There’s a terrific website called Help a Reporter Out, otherwise known as HARO. The tagline is “everyone’s an expert at something.”  Publicizing peoples’ expertise is one of the ways that my agency has helped clients to obtain PR coverage over the years so we follow the media leads provided by HARO and pitch when there’s a good fit.

A work-obsessed triathlete named Peter Shankman started this site as a service to connect people like me who do PR with journalists who need information to write their stories. You can go to http://www.helpareporter.comand sign up to receive daily e-mails with tips on what reporters are looking for in terms of contacts and information.  There’s a whole comunity of HARO PR people and journalists now who are tied together by this site which also has a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. The whole concept reinforces to me how PR has gone social in the past several years, and how we as PR people must stay connected to what’s happening in these online communities to find leads on stories and find the right people to pitch our stories to. Continue Reading »

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 »

I wrote this article for my bi-weekly e-newsletter, “The NMC Report.”  If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to go to www.marshallpr.com and sign up to receive it by e-mail every other Tuesday.  Continue Reading »

This is going to date me, but when I was a teenager, while spending summers at our cottage on Damariscotta Lake, I used to collect S&H Green Stamps and paste them into the little green stamp books. Then my mom and I would go to Rockland where I could redeem my books full of stamps for “stuff.” I don’t remember what “stuff” I used to get, but back then, it was pretty darn exciting.

This brings me to the subject of fish bait. Rockland used to smell like fish bait. Mainers would say “that smells wicked.” I didn’t talk like a Mainer back then, so I would just say, “Mom, it stinks here!”

Well Rockland has cleaned up its act. It doesn’t smell bad there any more. It is a beautiful town with lots of boats, restaurants, and shopt so visit, not to mention the Farnsworth Art Museum where you can see works by the Wyeth Family and the Maine Lobster Festival where you can eat plenty of my favorite crustacean. Continue Reading »

My agency, Nancy Marshall Communications, puts out an e-newsletter every other week with useful information on Web marketing, Internet marketing and public relations.  It’s called The NMC Report.  I’d love to have you go to my Web site and sign up for it!

I’m going to give you a sneak peek of an article that will be coming out in tomorrow’s edition. It’s by Anna McDermott who is one of my agency’s account executives and an expert on social media.

Internet Marketing: What Really Works

by Anna McDermott, Nancy Marshall Communications

In the last issue of the NMC Report, I focused on how to use SEO and social media to market your company’s products or services online. Those are obviously both important and useful marketing tools, but there is more to the world of Internet marketing. Another favorite Internet marketing strategy is the use of email marketing. Continue Reading »

This morning my son was leaving for a ski race in Vermont for the week, and he realized that he was nearly out of ski socks. We have a problem with an overly excitable yellow lab who chews socks when people come to visit us at our house. It’s her way of trying to get attention. So our inventory of socks diminishes quickly.  The problem with replenishing the supply is that the type of socks my boys and my husband have been wearing for the past couple of years costs $16 a pair. 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 »

Social media is online content such as blogs, social networking like Facebook and podcasts published by people who want to conenct with others via the Web. Are you one of those who think social media is just a fad and will eventually fade away? I hate to tell you, but social media isn’t going anywhere, and businesses are quickly catching on to its effectiveness as a communications medium.
The momentum of social media will only continue to grow. Eric Brantner of Digital Labz, a search engine optimization and Internet marketing company, provides ten reasons why:

1. Everyone is using it.  According to one study, over sixty million Americans have read a blog. Worldwide, that number is closer to 30 million.

2. Social Media is Gaining Trust. One of the knocks on social media used to be that it wasn’t trustworthy.  Today, social media is one of the top sources of news and important updates.

3. It’s Still Growing.  According to newly released statistics, Facebook s now growing by about 600,000 users each day. Blog reading has grown by over 66% in the last year. Continue Reading »