As a former TV producer, I worked with great PR professionals who helped me find experts and interesting stories for my shows, often at a moment’s notice. I dealt with many PR people who had bad timing and bad story suggestions; they were doubly clueless.

Recently, I was with a group of friends — TV producers, anchors and reporters — when the topic of bad pitches came up.  We laughed about the lazy ones, and others that were just plain bad, which I think @DearPR covers regularly.

Instead, I thought I’d focus on five things to do right. Here are tips from me and my TV friends.

1. Know my show.

The number one PR complaint from TV professionals is being pitched stories and guests that just don’t match up with their shows’ topics, format or time slots. When I was a morning show producer at a local network affiliate, publicists often suggested guests for cooking segments. But my show didn’t have guests and we certainly didn’t have a demo kitchen.

A morning show segment producer whom I work with often wishes PR people understood that the harder-hitting stories typically come earlier in the broadcast and topics get fluffier as the show goes on. “Know that we don’t do style segments at 7:55am,” he suggests.

If you want to actually land an interview, DVR the program for a week and study it. Understand how to make a concise suggestion on where your idea fits and who would be the appropriate anchor or reporter to tell it.

2. Know my competitors and don’t pitch me their stories.

One of my dear friends who produces a brilliant show on CNN recently forwarded me an email she received offering guest commentary on a developing news story that CNN was covering. The sender started the email by citing stories on the topic from other competing networks. Which leads to the next tip: They don’t want to be sent stories done by their competition and they certainly don’t want to repeat another station’s story. You wouldn’t pitch the Wall Street Journal by sending them a New York Times story. Don’t do it with broadcast either.

3. Know my shift.

If you want to land the Today Show, understand what time the show is on the air and don’t bother to call producers then. Observe the Twitter feed of the producer you are trying to connect with to see when they are clearly near their desk. Or even better, just ask when they typically have a few minutes to chat.

4. Know my name.

My husband, David, is a TV news anchor and gets dozens of pitches daily that should go to the assignment desk or a producer. That’s not the problem, though. The issue is the fake personalization of emails that begin with  “Hi Dave.” No one except his friends from high school and his parents ever call him that. Immediate delete. Before you pitch a TV reporter or anchor, watch the program and see what the other personalities on the show call him or her. Don’t pretend to be friends. Same goes with producers; don’t pretend to be long-lost pals if you’ve sent them an email once or twice. Be real and have a good story for them.

5. Know my Facebook wall is off limits.

One of my friends has been pitched on his Facebook page. Aggressively calling and emailing a person to get them to hear your pitch is one thing, but don’t cross the line to stalker. If you have connected on Twitter, DMs are OK. But Facebook is different. It’s personal.

TV professionals are busy. And news cycles are short. Keep up with changes on the shows, the people who host them, and most importantly watch the show before you pitch.

But Jackie’s public relations genius also extended to six major historic preservation projects – including saving Grand Central Terminal, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court — in which she was pivotal. Here are five things anyone in PR can learn from Jackie’s masterstrokes:

1.      Be likeable. It may seem obvious that whether it’s you or your client, the golden rule applies. But being likeable is more than just about being nice to others. It means you need to understand other perspectives, and take your messages to where they are. Speak their language, literally. Jackie spoke French to the French. She spoke Spanish in Miami to the in the Latino community. In both cases, her audience was enthralled by the respect she showed for their culture. And they could not help but like her, which translated into votes, bankable good will, a bigger stage, and influence over more people.

2.      Identify the Influencers. In her effort to stop the Eisenhower-inspired demolition of the Federalist-era townhomes lining Lafayette Square in front of the White House to make room for modernist government buildings, Jackie quickly found the one person who could at least slow the project “down to a walk.” That person was the man who wrote the checks at the General Services Administration. She pled her case to him, which bought enough time for her to find a new architect who could solve the problem. In the end, architect John C. Warnecke found a way to build the new space behind the old, keeping the historic façades.

Jackie at a Grand Central press conference in 1975.

3.      Be selective involving the media. She gave a dramatic televised tour of the White House in in 1963 (for which she won an honorary Emmy and 50 million people tuned in). Later, in 1975, Jackie was horrified to learn that Grand Central faced a destructive office tower redevelopment plan. While she rarely gave interviews, especially in her post-White House years, she knew there was only one way to force the beleaguered city to take notice – call a press conference. She was the star of the event, held in the train station’s famous Oyster Bar. When she spoke, the press went absolutely silent, until the camera flashes popped. Again, in 1982, when Lever House on Park Avenue was threatened to be torn down, Jackie identified the influencer (New York Comptroller Jay Goldin), met him at City Hall, and made sure the paparazzi were there when she kissed him on the cheek out front. Jackie got her way. She employed the same tactic in 1984, when, in an effort to stop St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan from being torn down, she had her picture taken with legislators in Albany. They, too, voted her way.

Jackie at the Grand Central press conference

4.      Give good quotes – and write moving letters. In the Grand Central case, Jackie hand-wrote an appeal to then-mayor Abraham Beame in which she said: “Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees…?” He had to agree. In 1987, in her campaign to block developer Mort Zuckerman from building an enormous tower at Columbus Circle in New York, she eloquently complained: “They’re stealing our sky!” Nothing new was built there in her lifetime.

 5.      Be political, when applicable. Jackie learned from the best of them – the Kennedy family. Before she undertook any campaign – whether it was restoring the White House (and getting the public to donate rare antiques rather than asking taxpayers to foot the bill) or saving Lafayette Square, she made sure she understood the legalities involved and how public perception would affect the decisions elected officials made; who needed political cover and how she could provide it; and how a story would play on Main Street. In a way, being political means being masterful at all four of the above tenets, which Jackie was in spades.

In addition to being SVP and Chief Content Officer at InkHouse, Tina Cassidy is the author of the newly released “Jackie After O: One Remarkable Year When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Defied Expectations and Rediscovered Her Dreams.”

Facebook has made it easier for us to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, and share content. And now, Facebook is making it easier for us to make an impact and potentially, save a life.

Last Tuesday, the world’s leading social network announced it will allow users to include an organ donor status on their timeline. It is an unprecedented move for a social networking site, but one that can have profound impact.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), more than 114,000 Americans are currently on waiting lists for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs. Last year, more than 6,600 died waiting for an organ.

There are nearly 1 billion Facebook users. The potential impact is clear.

“Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis,” wrote Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg in a blog post. “And we believe that by simply telling people that you’re an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role.”

Facebook is certainly well positioned to play the role—the site has mastered the power of sharing and connection since its inception in 2004.

We have certainly seen the power of social media to do good, particularly in times of need. There was an outpouring of support from the social sphere surrounding the tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Haiti. In fact, social media played a pivotal role in raising millions of dollars for relief efforts. Within hours of the disasters, mass mobilization was well underway.

We’ve also seen big brands leveraging the power of social media to support their CSR initiatives and make a positive impact—companies like Levis, Timberland, Kohls, all vying for the support of their “friends” and followers, all having great success.

So, is it really a surprise that Facebook is harnessing its power to share and connect in an effort to make a real difference?

The urgency surrounding the need for organ donors certainly does not exist like it did surrounding some of the world’s biggest natural disasters, but shouldn’t it? Eighteen patients die every day while awaiting an organ—that’s one person every 80 minutes.

It seems Facebook is already off to a great start—according Donate Life America, by the end of the day on Tuesday, 6,000 people had enrolled through 22 state registries. On a normal day, those states together see less than 400 sign up.

So what can we learn from Facebook? Well, for starters, businesses should start to think like Facebook. Find your niche. What does your business do best? And how can you leverage that—coupled with your resources and networks—to truly make a positive impact?

People are coming to expect corporations, big and small, to do something. So think about it because after all, it takes a village.

There. I said it. The in-person media tour is dead. In the 1990s, “desk-side” briefings reigned. We regularly tracked executives’ travel schedules and lined up press meetings in New York, San Francisco and Boston, often with five or six each day. These often took place months in advance of an announcement, back when lead times for some print publications that published on a monthly schedule were as long as six, or even eight months.

Today, the technology world often works on deadlines of a few minutes. We’ve heard stories of stressed out bloggers, working around the clock to keep pace with their ambitious competitors, and then suffering heart attacks. I understand how this could happen. Often, if we have set an embargo for 8:00 a.m. ET, we’ll see a number of bloggers post their pieces at 7:58 a.m. ET just so they can say they were first, and to inch their way up in the search results. Embargoes, of course, are an entirely other issue (for more, read: The Embargo Lives, for Now).

As online media has quickened the pace of reporting, so too has the pace of PR increased. When just two or three years ago, we’d schedule quick 5-10 minute calls to provide quotes about breaking news to the press, today, now we frequently  respond electronically, writing quotes and sending them in, often with a deadline of an hour to meet the reporter’s shortened deadlines. Reporters simply don’t have time to take the call. While they are writing their articles, we’re working on a quote that they can drop in at the last minute before pushing the story live. This does not mean that we won’t try and be opportunistic to schedule meetings around clients’ travel schedules – a good angle or a unique point of view always has potential to break through this clutter.

However, in general, all of this illuminates the way in which time has become a precious resource in the wake of constantly breaking news. Lunch breaks are a thing of the past, and office hours don’t exist. Reporters don’t have time to take an in-person meeting when a 20-minute call or an email interview will do. Likewise, they don’t have time to break away from their computers to attend events. We rarely, if ever, recommend scheduling an event just for the media. There are lots of good reasons to host in-person events, but you should consider media attendance an unexpected bonus if it happens.

There is good news for PR. The opportunities for inclusion in these short lead-time stories are numerous. We should stop lamenting the days when we could develop face-to-face relationships because they are, unfortunately, coming to a fast close. Relationships are still critical, and the way we can best foster them is through responsiveness and transparency. Following are a few tips from our experience here at InkHouse:

• Be fast. Get back to reporters within five or 10 minutes for proactive requests for comment.
• Be gracious. Don’t complain about short deadlines – we are living in the world of the press, and if we want to be included, we have to play by their rules and realities.
• Respond quickly. If you have an opinion about a story that happened this morning, tell your PR people within minutes. Once the story breaks, it will be over within the hour. You can get ahead of this by identifying the types of news stories on which you’d like to comment in advance, and even preparing broad points of view to fuel the PR engine.
• Be compelling and unique. If your point of view is exactly the same as everyone else’s, it’s likely to get cut.
• Be helpful. If a reporter comes to you for commentary and the request is either outside of your specific area of expertise or irrelevant for your business, don’t ignore it. Respond, if you can, or try and help them find another resource. They’ll remember the next time. I believe in karma.

As in life, PR lives in shades of gray, so there are exceptions to my black and white perspective. For example, I’m fairly certain that people such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Al Gore could easily book an in-person meeting about virtually anything (or nothing) with almost any relevant reporter of their choosing. We also secure in-person meetings for the top executives at our Fortune 500 and high-profile venture capital clients. Additionally, if you have a major launch and happen to be in the same city as the beat reporter who always covers your news, chances are fairly good that you could book a meeting.

For the rest of us though, there is reality. You have to accept the reality of who you are, and adjust your expectations accordingly. Just because I love singing in the car and my three-year-old thinks I’m good does not mean I’ll be the next Adele, no matter how badly I believe I deserve it.

On Monday, InkHouse tuned into PR News’ webinar “How to (Really) Use Twitter to Advance Your PR & Marketing Efforts.” We learned that as Twitter turns six years old and the site is averaging 230 million tweets per day, the main obstacle users face is how to make their voice heard.

The speakers in the webinar visualized the Twitter community as a cocktail party, but I saw it as more of an opportunity to grow a friendship.

Similar to maintaining a friendship, on Twitter you want to show your personality and be engaging, so the other person will enjoy your company. You also need to feel out what your audience would like to talk about and how you can build off of their interests.

So, how do you continue to build a lasting friendship? The answer is quite simple: communicate effectively. A few ways to improve your Twitter relationships include:

• Offering exclusives: You tell your best friend everything, right? Well, don’t hold out on your Twitter followers—give them the inside scoop too.
• Be an expert: Rely on certain friends for news, gossip, diet tips? If you have strong knowledge of a topic, interact with that Twitter community and add value to their conversations.
• Stay relevant and organized: The best stories are told in detail and don’t jump around. When it comes to managing your Twitter content, you can create an editorial calendar to stay on topic, relevant, and give followers a sense of continuity.
• Post photos and videos: There is a reason why we take pictures with our friends. To humanize and visually improve your Twitter account, post photos and videos to create eye-catching content.
• Correct use of hashtags: It’s hard to follow a story when your friend keeps switching topics. The same goes for Twitter; the correct use of hashtags can help organize your conversation so it can be found by those looking for that subject on Twitter.

Unlike with a friendship, on Twitter you can’t read the person’s face to see if they are interested in what you are communicating. Ways to measure the success of your content on Twitter include your number of followers, mentions, and retweets.

So, next time you find yourself on Twitter, be it for your personal use or the development of a client’s social media strategy, picture yourself standing next to one of your friends. Odds are that you will want to be remembered as the friend with the best stories who had an audience hanging on your every word.

This has probably happened to all of us at some point in our PR careers: we’ve worked hard to develop messaging and positioning with our client or internal spokesperson, prepared the press release, developed unique story angles and pitches, gone through revisions and feedback sessions, and finally pitched the story. And, voila! We landed some interviews. But when the spokesperson starts telling the story, your jaw drops because they are telling it in a way you’ve never heard before. Why? Maybe it’s because we forgot to carve out time in the lead up or simply ran out of time to do some basic media training. Even here, we are guilty of occasionally lining up that last minute interview without always thinking through prep.

Sadly, the time we take to prepare for the interviews can leave most of us feeling that we’ve spent too much time on the initial phase and not enough on coaching the client or internal spokesperson for the ultimate payoff – the interview.

And shouldn’t the media training be the cornerstone of this activity?

Often, a spokesperson may not be entirely comfortable doing media interviews, or may just be new to the process. So, while all the initial steps -preparing a detailed briefing document, outlining the opportunity and noting potential questions, suggesting talking points – are critical, what’s equally critical is allocating the time to prep the spokesperson.

Many times during my career in PR and as a media trainer, I have asked myself if I have spent enough time prepping the spokesperson for the interview. So much more time seems to be spent developing messaging and other core materials, that when it comes to prepping the spokesperson, we may think our job is done after we deliver the briefing document, hoping that he or she reads it and that somehow will be enough.

As PR professionals, we need to make certain that media training is happening on a daily basis, and not regarded as some feared annual mandatory workshop.

Here are some tips and tricks to make sure we are helping prepare spokespeople in their day to day lives vs. coaching them annually for the Armageddon of media interview scenarios such as Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes showing up at their door step unannounced:

1.) Walk the walk, talk the talk

If time doesn’t allow for formal media training after messaging is solidified and prior to the media interviews, at least set up a mock interview with the spokesperson in person or by phone. During this session, go over the basics—explain whom they are meeting with and why, and actually pose some potential questions to help with suggested responses.

2.) Answer the “So, what?” And get your party pitch ready

A favorite media question, either asked or implied, is “Why should I care?” or “So, what?” Be prepared! And, encourage the client or internal spokesperson to practice their elevator pitch or “party pitch” as I like to call it-whether at home and with friends. If they have an upcoming barbeque or a family party, encourage them to be thinking about compelling ways to talk about their company’s story in an everyday setting so that someone outside of their field would find it interesting. If you get feedback that above training in real-life scenario results in guests making a bee line for the bar to escape said budding spokesperson, offer to help your spokesperson fine tune that party pitch.

3.) Have an idol

Encourage your client or in house expert to find a spokesperson they admire, and ask them to identify what it is that makes this person charismatic and effective at telling their story. Is there something they can emulate from this person while still being genuine? Or are there particular styles they would rather avoid? This political season is ripe with good and bad examples of effective interview styles. Check out Beth’s post about which candidates handled tough questions the best during the GOP debates last fall.

4.) Put pen to paper

Encourage the spokesperson to write down three points or “must says” they want to get across before each interview, and prepare two sound bites they want to deliver, even if the interview doesn’t go as planned or goes off track. This allows the spokesperson to remain in control of the interview as much as possible and to have something concrete to go back to.

5.) Repeat, repeat, repeat

Like many things in life, practice makes perfect. Encourage your spokesperson to think about potential questions and answers developed during the mock interview session and review them out loud, preferably in front of an actual person who is patient and kind enough to act as a live audience. Who knows — your spokesperson could use blocking and bridging techniques in their personal life too. (Husband: Why is the house such a mess and are we really doing take-out again? Wife: What I can tell you is that the children have been extremely happy and active, playing and frolicking about).

Let’s face it; after all is said and done, one of the most important functions of PR is to generate positive, accurate and hopefully memorable coverage for our clients and the companies we represent as in-house PR professionals. By encouraging media training in the day to day, we may find we are helping develop more prepared, confident spokespeople who can  truly become “go to” sources for influential news media.

We are thrilled beyond words for InkHouse’s Tina Cassidy, whose second book, Jackie After O: One Remarkable Year When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Defied Expectations and Rediscovered Her Dreams, debuts today.

In the book, she takes a look at the year 1975, in which Jackie Kennedy becomes a two-time widow and begins what Tina calls her “third act.” That year, Kennedy embarks on a campaign to save Grand Central Station and becomes a book editor after a long absence from the world of writing.

Tina notes that Kennedy was once a journalist who quit her job the same day that JFK proposed to her. As Tina said, “This was her year to reclaim the person she should have been.” The most important takeaway from the book? Tina told New England Cable News yesterday morning that, “There are ways to have a midlife crisis gracefully, and she shows us how to do that.”

This is Tina’s second book (her first was Birth: The Surprising History of How We are Born). To hear her talk about it in-person, check out her recent appearances on FoxBoston and New England Cable News. You can read more about Tina and both of her books on her website. You can follow her on Twitter @tinacassidy2.

We have had the pleasure and honor of working with Tina here at InkHouse as our chief content officer. She is one of the hardest working people I know, and she brings an unusual steadiness to her work that inspires confidence in her teams and clients alike. We are constantly amazed at her capacity to write informative, inspiring and fascinating books, while somehow maintaining her beautiful family life and giving us everything she has to give.

Tina, our hats are off to you. You inspire us every single day.

One of the speakers was Kara Swisher, the founder of AllThingsD.com, an immensely popular tech, media and Internet news site (4 million readers) which she launched 5 years ago after she personally began to think that printed newspapers were becoming irrelevant.

Swisher doesn’t mince words. You would expect nothing less from a hardened journalist – one who turned down a gig covering the White House when she worked at the Washington Post because she was interested in a new phenomenon: the Internet, and AOL.

At the time, she told a man for whom she has great affection, Don Graham of the Post — now on the board of Facebook, by the way — exactly what she thought of the paper (outmoded), and quit. She decamped for the Wall Street Journal, where she started covering digital issues out of the San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector.

In 2000, she pitched a blog to the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, whose response was: “What’s a blog?”

“I said, ‘Why don’t we tape a joint between every page [and then people will read the paper],’” Swisher recalled.

Dow Jones also pushed back by saying bloggers regularly got the facts wrong – they didn’t do proper reporting. At which point Swisher presented the list of “43 mistakes” that the paper had made so far that year.

Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher and Steve Jobs at the website’s spinoff D8 Conference in 2010.

Skip to today. All Things D is staffed with serious journalists. And the staff’s personalized ethics statements are posted prominently, including Swisher’s own fascinating and lengthy one.

The site is unusual in several ways. First, it is wholly owned by Dow Jones and adheres to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online start-up (Swisher and tech columnist Walt Mossberg have skin in the game), they bring “fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.”

If you are among Swisher’s more than 800,000 Twitter followers, you know what she means. In fact, Twitter is one of their biggest traffic drivers.

With a staff of 7, the site broke seven of the 10 biggest tech stories of the year, Swisher says, and makes money. How many other journalists are providing revenue for the front office?  (The Wall Street Journal has dozens of reporters on the same beats, she notes.)

Swisher also said that she does not reveal web traffic results to her reporters on their stories because then the staff would only write about Apple. If I were Swisher (who has a fondness for LOLcats) I’d insert one here:

While Swisher’s Harvard presentation about tech trends was interesting – SoMoLo, Big Data and LOLcats among them – the point of her talk was to admonish the reporters in the room for “not keeping up with digital information.”

“Journalists need to be more entrepreneurial,” she said.

But then, the same holds true for investors.

The big trend in Silicon Valley these days? According to Swisher, “a lot of big minds are chasing small ideas.”

For the second year in a row, we are thrilled to be included in the Boston Business Journal’s Pacesetters, which ranks the fastest growing private companies in Massachusetts.

Since last year’s Pacesetters, we’ve marked some major milestones. We just hired our 33^rd employee, and are still looking for others to join our growing team. In June, we will also expand our space at the Watch Factory, an eagerly anticipated event given our current close quarters (thanks to the InkHouse team for bearing with us through the construction!).

Meg and I founded InkHouse because we’re passionate about telling great stories about innovation, and this year has proven to be one in which we’ve had the great privilege of working with inspiring companies, big and small, established and emerging. From Fiksu, Plexxi and Zmags, to Bullhorn, Raytheon, and Nuance, we are grateful for an amazing roster of clients who give us the fuel for great headlines and authentic social conversations.

We also extend a big congratulations to clients and fellow Pacesetters Bullhorn, Core Security, Litle & Co. and Sophos. We’re proud to be in your good company.

And last, but most importantly, we thank our smart, creative, dedicated and hard working team. We stand on your shoulders and are grateful for your earnest contributions, amazing results and contagious laughter every single day.

- Beth and Meg

I’ve been obsessed with words since elementary school. I would constantly write thank-you notes to my grandmother for her homemade cooking, news stories about pretend robbers vandalizing my neighborhood and book reports for English class. My mother wasn’t surprised in the least when I turned my love of writing into a communications career.

When Beth posted about signs of working in public relations, I thought there must be some common threads for us word nerds—individuals who are extremely passionate about grammar and writing. As InkHouse’s resident grammarian, I enjoy perfectly punctuated prose not only because my sixth-grade English teacher stopped awarding me extra-credit points after finding too many “edits for credit,” but because written communication is the heart of PR.

Here’s my map of the DNA of a word nerd. If you answer yes to at least three of these characteristics, welcome to the Word Nerd Club.

1. You eat, breathe and sleep Associated Press style—and text and tweet it.
2. Other people’s grammar mistakes are your treasured moments of celebration and correction.
3. You know the difference between using more than and over.
4. Hash marks aren’t proper typography, and you quiver when they appear in writing.
5. It’s one space—not two—after periods.
6. Your favorite authors are William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
7. You dominate multiple Words with Friends games and strategically throw down words such as qi and za to further increase your lead.
8. Excessive exclamation points drive you to drink.
9. Unnecessary apostrophes such as 1990’s or 20’s ignite migraines.
10. You have a special editing pen, and the color of your choice is always red.
11. You edit copy with old-school proofreading marks such as STET.
12. Your Twitter feed is full of best practices in grammar, hashtagged AP style.
13. You never use “like” in any of your like writing.
14. The Oxford comma is a serial offence.
15. Words such as utilize and leverage aren’t in your diction.
16. Your writing philosophy: deploying muscular verbs and varying sentence length.
17. You call a colleague to debate the philosophical placement of commas (HT @Laura_PM).
18. Chicago style doesn’t refer to deep-dish pizza.
19. Compound modifiers? No sweat.
20. You know how to “parse tree” a sentence.

I’ll be tweeting these signs with the hashtag #wordnerd and invite others to participate in the conversation by tweeting additional traits or posting them below as comments. Fellow word nerds unite!