conversations, take a look at the Mirror Communications website, read some PR and marketing post on your blog and then contact me. Let’s talk about how we can work together to make your company shine!

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If you want to join the WoBM Group Writing Project “Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!“, you should really do it now. There are only 5 days left until the deadline, February 28. Four and a half if you think today’s morning is long gone. In case you’re wondering what your struggling for, other than your reader’s appreciation and lovely comments, here are the prizes:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”

Plus the 2 hours of free PR counseling from me included in each prize. And our cool jury: Loredana, Alex and myself.

Don’t forget to play by the rules in the announcement post!

And if you’re wondering who you’re competing against, take a look at the already submitted entries:

Brad Shorr – Blogging Relationships are Gold for the Soul

Sarah Welstead – 7 Rules for Effective Relationship Blogging

Andrew of Good Honest Dollar – Three Special Bloggers

Joanna Young – Why it’s worth sticking with Twitter

CV Harquail – Tweet yourself like the person you want to be

Jacquelyn – How I started the WParent blog

And my own – Investing in relationships has excellent ROI

Good luck everyone and don’t forget time is flying by!

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Happy Monday everyone! A new week has just started and I bring you a fresh reading list. Hope you find these articles useful and that you add your own findings in the comment box.

Motivation is paramount no matter what you do or where you do it (home or in the office). Jean Murray of Home Biz Notes has put up a list of 7 ways to stay motivated.

We all tend to distort the truth: when we clean up because parents come to visit (I do this extremely often), when we’re asked to say the first thing that comes to our mind, yet we stop to think. We have our reasons for it, but we all do it. This leads to Nami Dunfords simple conclusion: all customers are liars.

What should you do to build your brand? Apparently, it only takes 3 steps to knit it. That’s Drew McLellan’s recipe.

Mig of eWritings takes os back to traditional SEO. And she’s teaching us a little more about the Meta description tag. You know, those few lines that appear under your link on Google search result pages!

Do you think some people are difficult? They might think the very same about you! Barbara Rozgonyi shows us how to deal with such people by being one of them.

Brad Shorr uses silly wordplays to explain sales. More specifically the difference between spending and investing.

That’s all for today! Ejoy the new week and see you next Monday!

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