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This Week

LOUISVILLE, KY: Humana launched a viral healthcare education campaign called "Stay Smart Stay Healthy" on November 10.

SEATTLE: Concepts & Strategies (C&S), a woman and minority-owned communications PR firm has partnered with Visible Technologies in order to use Visible's social media measurement, management, and engagement tools to support its communications efforts.

SAN FRANCISCO: Business Wire (BW) has added features to its NewsTrak Access service including added search terms to find press releases, details when a release is submitted to Facebook and other social media sites, and clickthrough information.

Media Watch

Social media tug of war

The PR industry as a whole must do a better job of embracing social media, or else they run the risk of losing the battle against the advertising industry.

Social media is still considered a relatively new phenomenon, one in which communicators must find new ways to engage customers. The medium values two-way conversations over one-way communication, psychographics over demographics, and influence often over reach.

Click here to read on.


New PRWeek blog

Marketing to a social Web

This PRWeek/Visible Technologies webcast, Interacting with Social Media to Strengthen Communication Strategies, features Jeff Zabin, Aberdeen Group research analyst and an industry case study from Bob Pearson, Dell VP of communities and conversations.

Check out the archived webcast. To access slides from this event, click here.

Date: June 19, 2008
Duration: One hour

Sponsored by Visible Technologies

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Latest News

Week-long festival highlights NYC's Internet contributions

Tonya Garcia

Internet Week New York, taking place June 3 through 10, is a week-long festival highlighting the city's contribution to the Internet industry.

Study finds PR-blogger divide

Beth Krietsch

WASHINGTON: A recent survey showed a strong divide between PR pros and bloggers regarding their opinions on acceptable communications practices involving both parties.

'SI' intensifies outreach as it unveils new 'Vault'

Frank Washkuch

NEW YORK: Sports Illustrated is promoting the release of a multimedia archive containing 54 years of its print content with a six-week media campaign.

Products & Tools exclusive

Tonya Garcia has been blogging from the NIRI show. Click here to see her latest posts.

Expert Q&A

UPDATE: Medialink stock reaches record low
By Tonya Garcia

NEW YORK: Medialink's stock price dropped to under one dollar last week, reaching its lowest price in company history.

At one point Wednesday morning, May 28, the broadcast and multimedia PR firm's stock price was listed at $1, but yesterday, May 27, the official close price was 89 cents; its lowest close in history. It closed Friday at $1.07. NASDAQ rules require companies to maintain a minimum closing bid of $1 per share. Failure to do so for 30 consecutive business days runs the risk of delisting. A one-year chart of the company's stock shows a gradual and persistent fall; the 52-week high for Medialink stock is $6.50, the low, reached during Thursday, was 87 cents.

COO Larry Thomas said those speculating about the well-being of the company were "connecting the dots in a way they shouldn't be connected," pointing out that the company has added five sales people in the past 90 days and is looking to fill other positions.

In its Q1 report released last week, the company reported a $2.5 million loss.

PRWeek reported the May 16 departures of Mary Buhay, former SVP of corporate communications, and Michelle Wallace, former SVP of client services. Thomas said the company is not looking for replacements for them but is "continuing to structure the business in a way that makes sense for the current market."

"It's part of the changes in the overall media landscape [and] changes in the broadcast PR industry," said Thomas. "The way to improve confidence overall is to make sure we have services that are relevant, [which is] what we're doing now."

When the Q1 results, released May 15, showed an 11.1% drop in revenues from the same period last year for a total of $7.1 million, Medialink CEO Laurence Moskowitz said in a statement that the company is suffering from the overall economic downturn. He noted a "sharp decline in business in March," but said that "April's results were back in line with our expectations," and the company had begun a "realignment of our domestic media communications group" to improve sales and services.

Medialink CFO Kenneth Torosian also attributed Q1 losses to problems with investor, Pequot Capital. "According to their public filings, Pequot held approximately 14% of the Medialink common stock," Torosian wrote in an e-mail. "The sale of over 900,000 shares of the Medialink stock, a generally thinly-traded security, in a short period of time put price pressure on the stock."

Medialink's Teletrax digital video tracking service reported a revenue of $1.1 million, an almost 60% increase from the year-ago period, but it incurred an operating loss of $825,000.

"We also are continuing the re-evaluation of the overall business plan for Teletrax while we explore various means of tracking video on the Internet," Moskowitz said in the earnings statement. 

PR Toolbox

PRWeek's Q&A column, PR Toolbox, provides relevant and useful information from the PR services industry for PR professionals. This is a great opportunity for you or your client to share your techniques, and demonstrate your expertise in a field.

Submissions are collected 10 days in advance of the print publication (two Thursdays before the issue date) and word count is 150.

Please contact our editorial assistant, Beth Krietsch, with Toolbox pitches.

Latest Features

Twitter is changing the pace, structure of communications

Keith O'Brien

Nothing is local. Everything is global. This sort of sentiment gets reinforced daily to us, or so it seems.

SEOs provide more coverage for clients, campaigns

Aarti Shah

Although most PR pros consider Web 2.0 tactics vital, many still hesitate to use search-engine optimization (SEO) for campaigns.

The new rules of evaluation

Tonya Garcia

As social media's role in the PR mix becomes greater, it becomes more imperative to figure out the best way to measure it

Integrated marketing insight, hiring outside writers, more

Beth Krietsch

I keep hearing that integrated marketing is replacing straight PR. What does this mean and how can I prepare for this change?




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