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Do PR Pros Suffer from Flavor-of-the-Month Syndrome?

By Maury Tobin

As the owner of a firm that produces written content, audio and video podcasts and Radio Media Tours (RMTs), I believe many PR professionals look for the magic bullet, which can get them stuck on certain tactics.

But effective PR shouldn’t just be about embracing the latest fad.

Social media, enter stage left.

Our profession is hyper-focused on this medium, but we’re like giddy teens on a first date as we’re trying to figure out how to act and what to do.

Public relations should be about developing a range of skills and tactics to help you communicate in a variety of ways and situations. Sometimes it’s a time-sensitive campaign. Other times, it’s continuous, as in the case of managing your organization’s reputation.

The reality is there is no reigning method of the moment.

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Posted Tobin Communications

Tackling Ebola in 2015: Better PR is Needed to Help Manage Crisis

By Debra Zimmerman Murphey

I have both a professional and personal interest in the Ebola crisis. As someone with journalism and healthcare public relations (PR) experience – and as the daughter of a career foreign service officer who lived in Western Africa – I’ve watched as the world has cumulatively crawled toward a response.

When I was a year old, my family moved to Nigeria and lived outside Lagos. It was the 1960s and my father’s first tour with the State Department. During that time, taking an antimalarial medication was a routine part of our lives. We also lived in Nigeria when the Biafran War began. As a child, I had no way of knowing that the latter would end up being one of numerous conflicts, not including many public-health challenges, that would plague the world’s second-largest continent.

Now, decades later, I am mindful that the thousands of Ebola victims in Western Africa, and the comparably few in America, crystallize that there are times when mankind should think globally, act locally, and speak with one compassionate voice.

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