THINKing

Painless Giving

If you’ve been with us here for a while, you know that every year we promote Holiday For Charity, which is the idea of asking friends and family to donate to charity in our name instead of giving us Christmas gifts. Charitable giving can do wonders for an organization’s reputation. We’ll talk more about Holiday For Charity in a later post, but today, I wanted to discuss some other painless ways to assist charities.

Netflix’s Corporate Seppuku

It’s good that Netflix has a red background on its logo. That way the blood doesn’t show from its self-inflicted wounds.

Media Continues Self Destruction

Photo credit: Grafixar from morguefile.com

The US media aren’t trusted by Americans, and the self destruction continued this weekend with the incessant drumbeat of impending doom ahead of so-called Hurricane Irene. As Kendall Allen tells us in her piece Fools In Raincoats,

Five Ways To Not Be A Weiner

I’m sure you have heard about Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s PR problems stemming from his inappropriate online relationships with at least six women. This cretin provides an example – albeit a bad one – from which we all can learn.

Bad PR Firm, Naughty PR Firm

Well, here we go again. You’ll remember back in 2006 when Edelman PR was caught flogging for client Wal-Mart . It seems that we have another PR debacle. There now are stories about Facebook hiring PR firm Burson-Marstellar to discredit Google in the press.

Playing Both Sides Of The Table

Editor’s Note: this is a guest article from Danny Wong, who manages Media Relations for Blank Label Group, and he helped to co-found the group’s startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition, and RE:custom. He’s also played on the other side of the table writing for outlets like the HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.

Content Focused

Blogging experts often tell you to hyperfocus on a topic if you want to build a following. We have been thinking a lot recently about our blog’s content. (We’d love your thoughts, as well. So, feel free to jump in.)

Social Media Relationships: Are They Real?

Just saw Suzanne Vara’s excellent piece on building social media relationships. Let’s listen to Ms. Vara for a moment:

Top 5 PR Posts

Our PR-related posts are among the most well-read. So, I thought we’d bring to the forefront some evergreen features on PR.  Now, let’s review.

Communications Planning 101 - Developing a communications plan requires a disciplined approach. Your first order of business is reviewing your current program for impact and efficiency.

Cap The Spill, Then We’ll Talk

You’ve probably read about BP’s so-called social media efforts to shape the conversation about the oil spill. It’s not just BP. The government keeps barring journalists from the area in what seems to be a move to downplay the spill. There is plenty of blame to go around in this debacle.Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim has an interesting take on this topic, too.  Says Andy,

“Updates, Response, Statement, Briefing, Broadcast, Distribution, Push. Those are just some of the words that I found while looking around BP’s social media efforts for the Gulf oil spill. So, what’s missing? How about…Listening, Engaging, Discussing, Conversation, Dialog, Understanding.”