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 »

Ragan.com, a company that shares useful info about public relations and marketing communications, just posted an interview with Adam Brown, who is in charge of social media at Coca-Cola. I strongly encourage you to read the article and watch the video. 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 »

I’m giving a presentation this Friday to a group of executive directors who are members of the Maine Association of Nonprofits. The topic is ‘developing a communications plan for nonprofit organizations.’ I’ve been working on a handout and a PowerPoint presention and thought I’d share some of my thoughts here.

In the most basic terms, when developing a communications plan, there are four things to consider.

1. The recipient of the message.

2. The sender of the message.

3. The message.

4. The tools used to send the message. Continue Reading »

I may have mentioned here before that I belong to a national network of agencies called the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies which is managed by Dave Wood of the Agency Management Roundtable.  At our last meeting, Dave talked about a new business development guru named Robb High. Dave had attended one of his day-long workshops and learned a lot.

So when I received an E-mail last week from Robb High announcing a series of upcoming seminars on new business development for agencies, I opened it up right away. He is coming to Boston next Tuesday but unfortunately I already have plans that day. Continue Reading »

My husband Jay and I have been in Chicago for a conference presented by Dave Wood of Agency Management Roundtable.  We’ve been interacting with several other marketing communications agencies which is always stimulating. It’s great to hear what’s happening in our business in other markets across the country. Continue Reading »

Yesterday I was a presenter at a conference about Marketing and PR for a group of professionals in the marine trades, composites and boat building industry in Maine. The first session was about Traditional Public Relations methods and the second session was about Social Media. 

One of the things we talked about is creating groups in MySpace and Facebook. I wanted to post an example of a MySpace group for owners of Hatteras Yachts.  There are pros and cons to creating a group in MySpace or creating a group on your own Website. If it resides on your site, you have more control, however if it resides on MySpace, you can access a larger number of people who might not already be visiting your site, and you can drive traffic to your site with links.

I’d like you to weigh in here on the pros and cons of having a group on your own site or on FaceBook or MySpace.  My PowerPoint is too large of a file to post here but let me know if you’d like me to email it to you.

Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking to a lively and energized group of women at the monthly meeting of the Maine Women’s Network at the Weathervane Seafood Restaurant in South Portland.

As promised, here is my list of ten tips on Branding and Public Relations. I encourage the women who were in the audience to leave comments with their own thoughts on branding and experiences in the realm of public relations and marketing.

Also check out my White Paper on “How to Build a Stronger Brand Image Through Publc Relations,” or my white paper on “Harnessing the Power of Conversational Marketing.” Continue Reading »

I think I was born to promote. As the saying goes, “you can’t deny your karma,” so I’m running with it.

 Now that I have a blog, I have something new to promote. I want more traffic to the blog partly because I want it to be successful and partly because my agency is in the business of counseling our clients on how to create their own blogs that rank high in the search engines. Continue Reading »

I’m a member of the Society of American Travel Writers, known as SATW.  At the most recent annual convention of the organization, Shel Holtz gave a fascinating and inspirational presentation about social media. As marketers, we can no longer think that our clients simply need Web sites, instead, we need to take into consideration how they build online communities around their brands. He talked about blogs, podcasting, and wikis. His presentation is available online.

Shel talked about how important it is to have a social media presence for building a brand and a reputation. It helps your organization to build a community around your brand, which in turn helps your reputation.

The statistics are compelling. Shel Holtz said that 1.3 million blogs are posted every day; that’s 18 per second; 100,000 new blogs are created every day, that’s two per second. The blogosphere doubles every 236 days, and there are now more podcasts than global radio stations. There are 100 million MySpace profiles and 50 million Facebook profiles, as well as nine million LinkedIn profiles. These numbers have inevitably increased since September of 2007 when he gave his presentation. Thanks to Diana Rowe who recorded all these statistics in the February/March edition of the SATW Traveler newsletter which is made available to SATW members as part of their membership dues.

I’ve been listening to Shel’s podcasts for the past several months and I encourage you to check it out if you are interested in the social media universe.