Old Dogs Learning New Tricks

By Junior Account Executive Bridget Veltri

The days of sending Fido, the family dog, out to fetch the newspaper in the morning may be numbered but newspapers are not dead…just adapting.

Organic Online PR Campaigns: Building Brand Staying Power Without Paid SEO

By President Abbi Whitaker

PR is organic in nature. A good story in a well respected magazine is most likely to create conversation and curiosity amongst potential customers. Those customers might post a review online, spread the message through social networks or even take the time to blog about the product, person or idea. That conversation creates natural organic search results that can’t be pushed down the chain when Google decides to shake up their algorithms. It enhances a company’s brand, their positioning and their place in the market. It outlasts any paid SEO and creates customers that are mostly likely to become brand ambassadors, and creates trust through the power of third-party endorsements. A well planned and properly executed PR campaign is likely to have more staying power over the long haul than an expensive SEO campaign. How do you accomplish this? By building a combination of strong content, good conversation, quality reviews, stories and expert staying power. Read on!

Power to the Bloggers! And the Facebook Contests!

Facebook contests; created as the almighty way to drive traffic to your page, increase engagement, reward your fans, and ultimately, skyrocket your page’s fan count. But as many failed attempts will attest to, that goal is much easier said than done.

We’ve seen contests crash and burn. We’ve had contests crash and burn.

Everybody Loves a Scandal: 5 Crisis Communications Tips from ABC’s Political Drama

5 Crisis Communications Tips You Can Learn From ABC’s Scandal

By Krystal Tingle, Senior Account Executive

Anyone who knows me can attest that other than news and NBA playoffs, I am not a huge TV watcher. Now, thanks to Grey’s Anatomy creator, Shonda Rhimes, ABC’s newest political drama, “Scandal,” is my guilty pleasure. I am literally counting down the hours until Thursday’s season finale. “Scandal” stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, Washington D.C.’s biggest fixer. Pope is a crisis communications phenom inspired by the career of Judy Smith, former deputy press secretary in George H. W. Bush’s White House and a consultant in high-profile cases like Monica Lewinsky. The fast-paced, sexy political drama is not only entertaining; it can teach you a thing or two about how to handle a crisis.

Workin’ the Weekends

By Bridget Veltri, Junior Account Executive

The news knows no day off. Fortunately, as public relations professionals we have the luxury of taking weekends (most of the time) but sometimes working the weekend can make the difference in getting your client covered.

When it comes to local media the weekend staff at news stations and papers are the equivalents of nocturnal animals, rarely seen or recognized but magnificent creatures starved for content. Here are a few things to keep in mind when working with weekend reporters.

Don’t be a Debbie Downer

Applying first date rules to your work.

By Leah Scherschel, first date professional and account executive

In relationships we tend to get a little comfortable, letting go some of the behaviors we display on a first date. I am definitely no expert on relationships, but know that a second date is dependent on the “success” of the first date. This is much like work; think if we employed first date habits into our work environment, how much more successful we could be. Below are some widely accepted first date rules that we should incorporate into our work days.

How to Pitch Your Local Food Writer

From President, Abbi Whitaker

Local food (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Restaurant PR isn’t all cocktails and five star dining.  Food editors, writers and bloggers are constantly approached by PR people to cover the latest and greatest restaurants, recipes and products.  Because let’s face it — we are not going to hit a home run with Epicurious.com  or Food & Wine every time.  As PR people it’s our job to work journalists from most markets to keep our clients in the media. How do you break through the onslaught of bad e-mail pitches, long winded phone messages and off-topic  Tweets to get through to these local industry influencers and get your clients those much coveted regional and  local kudos?  And once you’ve broken through the clutter how do get your fair share of press?  As more and more papers turn to social media to drive traffic back to their websites PR people should be thinking of viral additions to their written pitches – include a YouTube video, a Flickr photo gallery or a pin board on Pinterest.  Offer these writers some additional resources that they can then use on their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Pinterest boards.  Think about making their job easier and giving them more to work with.  Chances are  your e-mails will get more than a second glance.

A PRSSA Panel Recap: How to successfully pitch different media mediums

Think engaging media is easy?  Think again.  They can be unforgiving if you make the same mistake twice. But if you do your homework, understand their beat, and create a pitch that has a strong news hook, you just might be able to develop a mutually beneficial and long-term relationship.

I recently moderated an earned media panel for the regional PRSSA conference held in Reno and came away with some strong suggestions on how to develop relationships with local and national reporters and turn those relationships into stories.

Panel Members:

Brian Burghart — Editor, Reno News & Review

Matt Brown — Editor, Nevada Magazine

Kelly Scott — News Editor, Reno Gazette-Journal

Stewart  Cheifet– Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and former national TV news reporter

Pitch that Party: 5 Tips for Pitching Events

By Junior Account Executive Bridget Veltri

Publicizing events and parties just isn’t like it used to be in the good ole care free days of college. Back then all you had to do was create an event on Facebook (or for the older ones: Myspace), invite some people and promise beer.

At The Abbi Agency, what we enjoy more than attending a good party is pitching one (maybe that is a slight exaggeration) But, we relish the fact that we’ve put on stellar events like Canfest and the CAMPO opening benefit.  And after all, isn’t an event only as good as the number of people that attend it? Here are five tips that help us when pitching our client’s events.

Humanizing B2B brands with visual humor and satire

This post originally appeared on the CMO Site. You can read it here

From Constance Aguilar, our Social Media Specialist

The most unexpected tends to be what works best in social media. When you surprise your audience, they remember it, and aside from tragedy, the most memorable experiences for people involve humor. We like funny things. The Old Spice guy, The Most Interesting Man in the World, Lady Gaga Goes to Farmville, they all resonated with an audience because the concepts and execution are hilarious.

B2B brands find it difficult to be funny. After all, what’s funny about warehouses, processors, supply chains, and microchips?

While nothing may immediately come to mind, the fact is that humor can and already is applied to the B2B world in effective ways, particularly with video. It humanizes B2B brands, invokes positive emotion, and serves a reward to your audience. People love you when you make them laugh.

But how do you get it to work for you? Cisco’s social media manager, Tim Washer, has some pretty great insight to that. He takes riveting things like aggregation service routers and turns them in comedic gems. The process goes something like this: