For many years, the concepts and efforts behind public relations were underestimated due to the inability to determine exact return on investment. It was difficult to attribute specific increases in sales numbers or revenue generation as a result of intangible concepts like reputation building, brand management and community…
A few weeks ago, I attended my first two Obsidian new client meetings. In both meetings, during introductions, our clients inquired about the firm’s name. Kerri Guyton, the director of client services, confidently explained that our name is a metaphor of the natural forming rock, obsidian. She explained…
I’m not the first person to be in this position, nor is this my first time to be here - staring at a blank windows document, pondering what the heck to write about. Normally, when blog post time comes around, I’ve been mulling over an idea, or inspiration…
The Associated Press Stylebook is the bible of rules for writing news. My sophomore year of college, I took an entire classes dedicated to learning the ins and outs of this book. Back then, I had no idea how useful this training would be. Even though I have…
PR is on my brain almost all the time, even when I’m not at work. I think about applying aspects of PR planning to different situations in my personal life (see my post about my holiday family PR plan), and I think about different scenarios and symbols that…
Basketball season is coming to a close, which means NCAA March Madness has finally arrived! I always love this time of year because of all of the competitiveness with brackets and contests everywhere you go. Plus, I love cheering on the Memphis Tigers! And although they are fun,…
In the wonderful/crazy world of public relations, the spring forward a couple of weekends ago has really thrown me for a loop. I’m not able to go to bed until after midnight; the sun’s not rising until 7:40 a.m. doesn’t help with my morning schedule before work; and…
In an effort to ride the wave of Twitter’s hashtag craze, Facebook added the ability to use hashtags in status posts last June. How has that worked out for them? Well, how often do you use hashtags in your Facebook posts, or more importantly, how often do you…
While there are many tools out in the world that benefit the public relations profession, there is a specific tool that I believe can be beneficial with many different types of projects, especially visual projects. I am currently learning more and more about Adobe Photoshop in my visual…
Last winter, my family and I were in Orange Beach, Ala., for a quick vacation after Christmas. After a day of shopping at the Foley outlet mall (which is FANTASTIC the week after Christmas!), my mom and I were charged with picking up dinner. We’d been to most…