Five Key Elements of a Successful Funding Announcement

By Candice DeForest | Sep 30, 2016

Congratulations – your startup has received a mega round of funding. You have just a few weeks until the announcement date and while the planning process will be fast and furious, the strategy must be buttoned up to ensure success. Like any corporate news, a successfully executed funding announcement will take thoughtful planning, a well-designed […]

Read More

The Misconceptions of Public Relations

By Carly Langdon | Sep 29, 2016

You may not realize it, but you are exposed to the fruits of public relations every day, in every medium. From social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to traditional media like television, newspaper and radio, many of the pieces you enjoy are the direct result of a public relations professional doing her job. There […]

Read More

Beautiful Product Packaging on a Budget

By Kris Travis | Sep 29, 2016

Between Kickstarter, Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, e-commerce plugins, etc., it’s easier than ever to sell products direct to consumer. However, many solopreneurs and startups don’t have big budgets for product packaging, and yet they certainly want packaging that reflects the quality of their products. There are some creative options to consider that allow for custom branding, clean […]

Read More

Thought Leadership the Hard Way

By A.wordsmith | Sep 23, 2016

A lot of PR pros are eager to tell you how easy it is to be a thought leader: “3 Simple Ways to Become a Thought Leader in 15 Minutes or Less,” “How to Become a Thought Leader in a Month or Less,” and “You Can Be A Thought Leader: The Secret To Being Inspiring.” […]

Read More

How to Communicate a Business Name Change

By Gretchen Hoffman | Sep 20, 2016

There are a number of reasons organizations change their names, from mergers or company splits (Anderson Consulting to Accenture in 2001) to wanting to better align their names with an evolving service or product line (Apples Computer to Apple in 2007) or even distance themselves from a product in the portfolio (Phillip Morris to Altria […]

Read More

Influence Used Right: Big Brands Demand Diversity from Agency Partners

By Kelda Rericha | Sep 6, 2016

Take a look at this picture of 2014’s most senior leaders at the top 13 PR agencies by revenue, and the top two agencies by revenue growth in 2013: Zero minorities. And just four women in a field where 65-70% of the workforce is female. A lack of diversity has plagued ad and PR agencies […]

Read More

Five Ways to Reuse Blog Content

By Candice DeForest | Sep 2, 2016

Copyblogger writers spend an average of five to seven hours developing a single blog post (including research and writing time). While this may seem like a significant amount of time to invest in one piece of content, in reality it should serve as the beginning of a longer lead campaign. Content continues to take center […]

Read More

Visual Design for Social Media: Basic Tips & Tricks

By Kris Travis | Aug 29, 2016

Over the past few years, I’ve seen more and more design requests for social media assets. Now that it’s pretty clear how visual posts result in greater engagement, brands are working hard to make posts creative, eye-catching, and image-based. That’s great! But sometimes it seems like no visuals at all would be better than the […]

Read More

How to Leverage Big Data for PR and Marketing Communications

By Gretchen Hoffman | Aug 17, 2016

Image courtesy of photoexplorer at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Big Data has become a vital tool for large and small businesses alike, with Big Data software able to help analyze the vast amounts of information to today’s organization. New, simplified tools like Amazon Mechanical Turk allow organizations and individuals to more easily collect data from around the world, […]

Read More

Business Needs Newspapers Too

By A.wordsmith | Aug 15, 2016

The media’s been buzzing about John Oliver’s recent Last Week Tonight segment on modern journalism. You really ought to watch it yourself (beware a healthy dose of profanity), but the gist is not exactly breaking news: traditional newspapers are in big trouble. Faced with plummeting ad revenue and a public increasingly used to free, 24-hour news, […]

Read More

What to Know About Instagram Stories

By Savanna Frimoth | Aug 11, 2016

  The Controversy Instagram’s unveiling of its “Story” feature caused some waves in the social media realm. Critics of the feature say Instagram is attempting to take over Snapchat’s specialty, a sentiment that was echoed by some Snapchat employees. Fans of the new tool believe that Instagram has improved upon Snapchat’s original story concept by […]

Read More

What Thought Leadership is Not

By Natalie O'Grady | Aug 10, 2016

“Thought leadership” is often considered a buzzword in the marketing and PR world – little more than a spruced up advertisement for a company. However, if your content marketing pieces fit this description, then you’re not doing thought leadership. Thought leadership can be a strong, useful addition to a content marketing program and goes well beyond […]

Read More