Archive for January, 2011

Want to learn how to start a killer blog on the WordPress platform? Maybe you already have a WordPress blog and you want to find out how to kick it up a notch. Tomorrow’s PR Daily webinar can help you take care of that. After just one hour, you’ll be packed with knowledge on successful blogging. This is a can’t miss event — and you only have one day left to register! Learn more about it here .

The beleaguered philanderer golfer appeared on ESPN radio this morning, penned an article for Newsweek , and started a Twitter account . That Twitter account is pretty good so far. Here’s a recent tweet , presumably referring to his radio appearance. “The best part about phone interviews is getting to wear shorts,” he wrote. Any coincidence that this PR blitz comes one year after the car wreck outside his home?

Sure, he’s married to a supermodel and can seem downright deity-like on the football field, but can three-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady do the impossible — sell Uggs to men? The Australian-based footwear company is sure betting on it. The company signed the New Englander quarterback to a multi-year deal  as its  global spokesman starting with its fall 2011 collection.

It’s called Pulse of the Tweeters , and it’s the thesis project from a Northwestern University graduate student. The site determines the influence of Twitter users and decides whether tweets are positive, negative, or neutral, and it filters out spam, reports Reuters . “The researchers believe the technology could identify trends and the people who are influencing them,” according to Reuters.

Touché, Copyblogger . “I think good writing doesn’t have to be educated or well supported or even grammatically correct,” Jonathan Morrow wrote for  Copyblogger . Not grammatically correct? That’s a bold statement, sir. “[Good writing] does have to be interesting enough that other people want to read it. Much of what comes out of high schools and universities fail this test, not because our students are incapable of saying anything interesting, but because a well-m…

It appears the newspaper industry does have some fight left. Late last week, a fight reportedly broke out in The Washington Post newsroom between editor Henry Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam vet, who is nearly 70, and (the much younger) features writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, over an article Roig-Franzia wrote for The Post ’s Style section. Allen told Roig-Franzia that his story was “the second-worst story I’ve seen in Style in 43 years,” according to Washingtonian.com ….

“The only people you should follow on Twitter are people who are immediately interesting to you or people who might become interesting to you,” says blogger Mitch Joel . “Ignore the rest.” Joel admits that this is not very social media but it’s necessary in a noisy Twittersphere. Do you agree with this strategy? — Matthew Royse

CME Group in Chicago is looking for someone to develop and implement key corporate external speeches and multimedia presentations, create strategic content for executives’ external speaking events (both technical and high-level) and thought leadership programs worldwide, and align that content with key corporate messages. Read  more about this job.

No time to hire a pro? Follow these suggestions to clean up your copy.

The expensive programs you use every day — like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere — have free alternatives online. Some of them are good; some are garbage. 10,000 Words blog has seven of these free alternatives to popular programs.

Mashable is reporting that Twitter has invited a group of users to test a new analytics tool. With the tool, “users will be able to see a plethora of data about their account; for example, information about which tweets are most successful, which tweets caused people to unfollow, and who the most influential users are that reply and retweet their messages,” according to Mashable . The article includes screenshots of the new tool.

The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, also known as Freddie Mac, is hiring a senior public relations/social media manager to execute public relations and communications strategies and plans to promote corporate and business initiatives.  Read more about this job.

On Wikipedia, “social media” is defined as “media for social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.” But Wikipedia is wrong, says PR Daily contributing editor Jackson Wightman. He offered nine alternative definitions , including, “The group of Web-based things that saved the PR profession from going the way of dinosaurs.”

As you know, Juan Williams, a former news analyst for National Public Radio, received his walking papers this week after  admitting he feels anxious in airplanes when a fellow passenger is dressed in “Muslim garb.” Williams, who is also a Fox analyst, made the comments on the “O’Reilly Factor.” The usual suspects on the right, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, are demanding the federal government either cut or freeze subsidies to NPR, reports The Dail…

Flying tomorrow? Good luck.  National Opt-Out Day begins Wednesday morning at 70 airports. Organizer Brian Sodergren, who Time magazine  said is not flying on Thanksgiving, is asking travelers to opt out of the full body scans and instead ask TSA officials for an enhanced pat-down. That’s right; Brian wants you to get groped. Time is saying the protest could cause massive delays, so arrive at the airport early. Despite the negative attention — which Daily Beast media critic Howard K…