From the monthly archives:

August 2008

Why listening is the first step in social media

by Shannon Paul on August 31, 2008

For anyone in PR, this should come as no surprise. Listening has always been the first step. Right? The first piece of career advice I received as a student interested in PR was that I should read the news every day in order to understand the news cycle in addition to learning who writes about [...]

{ 0 comments }

This Should Be Illegal: D.C. government agency uses social media to reach students

by Shannon Paul on August 25, 2008

Departments of local governments aren’t usually thought of as early adopters when it comes to technology and social media, but one Washington, D.C. public department is hoping to use its new blog, Facebook and Twitter to build relationships with area university students to educate them about their rights to safe living conditions in off-campus housing. [...]

{ 0 comments }

Don’t be that guy

by Shannon Paul on August 17, 2008

We hear the phrase, “don’t be that guy,” a lot in social media circles, but there are a lot of those guys still running around trying to shout their message in an endless game of virtual whack-a-mole every time something pops up on their news alerts, in a blog post or Twitter stream when it [...]

{ 82 comments }

Don't hold your breath waiting for the end of PR spam

by Shannon Paul on August 13, 2008

Recently, Chris Brogan wrote about the launch of a new social media press release utility called PitchEngine that promised to “End PR Spam“. In his post, he mentioned that I might have some thoughts on the matter, and I do. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to witness the event, [...]

{ 0 comments }

PR people prefer print despite consumer preference

by Shannon Paul on August 7, 2008

In a survey conducted by U.K.-based Parker Wayne & Kent public relations, nearly 53 percent of PR professionals said that offline (print) coverage was more valuable than online news coverage for their company or client. Other findings from the survey include: 63.8 percent of PR professionals believe their stakeholders refer to print coverage more than [...]

{ 0 comments }

The PR industry desperately needs PR

by Shannon Paul on August 3, 2008

The plumber’s sink always leaks, right? Maybe that’s why the reputation of PR people and the industry at large always seems to be suffering. People either don’t understand what PR does, or they think PR is evil. Obviously, neither is ideal. An unfortunate side effect of this perception, combined with newsroom financial woes, is that [...]

{ 0 comments }

The perpetual myth of ROI

by Shannon Paul on August 1, 2008

Like everyone else, I have been stuck thinking about ways to tie social media for public relations directly to sales dollars. But, it finally occurred to me after some time that the numbers have always been fuzzy when it comes to proving any kind of ROI (return on investment) in public relations. The difficulty in [...]

{ 0 comments }