A few of you have been dying for today to arrive (cough, Courtney Dial and Valerie Simon, cough) and it’s finally here! Spin Sucks relaunches with a new design, look, and feel! But that’s not all…check out what’s to come!

As a recap, what you can expect to see every day:

* More content under communication, advertising, marketing, social media, SEO, and business growth

* Guest bloggers every day

* Expert Q&As

* Industry innovations

* Comment of the week

* Giveaways and contest

All of this will remain free, but be watching later this year for a subscription-based, behind-the-scenes Spin Sucks that will garner you access to more content, discussion groups, brainstorming, and access to experts.

Tell us what you think, what you’d like to see more (or less) of, if you know experts you’d like to see interviewed, if you’d like to guest blog, and if you’ve seen an industry innovation you’d like to see highlighted. This blog is evolving to help you do your jobs in the above six categories so tell us what you need from us.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter…we’re Spin Sucks!

Guest post by Arik Hanson, APR, the principal of ACH Communications

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know it recently won Blog of the Year in annual PR Readers’ Choice Awards.

Quite an honor, right? An award solely based on votes and nominations from your blogging peers. Well, not everyone sees it that way.

Some see lists like this as popularity contests – link bait even. Continue Reading »

On today’s video…I am a total dork, three housekeeping items (including something BIG coming here next week), and (the real meat) how to create a business blogging strategy while you’re on vacation.

You know I’m not one to mince words and that I value my integrity as one of my best traits, so I’m always SHOCKED when someone isn’t as overtly honest as me. Right now, I’m reeling from a situation I just learned about from friend, blogger, and wickedly smart entrepreneur Danny Brown.

I’m so shocked and angry, I don’t really know where to begin. Continue Reading »

If you haven’t heard, we’ve been nominated for PR Blog of the Year in the PR Readers’ Choice Awards! What this means is that YOU nominated us and we’ll forever be grateful. Not only is it a big deal because we were nominated by our community, but because I, personally, devour the content from our competition daily.

But before I ask you to vote, I’d like to tell you a little about our competition, as well as the blogs we voted for in the other categories. Continue Reading »

Before you get to see me take the dare of vlogging in my cycling gear AND talk about whether or not you need to create an editorial calendar for your blog, I have a favor to ask.

This very blog has been nominated for PR Blog of the Year. Would you please go over to Arik Hanson’s blog and vote for us? We’re in the very last category so scroll all the way down. And, while you’re there, vote for the other categories, too. And, if you would rather vote for another PR Blog of the Year, I’m okay with that – we’re up against people I really respect, admire, and read daily.

And now, on with the show. I was dared by Brad Farris and Blair Minton to do a video blog in my cycling gear. So here you have it (I’m totally self-conscious). Answering a question from Thomas Scott about creating editorial calendars for your blog.

Because we had more than 100 blogs submitted in our “share your link love” post from a couple of weeks ago, I’ve decided that Fridays (in association with #FollowFriday on Twitter) shall be an examination of one of the blogs left in the comments. Right now the decisions are up to me, which means they’ll likely be blogs I subscribe to and find interesting, but I can be bribed to include others. I mean, I DO live in Chicago. Continue Reading »

I would love to say that I was riding my bike (still stuck inside on the trainer and put in 200 miles last week…so I have A LOT of thinking time) and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you pimp your blog here, but I cannot take credit.

A couple of weeks ago, Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog – because there are a myriad of blogs on there, which surprised me. I thought it would be all PR, social media, or marketing blogs. When, in fact, those are in the minority. Continue Reading »