Blog Posts

Who doesn’t love a little mobile technology to help you get through a busy workweek? I rely on my smartphone to guide me to my next meeting, remind me to run errands and connect with friends while on the run.

President Barack Obama is no stranger to social media. From the campaign trail to his presidency, President Obama has remained active on Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks.

With new trends spreading faster than wildfire on the Web, we know it’s not easy keeping up, especially when many Internet crazes fizzle out quicker than you can say trending (MySpace, anyone?). Here’s a weekly roundup of what’s trending right NOW so you can stay ahead of the curve and seize an opportunity to have a little fun and join the craze.

Companies large and small often benefit from publicity because it raises awareness and lends credibility to their brand. However, publicity isn’t always easy to come by because it requires you to create a newsworthy hook and attract the interest of reporters. Here are a few things you can do to become newsworthy and generate publicity for your organization.

You’ve probably noticed those odd little black-and-white squares with what appears to be digital gibberish packed within their frames popping up in magazine ads, Best Buy stores and billboards. Those are QR codes, or quick response codes. They’ve been around since the mid-nineties when they were initially used to track automobile parts during the manufacturing process, but we’ve only recently started to see them appear in marketing and advertising campaigns. They’re continually becoming more common and more popular as marketers and smart phone users alike reap their benefits.

I continue to meet more and more business professionals who are afraid to reach out to their stakeholders using social media. I am not as surprised to hear about their overwhelming resistance to tweeting, however, I am taken aback by the number of people who don’t have any inclination to create a simple Facebook page.

Social media can be daunting to business owners for many reasons. You’re afraid to get started because you don’t know where to begin. You’re afraid of what people might say about your organization. You’re afraid that you don’t have the time to keep it up. You’re afraid that you don’t know what you’re doing. Let’s tackle these fears one by one.

I spend a lot of time meeting with business leaders in the South Florida community. It is one of the best parts of my job because I enjoy learning about their businesses and sharing with them what I do at Taproot Creative.
Oftentimes, I find myself clearing up the misconceptions of what they think of PR as spin. Unfortunately, this misconception is a result of a small subset self-described spin masters. These so called spin masters claim to do PR while in actuality what they do is not real public relations.

Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott who tweets as @flgovscott held a Twitter Town Hall. For 30 minutes, the governor answered as many questions as he could from people across the state in 140 characters or less.