Why give advice for free?
March 5, 2010
Just responded to a PR person’s rant about being asked to give free advice–and her resentment of people who want to ”pick her brain.”
I’m not crazy about being asked to work for free…but certainly there are ways to say “no.” Such as… I wish I could, but I’m not in a position to work for free; or “I’m swamped” or “I’m off the clock, just now.”
My colleague Ted responds to just about anyone who asks for help; as he says, ”We’re in business to make friends.”
Having spent too much time out of work, I know how much it means to have someone offer a helping hand–and will respond, when I can, to almost anyone who is looking for a job.
Likewise–I try to find time to help students or recent grads who need a little career guidance or connections to people who can help provide insight or work.
You never know where things will lead.
Just last night, someone to whom I’d given a bit of free advice recommended me for a consulting gig with an entrepreneur.
On Monday, I’ll be having a phone conversation with the entrepreneur, even though he told me up front he doesn’t think he can afford me and doesn’t want to waste my time. But I’m interested learning about his startup and if I can’t afford to take on the work, I might know someone who can. I do believe that “what goes around comes around”.
Still, I have to admit that after being asked too often to explain social media and its uses, I’m a bit fed up. So I’ve decided to post some blogs that will allow me to both beg off such inquiries and publicize my knowledge and skills.
And who knows? Maybe this post–which has offered some ideas (I hope!) for free – will help to do the same!
—Anita M. Harris
HarrisCom Blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries blogs.
Filed in interpersonal communication, public relations, social media
Tags: public relations, social media, blogging, free advice, marketing, consulting, helping others, advice, networking, social networking, entrepreneur
Boston health journalists have little use for social media
January 18, 2010
Much enjoyed hearing members of the Boston health care press admit (boast?) that they have almost zero use for social media.
Speaking on a panel at last week’s meeting of the Publicity Club of the New England, journalists from the Boston Business Journal (BBJ), Dow Jones Newswires, the Boston Herald and WBZ-TV) said they don’t “get” Twitter--don’t have time for it, and can’t see why anyone would want to use it.
Jon Kamp, who covers medical technology and energy for Dow Jones said, “I’m 35 going on 100. I don’t get it; I don’t know what to do with it. When I’m 100, I hope I’ll be saying the same thing.”
Brad Perriello, executive editor the year-old MassDevice.com, an online business journal covering the device industry, said he mainly posts news feeds to attract readers to the publication’s Web site.
Ryan McBride, a correspondent for Xconomy, a national online publication with bureaus in Boston, Seattle and San Diego, said he follows certain industry leaders on Twitter but rarely contributes, himself.
Several said they have linked-in accounts that they barely use and and none use Facebook professionally.
” Facebook is to show people pictures of my kid,” Kamp said.
McBride described Linked-in as “an online Rolodex that’s full of people I don’t talk to much. Facebook is friends and family and all the people in high school whom I didn’t know were my friends.”
Julie Donnelly of the BBJ can’t see the point of posting on Facebook. “I’m not that interesting,” she said.
Debbie Kim of WBZ-TV said she doesn’t have time and Christine McConville of the Herald, said that, as an investigative reporter, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make public the details of her life. Plus, “I can barely return my emails, get enough exercise, see my friends. I certainly don’t have time for [Facebook]. “
She does, however, enjoy contributing to videos that appear online every three weeks or so.
The conversation was moderated by Michal Regunberg, vice president of Solomon McCown & Co, a Boston public relations firm. Regunberg’s questions focused on the ways in which cutbacks and other changes in the media are affecting coverage.
All of the journalists agreed that the national debate over health reform has been the focus of their coverage in recent months (and that they’re tired of it).
All said they are working with less time, fewer resources and greater demands to produce more. As a result, they have less time for research or feature writing.
McConville said she must write two stories a day for the Herald. McBride covers two different beats for Xconomy. Donnelly writes for both the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech and is responsible for breaking stories on line as well as in print. Debbie Kim, medical producer for WBZ-TV, must sometimes produce as many as four pieces in a single a day.
Kamp mentioned that in the past, Dow Jones’ headquarters was relegated to offices in New Jersey but now shares the New York City newsroom of the Wall Street Journal–and that, in many newsrooms, there is tension over which stories should be posted online immediately and which should be held for the print version of the paper.
All of the above means that anyone trying to get coverage faces huge competition for reporters attention and must provide information that is extremely clear and to the point, the journalists agreed.
The discussion made me glad to be out of the pressure cooker journalism has increasingly become–but happy to see a high level of competence, dedication and concern for truth in the Boston press corps.
——-Anita M. Harris
HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries Blog.
Filed in journalism, media, new media, newspapers, public relations, publishing, social media
Tags: BBJ, Boston Business Journal, Boston Herald, Brad Perriello, Chrstine McConville, Debbi Kim, Dow Jones, Jon Kamp, journalism, journalists and twitter, Julie Donnelly, Mass Device, new media, Publicity Club of new England, Ryan McBride, social media, Twitter, Wall Street Journal, WBZ-TV, Xconomy
How-to Guide to the New Online Newsroom
December 15, 2009
On behalf of the Public Relations Society of America, Steve Morella of Tekgroup, today gave a very useful Webinar on how to integrate social media and online newsrooms.
I was impressed with Steve’s knowledgeability and pleased to learn of several new sites for monitoring social media outreach and campaigns.
Among other topics, Steve emphasized the importance of:
- Online newsrooms as central headquarters for all materials–including not just press releases and contact information but also white papers, bios, articles, blogs, rss (real simple syndication) capabilitt and feeds to social media such as facebook, twitter and linked in.
- Search engine optimization not just in the writing of press releases, but also in posting them in online newsroom postings
- Categorizing feeds by topic (sales, financials, industry) and type
( news, features, video, audio, blogs) - Co-ordinating feeds with social media outlets such as Facebook, linked-in, twitter, u-tube and blogs–as well as bookmarking/commenting/referral/sharing sites, like http://delicious.com, http://www. stumbleupon.com, and http://digg.com.
- Including video, audio and hyperlinks, as well as links to stories, studies and the like, in order to create social media press releases with “legs” (my term, not his!)
- Setting goals and measuring success of social media outreach using sites like https://bit.ly/ shorten, shares, and tracks hits on your links; http://technorati.com, which allows you to search for blogs based on keywords; http://www.blogpulse.com, which analyzes daily trends in the blogosphere. Http://trendistic.com/ measures twitter trends, www.twitalizer.com measures users tweets and retweets; and www.tweetstats.com allows you to see when and how often your tweets are read or retweeted, so that you can post when you’re most likely to be read.
Obviously, Steve’s social media tactic worked; here I am, a potential competitor–posting a blog about it! (He’s the director of Sales and Marketing for Tekgroup, a global firm offering online public relations services). Here are urls to the presentation slides.
http://www.greenjobsdaily.com/HowToUseAnOnlineNewsroomToInteractWithSocialMedia.ppt
http://www.tekgroup.com/marketing/HowToUseAnOnlineNewsroomToInteractWithSocialMedia.pdf
–Anita M. Harris
HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer.
Filed in media, new media, public relations, social media, technology
Tags: Boston, Cambridge, Harris Communications Group, Ma, Measurement, Online Newsroom, public relations, Public Relations Society of America, Search engine optimization, SEO, social media, social media monitoring, Tekgroup
Vooks
October 2, 2009
I read with interest Motoko Rich’s September 30 2009 New York Times article on Vooks–a hybrid “literary” form “mashing together text, Web and video features. “
She describes publisher Simon and Schuster’s release of fitness and diet and beauty books that include videos on how to perform exercises or make skin lotion. Also, Anthony Zuicker’s novel “Level 26, Dark Origins, published on paper, as an e-book and in audio, with a Web component that allows readers to watch brief videos adding to the plot.
The online comments–101 of them–range mainly from skeptical to negative.
John in New York writes, “Should we still call them books?”
Val in Baltimore suggests we’ll soon see “A nobel prize…in viterature!”
Mary the Trainer from Texas writes that the best part of ”reading a novel is creating the scenes in one’s mind based upon what the author has written.”
According to R Weber in Park Slope, ”Publishers –– all corporate hacks these days, with quotas to meet, bearing little resemble to publishers of old who thrived some years, got by in lean years –– have so little imagination & entrepreneurial drive, that idiocies like this are the best they can come up with. The truism proves true once more, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”
I scrolled through pages of comments in hopes of weighing in–but found that the comment box had closed.
What I would have said is that as an author, former radio and television producer, photographer, and musician, I’m thrilled and energized by the prospect of being able to merge media in order to give readers/viewers a fuller experience than is available through any single medium on its own.
In research Ithaca Diaries, a book (or something) based on journals I kept in college in the late 1960s, I was delighted to be able to check my fading memories using video, photos and news accounts I readily found on line. I’ve been struggling to pull my journal entries, letters, photographs and drawings into a linear form–but now it will be possible to include video of the Doors from 1969, Bob Dylan’s 1969 concert on the Isle of Wight; old news footage of the Chicago and Democratic News Conventions, maybe even the shootings at Kent State. Maybe I can even read from the diary entries, aloud–and share tapes of my old professors and friends.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to do this and how to find the time, what it will cost–and whether–and how–it will sell.
I’d welcome YOUR comments.
—Anita Harris
HarrisComblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer
Filed in Books, media, new media, publishing, technology
Tags: Anita Harris, Books, Cambridge, Cambridge Authors, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, HarrisComBlog, Hybrid books, Ma, New Cambridge Observer, public relations, vooks
How to write a winning blog for SEO
September 3, 2009
At the September meeting of the Cambridge Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Chris Baggot of Compendium Blogware, advised a tech savvy group of 72 that key words and multiple pages are crucial to winning high blog rankings on search engines like Google and Bing.
Group members interrupted Baggot numerous times with questions. (They didn’t want to believe that Compendium’s platform, which focuses on providing many pages, each with its own keywords, could work better than WordPress). But Baggot held his own.
Key takeaways:
- Eighty percent of activity on the Web is search–by people who are looking for solutions to particular problems– using keywords.
- Bing, and, now, Google, are increasingly using content, as opposed to links, in ranking the importance of particular posts.
- Domain names don’t matter: blog titles, and keywords do
- Have as many focused blog pages as possible–hundreds, if you can, each with its own main keyword
- For consultants: tell stories of problems you have solved
- Search engines “like” frequency and fresh pages; write short but often
- Blogs should be 100-150words; if you have to more say, write another post
- Include a call to action–give people a way to go forward: have an offer; ask them to sign up for something
Ohmygosh I’m over 150 words!
Here’s my call to action: Contact me at harriscom@harriscom.com if you need communications strategy, media outreach, Web structure and content, a WordPress blog or writing for any medium about almost anything.
–Anita M. Harris
Harriscomblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer. Copyright: anita m. harris, 2009
Filed in new media, publishing, social media, technology
Tags: Blog ranking systems, blogging, Cambridge SEO Meeting Group, Cambridge SEO Meetup, Chris Baggot, Compendium, Harris Communications, SEO, SEO Optimization
Welcome!
July 16, 2009
Hi–and welcome to HarrisCom.blog, a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.
We’ll be covering and commenting on issues relating to the traditional and new media, public relations, social media, health care life sciences, and our clients. We welcome links, pingbacks, comments and suggestions. Our materials are copyrighted, so if you’d like to use them, please email us for permission.
Thanks for stopping by!
Anita M. Harris, President
Filed in health care, interpersonal communication, journalism, life sciences, media, new media
Tags: Cambridge MA, Harris Communications Group, life science, media, media relations, new media, pr, public relations, social media
Comment on Doug Bailey’s call for no comment
July 16, 2009
On Wednesday, July 15, 2009, media consultant Doug Bailey wrote in an op ed column entitled ”Got a comment? Keep it to yourself” that space for comments at the end of online newspaper articles should be eliminated because they downgrade the quality of news.
Bailey, who does not disclose that he’s a former Globe editor, suggests that rather than enhance communication, newspapers online forums are “insidiously contributing to the devaluation of journalism, blurring the truth, confusing the issues, and diminishing serious discourse beyond even talk radio’s worst examples.”
He points out (without naming names) that the comment sections allow ”anonymous”, “unverified,” “agenda-driven” ”boneheads” to post inaccurate information that can be picked up by bloggers and then by legitimate traditional reporters who publish “missives” –unaware that the bloggers’ information came from their newspapers’ own Web sites.
Yes, this is a problem–and it is, as Bailey puts it, a bit ”insane”. But rather than ban readers’ comments, wouldn’t it make more sense for reporters to verify all sources? Certainly, real reporting takes time–and traditional journalists are increasingly harried in these days of cost-cutting and layoffs.
But it is verfication and objectivity that separate independent journalism from disinformation. And, it is truth, and allowing readers a stake in it–that, in the end, will give us a reason to pay for news.
Bailey ends his column saying, “By the way, don’t bother posting any comments directly to me when this article appears on the Web. I won’t see them. Instead, go start your own website or blog or buy a legitimate newspaper or write a letter to the editor, or an op -ed (and sign your own name to it). If you really have something interesting to say, I’ll find you.”
(I was amused–and glad–to see 168 comments after the online posting.
- “Kachunk” says he’s posting for “the irony”
- “Oldpink ”says it’s “ nice for ordinary citizens to be given an opportunity to add something that should have been in the original column, while allowing others to rebut.Messy? Often a bit mean? Commonly inaccurate? Absolutely. Isn’t democracy grand?”
- ”Sensibleman,” writes that he’s using the first amendment to tell Bailey “to stop submitting articles so if intelligent life ever scans our internet to determine how critical it is to stop at Earth they don’t pass over us due to stupidity.”)
I read Bailey’s column in the print edition–which is delivered to my door (late, but that’s another story) every day. But the Globe allows almost no print space for letters to the editor which, in days past, might have helped keep reporters and columnists on their toes. Hence, this posting–and comment #169 after Bailey’s piece, online.
But if I did write in, I’d include my name and prior affiliations– and make clear that like Bailey’s, my not-so hidden agenda is to attract customers to my consulting business.
Hint, hint: Anita Harris, a former national journalist, is president of the Harris Communications Group, of Cambridge, MA.
PS Comments welcome!
Filed in media, new media, newspapers, social media
Tags: Anita M. Harris, Boston Globe, Cambridge, Doug Bailey, got a comment, Harris Communications Group, HarrisCom, journalism, media, new media
