LIVINGSTON, NJ (January 6, 2012)

Read more here.

What do you think of this year’s most popular Fresh Ideas stories? Were you surprised at the range of topics? What would you like to see covered in 2012? Please share your thoughts and leave comments below.

10. Are PR Budgets Back?

9. Don’t Let a Bad Interviewer Spoil the Interview

8. Twitter Chat Transcripts Now Available from BurrellesLuce

7. When It Comes to Brands and Content, Simplicity Matters

6. Measuring Social Media, The Value of Influence

5. The Evolution of Media Measurement: Dr. Jim Grunig, University of Maryland, Interview

4. Public Relations and Marketing With QR Codes

3. Can We Talk? Social Media’s Impact on Human Relations

2. Survey: Journalists Do Not Want to Be Contacted Via Twitter

1. Blogger Relations Misconceptions

Did your favorite Fresh Ideas posts make the list? Be sure to leave a comment and let us know.

20. The Art of Storytelling

19. PRSSA National Conference Speed Networking PR Student Questions

18. How to Speak C-Suite

17. Disappearing Act: 10 Brands That May Not Be Around in 2012

16. The New York Women in Communications 2011 Matrix Awards

15. When a Hashtag Leads to Help: PR Tips from #BlueKey

14. Zappos, 24/7 Customer Service in the Internet Age

13. Oscar’s Social Media Fever

12. Snooki’s Appearance at Rutgers – Good PR or Poor Reputation Management?

11. Poll Results: Should PR Interns Pitch the Media?

December 2011

Links come from many different sources and in many different sizes. Whether industry resources, your company or client’s news release, or shortened URLs shared throughout your online communities – link building is a vital part of your marketing and PR efforts.

You don’t have to be a tech-whiz to make the most of SEO (search engine optimization) and increase the exposure and credibility of your company, brand or client via inbound and outbound links.

Learn 5 Tips to enhance your link building strategy and brand awareness in this month’s BurrellesLuce Newsletter.

November 2011

Broadcast media traditionally refers to television. It may seem people are spending less time in front of the TV these days. But with the media everywhere mentality, broadcast television still remains a viable part of media relations outreach.

In fact, broadcast is becoming even more important today because of its availability online – increasing shelf life and exposure of key content segments. “Today, broadcast is about much more than just television and radio. There is mobile TV, podcasting, web streaming, branded content, and ad funded programming,” confirms Weber Shandwick, a full service public relations agency who specializes in Broadcast PR. “In short, it is all about convergence between traditional broadcast outlets and the new digital kids on the block. A well thought out convergent campaign using the best of the old in conjunction with the best of the new will amplify your messages and give you an important voice […]”

With that spirit in mind, BurrellesLuce put together 5 tips to help you get the most out of working with television journalists and enhance your broadcast efforts.

Read more to discover 5 tips for working with TV journalists in this month’s BurrellesLuce Newsletter.

Above: Patrice Tanaka, CRT/tanaka and Johna Burke, BurellesLuce

Above: PR Week US

Above: Deirdre Breakenridge, PR 2.0 Strategies

 
Above: Crystal deGoede, BurrellesLuce, Bugs Bunny

Want to see more photos? Check out the our 2011 PRSA International Conference photo album on the BurrellesLuce Facebook Page… And while you’re there, be sure to tag you and your friends!

The ladies of BurrellesLuce are all ears (and a tiara!) at the 2011 PRSA International Conference in Orlando, Florida. From left to right: Tressa Robbins, Lauren Shapiro, Johna Burke, and Crystal deGoede.

Stop by our booth to see a demo of the Media Outreach, Media Monitoring, Media Reporting and Social Media Monitoring modules of BurrellesLuce WorkFlow and for a chance to enter one of several drawings for prizes. And let us know how you’re enjoying the conference!

Facebook re-designs and the advent of Google+ are creating super-charged environments in which to disseminate and consume content online.

PR and communications professionals can ramp-up their storytelling to produce content that gains and keeps the attention of their audiences in a noisy online space.

Discover these 5 storytelling tips in this month’s BurrellesLuce Newsletter.

Emailers Not Notified If It Lands in Junk (MediaPost/Return Path)
19 percent of all emails sent from corporate accounts either go missing or end up as “junk.”

Network News Chiefs: ‘The audience ultimately will make the decision as to whether we are still relevant or capable or not’ (MediaBistro/TVnewser)
TV network executives recently got together to discuss the future of evening news and broadcast journalism.

Study: Tablets Make Their Owners Less Social, More Sedentary (Forbes)
gfK MRI survey reveals that since buying a tablet device, 19 percent of users are less likely to play sports and 9 percent are not as likely to socialize with friends and family.

September 2011

Most of us have come across a “meme” or two. (Sad Keanu, Schrute Facts and even the concept of online “spam” are just a few that come to mind.) Whether they take the form of a catchy tune, hashtag, video, link, phrase, advertisement or some other concept, Internet memes are becoming the new sound bites and quickly shaping communications and culture.

Discover four things you need to know about Internet memes and how to incorporate these nuggets of viral gold into your marketing and PR strategy.

Adbusters-Organized Protest Occupies Wall Street (MinOnline)
“It wasn’t quite the turnout Adbusters magazine originally had expected, but the counter-cultural activist magazine helped organize a march on Wall Street on Saturday Sept. 17. Dubbed “Occupy Wall Street” by the magazine, the effort to assemble people via mobile phones, Tweets and web site notifications had hoped to organize thousands to join the protests.”

In Kabul, It’s Not MTV, It’s a Mission (New York Times)
“Tom Freston is a pretty mellow guy, but sitting in the corner of a downtown Manhattan restaurant last week he was getting very excited as he talked about his new project. ‘Every time I go there, there are kids doing a bunch of new things, making all kinds of interesting programming,’ he said.”

Associated Press Teams With 40 Newspapers On Mobile Coupons (PaidContent.org)
“With newspapers having suffered through 20 straight quarters of decline—and no end in sight—a collaborative effort on the part of the Associated Press and 40 newspapers is designed to play on two of the industry’s last advertising strengths: digital and pre-print circulars.”

Breaking: Netflix Splits DVD And Streaming Businesses; Creates Qwikster For DVDs (TechCrunch)
“Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just dropped a bombshell. In the wake of a rapid decline in Netflix’s stock price last week, Hastings is taking a bold step by separating the DVD and video streaming services. The DVD-by-mail service will now be called Qwikster, and the streaming service will maintain the Netflix brand.”

The New York Observer Grabs Mediagazer’s  ‘Human Editor’ (Yahoo!/TheCutline)

Gannett Chairman and CEO Craig Dubow Will Take Medical Leave of Absence (TVSpy)

PBS ‘Need to Know’ EP Joins Current TV as Programming Exec (TVNewser)

Lanctot Returns To Razorfish As Chief Media Officer (MediaPost)

Trading Places: Glam’s Jacobs To Head Omnicom’s Accuen (MediaPost)

1st Female Editor Denies Influence of Gender (Maynard Institute)
“Jill Abramson, who last week became the first female editor of the New York Times in its 160-year history, said Sunday, ‘The idea that women journalists bring a different taste in stories or sensibility isn’t true.’ The statement was challenged by women who have studied the topic of women in journalism.

Shoppers Via Twitter Spend More, Online Behavior Impacts Retail (MediaPost)
“Shoppers who land on retail sites through Facebook or Twitter are less likely to make purchases. Their conversion rates average 1.2% and 0.5%, respectively. Per average order, however, they spend more than those who come through Google.”

UPDATE: Facebook Suggests Subscribing To Profiles (All Facebook)
“Facebook is suggesting that you subscribe to people’s public status updates and customize how much of their feeds you receive. The site is rolling out a new subscribe button that will enable you to receive in your news feed publicly visible status updates from people who aren’t yet on your friend list.”

Are Big Media’s Partnerships With Seattle ‘Indies’ the Future of Hyperlocal? (StreetFight)
“In the furiously expanding, highly competitive and often conflicted hyperlocal space, some pieces appear to be coming together. Just possibly, highly digital Seattle may be the birthplace for what has long eluded hyperlocal: a sustainable business model.”

Where Newspapers Thrive (LA Times)
“Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they’ve been left out of the conversation.”

Court OKs Suit Over Toyota ‘Prank’ Campaign (MediaPost)
“A California appellate court has handed a defeat to Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi, its ad agency, in a lawsuit stemming from a viral “prank a friend” campaign that went awry.”

Photo Posts Major Mobile Activity (MediaPost)
“Tracking its panel of 294 smartphone and tablet owners, Prosper finds 69.4% are reading status updates on their networks, 53.4% are updating their own status. But 65.6% are viewing photos and 49% are posting photos.”

Lights, Camera, Advertisements (WSJ.com)
“More advertiser-created shows are running on the internet. They could provide a new template for TV that harkens back to the era when advertisers not only sponsored but helped to create, cast, and script ‘soap operas’ and variety shows.”

E-Books Get More Interactive With Amazon’s New Author Q&A Feature (ReadWriteWeb)
“Amazon nudged the experience of reading books ever-so-slightly further into the future today. The company announced a new feature for its Kindle reading platform that lets readers ask authors questions about their books as they’re reading.”

 Juror Pleads Guilty After ‘Friending’ Defendent (Mashable.com)
“Jurors and defendants are not meant to be friends — even if it’s just Facebook friends. Four charges of contempt of court probably drilled this point home for 22-year-old Jonathan Hudson of Arlington, Texas.”  

Apple’s Cloud Still Isn’t Streaming (AllThingsDigital.com)
“When is a stream not a stream? When it’s a download. While a video making the rounds today makes it seem as if Apple’s upcoming iTunes Match service will stream music from Apple’s servers to a user’s device, that’s not the case.”

Zuckerberg Tops Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment” List Again (And Look Who’s No. 40) (AllThingsDigital.com)
“Vanity Fair magazine put out its high-profile “New Establishment” list of the top 50 people, who are ‘an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.’”

Ex-NYC Deputy Mayor: Hyperlocals Should Help Citizens ‘March on City Hall’ (StreetFightMag.com)
“Journalism and community are rapidly converging in the hyperlocal space. But the big missing piece is meaningful participation by local government.”

Nielsen 2011-12 Rankings: Washington DC, Seattle Move Up, While Atlanta and Phoenix Drop (TVSpy)
“The Top 20 local markets will see some changes this year, according to Nielsen. The 2011-12 list of DMAs, released today, measures Washington, DC and Seattle each moving up a rank — to 8 and 12, respectively — while Atlanta and Phoenix each drop down one spot, to 9 and 13.”

Ad Giant Nurtures Startups (WSJ)
“Advertising companies keep finding new ways to cozy up to technology businesses—even tiny ones. Omnicom Group’s OMD and its client General Electric just completed a summer-long tech incubator to get an early in on new tech trends relevant to marketing. They awarded the $10,000 prize to a website called …”

7 Parts of a Facebook Post (SocialMediaToday)
“Content creation is one the biggest challenges for brands. Many of the folks I work with have a hard time trying to find the right thing to say to their listeners. There are two approaches I like to guide brands to take…”

Twitter Limits: Maximum Tweets Per Day? (SocialMediaToday)
“There are over two hundred million registered users of Twitter. This number grows by hundreds of thousands each day as new users sign-up. There are over one hundred and fifty million Tweets per day. So many, in fact, that many people find it hard to monitor ongoing conversations without using special platforms.”

Google Explores Re-Ranking Search Results Using +1 Button Data (Wired)
“Google is making plans to turn its +1 button into a crowdsourcing tool that helps it re-order search results and fight web spam. While not surprising, the move would bring Google’s search engine into the social networking era, while simultaneously creating a new avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results and potentially incurring the wrath of trust-busting authorities. Google confirmed its plans in an e-mail to Wired.com.”

News International confirms internal review of ‘journalistic standards’ (YahooNews/TheCutline)
“As the saga of the British phone-hacking scandal continues slowly to unfold, News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has confirmed it is conducting a thorough internal investigation of its properties.”

 Golden Globes Trial: Inside One of TV’s Messiest, Nastiest Battles (HollywoodReporter)
“THR’s in-depth look at why the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is accusing Dick Clark Productions of secretly squeezing it out of its own awards show.”

August 2011

As the media landscape becomes increasing competitive, PR and communications professionals must up their social game. These five tips will help you leverage Twitter for your marketing and communications efforts:

1. Identify casual followers vs. power users. Tools, such as Twitalyzer, are designed to help you learn who to follow and who has the most community influence based on who you’ve identified as being relevant and aligned with your target audiences.

2. Understand trending topics. Consider implementing timed tweets or paying to promote your account. Twitter offers advertisers the ability to promote their products, tweets, trends, and accounts via paid engagement. Promoted accounts see more visibility and come up at the top of Twitter searches and follower timelines.

Learn more tips for Marketing Via Twitter in this month’s BurrellesLuce newsletter.

Here’s Why Fox News Claims Gawker’s Traffic Fell 75 Percent (Forbes.com)
“Fox News and Gawker are going at it again. The Rupert Murdoch-owned cable channel says Gawker is irrelevant, so much so that its irrelevancy needs to be discussed both on Fox’s No. 1-rated air and on its website. The Nick Denton-owned gossip site says Fox’s logic-challenged attack is preemptive payback — pretaliation? — for a juicy story on a major Fox personality it’s getting set to publish.”

Steve Jobs’ Greatest Legacy: Persuading The World To Pay For Content (PaidContent.org)
“Jobs pried open many content companies’ thinking, because his focus was always on getting something great to the customer with as few obstacles as possible.”

Study Reveals Facebook Age Gap: Older Users Don’t ‘Like’ It, But Are More Likely To Click Through (MediaPost)
“Don’t expect Facebook users age 50+ to ‘Like’ a product or service in an ad, but do expect them to click through to the landing page or Web site, according to a new study.”

G.E. to Produce Short Films About Innovation (NYTimes/MediaCoder)
“General Electric just can’t stay away from the movies. Barely eight months after ceding control of NBC Universal and its Universal Studios to Comcast, G.E. is diving into the documentary world as the financial backer of 30 three-minute films by directors including Morgan Spurlock (“POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”), Joe Berlinger (“Crude”), Barbara Kopple (“Shut Up and Sing”) and Alex Gibney (“Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place”).”

Miramax Launching Multi-Title Facebook Movie App In U.S., UK & Turkey (PaidContent.org)
Miramax eXperience launches on Facebook, giving users the ability to rent some 20 U.S. titles. Movies cost 30 Facebook credits ($3) and can be viewed over the course of 48 hours.

Specific Media Settles Flash Cookie Suit, Promises Never To Use Them (MediaPost)
A privacy lawsuit between web user Stefen Kaufman and Specific Media, which recently purchased MySpace, has been settled for an undisclosed sum.  But the debate over Flash cookies and ETags are far from other. AOL, Hulu, and Kissmetrics, are just a few the companies that still have cases pending against them.

Tumblr Talking To Top VCs About An $800 Million+ Valuation (BusinessInsider)
As Tumblr continues its expansions reports are speculating that the blogging giant is in talks to raise $75 million to $100 million.

Fox’s 8 Day Delay On Hulu Triggers Piracy Surge (FreakTorrent)
In an effort to encourage viewers to watch its shows live, Fox has stopped posting its shows online the day after the show airs. The result: viewers, who would ordinarily seek legal streams to view their shows, are now frequenting pirated sources.