This morning I had the pleasure of giving a presentation to an engaged group of people involved with early childhood education and family services at the Augusta Civic Center. Called “Engaged Communities, Growing Small Children,” the conference focused around a book called “The Charismatic Organization, 8 Ways to Grow a Nonprofit,” by Shirley Sagawa. I tied my presentation in to Shirley’s book by talking about how organizations can engage themselves better with their communities through effective communications if they share their stories and newsworthy events on an ongoing basis. Continue Reading »

I met with a client recently who was struggling with ways to come up with ideas for their company’s blog and Facebook pages. They felt that every blog post had to be about something new and newsworthy happening at their company and every Facebook post had to have something worthy of front page news coverage.

I told them that one of the beauties of social media is that it allows public relations people like me or organizations’ representatives to show the human side of the company. I said, “don’t be afraid to share your personality, talk about what you’re doing, what you’re reading and what you find interesting.”

Of course you should post news about new hires, awards, new clients, new projects or other ‘hard’ news items. But your blog readers, or friends and fans on Facebook will also be interested in what books you are reading, what articles you find interesting, and random things happening at your company, like a visitor from out of state or a moose walking through your driveway. Social media is an act of socializing, which includes some ‘chit chat’ about yourself that helps others get to know you better.

How do you think creatively when it comes to brainstorming ideas for content on your blog, tweets on Twittter, or posts on your Facebook page? I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this topic.

Thanks to Kevin Gove, one of my long-time account executives at Nancy Marshall Communications, for providing this article with tips for successful blogging. Kevin’s article will be featured in our bi-weekly e-newsletter, “The NMC Report,” coming out today. If you haven’t already, please go to our website at www.marshallpr.com and sign up to receive The NMC Report, which is packed with useful (and free!) information about the intersection PR and social media. 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 »

You know the expression, “the shoemakers’ children have no shoes.”

I can relate to that old shoemaker. He is busy making shoes for his paying clients. When the day is done, he has to go home and do his chores, including taking care of his children and his home. The poor shoemaker has no time to make shoes for his own children.

Yet if he doesn’t, the children will have cold feet and then they will get sick. (Luckily the shoemaker lived in the day before the H1N1 Virus, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So here at Nancy Marshall Communications, we’re in the business of helping our clients to define their brands, their key marketing messages, and the “look and feel” of their identity. We do this work with great enthusiasm all day long.  But recently it became obvious that due to our business growth and expansion, and we needed to look at our own brand, I was overcome with a certain sense of paralysis. Continue Reading »

When I first learned about Search Engine Optimization(SEO), I was working with a Maine whitewater rafting company that had their accountant optimizing their site for them in his spare time. He was able to easily baffle me by talking about the logarithms for each of the search engines. This was at least 10 years ago, back around the time that we were spending a lot of time worrying about how all our computers were going to crash with the onset of Y2K.  Back then, we didn’t think about Google as much as we did Yahoo, Alta Vista, and even AskJeeves. Today, Google rules the roost when it comes to SEO.

Being a typical PR person, I have always thought more about words and images than about numbers. So when I even heard the word “logarithm,” I was immediately convinced that I would never be able to “do” SEO. The accountant easily convinced me that I needed to pay him to do it for my own site and my clients’ sites. Continue Reading »

This is my son Craig, preparing to go waterskiing earlier this summer. He’s also preparing to apply to college, as he is now entering his senior year in high school. As Craig and I have been thinking about options for college, and examining the literature from the various colleges, I have thought a lot about the way that colleges present themselves to prospective students and their parents.

So when I received my bi-monthlyenewsletter today from Michael Katz,  a guru of e-mail newsletters, describing his college search with his own son, my interest was piqued. I highly recommend that you check out his site  and sign up for his e-newsletter, which he publishes every other Friday.  

Michael’s newsletter today especially caught my eye because he is going through the college tour experience with his son that I have been going through with Craig.  Mike wrote about how the college tours are presented totally through the eyes and personal experiencees of the tour guide.  Continue Reading »

There’s an article in the new issue of  ”Mountain News”  by ski writer Roger Leo about Chip Carey,  who recently was hired to head up Marketing at Jackson Hole Resort in Wyoming.  I had the privilege of working for Chip at Sugarloaf in the Communications Department from 1984 to1991, then when I started my agency, he was my client for most of the 1990’s.

There is no question that Chip is a great PR man.  As Roger Leo writes in the article, he has always been ahead of the curve on technology and he considers that “the medium is the message.”  He bought one of the first fax machines in 1971 and he was responsible for creating the first website in the ski industry in the 1980s. He also started the closed circuit cable TV station that is still broadcasting at Sugarloaf and has grown into the Resort Sports Network which is now a national broadcasting and marketing company. Continue Reading »