In the past few weeks, there have been numerous examples of people speaking within range of a microphone that they either 1) didn’t know was on, or 2) knew it was on and didn’t care if what they said was heard.
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For years, PR and marketing stunts have been doing what they are designed to do – make media headlines and generate attention with the public. One of the earliest publicity stunts was in 1896 when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad organized a staged crash between two full-size trains in Crush, Texas. Attendance was free with 40,000 people viewing the crash, but unfortunately the stunt backfired – some of the attendees lost their lives when the train boilers exploded blasting bolts, iron scraps and debris into the crowd.
Since then stunts have come in many forms, and some have even gone from stunt to time-honored tradition such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. As the world has gone digital, so have stunts with some receiving the most attention via social media and some beginning on social platforms.
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Whether you’re in public relations, journalism or content marketing, the meat of your job is communicating. And with communicating comes emailing—lots and lots of emailing. You’re constantly clicking in your inbox:
It comes with the territory. However, if you use Gmail, there are plenty of hacks out there to make your life at little easier. Here are my two favorites at the moment:
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2014 was a big year for Reputation Ink. As many of us do at this time of year, over the holidays I reflected on the year. As I thought about how busy it had been, I started to think about everything we achieved and somewhat startled myself when I developed a list. Here are some of the highlights:
We started the year as Reputation Capital. In March, we rebranded to Reputation Ink and haven’t looked back. While I loved the name that we originally launched with back in 2011 (and as any company founder knows, it can be hard to let go of some things), I now love the name Reputation Ink even more. It perfectly reflects our commitment and passion for quality writing and how we use great writing to build our clients’ reputations.
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Many companies struggle with determining whether it makes sense to secure a monthly retainer with an inbound agency or marketing firm, or employ these agencies on a project-only basis.
As someone who used to work for an agency on the project fee model, where assignments are scoped and an agreed-upon budget is determined before work begins, I can honestly say that the employees, the agency and the work suffer. Projects are underbid and overspent, leaving creatives frazzled and holes in agencies’ pockets.
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At the beginning of this year, noted marketing thought leader Mark Schaefer of {grow} wrote a now somewhat infamous blog post titled Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend taking a moment to do so. His basic theory is that we are nearing the intersection of increasing volumes of content with our limited human capacity to consume it.
In other words, as companies jump on the content marketing bandwagon in droves, pumping out blogs, e-books, reports, videos and more, it’s becoming harder and harder to get people’s attention and succeed with the strategy. Just a few years ago, if you put a blog up and plugged away at it, you were a first mover and were pretty much guaranteed to have some success and earn attention from the audiences you were trying to reach. Today it’s much harder.
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It’s been a long week, and we’re ready to kick off our shoes, throw on some sweats and sink into our cozy couches. Who’s with us? But before we check out and get lost in what’s ahead, let’s look back at what swept headlines this week (in PR, social media and marketing—because that’s the fun stuff).
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Get your head out of the iClouds and grab a pumpkin spice latte—it’s time to welcome the weekend. Though it was a short work week, it certainly didn’t skimp on major headlines. Let’s take a look at the whirlwinds of the week in PR, content marketing and social media news.
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We did it! Before stepping out for a long weekend full of football, BBQ and beaching it, take a look at this week’s noteworthy PR stories:
Speaking of football, the season got off to a rough start for thousands of die-hard fans who were left beyond irate on Sunday night when the LIVE draft of Yahoo’s fantasy league—the one where people carefully research and plan their top picks for—was completely disabled by technical issues. Of course apologies were flowing freely, but maybe they were too little and too late. This isn’t the first time the Internet giant encountered technical snafus at a crucial time during fantasy football season. Similar issues occurred back in 2012 when the site crashed a few hours before kickoff on a game day, and last-minute trades were shut out. This year’s draft was rescheduled for Monday night, but our guess is there are millions of football fans who will be removing Yahoo from their roster next year.
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Happy Friday! Here’s what you may have missed this week in marketing, public relations and social media news:
We can’t cover the world of marketing and social media from the past week without discussing the ALS ice bucket challenge. While I’m sure many of you are tired of hearing about this social media phenomenon, there are many lessons we as marketers can take from it. As Robert Tuchman explains on Entrepreneur.com, there are several reasons why the challenge took off, including the power of video, the fun aspect, the celebrity appeal, the timing, and the charity angle.
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