Archive for December 2011
Happy Holidays from SYDCON Web Development!
All of us at SYDCON would just like to take a moment to wish you a very Happy Holidays! Just like last year I would like to share one of my favorite Christmas Songs! Go have a listen to the Barenaked Ladies version of Jingle Bells. If you have never heard this version, boy are you in for a treat! If this doesnt put you in a grand holiday mood, surely you must be Mr. Scrooge!
So, while I peak out from under all the flour, chocolate chips, cookie dough & sprinkles long enough to extend the warmest wish to you all, know that we appreciate you more than you know! To all of our friends, customers, acquaintances take this time to unplug & enjoy your family and friends! We have had such a marvelous 2011 with you all, we can not wait to see what 2012 brings! Cheers!
Make a difference this holiday, get a BlueKey
Tis the season as the saying goes. This season take a minute if you will to think of others. This season, consider spending $5 to purchase a BlueKey to help 43.7 million people forcibly displaced worldwide. This season do something to make a difference. Many of you I am sure recall the song “Do They Know its Christmas” by Band Aid. If you don’t or its been a while, go have a listen while you continue to read.
“No one chooses to be a refugee, forced from home, family and everything they have ever known. Yet 43.7 million people around the world—nearly the combined populations of Colombia or South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined—find themselves in this exact position. Everyday doors have been closed to them.
In December 2011, UNHCR will commemorate 60 years of working to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees and internally displaced people. Our goal is for 6,000 U.S. residents – thoughtful, caring people like you — to get a Blue Key. By doing so, you’ll tell the millions of refugees worldwide that they’re not invisible, and our staff that their live-saving work does not go unnoticed. If you’d like to do more to support our cause, we’d love to have you.”
I made a pledge to become a BlueKey Champion and help spread the word, and I am urging you to join me and do the same. I am doing this to show our children that there is a very different alternative to the life they are fortunate to live. I am doing this to show them that there are people in need and we are going to do what we can to help them.
Last year, at Thanksgiving, my brother-in-law Don (who always cooks enough to feed an army) packed up some food and he and Dave took our two older children out for a ride. See my brother-in-law lives in the city of Chicago, and not far from him, he has homeless people who live under the viaduct. My kids got to see first hand how they live and were touched when they saw their Dad give them the food they so desperately needed. So touched in fact, that our oldest daughter, Sydney urged no one to take home the left overs since there were others who needed them. This year at Thanksgiving the kids asked repeatedly were they going to go with their Dad & Uncle Don to do the same? Turns out, Uncle Don had done so earlier in the day prior to our arrival, and the kids didnt go with, but they were more than pleased to know he had done so.
This year, we were walking around downtown and there was a young mother and her two children huddled under a pedestrian safety walkway cover, looking for food or whatever you could spare. It was cold, and my children inquired why were they sitting huddled down there. They took notice, but still needed a chat to drive home the very real facts before them. So, I purchased my BlueKey to show a symbol to make them ask, “Mom, what is that?”, to make them aware whenever we can.
If you can take a moment, and spare that $5, please visit The BlueKey campaign and make a difference today. Make it a great stocking stuffer or ornament for your tree, give it as a gift to help spread the word. We can be like Band Aid and help feed the world!
The Importance of the Web In Public Relations
SYDCON is thrilled to welcome Gini Dietrich CEO of Arment Dietrich & author of the amazing Spin Sucks as a guest blogger today! YEAH! If you are not familiar with the Spin Sucks blog, go there immediately after you read this, you won’t be disappointed!
The last time public relations was defined was 1982.
A lot has changed since then.
There is this thing called technology that is changing the PR industry every day, let alone in the last 30 years. PRSA is in the middle of redefining PR, which is great. But it’s not allowing for things PR professionals need to incorporate into their skill sets. Things such as web development, mobile marketing, search, and optimized content.
The web, it turns out, is extremely important in the job of a PR professional. Much more important today than it was even three years ago.
It used to be your website was an online version of your corporate brochure. But times, they are a changin’. Your website now needs to be a living and breathing thing that changes daily, if not multiple times a day.
We used to have paid media (advertising) and earned media (media relations). Now we have owned media, which is the content you produce and distribute.
Owned media is great because, if you can write in an engaging and conversational way, while adding value, you no longer have to depend on media buys and influencers and journalists to tell your story for you. You can do it yourself.
PR professionals have always had to be good writers. Writing for the web is not a new skill, but is a twist on the types of writing we’ve always done. Rather than it being newsworthy or polished, it becomes a conversation. Rather than it being a way to shout messages, it becomes a dialogue.
The web is redefining the way we do our jobs and it’s up to us to keep up. I imagine a world where the web is creating 90 percent of our business opportunities, while the remaining 10 percent is still focused on the important face-to-face meetings.
If PR professionals don’t soon figure out how to use the web to their advantage, the industry, as a whole could die.
Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, the author of Spin Sucks, the founder of the forthcoming Spin Sucks Pro, and the co-author of the soon-to-be-published Marketing In the Round.
