After an embarrassingly long absence due to family and business circumstances too numerous to mention, we finally have the return of the PR Top 5.  Here’s what I’ve been loving this week!

1. When PR 2.0’s Brian Solis talks, people listen. And when he talks about news release embargoes (always favourite link bait subject), people comment and retweet.  In this longish post, he explains the mechanics of an embargo and references a lot of current thinking.  He says, “Embargoes are powerful and effective for all parties when coordinated properly and centered on information that is indeed newsworthy.”  I can’t agree.  I think issuing news under embargo is risky at best; a disaster waiting to happen at worse.

2. Matthew Stibbe names and shames those PR firms that continue to send him irrelevant news releases.  He lists 14 releases by headline along with the agencies that sent them.  It seems that 5W Public Relations likes Matthew a lot with several mentions on the list.  The post has no comments from the offending agencies however.  That’s not too surprising I guess. If they don’t read before sending, they probably aren’t listening anyway. I wonder if their clients will notice?

3. In Words of a Broken Mirror, Alina Popescu gives us her take on how to resource PR when budgets are tight. She looks at outsourcing, getting exisiting staff to look after PR and hiring an expert in-house as various options. One she’s missed out is getting an expert to coach, train and mentor existing staff members.  I’ve been spending a significant amount of time doing this lately.

4.  One objection to social media engagement that I hear often is about opening the door to public criticism.  You can understand that people get jumpy about negative feedback.  Here Mitch Joel offers six ways to consider how to handle it.

5.  Steve Rubel has posted some interesting stats on how PR people feel about news releases, overall is seems they are falling from favour.  He says, “Still press releases have their place – especially in financial situations. Also let’s not overlook the potential SEO value too.”  Agreed.  They were only ever supposed to be a story summary and door opener to help gain the interest of a journalist.  A well written news release still does the job nicely.

1. Steve Rubel and his colleagues at Edelman have put together a white paper on the role of search engine visability in reputation management. The main contention is that increasingly, search engines will have a critical impact on how brands are perceived. It’s well worth the read, especially the information regarding the importance of benevolence online.

2. Guy Clapperton takes on Harvard in Twitter Hyped? It seems that Harvard’s research revealed that a huge majority of people have created a Twitter profile and never use it after day.  Guy says that this is normal with new technologies, and predicts that Twitter will, indeed be pervasive.

3. It’s no secret that I’ve recently become fascinated with podcasts. So I was delighted to find Bryan Person’s  The Daily Boo, a short podcast about online communications and media.  This week he spoke to Donna Papacosta about the business of podcasting. She sees the use of podcasting on the rise among corporate clients who benefit from the long tail effect and the power of human voice.

4. I loved this post entitled Why I hate bloggers, not only because it’s a beautiful example of linkbait, but because Lisa Barone is just so wonderfully crabby.  She writes, “A blog won’t make you any less boring, it will just emphasise the fact that you are.”  Ouch! But the comments go on and on.

5. Doug Goldstein has written a funny post about why every marketer should take a journalism class.  Humour aside, he’s right in that marketers should be prepared to dig a little deeper when thinking about what strategies and tactics should be employed.

We had a capacity crowd come out this week to the Isle of Man Social Media Club’s Super Third Thursday get together.  The focus was on eDemocracy and how the interactive web is changing politics and democracy. Simon Collister, who hails from Ramsey, was our speaker and he gave us a fascinating insight into how the participatory web is rapidly overcoming barriers which made full participatory democracy, as opposed to the representative democracy we have currently, more viable as a political system.

Thirty-eight people attended (a record crowd!) and they had a lot of questions for Simon especially about how Obama’s Internet campaign delivered him to the White House.  The need for more transparency in UK politics drew a lot of comments from the floor; not surprising in light of the recent expenses scandal.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club, with the motto, ‘If you get it, share it’ aims to expand media literacy, share lessons learnt, encourage adoption of industry standards and promote ethical online practices.

Thanks to Simon for taking the time to join us and share his insights. Thanks also to sponsor Charterhouse Group International who made the event possible.  And thanks especially to everyone who came out.

There seems to be a theme about 'giving it away' in the PR blogosphere this week.  I guess it's a sign of the times, but what about those green shoots we keep hearing about?  Either way, here's my top five blog posts from the past week.

1. Lloyd Gofton has a go about 'devaluing PR'.  He says, "PR, as an industry, needs to wake up to a whole host of challenges, and the last thing we need is to be destroyed from the inside. Have we really been demoted to scrabbling around fighting each other for an ever decreasing pool of clients?" I hope not Lloyd.

2. Emily McDaid also says we shouldn't be giving our services away.  She's recently had to pitch against some one whose price tag was zero.  Don't worry Emily.  Remember: no cost equals no value.  This is not a sustainable strategy.  Your client will be back before long with hat in hands.

3. Mitch Joel seems a bit more optimistic with his 'Six steps towards a new economy' post.  He says that digitisation, new business models, nomads, customer care, contact and analytics will become key PR drivers as we work our way out of the recession.  I agree that all these will play a role. But the single biggest change will be that the  'mass communication' dream will become a thing of the past.  Recognition that each individual is part of community will be come clear, and this will impact everything we do.

4. The Bad Pitch Blog makes the top five again this week with Get the picture or get lost.  Kevin Dugan explains, "Visuals decrease our word count and increase our effectiveness. And in a Web 2.0 society it's become cheaper and easier to make our efforts über visual. The evolution of news and search is making this visual leap essential."

As it’s a bank holiday I’ve got some extra time to read up.  Here’s my list of what I liked.

1. Dave Fleet asks if your organisation has multiple personalities in this thoughtful post on customer service and social media.  Twitter, blogs or any online interaction can’t plug holes in your customer service provision.  Work on the essentials first, then worry about which communications channels you should use.

2. It’s a long one, but the  Shel Holtz post on the continuing need for professional journalism is well worth the time it takes to read.  In it Shel explains why ‘the crowd’ will never replace professional journalism. He says, “they will co-exist, complement one another, and ultimately produce a new ecosystem of news in which both forms of reporting play an integral part. “

3. In this excellent post Geoff Livingston revisits  the principles of  ‘How to win friends and influence people’ and explains how they can be applied in social media.

4. Leo Bottary has some good advice about bridging the gap between analysis and recommendations when formulating a communications strategy.  In this revved up world, sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the fundamentals.

5. I found this post about returning calls on the Bad Pitch blog interesting.  It implores us PR people to have the courtesy to return a phone call when a message is left.  Is this really a trend? Do PR people deliberately not return calls? I can’t imagine that professional communicators would be that rude.