Italians Love TV, Germans don’t like Facebook

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Italy is an interesting market. Despite the 150 newspapers published there, it is television that drives the coverage and generates most of the advertising revenue. Unlike Brits, Italians don’t get their gossip from daily tabloid newspapers, but from weekly magazines. When not reading those and watching TV, you can find Italians listening to radio, more so than any other European nation.

Travel a little bit north to Germany and you’ll find an entirely different picture. Its 82 million people subscribe mostly to regional newspapers. Overall, regional press accounts for 95% subscriptions. Where national press is dominant in other countries like the UK, in Germany strong regional newspapers are in high demand.

… Continue Reading

Getting Second-Tier Bloggers to Write About You

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You should not focus solely on mainstream media and a few most visited blogs. Second-tier bloggers deserve your attention. If they like your product, they will become your most vocal evangelists in a way that a journalist or top-tier blogger never would. I spoke about second-tier bloggers and how to reach out to them with one such blogger, Dianna Huff. She is the author of B2B MarCom Writer Blog and a B2B marketing consultant.

What’s keeping you busy these days? I know you work on several different projects at the moment and that you also run a B2B MarCom Writer Blog.
I do have two separate websites and two different approaches going on. I have my main work, which is business-to-business marketing communications. And for about the last two or three years I’ve had a number of consultant type people call me asking for help, so I started “The Profitable Consultant” to offer coaching to those people. And then I have my B2B MarCom Writer Blog. … Continue Reading

PR Tools You Must Try: News Tracking

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It seems that almost everyday there is at least one new tool, gadget or a website that can make our life more productive and results of our work even more impressive. Because there are so many different tools available to PR professionals, I decided to review them, a few at a time, in this new series of quick reviews.

Today, I will tell you about three tools for tracking your company’s coverage and all of them are free. The next post will look at tools for tracking the blogosphere. … Continue Reading

The Best PR Schools in the U.S.

While business schools, law schools and medical schools are ranked by many organizations every year, there are not as many resources for students who want to study public relations.  But thanks to PR Week, we now know which five PR schools are the best. On March 5, PR Week will announce a winner of the PR Education Program of the Year 2009. Let’s take a look at the nominees:

• Georgetown University Masters of Professional Studies in Public Relations and Corporate Communications
• James Madison University
• New York University, MS Degree In Public Relations & Corporate Communication
• University of Alabama PR Program, Spring 2008
• University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication, Public Relations Studies Program

Good luck to all on March 5, but I do hope that my alma mater, the University of Southern California, wins! … Continue Reading

Why BlackBerry Should Reach Out to Obama

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I am sure the marketing people at Blackberry screamed in joy when they heard that Obama is addicted to his BlackBerry, doesn’t want to give it up and media won’t stop writing about it. It is an endorsement worth about $25-$50 mil., reports a recent New York Times article. Whatever products Obama uses will get a lot of attention. Just recall the report that Obama is using a Zune. A little eye-witness blog post from Philadelphia made it into the mainstream news very quickly.

But is BlackBerry’s public relations department taking an advantage of it? Not from what I have seen or at least not yet. Now it is riding the wave of interest, but it should start getting proactive soon before Obama gets his new NSA-approved device. … Continue Reading