I am extremely proud to announce my very first article on Everything PR, one of my favorite blogs covering PR and marketing and run by my very good friends Mihaela Lica and Phil Butler. Here’s a sneak peak for you:

Private Garbage, the New Pseudo-gold Mine of Personal Branding

I thought keeping your dirty laundry away from the media was the key to success in the world of the famous, be it actors, singers, politicians or sport stars. And, the Tiger Woods media circus causing him to loose a lot of advertising gigs is partial proof for my point of view. Years ago it was not so fashionable to be rumored to have slept with X and Y famous colleague, substance abuse, abandoning your children, cheating on your spouse, and etc., these things were career stoppers – but things have changed

To read the entire article, click here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on it on the Everything PR blog!

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2009 has been a year of many changes. It’s been a year of accomplishments and joy, as well as the year when a lot didn’t go according to plan, in both personal and business life. I would have wanted to skip the 2009 review and go straight to my 2010 plans. But that would have meant skipping some important steps of the process and make it less effective. So what happened in 2009?

On Words of a Broken Mirror, it’s been a year full of significant posts and essential lessons. I didn’t exactly meet my own plans of posting frequency, but I am extremely pleased with the quality of everything published here, as well as that of the guest posts I have written for other blogs.

2009 was also the year when I went from part time to full time business owner. Mirror Communications kept growing, I continued to work with IT companies and tackled other fields as well. I switched from spending part of my day in a client’s office to working fully on my own. This of course came with some organization and time management issues. It’s still fairly new but I’m getting better at it every day. Continue reading

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There hasn’t been one day in 2009 when I got bored. As my world kept changing in every aspect that could change, I kept experimenting, adjusting, learning and meeting new people. So reading along the lines I have written and published all year and trying to find the essential words for 2009 was quite an interesting experiment. It reminded  me of where I’ve been, what I have discovered and of how this particularly full year has altered my views on certain aspects, including my thoughts about who I am and what is important for me.

Joanna Young’s challenge to find the essential lines and the essential posts of 2009 wasn’t easy easy. But it was fun and I managed to find the essential lines for both me and the readers of this blog. An important lesson that I see as the most important of the year that’s about to pass. It’s not something new, it’s not at all complicated…

“Sometimes we are reminded of the big secrets in the business world by what appears to be the most unrelated situation.” Continue reading

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I tried my best to tell you what the writing retreat in Sardinia felt like and what it taught me. It’s now time for the conclusions! Because all lessons are wasted, unless applied. And because I always love sharing my dreams and plans on this blog, although it isn’t one of the most personal blogs out here.

My first decision after Sardinia was that I was indeed a writer. I left for the retreat thinking that no matter what, I couldn’t fail. Failure was not an option. Worst case scenario: I’d discover my fiction writing wasn’t as good as I thought. But complete failure was out of the question, as writing represents an important part of what I do.

Yet I had stopped thinking of myself as a writer a long time ago. When I finished high-school, started Journalism school and stopped writing fiction. Now I know that I am a writer, a pretty good PR specialist, a photographer, a quite proud Romanian, a friend, a child (son and daughter alike) and anything else I want to be. I could very well feel that there is no one, unique part of us that defines us. It’s everything we are.

I decided my vampire story kind of rocks and I’m going to finish writing it, then go through editing, and then publish it. And I’m pretty much going to take the DIY approach to it. My story, although referred to as being a vampire story, is really a love story, a story of acceptance, of learning how to see people as a whole, rather than focusing on bits and pieces of their being. The big, shiny plan is to have it ready for you sometime in September.

I decided I should write everyday. Business writing, blog writing, fiction writing, diary writing, it does not matter, as long as I keep writing. I also discovered exercises are a big part of it, and if you don’t believe me, ask Joanna. I also discovered writing all your ideas down is helpful.

I also figured out being fluent in English and understanding (with some feeble attempts at conversations) another few languages wasn’t enough anymore. So I’ll work hard on reviving forgotten language skills and acquiring some new ones.

To sum up, it will be an extremely busy summer!

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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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