So you think you can write?  Then March Communications may be just the place for you!

March PR is looking for a talented account executive to join our exciting team.  You must have 2-3 years of tech PR agency experience, successful media placements and a passion for writing, including press releases and bylines.

To find out more about the position, please send your cover letter and resume directly to me — Liz@Marchpr.com.

Hate when your email crashes?  Well, obviously, but for the same obsessive organizational reason I do?  I always need to open my Outlook first each morning so that it’s all the way to the left, next to the Start button, on my taskbar.  If, for some reason during the day, Outlook decides not to work and I need to shut it down, I then have to shut down every other program and document I have open to reopen Outlook to make sure it’s all the way at the left of the taskbar again!

What a pain!  That’s why I am truly grateful to our IT guy for installing Taskbar Shuffle on my computer.  This allows me to drag and drop programs anywhere I want on my taskbar so they can be in the order I want.  I have it set to start with Windows and group similar tasks, but not in one button – so now, all my emails can be together with Outlook at the left of my taskbar, but I can see them all individually.  This could get out of hand with really small buttons, if you have tons of stuff open, but it’s perfect for me!

So far I haven’t had any problems with version 2.5 and you can download it for free at CNET here!

It’s no secret that the social media scene has exploded over the last year or so and the blogosphere is no different.  It seems like every Tom, Dick, and Harry are blogging their thoughts to the world.  But beyond personal blogging, companies often wonder if they should have a corporate blog as well.  Many companies ask if it’s really that important to embark on such an initiative – I mean, who will read their blog and what value will it really add to their business?

Well, I’m glad you asked!  Companies can greatly benefit from starting a blog and joining the conversation because, guess what?, that conversation is already out there and it’s going on without you!  Whether it’s about your specific industry, line of products/solutions, or even just your general geographic area, you should be there showing these online communities what you have to offer.  This kind of contribution helps establish your company and its executives as thought leaders in your area, but even more importantly, it shows that you’re listening to what’s being said beyond your own little corporate bubble.

As I’ve noted before in my posts The Key to Social Media: Balancing Observation with Participation and Using Social Media to Generate Leads, with social media, more so than anything else, you have to take into account what everyone else is saying in order to make the most of your contributions and get others to observe you and take account of what you’re saying. 

It seems questions about whether or not blogging is advantageous have been floating around a lot recently and now there are some great statistics to prove my point.  HubSpot recently found that active business blogs draw 6.9 times more organic search traffic than non-bloggers.  It’s no secret that having a blog can increase your SEO, especially since the blogging culture itself encourages cross-linking between posts, but what’s the catch?  That little word “active” is the key.  If your company doesn’t have the time or resources to devote to blogging at least once a week, then perhaps it’s not your time.  While blogging is fun and certainly beneficial, it’s also work.

Maybe you’ll want to find the missing time and resources though since it’s been found that blogging business experience 126 percent higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses.  It’s also interesting to note that a 2008 research study by Cone found that 93 percent of social media users think companies should have a social media presence with 85 percent believing companies should also interact with its community via social media.

The benefits are clearly out there, so get your company to jump on the bandwagon and join the conversation!

As I exited the “t” station this morning, I was handed a complimentary copy of The Wall Street Journal.  I quickly scanned the headlines, and one immediately caught my eye: “Tech Spending Bounces Back As Profits Rise.” The piece looks at increasing spending on technology goods and services as the economy improves and how this spending is breathing new life into companies like Cisco Systems Inc.

“The economy has entered a new ‘phase of recovery,’ said John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, in a call with analysts, adding that he planned to hire up to 3,000 workers in coming quarters.  ‘This is one of the most robust positive turnarounds I’ve seen in my career,’ he added.

“Cisco’s results add to a growing body of evidence that companies are starting to open their wallets after the recession.  The Commerce Department last week said business spending on equipment and software rose at a 13.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, adjusting for inflation. That was the fastest growth since early 2006.”

Good news!  Although the piece goes on to say that spending was still below what it reached in late 2007, and economists believe companies must continue raising capital-spending levels through the remainder of the year to keep pace with depreciation.

However, the good new for those in the technology field is that according to this piece, “Companies appear particularly eager to spend on technology, which forms the backbone of many corporate infrastructures and can boost productivity. As a result, Cisco and its peers, which fell into a slump in the fourth quarter of 2008, have rebounded sooner than companies in other sectors…”

Crate & Barrel, Nestle, American Apparel, evian, Kawasaki, North Face, American Airlines.  What do they all have in common?  They’re all widely recognized brands, but what makes them so recognizable?  What drives their brand awareness?  Press releases, banner ads, shopping bags, and articles certainly play their part, but did typeface come to mind?

Recently, I watched an entire documentary on typeface.  It gets worse than that.  It was an hour and twenty minutes on just Helvetica and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Originally developed in Switzerland 50 years ago, Helvetica is now one of the most widely used typefaces in the world described by experts as “clean,” “professional,” “efficient” and “industrious.”

But it’s more than just corporations using Helvetica typeface.  New York City and Chicago both use the ubiquitous typeface in their public transportation signage, and the U.S. government uses it on its federal income tax forms.  While Helvetica may convey a sense of modernism when you see it used by Verizon Wireless and Apple, it delivers a different tone when you read “Caution!” “No Littering,” or “Exit Only.”

There are many elements that go into your brand’s messaging, but amid all the PR activity surrounding coverage, awards, speaking opportunities, who knew typeface would ever enter the equation in setting the tone?

Talk about successful PR, Punxsutawney Phil has an amazing publicist.  On February 2, he’s one of the top-searched in Google (3,438 results right now as I click on Google News) and one of the most popular trending topics on Twitter.  I also read on Huffington Post that Phil has more than 4,500 fans on his Facebook page.

He saw his shadow this morning, which means six more weeks of winter… Bing!

According to an article in National Geographic today, “Groundhog Day is a lot like a rock concert, but the people are better behaved and there’s a groundhog involved,” said Tom Chapin, editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit.

I’ve always wanted to head down to Gobbler’s Knob in PA for the festivities, perhaps next year!

As I am sure most of you read in Juliana Allen’s post on March’s first Live PR Campaign Strategies Take One , the very under-used PR tool issues responses have been working a treat for our client TmaxSoft.  This couldn’t be more truer now as just yesterday our client called to tell us one of the largest insurance companies contacted them to talk about rehosting and specifically the TmaxSof’t solutions mentioned in an article they read in SD Times. 

For an established enterprise software company in Korea that has very little visibility in the US – having only worked with us for just under three months – this is a tremendous result.  Quite frankly it’s a tremendous result for any enterprise software company.  I’ve dedicated many posts to measurement but this particular result is so straight forward it needs very little measurement.  Was this lead a direct result of PR?  YES!!!  This is in its purest sense what i mean by the output needs to lead to an outcome!

Last week, in March Communications’ first ever “Training Tea,” I gave a presentation on blogging in an effort to inspire people to blog early and blog often!  I began by explaining the importance of having a theme to the overall blog that can then be applied to each individual post.  While I encouraged people to blog about anything their little hearts desired, I stressed the importance of relating it in some way back to the theme.  Having a congruent theme throughout your blogs’ posts helps generate and sustain a following.  If each post is completely random, no one will know what to expect when they sign on to view the latest posts, but if they know this blog focuses on X, and this one on Y, they’ll be more likely to keep coming back to see the latest updates on that topic.  This kind of loyalty is more beneficial than an irregular stream of unique visitors since it helps establish your blog as a thought leader, providing expert opinion and commentary on a designated topic.  Not sure what your blog’s theme is?  That’s a problem… but start with the about page as a guideline (since that’s where your readers will likely look first too) and go from there!

To demonstrate what kind of posts do well on our blog, I analyzed the top viewed entries and looked for themes already present.  What I found was that posts relating to social media, PR, technologies, and current events or trends seemed to do exceptionally well – and even better when they all tied together!  Another key element was when big names were used.  “Big names” meaning large publications, well known companies, or influential executives used not only in the post, but the title of the post as well!  These kinds of posts did particularly well if there was something relevant going on in the news about them at that time.  For instance, Tiger Woods is a big name in his own right, but combined at the time of his scandal, his name gets that much bigger.

It’s also good to think about what people might be searching for in their browser’s search bar.  One of my posts that continually gets unique visitors clearly demonstrates this as it is a direct question I’m guessing many people type right into their search bar: What is that # symbol on Twitter? This post is relevant as social media continues to be a big trending topic in the news and with more and more users signing up for Twitter each day, people are bound to wonder what the # hashtag symbol means.

While generating traffic and keeping in line with your blog’s theme are important, it’s also important to have fun!  We rounded out the presentation with a game of Catch Phrase.  This was inspired from my earlier post, Catch Phrase for Public Relations.  If the buzzer ran out on your turn, you had to use the word that no one was able to guess to come up with a blog post topic – while still keeping in line with the blog’s theme!  Challenging?  Yes.  Fun?  You bet!

 We are often asked to explain to clients why they should start a blog.

 The answer is pretty straightforward.

Each blog post basically acts as a perfectly optimized new page on your website.  If you blog about things that are relevant to the content on the more static pages of your main site and link to them frequently, it can have quite a dramatic effect on the amount of traffic you get from natural search.

You can improve this still further by linking and creating trackbacks within each post to other relevant and useful articles and resources.  And you can comment on other articles and blog posts that may be similar or relevant to your own post, thereby creating a matrix of links that becomes powerful in terms of Google friendliness.

This is just the basics.  There are many different things you can do as well, from blogrolls, to getting listed in blog directories, to syndicating your content, to hosting guest bloggers….

From a technology PR point of view of course, the blog becomes a natural extension of the PR program and helps companies be seen to have an opinion and to demonstrate thought leadership.  2010 is looking like the year of the blog for many of our clients who having shown scientism are now showing how well they can be done.