At present, the practice of PR is full of mistaken ideas. Let’s spot a few together…

The first is thinking that email is an essential medium through which you can place stories without doing any more work than drafting a press release, titling your email “Press release”, writing “Please find the attached press release” and titling the attached press release as (what else?) “pressrelease.doc”.

Yeah, you’re laughing, aren’t you? I get a couple of those a month though, a statistic that has remained unchanged for at least ten years.

The second is thinking that “a follow-up call” will magically make me interested in what you wrote. Yes, I know that it’s the client who wants you to make that call so you can put a little mark in the column next to my name, show them you sent the press release and then followed it up.

You know what? I don’t want to be your client’s kibble. Every journalist I know *hates* those calls. Every PR person I know hates making them. Feel free to print this out and “accidentally” leave it on your client’s desk. Just because they’re checkbox-obsessed doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be. Your time and mine would be better spent considering one of the points below.

via You know what? I don’t want to be your client’s kibble.

For this, our second edition of Ask Gamasutra, we addressed an issue that’s important to big game companies, and small indie developers: the dos and don’ts of reaching out to media using press releases.

via Gamasutra – News – Ask Gamasutra: How to annoy a games journalist with a press release.

What’s so encouraging about this trend is that it isn’t exclusive to corporate behemoths. To the contrary, smaller companies can leverage blog-centric communications with great success. Here are four examples of those that do it well.

via 4 Ways to Rethink the Press Release.

Peter Shankman is known for many things: skydiving, social media chops, public speaking, and a wry and brazen wit. What’s important to remember about Shankman is that he is a public relations professional at his core, and prior to his serial entrepreneurship he was a hard-at-work flack. There’s no shame in this, and as a matter of fact if done right, public relations can be a glorious job. Unfortunately, it’s often done wrong more than it’s done right.

via How NOT to do public relations: An interview with Peter Shankman – Forbes.

Forrester’s December 2010 US Interactive Marketing Online Executive Panel Survey showed that PR agencies held a respectable fourth place when it came to which agencies are helping with company/brand interactive marketing but the same survey also showed that 68% of marketers were working with at least two or more agencies for their interactive marketing needs all competing for budgets and control no doubt.

via PR Agencies: Adapt or Die | Forrester Blogs.

And technology PR is not an easy task—to do the job well, it requires a technical understanding of the product and the ability to digest and relay this information in a communicable way. Startups realize that having this on-hand at their investment firm is an asset to them, Mendell explains.And many of the pr execs mentioned above are solely focused on helping portfolio companies as opposed to doing in-house communications for the firms themselves. Lee tells me that part of the trend of more VC firms bringing on PR talent is a reflection of how the role of communications is changing in the tech industry in general.

via Why VCs Are Getting Into PR | TechCrunch.

How To Deal With Tech Media at Mike Butcher.

A great reminder 🙂

Vocus became a Twitter trending topic Wednesday afternoon, thanks to its State of the Media report and webinar.

(You can download the report here.)

The report paints a media landscape that continues to struggle but is using the Web—and especially social media—to evolve.

Although fewer newspapers shut down in 2011, they continue to shutter bureaus throughout the world and launch fewer titles, according to the report. Papers also continue to cut staff.

via 7 things PR pros should know about the shifting media landscape | Articles.

PR gets a bad rap. To many corporations and businesses, PR’s role is undefined: a support function, not quantifiable in terms of ROI, just another line item in a rich marketing budget.

Things have gotten so bad that the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) is currently undertaking a "redefinition" of PR. (I’m not kidding.) The results will be announced in early 2012. It’s probably safe to say that most of us are not waiting with bated breath.

Having left a big corporate job to build a start-up, I dream of one day building a budget from the bottom up, with multiple line items. But at this point, my focus has been on building the product, developing a business–with two markets and 80-plus partners–and motivating my partners and stakeholders.

That’s why my marketing budget has only one line item. Here are three simple reasons why I chose PR.

via Marketing Plan: Why I Bet on PR | Inc.com.

With the New Year right around the corner, the LinkedIn team thought it would be a great time to refresh one of our most popular analyses from last year – overused professional buzzwords! Maybe during the last year some of our members scrubbed their profiles of buzzwords and more uniquely described themselves? Or maybe there has been a huge growth in the number of ‘innovative, motivated, entrepreneurial team players who are results-oriented and thrive in fast-paced environments’. To the data!

via The LinkedIn Blog » Buzzwords 2011: Who’s been ‘creative’ and ‘effective’ this year?.