Last week, our team spent a day at a couple of wineries for our annual #SpeakerBoxDay celebration. We try to take some time for team-bonding a few times a year. In the past, we’ve gone to baseball games, beer gardens, cooking classes, a teammate’s house for...
Good analyst coverage is a must for technology companies. But engaging with analysts to properly position and communicate your offering’s unique benefits presents real strategic, logistic, and monetary challenges. Plus, once you have connected, how do you know that the analyst has interpreted what you...
Knowing your target audience and when to take a calculated risk Nike released their ad, Dream Crazy, on Sept. 5. The two-minute montage follows obscure and well-known athletes alike, training for and playing their respective sports. The video ends with a bold call to action, “So...
This fall, SpeakerBox rolled out two new philanthropy programs that support our local community. As students across the country prepared for the beginning of the school year, the SpeakerBox team kicked off its Operation Backpack program. Sponsored by Volunteers of America, Operation Backpack aims to provide...
Like hunting for the Colonel’s secret recipe (hint: it includes black pepper), marketers have long sought to identify the algorithms that Google uses to determine its rankings. For years, search engine marketing experts have followed the ever-changing guidelines, rules, and updates that Google has issued...
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes" -Oscar Wilde Nearly every public relations professional has their fair share of mistakes, slip-ups, or other moments that make them sweat. Whether it’s a reporter breaking an embargo on a press release, or a spokesperson backs out...
This month I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the incredibly talented designers we use to bring our clients marketing materials to life. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, Kristen and I have been friends for 13 years – and got to...
If you do a quick, unscientific look through Glassdoor for reviews on the leading mid-sized PR firms and management consultants, you will spot a troubling trend. The scores for work/life balance seem to sit right in the middle of the scale. Even among award winning...
Last year, Forbes published a piece entitled “Why Medium Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” only to slightly undermine that argument by extolling all of the reasons why Medium does, in fact, still matter in 2018. “Medium makes it easy to blog,” the author wrote, before also maintaining...
A few weeks ago, I was compiling a progress report for a client that covered the entire first half of 2018. For this particular client, we were in charge of media relations, analyst relations and building their social media presence. If you’re outside the PR...
I wasn’t always the debonair wordsmith writing for you today. I remember a time not very long ago when I was sitting in my car, hyperventilating, trying to think of a way to get out of doing my first big college presentation. My group had...
This week Market Connections released their 2018 Federal Government Contractor Study in conjunction with Merritt Group and the Professional Services Council. Market Connections typically conducts this survey every other year, and this year’s survey focused on the intersection of business development and marketing within companies...
This year’s DCA Live Red Hot Companies event celebrated 40 of the hottest companies to make a mark in the DC area. Even with the deterrent of rain and an MLB All Star game, companies from all over the region gathered at WeWork, 1440 G...
Once upon a time, some enterprising young upstarts created websites that would connect us to each other like never before, and allow any stray thought to be shared across the world. To quote Douglas Adams, “This has made a lot of people very angry and...
I have a secret. I like the Edelman Trust Barometer. Not as much as I love Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report, but I do look forward to it every year. It’s interesting how much things change in a short period of time when it comes...
Not too many companies can boast a customer base of more than half a billion people spread out over 200 countries, but LinkedIn is a rare breed. Its social media cache comes from the fact that it is remarkably effective. More than 90 percent of...
While women are involved in nearly every aspect of a business, their advancement into leadership positions is still moving at a snail’s pace. Perhaps not surprisingly (at least to me as a woman) McKinsey found that “nearly 50 percent of men think women are well...
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to moderate MindShare’s annual “Meet the Press” program featuring four local reporters who cover the business and technology community. First, what is MindShare? Launched in 1997, the organization handpicks 50 to 60 CEOs every year from the DC...
Before I really started delving into the world of social media PR, I thought live tweeting was stupid. Who needs someone blowing up their news feed, talking about how “Ben is a total jerk for not giving Carly a rose” and how “#UglyAF Danielle’s dress...
In the last few months as I’ve slowly become aware of GDPR and its ramifications, I have realized that my colleagues and clients here in the US are equally ignorant about how this may or may not affect PR. I started by trying to gather...
We’ve all heard the saying “go big or go home.” It means to go all out, live life to the fullest, and be extravagant. But how often in marketing do we really have an opportunity to do that? Aside from the odd trade show or...
I love to cook. After a long week of client meetings, pitch writing, and media outreach; there is nothing better (in my mind) than coming home with a bag full of groceries and cooking a delicious meal. I also love social media. As a millenial, it’s...
The world’s premier superhero team is still reeling from their battle with Thanos, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from them. Superheroes are meant to be examples to look up to, and I believe they can teach us things beyond how to poorly...
At SpeakerBox, one of the many hats I wear is mentor interns who join the team for a few weeks or months. I aim to give them a snapshot into what it’s like to work at a public relations agency. When we hire young professionals,...
Though content marketing has been around for a long time, Selina McPherson, marketing lead at Hatch Apps, shared some fresh ideas on the topic at the recent Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit. One of her points that resonated with me is the suggestion to focus on “big content.” According...
Chief Marketing Officers are more used to building interest in their companies than in themselves, but Wednesday night saw the spotlight shine on some of best CMOs when they were honored at DCA Live's Top CMO event. Hosted at the 80 M St SE WeWork, near...
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of introducing my nine year old daughter to the Star Wars series. We’ve been taking things out of order; I figured I would start her off with the newer films, which are pretty entertaining and easy jumping off points. We’ve...
The B2B Marketing panel was hands down my favorite at the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit late last week. I often feel that general marketing discussions just don’t apply cleanly to the B2B or B2G markets. Our audiences can be much different and much more narrow, and...
I’ve heard many marketers discuss agile marketing, but I’ve never actually seen it in action. In last week’s presentation at the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit, Laura Taylor, President of Silverline Communications and Chris Tomassian, an agile coach at Excella shared a case study for agile marketing. For...
As a PR professional for the last 17 years I was really excited for my last session at the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit, the PR-Marketing Convergence. While I may describe what I do as PR, the reality is that my clients are almost always on the...
The great thing about getting out of the office and mixing with other marketers is the chance to learn about newer technologies that sometimes take longer to penetrate the B2B space. Facebook definitely falls into this category. While Facebook is a no-brainer for B2C companies,...
Public relations often involves explaining ideas and concepts to reporters that they may not be familiar with. When the public relations is being done on behalf of technology companies, playing the part of a technical guide can be even more crucial. Even when a reporter...
As public relations professionals, we love when we can tie recent news events into our pitches. News hooks are one of our industry’s tried and true ways to peak a reporter’s interest - but that’s just one part of what we’re paid to do. The...
With one-third of the time people spend online spent watching video, it’s no surprise that marketers want to know how to leverage this valuable format. At the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit, a panel of video consultants and users talked about the core issues and costs facing...
SEO is one of those areas of marketing that seems to always be changing. Keeping up with latest tweaks Google has made to their algorithm can be maddening and many people find themselves overwhelmed by the ever-shifting rules of the road. That was the premise...
Every spring for the last six years I’ve had the great opportunity to attend the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit. The annual event brings together hundreds of marketing and communications executives throughout the region to discuss high-level issues through a series of panels, keynotes, presentations, exhibits, and...
In public relations, we spend our careers telling our clients’ stories. Ideally, there is a good mix of reality and just enough future promise to make things interesting. The trick with good PR is to find the sweet spot - never letting your company story...
Earlier this month we held one of our regular Technology Marketing Alliance (TMA) events, which brings together senior technology marketers from around D.C. to discuss pressing matters in the world of tech marketing. For this month’s event -- titled “Ensuring Alignment Between Sales and Marketing”...
Marketers love making pretty things and saving money, but the two do not always go hand-in-hand. Visually compelling and informative standalone content pieces, such as infographics and white papers, can become quite expensive depending on the amount of research and creative work involved in their...
Although we are only three months into the new year, it seems that public relations teams have been very busy at their jobs. If you keep up with the latest and greatest in the world of public relations, you’ve probably read about two companies’ efforts...
Nothing grabs a reporter’s attention better than data. As a PR professional at a firm specializing in the technology industry, I’ve seen the difference good data can make in a pitch. Conversely, I also quickly learned that tech reporters are used to receiving a lot...
Alignment between sales and marketing organizations has been popping up everywhere as a trend to watch. The American Marketing Association recently covered Ascend2’s marketing survey that identified sales and marketing alignment as the top account-based marketing (ABM) strategy for 2018. Forbes Magazine also covered this...
Building off Pete Larmy’s recent post on creating an award submission that gains the judges attention, I wanted to explore how to be more strategic with awards overall. Many companies pursue product awards as a way to get recognition for their technical innovations. However, those...
In my last blog post, I discussed the value of using paid social media campaigns to further extend your company’s messages beyond traditional media relations or organic social engagement. This month, let’s focus on how to best measure and optimize those campaigns. As previously stated...
Awards season may have just wrapped up in Hollywood, but it continues unabated in the world of PR and marketing. In addition to the EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year, we’ve got the usual suspects coming up, including the Washington Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 and...
After landing a public relations job, I had to learn the ins and outs of agency life quickly. During my first six months, my tasks covered the gamut of PR. I’ve spent time building media lists, researching speaking & award opportunities, writing pitches, creating social...
The beginning of a new year is always daunting. As individuals, we set lofty goals and resolutions to make big lifestyle changes, often with big results in mind. I’ve seen a similar phenomena occur in public relations as well. With the start of a new...
Public relations professionals strive to frame their clients positively to reporters, proactively pitching successes and standout moments. Reporters though may have their own ideas on the story they want to tell about a client. There are always things clients can’t or don’t want to talk about....
Last month I wrote more than 1,300 words on how to secure top tier media. That high-level and strategic post was about three main areas to focus on for targeting top tier coverage: the audience, the message, and the need for persistence. You’d think with...
With one exception, I have always worked in fairly collaborative environments, but I recognize that not everyone shares this experience and many wouldn’t like it if they had. But, collaboration is quickly becoming commonplace in organizations of all sizes. Even if your team doesn’t embrace...