PR Insights Blog

To reap the benefits of a press release and increase the chances your news will get published, understand how to properly write one. This article includes all the important components for a publisher's consideration and offers guidelines for how to make your news item compelling and newsworthy enough to get picked up as a top priority for publication.

Maintaining a learning mindset is the key to success in our careers and to what happens when, inevitably, we change them. But life is not just about careers. A learning mindset is also a key that unlocks a better and more fulfilled life. In this article, I discuss ways in which the wisdom of Socrates, Aristotle, and a poster from the London underground offer a path to keep us learning forward.

The Museum of Public Relations is re-writing the history of PR by including the contributions of its diverse leaders. The upcoming celebration of Latino PR History, organized with the Hispanic Public Relations Association’s New York Chapter, on September 12, will celebrate the contributions of Hispanic leaders to PR history. It will provide a unique opportunity to hear the stories of diverse leaders in whose footsteps we tread and that are the key to ensuring we do not tell a monochromatic story of PR's founding and inspire the next generation of diverse professionals.

This article defines the purpose of copywriting as a vehicle to win customers' interests in products and services through strategic wording that demonstrates how that product or service will relieve their pain point by satisfying their needs and wants. It instructs the would-be copywriter in how to think like the customer by providing the necessary guidelines, such as writing in the second person, showing empathy, and appealing to interests.

CommunicationsMatch announced today its partnership with Ken Jacobs, ACC, CPC, to provide leadership coaching and development as a service to corporate and agency public relations, advertising, communications and marketing leaders and executives.

Despite new research questioning whether practice makes perfect for violinists, Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule is as relevant as ever for the PR, marketing, and communications industry. Being an expert takes work and time. Driven by the behavioral science concept of "scarcity", many are tempted to claim expertise, rather than invest in achieving it. For agencies, consultancies, and freelancers, the 10,000-hour rule is a reminder of the effort required to master skills in a changing landscape. For client-organizations, evaluating the claims of expertise is the key to ensuring that when the curtain is drawn back the emperor is wearing clothes.

Why do we do things that may well not be in our best interests? In an exceptional podcast by Social Scientist Shankar Vedantam of NPR's Hidden Brain some of these behaviors are explained by "Scarcity". The idea is when we want something badly enough we develop tunnel vision. At these times we can no longer see the wood from the trees. In an article published by SpinSucks, "Is Tunnel Vision Impeding Your View of the Sales Funnel," I put this in a communications context.

Drawing on social science research this article explains why we make bad decisions when we are chasing money and ways in which which we can improve decision-making by recognizing when are in a tunnel driven by scarcity. By furthering an understanding behavior and tunnel thinking, and highlighting the benefits of stopping, looking up and moving into a funnel to broaden perspective, we provide communicators, entrepreneurs and business leaders a simple model to avoid behavior traps.

How do Fortune 1000 companies and large non-profit associations conduct agency searches? How do they grade agencies in the hiring process and those they've hired? Insights from our new research conducted with RFP Associates and Researchscape, with the support of the Institute for Public Relations and industry leaders, offers a path to achieving better search outcomes and longer relationships.

Researchscape's new ResearchStory™ artificial intelligence-powered survey tool helps companies evaluate quantitative and qualitative survey responses, and provide results reports in hours. With this new product, CommunicationsMatch™'s research partner continues to break new ground.