It’s video blog time! This week a real video instead of my Blair Witch Project-esque video of the Great Chicago Blizzard. The Arment Dietrich Facebook question of the week comes from Erica Allison, founder of Allison Development Group. She asks, “OK, because it’s on my mind and I’m planning my educational opps for the year, which two conferences are a MUST ATTEND for a PR pro ... Read More

Alright. I give! I wasn’t going to blog about the Groupon Super Bowl ad, but here I am. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is. Watch it quickly for me. Go on. It’s only 30 seconds. Honestly? It didn’t bother me as much as it seems to have bothered CNN, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and more. Then again, I’m not a ... Read More

Yeah. I know. I spend a lot of time reading the blogs at Harvard Business Review. I can’t help it. So much of what they write is so far from reality that it’s great for me to read what they’re thinking in think tanks without any real world application. They have the university approach – really smart people who get theory, but have never applied it. ... Read More

Before I get started, WE HAVE SNOW!!! And a ton of it. I’ll do the Facebook question of the week tomorrow from the great outdoors so you can see all of the glorious white stuff that is making me so happy. But…we also lost power so I’m having to write quickly to conserve battery power. I have three hours and 55 minutes left right now. On ... Read More

I was reading Umair Haque’s review of Davos titled, “Ten Things You’re Not Allowed to Say at Davos.” For those of you who don’t know (and why would you, if you’re not the CEO of a Fortune 10 company or, well, Bono), Davos, Switzerland is where the upper, upper, upper (did I say upper?) echelon meet for the World Economic Summit annual meeting. And it took place ... Read More

Uh oh. Edelman is in trouble again…this time over a media request from Ragan about Best Buy On. Mark Ragan, who most of you know if you’re in the PR industry, asked one of his reporters to contact Best Buy to interview them about their new On, the new “magazine” they’ve created for customers. Mark, like a lot of us, see the trend of companies becoming publishers ... Read More

There has been quite a bit of discussion here of late about the PR industry; why Doug Davidoff thinks we don’t have a seat at the proverbial table, why The Economist is completely off-base about our industry today, and why Les McKeown is tired of hearing about the shiny, new penny from PR professionals. Because of all of that discussion, and because I know a good ... Read More

A few weeks ago, Doug Davidoff wrote an open letter to PR professionals, which speaks about the client’s view of our profession and how we’re stuck on tactics and not on results. And on Monday, Les McKeown wrote “Living with the Pregnant Widow,” a tongue-in-cheek look at the so-called social media experts who, again, are stuck on the tactics and not on results (mostly because having ... Read More

This blog post first ran on TheTop10Blog so if you read it there, move along to the comments, where you always find the real gold anyway. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that 2011 is the year of integration. This past year you got to play with social media tools and figure out which were most applicable to your business. Now it’s time to stop playing ... Read More

Troy Claus is co-founder and partner at Bonsai Interactive Marketing, a full-service marketing agency, offering integrated and digital solutions. He also blogs at TroyClaus.com. “All I need to do to take my business to the next level is get a Facebook page and a Twitter account.” That has become the mindset of many SMBs (Small Minded Businesses). Coupled with that mindset is usually the understanding that ... Read More