Thanks from PerkettPR

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Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you enjoy some time with good friends and family and remember all that you have to be thankful for. Inspired by the “thankful videos” posted on Facebook by our client, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, we, too, wanted to share what we are thankful for this year. Here are some of the personal and professional things that some of the staff at PerkettPR wanted to share – how about you?

  • The unbelievable real friendships that I’ve been able to build out of “internet” friendships
  • A great boss that keeps us on top of trends, ahead of the “next best thing” and always pushes us to do better and be better
  • Good health for myself, husband and kids and the extra wisdom to appreciate it
  • Feeling like I share actual office space with people because of the closeness I feel to my colleagues
  • Watching my kids grow and learn
  • Having a supportive and fun team to work with
  • To be working for an amazing organization, whose members impress me every day with their dedication and super-human efforts
  • For my wonderful family and that, someday, my daughter will sleep through the night
  • Good health and great friends
  • The opportunity to engage with co-workers and clients that are continually teaching me new things
  • My wonderful, impish, impulsive, clever 2 year old and the joy he brings to my life (despite the call from daycare that he bit another child)
  • My job, the fact that I get to work virtually, and most importantly the amazing people I’m fortunate enough to work with each day
  • Smart, engaged colleagues who push themselves daily to deliver results
  • The good health of the people I love
  • The daily laughs, good health, and endless support of my sisters, Mom, extended family, and good friends.
  • Working for a company (and with my rockstar co-workers)—that exude passion, creativity, and brilliance on a daily basis
  • My healthy family
  • My truly wonderful co-workers who bring new meaning to the phrase “team work”
  • Clients and team members with great personalities and contagious passion for what they do every day!
  • Having a roof over my head, food in my belly, wine in my glass, and the best family and friends in the world!
  • A healthy family
  • My job – and to have the ability to provide for my family when others are less fortunate
  • A tight group of friends and family and the ability to live closely, so I can hug them often
  • The chance to work with colleagues and clients who have a great sense of humor
  • A healthy family
  • The amazing community that has supported PerkettPR this year: clients, industry colleagues, loyal and amazing staff

Persuasive Picks for the week of 11/16/09 – Focus on Social Media Guidelines and Policies

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Hey B2B marketers: It’s okay to have fun!
Marketing strategist and author, David Meerman Scott reminds companies that B2B marketing still means communicating with people and doesn’t need to be boring.

What makes a blog successful?
Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk shares stories of blogging success straight from her own experiences.

Create social media guidelines to engage your customer
This post from Daniel Burrus on TechJournalSouth.com is one in a series containing advice on creating social media guidelines. This pick zeros in on the importance of establishing clear and consistent focus across the company.

A Call for Social Media Guidelines
The topic of social media guidelines continues with this post on PharmExec.com – recapping some of the biggest issues facing the health care industry as it attempts to engage in social media.

A Few Guidelines for Drafting Social Media Guidelines
This post from Chris Crum rounds out a trilogy of picks on social media guidelines and features video interviews with Wayne Sutton and Patrick O’Keefe.

Please Join Us – PerkettPR’s Virtual Clothing Drive to Benefit Rosie’s Place

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UPDATE 12-10-09

We are on our last few days of collecting clothing and donations for Rosie’s Place in Boston. If you live in or around Boston, we will pick up your clothing donations over the weekend or on Monday, December 14. Please contact us via the email below or Susan at 781.267.8849 to coordinate time and location. In a time where donating money can be difficult, please consider looking through your closet this weekend instead. That old sweater you haven’t worn for five years might not mean much to you, but can brighten 2010 for a woman in need.

If you would like to donate monetarily, please use our ChipIn button below. We’ll be delivering a check and clothing to Rosie’s on Monday, December 14.

Thank you!

2009 has unarguably been a year of many ups and downs, not only here in New England, but across the globe.  In Massachusetts alone, we have witnessed the unemployment rate rise as high as 9.3% (October 2009) and my guess is that we all know at least one person who has been laid off this past year or been adversely affected by the struggling economy.  As the holidays approach this year, I asked myself and my employees “What can we do as an organization to help others who are less fortunate than us?” We may gripe about changes we’ve faced, but focusing on others who are facing even more challenging times can help us to keep perspective.

The answer came to us quickly. We could utilize our “virtual” expertise to benefit a local organization – bonding together to focus on helping others whose lives have been far more challenging than anything we’ve had to face. And so, we are thrilled to announce the kick off of our first-ever “PerkettPR Virtual Clothing Drive.”

PerkettPR has teamed up with Rosie’s Place – a local Boston shelter for women — to help raise clothing donations in our first – of what we hope will be annual – virtual clothing drive. Since 1974, Rosie’s Place has been an oasis of hope and nourishment for poor and homeless women. The mission of Rosie’s Place is to help women maintain their dignity, seek opportunity and find security in their lives. Rosie’s Place has evolved from providing meals and shelter to providing permanent solutions through advocacy, education and affordable housing. And with your generous clothing donation, we hope to make the holidays a little warmer at Rosie’s Place.

How You Can Help – Boston and Beyond
Please help us to share the warmth by donating new or gently used/clean winter items for women. Items can include hats, gloves, scarves, twin-sized blankets, etc. Take a look through your closets at what you no longer wear, or grab an extra gift during your holiday shopping. It’s easy to do and will make a huge difference to a woman in need.

You can either send items to us via UPS, or collect items at your office and the PerkettPR team will come pick them up the week of December 7th (for Boston-area companies). Simply email rosies@perkettpr.com to indicate your desire to donate and to coordinate details with our staff (shipment or pickup).

An alternate way to donate
You may also make a non-deductible monetary donation via the ChipIn widget below as an alternative method of participating in our drive. Every dollar counts and is very appreciated!

How Generous is Your Company?
If we receive a positive response, PerkettPR will name one company as “Most Giving” and feature them on our blog this December. So gather your colleagues, put a box at the front desk or in the lobby and start piling up that winter warmth.

Thank you in advance for helping us to help others.

Happy Holidays,

The PerkettPR Team

Global Entrepreneurship Week – How Are You Helping Tomorrow’s Leaders?

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This week has been dubbed “Global Entrepreneurship Week” by the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s leading foundation for entrepreneurship, and Make Your Mark, the UK’s campaign to give young people the confidence, skills and ambition to make their ideas happen. Their goal is to connect young people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their potential as self-starters and innovators.

One of the things I’ve been most inspired by in social media lately is the ability to connect with and help out students in the PR field. This is much easier (for parties on both ends) than when I was in college. Back then, you had to be extremely aggressive and convince already-too-busy executives to sit down with you for an “informational interview.” There were not a lot of opportunities to connect with – or network with – industry professionals beyond this all-too-brief meeting (one where the executive was usually running late and/or had to leave early), and an occasional PRSSA conference. But today, I’ve been contacted directly by students and have been able to answer their questions on a less-intense but longer-term relationship basis – thanks to social media. I was a special guest, and have watched others participate in, #PRStudChat on Twitter. I have connected with students through Facebook and LinkedIn. They can see what I’m reading, who I connect with and what issues I care about, as well as read about our day-to-day work via our blog, Twitter accounts and more. It’s an exciting time and I am eager to watch the progress of tomorrow’s generation of PR professionals.

All that being said, there are four fundamental goals that the folks behind GEW are hoping to accomplish, including:

  • Inspire
  • Mentor
  • Connect
  • Engage

I think these are fantastic goals to live by every single day as  business leader – not just for tomorrow’s industry champions but to inspire today’s as well. I also think we’ve covered them pretty well in 2009 at PerkettPR, but can up the ante in 2010. I hope to inspire my staff to be happy and balanced while delivering amazing results,  mentor a new influx of PerkettPR employees, continue to connect with our community and expand our relationships in the business industry at large, and engage not only PerkettPR friends and new clients, but their constituents as well.

How will you help tomorrow’s leaders – both at your own company and beyond?

For learn more about Global Entrepreneurship Week, visit their very informative and interactive site. Here’s to tomorrow!

Persuasive Picks for the week of 11/09/09

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Coping With Social Media Burnout
Have you reached the point of social media burnout? For some, committing to and keeping up with, social media engagement can be overwhelming. CIO.com’s Kristin Burnham contributes this guest post on the topic to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Study: Social Media, Mobile Set to Impact Holidays in Big Way
Retailers might get a little extra business from social media communities this holiday season. Christopher Heine from Clickz.com cites some interesting facts from a recent study by Deloitte.

Your Social Media Content Must Be Valuable
Content might be king, but SearchEngineWatch.com’s Liana Evans reminds readers that quality outweighs quantity when it comes to maintaining your high search engine rank.

Companies Identify Major Business Benefits in Listening to Online Conversation
More great facts, stats and examples of the importance of paying attention to online conversations about your brand, courtesy of Aberdeen and CNN Money.

How Ford does Social Media
JD Lasica shares this great video interview featuring Scott Monty who heads up Social Media at Ford.

Can You Afford Not to Demand Excellence?

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I recently had a conversation with an industry colleague who works on the client side. During that conversation, which took place at a marketing conference, he shared with me his experience at a certain other interactive conference last year: “One awesome week-long party paid for by my company. No real business takes place in terms of ROI. I can’t wait to go back.”

burning-wasting-money-600Huh? With that mentality, no wonder marketing is often the first line item when companies are facing budget cuts.

But wait a minute – aren’t you responsible for ensuring excellence for your company across the board at all times? In this day and age of record unemployment, pay cuts, “turning out the lights,” and more work with less resources, can you afford this sort of mentality on your workforce? Do you have any idea what the marketing department does with its budget? Are you assessing and measuring and demanding excellence on a weekly basis?

More importantly, if you have a marketing department spending money on events, travel, conferences and tradeshows, are you really measuring the ROI of such efforts? Do you assess the cost of the show (in full) and what it yielded for results? Do you pay attention to who’s going, what they’re doing and the expected results? Do you compare these investments to other marketing activities? Can you afford not to have such checks and balances in place these days?

Mind you, this was no multi-billion dollar company – although even they, too, are being affected by this global recession. This was a start up in a precarious and competitive industry. In other words, that kind of irresponsible mentality (like #11 here) shouldn’t be difficult to spot. But if you’re not paying attention – and not demanding results from every investment – then it could be missed. And such ignorance could cost you not only money, but perhaps a future layoff or worse.

Take the time to assess all of your  marketing activities – not just SEO or PR or advertising – but the dollars spent on every activity online and off. Demand excellence in everything and set parameters for employees. Prioritize in advance – know which activities yield the best results and which could easily be diminished with minimal impact.

Can you draw a direct line to results or positive ROI for each  marketing activity? If not, can you afford not to demand excellence and results across the board? I didn’t think so.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 11/02/09

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twitter_spam-300x3004 steps to Get Rid of Twitter Spam
If you’re active on Twitter, then no doubt you’ve seen the recent increase of “Twitter spam” coming from hijacked Twitter accounts. Damian Davila Rojas let readers know that Twitter Spam happens when application developers abuse that access that you have granted them to your Twitter account. He also shares 4 simple steps to help protect yourself by auditing the connections to your Twitter account.

What Social Media Monitoring Won’t Get You
Monitoring your brand online and the plethora of tools available to select from are all the rage of late, while Facebook’s popularity as a place for brands to plant their flag has also exploded. This post from Jason Falls reminds us that access to the vital conversation behind Facebook’s “walled garden” are not accessible by social media monitoring tools.

Get Off Your Computer and Become a Better Blogger
Want to become a better blogger? This post from James Chartrand on CopyBlogger provides some great advice on how to do just that, and it starts by stepping away from the keyboard.

9 digital trends to watch in 2010
This fun read from Nuri Djavit  on iMediaConnection shares 9 interesting predictions for digital trends that “could be” in 2010. 

Create a Virtual Office
Last, but certainly not least is this guest post on WomenEntrepreneur by our very own Christine Perkett where she expands on how a virtual workplace can benefit your company.