• Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit for $6 Million, by SitePoint
• Need to declutter your life? Reboot Your Workflow This Fall with tips from lifehacker
• Legacy Multimedia has a wonderful post on the importance of creating a storyboard for multimedia projects.
• Copyblogger tells us How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes
• FEMA offers online training for public information officers. Check out their NIMS Independent Study Program.

Some links to add to your bookmarks:

• soundunwound, from the great people who brought us imdb, it’s the ultimate online database for music knowledge
• SitePoint Blogs gives us 15 Places to Sell Your Photos

Business Cards — Some tips, in an abbreviated format:

1. Name: Use your full name that you want people to call you. You don’t have to use your legal name and don’t use a nickname.
2. Personal picture: Every business card should contain your face.
3. Logo: Whether you have a personal or corporate logo, it has to be included on your branded business card. A logo is the best visual for branding.
4. Contact information: just use your preferred method of contact.
5. URL(s): This is the perfect time to include a link to your blog, LinkedIn account or any other website that best represents your brand.
6. Material: Apart from common business cards made of paper/card
   there are also special business cards made from plastic (frosted
   translucent, crystal clear, white or metallic). You can even use metal,
   rubberized cards, magnets or wood. You are guaranteed to stand out if
   you don’t use the regular material.
7. Product snapshots: If you sell a certain product, like an iPod, a car or even a house, then take a snapshot and put it in your business card.
8. Font: The typeface you use is very important for your personal brand.
9. Personal brand statement: This is yet another place to put
   your personal brand statement. Remember, this statement includes “what
   you’re the best at” and “the audience you serve.” It’s personal
   positioning for the 21st century.

Portfolios — 3 Tips for grade A portfolios:

1. Use categories
2. Include descriptions

Resumes — Great tips to follow:

1. Design your brand.
2. Don’t use your picture.
3. Links rock.
4. Experience trumps education.
5. Show some class.
6. Create the multimedia you.
7. Get Linked-In.
8. Grow it.
9. Summarize it.
10. Customization.

Cover Letters

Want to become a better writer? These sources say that you make this happen by reading and just writing. I find that the more I read, the more I have to say. And the more I write, the more often I write, the better my writing becomes.

Simple. Effective.

Links to help you network and find a job

• LifeHacker gives you “Rebuild Your Resume with Five Simple Fixes“
• Tips on improving your LinkedIn profile from Guy Kawasaki’s “LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover“
• I’m on LinkedIn Now What, a great blog
• The blog entry “LinkedIn Recommendation Examples” from the online business networking blog
• The blog entry “Better Boilerplates” from Linked Intelligence
• Guy Kawasaki’s blog entry “Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn“
• The Virtual Handshake blog
• “Getting Started Building Your LinkedIn Network” — a primer of LinkedIn Tips
• The blog entry “Top Ten LinkedIn Dos and Don’ts” at Linked Intelligence

Internships without pay have pitfalls for employers
– Houston Chronicle²

Summer interns are ripe for exploitation.

They’re desperate for real-life experience to help them land a permanent job, at a time when the economy is slowing and positions are scarce. Many are willing to work for free or below market rates, just to get a foot in the door.

But that doesn’t mean employers should do that.

“It’s very tempting to try to come up with unique ways to get more out of your company, but the way to do it is not to bring in people who are unpaid,” said Jay Zweig, a labor lawyer at Bryan Cave in Phoenix. “An internship, to be unpaid and legal, needs primarily to be a learning experience for the intern and not something where the intern is expected to produce work product that is going to benefit the employer.”

“All it takes is one disgruntled intern, or their parent or spouse or friend, to call the U.S. Department of Labor, and the company who follows this type of exploitative advice is toast,” Zweig said.

[snip]

Footnotes
2 = article may expire in a few weeks.

Interestingly enough, the Houston Business Journal reports that they’ve signed on six clients since their formation in March.

So, I guess there is still work to be had for new PR agencies.

Source: New public relations firm launched in Houston, by the Houston Business Journal

Nice to know that there are still some opportunities for us out there.

Resources:

• Developers turning to PR pros to help ramp up project buzz, by the San Antonio Business Journal

Found via Catching Flack.

1. About us vs. the prospect
2. Proposal summary vs. a business case
3. Opening with blah blah platitudes vs. guts and convictions
4. Verbal runoff and information overload
5. What’s at stake?
6. General to industry vs. personal to prospect
7. Educating vs. selling
8. Bland writing inadvertently conveys lack of real interest
9. Too many pages
10. Where can I find more?

My favorite:

Effective executive summaries are about the prospect– not you. How you’re going to solve their problem. Advice on how to burn down their obstacles. How much money they are going to save. New ways for them to be innovative in their industries.

It’s definitely worth a read or bookmarking.

Track open records requests in Houston
The Houston Chronicle’s Houston Politics blog reports that blogHOUSTON has “launched a new forum to let readers post their open-records requests for everyone to read.” Worth watching, even if you aren’t subject to TPIA requests.

Public relations best practices
From BNET’s Catching Flack column:

The authors of the USC-Annenberg study of PR departments compiled a list of 13 best practices among the more than 500 PR departments that responded to their survey:

1. Maintain a higher than average ratio of PR budget to gross revenue.
2. Report directly and exclusively to the C-Suite.
3. Optimize the C-Suite’s understanding of PR’s current and potential contributions to the success of the organization as a whole.
4. Establish an effective social responsibility strategy for your organization.
5. Establish an effective digital-media strategy for your organization.
6. Establish an effective issues-management strategy for your organization.
7. Optimize integration and coordination within the PR/Communications function, and between it and other organizational functions.
8. Encourage highly ethical practices across the organization, beginning with communication.
9. Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a long-term strategic point of view, beginning with communication.
10. Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a proactive mindset, beginning with communication.
11. Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a flexible mindset, beginning with communication.
12. Optimize the integration of PR and reputational considerations into top-level organizational strategies.
13. Measurably contribute to organizational success.

If you’re not already reading Catching Flack, you should add it to your list.

Learn better pitching from Hollywood
Another Catching Flack feature, “A Hollywood Exec Teaches Business Pros to Pitch Their Ideas.”

• It’s more important to be interested than interesting
• It might be counter-intuitive but focus more on relationship
  building than the immediate outcome of a meeting
• Brevity has value, but don’t pitch your idea in an elevator (or at
  the dentist, or in the men’s room)
• Traditional networking is a waste of time
• Send hand-written notes in non-business sized envelopes: assistants
  will automatically put small envelopes at the top of the mail pile.

Don’t use old rules to pitch new media
Dan Schawbel give us tips to keep in mind when pitching bloggers:

1. Know your blogger.
2. Don’t play by the rules because there are no rules.
3. Lead with your personal brand.
4. Become a part of their community.
5. Content is king, even with PR pitches.
6. The social media release.
7. Be passionate and creative.
8. Relationships still trump everything.

Let me repeat that last one: “Relationships still trump everything.” Just a reminder.

Brand yourself
Looking for ways to enhance your personal brand? Chris Brogan has “100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media” that has some very practical and easy-to-use tips. Even doing just a couple will help.

Today’s tips are given in a post entitled “Three Questions Your Copy Must Answer to Succeed“:

1. Why Do I Really Need This?
2. Why Should I Choose You?
3. Why Should I Decide Now?

These are things that need to be answered when creating a sales pitch in copy. And, remember, all our copy is sales… we’re trying to produce an action, a result.

From the Houston Press’ blog, Houstoned:

Music writer Ramiro Burr, who for years has written columns and stories for the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle, has resigned.

Express-News editor Robert Rivard says Burr “caused [the paper] to unknowingly publish work under his name that was not, in fact, his own work.”

A writer Burr used has hired a lawyer seeking byline credit for stories he worked on.

On his blog, Burr says he resigned as a way of “taking things to the next level,” which apparently means the Web. He says he had “editorial differences” with the Express-News over crediting other writers who worked for him.

[snip]

From an article in the Houston Chronicle:

[snip]

“It was the work of at least one other writer who did not receive credit and who we did not know about. Ramiro decided on his own to resign just as our investigation was concluding and we were preparing to take appropriate action. We have a zero tolerance policy whenever someone on our staff presents work as their own that is not their own.”

In a brief statement, Burr said, “I sincerely apologize for breaking any rules.”

[snip]

Whatever is going on, it’s sad to acknowledge that he’s no longer going to be writing for the Houston Chronicle.

LOPEZ NEGRETE COMMUNICATIONS RANKS NUMBER ONE AMONG TOP 100 DIVERSITY OWNED BUSINESSES IN TEXAS

In recognition of the economic power of multicultural businesses, DiversityBusiness.com, the nation’s leading multicultural Internet site, ranks Lopez Negrete Communications as number one among the Top 100 Diversity Owned (Div100) businesses in Texas. The second largest independent Hispanic owned and operated, full service agency in Hispanic marketing in America also received national honors ranking 5th among the top 100 Hispanic American Owned businesses in America, and 36th overall among the top 500 Diversity Owned businesses in America.

[snip]

The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau has won an award for its documentary, “One Day in Houston.”

The bureau received a 2008 Bronze Anvil Award of Commendation from the Public Relations Society of America “for superior performance in the design and execution of an individual public relations tactic within a broader public relations campaign.”

The GHCVB, along with video partner Zen Film of Houston took the honors in the External Video category for the 12-minute documentary.

[snip]

In the end, though, there are only really two elements that define a good press release: it needs to be brief, and it needs to contain real news. The definition of “real news” is that it be timely and contain some facts and figures about the news you are announcing. You get bonus points for including links to background information on the web. You also get bonus points for making sure the people who are involved in announcing the news — the PR person and the key spokespeople — are available to comment and follow-up with interested parties immediately after the release is issued.

“It’s not news” is something I am constantly telling people when I explain why I will not be sending out a press release about… whatever it is they think is newsworthy. Just because we think something is important doesn’t mean it will be important to a reporter.

Most of my job is centered around packaging our stories in just the right way so someone from a media outlet will find it newsworthy. That will get you coverage most of the time.

“The consequences of permitting employees who are untrained and
unsophisticated in media relations can be significant, exposing those
employees to personal liability for defamation and ethics charges, as
well as exposing the County to potential civil liability for policies
and practices that ahve a prejudicial impact on witnesses, jurors,
judges, fellow prosecutors, law enforcement investigators, and accused
defendants.”