The position of "community manager" is relatively new. It's also increasingly important. The person in charge of tending to your online tribe needs to possess certain skills. Obviously writing, the ability to produce multimedia content, comfort with tech, experience, work ethic and intellect matter - as they do for any modern day…
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I haven't posted on email in awhile, but it's a favourite subject. I've been wondering about those messages pertaining to how we should consider the environment before printing an email. In fact, I've got several questions. If you can answer them, please do so in the comments: Does this now omnipresent blurb…
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There are right ways and wrong ways to ask questions when you are new to the Comms business (or any business). No sane manager expects entry level people to place clients in huge outlets or solve massive PR crises. However, everyone likes to see that new folks think, even if…
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I hire lots of people who are fresh out of school for my PR team. Below are the job specific things that I look for in new hires. A sense of what news is: PR pros are not yet glorified community managers. We still 'do' news and pitching. The latter requires…
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North Korea uses the most over the top official rhetoric of any country on Earth. In fact the language is so routinely bizarre that sometimes you wonder if the place is actually on Mars. Every year at this time the North Korean government issues a collection of crazy statements related…
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You've heard about idiot employees Facebooking themselves out of jobs. If you manage folks in a shop that allows access to socnets you've probably spent some time wondering whether your people are using Facebook to dick around at work or are leveraging it for meaningful connections (or some such nonsense).…
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When I was young I spent a summer working in a glass factory. It made bottles of all types. The shifts were 12 hrs at a time, from 7 am to 7pm or vice versa. Breaks, lunch and station changes were scheduled to the minute. They have places like this…
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Writing is really hard. It is one of those things that lots of people claim to be good at but aren't. Mechanics, style, flow and the inability to express thoughts succinctly are the usual suspects when it comes to crappy prose. Even if you are OK at putting words together,…
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In a dictatorship candour is generally absent from public life. This creates situations where the dictator has trouble getting good information about what is actually going on. For example, in the first Gulf War Saddam Hussein had such faulty intelligence re his own military's capacity that the Iraqis got into…
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Since yesterday was so much fun I am back again with installment two of "Shoot that term in the head." Today's victim is "this is a critical time." This unfortunate group of words is often employed by managers who are trying to impart a sense of urgency to their troops.…
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