Mopwater will return in full swing on January 5, 2009. Have a safe and happy New Year!

If you’ve got great media contacts and are skilled at working with the media, I may have the job for you. APCO Worldwide is looking for a media relations manager for its Washington,DC office. Interested? Read on…

APCO Worldwide, a global communication consulting firm, is seeking an experienced media relations professional with expertise in the areas of litigation and crisis communication to join our team. This position will be responsible for managing projects, designing and executing public relations campaigns, responding to media inquiries, providing clients with media training, and writing and distributing press materials. This position will require extensive travel. Qualified candidates must have a strong track record for media outreach; excellent writing and editing skills; BA/BS degree; knowledge of or experience in the government investigation process; and 6-10 years of journalism or media relations experience.

So if you’re in DC, have great experience, and you’re looking for what sounds like a pretty stressful gig with travel, apply here.

Why Twitter? (Part II)

As you may recall in Why Twitter (Part I), I promised to follow up with more ways that you can use Twitter for business.  If you’re a business owner/entrepreneur, artist, celebrity-in-the-making, you need to get on Twitter. Here’s why: Your customers are on Twitter.  Your would-be customers are on twitter. And more than likely, the competition is on Twitter.

Let’s say you sell…uh I don’t know, post-it notes (first thing I saw on my desk, sorry).  So anyway, you’re selling these post-it notes and you set up your Twitter page online.  You’re following a few people and you’ve got your mom, cousin and best friend following you back. But that’s it. You’re thinking “How in the world is this silly page gonna help me sell more post-it notes?” Let me tell you. Continue Reading

Here at the ASW/Mopwater HQ, we’ve been overwhelmed with your interest over the past month or so. What was conceived somewhat on the spot when my instincts told me that I should blog, has evolved into what I hope will be a great resource for you. But I can’t do this if you don’t read (and comment!) This is supposed to be a conversation, so let me know what’s on your mind!

From my family to yours, Happy Holidays. Thank you for being a part of our great year.

In case you missed it, you can view the December 2008  newsletter here.

Attention all social media kings and queens: Fleishman Hillard’s Washington, DC office is looking for a social media strategist who specializes in healthcare. From the announcement:

The ideal candidate will have healthcare experience; a strong knowledge of how to leverage social media (MySpace, Facebook, Ning, Sermo, Revolution Health, Daily Strength, Flickr, YouTube) and blogger outreach for clients; experience with integrated marketing communications campaigns; great interpersonal skills; an ability to juggle multiple tasks; excellent time management skills and a keen interest in learning more.

Candidates must have at least two years of experience. Previous digital healthcare experience at a public relations, advertising, interactive, marketing, health specialty firm or within a healthcare marketing or communications environment is a plus.

Are you on Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn all day anyway? Might as well get paid for it. Get your resume together and apply.

Welcome to the first Test Drive My Job-a column that will profile marketing, public relations and social media professionals at various stages of their careers. Test Drive My Job is meant to do just that-allow you to test drive a job before embarking on a new career or industry change. Use the experiences of your colleagues to find out what careers may be a good fit for you. Feel free to connect on Twitter to learn more about each of their experiences.

I recently caught up with Peter Corbett aka “Mr. Social Media DC,” whom I met at the One party a few weeks ago.

Name: Peter Corbett,28

Twitter: @corbett3000

Current City: Washington, DC

Company: iStrategyLabs

Company Size: 2 employees + 20 something contractors

Job Title: CEO

Time @ Job: 17 months

Mopwater: What are your typical work hours? PC: 7am – 2am (yes…i average about 19 hours a day)

Mopwater: What’s your typical workday like? PC: I move client’s business forward with smart marketing programs that deliver results. Tactically speaking that means I spend a lot of time thinking about their brands and customers and then provide creative ways to deliver value to that audience. Once ideas are on paper, I usually get involved in executing digital builds or physical programs of some kind.

Mopwater: Where and how do you work? PC: I work everywhere. I have an awesome LAB in Dupont Circle and a home office. I travel a lot so I do a lot of work in hotels, coffee shops, book stores. I love this way of working – I’m a digital nomad!

Mopwater: What type of clients do you take on and what do you do for them? PC: We work mostly with consumer brands but also work with some non-profits and the government. We provide interactive strategy, experiential marketing and content creation services. Here’s our capabilities deck. We recently did this project. And this project and this one, too.

Mopwater: How many co-workers/employees do you have? How do you best collaborate with your team? PC: I have 1 employee, my COO. We have 20+ contracts that work with us both in person and virtually. We use wikis, blogs, twitter, facebook, Basecamp, conference calls and all manner of collaboration tools to do our work.

Mopwater: What are your favorite things about working at iStrategyLabs? PC: The most exciting thing is that iStrategyLabs is not definable and ever changing. We’re morphing with the market as we go and are batting a thousand with regard to delivering results for clients. Providing marketing services for clients is what we’re known for, but increasingly we’re an incubator/community developer/innovation company. It will be an exciting year in 2009!

Mopwater: What do you wish was different about your job? PC: I wish I didn’t have to think about internal operations at all – my COO came on board 3 months ago and soon that part of the puzzle will be completely off my plate.

Mopwater: Do you see yourself in this job in 5 years? If not, where do you see yourself? PC: Yes. This is a company I plan to run and keep for the rest of my life. There is no exit strategy. Being an entrepreneur is the most rewarding and challenging path in the world. If you plan to start you own thing remember this – it’s all or nothing. You’ll either be success or you’ll crash and burn. Be prepared for both!

Do you have an idea for a Mopwater story? Did you just read an amazing article or blog post or tweet that we should link to in our “Social Media and the Media” section?  Did you pick up the paper and see some media news that ought to be shared?

Are you a journalist, editor or producer who would like to appear in the “How to Pitch” column? Are you a marketing or public relations professional who would like be interviewed for the “Test Drive My Job” column? Contact us with your tips.

tips@millerlittlejohnmedia.com

From the New York Times story Big News in Washington But Far Fewer to Cover It:

“The times may be news-rich, but newspapers are cash-poor, facing their direst financial straits since the Great Depression…Racing to cut costs as they lose revenue, most have decided that their future lies in local news, not national or international events.”

Crazy that such an amazing  time in our nation’s history will suffer from less media coverage as papers close Washington Bureaus. Seems so wrong, especially considering how “well-covered” our outgoing President was. I feel like pouting and throwing a mini-tantrum. I want my Obama news!

But what we lose as media consumers and voyeurs, we gain as business owners and publicists. If you’ve been trying to get coverage in your local markets, seems like a great time to get to know your local reporters, their beats and how they like their pitches. Go on and make that lemonade.

WSJ on LinkedIN

WSJ reporter Jessica E. Vascellaro wrote yesterday that LinkedIN CEO Dan Nye “is resigning after fewer than two years at the helm of the social-networking site which is aimed at professionals…The reasons behind Mr. Nye’s departure aren’t clear. The company has had high turnover of top executives in recent years as it has lost talent to broader social-networking sites such as Facebook Inc.”

Interesting. I’ve recently noticed that LinkedIN has stepped its game up with all of those fancy new applications, a slicker appearance, etc. Seems like the site and company are on their way up.  So why is Nye bailing?

Axed: Former WCP staff writers Angela Valdez and Amanda Miller Littlejohn at WCP Holiday Party

Got back a few hours ago from my last official professional party of the 2008 holiday season. This time, it was the Washington City Paper’s holiday soiree held at the Reef in Adam’s Morgan.

Background: I got an internship with the WCP in the fall of 2006 after returning from a journalism fellowship at Medill in Chicago.  I was hired about six months later as a staff writer.  It was undeniably one of the greatest professional experiences I’ve had to date; I learned so much there.  And yes, it was a ton of work, lots of stress, but so much fun. And I miss the people there like crazy.  Despite the fact that I was technically laid off during one of the first round of staff cuts in December 2007, I still keep in touch with the staff over there.  They’re a very unique bunch. And they know how to party.

I went to the Reef with fellow former WCP staff writer Sarah Godfrey, who,  is probably the most amazing hip hop/r&b/go-go music writer in the game right now (check out one of my fave music pieces, her story comparing Beyonce and Jessica Simpson).  Anyway, when we got there we saw fellow former staff writers turned freelance writers Angela Valdez, Dave Jamieson among others. Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis, who hired me for my internship and mentored me pretty much during my whole tenure at WCP, was there  singing bad karaoke.  Editors Erik Wemple and Jule Banville were mingling. The mood was festive, considering the circumstances.

And the circumstances are these: ever since Creative Loafing purchased WCP back in 2007, everyone who works for, has worked for, or knows someone who works for that paper has been on edge. First CL cut the WCP production department, then they began whittling away editorial. The last time I checked there were two writers on staff and just a few editors left to push punctuation around the ever more anemic content. Continue Reading

My whole house is sick.  My 14-month-old Logan had a playdate last Sunday and caught a cold. Logan gave his cold to his brother, 10-week-old Connor. Connor and Logan both passed it on to my husband Marc. Meanwhile, I was fighting it: luckily I’ve only suffered a sneeze here, a cough there. Nothing incapacitating.

Anyway, all of this sick time means my husband/best friend is home recovering, and we get to spend time together engaging in one of our fave activities: talking.  When we have down time, I love to brainstorm and cook up creative schemes alongside Marc, as he is my most reliable and objective sounding board.

A few months ago I was kicking around the idea of a business blog targeted towards a younger, more diverse entrepreneur. I really like Entrepreneur Magazine (and the family of Entrepreneur.com blogs), PINK Magazine and Black Enterprise. But none of the publications are a perfect fit for amandamogul.

Entrepreneur profiles lots of young, exciting start-ups. But there’s never any diversity.  PINK always features great women that I feel I can look up to, and it’s diverse enough, but the women tend to consistently be way older than me.  And Black Enterprise offers a great mix of youth with experience, men with women. But I’m not feeling the lack of diversity when it’s skewed all the way to the black side either. So what to do?

Why, start a new business blog, of course. Continue Reading

Why Twitter?

If you’ve talked to me in the last month, you’ve probably  noticed that my latest addiction is Twitter. Several people have asked me what’s up with Twitter: so many so, that I decided to write this post. Some people have Twitter accounts and don’t know what to do with them. Some don’t know what Twitter is. Some know what it is and think it’s silly. This post is for all of you.

First, let me explain how Twitter works. The whole point of this web application is brevity. If you can’t keep it short and simple, you can’t use Twitter. Any message or “tweet” must be no longer than 140 characters (that includes spaces and punctuation marks).

So you sign up to get an account. Your url would be http://www.twitter.com/yourusername.  Once you have a username, and you reference yourself to other twitterers, your handle becomes @username. I’m @amandamogul.

Once you’ve signed up you can “follow” others (the equivalent of  friending on Myspace or Facebook) and basically have access to every updated tweet they post. They can follow you back, but they don’t have to. But if they do follow you, you can direct message or DM each other (send a private note that only the recipient can see).  When you log onto your homepage, you’ll see a list of all your tweets and your friends’ tweets (including non-private messages directed at specific people, which can get a bit involved) in chronological order. That’s about it.

I know a lot of you are thinking, “What makes that so special?” For me, at least, twitter has been an incredible way to get introduced to new resources AND find out the latest breaking news in business, media, marketing and PR. Continue Reading

Yesterday I spoke with my friend and mentor Karen Alston over at Alston Marketing Group. I knew someone who was looking to do a national marketing campaign and I couldn’t submit a proposal (due to a conflict of interest) but I knew Karen’s firm would be perfect. (See tip # 4) Anyway, she was getting my thoughts before she prepared her proposal, and we began to chat about how things were going in her world.

I love Karen: she is frank and honest and will let you know when things aren’t going so well. She said she can gauge how the overall economy is doing by her phone. If the phone rings, things are okay. If it sits there silently, things are definitely not good.

Not surprising that her phone hadn’t rung in months. But what you may find interesting is that she’s noticed a little bit of an upswing.

Just this week she’s gotten 4 calls to bid on new work.

And she’s apparently not the only one. The Firm Voice just posted an article about 2009 budgets. They’re saying that businesses aren’t arbitrarily cutting PR and Marketing budgets, because those businesses still recognize the value of their PR and Marketing programs. (Someone in our industry must be doing their job!) Business and organizations are however, focusing more on results and added value (see tip # 1). Continue Reading

Can independent PR and Marketing professionals survive the economic downturn? Absolutely. While we all keep hearing about how bad things are, there are still opportunities for marketing and PR pros to grow our businesses, even though many see what we do as the icing on the cake.

Here are 8 ways consultants like me can bring in new clients and hold on to current clients during the downturn.

1.ADD VALUE. Gone are the days of billing your client monthly with no clear, measurable results. Customers these days want to see that the thousands of dollars they pay you each month are giving them million-dollar results. Send them detailed reports that describe more than just your number of billable hours, or build measurement into your scope of work. Offer them fresh ideas and new deliverables outside of your marketing or PR calendar. Consider it a part of your own marketing and retention strategy to give your clients a little more than they pay for.

2. PLANT SEEDS IN FERTILE GROUND. Entrepreneur Magazine has posted its 2009 trends to watch. Among the areas that are expected to experience growth are green/environmentally friendly products and services, health and fitness, web applications, and products or services geared toward baby boomers. So if you’re looking for a new client to pursue, check out businesses in your area that offer these things.

3. KEEP NETWORKING. It’s tempting, especially for start-ups, to forgo the hefty pricetag of many networking events held by professional associations. But in these economic times it’s even MORE important to network, network, network. Who knows, you may be really great with media relations and meet someone who’s an incredible writer. Then they hear of a gig writing and pitching a series of op Eds for a company executive, they remember meeting you, and they pull you into the project. Which brings me to my next tip…

4. FORM COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS. The power of collaboration is amazing. Brian Clark over at Copyblogger wrote a really great post about collaborating that you should check out. But anyway, form partnerships with people who have skills that complement yours so that whenever big projects come up, you can each take a little piece of the business. Form arrangements with other independents and routinely offer a combined list of services when you’re sending out proposals for new business. No one can do it all, but if your network is strong and talented, you can handle any project.

5. DON’T FORGET YOUR OWN PR. Never miss the chance to get your name and your company’s name out there. You might work hard for your clients, but if you want to increase the name recognition of your agency and eventually land more clients, you’ve got to get out in front. So pitch a story about your company (not just your client) to the media.

6. TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU’RE DOING. The general public doesn’t always know what we PR and Marketing professionals do on a day to day basis. So join Twitter and post tweets about what you’re doing for your clients. It will remind people of what you do and what you’re good at, so they’ll think of you first if they ever need those skills and services.

7.PUT SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS TO WORK. Update your Facebook page and linked in profile with your blog and/or company Web site url and professional bio. You never know who might see your profile. Your long lost high school calculus tutor might be running a company that could use your services. If s/he sees your company web site on Facebook, s/he might just check you out.

8.GET INVOLVED IN INDUSTRY ORGANIZATIONS. Position yourself as a leader by speaking at your local PRSA, IABC, AMA or AD Club functions, or sponsor an association event and get your company name and logo on display. If you can’t afford to sponsor an industry association event, work out an exchange for services. You can edit the newsletter or volunteer your time some other way in exchange for sponsorship status.

So what are your tips? What are some ways you’ve been able to keep clients or get new ones during these tough economic times?

Meet the Press just announced that David Gregory will be the new host, following Tim Russert’s untimely death this past summer.  I talked it over with my husband, Marc Littlejohn, who follows politics and political journalism far more intently than I do. This is what he told me:

“David Gregory is one of the best journalists out there. He’s the most objective, and at his age he’s very experienced. He’s very astute;knowledgeable on everything as it relates to politics. He’s always unbiased in his reporting, he’s not fawning all over people. He’s not afraid to ask tough questions. He’s fair. And he represents the younger generation.

I think Tim Russert would be proud.”

So there you have it. DG  will be our new Sunday morning messenger, leading the historic weekly broadcast at a truly historic time in our nation’s politics and culture.  Looking forward to tuning in.

So, I subscribe to three newspapers (Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal). But, being a busy new mother to an 8-week-old and a 14-month-old, as well as doing all of my marketing and pr work for clients, I don’t get to read all of my papers as often as I’d like. I consistently get through the Post and Times, even if I have to play catch up on the weekends. But more often than not, I’ve noticed lately that the Journal stays in its plastic wrapping and goes from my front stoop to the recycling bin untouched.

Today is a light work day so I picked up the Journal first. And instantly I realized why I’ve been avoiding it. Front page headline: “Companies Accelerate Layoffs.” Great, more people are going to be unemployed, and at Christmas of all times. “Housing-Crisis Grants Force Cities to Make Tough Choices.” Awesome, more people losing their homes. And What’s News? November Jobs Report Expected to be Grim. Big Three Auto CEOs are Begging for a Bailout.

It’s just one depressing story after another. Not that the WSJ was ever a party on paper anyway. But I did enjoy reading about the trends behind the trends that make all of our businesses churn. But the overarching trend these days seems to simply be: cut back, layoff, and delay expenditures (my pr and marketing services!).

What do you think? Can you still bear to read the Journal these days?