The past couple of weeks have brought in quite a few articles and blog posts about driving traffic as the new leverage of PR professionals. Pitch the story and have the traffic to back your pitch. But is this practice really new? Haven’t PR professionals already been driving traffic to online stories? I know I have and I doubt I’m the only one.

What stories do we drive traffic to? Well, almost anything showing up online.

Product/service reviews – all independent reviews, neutral and positive, are a gold mine for PR and Marketing pros. They are seen as objective points of view by customers and the bigger the publication, the more valuable the endorsement. Reviews are usually posted in a special website section, added to newsletters, used as literature to close new deals, twittered and blogged. Continue reading

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

Our weekly roundup has been MIA for quite a while now. But we’re back with 5 great articles I stumbled across last week. I’ll make it short and sweet and as always invite you to add to the list!

A great way to learn is to find out what you should never ever do, no matter who does it and thinks it’s cool. Darren Rowse of Problogger came up with a top of the worlds’ 10 worst strategies to promote your blog.

When you send an invitation to a party, people expect to show up and join the fun. Not to first submit a form and then get a second approval to attend the party. Karen Swim perfectly explained how this situation applies to social media in general and Twitter in particular.

There are some words or phrases that we hear on a daily (or should I say hourly?) basis. We’re so used to them, that we sometime believe just hearing them is enough to know what they mean. Open source is one of those phrases. Before starting to use it and other related terms, read this list of definitions published by Seth Godin.

Readers’ attention is hard to get and even harder to mentain. We are in a rush, a little bored and sometimes lazy. So grab words, as explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive, are always a great way to make sure we read a piece you’ve wrote.

Bloggers are a growing force when it comes to PR and Marketing. That is why a lot of companies and agencies what them to cover their stories. But bad pitches are common, so here’s another article on how to pitch bloggers from the VallyPRBlog.

Hope you like this week’s articles! Till next week, feel free to share your own findings

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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:

Continue reading

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I am honored to announce that Lillie Ammann of A Writer’s Word, An Editor’s Eye has awarded a Premio Dardos to this PR and Marketing blog. Put in slightly different words, I won a Premio Dardos Award and I am extremely proud of it

What’s the Premio Dardos Award?

Premio Dardos means “prize darts” in Spanish. It is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. Continue reading

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It’s Sunday so it’s the perfect time to brag a little! WE magazine for women has published a list of 101 female bloggers they recommend to their readers for 2009. This happened in January, but I’ve only recently discovered the entry. Words of a Broken Mirror is on the list and I can’t tell you how proud and happy that makes me feel.

But enough about me! If you’re looking to expand you blog reading list, check out some of the great women selected by WE magazine. And you can help expand their list of women to watch by simply sending them a recommendation. I think you should really start doing this, as there are quite a lot of great bloggers out there who are also women. While you’re at it, if you’re a businesswoman running a business blog, you should contact Women on Business to get included in their businesswomen bloggers directory.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone!

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