“Never Hire a PR Firm”

Maverick Mark CubanThat NBA champ, author, and billionaire blogging maverick Mark Cuban offered up some mostly sound advice to the startup community this week in a post titled “Mark Cuban’s 12 Rules for Startups” on Entrepreneur.com.I say mostly because his #11-ranked recommendation read as follows: “Never hire a PR firm. A public relations firm will…… Continue reading “Never Hire a PR Firm”

Friday’s Video Views

Mining Twitter’s SecretsWhen one thinks of search, Google, Bing and Yahoo! come first to mind. In fact, whole industries have arisen for helping individuals and enterprises mine and make sense of search data, let alone the troika of popular social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others. While much of one’s data on…… Continue reading Friday’s Video Views

Robo Pitch

From today’s Twittersphere:TechCrunch’s @robinwauters PR pitches I hate: “You have probably already seen the news that blah blah. As you’re drafting your coverage of the news, blah blah blah.”TheNextWeb’s @alex I actually did see the news, and passed. Pitches like that mean I made the right call. Comes across as very arrogant, too.Ad Age’s @Aerocles…… Continue reading Robo Pitch

Friday’s Video Views

Here’s this week’s edition of Friday’s Video Views, entertaining and sometimes edifying video clips from around the Web: “An Inconvenient PR Truth” – If Al Gore turned his sights on the pollutive effects of PR Spam, this is what might emerge (albeit with a British accent). Of course, violators can always test drive MatchPoint, (a…… Continue reading Friday’s Video Views

The Bad Pitch Wiki

As the long-time, but recently retired editor of the Gawker-owned A-list blog Lifehacker, Gina Trapani has moved effortlessly in tech and social media’s rarefied circles. In her editorial gatekeeper role, she also received more than a fair share of inane or misguided story pitches from lazy or vendor-reliant PR people.Now that she’s out of her…… Continue reading The Bad Pitch Wiki

Hocus Vocus

I have nothing personal against Vocus. It’s all professional. First, I should say that I’m not a subscriber to this media database management, distribution and monitoring company. I have been known to disseminate a release or two via PR Web, which happens to be owned by Vocus.I should also disclose that I co-developed with a…… Continue reading Hocus Vocus

The End of PR Spam?

I’ve been in the PR game for a while, and as long as I can remember, clients have judged and compensated PR pros based on their ability to build a positive presence in the media. This client-agency paradigm hasn’t changed much over the years, though the means for building that presence, and the nature of…… Continue reading The End of PR Spam?

Good and Plenty PR Pitch

It was refreshing to see Susan Getgood acknowledge a “good” story pitch from a PR person (courtesy of Mir Kamin). I mean how many more blogposts can we bear maligning PR “pros” who blindly send their misguided and unsolicited story ideas into the overflowing e-mailboxes of beleaguered journalists?How many PR blacklists need to be created…… Continue reading Good and Plenty PR Pitch