How To

As part of the intensive media outreach to build awareness of online coupon site RetailMeNot.com, Schwartz Communications deployed an established PR tactic—sending a gift to the desks of tier-one journalists and Web producers. The Holiday… Continued

The ability to get the message out to millions of people drove 1-800-Flowers’ decision to participate in Undercover Boss, where the boss pretends to be a regular working stiff and, hopefully, learns valuable lessons from his rank-and-file employees.

Selecting the right initiative that ultimately becomes the “face” of an organization’s CSR program is crucial. CSR experts from both the corporate and agency worlds share their strategies and best practices.

Most brand stories take a little more than 140 characters to tell, but we pitch media via Twitter. Then we wonder why our messages become confused with competitors, our products seem undifferentiated and our brand stories are often forgotten. Maybe we need to start fresh, with a simple story.

While the contributed article has been a part of PR outreach for decades, another related practice has stolen its thunder—self publishing.

The usual practice in the market research world is to target an elite few when testing products and/or concepts. Now, online survey company Infosurv and BrainJuicer, in the U.K., are turning that adage on its head—the new thinking banks on the premise that large groups of people are wiser than an elite few.

With the explosion of consumer-generated media, opinion research has become one of the pillars of communications strategy. To explore the ins and outs of external surveys as a media relations tool, PR News asked corporate PR heads who often field surveys and an online research firm executive about the benefits, options, challenges and possible pitfalls in conducting meaningful research.

By now it’s a mantra for PR executives and social media gurus everywhere. Listen…learn…engage. Certainly no quibbling here with that advice. But while you’re quietly, unobtrusively monitoring Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums, there’s another strategy you should be thinking about and deploying: creating and sharing compelling content via digital platforms.

While the financial collapse was painful, there were some valuable PR lessons learned.

PR professionals who follow the media relations rules are growing increasingly frustrated by PR spam complaints in the blogosphere. The good news is there are things you can do to clearly signal your commitment to respect journalists’ traditional boundaries.