Aug
11
A Hummer with an eco conscious? Hard to believe but true on Catalina Island. The first of two H1 Hummers converted into biofuel-powered vehicles has been rolled out by the Santa Catalina Island Company. Powered by recycled vegetable oil from Avalon restaurants, the ‘green’ Hummers take visitors on expeditions through the island’s rugged interior.
When you visit Catalina, help out the environment by eating fries!
Jul
29
Lyman PR’s Carm Lyman provided today’s PRNewser Guest Post offering tips for PR pros about how to help journalists promote their client on iPad and tablet news apps.
Read the full story here: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/guest-post-ipad-tablet-media-relations_b25039
Jul
20
Today Sonos introduces the Play:3, a small, stylish, tuck-in-a-corner, all-in-one player that breathes new life into home audio with HiFI sound, easy set up, music streaming from all over the Earth, perfectly synced multi-room capability, and the ability to control it all from the palm of your hand.
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Jul
08
Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Pro-runners, cyclists and triathletes who want to have access to one of the world’s most challenging and spectacular training grounds can take advantage of the Mammoth Endurance Crib at Snowcreek Resort at Mammoth. The luxury condominium sleeps 8 and will serve as a complimentary endurance basecamp for athletes who want to spend a week training at altitude.
Mammoth Lakes and the Eastern Sierra are quickly becoming a West Coast training mecca. The wide variety of roads and trails amidst spectacular scenery attract professional cyclists and runners, while alpine lakes add the opportunity for triathletes to hone open water swim skills. In fact, many of the most elite runners in the world already call Mammoth Lakes home, including:
• 2009 New York Marathon champion and 2004 Olympic Marathon Silver Medalist Meb Keflezighi
• 2004 Olympic Marathon Bronze Medalist Deena Kastor
• Josh Cox, who recently broke his own 50k US record
• Triathlete Chris Lieto, who finished 2nd at the 2009 Ironman World Championships, has used Mammoth as high altitude training base
The Mammoth Endurance Crib provides the perfect opportunity to experience an area that has a wide appeal for elite athletes, whether a runner, a cyclist or a triathlete.
Jul
07
As digital media consumption has moved from the desktop to laptop to the palm of our hands, the functionality of tablets has created an unprecedented opportunity for interaction and engagement. While media heavyweights such as The New York Times, USA Today, and Wired were early adopters to the platform, specialty publications such as Golf Digest are now rolling out offerings. For the PR pro, just as Twitter and Facebook opened new, dynamic communications channels, news outlet apps for iPads and tablets can do the same.
The demand for quality information has not just increased but also shifted in terms of how people want to experience it. As we discussed in our post about the dawn of the social media release, the nature of tablets requires expanding your PR toolkit with interactive content such as video, a wider array of photos, audio clips and infographics.
Like any good media outreach effort, when it comes to pitching an iPad feature, research the media outlet’s app and tailor your approach to accommodate their style. Offering the right elements will make pitches more successful while also offering readers a more comprehensive understanding of product/service features and benefits.
As a example, we recently worked with a reporter at Orange County Register to build out an app-tastic story on our client, Mammoth Mountain, with succinct copy and lots of supporting images and video. This approach – telling a story in an interactive format—resulted in a great piece for both the press and client.
Journalists and publishers are both interested in experimenting in this space so take advantage of their eagerness and get some great coverage while building better media relationships.
Have you developed an interesting app to feature your client in the press or are you thinking about it? Let us know.
Jun
20
Are you looking to start a blog but not sure about which features to include? In a follow up to our post about Favorite Corporate Press Rooms, we look at how some of the world’s biggest brands are utilizing blogs to communicate with their audiences.
In summary, here’s a checklist of the most important features discussed in the video:
- a title and description of the blog
- clearly displayed calls-to-action
- Facebook and Twitter feeds and/or links to your social media presence
- link to your RSS feed
- chronological list of blog archives
- topic list of blog archives
- list of company bloggers
- widgets and features that show off your brand’s “personality”
- interesting, thought- provoking content that is not company-centric but customer-centric
Have any items to add to the checklist or another blog that you think is exceptional? Let us know below…we’d love to hear from you!
Jun
16
Seeing is believing, especially in Mammoth Lakes. This week we caught up with Sierra Star’s director of Golf Dave Schacht, who told us about the course opening, skiing/riding at Mammoth Mountain for July 4th, a ski & tee package and more.
May
26
A few weeks ago, we discussed why the traditional press release may no longer be the most effective way for organizations to spread news. Today, let’s look at some of the alternatives to the traditional press release.
Journalists want facts, information and ease of use rather than long, self-serving releases filled with marketing jargon. A social media release fills this role perfectly, allowing journalists to make conclusions on data. Research shows that 55.8% of journalists today have started accepting social networks like twitter and Facebook as legitimate channels of communication with PR pros. This points to the need for a new communication approach and the rise of social media releases.
A social media release consists of:
Clearly stated news and company facts: As long time journalist Tom Foremski writes on his blog, “Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. The journalists are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother?”
Supporting multimedia (images, videos, podcasts, presentations etc.) to make the release much more interactive: As more and more publications become purely online, reporters are looking to include copy-paste multimedia materials. Of course, since reporters don’t want to include podcasts or slideshows created by other sites or publications, this necessitates that the company issuing the SMR create its own multimedia content.
May
11
New Hampshire’s Ted King was the first American to sigh with Liquigas-Cannondale, 
Italy’s powerhouse pro cycling team (think the New York Yankees of bike racing, or in Ted’s case, playing for the Boston Red Sox). Ted has ridden many of the world’s most esteemed races, and currently has his sites set on the Amgen Tour of California starting May 15th in Lake Tahoe.
Aside from a life on the road, Ted also has a popular blog, writes for a number of top cycling media outlets, and is a budding entrepreneur. We caught up with Ted for a cup of ‘sports self-branding’ java and how he puts the pieces together so successfully.
Q: How do you perceive yourself as a brand?
A: That’s a tough question to answer while trying to maintain humility. My guess is that it has to do with having my name directly in the heart of it, iamtedking. Truthfully this whole brand has unfolded in a very unexpected and the most organic fashion possible. iamtedking 
started simply as an email address which then segued into a blog to keep the family and friends back home apprised of what professional bike racing is about. That gained noteworthy popularity – especially when I made the international jump to the European pro peloton – and started to get requests from my reading 
audience to create some t-shirts. I tried out the iamtedking shirt idea, but then accurately added the “not” to really target my audience… that is, virtually everyone on earth besides me!
Lyman PR: “Everyone on earth besides me” seems like a sustainable market.
Q: Now that you have a brand established, how do you see it evolving?
May
05
The vast majority of PR professionals will agree that a press release is currently the foundation for any PR campaign. However, in a time when news is broken first on Twitter, we must beg the question of how relevant the press release is to a rapidly changing news cycle and a constantly ravenous reader base.
Journalists are doing their best to keep up with an audience that is hungry for more content (with a constantly shrinking attention span) and in turn PR agencies are trying to keep up. In a few years, we suspect most PR professionals will have a tough time making a case for the traditional press release in such a media environment. So how has the press release morphed over the past few years and where can we see it go?
It is remarkable that since the conception of the press release by Ivy Lee in 1906, its format has changed minimally, if at all. Most PR agencies stick to the tried and tested formula of headline, sub heading,body and boiler plate. With the advent of e-mail and social media, press release distribution might have changed, but the format itself has not. We suspect, however, that this will change very soon due to the following indicators: