Trust is a rare and very valuable commodity in the world of public relations. It is what seldom makes the difference between success and failure for both PR professionals and the companies they represent. To better understand how trust capital impacts a PR career, read on for an analysis of three main ways trust defines your day to day work.

Journalists and trust

The way a journalist views a PR representatives and their clients often determines their angles on stories they pick up and write about. If you are trustworthy, they will also be more likely to pick up the topics you pitch and cover them. What trust means when it comes to a PR pro’s relationship with journalists is that a reporter or editor trusts the information you send to be accurate, believes you when you say you and your clients are available for follow up questions and any other background details they might need and also trusts you to let them know when something worthwhile is happening. Continue reading

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When you are the face of a company, you can say good-bye to having a personal life. Well, you will still live it, but anything you do will impact the company you’re representing. If you’re caught driving while drunk, if you get into a fight or get arrested for any reason whatsoever, it will impact the company. If you make racist or other hateful comments, if your clothes are inappropriate, if your kids do something wrong, it will impact the company. That’s a fact. What’s unclear is how a company representative’s mishaps or mistakes or eccentricities will actually affect the business.

In some cases, customer lose their trust in the company. If the person speaking in their behalf was a thief, what guarantee is there the company isn’t also stealing. In other cases, such as Facebook, a movie showing the CEO acting like a careless smart ass that is more interested in his company than in his friends or any human relationship for that matter might actually have no negative impact. Facebook users are either inspired to go for it all, too addicted to Facebook to give it up, or find that not using the service will affect them more than using it, in a word, they’re being practical. Continue reading

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There are many ways in which a company can end up looking bad in front of customers, the press, or just about everyone. And it seem that this week I am prompted to explore many of them.

Finding the right companies and the right people to help your business grow is always a great idea. Hiring a great HR manager to make sure your staff is top notch, hiring the write PR and marketing agency, these are complicated tasks that not all companies get right.

But once you hire someone that’s really good at what they do, make sure you are familiar with the campaigns they run for you! Imagine this: one of the sites I sometimes write for gets this great targeted email proposing a very interesting contest . The message is well written, it’s clear they did some research before and you can’t wait to get started. Unfortunately, you want to have the story published by the end of the day and the person contacting you did not answer. You pick up the phone and call the company behind the campaign – they don’t know who the person is, what the campaign is about and their marketing officer is not in. Continue reading

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Are you wondering why I’ve kind of disappeared? Well, the reasons are two: my not feeling very well and Kayla chewing up my laptop charger. Does the last one sound a bit like the “Dog ate my homework” excuse? Well, at least it is funny! But being without my laptop really reduced my online time. Why? Because I have to get my boyfriend away from his computer and work without most of my tools. Then again I have no saved passwords and it gets into a big hassle very fast.

Bottom line, I want my computer running . At all times if possible. Now the big question comes: why didn’t I buy a new charger. Well, I couldn’t find one. In the big city, capital even, of Bucharest, with its 4 or 5 Sony Centers, there are little to no Sony Vaio chargers.

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