By Linda Forrest
To be an effective modern marketer, one must be an adept communicator. In the modern world, one where electronic communications are at the fore of our personal and professional lives, that includes a lot of written communication. With the rise of social media, users have many more opportunities to write, whether it’s in 140-character bursts on Twitter or lengthy missives on a blog. While some bemoan that the space constraints of text messages or Tweets are ruining the English language, and dooming younger generations to being unable to string words together in a cohesive fashion, others disagree; the jury remains out on the matter.
Given the increased frequency with which modern communicators must pick up their digital pens and turn out prose, how can they keep their proverbial saws sharp? To what resources can they turn to improve their vocabularies, and improve their writing abilities?
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By Linda Forrest 
It can’t all be good news, sadly.
The trick is knowing how to share your bad news using PR so that you come out the other side of it as upright as you possibly can. It’s not just “spin” that needs to be considered here; trying to convince the marketplace of your silk purse when you’re clearly holding a sow’s ear does nobody any favours, but there are proven tactics that can be employed to dampen the impact of your bad news, whether its personal peccadillos of your executive team, bad sales figures, lost deals, lawsuits, or any other myriad pieces of information that your marketplace needs to know about, whether you really want them to or not.
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By Linda Forrest
Ah, the end of the year. A time when PR practitioners far and wide dust off their crystal balls and prognosticate about what lies ahead in our industry for the year ahead.
My Twitterstream is positively jam-packed with predictions for public relations in 2012. The aim of this post is to provide a quick round up of the top trends PR practitioners see emerging and what they feel the impetus is for said trends. I trust you’ll forgive me that the brunt of the prose comes from elsewhere; my mind is filled to the brim with if not dancing sugarplums, at least my distressingly long “still-to-do” list.
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By Linda Forrest
In my post on the subject of the PRSA initiative to create a new definition for PR, I likened the task to that of herding cats – ultimately futile.
But others closer to home have engaged in this exercise in the past, ending up with what they consider to be a successful outcome. Back in 2007, driven by the Canadian national PR association, the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS), a committee of PR experts endeavoured to develop a new north-of-the-49th-parallel definition. This was a collaborative research project that resulted in the adoption of their proposed definition by the CPRS:
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Thank you for being with us for the 10th month of our blog. In case you missed them, here is a recap of our posts from November.
Moving forward with our two new series, Technology Marketing 101, and A Startup’s Story, we introduced a new startup, Teamly, and explored how it is managing to drive steady organic growth on a shoestring, and shared Screenreach’s recent adventures in radio and television.
Beyond our series, we offered best practices on how small business can work with government and universities to bring technology to market, explained what makes a good PR person and also what makes a great entrepreneur. We discussed the prior art wall and its impact on patent coverage, the importance of creating a well-researched, well-funded and coherent marketing strategy and sticking to it, as well as the benefits and determents of Google Plus brand pages. Of course, this list of posts merely scratches the surface of all that was covered over the course of the month. You’ll have to read them for yourselves by clicking the links below. And, as always, we welcome your feedback.
November 7: Breaching academia’s ivory towers by Jason Flick
November 10: Driving steady organic growth on a shoestring by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 14: What an IP coordinator should know: The prior art wall by David French
November 18: Making waves in radio and television by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 21: Taking the higher ground: from product to leadership positioning by Ronald Weissman
November 23: The layman’s guide for bringing technology to market by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 28: Beware the million-dollar cheque! by Peter Hanschke
And on a related note…
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