The Gold Medal Goes to ….

Much like Olympic events, business communications programs involve both artful and impeccable technical execution of strategic events -- from client relationships to media outreach. Our Olympics-inspired blog series features medal-worthy best practices to implement as part of your broader program. As anyone who has ever pitched a story is aware, media relations is a competitive sport. PR pros vie for journalists’ attention every day and, just like in the Olympics, only those with the right combination of high-quality equipment, first-class...

PR Olympics – The Social Media Engagement Event

Much like Olympic events, business communications programs involve both artful and impeccable technical execution of strategic events -- from client relationships to media outreach. Our Olympics-inspired blog series features medal-worthy best practices to implement as part of your broader program. Just as in the Olympics, there can be varying levels of success with a social media strategy and the way we choose to engage with others on social platforms. It seems timely, given that our athletes are gracing podiums over...

Six Lessons from Sochi on Client Relations

Much like Olympic events, business communications programs involve both artful and impeccable technical execution of strategic events -- from client relationships to media outreach. Our Olympics-inspired blog series features medal-worthy best practices to implement as part of your broader program. With the NFL season now over, the NBA in mid-season doldrums, the NHL on hiatus for the Olympics and MLB spring training still a few weeks away, we've arrived at the dead zone of sports viewing. So, we turn our...

3 Skills You Need to Always Be Pitching in PR

Last week, as part of LPP’s Peer Training workshops, where LPPers share their expertise and best practice with each other, we focused on Proactive Pitching. My colleagues and I broke down proactive pitching into three worthwhile skills, Monitoring Media, Critical Thinking, and of course… Pitching! I thought there were some great reminders and tips in the workshop that were worth sharing. Monitoring Media: Press lists are ALWAYS out of date. Reporters are covering new beats, and beats are changing on...

What's Missing from your LinkedIn Profile?

One of my particular passions is to help the executives I work with become stronger storytellers. I always advise them to make sure that the first place an influencer or conference organizer looking for an article source or a speaker will go to "check them out" is LinkedIn, so it's really important that they have an effective profile. I then proceed to audit their current profile and tell them the missing elements they need to fix to help them stand...

The Best and Worst Stories Told by Super Bowl Commercials

To those who are still disappointed about the outcome of last night’s Super Bowl game, we bring consolation in the form of an analysis of the best and worst commercials – from a storytelling perspective, of course! If we missed anything, we'd love to hear from you in the comments! While some coverage has said that brands played it safe this year by not trying to be over the top to demand attention, other industry experts have noted that this...

Super Bowl PR Showdown: Perceptions of Legacy and Emerging Quarterback Stars #PRperspectives

This Sunday, we are excited to join the hundreds of millions of people who tune into the Super Bowl every year; especially because LPPers can’t help ourselves, and we like to apply a PR lens to almost everything that happens around us. In the case of this year’s Super Bowl, it was expected that social conversations and media coverage would focus on the two quarterbacks facing off this Sunday. But what makes Peyton Manning so “difficult to bet against”? Why...

The Sad State of Differentiation and What to Do About It

I recently attended a webinar hosted by Gartner’s Technology Research Director, Hank Barnes (@Barnes_Hank), about “The Sad State of Differentiation and What to Do about It.” While the webinar was focused on the IT industry, I found the key take-a-ways transferrable to marketers in any industry, regardless of whether they are promoting a product or a service. A failure to differentiate can be costly, and it is happening all too often. Buyers are frustrated and confused by most messaging and...

How B2B Companies Can Use Twitter to Make an Impact in 140 Characters

Over the last few months, I have conducted a qualitative assessment of 18 B2B Twitter accounts. This involved the evaluation of activity over a 3-6 months period of time (depending on the number of tweets sent each month). Research was my favorite while I was in graduate school, so I'm ashamed to admit that this was fun for me. As of June 2013, Twitter has 232 million active users, so I know my research was not at all exhaustive. In...

CES: Five PR Rules for B2B Companies

My colleague, Andi Narvaez , wrote a recent post about CES and the changing media landscape. The fact that journalists are looking outside the show tells a lot. They are interested in the big consumer products, the newest TVs and phones, but they are also interested in what’s next. However, breaking through the CES noise with technology or prototypes that consumers won’t see for months can be very difficult. We deal with these types of clients on a daily basis....