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

There is no better way to start the week then reading last week’s best business, marketing and PR pieces! So let’s kick this week off with a few reading recommendations!

Guest blogger Lena West explores The Unfortunate Burden of Poor Social Media Examples on LipSticking, discussing how bad examples seem to weigh a lot more than the overwhelmingly numerous good examples of businesses using social media.

Do you know what the difference between reach, outreach and reaching out is? Liz Strauss explains it in a great piece, stressing the importance of reaching out and connecting with someone, building a valuable relationship.

Once again proving there are things to be learned and to be successfully applied to your business virtually anywhere, Karen Swim shares 5 Sweet Business Lessons from the Cake Boss.

Have you ever had trouble convincing your clients to try something new, nontraditional and harder to explain? Pia Mara Finkell has experienced such a situation and has come up with Five Ways to get Traditional Clients Onboard with Untraditional Methods which she shares on the Buzz Bin.

Paying attention to what has changed in your customer’s lives is always a great way to determining how to better market your products and services. Drew McLellan explains this simple but smart marketing process in his piece about a deodorant brand’s smart marketing.

For some of you, the fact that asking the right questions is critical might sound a bit like a cliche. Yet businesses sometimes focus on finding answers without first asking the important questions. When it comes to SEO and marketing, Mat McGee of Small Business Search Marketing has pinned down the 7 Questions Small Businesses Should be Asking.

Although it started as a response to a Mashable article on the future of public relations, in Future of public relations and social media – the truth according to Mashable, Stuart Bruce has thoroughly explained what’s currently important in the PR practice of today and what won’t exactly change in the future.

PR and Marketing can sometimes end up by seeming exhausting to any practitioner, regardless of age. It is a fast paced world and keeping up with it can be difficult. Tod Defren described 5 Steps to Dealing with the Relentless Pace of Marketing.

Weekly Roundup on Travel Tweaks

Visit Rio de Janeiro, One of the Top Destinations in South America

Top 5 Romantic Things to Do in Tokyo

Rise in US Travel Demand Leads to Higher Peak-day Surcharges

Top Three Things to Do in Belize

Top 7 Honeymoon Attractions in Macau

My articles on Everything PR

ACP Reinstates PR, Makes Veteran Editor Deborah Thomas its Public Face

Ellam Tam Became PR Newswire’s Services Representative in the Palestinian Territories

Coaching Program for Fashion and Product Designers by Lisa Elia Public Relations

Alterian Appoints Christian Wright Chief Solutions Officer, Managed Services

Leading Under Pressure, New Book on Crisis Management and Leadership

Porter Public Relations Offers Affordable Marketing services to Companies on a Budget

CareerBuilder: One-Third of Employers Use Social Media to Promote Their Organizations

NetLine Corporation Acquires All About Sales, Inc

LATINA Style Magazine Includes Verizon in its List of Best Companies for Latinas to Work For

PR Daily webinar – The basics: How to produce a social media news release

Yellow Pages Launches £5000 Online Video Challenge

Black Swan featuring Natalie Portman, a Different Type of Movie about Dancing [video]

PR News’ PR People Awards Call For Entries

I have always been intrigued by the relationship Romanians have had with their car brand, Dacia. It is the only brand that still exists and that did not disappear after the Revolution that put an end to communism. But the way we’ve seen the brand, the way we’ve related to it or chosen to ignore it, makes for a very interesting story.

Dacias were not the best of cars during the communist period.  But they were one of the few types of cars you could actually get. Long lists and long waits came before any car purchase. And when I say long wait, I mean years. But then again, that gave you time to raise the money for it. The design was outdated, there weren’t that many options to choose from, and some relatives told me some now funny stories about how they prayed for their car to arrive with most of the parts on it.

After the Revolution, we finally had choices. And we went for them. Foreign cars, used at first, brought from nearby countries, Germany being the leading supplier. I grew up with high-school friends that made a business out of driving to Germany in one car and returning in three. They would work on them for a while, then resell them for some extra cash.

Old school Dacia, Sandero and Duster

Everyone thought of new Dacias (which came with a slightly updated design and a few more features) as cheap, but ultimately bad cars and they bought them only because they found nothing better. Then came Renault, which bought Dacia in 1999. Soon came the Logan brand and things started to change in how Romanians perceived the cars.

Yet there still were plenty saying they’d buy anything else. With rather strong competition on the market, the number of choices was still extremely large and with a negligible price difference. But of course, the Renault brand standing behind Dacia meant something.

In recent years, the Logan and the Sandero brands have changed perception even more. They are top selling cars and Dacia is one of the most profitable companies in the Renault group. We had to see that Brazil, Germany and other European countries love our cars for us to start loving and consider them as a strong alternative. I have to admit that I am now making plans around a new 4×4 announced by Dacia and Renault, Duster, and I would love to have one!

Was there another way to get us to support Dacia sooner? Was there something more than the price that they could have shown us? Definitely! We grew up seeing Dacia as crappy. Maybe all the reactions from other countries should have been brought to our attention sooner, more often, until we were no longer trapped in what we thought we knew and we could have given Dacia a chance.

No matter how we got here, I am happy to hear Romanians are proud of their car brand. They smile when they hear how well Sandero is doing on the international market and they are looking forward to see what’s next. I for one heard of a very cheap car running on electricity. Rumor has it it will cost about 5000 Euros.

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

The last week of January 2009 comes with the 20th edition of the Monday reading tips brought to you by Words of a Broken Mirror.

We’ll start with some interesting top 10 trends for 2009 from Samll Business Trends: the top 10 software publishing trends by Tim Berry and the top 10 global trends for SMBs by Laurel Delaney.

Mihaela Lica raises the issues of spam-like ads on Twitter, an attempt thought of by Magpie, not Twitter’s monetization team as you might have thought.

Lip-sticking has published an inspirational guest post by Mary Schmidt on powerful first ladies, what they have achieved and what women in general can accomplish, regardless of being married to powerful men.

Brad Shorr of Word Sell Inc. discussed the issue of business-to-business sales and how managing daily pains helps build or demolish businesses and individual careers.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 pointed out that social networks are growing up as more adults are joinging the conversation.

Hoping you’ve enjoyed this week’s list, I invite you, as always, to share your recommendations in the comment box. See you next week!

This is the kind of news that makes all those predicting the end of print media go “Aha!”. Starting February 2009, we’ll have to say goodbye to the print version of PC Magazine. It will be changed into a digital format, with similar subscription options. I’m looking forward to see how advertising options will change, but even more curious to see how many of they readers switch from paper to downloadable format.

How did they announce it? Well, it’s all posted on their site, the CEO emailed their contacts and, just in case that email was lost among others, account managers also contacted their clients. From what my contact shared with me, before this move, a large part from the magazine’s income was generated by their digital branch. This leads me to believe the complete switch was a pretty smart move.

What do you think? Any predictions you’d like to share? Will other magazines follow the same pattern? Is this easier for a tech magazine? I’d love to read your thoughts.