How Not To Be An Annoying PR Professional March 4, 2010
Posted by Blake Sunshine in public relations.Tags: blogger relations, blogging, pitching, pr professionals, public relations
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I consider myself and the people I work with to be pretty innovative PR professionals. We really do work hard to send timely, informative information to editors at engineering publications. I realize that we aren’t always perfect, and that a lot of PR professionals suck at doing their jobs.
Which is why I got a huge kick out of this video from TechCrunch about PR professionals.
This video made me laugh, but it covers a lot of common mistakes that PR professionals make including:
1. Following-up too soon
PR Pro: Hi I’m just checking you got the email I sent.
Blogger: When did you send it?
PR Pro: Five minutes ago.
2. Sending news with an embargo
Blogger: No. What did it say?
PR Pro: I’d love to tell you, but you’ll have to agree to the embargo first.
Blogger: Ok whatever, I agree, now tell me more.
PR Pro: Can you email back first saying you agree to the embargo?
Blogger: Look, I honor the fucking embargo. Now tell me more.
3. Pitching bloggers who don’t care
PR Pro: A Silicon Valley based startup is going to announce a new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies targeting B2B. It will change the way social media marketing is done forever. Are you interested in a briefing with the company’s CEO.
Blogger: No, I don’t cover B2B.
PR Pro: But I thought you wrote about social media.
Blogger: I do, but not B2B.
4. Thinking your product is revolutionary when it’s not
PR Pro: But it is revolutionary.
Blogger: So are all the others.
So what can PR professionals do so they don’t look like the idiots in this video? Don’t be annoying, be timely, target the right editors/bloggers and don’t just say that your product is revolutionary, prove it.
Happy Texas Independence Day March 2, 2010
Posted by Blake Sunshine in blogging.Tags: texas, texas independence day
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Today is Texas Independence Day! If you live in Texas this is sort of a big deal, and if you don’t live in Texas you probably have no idea that today is Independence Day. And to be honest, I live in Texas and didn’t know what Texas Independence Day meant, so I decided I would look it up and educate you fine people.
So of course, I went to Wikipedia. And according to Wikipedia, Texas Independence Day is the celebration of the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. With this document, settlers in Mexican Texas officially broke from Mexico, creating the Republic of Texas.
Hooray! Freedom for Texans!
Thank you to all of the people who fought for the Independence of Texas and gave me:
Queso
Longhorn Football
And last, but not least…
Blue Bonnets (Oh how I love blue bonnets!)
Happy Texas Independence Day to all!
Beware The “Ideas” of March March 1, 2010
Posted by Blake Sunshine in social media.Tags: idea exchange, ides of march, social media, the ideas of texas, university of texas
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Whoa February, where did you go? The shortened month really threw me off and now, before I know it, it’s March. The month of March always reminds me of my Latin teacher Mr. Sharpe. In high school he would always remind us to beware the ides of March, which was the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated. Now I’m sure I have no reason to be afraid of anything happening in March, and with the start of spring I am more excited for this month than ever.
To me, March just screams the start of spring and a time for renewal and new ideas. And I am not the only person who is looking for big ideas in March. I’ve written before about how The University of Texas has been innovative in sharing information with their community through the Tower Talk blog.
But the innovation isn’t stopping there, because I just received an email that UT is starting “The Ideas of Texas.” This is just like a Dell Idea Storm (or NI Idea Exchange) that allows users to submit and vote for ideas that would make The University of Texas a better place to learn. I don’t know if there are any other universities doing this right now, but I think it’s an amazing idea for gathering and implementing feedback. And I couldn’t have said it better than President Powers. ”In these challenging times, when we must do more with fewer resources, sharing ideas is invaluable.”
So instead of being afraid of the Ides of March, I am making March my month of ideas. Let me know what you want me to write about, and I’ll do it. I am definitely not afraid of the ideas of March. Leave me a comment and let me know what you want to hear about.
(By the way, thanks for stopping in to read my blog. Do you like reading my posts and want to subscribe? Click here to subscribe via RSS and click here to subscribe via email. Thanks!)
The Seventh Inning Stretch March 1, 2010
Posted by Blake Sunshine in corporate, Me, millennials at work, public relations, social media.Tags: austin, austin texas, millennials, millennials at work, public relations, queso, social media, writing
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Tomorrow marks the end of month number seven since I moved to Austin and started my job at National Instruments. It feels good to have made it this far, especially because I doubted my ability to live here in Austin without all of my college friends. But things are coming along, and the past seven months have literally flown by. And while they were flying by, I’ve learned a few things about myself that I want to share…
1. I still love my bread and butter- I stayed in Austin for my job, and it’s a damn good thing because social media and public relations are still my bread and butter, and I’m as passionate about them as ever. If I’ve learned anything in the past seven months, it’s that you literally can not get up every day to do something you hate. And lucky for me, the industry that I suspected I would love seven months ago is the industry I love waking up to every day.
2. I still have work to do- Like I said above, I love what I do. But I still have a lot of work to do. The past seven months have really shown me that there is A LOT of stuff I don’t know and a lot of things I wish I were better at. My goal for the next seven months is to really, really work on my writing. Because it doesn’t do me any good to just be good at the few things I love to do, I also want to be good at the things that help me do my job better.
3. My queso tastes have changed- Seven months ago I would have told you that my favorite queso in Austin was at El Arroyo. But I was very, very wrong. Trudy’s has the best queso in Austin, and that is all I have to say about that.
So that’s what I’ve learned in seven months here in Austin, and I’m looking forward to an equally great next seven months.
