RSS MAD

77+ PR and Blogging Wars Articles and Resources

Lots of PR talk hitting the scene as of late as PR peeps and bloggers argue about PR spamming, blacklists, and doing PR pitches right.

Just the messenger trying to collect them all in one spot. I do both sides of the PR biz… receiving-end and PR’ing end.

Advice, Arguments, Debates, and Articles

1. 5 PR Pitches: The Good and Bad
2. 7 Promises of the PR Pro [pdf file]
3. 15 Reasons To Just Freakin’ Do It…Stop The Complaining and Take Command! Make the Pitch Your Friend
4. Blacklisting Bloggers
5. Blacklisting PR Firms
6. Blogger Blacklist and other PR Pipe Dreams
7. The Caring and Feeding of the Press: If you read nothing else, start and finish here. Best article on the topic from the wonderful Esther Schindler.
8. Dear Nasty Reporter/Blogger
9. Die! Press Release, Die!
10. Dueling Blacklists: Bloggers vs. PR Firms
11. An Email Blacklist of Technology PR Agencies
12. Flacks Need Manners
13. The Growing Backlash against PR Spam, and the Rationale for MicroPR from Stowe Boyd.
14. How Do I Get Placement on Blogs?
15. How to Pitch to Bloggers
16. How Not To Help a Reporter: Yeah, go right ahead. I dare you.
17. Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations
18. Matt Haughey on How to Pitch to Bloggers
19. Not Short, Not Sweet, but to the Point…
20. PR Blacklists: Treating the Symptoms
21. PR blacklist won’t fix imperfect system
22. PR industry crisis and a lovely weekend
23. PR Bludgeons Itself Again
24. PR Lessons of a Clueless Blog Pitch
25. The PR Rolodex Myth
26. PR vs. the Bloggers part XXVII
27. Quelle surprise: Another PR Blacklist
28. Sorry PR People, You’re Blocked
29. Stupid PR Watch: Reporter pet peeves
30. To Blacklist, or Not to Blacklist
31. Top Ten Lies PR Agencies Tell Their Clients
32. Twitpitch is the future
33. Value of PR for Bloggers
34. Won’t Anyone Think of the Phone Calls?
35. Where Do We Go with Blogger Relations?
36. Why PR Folks Should Blacklist Bloggers
37. A Young Pro’s Take: Media Relations and the New PR Blacklist

And tons more… oi.

Resources

1. Art and Science of Blogger Relations eBook
2. Blogger Blacklist: Requires permission.
3. Global PR Week
4. Internet Press Guild
5. PR Spammers Wiki: Watch out for these PR folks… they spam bloggers.
6. Twitter Blacklist
7. Twittering Journalists Wiki: Lists journalists, reporters, and media outlets on twitter. PR folks, please don’t spam these nice people.

Blogs

1. Bad Pitch Blog
2. Beyond PR
3. Blinn PR Report
4. Blogging Me Blogging You
5. Common Sense PR
6. Corporate PR
7. Engage in PR
8. First Person PR
9. HighVizPR
10. Hispanic Marketing and PR
11. India PR
12. KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog
13. Launch PR
14. Online PR Thoughts
15. Naked PR
16. POP! PR Jots
17. PR 2.0 Blog
18. PR Blogger
19. PR Communications
20. PR Disasters
21. PR Interactive
22. PR Meets Marketing
23. PR Squared
24. PR Voice
25. PR Wordsmith
26. PR Works
27. Pro PR
28. PRoactive
29. PitchEngine
30. Publicity Hound
31. rajesh@blogworks
32. The Straight Pitch
33. Strategic Public Relations
34. Valley PR

Follow Your Company and Brand Online

If your PR and marketing folks aren’t tracking your company, brand, and competition online, they need to get up to speed to better do their jobs. If you play all of the roles, tracking your company and brand isn’t as time consuming as it sounds.

Remember alert services, blogs, and social network sites. Many of these can deliver updates to your inbox or phone.

Alert Services: Sends e-mail, text, etc. whenever your keyword shows up somewhere. Media services such as BBC News and TMCNet have their own alerts — so check out sites that cover your industry and sign up for their alerts. Here are general free keyword alert services.

1. AOL Alerts
2. Clip and Copy — three free searches in Basic account.
3. Google
4. GoogleAlert (not from Google) — gives three free searches).
5. Reuters
6. Windows Live Alerts
7. Yahoo

Blogs: You can most likely find blogs for every industry. Numerous blog directories exist that to make a list here would be futile. MasterNewMedia has a hey-ugggeee list.

Social network sites: Also too many to list, but it should include Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and conversations like Twitter and forums. Also look for social networks covering your industry. The following sites/tools let you search Twitter with keywords:

• Summize
• TwitterMap search
• Google’s twitter search
• Terraminds
• Tweetscan

Track forums and other conversations with these sites:

• Boardtracker
• Omigili
• Klostu
• Twing
• Boardreader

Resources

• Copybrighter
• Online Reputation Management Blog
• Online Reputation Management Guide
• Radically Transparent

How to Show Something Is Really Yours

Just had to share this grammar blooper from PC Magazine’s Mother’s Day article. Perhaps, the magazine wanted to emphasize Mom belongs to you in superlative terms.

Of course, I wanted to know what gadgets they recommended for us geeky moms.

Links: 2008-05-09

• Memory Improvement Tips
• Top 10 PR Tips for Small Businesses
• Write with Authority and Inspire Trust
• The best time to submit news
• 8 violent truths about freelancing part one and part two
• 178 ways to improve your internet writing tips
• 2008 Webby Award Winners
• 50 greatest entrepreneurs of all time: Every person I could think of is already on the list. Anyone missing?

And for fun ‘cuz you’re allowed:

• Twitter cartoon and other funny Geek and Poke cartoon [Link: Buzz Bishop]
• Twitter Club
• Internet Pinball Database: My hubby’s favorite: High Speed.
• 32 places to find free shipping. Gotta love it especially when Amazon may be forced to charge tax to Texans.

Stop the Graying of Sites Trend

The messages many sites send when they use gray text on a white background is, “We don’t want you to read our content,” “Our content isn’t worth your time,” and “We want you to struggle reading our content because we think black is boring.”

#333333, #666666, #999999, and #cccccc (various shades of gray) are almost black, but not as good as black. Those sites don’t make this list.

It’s an epidemic that I alone can’t stop.

To reward those sites doing it right, they get a mention and a link here. Add your site to the comments section. However, we will check every link. If a site’s text hides in a fog, it will disappear.

Note — this only looks as the contrast between text and background — not the font choice, font size, text formatting style, or design.

1. Adversity University Blog
2. Be the Story
3. Blogcritics
4. Bob Bly
5. Book Marketing
6. The Book Sistah
7. Caroline Middlebrook
8. Chronicles of a Mompreneur
9. D. Keith Robinson
10. Dosh Dosh
11. Geekpreneur
12. Global Neighbourhoods
13. The Golden Pencil
14. Graywolf’s SEO Blog (yeah, even the guy with “Gray” in his name passed!)
15. GTO Management
16. How Not to Write
17. InternetVIZ
18. ISIPP
19. Melle.ca
20. Men with Pens
21. Molly
22. Niroze
23. PoeWar Writer’s Resource Center
24. The Program Witch Pages
25. Sparkplug CEO
26. Stowe Boyd
27. Strategic Public Relations
28. SuccessCREEations
29. Verge New Media
30. Writer’s Helper

You wouldn’t believe how many sites I looked at before my eyes begged me to stop. List is disappointingly short.

Moral: Black on white is NOT boring. It’s readable.

P.S. I skipped those with different colors because they may not be readable to those with various forms of color blindness.

How Lenovo Outdoes Apple with an Ad

I rarely check out videos because chances are high that it won’t have captions or subtitles. But I bit on this Lenovo-produced video comparing its ThinkPad X300 to the MacBook Air [link: Dave Winer]. It presents a powerful visual message without using words.

But not one to let commercials sway me without research, I wondered how many attachments MacBook Air owners realllllly use. Lenovo smartly added attachments of products it has in its ultraportable Thinkpad X300 to the Mac Air to make people think thinner isn’t always better — you sacrifice some things.

Just looking at the two computers, the Mac Air still wows with its thinness. I found a twitterfriend who owns a Mac Air FabGal — check out our twitversation:

FabGal: Sorry, but mah MacBook Air could kick that ThinkPad’s ass. And also? It’s shiny! And silver! And my preshus. (drool)

Me: Mac Air does still look wowie wow wow. What do you add on to it regularly?

FabGal: I haven’t added anything to it so far. Everything transfered from iBook wirelessly. Am thinking of a superdrive, though.

So there you have it. One owner who doesn’t even have anything on her Mac Air. So seriously, how many Mac Air owners buy attachments and use them regularly? One attachment might not be so bad.

Nonetheless, the message comes through powerfully and will likely sway Windows users not to make the switch to a Mac … not just yet.

10 Tips to Balance Freelance and Personal Lives

Karen Putz asks how I do it — balance full-time writing and being a parent to three kids. I should be asking her how she does it — she interviews Marlee Matlin!

As I mentioned in my how I became a writer story, the whole thing started as a part-time venture while managing a part-time corporate job (for most of it) and three kids. I believe writing on the side while holding down a corporate job is a better route than chucking it all for the freelance life.

Yes, life is about risks, but you’re more likely to succeed by building up instead of starting with zip. Had I chucked it all back in 2000, I would’ve had less than a part-time amount of work and no health benefits. My spouse got laid off in 2003, right before #3 came along. We would’ve been in deep trouble had I chucked, which would’ve been more of an upchuck (holds back from the woodchuck routine).

I also volunteer and sit on several PTA boards. My mom was a full-time volunteer for the second half of my childhood. I wanted to be like her. Living a balanced life is important to me. My kids will grow up, so I need to enjoy them NOW.

Prefer to be all about your career? You might want to read Wake Up, Damn It! If your career makes you happy, then go for it and ignore everything here.

So how do I manage all of this? Not without a little insanity and stress at times, but these tips help make it easier:

1. Enroll younger kids in pre-school. Keeping them at home isn’t doable (unless you have a nanny). My youngest has learned amazing stuff he would never have learned had he stayed home. He enters kindergarten in the fall (sob).
2. Rely on a personal information manager complete with contacts, calendar, and to do lists. The Palm desktop has been my trusty sidekick since 1995. Use Outlook. Use any of the many online web-based applications.
3. Balance your schedule for the week. Non-work appointments take too many of my slots this week. I’ve rescheduled two. I try to spread out appointments, but that doesn’t always work and find a week becomes overloaded. So when I realize it, I start moving things around where I can. I review the week ahead sometime between Friday and Monday to ensure balance or to do something about it.
4. Accept working off hours. While I work a standard work week, appointments and kid events can cut into my work time. So I make it up in the evening or on weekends, but never at the sacrifice of sleep bring us to the next point…
5. Get sleep. Everyone requires a different amount of sleep to function well. If I stay up late working on something, I’m hurting more than helping my clients and business. While I might get something done late at night, I’m useless the next day and lose an entire day. So better to sleep and finish in the morning.
6. Avoid waiting until last minute to do work to make deadline. To avoid late nights, I make sure I have room to meet the deadline. This prevents racing the clock or sacrificing quality to make a deadline.
7. Make “No” part of your vocabulary. Or else, get stuck with deadlines close to each other, overload your schedule, and turn yourself into a stress machine (which affects your health). I believe, “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” So parents, it may feel selfish to say, “No,” but your family benefits.
8. Drop stressful clients. I’ve dropped a client or two because I didn’t enjoy the work and dreaded working on their projects. Add these together spells energy drain. Worried about replacing them? Writers should always include marketing a part of their job.
9. Balance your kids’ activities. Who says they need to take music lessons, play sports, dance, and do scouts all at once? Kids need a break, too. Try to limit younger ones’ — who are trying things to find what they like — current activities to one or two. When one ends, you can try something else. After all, fewer activities means fewer chauffeuring jobs for parents.
10. Use your “I can’t write now” time wisely. When we find ourselves unable to write or work, we can easily fall into the trap of needlessly surfing the Web or doing other wasteful activities. When I’m in a stupor, I fold laundry, exercise, play games (that I need to review) — Things that benefit me.

How do you balance your writing life with your personal life?

Links: 2008-05-02

• 10 Clever Ways to Wow Your Clients
• Are You Approaching Freelancing All Wrong?
• The Only 12 1/2 Writing Rules You’ll Ever Need poster. Should get this for my office. Actually have wall space. [Link: Deb Ng]
• Four Ways to Target Online Buyers with the Right Words
• Write for Food
• Grammar Lessons from the English Chick.
• 9 Niche Carving Techniques: Even if you want to be a Jack or Jackie of all trades, you can still have a niche as this entry shows.
• 50 open source resources for writers.

Interesting:

• Is the Palm OS Dying? Should you care? I do! I have owned a Palm device since 1995 and am still hoping the company will surprise us and SOON.
• Student twitters his way out of Egyptian jail. WOW. Talk about major twitter impact. If I had done the same thing, I’d still be in jail.
• 20 things to do with nail polish. Well, color won’t work well for some of these, but good tips. Men — it’s OK to use nail polish! [Link: Deb Ng]

And because we always look for ways to save money:

• AAA gas price finder

And because I had my first job out of college at DOT:

• Secretary of DOT blog: My first job out of college was as a DOT trainee. We rotated to three different areas in one year and then permanently settled with one of the areas. I still stay in touch with many folks there — they are good people. Don’t let the FAA’s problems deter you from thinking otherwise.

Click Here to See the Full Newsletter

Noticing another (the first being the gray text on white background) trend and it ain’t good. More and more newsletters require you to click a link for the full newsletter. To make the situation worse, some of these are in — ack! — Acrobat pdf format!

I like Acrobat files, but not for e-mail newsletters. E-mail newsletters generally load fast unless the issue has too many images that aren’t optimized (you won’t find me subscribed to those that do this every time). But to click the link to go to the PDF page takes longer.

I still read some newsletters that use this method because they offer high quality content and I respect the editor behind the newsletter. I just might not read every issue or refer back.

E-mail newsletters work for me because I can file them, search them, and read them whenever. Yes, you can file the “click link for newsletter” e-mail, but you can’t search it. You won’t remember if the content you need came from that newsletter or another.

Yes, trying to get an e-mail newsletter to display the way you want it in every e-mail client is an impossible task. But that’s not an excuse for chucking the idea and going PDF where the newsletter doesn’t have to deal with e-mail application idiosyncrasies.

Remember all of us have lots of information coming at us… and we all have our preferences how we like to get that information: RSS, e-mail, Web. A successful newsletter provides readers with choices in how to obtain the content.

More related posts on this topic

• HTML in Newsletters
• Designing Newsletters for all E-mail-Kind
• Spread the Marketing Wealth for Best Results

Am I off base here? Or do you like your PDFs?