According to various media outlets, on Wednesday, November 24th, a bunch of misguided idiots are attempting to get people who, on average, fly twice a year, to participate in something called “National Opt-Out Day,” wherein they’d like all of these twice-a-year travelers to refuse the Backscatter technology TSA scanners at the airports, and instead, ask for pat-downs. The flawed logic of these massively misguided protest organizers is that if everyone does it, it’ll slow down security lines across the country, resulting in massive flight delays, and “will show the government that we object.” Holy crap on a stick, the end of days is coming – I’m actually leaning towards siding with the TSA on this one. Sort of. First off, [...]

Was speaking at a conference the other day, and was prepping some notes a few minutes prior to my speech, when someone came up to me and introduced themselves. “Hi, Peter, I’m so and so – I’ve wanted to meet you, I follow you on Twitter, Facebook, etc…” “Hi, so and so – Nice to meet you.” Ridiculously long awkward pause. And then she went and sat down, and I know she spent the entire speech thinking “I can’t believe I blew that.” What’s the first thing you say to someone when you’re introduced? How do you say hi and not bore them? How do you do it without becoming a douche? Without making it all about you you you? [...]

I spent a day last week speaking to a Fortune 100 company about the best ways to integrate social media into their marketing plans, and how best to use social media to help their marketing to continue to generate revenue. The majority of questions they asked me afterward fell into the following categories: 1) So how do we get more followers? 2) So how do we get more likes? 3) Should we hold a contest to get more followers/likes? 4) How do we get our followers/likes to spread the word about us? These are smart people. These people are the marketing force behind a company that interacts with millions of people through multiple brands every day. These people aren’t stupid [...]

Cross posted on Shankman.com and PRWeb.com So… Remember when I said good things were going to come from HARO being acquired by Vocus? I wasn’t lying. You were all like “OMG, it’s gonna be horrible, WTF, BRB, and LOL!” Actually, you didn’t LOL much. But the other things you did. And I was like, “OK, srsly, chill. And you were like, OMG!” And I was like, No, really, srsly, chill!” And you finally did. And then I told you it was all gonna be good. And you were all like, “Well, ok… We’ll see if you’re right.” I was right. Vocus also acquired PRWeb a few years ago. So I said to them, “hey, why don’t we give our loyal [...]

Running HARO for the past three years, I’ve seen, hands down, the best ways to get your story placed, front page, EVERY TIME. Assuming you want ALL THAT COVERAGE, as your boss has told you that you do, these are, without question, the top five ways to get it. Make sure you follow EVERY single rule here, and you’ll be well on your way to getting tons and tons of coverage! 1) Make sure to pitch completely and totally off-topic, with absolutely no regard to what the journalist covers. Hey, times are tight, right? They should be LOVING you for pitching them at all! They cover finance? Make sure to pitch them on a home entertainment system for 8-15 year [...]