Hear the Little Birdies?

A couple of years ago when I was still living in Sacramento, I joined the PR Association there and went to their annual luncheon.  The food was meh, as usual for that kind of event, but the speaker,  Shane Rhyne of Ackerman PR, was very interesting and talked about social media - Twitter in particular.  Follow this LINK for a very basic tutorial about Twitter and how it can help your PR efforts.  I do agree with Rhyne that I'm more of a editor on Twitter, sharing information among my followers.  Of course there's always the link to the funny cat story, but everyone needs a laugh, right?

Just July?

Although I try to post more than once a month, it seems as though that's my current posting schedule.  Of course I was very busy this spring and early summer consulting for the Portland Performing Arts Festival and now I'm helping with the PR for Constellation Gallery in Portland. No more excuses.

I have an old (actually I think he's younger than I am) friend in Sacramento who has been doing marketing consulting for many years.  Yes, I'm talking about YOU Michael Boyd!  I first meet Micheal when he ran a small desktop publishing business in midtown Sacramento.  This was back in the day when the archival color printers were still too expensive for mere mortals like me to own.

Today Micheal posted a very good article about the best times to post on social media sites.  Of course I'm not posting this blog at a very good time according to the article.  As a writer I need to write when the spirit moves me however, which is a little different than posting for PR's sake.

I've also almost finished the final rewrite for my PR booklet - Public Relations for Artists, Photographers And other Creatives.  Many thanks to consultant Bob Walters and write Kate Maney for their feedback.  I'm thinking that I will go the Amazon route, but will post more info on that when I sort it all out.

Make May Marvelous

How did April get past me?  Perhaps I've been busier than I expected doing PR consulting work for Portland Performing Arts Festival, as well as planning to direct a one-act for the Port Fringe theatre festival which happens at the same time as well as a few visual art projects I'm involved with along with finishing up some work on my book - "PR for Artists, Photographers and Other Creatives".   Yes, that was why April flew by.

But here we are in the merry month with our friends at Mashable serving up interesting as always information for you and your business.  With our continued focus on new media, check out their list HERE.  The article I think is the most valuable  in PR terms is this one.

Up here in Portland Maine, the tulips are just about gone.  It's springy in that chilly, rainy way and I'll just bet we get thrust into summer by Memorial Day!

My, What Lovely Fox Paws !

Yes, here I am committing a faux pas, or committing bad humor.  Which do you think dear reader?  Nonetheless, the PR blunder is the topic for this month's second post.  For most groups, organizations and companies, it's a question of when rather than ever having committed a PR blunder.  A small slip of the tongue near an open microphone, a mis-Tweet or what someone thought was a funny post on Facebook can turn around to slap you right in the face.  Cheap Shot Alert - Unless of course you're Charlie Sheen.

So is dealing with those kinds of mistakes any different in cyber space than in the physical world?  In a word, no.  The same things you would do here, you carry over to the social media sphere.  As a matter of fact, I think it's easier to react quickly, honestly and with humor in social media.

Thanks to my friends at Mashable for sharing this link to AMEX's forum for small businesses about recovering from a social media fox paw.

Using Social Media for PR

 There are probably many different ways to use social media for public relations depending upon the type of business you are promoting.  Mashable.com recently ran an article showing what they considered some smart ways that different companies are doing this.  Since it's always instructive to see how others are doing it, let's take a closer look at these examples.

For the Rayovac snowball fight, yes it's a cute idea but perhaps too cute?  Would you have participated?  I know I wouldn't  have.  But it was effective!

In these days of tight budgets and rising food costs, the Healthy Choice campaign seems like a good one, but only if you are a coupon person.  I have tried to be in the past but the coupons never made it to the store until they were expired.  But this effort did have a demonstrable effect in gaining new fans for the FB page.


 The Breeders Cup campaign also successful but it looks as if they needed a whole army of people to pull it off.  The Balsams Resort campaign takes a page from my buddy Chad Sorg and his Artist Fishbowl project where he would live a week at a time in different storefront windows in Reno and LA.  You were ahead of your time Sorg!  The KFC scholarship campaign got turned on it's head with substituting a single tweet for a long essay.

In looking at these, you'll notice that they are all corporations using agencies.  How can the smaller business or nonprofit benefit from these examples?  I think the answer is by thinking out of the box.   If your nonprofit is planning a benefit, maybe taking a cue from some of these examples to use either FB or Twitter to not only publicize the event, but perhaps give away free tickets to the event.