A while back I was discussing how the ability of driving traffic to stories is nothing new for PR professionals. Actually, I strongly believe being able to generate buzz and traffic around a story published in the media about a client is something journalists should consider when covering a topic. In the current background, it seems that this ability of PRs will prove to be worth quite a bit in the business world.

We all know that blogs and online news outlets usually give bonuses to their writers based on traffic, engagement or shares that help spread the word. It’s not unusual for a writer to make more just because his or her story gets tons of retweets or Facebook shares or because it brings in thousands of visits.

What’s even more interesting is that this trend will soon move to media outlets that made a name in print and have online editions. Rumor has it USA Today is considering giving traffic bonuses to writers. As public relations professionals pitch stories to the very same journalists who will earn more based on traffic, how good the PR expert is at helping out on this matter will count.

And it should count! All news outlets are businesses. The numbers matter to them as the matter to other types of websites. I don’t see this as a new trick to pull to get some coverage. The way I see PR and journalism is as a collaboration, mutual help. The journalist gets a good topic to cover and information helping him get a broad picture, plus the traffic required by their supervisors, the PR pro gets coverage for a client, which translated into traffic and hopefully sales for them and an ongoing contract for the PR consultant.

The million dollar question for PRs right now is can you drive traffic to stories? If not, are you planning on learning how to soon? Now it’s the time to do it!

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!

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.

In what my PR and Marketing agency is concerned, there’s much work ahead. But I have had the opportunity to try a lot of things together with my clients and the results made us all very happy. We are currently plotting and planning what to do in 2009 It hasn’t been an easy ride, but it’s been challenging and inspiring and I am sure it’s been a very good decision, career wise, to start my own business.

In late August, together with two friends of mine, I have launched an online magazine for women, Cenusa de trandafir. It will turn 4 months on Christmas and it already has quite some traffic, good ranks and my personal reasons for happiness and excitement – over 1000 comments already, daily conversations with our readers on Twitter, many guest authors of which some became permanent authors! Compared to our competitors, we’re doing great at building a community around the magazine. The future holds a complete redesign and a lot more work from the entire team

I kept planning all year to revive my travel blog. It took me a while, but in November I again started posting frequently on Travel Spells! Better later than never, as the saying goes

I also started writing a book in 2009. As I have mentioned before it’s a vampire story. A few close friends (including Joanna Young whom I haven’t thanked enough for all her help and support) have read what I have written and their positive feedback fueled my desire to keep going. I was planning to release the book in December, but things got a bit delayed.

The personal part of 2009 has definitely been a wild ride. Yet I am happy and thankful for everything that has happened! Life sometimes makes us the most wonderful surprises ever!  And based on how I feel in the month of December, I can honestly say 2010 will be an amazing year on all levels

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.”

And along these lines not one, but two posts stand out. Both describing important skills and lessons that have to do with marketing and promoting your business. Both showing how I learned about them in what seemed a completely unrelated situation.  My teachers? Bikers and stray dogs! The two posts I’m referring to are:

5 Social Media Lessons You Can Learn from Bikers

What feeding stray dogs taught me about word of mouth marketing

While I am the first one to admit that riding a bike and playing with the dogs are not the best moments to think of business connections, these lessons are still valid and they are essential. We are so focused on business tips and tricks, on case studies and examples, on checklists and plans, on tasks, schedules and success recipes that we easily overlook what’s right in front of us. An business seminar is hardly the only place where you can learn to be better at what you are doing. A business book is not the only piece of writing that can help you enhance your skills!

I challenge you all to join Joanna’s group writing project and analyze what you have posted in 2009. What are your essential lines? And which is your essential post? Write your entry by Spetember 27 and make sure you tell Joanna about it!

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!

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

In Ca La Somara, while enjoying every last second of Joanna and Emma’s writing retreat, I’ve also learned some extremely important lessons. Some from the people I’ve shared the experience with, some from people who we’ve share the agriturismo with, some from reconnecting with myself, each of them meant to help me live a better life, be happier, smile more and generally remember what’s really worthwhile. I keep thinking of everything that’s happened, trying to pick the best of it and share it with you, hoping it will bring you the calm, happiness and freedom it has brought me. So here are a few ideas

People are indeed unique, but…

We are not defined by class, religion, nationality, interests, education, or job alone. None of these aspects is more important than the others and what makes us unique is their specific mix. Plus our dreams, favorite songs, favorite food, friends, family, pets, our take on having fun and any other apparently insignificant detail you can think of.

No one can save you from your current self

If you hate your job, hate your life, hate your industry or hate your friends, if any of these make you unhappy, you need to change it! No one else will do it for you. Don’t wait to be rescued, take responsibility and change your life. You’ll be happier afterwards!

Angry and resentful people are not that bad, really

They might offend you at a certain point; they might ruin part of your evening, but in the end you’ll just appreciate those you love and feel comfortable with more. You’ll appreciate the fact you’re no longer angry and resentful. You’ll appreciate the full live you’re living.

Fear is indeed the mind killer!

For the rest of your Dune groupies, yes, that’s a Bene Gesserit mantra! I couldn’t wait to get to Sardinia, meet Joanna, Emma and see who else would join us. But I took my fear with me. The fear I could no longer write. The fear I was a fool to write in a language to write in without being a native speaker. It made me doubt myself, my novel and a lot of other things about me.

The moment I faced my fears, everything changed! I felt liberated, happier, empowered and stronger. Yes, the positive feedback would do that to you! But even if it would have been awfully negative feedback, it would have been a lot better than a life in doubt and fear.

Stress is the modern plague!

I have some health issues caused by some bile functionality problems. I’m on a more or less constant diet, I can’t drink alcohol and my food choices are limited. I also gain weight when stress surpasses certain limits. So I want to Sardinia, ate everything you could think (to the horror of some Italian women thinking we were eating too much) of and drank a lot of red wine (as I don’t usually drink alcohol at all, please don’t imagine lots of bottles of wine lined up under my table ). My health was impeccable, I didn’t gain any weight and I generally felt awesome.

There’s pressure in finding yourself in the best conditions to yield inspiration!

Everything might be perfect, and you still might not feel inspired. The most important thing you can do is write. Write about how uninspired you are, how annoyed you are by it, what you would want to write about, what prevents you from actually doing it. It works! Ask Joanna, she wrote an incredibly inspired poem about being uninspired.

More to come soon!

Caveat! If my stories on Sardinia seem to lack structure, feel a bit unprocessed, it’s because our week there was extremely intense and full . But I’ll make sure you get a clear picture of it all!

Friends and family ask me about Sardinia. How was it, what did I learn? Any fun moments to share? When I hear the question, a big smile lights up my face. And I can’t stop smiling while I tell my stories again and again. It was wonderful, amazing, intense, too short, filled with laughter and sharing and emotions, it was sunny and windy, it was private and it was shared, it was better than anything I’ve even imagined when I first mentioning I’d go there!

But I somehow feel they can’t fully understand it. Such an experience needs to be embraced (Joanna and Emma, did you think of who I think you did when you saw this word? ), seen, heard, taken in with every breath. I’ve enjoyed each moment of it so much, that I actually cried when I found myself alone in the cab, going to the Olbia airport. I haven’t done that after a trip since high-school! Incidentally, it was another trip to Italy.

Joanna Young is everything you imagine her to be when reading her blog, tweets and comments. And much more. Same goes for Emma Bird. These lovely ladies are, in a word, amazing. But a word is never enough to describe someone, is it? Nor are twenty, or a hundred. Ca La Somara is the perfect place for such a retreat. Peaceful, but never really silent. Bright and sunny, but with a cool, constant breeze. Sardinia is alive and the skyline is indeed dramatic. Beaches are hard to find, the more beautiful they are, the harder to find they become. The food is amazing, the massages are just right, the restaurants are welcoming and again, great food. The read wine is exquisite and I should know, I’ve drunk during this week more than I normally do in a year.

We had donkeys, dogs and cats. We had incredible people to share everything with. We had confident, absorbing, surprising, deep words scribbled on paper, be it real or virtual. We had screenplays and novels and poems and songs. We made some wonderful friends along the way. We also ran into the usual sad, angry and judgemental few. But we ignored them! We experienced the famous transportation strikes but talked our way into a refund and went to the competition. We laughed so hard and for so long, one would have said we’re making stacks to last us a year.

In the next few days, I’ll try to show you as best I can what this Sardinian Writing Retreat was about. I’ll share what I’ve learned about myself and the world, I’ll share the dreams and fears I’ve taken there with me, and the new dreams and hopes I’ve come back with. There will be photos, the occasional inside jokes and lots, lots of happiness! Make sure you tune in!

I will be in Sardinia, enjoying Joana Young‘s and Emma Bird‘s company and meeting interesting new people. The place is perfect to get inspired, relaxed and in the right mood to learn. It’s easy to find out how excited I am about this Writing Retreat: just ask my family, my friends and my colleagues, they all know of every little detail in my trip plan.

I got the plane tickets, arranged for rides to and from Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport, I’ve let my clients know I’ll be emailing them from Sardinia. I’m ready for my share of confident and absorbing writing.

Where will you be in May? Will you join us this time? Will you be coming next time? I’m making it my mission to tell you everything about the retreat. I know I’ll love it and that my experience will be contagious! Keep an eye on this blog for details!

I’m planning to cover the trip there, details on the region, my efforts to write better, the progress on my vampire novel (which I’ve already completely restarted 3 times already), profiles of the wonderful people I’ll share the retreat with, writing tips and tricks and more. If there is something in particular you’d like me to know, if you’d like to get a postcard from Sardinia, just let me know. I’ll do my best to get your questions asnwered!

Photo credit Wikipedia

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve not completely disappeared. But if we only connect through this blog, well, I might have led you to believe I’ve deserted and am hiding away . So I thought it was high time for a quick update on what yours truly has been doing lately.

• Working, of course. Both with my existing clients on some amazingly cool projects and with new ones I’ll tell you more in a short bit. It’s been fun and challenging, but is also took a lot of my time, including weekends The situation won’t change, but I’m learning to better adapt to it.
• Reading and listening to music – these have been my favorite ways of relaxing. I’ve finished the first three books of the Twilight series (the fourth will only be published in Romania this autumn, so I’m getting it from Amazon). As for music, I finally reconnected with my old habit of listening to music while working. I draw a lot of inspiration from it.
• Looking into buying a house. Actually, rent it first, then buy it, as this is not the best moment ever to get a loan. So, thank God for smart companies, they’ve invented this Rent-2-Buy program, where you pay rent for a couple of years and after that, when you buy the house, all your rent is deducted from the price. So it appears I’ll soon have my own little house, with a little garden, a terrace and a huge kitchen
• Writing! I can’t really explain when exactly I’m doing this, but I’ve started writing a novel. It’s been a while since I last considered writing fiction again! But it’s a great opportunity to use my English vocabulary for something more than business writing. I can tell you it will be a vampire story. Simply because after dozens of books, movies and TV series, I still fee I haven’t been told the story I always wanted to hear. So I’m writing it

I’ve missed being here, reading blogs and connecting with you all! But I bet my break from my online home is over! See you around