I have crossed paths with quite a few companies lately that have taken the DIY approach when it comes to PR. Although they had no real team, no real expertise, and the people specifically hired to handle such tasks had nothing to do with the job at hand, they felt they could do it on their own. Later on, they decided hiring an agency was better suited for them. They of course could have saved a lot of time, effort and ultimately money by hiring the experts to begin with.

Why did they choose not to at first? It’s simple, when companies calculate costs, they usually don’t pay attention to details. They believe that if an employee has some spare time, that time can be used in any way. Effectiveness, ability to learn, natural talent, they are all disregarded, as of course we are all good at promoting ourselves. Much like the physicists in The Big Bang Theory who were supposedly marketing geniuses as well…

A company has three choices when they take the in house approach: use existing personnel, hire someone new with little to no experience and have them trained, or hiring a PR expert. Continue reading

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Blogsessive.com has just published a guest post written by yours truly on how to make your blog and twitter account work better at promoting each other. And the solution is simple: notice what they have in common, notice the differences, and if it’s a team you want, then create one!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and your own tips on how to create a dream team out of your blog and Twitter feed, so head over to Blogsessive to read the article and share your insight

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People are lazy. And laziness, when kept under control, fuels a lot of their drive to do things faster and better. Let’s be honest, we’d all want to work less and smarter, generate more income and have tons of time to enjoy those we love, our passions and our hobbies. Given the opportunity, we’d all prefer to work for 3 months and travel around the world for the rest of the year (or insert other pleasant pastime here).

We need to stay mobile and render parts of what we do automatic, so that we gain time. And when it comes to social media, well, we have taken automatic to another level. Auto replies, retweets, direct messages, scheduled posts, automatic posting of content to social media websites. It’s all working out great for us. Continue reading

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I’ll keep this one short and sweet. I get a lot of Twitter direct message spam. I overlook some of it, because it’s unintentional. I don’t think all Twitter users a) realize they send direct messages to those following them with Mafia wars requests and b) can tell how utterly annoying it is when it comes a few times a day from different people. But I draw the line at so called online professionals doing the very same. Stop! It’s annoying.

Yes, if you have a twitter account that you use casually to fool around with friends, by all means, play all the Mafia Wars you want. But if it’s a business account and you are trying to show how much of an expert you are, you should know better! No, you can’t get away with it as easily! You’re on probation! I follow people in my line of business because I admire them. We can brainstorm, discuss our ideas, share news. But I can’t look up to spammers or waste my Twitter time on them

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