But the service itself is not juvenile (apparently that’s just me).

For those of you who have been in the PR industry a long time, you likely know HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, created by Peter Shankman and then sold to Vocus in 2010.

Well, now Cision has a similar service, but it’s for journalists, bloggers, and PR pros.

From their site:

Seek content, expert sources, research and other support for stories. Shout to let the community know you have a story to tell. Join Seek or Shout today and see what a difference the right connection and the right time can make.

I’ve been using it since there were only five (I made up that number, but it was very few) of us on there and it’s a great way for me to get story ideas and sources for blog posts. I also really love that I can push pitches to come through there instead of to my inbox.

For the PR pros who need extra tools in determining the best relationships to build either for your company or your clients, Seek or Shout uses the Cision database and combines it with personal preferences, most recent stories, and stories that are culminating in real time.

It also tells you about job changes, promotions, and new jobs at the media outlets. It’s come a long way since the big green books that were updated only once a year.

If you’re seeking sources or story ideas, you click the “seek” button. If you have something newsworthy to tell – a new product, campaign, or award – you click the “shout” button.

Either way, it allows you to connect directly on stories, blog posts, videos, and podcasts that are most valuable to you right at this moment.

If I’ve convinced you to at least check it out, you can do so by watching the video below (or click here and it’ll magically appear).

It’s free to join. I highly recommend you do so, no matter which side of the table you sit…or even if you sit on both sides like me.

Seek or Shout…not Hide and Seek.

Today’s guest post is written by Brad Marley.

You can’t tell a great story without great characters.

Charles Dickens knew it.

Stephen King knows it.

Heck, even the dude who wrote “A Million Little Pieces” beefed up his life story to make himself more interesting to his readers.

While the premise of a story might be the impetus to take a book off the shelf, it is the characters that keep you turning pages.

And this idea of having a strong cast of characters is just as important in PR, an industry that is quickly being transformed from a group of news release-pushers into one of storytellers.

On the General Motors environmental communications team, every blog post, every podcast, every news release we write is another chapter in the novel that is the GM sustainability story.

But we can’t come up with all of this content on our own. If we tried, it would quickly turn into fluff. And nobody wants that.

So we turn to our cast of characters inside the walls of GM who provide us with a majority of the content we push out on a daily basis.

Almost like how a reporter cultivates their sources, we reach out regularly to the experts to see what they are working on.

One of our environmental experts came up with the idea to turn oil-soaked booms from the Gulf of Mexico into parts for the Chevrolet Volt. He’s the manager of waste reduction efforts at GM. His job is to figure out how to reduce waste. And he doesn’t do this for a paycheck; he lives it.

During a recent phone conversation, he mentioned he was hauling a five gallon bucket of coffee grounds to his car. He was taking them home to use as bedding in his landscaping. His division has a coffee grounds recycling program in place that prevents 3,000 pounds of coffee grounds from becoming waste.

His off-the-cuff comment about the coffee grounds became a blog post.

But if I wasn’t in regular contact with him, that story never would have seen the light of day.

Our stable of experts also includes a woman who handles all matters related to wildlife habitats on the grounds of GM plants, as well as a guy who handles everything related to solar energy at GM facilities, just to name a few.

They are vital to the story because they keep it moving.

From a public relations perspective, you must start thinking about identifying those within your clients’ organizations who can advance the overall story, because that’s the future of public relations.

[Corny phrase alert!]

And the future is now.

Make the effort to meet with the experts. Take them out for coffee. Pick their brains. Find out what makes them tick.

You might be surprised to find out their job reflects their passions.

If that’s the case, the story will practically write itself.

Brad Marley works for Mullen Detroit and spends all of his billable time telling the GM sustainability story. You can find him on Twitter at @bradmarley and at his blog. He tries not to take himself too seriously.

An admirable undertaking and one that surely was not to please everyone, they made an impressive decision to have the definition crowdsourced.

There were, of course, some flaws in how you could submit your definition. In an effort, I would guess, to make everything uniform and make it easier for them to get through all of the responses (nearly 1,000 of them).

Last week they announced the final three definitions and voting is open for you to participate.

I have lots of friends at PRSA so I hope they don’t take offense to this: The definitions suck.

They are:

I’m a communication professional and I have no idea what any of these mean. They all are full of corporate, marketing lingo bingo.

Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and someone asks you what you do. You say PR. They say, “Oh! You know, I never understood PR. What is it?”

And you say, drumroll please, “Public relations is the strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics to achieve mutual understanding and realize goals.”

Say what?

Last week you read about The Difference Between PR and Advertising here. In the comments, Maddie Grant and I are still debating the difference. It’s an important conversation (even if you don’t agree with me).

It’s not quite a heated debate, but it certainly lends itself to the bigger conversation about the definition of PR.

Maybe it’s the difference between working for a large corporation (where Maddie got her early career experience) and a global PR firm (where I got mine). I never did much media relations, or publicity, when I worked for agencies. Now that I have my own, we rarely do any. And, if we do, it’s part of a larger marketing program.

But the point is not PR is not publicity (though it’s not – I’m not letting it go!), the point is, we’re communication professionals. Why is it so darn hard to describe what we do?

You can vote on one of the three definitions. Voting closes on February 26.

I know Steve. He and I both are cyclists and favor shipping our bikes to Counselors Academy every year so we can ride with a small group of friends.

I like him. A lot.

I respect the heck out of him for the agency he’s built in the last 16 years.

But he’s wrong about the difference between advertising and PR. Rather, he’s describing publicity, and that’s what is wrong with the perception of our industry.

We are not just publicists. It’s ONE tactic we use in an overall communication program. 

He started off the description of the differences between advertising and PR so well:

I believe far too many chief executives officers of the country’s fastest-growing companies have no real clue how truly multi-faceted and more powerful public relations is than its marketing counterparts.

Totally agree!

But then it went off the rails:

Public relations, which is sometimes referred to as unearned media, is more of a dog’s breakfast. It involves reaching out to an objective reporter, editor, or producer with the facts and figures about an organization, its products or services and hoping the journalist finds the information of interest to her readers, viewers, or listeners. But, and this is a huge but, it is entirely up to the journalist what is written and when it appears.

Let’s put aside the fact he said PR is unearned media (it’s earned media so we’ll assume that’s a typo), what he is describing is publicity – or media relations.

Our industry, for a very long time, has used media relations as the example when describing what we do because it’s tangible. Just like you can hold or view an ad, you can hold or view a story a reporter has written or produced. But it’s doing us a huge disservice.

There are many other tactics we use: Crisis planning, monitoring and listening, issues management, messaging, creating and telling stories, speaking engagements, content development, events, guerilla marketing, internal communication, social media, lobbying, audits, market research, community development, influencer relations, blogger relations, word-of-mouth, contests, trends development, and more.

Some of us even integrate what might be considered more traditional marketing: Email, database development, search engine optimization, trade shows, search engine marketing, inbound marketing, cultivate and convert leads, gamification, and mobile technology.

When you combine tactics such as these, you have an integrated marketing and communication program that drives results. Real results such as improved margins, shortened sales cycles, and increased revenues.

I agree with Steve that when you say you’re in PR, people’s eyes glaze over.

There’s nothing more fun than going to a cocktail party with your charismatic, charming, extroverted husband who is in politics. People want  to talk to him.

Me? The best they can come up with is, “What’d you think of the Super Bowl ads?” or “Do you watch Mad Men?”

We’re natural storytellers…so why can’t we describe what we do in an exciting, and more accurate, way?

I bet you’ve heard plenty about the importance of conversation in social media.

We’ve all heard companies must engage their customers online. We’ve probably said it ourselves.

But is conversation the most important thing in social media?

What’s The Value of Conversation?

Few will question the value of conversation. It extends customer service and makes PR more personal. But does conversation improve the bottom line?

Case studies suggest social companies do better than their non-social competitors.

If we’ve proven conversational companies are more profitable, is it because conversation made them more visible?

There are more reliable ways to reach the masses.

You could advertise on Facebook for $0.25 per thousand views, and you wouldn’t be subject to that notoriously unreliable viral phenomenon.

Did companies who got social first simply get media (and its associated benefits) because they were first?

Can late-adopters get the same benefits?

Will we always have to do something novel to get noticed?

Do social prospects buy more because we talked to them?

Or was it because they already liked our brand more anyway, and that’s why they talked to us?

Have you really tracked how many of your new customers heard about you because you got their attention first from a social media platform?

What Are We Talking About, Anyway?

Business card cartoonist Hugh McLeod wrote a post about social objects years ago. Let me paraphrase: People need something to talk about. Let’s give them something to talk about.

In day-to-day life, we talk about art, TV shows, movies, fashion accessories, and sports games – all creations or performances. Businesses use blog posts, whitepapers, and infographics to create conversation or get a lead form filled out.

That’s content marketing. It’s not the same as conversation. Conversations without any content are less likely to go anywhere. Your executive suite cares where conversations go- they want them to go toward the bottom line.

Conversation Isn’t Enough

Talk is cheap. Conversation is ephemeral, substanceless, too easy, not as valuable. Quantity conversation doesn’t make up for lack of quality content. And yes, content is harder to do than conversation.

You have to create value with content. This is why books are valued. This is why people love infographics- they look valuable and usually they are valuable. It’s not easy to do, because it’s hard to create value out of nothing.

Quality content creates better conversations. If your search and social popularity aren’t great, you may not have enough content, or your content may not be good enough for people to care about.

If They Aren’t Talking To You, You’re Invisible

I hope you paid attention to Facebook marketing in 2010 and 2011, because even being generous to Twitter in estimating its active user base, Facebook reaches at least four times as many people. You probably heard about EdgeRank, the algorithm Facebook uses to filter what posts people see in their newsfeed.

Do you know only three percent of fans ever return to your business’s facebook page after liking it?

Are you aware your Facebook page fans, if they aren’t liking and commenting on your posts, will stop seeing your posts?

Did you know the average Facebook page reaches just 17 percent of its fans?

The average page’s posts are not being seen by 83 percent of their fans.

Mediocre engagement leads to horrible visibility.

We must get more likes and comments on our Facebook posts if we want more of our fans to see them. We already wanted more retweets and clicks so we could demonstrate an impressive number of visits to websites from social media.

Now we need to go figure out what content is most engaging and viral, figure out why that content works, and then reproduce that success. We need to use tools such as Infinigraph to discover what content is working best for us and our competitors.

Then we need to monitor which content creates the most leads and sales for the company, because controversy doesn’t necessarily create sales. Oh shoot- this social media thing has to be connected to direct marketing and sales? Is it PR or is it marketing? I’m not sure there’s a line anymore. Everyone needs to learn new skills.

Start Caring About Which Content Is Most Engaging and Viral

Google’s “Search Plus Your World” makes all search results more social. You’re more likely to see search results for things your friends have shared or created. One of the biggest effects this will have in the next couple years is to move more of the search experts away from link building and more toward content creation.

These guys live on analytics. They get off on turning a 250 percent ROI campaign into a 700 percent ROI campaign. They’ll bring their nerdy analytics focus to the task and make sure the content they share gets lots of tweets, likes, plus-ones, shares, and comments. In other words, if you don’t get quantitative about your content, these geeks are going to beat the pants off you.

Brian Carter is the author of the bestselling books The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook and Facebook Marketing: Leveraging Facebook’s Features For Your Marketing Campaigns (3rd edition).

I’ve been in and around the real-time news business my entire career, both on the news creation side (working for Knight-Ridder and other publishers) and the PR side of the house.

The transformation I see in the news business right now opens the best opportunity ever for smart marketers to bypass all the spin B.S. and reach journalists when they are looking for what you have to offer.

Speaking of spin, because I write for a bunch of publications I get several hundred pitches a week.

Most suck.

Why?

Because people want to tell me about their stuff when it is convenient for them. The fact that so few people understand how to reach reporters when they need the information is why I love Newsjacking.

The real-time web

As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts—who/what/when/where—are often fairly easy to find, either on a corporate website or in competitors’ copy. That’s what goes in the first paragraph of any news story.

The challenge for reporters is to get the “why” and scope out the details. If you are clever enough to react to breaking news very quickly, providing credible content in a blog post, tweet, or media alert that features the keyword of the moment, you may be rewarded with a bonanza of media attention.

If there is one organization we all count on for a quick reaction, it’s the fire department. So it is encouraging to find that the London Fire Brigade (LFB) is able to newsjack at lightning speed.

Sir Richard Branson was hosting actress Kate Winslet and 20 other guests at his private Necker Island retreat in the British Virgin Islands on August 22, 2011, when lightning struck the wooden building and set it ablaze. Winslet helped rescue Branson’s 90-year-old mother from the inferno.

News of the rescue, along with photos of the dramatic fire, quickly became the lead story in media worldwide. But the story was thin, few outlets had an original angle on it, and no one had reporters in the British Virgin Islands. For editors in the ferociously competitive UK media, situations like this are hideously stressful. So imagine their collective relief when the local fire brigade showed up to the rescue.

Within hours of the initial reports on the fire and Winslet’s role in the rescue, the LFB offered Winslet the chance to train with firefighters at its training center. The offer was made in a story written by the LFB and posted on its website.

Newsjacking.

This clever newsjack got the LFB huge attention, as the offer to Winslet was featured by news outlets worldwide.

What the LFB did—quickly posting the Winslet offer on their site and alerting reporters—took no more than a few hours and probably cost nothing. But the resulting media exposure was worth millions. It was a gambit that succeeded because the timing and the message were perfect.

Anyone familiar with how corporate PR spending effectiveness is measured by frequency of mentions in the media will grasp the implications. With one blog post, I’d guess LFB likely snagged more media mentions than their entire PR budget managed to achieve in the entire preceding year. And apart from the somebody’s salary, it didn’t cost a dime.

You can newsjack, too.

But you’ve got to follow the new rules of speed. The traditional PR model—sticking closely to a preset script and campaign timeline doesn’t work when a story breaks.

Newsjacking is powerful, but only when executed in real time. It is about taking advantage of opportunities that pop up for a fleeting moment, then disappear. In that instant, if you are clever enough to add a new dimension to the story in real time, the news media will write about you. Newsjacking favors quick, observant, and skilled communicators. Newsjacking may be relatively new, but it is here to stay because it works and it can generate huge returns on investment.

David Meerman Scott’s newest book “Newsjacking” was released in November 2011 as an ebook only on Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony, and many other readers. His classic “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web and has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in more than 25 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese. Scott’s popular blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers. His other international bestsellers include “Real-Time Marketing & PR,” “World Wide Rave” and “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead” and they are available on his website.

Today’s guest post is written by Danny Brown.

There’s an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth.

This is equally true for businesses, particularly smaller ones.

While it’s essential to grow to continue early success, it’s also important to keep realistic with your aims.

Whether it’s launching new products, starting a PR/marketing/advertising campaign, or adding sections to your website, taking on too much will leave you thinly spread.

And, ultimately, less effective.

Instead, concentrate on one or two growth areas, and make them as strong as they can possibly be. This will allow you solid ground for increasing activity at a later date.

Product Launches

Look at two of the biggest and most successful companies around today – Apple and Microsoft.

When they launch a new product, it’s usually no more than two different products. The iPhone, the iPod, Windows Vista, Xbox – although there may be different versions of the same product for different markets, essentially it still equates to one product line.

This is one of the main reasons why these two companies lead the market in their fields. They keep the new products launched to a minimum for a simple reason – don’t confuse the market. This ensures that people aren’t wondering which version is better – instead, all they need to decide is which colour to buy.

Keep your own product launches restricted to a minimum and build their brand loyalty first. Then expand.

Less Is More

One of the more common mistakes I’ve found in the past is from clients looking to have a huge PR or marketing campaign when, in reality, all that’s needed is a smaller, more targeted one. This isn’t necessarily the client’s fault – more the programming that we tend to receive that bigger is better.

However, unless you have a huge budget to employ multiple agencies or resources, or one that can provide you with dozens of bodies for your account, having a large campaign is invariably just pouring money down the drain.

Additionally, it can lead to a confused message – is Product A better than Product B? Why should I use Product C over A and B?

Instead of confusing your target audience with multiple campaigns, concentrate your efforts on your limited product launch instead.

Reach the audience – consumer and media – that you’re after, knock them for six with an excellent product and promotion, and you’ll find your results will be far stronger than if you throw everything you have at a wall and hope some of it sticks.

It Ain’t What You Do…

Sure, you don’t want to stand still in business. But you don’t want to run too fast or spend money unnecessarily either. If someone tells you that you need to spend so much on something, ask why.

If the answer is because bigger is better, say “Thanks, but no thanks – I’d rather concentrate on quality over quantity.”

After all, quality still counts. Doesn’t it?

Danny Brown is director of retention and social media at Jugnoo, Inc., and an award-winning marketer and blogger. His blog is recognized as one of the leading marketing blogs in the world. Danny is also the author of The Parables of Business.

Today’s post is written by Linda Olatunde.

Most nonprofits stick to some of the tried and true fundraising events to support their organization, raise money, build supporters, and gain wider recognition throughout the community. These events are the annual 5K run and the banquet dinner.

As PR professionals and marketers, we take our clients’ requests to get the word out and promote these standard fundraising events in all of the traditional ways.

We get them the local media coverage and we increase awareness for their organization with new audiences and past supporters.

For the most part, we honor the request of our nonprofit clients by effectively getting their message and event to the masses and surpassing last year’s outreach numbers.

We have done our jobs successfully, more money has been raised, see you next year!

Not quite.

The strategy behind putting together a 5K is effective. It requires a small time commitment from participants,with a potential high monetary yield. These are all great things, yet it no longer stands out. Almost every organization is doing a 5K run.

It is time for some new ideas!

If you currently work with a nonprofit and have already begun the task of getting the word out to targeted audiences regarding next year’s 5K, I ask you to take a step back and perhaps offer some suggestions to your client by first asking them these questions:

1. Why should a company encourage their employees to participate in your organization’s 5K run?
2. What are you doing differently to keep your volunteers engaged with this event each year?

I am sure they will defend, ever so eloquently, their reasoning for keeping the 5K run alive, but the real reason is, because it’s tradition.

Please don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with tradition. However, from a donor perspective, and as an individual who has a passion for youth issues, women’s health, animal rights, and feeding the continent of Africa, I can only choose a few organizations to financially support each year.

The question your clients’ organization will have to answer is, “How can we entice this advocate to support our cause this year?”

This is where you come in for your client, PR person, marketing master.

Suggest new and fresh and fundraising events that work in accordance with the organization’s personality.

Three Ways to Avoid the 5K Fundraising Event

1. Host a Zumbathon Party. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Organization beat all nonprofits to the punch by officially partnering with the national Zumba Fitness organization – Party in Pink. But that’s nationally. Locally, any nonprofit can hold a Zumba party with proceeds benefiting an organization’s cause. Partnering with a local gym provides volunteer instructors, as well as participating gym members, which all goes back to the nonprofit cause.
2. Amateur Talent Show. This is a great way to let your client get their employees, board members, junior board members, and volunteers involved in something fun, interactive, and requires about the same amount of planning time as organizing a 5K does.
3. Bowling Party. Let your client know team-oriented activities build camaraderie while raising money and awareness for their organization. It is a great way to get local businesses as well as corporations involved.

Do you have suggestions for your nonprofit client? How would you suggest they stray off the beaten path and raise funds?

Linda Olatunde is the principal of Yellow Duck PR. You can find her blog here and like them on Facebook. Originally from New York City, she has lived and worked in Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, and almost London. She is planting roots in Chicago and loves what she does.

Today’s guest post is written by Jeanine Black.

Gini Dietrich recently wrote about the pros and cons of working for a large or a boutique agency. It made me think about the same arguments for agency vs. corporate sides.

There is green grass on both sides; deciding which side you like best is key.

I have worked at a small marketing/PR firm, as a freelance writer and consultant, and now as the only in-house marketing professional for a CPA firm with 70 employees.

I have not worked for a large agency or organization with huge in-house departments, and don’t represent their perspective here.

I do, however, strive to find some commonalities that I believe would pertain to all organizations, big or small.

Since taking the job at the CPA firm four and a half years ago – a great opportunity for me, personally – I have often wondered if I made the right choice professionally.  Has it made me “soft?” Has my creativity suffered? Will I ever be able to re-enter the agency world if I decided to try?

To say I haven’t pondered the pros and cons of each, at least daily, would be a lie. But I decided to focus on the positive aspects and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

What I love about working at an agency:

1. Variety of clients and projects. Moving from pediatric healthcare to retail/grocery to industrial tubing in one day keeps you sharp.
2. Fast paced. It’s hectic, insane, and it increases your blood pressure; but when it goes right, it’s exhilarating.
3. Opportunity to learn different disciplines. We wear a lot of hats in smaller agencies: Media relations, crisis communications, community relations, promotions, marketing communications, and more.
4. Work with like-minded people. In essence, you are surrounded by people who think like you and understand you.
5. Everyone understands what you do for a living. Even with four and a half years at my firm, I still have to explain to some friends and family what I do. But, at work, I’m surrounded by people who know exactly what I do.
6. Opportunity for advancement. I know many PR/marketers who have made it to CMOs, partners, principals, and VPs of Marketing at their organizations, but the opportunity to grow with an organization and become a partner/owner, I believe, is greater on the agency side.

What I love about working on the corporate side:

1. Non-billable. There are no quotas or added pressure and competitiveness.
2. Schedule is essentially 8-5. That doesn’t mean we don’t work more than 40 hours; there just isn’t an expectation to do so.
3. It’s nice to be the client. For those who went from the agency to client-side, I actually think we make AWESOME clients, because we understand what the agencies are experiencing and what they are capable of doing.
4. No day is ever the same. This is the one thing that really shocked me coming over. I thought I would be bored and unchallenged. If you look for new opportunities to be creative, you can make anything interesting and exciting – yes, even accounting!
5. No one understands what you do. Okay, no one is an exaggeration, but many don’t. It’s frustrating, but this can actually be a positive because they depend on you and your skills that much more.

Essentially, both sides have their pros and cons.  For me, it was a personal, as well as a professional choice. I don’t regret it one bit. But I often wonder what it’d be like to go back, and if I’d be able to.

What is your experience with this?

Jeanine Black is the marketing coordinator for Akron-based CPA firm Bober Markey Fedorovich with over 12 years of marketing and PR experience.  Prior to joining BMF, Jeanine worked as a freelance public relations consultant and writer. She also held positions with Fine Point PR and Wirtz Integrated Marketing, both in Akron.

Today’s guest is written by Jayme Soulati.

Public relations practitioners strive to develop authentic relationships; we want genuine and sincere romance with our tiered audiences, and we get there with engagement.

The word “authentic” itself begs for definition. It was used in a variety of ways by a variety of practitioners when I launched an effort awhile back to define public relations on my blog. Social media allows for creating real communities with give and take, with nurturing and education, and with growth by engagement. Combined, these contribute to authenticism (I often coin words).

Enter automation.

My growing fear is social media automation is quickly winning over authenticity. If you follow me online, this statement comes as no surprise. I have been lamenting scheduled tweets, the success of Triberr, and the disappearance of Twitter banter (nowadays that’s just about anything without a link!).

1. Automating Tweets: I freely admit I schedule tweets on occasion; in fact, I was encouraged to do more of it to push attention to the blog. You can’t get traffic if you tweet a new post once. So, I did, and lo – more traffic. I also use Triberr religiously. I automate post distribution in the three tribes I’m in. In fact, I’m kind of jazzed; I recently launched Globe Spotting – a tribe with seven bloggers from seven countries.
2. Optimizing Writing: I’m struggling with the whole optimization thing; it compromises authenticity! (While optimization is not automation, there are enough automated tools to enhance optimization, so they’re, like, kissing cousins.) A recent blog post over at Live Your Love by Brankica Underwood had me stewing. (She’s an expert about writing with keywords and measuring web analytics.) Bran shared how she wrote a keyword rich post and watched the traffic roll in. Then, she increased her traffic by writing a how-to post because keywords and search terms told her the market was seeking that information.
3. Quantifying Influence: How about Klout? I predicted recently that employers and clients would begin reviewing Klout scores and select candidates with the higher scores. I just read a blog post where that prediction rang true. People on Twitter who schedule unique content, RT consistently, and write about keywords can automatically boost Klout scores – even when the keywords for which peeps are being considered influential mean nothing, such as “cougar,” “heavy metal,” or “sheep.”

All my fears for the future are likely a yearning for the past. As I’ve been pondering this preponderance of push marketing, others have stated, “nothing stays the same…to grow we need to automate.”…OK, but at what expense?

Jayme Soulati is president of Soulati Media, Inc. where she executes a blend of public relations, social media, and marketing. At her blog, Soulati-TUDE! (Ad Age Power 2000 – just kidding, my blog is not even listed, heh) she gets a ton of inspiration from Spin Sucks and feeds on the plethora of topics generated by this community. In her own words: She’s grateful for the opportunity to guest here and is eager to contribute to the conversation.