With cur­rent eco­nomic down­turns and fis­cal crises on the minds of most work­ing peo­ple, there are a few sub­tle steps you can take when times get really tight. In our soci­ety, it’s not a secret that goods and ser­vices once thought to be a lux­ury have become a cur­rent stan­dard of our lifestyle. Can we sur­vive liv­ing within a new means with­out sac­ri­fic­ing our hap­pi­ness? We most cer­tainly can, and can pos­si­bly even increase our hap­pi­ness.
Read the rest of this entry »

Set­ting up a secure pub­lic machine for demon­stra­tion pur­poses can be tricky. This is infor­ma­tion freely avail­able; how­ever, when I first began this task, it was very dif­fi­cult to get a straight answer on the do’s and don’ts.

Please Note: This is only an effec­tive way if you want to uti­lize a web-based pre­sen­ta­tion or application.

Around a year ago, a client of ours sent two brand spankin’ new 24” iMac’s and wanted to use them as secure browsers. So, we got to work on fig­ur­ing out how to imple­ment this sort of thing on the Mac plat­form. Our com­pany before used to build .NET appli­ca­tions spe­cific to an event and win­dows based machine; this process wasn’t the most stream­lined, see­ing as how a sim­ple web app for data cap­ture would work just as well. So after some search­ing, I found a method that would work out per­fectly for this and it’s even cross plat­form compatible!

Read the rest of this entry »

Not only is eti­quette a cour­tesy in busi­ness and per­sonal life; it’s also a way to imme­di­ately cre­ate cred­i­bil­ity in your brand, you.  So what exactly is good eti­quette in the busi­ness world?

A few tips to consider:

• When some­one enters a meet­ing room, stand and greet them
• When in a room of strangers, extend a warm hand­shake and intro­duce your­self, espe­cially to those stand­ing solo
• When din­ing, don’t chew with your mouth open
• Don’t chew gum dur­ing meetings
• Never put your bags on the con­fer­ence room table; sit them next to your chair or on your chair and unload from there
• Always bring paper, writ­ing uten­sil and your cal­en­dar to ANY meeting
• Always arrive a few min­utes prior to a meet­ing – don’t make every­one wait on you
• Hold the door for oth­ers – male or female
• Clean up after your­self; don’t expect some­one else to pick up your dirt­ied glass or trash
• Send a hand­writ­ten thank you note after meet­ing a new per­son and enclose your busi­ness card … not only good eti­quette, but also good networking!

For more great tips, check out Emily Post.

As a pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sional, it’s my job to call reporters and share my client’s story with the media. But for a moment, imag­ine the other end of the phone line … the reporter. Hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of peo­ple just like me are call­ing, email­ing and fax­ing; all of us work­ing to get the reporter’s atten­tion so they’ll write a story. How do you set your­self apart from the pack? Keep reading …

PR isn’t just about pick­ing up the phone and call­ing a reporter. There is a ton of strat­egy involved in what we do. So before you pick up the phone or send out a “PR release,” lis­ten to what I have to say

But STOP! Before we go any fur­ther, IT IS NOT CALLED A PR RELEASE. I repeat. It is not called a “PR Release.”  We send out news releases

Now, on to the good stuff

DO NOT MASS DISTRIBUTE. Don’t blast emails or faxes. Don’t do a generic pitch that blan­kets a ton of reporters.  It’s impor­tant that you do your home­work and get to know each reporter you’re plan­ning to pitch. There is noth­ing more embar­rass­ing than send­ing a pitch to a reporter that doesn’t cover your topic. Exam­ple: my client is launch­ing an exer­cise video. Over my dead body will I pitch the finan­cial edi­tor on this topic. UNLESS there is a finan­cial angle

Fur­ther, mass dis­trib­ut­ing your news releases is just like spam. You know how annoyed you get when you receive those Aus­tralian lot­tery win­ner emails or the African prince that is look­ing for his soul mate. DON’T SPAM

Cus­tomize your out­reach. Refer to pre­vi­ous cov­er­age by that par­tic­u­lar reporter. Open up with a brief remark that gets the con­ver­sa­tion going … and per­son­al­ize it.

It’s fine to fol­low up with a reporter, but please don’t call and ask if they’ve received your news release. Chances are their desk is just as clut­tered as yours.  Instead, lead with “Am I call­ing at a good time” and give them a cou­ple of juicy facts to gauge their inter­est. They may ask you to send them a release; don’t be offended. Just keep your mouth shut and send it again. Be respect­ful of their time and cour­te­ous with your fol­low up.

Most impor­tantly, develop rela­tion­ships with reporters so that you become a resource for them.  A few reporters I work with con­tact me need­ing sources for sto­ries that don’t apply to any of my clients. I don’t mind help­ing them because I know that when I really need them, they’ll be there.

It’s no secret that today’s soci­ety has con­cern for the envi­ron­ment. Recy­cling, hybrid vehi­cles, buy­ing locally grown pro­duce. As cit­i­zens we’re all work­ing to do our part. But what about cor­po­rate Amer­ica? What about the com­pa­nies that have main­tained a focus on the envi­ron­ment for decades? How do we ALL work together to pro­tect our planet?

I came across a great arti­cle last week in Ad Age, How Agen­cies Are Help­ing Their Clients Help The Envi­ron­ment. It really puts things in per­spec­tive … as indi­vid­u­als, it’s impor­tant to make wise deci­sions con­cern­ing the envi­ron­ment (recy­cling, buy­ing locally-grown pro­duce, etc.). As a cor­po­ra­tion, it’s impor­tant to take a look at how we can elim­i­nate waste dur­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, etc. But as a mar­keter what can we do? We can encour­age our clients to cre­ate earth-friendly campaigns.

Exam­ple: Snack­box is work­ing with a major con­sumer pack­aged good brand that has prac­ticed earth-friendly pro­duc­tion since the early 1900s. Before it was “cool” to be “green.”  We’re work­ing with said com­pany to cre­ate a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign that edu­cates con­sumers about their prac­tices in pro­duc­ing dis­pos­able table­ware.  Most don’t auto­mat­i­cally think paper plates = good for the envi­ron­ment. I’m sure demand for their prod­uct will increase once our cam­paign is com­plete, but more impor­tantly, as con­sumers, we will know that we have choices. Choices that are actu­ally good for the environment.

We’re also tak­ing the envi­ron­ment into account in other prac­tices: Doing away with paper press kits, email­ing our invoices and pre­sent­ing brand iden­tity sys­tems elec­tron­i­cally rather than past­ing to pre­sen­ta­tion boards.

Pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment isn’t another fad. Let’s all do our part to pro­tect and preserve.