What is GameStop stopping this holiday season? How is Ad Block affecting the PR industry? Are you a hashtag pro? Check out the Hoffman team’s favorite PR blog posts and articles from this week.
- The holiday season is around the corner, which means that this is just the time we hear about all the Black Friday and pre-Black Friday sales. But PR Newser suggests that maybe the pre-Black Friday trend is dying down. GameStop announced that it is ending Thanksgiving campouts and closing the store on Thanksgiving this year to respect its employees’ family time. Perhaps a good PR move, but maybe not a good move for its stock. Only time will tell.
- Writing or reading layoff letters is never easy, but Twitter’s Jack Dorsey tried to be honest in his layoff memo to 300 employees. Trying to cut through all of the self-described “corporate speak,” Dorsey explained that he is trying to build a “more purpose-built team and a stronger Twitter” reported PR Week. We will see if this layoff will fix the social media site’s lack of profitability and attract new users. However, one thing is for sure — at a company this big, the layoff memo is bound to get around (especially on its own platform).
- Ad Block installations on consumer computers is on the rise, and Bulldog Reporter questions how it will affect smaller businesses from an advertising perspective. It might be a bad thing for the advertising side of the industry, but most likely a good thing for PR firms in the future. The popularity of Ad Block software is a testament to the public’s intolerance for traditional ads, and with that comes a great opportunity for PR professionals to jump in and tell real stories.
- Hashtags may have made their debut on Twitter, but now they are accessible on most other social media platforms as well. The Meltwater blog wants to make sure you know how to use them the right way on those other social networks. The devil is in the details, and using hashtags incorrectly on your client’s social media page is a major faux paus. Correctly leveraging the power of the hashtag is important for gaining those likes, hearts, retweets and more.
- Are you pitching experts correctly? The Beyond PR blog reports on the five must-dos when pitching experts to feature in your content. One of the most important tips is to be concise. This means getting the information to the expert in the most efficient and clear way possible. Treating a pitch to an expert the same way as one would to a journalist is a good rule of thumb.
Check back every Friday for our This Week in PR roundup to discover more PR trends and news.
