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A Public Relations Crisis Management Allegory: The Tornado
My heart goes out to the people of Moore, Oklahoma. As emergency personnel and government officials described the disaster relief efforts after the terrible tornado this week, I was reminded that many...
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Facebook Best Practices: 5 Rules for Business Facebook Pages
In a recent post I argued that Facebook can be very useful as a public relations tool but is not a good way to advertise. Instead, Facebook can provide a wonderful channel to build visibility,...
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Business Creativity: Innovation in the Workplace
I see a lot of job descriptions. In the list of employee attributes, creativity (or innovation) is one of the universally necessary personality traits along with team player, flexibility,...
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Good Content: Best Practices for Every Call to Action
People need direction. If you don’t tell them what to do, and how, they are unlikely to do it. In marketing, those instructions are known as the call to action and every instance of marketing content...
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Email Best Practices: Anatomy of an Effective Channel
My son tells me that no one in his generation uses email anymore. They would rather text message or interact on social media. The studies verify that—but only for personal messaging. For relationship...
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Handling a Public Relations Crisis
Case Studies of Crisis Management Steps Paula Deen’s financial empire continues to unravel after complaints that she had used the “N” word and told offensive racist jokes. Her appearance on the Today...
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The Hazards of Overextending Your Marketing Strategy
Business people often reach out to me to help them enhance their marketing strategy by adding new initiatives. I often wonder why they didn’t start by determining their marketing objectives. If there...
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Business Management-Firing Employees: The Baby and the Bath Water
Two of my friends were laid off last week. My heart goes out to both of them, but I also pity their companies. In both cases, rather than trying to determine whether the conflicts the company perceived...
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Social Media: Pied Piper Going Nowhere
Lead and they will follow. With social media, the problem can be in finding somewhere to go. This week I visited with another marketing practitioner. He was telling me about his frustration after...
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Prospering in the Contract / Freelance Economy
Yesterday on the Diane Rehm show on National Public Radio I heard a discussion of the labor shift toward engaging short-term, part-time, contract workers to meet business needs. The panel included...
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Companies and Individuals: Know Who You Are and Brand Yourself
Individuals have personalities and value systems. So do companies. In marketing “Brand Identity” is the word that describes the persona of a person as well as of an organization. For collectives and...
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Management Oversight that’s Overdone
Have Formal Policies and Procedures that are Practical and Reasonable In an effort to eliminate waste, in many organizations the supervisory and project control systems can cost more than they save....
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Content Marketing Extended to Scent Branding
Using branding, marketers try to establish a positive impression, compel action, and then build customer loyalty. As a content marketer I am accustomed to considering how appearance and sound (speech,...
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Marketing Goes Local – Reinforce Your Online Presence
In an effort to keep my expertise sharp, I attend a lot of marketing programs. In the last month, I have been to four presentations about accentuating local search rankings to build sales. It seems...
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Selecting the Right Social Media Channel for Your Business
Correctly used, social media provides the opportunity to interact with your community of customers and prospects and build relationships. It also offers a great way for your followers to alert you to...
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Mitigating Significant Business Risks
My personal curiosity about human behavior and my business interests converge when I begin considering how people make choices. As a result, I read a lot of books about decision-making processes. As a...
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Overcoming Workplace Bias: Sexism, Ageism, Racism and Other Stereotyping in...
Here is a still from the discussion about Wall Street. Notice that as Jones was speaking, Robertson and Griffin were visibly distancing themselves from him with their body language. Vascular surgeries...
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The Content Conundrum: How to Evaluate Content Quality
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were clear markers that helped readers and viewers to judge reliability. In those days, the context provided the audience with an easy way to evaluate the...
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Resumes are Marketing Documents
As a marketer, I have always found that it is more difficult to market myself than it is to market a business or someone else. I don’t like describing who I am because it feels like bragging and I...
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Adding Zing to Old Spice with Viral Video and Social Media
I attended the Social Media Club of Dallas meeting on October 24th to hear Dean McBeth, one of the architects of the hit “Manliest Man” campaign for Old Spice described this best-in-class example of a...
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