First there was Profnet. Then HARO (Help A Reporter Out). Then other similar tools entered the space, clearly to combat a decline in the value of pitches these early channels were generating. Most recently, Peter Shankman, the guy who created HARO, has launched SOS (formerly, and quite briefly, HERO). It’s a welcome new tool that, at least for now, seems to be successfully thrwarting the fake profiles and bot/GenAI-generated pitches. Continue reading “How NOT to Use Tools Like SOS and Qwoted to Gain Media Coverage”
You’re sitting at your desk, talking to a colleague about a trip to Spain you’re planning. The next thing you know, you’re seeing ads for Spain pop up in Google search and on Facebook. It’s not magic. It’s the power of voice search. Marketers can use your interactions with voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, along with other factors—your search history, shopping activity, visited websites, etc.—to create a comprehensive profile that they can use for ad targeting. Not all voice assistants do this, and the process is actually more complex than it may seem, but it’s illustrative of the shift from text to voice in consumers’ search habits. Voice search is on the rise. 
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I tend to be passionate about some odd things (I can tell by the way people look at me sometimes…) One of the things I’ve been passionate about for a number of years is effective branding. It’s an issue that I find that many people—even very smart business people and sometimes even extremely smart communication professionals, don’t really fully understand.
Before I started Strategic Communications in 2008, I worked for some large organizations in the education, energy, and healthcare industries. These were the early days of internet and social media adoption and it was, at least initially, wildly uncharted space. When the American Medical Association issued guidance for physician use of social media, I was all for it. In my former role, even absent these guidelines, I would have worked hard to keep our providers from independently using social media to communicate with patients.
As GenAI took the world by storm in 2023, I began to see frequent posts from fellow writers and content creators wondering about how, and to what extent, the technology would replace the need for their services. There have been a number of impacts, both good and bad. 
I was an early adopter of GenAI and have been experimenting with its various tools since they first became available for consumer use. And I’ve found them to be very helpful for a number of things. In fact, I usually have at least two or three tools open on my desktop that I refer to throughout the day.