How Not to Suck at PR in 2010

It’s now officially 2010, and while many PR firms and companies are doing a great job; there are far too many companies that don’t. These firms don’t qualify for a post on the Bad Pitch Blog; but for one, or all, of the following reasons they suck at PR.

So please, I implore you, don’t suck at PR. With so many talented individuals in the arena and simple steps not to such, there’s really no reason to suck at PR.

Here are 3 ways not to suck at PR and to get bloggers to pay attention to what you are pitching.

1. Get Em-bed with the bloggers: No not in bed with them Embed, as in embeddable video. We aren’t print and big part of that is that we can deliver timely media rich content to our readers. Most often this is in the form of videos which are easily embedded in posts.

Many companies have great demo videos that I would love to share with my readers, but I can’t because you don’t offer an option to embed it. Why is immaterial, with YouTube available there is no logical reason not to let me share your video on my site. Don’t kid yourself that the video is worth visiting your site to watch — if it’s that good embedding it will drive even more customers. A second alternative is to let me download and embed it on my own, but again, no sense in doing this when you can create a corporate YouTube account or handle it yourself.

2. Image Not Found: Again, nothing is more frustrating to me personally than locked down or flash only product pages and images. If you are pitching a product I need to be able to easily share that image with my readers. This may be a screenshot or picture of your product; whatever it is make it easy for me to share.

3.Press Pages aren’t just for looks: Have a press page, even if that means a single page with one with a product shot, one embeddable product demo and an email address for more details. If you can’t do this, how do you expect to answer questions and more importantly for you complaints that press may be covering. On a side note, right or wrong, I judge the companies I cover and those I shop at based on whether they have a press page.

Bonus Round – Focused Concise Pitches: Press releases are great, they represent a carefully crafted product pitch; what’s better is a pitch that has a concise focused pitch to my readers.

Follow these 4 steps and soon, you too, won’t suck at PR.

image via smlp.co.uk on Flickr

Tablet PC Link Roundup

I’ve had my HP tx2000 tablet PC for just about a month now and I am still loving it. The ink is really great for taking notes in class and at work. Being able to use it just as my colleagues use their legal pad removes a barrier which is there in my workplace if you are using a laptop.

I’ve compiled a group of links which helped me set up my tablet PC to get the best experience.

You  can find the entire bunch at del.icio.us under my tag of tabletPC.

If you are looking for a set of links about getting started with your tablet, check out the primer tag.

There are loads of other tags to break down the links, I think you’ll find this collection helpful for learning about your new tablet.

Download Squad’s Squadcast – How to Podcast

I just discovered the Download Squad’s weekly videocast called a Squadcast. This week’s episode featured Amber Rhea an experienced podcaster and covers some basics about how to do a podcast. The videocast doesn’t go into too many details but should be seen as a primer with some good introductions to podcasts and podcasting. Check it out below.

Charles Stricklin the man with the plan behind the Wordpress podcast had started a project called Podcast Planning which seems to have been victim to overbooking of time and is currently in a lul still has good information to process if you plan to start a podcast. I have been toying with the idea of producing a podcast for the last 6 months or so but I am still trying to find the void that needs filled

How To Respond To Blogger Criticism

According to Marshall Kirkpatrick you Fix it!

I had an opportunity to comment today on the question of how a company ought to respond to bloggers who have damaged their reputation. Below are my thoughts. I’d love to read yours, too.

The best thing that companies can do in response to bloggers who have done their reputation harm is to take the bloggers’ complaints as seriously as is appropriate. Readers will determine the validity of blogger criticism for themselves, but if the criticism is valid then there’s no hiding from it any more.

When a Blogger Criticizes Your Company via Tobias Buckell

How to Handle Your Student Loans

I just covered how to have fewer student loans, and student loans are not a new topic on Imjosh.com but good advice on student loans is always welcome. Sjeans from Stacking Pennies, guest writes on Get Rich Slowly about how to repay your school loans.

The article covers a multitude of topics which should be required reading for anyone attending college.

Key Points

• Differing types of loans and their specifics.
• I have these loans, what do I do? consolidation etc.
• What to do if you can’t afford your payments?
• What to do if you CAN afford to make your payments?
• More points on private loans.

This is an amazing resource and should get you up to speed on what you need to start doing. Remember financial advice doesn’t always work out the same for everyone, but you cannot simply ignore education debt.

Start making a plan, start making payments, start making sacrifices, stop accumulating debt.

A Rough Guide to Repaying Student Loans – Get Rich Slowly

How To Check Gmail by IMAP on Windows Mobile

UPDATE: If you are getting blank messages when checking over IMAP read my latest post for some more information.  In short it appears Google’s implementation of IMAP is not utilizing all of the fields it could use and Windows Mobile Messaging is not handling the lack of these optional fields well.

UPDATE 2: If Gmail fails to send your messages check out this fix.

Google just announced that they are rolling out IMAP support for Google’s Gmail service. The feature will be appearign in different accounts over the next several days. If you are currently using POP3 to get your gmail to a Windows Mobile client or even a desktop client IMAP is a huge improvement. IMAP allows the status to be updated between all of your viewing areas (more on IMAP v. POP3). This means that if you read an email on your Windows Mobile 6 device, when you login to gmail.com the mail will show as read, etc etc for the majority of the functions relating to mail management.

Google Provides a handy list of what Gmail actions correspond to actions on your mobile device.

Action on mobile device/client (e.g. iPhone/Outlook)	Result in Gmail on the web
Open a message	Mark a message as read
Flag a message	Apply a star to the message
Move a message to a folder	Apply a label to the message
Move a message to a folder within a folder*	Apply a label showing folder hierarchy (’MainFolder/SubFolder’)*
Create a folder	Create a label
Move a message to [Gmail]/Spam	Report a message as spam
Move a message to [Gmail]/Trash	Move a message to Trash
Send a message	Store message in Sent Mail
Delete a message	Remove label from the message, or delete the message permanently if the message is already in the Spam or Trash label

Find the walkthrough after the Jump.

Read more

Beat That Funk!

The Dumb Little Man blog has a nice posting on how to get out of a crabby mood. The list has some good ones on it and includes my sure fire way to beat a crabby mood.

6. Make Someone Else Happy. Who could you cheer up today? Who could you thank or compliment? Who could you send a quick handwritten note to? You can really have fun with this, so go ahead and do it!

Whenever I am in a crappy mood other than listening to some good music, buying flowers or a card for my wife helps me get back into a happier state.  Try it next time, it works!

via lifehacker

Cleaning Call For Help

Go pick up the phone and call your mom, say hi and tell her you love her. Next ask her what can take vegatable oil off of a painted wall. If she doesn’t know start calling your aunts and uncles, maybe ask the friendly people you work with. After you find out let me know because we have vegatable oil on our kitchen wall. I am hoping there is something short of sanding, priming, and repainting that will improve the visual style of our kitchen. Thanks for the help!