Each Monday, we will compile articles found online to help with the marketing process that includes SEO, PR, social networking and much more.

Are You Ready to Hire a PR Firm? by Social Media Today

I was in a meeting the other day with the chief executive officer and the chief marketing officer of an organization that is right on the tipping point of success.

They’ve done a lot of the right things: Their sales team has the right connections, they’re gaining industry recognition, and they have the right people both setting the strategy and executing on it.

But when we asked what they do differently than their competitors, the silence was deafening.

So we tried the question another way, “What makes you excellent?”

Again, no answer.

That’s not entirely true. They did try to answer it, but they couldn’t come to a consensus.

Much to the surprise of my team, I cut the meeting short. I closed my notebook (yes, I still carry a notebook), pushed back my chair, and said, “Gentlemen, you’re not ready for us yet.”

Sure, a communications firm can help an organization figure out their messaging and positioning, but if they don’t have the slightest inkling of what it is before they spend money on PR, it’s pretty likely the firm isn’t going to succeed.

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5 Tips to Bring New Life to Your Social Profiles by Social Media Examiner

When was the last time you updated your social media profiles?

Are they starting to feel drab or dated?

Your social profiles may be in dire need of a refresh!

And are you sharing the types of updates tailored to the latest platform designs and suited for today’s social media marketing?

With recent changes to major platforms, you may be missing out on using some of the cool new options.

To freshen up your social media profiles and take advantage of the latest updates, implement any of the following five ideas.

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S%*t PR People Do That Journalists Hate by Hubspot

I began my marketing career at a political communications consultancy in Washington, D.C., and it was only a matter of days into each client engagement when one of their executives would say, “have you thought of the TODAY Show?” or, “do you think the Journal would be interested in this?”

It didn’t take me long to figure out that anyone who works in PR is caught in the vast space between fact and fiction, perception and reality, and needs to constantly manage executive expectations while also maintaining effective and fruitful relationships with journalists. Ronn Torossian, a brash public relations expert in his own right, once said of his field: “PR is a mix of journalism, psychology, and lawyering — it’s an ever-changing and always interesting landscape.”

Given the confluence of factors that go into PR on any given day, along with the fact that 99% of businesses I know wish they got more press, better press, or different press on a daily basis, we decided to go to the experts on this issue. We asked a slew of journalists, producers, editors, and bloggers for their ultimate pet peeves: the things we as marketers do on a daily or weekly basis that make them want to scream, cry, block our emails, or ignore PR pitches altogether. Here’s what they had to say.

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