Here’s a video we put together on why we’re putting such a heavy focus on new media public relations. Please turn the sound up and make sure to watch it in “full screen” mode.
Archive for the category ‘RPR Complimentary Advice’
“You guys were probably too young to remember that”
If I had penny for every time my brother/business partner Steve and I heard that comment, I could probably afford to buy that beautiful purple and teal velvet sweater that Steve is wearing in this photo of us taken circa 1980 (click image to enlarge).
Yes, my brother and I are young business owners; however, it’s important not to mistake “youth” with “inexperience” and/or “influence.” Even more important is to make sure your organization is successfully executing a New Media marketing campaign to reach the “youth,” as they are your futures and media is undergoing a major transformation.
The future of PR is not pitching, it’s participating in an ongoing dialog with your customers. With social networking sites and new media, there are more ways than ever to go straight to the source to reach your audience. Here’s a nice article from an interview I recently did with American Express Briefing that can help your organization begin doing some preliminary steps (link).
Don’t be “too old” to recogonize that the “too young” crowd is exactly your target audience; and we can help you reach them. Find out more.
No Email Fridays
I do not check emails on Friday.
Instead of spending this day writing/responding to hundreds of emails, I’ve chosen to spend my Fridays visiting clients and media; as we believe that you can get more accomplished in a 5-minute face-to-face meeting than you can in 5 back-and-forth emails.
At Rivera Public Relations, we pride ourselves on our relationships with our clients and we do not define success by a clean inbox.  We found ourselves spending increasingly more-and-more time trying to “get through emails,†and less time on what’s really important; human interaction.
I was inspired by an article in Forbes Magazine that I would recommend everyone reads, here’s a good excerpt…..
“The self that grows up with multitasking and rapid response measures success by calls made, e-mails answered and messages responded to. Self-esteem is calibrated by what the technology proposes, by what it makes easy. We live a contradiction: Insisting that our world is increasingly complex, we nevertheless have created a communications culture that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think, uninterrupted. We are primed to receive a quick message to which we are expected to give a rapid response. Children growing up with this may never know another way. Their experience raises a question for us all: Are we leaving enough time to take our time on the things that matter?” read the entire article
Want to join the No Email Friday revolution? It’s simple and it’s free, just paste “No Email Fridays” in the subject line of your auto-response and POOF, you’re in the club.
Recession or Depression?
As a dog owner, I cannot take Riley out for a walk without seeing smatterings of newspaper headlines that warn everyone that “The Next Great Depression” is latent.
As a business owner, I cannot have a conversation with my banker, CPA or CFP without receiving mixed messages about what to expect next.
With the media raging about this next “Great Depression” coupled with the elections less-than a month away, we’re all looking for the silver lining in an electoral candidate (Obama, McCain, etc); but we’re looking in the wrong place.
The change begins with YOU and ME. What turned a recession into the Great Depression was a drop in consumer spending that we cannot explain through income or wealth effects. With the advent of the internet, information (accurate or not) is so widely disseminated that us consumers are falling victim to misleading information.  However, the advantage to having all of this information at our fingertips is that the consumer can proactively research what in actuality is going on. I took the time to do this, and took a shot to sum up a majority of it up below.
Our current situation is a financial panic, not an economic collapse. There is no doubt that damage to the financial sector has been profound, with the demise of major Wall Street institutions and gut-wrenching plunges in the stock market. But that has not hurt Main Street to the extent it did in the Great Depression. There are many critical differences today- one of the biggest is the very fact that the Great Depression already happened and has been intensely studied.
Alan Taylor, an economics professor at UC Davis points out that “if a recession is really bad and long, we call it a depression; a recession if something you remember 10 years later. A depression is something you remember 100 years later.”
Rather than blogging any further about my view on politics and economics, I want to share some basic facts and numbers with you about what’s really happening in our economy: click-to-view
Email Breathalyzer
Who among us hasn’t sent a email message after having one too many, confessing our love for a (fill in the blank), that they wish they could “un-send?” Â What if there were a way to prevent them from ever going out?
A post by a Gmail engineer Monday says the company is working on a feature called Mail Goggles that would make users answer a series of simple math questions before sending any email messages. That way it prevents mail from being sent when the user is in an altered state of mind. By default the feature would activate late nights and weekends, though users could set it to activate whenever they want.
Screen shot:
So how can I get this feature installed on my clients computers, specifically on their Yelp accounts? Â I advise all of my clients not to check their restaurant’s Yelp reviews after their shift drink- more so, I just shy of plea with them not to try and respond.
The good news about bad online reviews is that the ink is never dry.  Any review, good-or-bad, opens up an opportunity for you to create a relationship with your customer.  If you handle the situation correctly, you can successfully turn some of your opponents into your biggest evangelists.
Some of the best friendships started with a fist fight on the playground. Â The same applies for today’s digital world, but our fists have become fingers and our playground is the World Wide Web.
Media training helps QB avoid a PR sack
Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger may have only thrown for 137 yards in this game, but he scores a win from Rivera Public Relations for his ability to eschew the question about his hurt shoulder by an overly aggressive on-field reporter.  Video below.
Nice work Ben, you showed the ability to handle difficult questions in a live situation while showing confidence and taking control of the interview. Â Two very crucial things when being interviewed by the media.