By DeeDee Rudenstein

In 1982, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) adopted the following definition of “public relations” that had remained in place until this month: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” (For even-earlier definitions, you can see Wikipedia.)

On March 1, PRSA announced a new definition after a lengthy debate and vote by public-relations professionals: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” The organization describes the new definition thusly:  Read more...

By Daniel Goldstein

Unless you have been living under a digital rock, you probably know the increasing importance of social-media marketing to your business both today and in the future. However, it is important to know that social media is not a panacea – it is not a magic bullet that will get you a quick million dollars in sales in return. If it were, then every business would be successful within weeks of creating a Facebook page or Twitter account.  Read more...

By Samuel J. Scott

If you follow marketing news, you have probably heard of national brands launching large social media campaigns like Kohl’s and Target on Facebook and Radio Shack and Nestle on Twitter. Still, it is very easy to use social media for business even if you just have a local store.

In Boston, where I lived for nine years, one of the most-famous pizzerias is Santarpio’s in the neighborhood of East Boston. If you live in Eastie – as Bostonians call it – and order delivery from somewhere else rather than take-away from Santarpio’s (pictured), your neighbors will think that you are crazy or have bad taste in pizza.  Read more...

By Samuel J. Scott

After Google unveiled first its +1 social-sharing button and then its Google+ social network last year, my colleague Daniel Goldstein predicted that the changes will eventually influence organic-search results. Google, he argued, will increasingly personalize search results based on what an individual searcher has “+1ed” in the past.

Well, that time has arrived. And if your company does not adapt, you will miss out on a tremendous amount of valuable traffic to your website.

On January 10, Google announced its “Search, plus Your World” revamp of its search-result pages:  Read more...

By Daniel Goldstein

If your business would have had a mobile-marketing campaign during the holiday season, your sales may have increased by as much as eighteen percent.

That is the opinion of Razorfish Vice President of Mobile Paul Gelb. “I think the biggest takeaway from 2011 holiday marketing was the emergence of an enormous mobile-marketing gap amongst retailers,” he told Mobile Commerce Daily. “Retailers that are not ready are ceding high ground to their competitors and may have trouble leveling the playing field in the future.”

And Gelb is not alone. Hipcricket CMO Jeff Hasen observed that:  Read more...

By Daniel Goldstein

Most of our previous blog-posts on search-engine marketing (SEM) have focused on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search-engine optimization (SEO). Here, we wanted to address another important aspect: linkbuilding.

As you may know, Google ranks search results based primarily on two factors: relevance and authoritativeness. The first is obvious: If you search for “Christmas gifts,” you do not want the latest Philadelphia Phillies scores to appear. In simplistic SEO terms, on-page optimization is an effort to tell search engines the topic of each page of your website.  Read more...