Guest post by Susan Daniels

When most people think of blogging, they don’t conjure up images of brand blogging. However, even Coca-cola has a blog to further empower its brand. Brand blogging helps your business out in two ways: it gives your customers a sense of community and it allows you to gain greater online visibility.

But starting a brand blog doesn’t simply mean writing an article every couple of days or so. To make your brand’s blog successful you need to incorporate the following into your every day posting: Continue reading

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Guest post by Susan Daniels

Social media is an integral part of any PR efforts. We all know the importance of having multiple social media accounts, and why we should be Tweeting and posting everyday to maintain good online standing.

But what do you do when Tweeting or posting to Facebook fails? How do you manage the masses and save your business when an inappropriate Tweet or post hits the web? A social media PR fail can ruin a business, but that doesn’t mean it has to ruin yours. By integrating the following 10-Step program you can be on the positive road to recovery in no time:

1. Admit You Are Powerless

Once you click submit, there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of frantically trying to devise some mastermind way to crash the internet or trying to buy the best SEO software to bury your FAIL deep, simply accept the social media PR FAIL you have just created.

2. Admit Your Fault

Once you realize that you have done something wrong, you need to figure out what type of social media disaster you have created. Continue reading

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Public relations is not always an easy-peasy walk through the bark. A lot of times getting results from a PR campaign involves a lot of effort: thinking it through, brainstorming, drafting and then reviewing everything you need, choosing the right channels to communicate, reaching out to the media, bloggers, fans, evangelists, friends and partners, monitoring and measuring your progress, fine-tuning and starting again, right from the beginning.

It takes time and resources to make PR efforts work for a certain company, person, non profit or cause. But there are also times when an opportunity to make your story known just lands on your lap. An interview request , an invitation to speak at a conference, a friendly request to take part in a high profile online debate. Everyone would smile and cheer just thinking of such a possibility. But the reality is, a lot of companies just don’t find the time to make the most out of these opportunities.  Continue reading

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Guest post by Susan Daniels

New research out in the PR space seems to favor the use of theory-based PR relations techniques. But by thinking inversely, like a person using a search engine’s reverse phone number lookup to stop businesses from doing solicitations, people can build great stories to capture any audience and build better brand recognition.

Catherine Sweet is one that disagrees with those perpetuating the theory-based PR. She says that “my teaching has made me realize the power of ‘story telling’ as being the best form of PR and communication there is. As humans, we are hardwired to listen and learn; it’s how we acquire language in the first place.” To her, storytelling is a much more effective communication technique for PR, and gives those in PR some creative expression to think directly or indirectly. Continue reading

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One of the things we consider when creating online content is it’s ‘shareability’ factor. Meaning how eager readers are to share it with their online connections after reading it. While the content itself is directly responsible for the desire to make people want to post it on their social pages or send it via email, it is not enough. To increase the ‘shareability’ factor, we often add little tools or plugins – google + buttons, Facebook like buttons, retweet buttons, Stumble Upon buttons. We attempt to make it easy for the reader to share that content.

But in the process of website updates and management, we sometimes forget that sharing is supposed to be easy and take as little time as possible. That is why we forget to check the buttons and the plugins and see if they work. When these tools don’t work properly, most readers will give up. They don’t have time to edit the tweet or Facebook update! It should all run smoothly. Others might choose to take the time and do the work, if the story is really worthwhile. But if they are in a hurry, they might postpone it for a bit – which can turn to quite a long time if they forget about it in the craziness of their own day.

So when you’re done nailing down that ultimate headline, when the post and the subheadings and the joke and the questions are done, please remember to check your plugins! If they work properly, you have better chances to have your post spread like wildfire!

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