A PR Pro’s Social Media Blunder: Rejecting before accepting

Guest Post on Twinked.In
I recently wrote a guest post on Twinked.In “Twitter & LinkedIn Link Up Benefits PR Pros.” TwinkedIn.com aims to be a resource for professionals who are ready to take their social networking to the next level. The site features guest posts and how-to’s, as well as a community forum.

Guest Post on PRSA’s New Pros Blog
I wrote a guest post on PRSA’s New Pros blog, “The mistake I stopped making.” The post is about a mistake that I made when I first entered the full-time workforce. PRSA’s New Pros blog is a great resource for new professionals and college students focusing on PR.

Conferences: Share with me, don’t talk at me
Last week I attended the AACSB Building B-School Symposium in Scottsdale, Arizona. This conference was different than most. Besides it being exclusively for higher education communicators and development folks (the people who ask for donations), 60% of it was simply sharing best practices. Each participant was asked to fill out a questionnaire before hand and was notified of each session’s topics. There were only 25 people in the communicators track. The AACSB asked participants to come prepared and this model for a conference worked effectiv

Nine factors that determine news value
It’s always important to be reminded of the basics. Earlier this week I sat in on a presentation for new newspaper writers. The presenter went over the basics of news writing and what journalists should look for when thinking of stories. The following are nine major factors that determine news value. As PR practitioners, we need to craft our pitches with the following factors in mind: Timeliness – Don’t pitch or send a news release about an event that happened two weeks ago. New news is always better than old news (unless it’s a source pitch about an anniversary of a major event) Proximity – Don’t p

A “typical day” in PR
Usually twice a month I receive e-mails from PR students. Some have questions about the industry; others have to interview a practitioner. No matter what type of inquiry I receive, the most common question asked is “can you describe a typical day in public relations?” The answer is I can’t. Every day presents a new task. As a PR practitioner you are usually working on multiple initiatives for multiple clients (Yes you need to know how to multi-task in this industry). I would say the only daily routine I have is checking news hits and watching the news. Everything else (press releases, media advisories, newsletters, social media etc…) is diffe