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Too Busy to Market Your Company?

For years, I’ve been offering advice to my husband that he should market his graphic design and web development business more. He always looked at me and said something like: “It’s on the list.” I usually then shook my head and thought that he needed better planning skills. This was before I left my 9-to-5…

Money Basics (Or So I Thought): What? Credit Cards Can Pay You Money?

Normally I stick to communication and business tips on this blog. However, today, I will deviate to share a funny, but surprisingly true story about money. Credit cards to be specific. Considering the current “financial crisis” that’s impacting everyone’s businesses, I think it’s relevant. Last night I had to call one of our banks, Bank…

Linkedin Now Has Events: Great for Associations and Local Networking Groups

Business networking website Linkedin.com now has an events function, which is a great step to really becoming a competitor to Facebook. For all of us who have ever worked in associations, this feature makes the pulse jump a tad! You can add an event and then link your participation to it, as a speaker, organizer…

Bad Press for a Penny: What NOT to Say If You’re a Spokesperson

My local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sent me an interesting story in their news email blast. The headline read: “City threatens blind woman over unpaid 1-cent bill.” Uh-oh, I thought: PR disaster. Some auto-billing mechanism is creating a havoc. Sure enough… The city of Attleboro, Mass. sent a nastygram to a 74-year-old blind resident…

10 Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals & Journalists

Every once in a while I come across a post on the web that is so valuable that I have this urge to print it and save it somewhere in a vault of “important informaton.” However, these days, I am retraining myself to save the link or if I must print it, print it to…

Promote Your Event with No Marketing Budget

I recently read an article in the ASAE Communications Section Newsletter about an association offering a new conference… one hitch: they had no marketing budget. What did they do? According to Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, his association used new media to inexpensively and effectively promote their conference. Della…

How to Avoid Becoming a Flop When You Speak

I read a very good article in Maximum Impact’s newsletter, called “7 Reasons Why Speakers Flop.” For years, I have worked with CEOs on speaking at conferences, and these are all things I worked to get across to each of them each year. As I read this article, I wanted to stand up and yell,…

Guidelines for Making Your Brainstorming Session More Effective

This is my second post on an innovation presentation that I recently attended by Kathie Thomas of Fleishman Hillard at the PRSA St. Louis monthly luncheon. Although Thomas presented many great ideas, one of the takeaways I enjoyed most was the brainstrorming guidelines. We’ve all been a part of such ridiculous brainstorming sessions at work…

Oops… Where’s My Attention to Detail?

Today I accidentally deleted all the “real” comments off this site when I deleted all the spam comments. How did I do this act of stupidity? Not paying attention to detail. I could blame this website’s interface, but in reality, I just wasn’t paying attention. It’s funny how all these years, I thought I was…

What’s Your Innovation Style?

I recently went to an excellent presentation on innovation hosted PRSA St. Louis. The speaker was Kathie Thomas of Fleishman Hillard (headquartered here in St. Louis). She’s their innovation guru, and this presentation was also presentated at a national PRSA conference. I thought I’d share a few bits of her presentation that I found interesting.…