Category: Uncategorized

January 21, 2016

I’m not good at this

I had that thought a couple weeks ago while going through the ordeal of buying a car. And then I remembered one of the many times I had felt that feeling before – back when I started cold-pitching national media.

January 7, 2016

My LAST Year’s resolution

My New Year’s resolution for 2015 ended up being about you, even though when I made it I thought it was all about me. Find out how the lesson I learned will change things for you and me in 2016.

December 23, 2015

A Christmas “miracle”

The room was almost full of 250 people . . . it was almost go-time . . . and I was rattled. This was my biggest speech of this past year, one I prepared long and hard for, but I wasn’t myself.

December 17, 2015

No more “front page”

A speaker at a conference I attended kept referring to landing great placements “on the front page.” Each time he said it, the words clattered around the room like a Model T. Here’s why we need to change our emphasis.

December 3, 2015

Is there 1 right way to pitch?

I examined 11 ultra-successful pitches and looked for commonalities. You may not notice a grand unifying theory right away, but there IS one thing all these winning PR pros had in common.

November 24, 2015

Black Friday and “real” PR

REI’s awesome move to shutter stores for Black Friday reminded me of the real definition of PR (and also demonstrated an oft-overlooked publicity tactic).

November 20, 2015

Problems of an “overachieving” PR Pro

“It’s almost getting too easy,” she told me, not bragging, just saying. She mastered a SINGLE element of the craft and leveraged it in a major way. Now she’s tackling the next step . . .

November 12, 2015

How to win at conferencing

She was right in the front. All three times. We would all benefit from this PR professional’s example of being aggressive about professional development.

October 29, 2015

“What’s with the grammar errors & sentence fragments?”

That was a question I got on a recent webinar with current university PR professors. It didn’t surprise me. Here’s why I use an informal tone in my pitches.

October 22, 2015

Sorry, I’m sick of Back to the Future Day

And if I was that sick of it, imagine how journalists felt? When pitching media, it’s no longer enough just to claim a connection to a date on the calendar. Here are three ways to set yourself apart from the masses.