On Tuesday, I will be giving a presentation to Oak Park-area business owners on the use of social media in business. As part of my preparation, I was struck by the sense of dread that Facebook and its social-networking brethren routinely strike in the hearts of many business owners that I encounter. Today, there are […]
What’s in a name? The ability to attract attention, for one thing. This morning I was reviewing the 150-odd (some odder than others) videos on my YouTube channel. Most of them stem from public-relations outreach I’ve provided for clients, such as Downtown Oak Park’s mass dog wedding (a Guinness World Record attempt) in November 2008, […]
Whenever I agree to represent a business, it must pass my “newsroom vet litmus test.” In other words, if I were writing for a newspaper or magazine and someone pitched the story to me, would I be genuinely interested in at least digging into story suggestions about this company? In September, after a client, Robust […]
Whenever you can offer the media a story suggestion that has versatility–it can be a human interest feature, a health and wellness story, and a business piece, for example–then it provides you with bigger placement potential. In other words, if a given outlet isn’t interested in the story under Category A, then you still have […]
A recent CNN.com story on innovative social-media approaches to adopting children is just the latest example of how our world has drastically changed in recent years. I’ve documented numerous examples, in this blog and elsewhere, that underscore how the collective “traditional” media is no longer the sole arbiter of what is newsworthy. (News flash! ANYONE […]
Playing basketball over the years, I’ve been pretty adept at offensive rebounding, even if I was no Dennis Rodman (pictured). Often, it’s because I’ve known better than anyone else on the court exactly how that shot I just took was going to careen wildly off the rim. I try to adopt the same mindset in […]
A few times over the years, I’ve pitched airline magazines with story ideas. Alas, none of those overtures have, um, gotten off the ground. But I recently had the good fortune of being quoted in GO Magazine, AirTran Airways’ inflight magazine. Some of my observations about numbers, and their interplay with we humans, formed the […]
When I was starting out as a newspaper reporter, Ronald Reagan was in his first term as U.S. President, there were three main choices on television and “hyperlocal journalism” meant that I had a lot of energy pedaling my bicycle around town in pursuit of my next story for the Marshfield (Ma.) Mariner. But now […]
For the first time over a six-month span, encompassing story pitches for four different clients, I reached one particular reporter yesterday at the Chicago Sun-Times. She had never responded to any of my prior messages, neither my well-crafted and eminently timely e-mails nor my professional and succint voicemails directing her attention to those e-mails. Of […]