If there is one thing I’ve learned about PR is that there’s always something new to learn. And you find lessons in all possible places, such as learning about word of mouth from stray dogs. One of the best resources for new things to learn are your clients. While working with them, you’ll discover PR mistakes and PR goldmines. You will brainstorm and get to implement ideas that you’d never considered possible.

But while this is obvious, the link to knowledge run deeper. When you work with a client for a longer period, you get to know their partners and their clients. You learn about their issues, the mistakes they made and what they did that worked as a charm. If they come from different parts of the world, you will be receiving extremely valuable tips on intercultural communication.

So when you’re getting ready for your next meeting with your client, their customers or their partners, remember to keep your eyes and years open. I for one have learned a lot about crisis management from clients who’ve never been through a crisis, but whose target market was prone to PR disasters

What valuable PR and marketing lessons have you learned from your clients, your partners or from people you’ve worked with?

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While browsing through my LinkedIn account, I just noticed this question about apps that allow you to schedule tweets. Some of the answers stated no one should ever schedule tweets, as it is spammy. Automation is bad, don’t do it. And I started wondering. Is it really spam? Or is it just a way to make work easier and give your followers a break? And the answer is, like always, it depends

I should first say I manage a few Twitter accounts. On some I schedule tweets, on others I don’t. On those who are there to provide news on a certain topic, I do schedule tweets. I usually find the news all at once and just sending them all out at ones is actually more spammy to some users than scheduling them throughout the day. That does not mean I ignore the conversation. I check the stream every couple of hours, check what others are saying, retweet, reply, thank people for their comments and retweets.

When it comes to blog post, a lot of what I write is scheduled. And when I set the publishing time and date, I also set the tweet. Basically because I tend to get caught up and I might forget. I do check it, I do interact, as I said before. And I really don’t think programming tweets is a form of spam.

When all your tweets are programmed and you are never there to talk, reply or answer questions, it is definitely spam. You are there to broadcast more or less forcefully whatever you please and you really don’t care what your followers have to say. But from that to saying any form of automation and of rendering your work fast and effective is spam is a long road to be traveled.

What bout you? Do you schedule tweets? Do you think it’s spam when others do it? Should we ban all automation, good or bad from social media? I say not, yet it all needs to be approached with great care. And over to you…

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The purpose of pitching a story is to get coverage for it. That means that if someone offers to write about the topic you’ve proposed and asks for the product you mentioned or simply for more info, you need to reply to their emails. Not keeping track of who you’ve pitched to is a bad idea in such a case. Especially if instead of following up, you resend the same pitch and fail to reply to the second inquiry.

If you don’t know how to keep track, here’s a simple idea: get a list of names and emails of people to contact. As you send your message to them, mark them in a different color. If they reply and need more info, use a third color. It’s easy and a bit playful. And if you’re good at mixing colors, it looks good too.

Following up is a must. For both those who have shown interest and for those who’ve not replied. Those interested will actually publish after you give them what they need to do so and a friendly reminder with some interesting details might help others decide to publish your story in the end. Continue reading

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

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

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

This week’s edition is short and sweet. Not because I didn’t find enough interesting articles (there were about 9), but yoursturly has yet to learn that leaving 60 tabs open in Firefox is not the safest way to keep said interesting articles and not lose them if FF was to, say, crash…

So I give you the three articles I actually saved in this post’s draft

You might have already seen this one, I’ve certainly ran into it a few times, but just in case: John Jantsch entry on how to raise the price of free. Must read, so use your bookmarks, learn from my mistakes

If you’re interested in learning more about search engine marketing, Josh Klein’s entry on process and framework is also a must read. It will help you better understand what SEM it’s all about and build your very first strategy.

With the jobs market in a full recession, here are some findings that might help: what recent hires recommend to job seekers. This is only a part of a larger survey published on Web Strategy, find out more on Jeremiah Owyang’s full list of posts.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks short version of the monday roundup. As I did miss a lot, please share your interesting reads in the comment box

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