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Tobin Communications, Inc. (TCI) Marks 20 Years

WATCH the video.

By Maury Tobin

Twenty years ago, I started Tobin Communications, Inc. (TCI) with several key goals in mind: to promote public relations (PR) as an essential part of any business or organization’s structure, to convey that it’s not about spin, and to emphasize that communications should never be an afterthought.

Through the years, our firm has worked with many top-notch clients. Campaigns have ranged from healthcare education, advising clients on national policy initiatives and messaging, grassroots outreach and media relations, and producing content for multiple digital platforms.

I thank all of you who have worked with TCI or kept abreast of our news; however, instead of sharing a boring two-decade retrospective, I’d like to point out that having a successful company also means fulfilling some other important goals in my life.

They involve enjoying and helping preserve the historic Port Tobacco River (which runs adjacent to where my wife and I own a home in Maryland), helping wildlife, providing pro-bono PR on specific animal-advocacy issues, and giving our four dogs, two cats, and 25-year-old former show horse quality lives.

For instance, three of our dogs were strays, including one that can now walk because of a successful and costly spinal surgery. We also have an older beagle who has many special needs because of a rare form of Cushings disease.

Through the years, I’ve also gotten to know many of you beyond the surface, and I enjoy learning about your personal and professional passions too. Here’s to another 20 years!

Posted Tobin Communications

Social Media is Making Good Content and Journalism Rise to the Top

By Maury Tobin

A lot of public relations professionals and communicators discuss how social media opened up a new information frontier, but it appears we still wrangle with how to best utilize it or what it means.

Part of the reason is that social media presents this unfiltered mish-mosh of words and images that occupy the digital sphere, but may not have the same importance at the end of the day. Yes, citizen journalists can now shake up the world by illuminating something the mainstream media isn’t, but think about this reality too: in that content stew may exist your friend’s selfie at a wedding and a powerful editorial from The Wall Street Journal.

And if you are someone like me who has a personalized newsfeed gleaned from a range of platforms, it’s easy to understand how news and content junkies embrace the appeal of social media. Nonetheless, it is increasingly becoming clearer that consumers want and need credible information and context from good journalism outfits.

In Tobin Communications, Inc.’s latest PR Podcast, TALKERS magazine publisher Michael Harrison discusses the factors behind the ever-shifting news and information paradigm. Harrison says, “We’re already seeing signs of people wisening up to the distinction between something that’s good and something that’s half-baked.”

So that means we’re all going to have to be clever about how we feed the beast.