Who said nice guys finish last? Being nice—cordial, respectful, patient—pays dividends, whether in public relations, marketing or, yes, even journalism. Say, for instance, you are a newspaper reporter getting stonewalled in your efforts to reach someone getting paid $1,000 a month to serve on a town commission that has never met. (In fairness, this commission doesn’t […]
As circumstances have played out, this post represents the second consecutive basketball-related piece. Fortunately, this one has a much happier, benign thrust than the prior story about my long-ago interactions with, and writing about, the late, could-have-been-so-great Len Bias. Just a brief mention here of my ambidextrous free throw-shooting zeal, as chronicled by fellow Oak […]
The story-telling process often unfolds in isolation, but shouldn’t be an entirely solo act. Before the story reaches the masses, or even just gets in front of a select group of interested individuals, we ought to arrange for at least one additional set of eyes to review our work. That’s a lesson I learned in […]
Not long ago, I began seeing “Boost Post” instead of “Promote Post” on the various Facebook pages that I administer. Whether it was the Five Seasons Family Sports Clubs in Northbrook and Burr Ridge, McAdam Landscaping in Forest Park, the Kenosha Area Business Alliance, my own Inside Edge PR page, or any of the others, […]
With a colorful, playful sign out front touting its “little teeth big smiles” motto, Children’s Dentistry of Forest Park has been an eye-catching attraction along Harlem Avenue for years. But the practice’s founder, Dr. Jerry Udelson, isn’t one to rest on any laurels. As a result, the popular pediatric practice (and Inside Edge PR client […]
It was the first week of November 1981, and the price of a first-class U.S. stamp had just jumped to 20 cents, a 5-cent bump from only eight months earlier. That’s the week when I planted my entrepreneurial roots–as well as my passion for helping start-ups gain marketing and public relations exposure. What got it […]
It isn’t quite the opposite of public relations—that would be private estrangement—but there are some instances where an individual or organization needs what I call “private relations.” Now, before you misconstrue that term with some scandalous undertones, let’s elaborate on private relations, at least in this context: it’s the ability to connect more effectively on […]
I’m always amused when I see someone with hardly any credentials at all drone on about their illustrious lives with platitudes and white noise, while globally renowned figures like John Grisham keep their bios to 20 words. Having written scads of bios over the past 20-plus years, and seen others’ work both stellar and abysmal, […]
When is the last time you broke down a daunting marketing or public relations goal into smaller pieces? Marathon runners do it all the time until their ultimate goal, finishing the race, is simply another smaller objective on the heels of a stream of other, manageable goals. On April 20, those who witnessed George Hood […]