A lot of PR agencies or corporate PR departments still believe spam is the way to go. They have built or bought quite a data base over the years, they keep expanding it and then shoot an email to everyone on the list. While they might have had some common ground when starting to develop the data base, over time names and emails just keep being added without any further checks. Who cares if you’re interested, we’ll email you anyway.

I am not talking about asking for permission, or allowing people to unsubscribe, I’m talking about at least making sure they are remotely interested in what they’ll receive. For example, why would I be interested in a debate held in Beverly Hills between a Rabbi and some woman I know nothing about on dating in a material world and if money can or cannot buy love?

If you’re gonna spam, at least be wiser than the average spammer! You should be able to at least do that if you’ve ever read anything, even a tiny article on PR and/or marketing. If you’re going to take your chance and spam, at least make sure people won’t delete your email because they simply don’t care!

I’d advise you to refrain from spam alltogether. Sure, contact someone to introduce yourself and ask for their permission to send press releases. But don’t start out with an attached PR and a one-liner asking them to call you for details!

Popularity: 10% [?]

I will be in Sardinia, enjoying Joana Young‘s and Emma Bird‘s company and meeting interesting new people. The place is perfect to get inspired, relaxed and in the right mood to learn. It’s easy to find out how excited I am about this Writing Retreat: just ask my family, my friends and my colleagues, they all know of every little detail in my trip plan.

I got the plane tickets, arranged for rides to and from Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport, I’ve let my clients know I’ll be emailing them from Sardinia. I’m ready for my share of confident and absorbing writing.

Where will you be in May? Will you join us this time? Will you be coming next time? I’m making it my mission to tell you everything about the retreat. I know I’ll love it and that my experience will be contagious! Keep an eye on this blog for details!

I’m planning to cover the trip there, details on the region, my efforts to write better, the progress on my vampire novel (which I’ve already completely restarted 3 times already), profiles of the wonderful people I’ll share the retreat with, writing tips and tricks and more. If there is something in particular you’d like me to know, if you’d like to get a postcard from Sardinia, just let me know. I’ll do my best to get your questions asnwered!

Photo credit Wikipedia

Popularity: 11% [?]

Being the Twilight freak that I am, I had to find out a little more things about the books, their writer, the movies and the actors. Besides, after seeing the movie over 10 times and finishing all four books in about, well, 8 days, what else can a girl do?

This is how I ran into some interviews with Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen). What really struck me was his story of being sent to a center to learn how to handle his image. As he was playing a vampire, they said he should put on his bad boy face. There are a few things disturbingly wrong with that statement: first, it shows signs of a disease you can see all over in the PR and marketing worlds: generalization.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

A couple of weeks ago, I went to an interview with one of my clients. We were meeting an IT journalist who was working for a local business magazine. We met, the interview went great, the story was supposed to be included in a future edition of the magazine.

We even sent some photos after the interview, as there was no photographer available for that interview. And then we waited. It was a 2-week wait. But after just one week, we heard that he magazine had been shut down. Most employees had been fired, a few of them had been transferred to a different business magazine of the same group.

This is the third magazine that’s closed down since last autumn. Will more follow? Should we get used to not have our clients’ stories published not because they’re not good enough, but because there’s no newspaper/magazine to publish it in?

Popularity: 10% [?]