Holtz Communications + Technology

Here we go…the third incident I’ve reported recently in which a local entity has come under fire for the egregious sin of investing in public relations. This time, the culprit is Springfield, Massachusetts, where the Finance Control Board spent $10,000 to contract with one Paul J. Robbins to “chip away at the city’s image as a dangerous place,” according to a report in the Springfield…

PRWeek reports that Procter & Gamble has developed an in-house tool to assess the value of its public relations efforts. The results indicate that PR generated higher return on investment than other marketing channels in four out of six brands the company’s PR department tested. The instrument, called PREvaluate, “incorporates detailed analysis, including information on cost, scope, audience, geographic markets, and possible…

Lee Odden over at Internet Search Engine Database has some advice for writing press releases destined for the Net.

A talented writer should be able to incorporate keywords into a press release as well as satisfy any creative requirements for a compelling read. This is the “art” of press release optimization and also of web page optimization.

The advice that follows is worth…

Focusing on the shift in media consumption patterns, Internet content strategist Sally Falkow offers 11 steps for PR people to take in order to revitalize the profession. Citing statistics that indicate key demographic groups now go online to get news and information, Falow writes, “To ignore these changes and keep on doing PR the same old way doesn’t make any sense to me. Of…

In part of his response to my post on the press release meme, Eric Schartzman wrote, “...it???s tough, in today???s 24/7 news cycle where everyone has access to the newswires online, the segregate a news releases to just the news media.”

Yeah, it’s tough. That doesn’t mean that it’s never desirable.

I encountered two instances of organizations that embraced this notion that press releases are for everybody,…

As if we need further proof that organizations no longer control their messages, Market Sentinel has released the results of a study that spotlight the negative PR implications of Google searches. The study involved Google search results for the 50 top grocery brands in the UK. Of those searches, two out of five included negative messages in the top 10…