Shonali Burke is a local PR professional here in the DC area whose work I respect. She’s living the American dream running her own shop, and pens a small business column for BNET. Her piece a couple of days ago, “Why You Should Leave PR to the Pros,” really hit home for me. The piece […]
This weekend I had some first-hand experience with policing conduct online. I’m active in some BMW online forums, and I saw the car above offered for sale. But, it looked awfully familiar. In a forum focused on the E39 M5, this nice looking, low mileage 2002 was offered for private sale locally in McLean, VA. […]
Unless you’re directly involved in the domain name industry, you probably haven’t heard about the runaway success of .CO. It’s the country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the country of Columbia, and previously a registrant had to have some kind of direct relationship with Columbia to register one. That all changed this summer, when […]
Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend. Gabriele and I got in some R&R and enjoyed the beautiful weather in the DC area. She and I have been exploring Rhones for the past few weeks, as I’ve highlighted in a couple of previous posts. Last night I coaxed her in front of the flip […]
It’s been a big week for social media professional development at Strategic Communications Group. On Monday we had Kelly Collis of CityShopGirl come in, and this Wednesday Patrick Lafferty, long-time CMO for the Travel Channel visited the agency. Check out my partner Marc Hausman’s excellent blog The Strategic Guy for more on Pat’s talk. Pat […]
Strategic Communications Group is not a b2c PR shop, but we’re always looking for online success stories that can help clients. So we were excited to have the CityShopGirl herself, Kelly Collis, visit the agency to talk with our staff. Kelly is the person and the brand behind the successful CityShopGirl.com email alert service, and […]
In this installment of the Work, Wine and Wheels interview series I talk to 20+ year PR professional Marc Abshire. Marc has had a protean career — he’s served as a Public Affairs Officer in the Air Force, written speeches delivered by the President of the United States and he’s directed PR efforts at leading […]
I’ve been in Las Vegas the last few days, celebrating the baptism of my nephew Dustin Parente. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and in prior years it’s always been for business. We’re at the Trump Tower, and the service has been incredible. Whatever your feelings about The Donald, it’s a great place […]
This past Friday a story ran that reminded me how massive media layoffs have affected the quality of news coverage. It doesn’t matter sometimes how good the reporter is — he or she is stretched so thin that stories get printed that wouldn’t have just a few years ago. Background – On Friday USA Today […]
Gabriele and I had a really fine meal at Ray’s the Steaks in Arlington last weekend. We were giving Ray’s a second chance at their new Arlington location on Wilson Blvd. Michael Landrum has made a big name for himself with his growing empire of Ray’s locations. I’ve had a couple of good meals in […]
In my role at Strategic Communications Group I counsel many clients on social media strategy. Often that includes publishing a blog, and I’m constantly reminding clients to invite third party experts to participate on their blogs. It’s great for added expertise, added credibility and it supplies high quality content for building an audience. Well, I […]
I’ve been worrying about BMW reliability lately. And not about either my M3 or my 530. It’s how BMW’s quality and reliability have worsened in recent years. A little background — I don’t buy new BMWs, I like to buy lightly used ones that have been well maintained by their owners. So no one in […]