The Public Relations Blog

Engaging with your community online is one of the key objectives of any social media strategy. Of course, your chief goal is to turn your followers into clients and customers. For that, you need to keep them interested and engaged in your content. Every business is unique and has its own ways of engaging with followers. However, there are a few social media strategies that are mistakes in any niche.

Even Saturday Night Live is getting into the Undercover Boss excitement.

Saturday Night Live kicked off its first episode of 2016 with an Undercover Boss comedy sketch. The sketch featured master of the Knights of Ren, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, going on Undercover Boss as “Matt, a radar technician at Starkiller Base.”

Appearing in the skit intro is Shoppers World’s CEO Sam Dushey, who went undercover on the Jan. 3 Undercover Boss episode. Axia Public Relations facilitated Sam’s Undercover Boss appearance, and we can help you get on Undercover Boss too.

A checklist before worst-case events so you perform well in any incident

One of the ways that first responders prepare is to practice. Police, fire and emergency medical personnel prepare themselves for certain situations so that good habits are strengthened and surprises don’t negatively impact their refined skills.

You can prepare too, with public relations. Composing statements on issues that concern risk management in your industry (or things that have happened previously – to you or your competition) means you don’t have to think about everything on your feet.

PR helps you keep your CEO happy without sacrificing the company’s image

Your company just hosted a public event with news media all around and your CEO put his foot in his mouth – again. Perhaps he said something insensitive, appeared sweaty and uncomfortable, or gave statements contradictory to the company line. Whatever he did, the end result was that he made your entire organization look bad.

The CEO is most often the public face of a company, and sometimes that face is not the one you want to show to the world. Do you wish you could just keep your CEO away from the media altogether? There are right (and wrong) ways to handle this issue and PR can help.

Axia PR offers tips on media-friendly writing

Your business has made some incredible headway and is on the cusp of launching the next big thing. But how do you share this information with the world?

A basic tool of the public relations trade is the news (or press) release. A well-crafted news release contains all the pertinent details you wish to share, along with factual support, delectable sound bites from valuable resources and company positioning. But too often, companies believe that anyone can write a news release and the news media will go nuts over it.

Media relations are important to your company’s earned media coverage

I recently attended a “Meet the Media” event with a professional PR association. While there, I noticed some common mistakes PR people tend to make that turn off media personnel. Most of the frowned-upon behaviors seemed obvious, but when you’re determined to pitch a story, it’s easy to make the same mistakes.

Knowing more about how PR agencies work can help to improve your relationship with them

The PR profession works hard to disassociate itself from words like scheming, deceitful and dishonest. Still, you should know there are some things that PR firms lie about.

Of course, most PR firms don’t intentionally set out to lie, but even the ethical ones sometimes get caught up in the excitement of getting and keeping clients and communications issues can result. However, once you understand the nature of these lies, you can make more informed decisions when it is time to hire your next PR firm (or fire your current one).

Why nothing said is “off the record" and how PR can improve your media relations

Most people have witnessed a moment in a live television broadcast when someone on camera blurts out something inappropriate or controversial. Or, a company spokesperson is quoted in a newspaper saying something unsavory or offensive and his response is that he thought it was “off the record.” When these moments occur, the audience cringes and thinks why would someone say that? The reason this happens is typically because the speaker thinks the camera isn’t recording or that the conversation is confidential. But what causes a person to lose focus in this way? How can you avoid having this happen to you?

The seven-step ultimate guide

Driving traffic is one of the key goals of any social media strategy. Businesses strive to attract more people to their websites in order to increase their client databases. To do that, you must produce high-quality content. Valuable content also increases your visibility on search engines.

Here are seven key ways you can use your content to drive traffic to your website.

As we turn the calendar to 2016, there are four things we’re very excited to share with you.