Lots of PR talk hitting the scene as of late as PR peeps and bloggers argue about PR spamming, blacklists, and doing PR pitches right.

Just the messenger trying to collect them all in one spot. I do both sides of the PR biz… receiving-end and PR’ing end.

Advice, Arguments, Debates, and Articles

1. 5 PR Pitches: The Good and Bad
2. 7 Promises of the PR Pro [pdf file]
3. 15 Reasons To Just Freakin’ Do It…Stop The Complaining and Take Command! Make the Pitch Your Friend
4. Blacklisting Bloggers
5. Blacklisting PR Firms
6. Blogger Blacklist and other PR Pipe Dreams
7. Blogger Relations: I don’t need a new best friend.
8. The Caring and Feeding of the Press: If you read nothing else, start and finish here. Best article on the topic from the wonderful Esther Schindler.
9. Dear Nasty Reporter/Blogger
10. Die! Press Release, Die!
11. Dueling Blacklists: Bloggers vs. PR Firms
12. An Email Blacklist of Technology PR Agencies
13. Flacks Need Manners
14. For Immediate Release Podcast #345: Discussion on the topic about 8 to 10 minutes into podcast. [Link: Eric Eggertson]
15. The Growing Backlash against PR Spam, and the Rationale for MicroPR from Stowe Boyd.
16. How Do I Get Placement on Blogs?
17. How to Pitch to Bloggers
18. How NOT to approach JV partners and bloggers
19. How Not To Help a Reporter: Yeah, go right ahead. I dare you.
20. Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations
21. Matt Haughey on How to Pitch to Bloggers
22. Meet Lois Whitman, the Poster Child for Everything Wrong with PR
23. Not Short, Not Sweet, but to the Point…
24. PR Blacklists: Treating the Symptoms
25. PR blacklist won’t fix imperfect system
26. PR industry crisis and a lovely weekend
27. PR Bludgeons Itself Again
28. PR Lessons of a Clueless Blog Pitch
29. The PR Rolodex Myth
30. PR vs. the Bloggers part XXVII
31. Quelle surprise: Another PR Blacklist
32. Social media will not kill PR, but it does expose industry weaknesses
33. Sorry PR People, You’re Blocked
34. Stupid PR Watch: Reporter pet peeves
35. To Blacklist, or Not to Blacklist
36. Top Ten Lies PR Agencies Tell Their Clients
37. Twitpitch is the future
38. Twitter PR
39. Value of PR for Bloggers
40. Won’t Anyone Think of the Phone Calls?
41. Where Do We Go with Blogger Relations?
42. Why PR Folks Should Blacklist Bloggers
43. A Young Pro’s Take: Media Relations and the New PR Blacklist

And tons more… oi.

Resources

1. AngryJournalist: Journalist share what they really think of PR.
2. Art and Science of Blogger Relations eBook
3. Blogger Blacklist: Requires permission.
4. Global PR Week
5. Internet Press Guild
6. PR Spammers Wiki: Watch out for these PR folks… they spam bloggers.
7. Twitter Blacklist
8. Twittering Journalists Wiki: Lists journalists, reporters, and media outlets on twitter. PR folks, please don’t spam these nice people.

Blogs

1. Bad Pitch Blog
2. Beyond PR
3. Blinn PR Report
4. Blogging Me Blogging You
5. Common Sense PR
6. Corporate PR
7. Engage in PR
8. First Person PR
9. HighVizPR
10. Hispanic Marketing and PR
11. India PR
12. KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog
13. Launch PR
14. Online PR Thoughts
15. Naked PR
16. POP! PR Jots
17. PR 2.0 Blog
18. PR Blogger
19. PR Communications
20. PR Disasters
21. PR Interactive
22. PR Meets Marketing
23. PR Squared
24. PR Voice
25. PR Wordsmith
26. PR Works
27. Pro PR
28. PRoactive
29. PitchEngine
30. Publicity Hound
31. rajesh@blogworks
32. Corrine Weisgerber’s social media PR class
33. The Straight Pitch
34. Strategic Public Relations
35. Valley PR

Updated: December 17, 2008

If your PR and marketing folks aren’t tracking your company, brand, and competition online, they need to get up to speed to better do their jobs. If you play all of the roles, tracking your company and brand isn’t as time consuming as it sounds.

Remember alert services, blogs, and social network sites. Many of these can deliver updates to your inbox or phone.

Alert Services: Sends e-mail, text, etc. whenever your keyword shows up somewhere. Media services such as BBC News and TMCNet have their own alerts — so check out sites that cover your industry and sign up for their alerts. Here are general free keyword alert services.

1. AOL Alerts
2. Clip and Copy — three free searches in Basic account.
3. Google
4. GoogleAlert (not from Google) — gives three free searches).
5. Reuters
6. Twitbeep — Google alerts for twitter.
7. Twilerts — Google alerts for twitter.
8. Twitter Search — Even if you check your own @replies page, someone may have mentioned you and it’s good to check here.
9. Windows Live Alerts
   
10. Yahoo

Blogs: You can most likely find blogs for every industry. Numerous blog directories exist that to make a list here would be futile. MasterNewMedia has a hey-ugggeee list.

Social network sites: Also too many to list, but it should include Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and conversations like Twitter and forums. Also look for social networks covering your industry. The following sites/tools let you search Twitter with keywords:

• Summize
• TwitterMap search
• Google’s twitter search
• Terraminds
• Tweetscan

Track forums and other conversations with these sites:

• Boardtracker
• Omigili
• Klostu
• Twing
• Boardreader
• Twing

Resources

• Copybrighter
• Online Reputation Management Blog
• Online Reputation Management Guide
• Radically Transparent

Updated: January 16, 2009

• Memory Improvement Tips
• Top 10 PR Tips for Small Businesses
• Write with Authority and Inspire Trust
• The best time to submit news
• 8 violent truths about freelancing part one and part two
  
• 178 ways to improve your internet writing tips
• 2008 Webby Award Winners
• 50 greatest entrepreneurs of all time: Every person I could think of is already on the list. Anyone missing?

And for fun ‘cuz you’re allowed:

• Twitter cartoon and other funny Geek and Poke cartoon [Link: Buzz Bishop]
• Twitter Club
• Internet Pinball Database: My hubby’s favorite: High Speed.
• 32 places to find free shipping. Gotta love it especially when Amazon may be forced to charge tax to Texans.

• Liz Strauss on creating a successful blog with community. Long transcript (we deafies thank you), but great conversation. You can download the PDF for reading a bit at a time.
• Fail frequently. Edison didn’t fail 1000 times, he found 1000 steps to creating the light bulb. Also, think about how you deal with mistakes.
• Making Headlines: This takes time, but it will pay off.
• Online Writing: How one teacher uses social media in teaching a writing class.

And for fun because you’re allowed

• Bored people find x-ray machine
• Toddler sings The Beatles’ “Hey, Jude” [Link: Buzz Bishop]
• Traveling to a subway city? Hop to HopStop to get all the bus and subway guides. Washington, DC’s metro system is amazing — complete with information visualization through its maps. New York City? It only confused me. I’m underground, how am I supposed to know which way is north?

Geeky couple’s rings [Link: Chris Kieff] looks almost obscene. Chris and I were joking in Twitter. He said, “… I think it would be a little awkard to have them plugged together… God what a geek I am to think that!”

I replied, “Yeah, just amazing hooking ‘em up and trying to walk together side-by-side… ohhh, carpal tunnel!”

Reporters everywhere despise it when PR people call them and ask, “Did you get my [fill in the blank]?” Fill in the blank with your distribution preference: “e-mail, fax, or other means of distribution.”

We know e-mail can get lost somewhere on the Internet highway, but that doesn’t justify calling a busy reporter or editor with such a silly question. The Washington Post [Link: Publicity Hound] pokes fun at this frustrating practice.

One of my current projects involves contacting writers and editors of the appropriate publication (a mistake many PR people make… sending it to publications that have nothing to do with their release or business — or at least, they don’t make a connection).

Based on experience as a person on both the sending and receiving end of PRs, I think what’s most effective is a note personalized to the recipient and publication that focuses on what readers could get out of a story and proposing story ideas.

Some publications accept articles from companies (IF they’re not marketing-speak) — take advantage and propose story ideas that complement the publication and avoid topics that have already appeared in the publication unless it’s reporting something new or different. Using this method, two publication responded to my e-mail and we’re working on something.

At the end of the message, let the recipient know there’s a PR WITHIN the e-mail for FYI. Don’t make the message about the PR. Writing creative PRs works — but some clients prefer sticking with traditional PRs. Focus time and energy on that personalized intro.

With book coverage in print and newspaper sales declining, authors and publishers must extend their reach to the Internet if they want to boost book sales and publicity. Furthermore, authors are more involved in marketing their books than in the past as publishers can’t or won’t do enough.

Print publications still play a valuable role in books’ lives though the Internet offers many other advantages for promoting books:

• No need to rely on battery power, electricity, or a working Internet connection to read print.
• People leave finished copies of printed resources in doctor’s offices, coffee shops, and other public places for others to pick up.
• No shut down needed upon flight take off and landing.
• No taking it out of your carry on or briefcase to get through airport security.
• Fewer distractions and information noise as you don’t have links and animation enticing you away from your reading.
• Knowing where something starts and ends. The Internet consists of connected pages making it easy for someone to jump from page to page endlessly.
• Just open and read. No booting up, waiting for loading applications and pages, signing on…

Authors and publishers need to make the Internet their partner in marketing books. The Internet offers the following benefits:

• Cheap: It costs as little as $5 a month to have a Web site and $0 for a page on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bookhitch. Plus, add the book to your e-mail and discussion board signature for noticing when people read your e-mails and posts.
• Search: Search engines and Web sites help people find books on topics of interest.
• Access: Contact reviewers and bloggers who cover your book’s topic offering to send them a review copy. Also contact sites that publish book reviews like BlogCritics. The Internet also provides a great way to connect with reading groups. Many reading groups invite members to submit questions for the author to respond or hold a conversation online through chat or a Web-based application.
• Network: Forums, online groups, and social networks allow you to connect and interact with potential readers and reviewers.
• Link: Contribute articles to article libraries, online magazines, and other online resources where you can have a byline that links to your Web site or book ordering page.

Start or boost online book marketing with help from the following resources:

• Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book!, walks the talk with his blog and Myspace page on this topic.
• Christopher Diggins’ Marketing Your Book Online guide
• 101 Book Marketing Sites
• BookSistah Blog often covers book marketing. Sophfronia Scott also has book and writing articles in EzineArticles.
• SalesRankExpress has a tool for checking a book’s Amazon sales rank.
• Future Perfect Publishing blog often covers book marketing.
• 27 ways to sell more books doesn’t focus on online book marketing, but authors can integrate its tips with online marketing.

How’s this for irony? I watched The Shipping News a couple of days ago before reading this book. One of my favorite parts of the movie was the main character learning how to write strong headlines. Instead of the dull “Horizon Fills with Dark Clouds,” his co-worker suggested, “Imminent Storm Threatens Village.”

The main character, an honest man, asked, “But what if no storm comes?”

“Village Spared From Deadly Storm.”

Writing attention-getting releases isn’t about lying, but about putting a creative twist on the truth. Free Publicity is unique in that it’s written by a person who is typically on the receiving end of the releases instead of someone who has spent years writing and submitting them. I’m more interested in what the recipient wants than what the person who has written a ton of them thinks they want.

Crilley is a TV news reporter in Dallas who shares his experiences in book that takes about an hour to read because it’s fast-paced, grabs your attention and keeps it. That’s how good these stories are and why they got Crilley’s attention. Each chapter provides a few key points and those points are reiterated at the end of the chapter for easy referencing.

The author is on target when he suggests honesty even when things are bad. If Clinton had come clean from the start of it, the whole scandal involving him and “that woman” might not have been the big deal that it came to be. The media is going to keep nibbling until it gets what it wants or arrives at the truth.

Within moments of reading the book, ideas started floating in my head on how to bring more attention to a few things needing spotlight. This simple book has it all: it’s fast, easy, useful, and humorous.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Free Publicity: A TV Reporter Shares the Secrets for Getting Covered on the News
AUTHORS: Jeff Crilley
PUBLISHER: Brown Books Publishing Company
PUBLICATION DATE: December 2002
ISBN: 0972647406
FORMAT: Paperback
PAGES: 128
PRICE: USD: 12.95
CDN: 13.65
UK: 6.34

Lois Carter Fay brought this week’s Global PR Blog Week to my attention. More details are also available in TheNewPRWiki.

I look forward to seeing what information is gleaned each day. Today’s topic is PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism with Trevor Cook, Don Crowther, Dan Forbush, and others.

I am interested in seeing how effective this event is especially since it is more accessible to me than a typical conference. As a person with profound hearing loss, I get exhausted trying to lipread the speakers and miss a lot of information. Plus, with the huge amount of blogs out there — how many people are going to find out about this one and take the time to visit it? I only find out about it because I happened to be in recent contact with Lois.