As many of you know, I’m writing my second book (Spin Sucks, due out in November!) and, because of that, I’m doing a ton of research (a TON) for case studies, examples, and stories to use to help tell the story.

I keep coming across something interesting: Lots of people are searching for how to write great blog content, but there are very few people who are providing tips on how to do it.

I’m going to get us started and then you can add to the list in the comments below. Continue Reading »

It’s April.

They say April showers bring May flowers.

April also brings waves of students about to graduate, filled with anticipation, pounding the pavement in search of that first job in PR and marketing.

But this year, finding that first job will require a combination of digital and practical skills.

The competition is fierce. The economy is just now beginning to turn. You have to stand heads and shoulders taller than your peers to even get an interview.

Here are five tips to help new grads land their dream job.
Continue Reading »

We get lots of phone calls and emails from people wanting to work with us. It’s a great position to be in and certainly helps my introverted self from having to sell in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

Sometimes the prospects are start-ups and they want to trade services for equity. While I’d love to be able to do that (Jay Baer does some angel investing and coaching), we can’t make payroll with equity. So we often turn away those opportunities.

More often than not, though, the organizations just aren’t ready for outsourced marketing and communications help. Continue Reading »

Have you ever spent 30 days on a blog post?

I know, it seems crazy.

With that amount of time you could easily write many, many blog posts.

Why did I do that?

Let me tell you about my experiment, and you’ll understand why I spent an entire month on a single blog post.

And why you might want to as well. Continue Reading »

About four years ago, I got fed up with the way #FollowFriday was done on Twitter and decided to highlight just one person each Friday.

If you spend time on Twitter, you know what I’m talking about. The endless list of Twitter handles with no real reason to follow them, other than someone said so.

In the early days, I kept a spreadsheet of the people I recommended and would do it by city or passion or job or experience, just to differentiate the way I did it.

In this completely fake tweet, I recommended my team so you can see what I mean. Gross, right? Continue Reading »

Back in October, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook had broken the one billion landmark for active monthly users.

The company’s end of year report revealed there were in fact, 1.06 billion monthly active users (MAUs), as of December 2012.

To put that in perspective, more than one in seven of the world’s population are now hooked up to the social media behemoth.

And the social media market shows no signs of reaching saturation point just yet.

According to eMarketer figures the two countries showing the biggest increase in social media usage through 2011 and 2012 were India and Indonesia, with a massive growth of 51.5 percent and 51.4 percent respectively. Continue Reading »

All of the changes at Google are enough to make you want to cry over spilled milk.

As if it wasn’t enough to hear rumors Feedburner is shutting down, then they announce Reader is retiring and now Alerts is next?

I’ve always said we’re not the user of Google – we’re the product – so it shouldn’t be so devastating when they take away our free products, but change is hard. And it is devastating.

On the flip side, however, they’re launching some new things that will help you retrieve data and make better decisions: Universal Analytics and they began showing you trackbacks to your site.

Let’s first talk about where you can go to get the services you’re accustomed to having without a lot of pain in change. Continue Reading »

Welcome to 26th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Sky Pulse Media), and me!

For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.

This week we have thoughts on passion projects, democracy, and drama behind the scenes at a popular morning show.

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate! Happy Sunday reading to the rest of you! Continue Reading »

Our office is officially closed today, but I am taking a writing vacation in exactly nine days so have lots to do!

Yes, it’s true. I will be away from here for two whole weeks!

But it means I’m taking advantage to most people being off today and getting some work done.

That means you get the regularly scheduled Gin and Topics. I didn’t really want to wait until next week to give you the one in the number one spot, anyway. I hope you like it as much as I do. I’ve watched it six times and it makes me laugh every time!

The videos this week are thanks to Heidi Massey, Lindsay Bell, Laura Click, Mr. D., and yours truly.

Let me know what you think! Continue Reading »

I feel like the entire world has been off the last two weeks.

Not that I mind – it’s a lot easier to get work accomplished when you’re all running around Disney World with your kids.

But I thought, rather than introduce you to someone new today and risk your missing it while you’re on vacation, I’d do a roundup of all of the #FollowFriday recommendations we’ve made here since the beginning of the year.

We’ll do roundups like this occasionally, in case you miss a week or two throughout the year.

Now you can follow the Twitter list and subscribe to the Feedly blog bundle for the following 12 people. You have to be logged into your Feedly account to get the blogs. I haven’t figured out how/if you can subscribe to it so if anyone has tips on that, please share!

We’ll add to this list as we make more recommendations. By the end of the year, you’ll have nicely organized Twitter lists and blog subscriptions. Continue Reading »