If you’ve been following this Maine PR Maven blog for any period of time, you have read about the process we have been going through to develop a new Web site for our own agency.

And you may know the saying “The Shoemaker’s Children Have No Shoes.” I understand why the shoemaker struggled to keep his own children in shoes. I feel his pain. When you have customers who want your products, you always feel that taking care of their needs is more important than taking care of your own. Continue Reading »

How often have you spent time adding contacts on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, all the time wondering if the investment of your precious time would actually lead to something (other than creative procrastination from what you should really be doing at any given moment?) Continue Reading »

OK. I confess. I have the same New Year’s resolutions for my personal life as I have over the past….well…..maybe 10, 15, or even 20 years! Exercise more, spend more quality time with my family, listen more and better, stop rushing all the time, get organized, and lose weight!  No problem, right?  Hopefully I won’t have the same resolutions again in 2011!

But Ragan.com, on its Daily PR Newsfeed today, had some realistic New Year’s Resolutions. I decided to share them with you here. Many of them apply to what I’m working on with my business, such as updating our Web site and revising our branding. How about you? Do you have New Year’s PR Resolutions?  I’d love to know what they are!

With firm resolve: 15 resolutions for PR professionals
By Tom Nixon (from www.ragan.com)
Let the calendar remind you not just that it’s January—but it’s also 2010!

It’s that time of year again: time to make a well-intended list of our priorities for the new year—all of which we’ll forget come Jan. 16 or so.

But it shouldn’t be so. When doing your company’s strategic planning, new year’s resolutions are not made to be broken. They should chart your company’s success for the next 365 days and well beyond.

If you’re having trouble making your company’s new year’s resolutions with respect to your public relations, marketing and overall branding goals, here—allow us:

1. This is the year I will finally align my brand’s identity with the brand we wish our company to have, not just that which has sloppily evolved over time.

2. I resolve to at least monitor Internet conversations relevant to my company, its product or services, my industry and my competitors, even if I do not plan to “engage” in social media in 2010.

3. I will engage the C-suite of my organization to align the business’s overall objectives and priorities with that of my entire communications program.

4. I commit to bringing my Web site out of the 1990s and into the second decade of the 21st century.

5. I will not jump blindly into social media until I have identified my audiences, goals and metrics and have defined success.

6. I will understand the difference between the press release in 2010 and the press release of 2001 and will learn how I can leverage the inherent advantages of the press release, version 2.0.

7. I will stop wishing that my company appeared on the first page of search results relevant to my industry and suite of services and will actually do something about it.

8. As the economy begins to turn the corner, I will maximize this opportunity I have to convincingly define my company’s identity, messaging, its differentiators, its value proposition and its market position, so that we can hit the imminent upturn firing on all cylinders.

9. If I have a blog, I will keep it updated, and I will use it as an outpost to drive traffic to my Web site and/or as a home base to which I will drive traffic from other Internet outposts, such as social media channels.

10. I will update or establish my company’s media kit, including our company profile, fact sheet and biographies of key personnel.

11. I resolve to have my social media policy drafted and in place by March 1, 2010.

12. I will conduct a thorough audit of my brand, my industry, my competitors and relevant trends existent on conversation platforms online, identifying strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOTs).

13. I shall examine every piece of marketing collateral, corporate identity or external representation of my company’s name, logo and description and make 100% sure that they all match—and that we’re happy with what they say.

14. I will commit to understanding how search engines are changing and what this all means to my business.

15. I will not have to make any of these resolutions again in 2011.

Tom Nixon is partner of Bingham Farms, Mich.-based Identity Marketing & Public Relations.

People are changing the way they read books. Amazon put out a press release on Christmas Day saying that more Kindle books were sold this holiday season than ”physical”  books. 

I don’t have one yet.  I still love to curl up in my cozy bed and read a book while I  hold it in my hands. I like the feel of the paper and the heft of the book. Sometimes I like to underline and highlight things in the book.  I also like to mark my place with a bookmark or by turning the page corner over (only on paperback books, however.)

On the other hand, my brother Walter (who is six years my senior) digests books at am amazinng pace, so he loves his Kindle becsause it allows him to acquire and consume several new titles each week. And my friend Ross loves his because he likes to read the New York Times on it each morning.

I imagine I’ll get one at some point, but for now, I am going to stick with my old-fashioned paper books. Continue Reading »

My 17 year old son Craig recently won third place in an international video competition related to his sociology class at Carrabassett Valley Academy which is taught by Eric Chamberlin. The competition relates to the book “The World is Flat“  by Thomas Friedman.  I think this project is a great example of how teachers around the world can bring students together via the Web to work collaboratively.  Check out his video on YouTube. I may be partial since I am his mom, but I think it is very clever. And he composed the music himself on his computer, too! Continue Reading »

We publish a monthly e-newsletter called The NMC Report that focuses on the intersection between public relations and the Web. Since my agency was founded in 1991 purely as a public relations firm, and has grown from there into a full-service Web site development, Marketing Communications and Internet Marketing agency, we use our e-newsletter to share our knowledge and expertise with our readers. Continue Reading »

Many of you know that my agency is handling the PR and Web site for Saddleback Maine where they are currently building the largest glade in the East. It’ll be called Casablanca, not after the famous movie but after a ’streamer fly’ which is famous for catching trophy trout in the Rangeley Lakes Region. All the trail names at Saddleback are fly fishing-related.

So last week Icalled Scott Thistle, who is regional editor at the Lewiston Sun Journal, and in a previous life a ski patroller at Sugarloaf. I invited him and his buddy/photographer Russ Dillingham to head up to Saddleback and do a story about “A Day In a Life of a Glade Cutter.”  Not only did they go and create a two-page feature that appeared in the newspaper on Sunday November 15, but they also did a video that appeared on their Web site, called “The Sawyers of Casablanca Movie.” Continue Reading »

This morning, Greg Glynn from my agency team and I presented a seminar on Social Media for Small Businesses at the Skowhegan Community Center. The workshop was sponsored by our client, Skowhegan Savings.  We talked about how small businesses need to define their goals, their identity, and their key messages before diving into the pool of social media. We recommended that people who are totally new to social media start by establishing an account on Linked In to start experimenting with the power of increasing your network of contacts. Continue Reading »

This week I attended one of my twice-yearly meetings with the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies. You can check out our new portal Web site at www.amcagroup.com.  This meeting was held in Phoenix, so I went from snowy weather in Maine to 90 degree heat in the Arizona desert. I love the diversity!

One of the agencies in our group walked us through a “Brand Re-launch” they just did for a communiity hospital. I was really interested in their process because it is similar to our “Marshall Plan” process that we use for cliens who need to define their brand and map out a comprehensive marketing communications strategy. Continue Reading »

Happy Halloween from the Maine PR Maven!

I still haven’t decided what I am going to be for Halloween. I’ve been working on my computer all morning today, so this afternoon I need to get into my closet and figure something out.  What would I wear other than my normal clothes if I wanted to be the Maine PR Maven?  Hmmm, I will need to think about that. I may be heading to Kingfield tonight for the Halloween Spooktacular at the Herbert Grand Hotel.

My friend and fellow alumna of Colby College, Heidi Murphy, owner of the local newspaper, The Irregular,  alerted me to this event. Thanks Heidi!