The closest thing that I have to a school-year cycle is my ongoing work for the Chicago District Council of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Last week, with “Defending the `Burbs: An Investment Outlook for Chicagoland Suburbs Compared to the CBD,” I began my fourth year of writing summaries for ULI Chicago at the monthly […]
Category Archives: Public Relations
Four of the top reasons why publicists should shoot their own videos: 1. It provides another avenue for communicating directly with your target audience. Uploading a clip onto a site like YouTube creates a permanent home for you to convey your message, long after the story pitch’s original timeframe. 2. It is a helpful tool […]
Groupon is without a doubt one of the sharpest double-edged swords in marketing and public relations today. On one side, it can slice through the marketplace chatter and clatter and get your company’s message out to large chunks of the population in a single, smarmily scrawled offer. On the other side, it can irritate existing […]
You don’t grow when people don’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. And you don’t grow (at least in a healthy way) when people tell you how wonderful you are. As I tell everyone who becomes an Inside Edge PR associate, failure to personably push back (to question, to challenge, to offer a different […]
A few hours ago, I came across a typo on a major newspaper chain’s website. It had misspelled the name of one of the towns in its drop-down index. I alerted an editor I know, and he got it fixed pronto. “Thanks,” he wrote me. “I can’t believe no one (including me) caught that.” I […]
Happy new month, even if it means yours truly is no longer receiving as much exposure on calendars throughout the Oak Park-River Forest-Forest Park area. For 31 days, some 5,000 calendars in the area displayed my alter ego from late 2009, Super Shopper Spotter. It was a character I developed for the “Shop the Village” […]
The headline today in Ragan’s PR Daily reads, “Study: LinkedIn top social media site for journalists.” So, at first blush, it might be tempting to fire off that next news release straight through LinkedIn to your target list of media members. And while that may well be the eventual path you take, it behooves you […]
Hurricane Irene is making quite a name for herself. Any organization looking to do the same ought to consider how their products or services can dovetail with Irene in a legitimate, winsome manner. This is hazardous PR terrain and going about it clumsily can backfire on you. A triumvirate of “S”-ential points to consider: Be […]
Exactly a week ago, my kids got an unexpected treat at Pump It Up in Elmhurst. As it happened, last Monday was their 8th birthday, and the trip was a last-minute addition in an already-crowded day of activity for my wife. As she filled out the admission form for the duo, she mentioned that she was not suffering […]
Earlier this month, I received a hand-written thank you note in the mail from an undergraduate at Northwestern University, my alma mater. That was impressive. The personally written, but hardly personalized letter from a Northwestern undergraduate. Then I read the note – and if it wasn’t a verbatim transcription of a form letter, then I […]