Tweeting Your Way to Media Coverage

I’ve been working in PR for over two decades and, even to this day, nothing makes me happier than when I land a great piece of media coverage for a client. To me, this joyful moment happens when three elements come together in unison: a great pitch, a solid relationship with a reporter, and the right timing.

Once upon a time, great media relationships were built over lunches, press conferences, phone calls and in-person media tours. But times have changed and so has PR. Today, while phone calls still matter a great deal, in-person meetings are rare. The good news is that we now have Twitter and it’s a huge and, I think, untapped, asset for building relationships with reporters.

Your Virtual Guide to SXSW

Not all of us can make it to South by Southwest (SXSW), one of the hippest conferences of the year and a top convergence for original music and independent films, as well as a premier destination for innovation and emerging technologies.

For those of us who want to follow along virtually, we put together the following guide. First, Screen Geek has compiled a list of must-follow folks on Twitter, and a great SXSW Vine list and Spotify Playlist. If you can’t join them, you can certainly listen to mood music while scanning through the photos and videos. Check out Mashable’s “8 Vines to Follow During SXSW” for a sampling. SXSW’s Pinterest page is also full of fun visuals.

Social media tips for your company from a 140-year-old museum. Really.

In PR, case studies are like gold. People love reading about companies or people that did something cool or interesting that they can borrow and do for themselves.

This is the story of an unexpected case study: a 140-year-old museum focused on fishing and art in a coastal Massachusetts town. It’s not a huge, well-funded museum like the Met in New York or the MFA in Boston. It’s the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Mass.

Founded in 1873 as the Cape Ann Scientific and Literary Association (catchy name, right?), the Cape Ann Museum has lots of works about the history of Gloucester, the nation’s oldest fishing port, but also an art collection by the surprisingly large number of artists who’ve lived on or been inspired by Cape Ann.

Marketing Real Estate to Millennials: 10 Things to Know

The numbers are astounding: Approximately 4,400 apartment and condominium units are under construction in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, according to my friend Paul McMorrow, who did the math. But that number is only half of what is in the pipeline in the same geography. From Jackson Square, to Downtown Crossing, the Seaport to Northpoint and Assembly Square, that’s a lot of housing – and it’s a lot to hit the market within a relatively short time period, making the competition for consumer mind-share fierce among developers.

But first, who’s going to live there? Since all of these units are urban, and quite a few will be super-small “micro units,” it’s clear that developers are targeting Millennials, also known as Echo Boomers. There are about 80 million of this cohort in the U.S. Born between 1980 and 1995, they’re the largest population group since the Baby Boomers.

The 12 Days of PR

One of my colleagues likes to say that the euphoria one experiences during a highly successful PR launch, is like being a kid on Christmas morning. There are very few things that make us jump up and down with the same enthusiasm as, say, a child who gets a puppy from Santa. But for public relations professionals, a top-tier media hit that delights a client is one of those things. Launching a successful social media campaign is one of those things. Landing a speaking engagement at a key conference is one of those things. Yet as any elf knows, a whole lot of effort goes in to making the holidays bright. Our office equivalent is the strategic planning that goes in to creating success in the year ahead.

Four Simple Rules for Posting Comments

Content is king – you’ve heard that before. Granted, there should be a healthy focus on content creation in today’s marketing mix, but one of the core beliefs at InkHouse is that content by itself – even great content – falls short. Content needs to be shared, it needs to grow and it needs to engage in order for your thought leadership foothold to increase. This is where a strong seeding program (i.e. InkHouse’s Content Bureau) can set your content apart.

One of the most effective ways to seed your content is to interact with existing content – articles, blog posts, even tweets. For the sake of this post, let’s focus on blog posts and articles. Almost all writers like a comment on their article or blog post – journalists have told InkHousers that they appreciate a article comments much more than a “rapid response” email – so it’s a great place to engage with influencers and drive them to your content.

The Only Place to Surf During a Hurricane Is, Well, Online

Our office is working remotely today – as are most – because of the Frankenstorm. With many calls and all in-person meetings cancelled due to the weather, it’s freed up a lot of time to catch up on other assignments.

But in addition to preparing for the storm, it’s also an excellent reprieve to do some serious social media tending, weeding out followers who may no longer seem relevant, adding new ones to the list, writing that blog post we’ve been meaning to write (this will be my third today), connecting with new contacts and groups on LinkedIn, and building out more blog syndication channels (that’s how my morning went thanks to NetworkedBlogs and IFTTT, which is a pretty cool tool that lets one social media push trigger another social media action).