How to Attract and Keep Superstars in Your Firm

"Top talent rarely leaves for reasons directly connected to remuneration but because the job is not satisfying in some intellectual way or because there is no sense that their worth is valued."

This might have been written with the legal profession in mind but it's equally applicable to the PR business. See Allison Shields' full post here.

Hat tip to Dennis Howlett. The quote at the start of this post is his.

Inappropriate headlines? - love it! magazine's "Raped by my dad"

Am I the only person who thinks that a magazine called love it! shouldn't carry the headline, "Raped by my dad"?

It's a real magazine. It's a real front cover. I saw it in my local supermarket.

How to take a good story and destroy it using corporate PR speak

Click here to learn how a press release can be written to appeal to a journalist.

Freelancer Chris Edwards finds a good release (a real one) and then rewrites it in corporate PR speak.

Guy Kawasaki: How to Kick Butt On a Panel

We all do media training and learn how to present properly. But who amongst us knows how to make best use of a panel?

Guy Kawasaki has an informative post on this right here.

(I know, I know. It feels a bit like Guy Kawasaki week here - but he's publishing some interesting stuff which I want to share!).

How to be a demo god

We all know at least one product manager who needs to learn how to give a good demo.

Guy Kawasaki gives his tips in How to Be a Demo God

Ten reasons to blog

Morgan McLintic lists his ten reasons for blogging:

1. To showcase my thinking
2. To raise my personal profile and kudos and therefore the value I can bring to my firm
3. To enhance my writing skills
4. To have my ideas challenged
5. To force me to read others' thoughts and keep up to date - perhaps carve my own niche.
6. To show passion
7. To show humour
8. To keep up with my competitors for the position
9. To increase my contacts in the industry
10. Because no list should end at nine.

These are in the comments section of MonkChips and are specifically about why Morgan would think about starting a blog if he were an analyst.

I think they articulate the reasons for blogging as well as any other list I've read. For that reason alone, they deserve sharing more broadly.

The Business Editors: Mainstream media: adapt or die!

Al Tepper over at The Business Editors looks at the new role that mainstream print media will play in the future.

It's a short piece and well worth reading. There's an interesting comment or two as well.

Why press releases aren't just for the press

David Meerman Scott has written a post on how "savvy marketing professionals use press releases to reach buyers directly." He's providing a complimentary e-book on the subject.

It seems like a good idea to me. Most journalists I speak to say that press releases are a waste of time. And nowadays, a lot of press releases are put out just to satisfy financial regulations.

Purists may hark back to a time when press releases were a valuable means of providing reporters with information and companies only put them out when they had something newsworthy to say. Those days - on the whole - are long gone. We all need to adjust to that change.

If press releases can also be used to positively influence another audience (this time, customers or prospective customers), then go for it. At the end of the day, that's what PR, marketing and advertising is all about.

Steve Rubel disagrees - not because it won't work but because a) it's not blogging and b) because press releases are only supposed to be for the press.

Thanks to Seth Godin for the original link.

A PR Guru's Musings: Economist article about PR industry

While I was on Stuart's site, I saw his latest post. It's about an article that The Economist has published on PR.

Stuart comments: "refreshingly, it's a straight business story." I'd agree. Well worth a read.

Media training blog from Guy Clapperton

Guy Clapperton is a freelance journalist in the UK and I've just found his blog. It's great. I love this story.

Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the link.

Andy Lark: How to kill news

Thanks to Andy Lark for the link - A CBS journalist on how to kill a news story

Blogs v PR

Shel Israel has got an interesting debate going on about the relative benefits of blogging and PR.

Shel's posted on why blogging is a better bet for early stage Web 2.0 companies than using a PR agency.

Mike Manuel at Media Guerrilla has responded here with a lengthy critique of Shel's argument.

There's more over at Communication Overtones as well as here and here.

Personally, I go with Mike's and Kami's view of the world on this one.

When is a blog not a blog

I saw this site - http://www.shirky.com/ - refered to as a blog the other day.

It delivers RSS but nothing else about it struck me as blog-like. No regular posts, no comments, no engagement with readers.

To me, Mr Shirky's website is just that. A website. It's not a blog. Am I wrong?

Is RSS a conversational tool?

One of the comments in PR Week's RSS feature came from Georg Kolb at Text 100.

He's quoted as saying "RSS is not just another distribution channel, it's a conversational tool."

This got me thinking. Every piece I've read on line has discussed RSS as a distribution method. That's how I see it. It's blogs that provide a means for companies to have conversations with their customers.

Perhaps there's something that I'm missing here. I need to go and do a bit more reading (and thinking).

Open (finds, minds and conversations)

My colleague Antony Mayfield from Harvard PR has started his blog. It's good too.

Called Open (finds, minds, conversations)..., it's all about

"Finds...
Sharing news, cool businesses and applications that I think are too good not to shout about...

"Minds...
Well ideas. Other people's thinking and mine. Innovations and business ideas. See if any of them are useful to you.

"Conversations...
Mainly it's about the conversations. With so much change in the air and the ether I'll bring to the blog some fruits of the more interesting conversations I've been party to (or just shamelessly eavesdropped on) and see if they have a life online."

PR advice from The Sunday Times

In today's Sunday Times, Matthew Wall looks at how small firms can combine to lobby against new laws that might hurt their businesses:

"It is also worth trying to get coverage in the press. You do not need a PR company for this. Simply do some research into the journalists who regularly cover your industry sector and write to them or invite them out to lunch. Similarly, target the relevant section editors and leader writers."

PR Week on RSS - The future of news is (really) simple

PR Week is running a major feature this week on RSS.

It features many names familiar to any regular IT PR blogger as well as a smattering of PR agencies and journalists.

For anyone familar with blogging, there won't be that many surprises.

Dan Gillmor - PR: It's a New World

Dan Gillmor - pioneer of citizen (or grassroots) journalism - has started writing a monthly column for PR Week.

I think it's only in the US edition but Dan has posted up the first piece on his blog, PR: It's a New World.

In it he looks at the changing nature of communication and how "traditional methods must give way to different kinds of conversations...the nature of corporate communications must change from top-down control to multi-directional openness - from lecture to conversation..."

CEO views on reputation management

Last year, Chime (owners of Bell Pottinger, Harvard and Insight) published a report CEO views on reputation management on the value of public relations, as perceived by organisational leaders.

It might be a year old but if you've not seen the report, it's still worth taking a look at.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I work for a Chime subsidiary).

The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade

I've just finished Piers Morgan's book, The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade.

It's a great read. Interesting, well written and full of insights into life as a national editor. Sometimes serious, sometimes trivial, sometimes surreal. Thoroughly recommended.

Insight sets up press release RSS feed

Our sister company Insight Marketing has just started putting out its press releases on RSS. I said I'd give them a plug.

Four Candles

Ronnie Barker's dead. It's hard to believe.

CSR: Just good business practice

I spent two hours today learning about CSR courtesy of SMART, one of our sister companies. I know a whole lot more now than I did before.

What struck me most was that CSR (or CR as it is now becoming known) is simply good business practice. If companies behave responsibly then more people want to work for them, more people want to buy from them, communities are more likely to accept them and governments are less likely to regulate against them.

Niall Fitzgerald, the former CEO at Unilever, summed it up nicely in The Guardian in 2003. "Corporate social responsibility is a hard-edged business decision. Not because it is a nice thing to do or because people are forcing us to do it... but because it is good for our business... More and more people are looking at companies and ask themselves if this is an organisation whose values they share. This is a hard-edged business issue."