As PR people, we strive to do our homework; we investigate what you’ve been writing, we craft a pitch we think will catch your attention and have relevance to your readers. We understand that sometimes you get too many emails to really read each one, we know that there are days when you’re super busy.  But if and when you do get a chance to check out our emails, and you see something that just doesn’t fit with what you’re doing, what stops you from just saying no?  In the long run, it’ll help us help you, and it’ll save your inbox from extra notes that you’d rather not get.

Is this unreasonable?  Is it a nice idea but just too far-fetched?  What would make it easier for media folks to just say no when the pitch doesn’t quite work?

From working with Todd at SHIFT, I can attest that this award is definitely well-deserved.  Readers of his blog, PR Squared, and every person in the Boston and San Francisco offices can tell you that Todd puts his values and beliefs first, and his enthusiasm for public relations and bringing the industry to the next level is evident in all that he does.  Todd’s built a killer army of smart, driven, fearless PR pros, and everyone here is proud to work with him.  SHIFTers, clients and industry peers should all consider themselves lucky to know this cool cat.  And all this before 40!

Congrats, TD!

Dowding’s lucky students are in for a discussion about the importance of good writing as it pertains to public relations and communication in a 2.0 world. And of course, we’ll be talking about first jobs and what life is like on the entry level as we start and build our professional careers.

Should be a good time–here’s hopin’ we all learn something new.

But… I figured, why not reach out and see if any PR pros or people approached by PR pros out there have nuggets of wisdom to share.  With improving understanding and ongoing education in mind, what would you want to make sure your new hire had on a PR 2.0 one-pager?  Maybe it’s an example of what not to do, or a tip on how to leverage LinkedIn.  Maybe it’s a blog tracking tool, or what you consider the simplest RSS feed reader for newbies.

I think it would be cool to compile a list of quotes from people who can share advice, encouragement, examples or opinions that I’ll then pass on to the SHIFTers and my Social Honeycomb readers.  I’m sure I’ll dig up some gems from PR Squared, PR 2.0 and various other PR/marketing/communications blogs, but I figured I’d open the door and invite you to chime in here.

Your 2 cents.  Spill it.

Adam Ritchie thinks you should compare your company’s blog to industry leaders’ blogs and take a look at what’s missing or where you can learn from best practice examples.

Mike Volpe thinks that beyond reading something or signing up for something, every company should blog. He thinks if your company can’t blog, there’s something wrong because you should always have something interesting to share.

Patrick Richardson recommends that PR pros use the Internet as the marketing research tool it is. As he said, your customers are out there, opting in to conversations about your brand. His advice is that using RSS feeds is a great way to listen to these conversations and learn about your consumers.

Mark McClennan feels that too many companies are mute, but that the bigger challenge at this point is too many companies are also “blind and deaf.” There are effective, free ways to listen to and learn from all the things people are saying about your clients online. He also highlights that there are tons of PR pros sharing insight and information on the Web, and it’s important not to overlook these conversations as well. His parting words: You gotta listen and you gotta see.

Also, I won a copy of Brian Reich’s Media Rules. Share in my glee!

A PR professional from an agency elsewhere in the United States sent me a pitch over email for the blog. It, um, wasn’t a great pitch. The subject line was a bit confusing. She let me know she liked one of my recent blog posts but then copied and pasted some stuff from a press release that had nothing to do with what she said she liked and also nothing to do with things I write and care about. There was a big typo in there somewhere. It just wasn’t a good pitch for me.

Because I’m a PR kid and a blogger at the same time, this pitch made me upset for two different reasons. As a blogger, it was a little upsetting to receive a pitch so off the mark. As a PR pro, it was upsetting to see someone sending out pitches like this one and know she’s probably not just sending it to me. It worried me that another public relations practitioner was running the risk of getting blasted on some blog for sending spam-like and lazy emails.

I called her up.

I told her who I was and said I had gotten her email. I let her know that as a fellow PR person, I wanted to call and talk about what may have worked better for pitching me. We ended up having a great conversation about the how difficult it is to always make the right decisions when reaching out to bloggers and we discussed some better approaches. I let her know that with me, if I’m on an outreach list, but she isn’t totally sure that her news is a puzzle-piece fit for me and my blog, to just say so and be honest. I told her not to waste any minutes of her busy day writing out a big flowery pitch and including paragraphs of information. Just tell me honestly why you’re reaching out, let me know what the news is and give me a few short bullet points with things like links so I can find out more before I write back. I stressed that while this is a good approach for me, it might not work for everyone, and it’s important to remember that. It’s a good idea to reach out to bloggers you want to befriend and ask them how they’d like to be pitched (if at all) and what types of things they are open to receiving.

The thing that makes my experience interesting is that this PR pro was really appreciative of my call. It’s so rare to receive constructive feedback in this business, so I think we both hung up feeling a little better. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t threatening. It’s important to me that PR professionals improve their skills and understanding when it comes to social media. This was just one little way I felt I could help someone and by extension, the profession.

Here’s my call to action. We all get pitches we think are less than awesome, but so many people either ignore them or humiliate the person who sent them. Once in a while, give some constructive feedback. Remember that this person probably doesn’t want to annoy or offend you–they’re still learning how to respectfully and effectively reach out in this changing media landscape, and sometimes they need some pointers. Be pissed off for a minute, but then spend a minute thinking of how this PR person could have done a better job or how they could better approach you in the future. The profession as a whole will have an easier time improving and moving forward with a little guidance and a bit of feedback. You may be surprised at the difference it makes.

One of the gems that stood out to me (besides the chocolate-covered raisins in my dinner package, mmm) was the discussion around being “on message.” Mike really hit the nail on the head as he explained that there’s simply no such thing as the crafted, corporate message working anymore and that “the message” is what people are saying, regardless of what you put in a PR plan or what your client’s legal team approves. I really liked that Mike took this idea one step further to say, “If you don’t like what people are saying, YOU have to change something. You have to change what YOU’RE doing if you don’t like what people have decided the message is.” I’m a firm believer in this concept, and it pains me when I hear stories about clients pulling their hair out over “this” vs. “that” word choices and ignoring what’s really being said about them on the Web. You don’t own your message, so listen to the people who are creating it and respond and collaborate accordingly.

Another key takeaway from the night was the discussion that social media tools and tactics aren’t always right for every client or in every situation. As much as we get excited about this stuff and see the value in bringing it to light for our clients, there’s no merit in rolling out a Facebook campaign or a YouTube contest if it doesn’t make sense for the goals you’re trying to achieve. The panelists mentioned that while Facebook might work for getting in front of college students, some almost-100 percentage of students also look to and trust their university papers for news. And let’s be real–no one is hosting an event with panelists getting fired up about how awesome newspapers are and fresh ways to use this sweet PR tool, but it’s good to remember that a little traditional/new mix-n-match can be the magic potion for meeting client objectives and achieving success.

Each of the panelists also stressed the importance of practicing what you preach by being engaged yourself. I really liked what Mark said about “social media finally enabling PR people to do what we’ve been WANTING to do for 100 years.” We have countless tools and opportunities to connect with people, learn new things and share interesting content, so why are so few people taking advantage?

In the car ride home after the event, Pamela Seiple, Mary Sullivan and I got to talking about the connection between online and offline interaction. In my opinion, the Web has given us a digital reflection of how social relationships exist in real life already, which makes the transitions from online to offline remarkably fluid. Brian alluded to a PR team in crisis mode taking angry bloggers offline to talk about issues as possibly revealing a flaw or failure of new media. I have to respectfully disagree. (Or honestly, maybe I just missed the point? Brian’s a soft-spoken guy.) I think taking plugged-in people offline is just an extension of the way they’re able to socialize online, and vice versa. And when bloggers and tweeple congregate offline, they’re most likely still texting, updating Twitter, sending emails–still connected to their online interactions. The fluidity of online-offline social interaction is pretty sexy if you ask me. Engage me online, engage me offline and let’s talk about online when we’re IRL and real life when we’re online.

And let’s remember: most people who are participating in this social media and social networking stuff are into the idea of engagement. These people generally want to connect, so if PR people are passing up opportunities to form relationships with the people who are driving “the conversation” on the Web (and offline!) about brands, products, public figures, whatever–they’re pretty insane.

All in all, I feel like a lot of my values and ideas about social media and its marcom uses were brought to the surface and that the overall excitement in the room tonight was promising. Every day we’re takin’ this thing closer to the future.

What do you think, boys and girls?

I recently came across a campaign by Haagen Dazs called Help the Honey Bees. This didn’t sound like your typical awareness campaign so I poked around the site a little. Apparently there are a lot of forces working against honey bees, and this in turn affects many of the foods we eat, including, of course, my guilty pleasure of choice–ice cream.

A few interesting facts from the Help the Honey Bees press kit:

• Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, providing 80 percent of the country’s pollination services
• Honey bee pollination directly results in about $15 billion worth of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and agricultural seeds annually in the U.S. That does not include the role that honey bee pollination plays in providing the seeds that are planted for forage (alfalfa and clover, etc.) that are eaten by our livestock and end up on our plates as meat, or as dairy products

I never knew honey bees were so important! This Haagen Dazs micro-site represents an interesting cause marketing/PR campaign for an issue most people probably never think about. You can easily learn about the bee crisis, see what’s being done, find out how you can help and play around with some fun bee-themed features at the same time. This awareness-raising campaign seems genuine, and positions Haagen Dazs as environmentally-minded and responsible beyond the brand just wanting to sell more tubs of ice cream. …Mmm, ice cream…

Even if you hate ice cream and don’t care if the foods you enjoy are ruined by the plight affecting honey bees, you may enjoy the whimsical “Make a Bee” section of the site. It’s reminiscent of the Become an M&M campaign, where you can customize a honey bee and send it through “bee-mail” to a friend.

I think this is an interesting cause-related PR campaign. So get out there, buy some ice cream and save some honey bees. …Mmm, honey…

I’ve seen some of my Twitter friends like Geoff Livingston, Greg Verdino and Matt Dickman talking about Tweet Clouds recently, so I checked the site out. It’s a cool way to visualize your most tweeted words.

What I find interesting as a PR person is that you can see the terms arguably most important to people as well as who they’re talking to most often. This gives us insight into who our influencers are and what things and people are central to their conversations. Tweet Clouds could end up being a visually interesting and useful way to get a better snapshot of who people are on Twitter.

Try this out. In the meantime, here’s my Tweet Cloud:

As an entry level PR professional, I spend a lot of time in the trenches scanning, tracking, compiling, reporting, monitoring… You get the picture. I’m sure the other newbies out there know what I’m talking about, w00t. It’s part of the job, and even though it’s sometimes tedious and time consuming, this stuff is important to our clients and supportive for our account teams.

A tool I’ve been using in my scanning and monitoring work is Hubspot’s Website Grader. Since Technorati isn’t all that comprehensive or reliable on its own when it comes to ranking and scoring blogs, I love that I have this tool to help me give meaning to the content I track. Why does this service rock? From the Website Grader home page:

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

I like that the grading doesn’t just give you a number or a score, but that it shows you how the tool derives that number (AND how to better optimize your content if you want to improve your score). Website Grader pulls from different resources like Technorati, Google Page Rank, del.icio.us and Alexa (not to be confused with this Alexa), and gives you a table-view snapshot of your results. So simple. It helps people like me to explain the authority of certain blogs as opposed to others with easy-to-understand evidence supporting my recommendations. I love this tool.

If you have been tasked with scoring blogs, have you used Website Grader? What do you think?