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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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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The moment you start getting more traffic on your blog, those harvesting it for their own petty interests will show up instantly: spam commentators and trackbacks of doubtful quality. While comment moderation is something most bloggers are paying attention to, as it is easy to implement and dedicated plugins make it a bliss, there’s a different story for trackbacks.

First because having your blog quoted on a different site generally means your writing is appreciated and spread among new readers. Most of the times it comes from blogs with common interests, from bloggers who just happened to run into your article and love it or from friends helping you out in your promoting endeavors. Plus, if it’s a quote and if it gives proper credit, there’s no harm done!

But there are two types of link-backs I’ve ran across that can harm a blog more than you can imagine. And there are two things you can look for when trying to prevent such mischievous usage of your content:

• what quote is really linked to your name or blog name
• what else the blogger posts on the page where you’re quoted

Why is this important, you might wonder? I’ll share my experiences with you to better explain my point.

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Picture this! You find out about or stumble upon a really great new blog. You read a few articles and really like them. One of them is actually on a topic you’ve heard of before and were anxious to talk about with someone else. So you go to the comment box and try to post your thoughts. And then it happens: you’re asked to sign in. No matter how cool the blog is, your online time is still limited, creating accounts leads to profiles and to other steps you have to skip. What do you do? Sing in or click away?

I usually click away. If the blog really interests me, I’ll add it to my reader, but I won’t comments, so half of what’s so great about blogs, instant conversation, exchanging opinions and building connections, is completely lost. So here’s a list of reasons not to ask your readers to sign in before commenting: Continue reading

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