Pat Parkinson

Among professional athletes, NBA players were some of the first to have prominent profiles on Twitter. Now the league is embracing that passion for social media by producing T-shirts with players’ Twitter handles instead of their last names above the jersey numbers printed on the back. Jeremy Lin, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul are now @JLin7, @carmeloanthony and @CP3. An NBA spokeswoman told Mashable the league … Read more

Next time you’re preparing to announce to the local press that your company has hired a new director, one word of advice: Don’t. Do not issue press releases about your latest store opening or how much your company grew in the past 12 months. Nobody cares! While gaining coverage in the local media requires effort, getting written about in the newspaper or talked about on television … Read more

With content marketing gaining steam, and more and more companies employing bloggers to spread their message, new writers sometimes ask: should links in my posts open in new tabs? The easy answer: Abso-freakin’-lutely! Otherwise, consider how much website traffic you might push away by allowing links (especially external links) to open in the same tab as your blog post. Blog readers appreciate links that deliver news … Read more

The Associated Press is making it easier to use AP style in your writing with its release of a tool that edits copy for you. As a student of the “AP Stylebook” (the journalist’s bible) I know that “more than” is preferred to “over” when writing about numbers. Over … generally refers to spatial relationships: The plane flew over the city. More than is preferred with … Read more

Facebook likes can mean dollar signs for businesses savvy enough to have a social media marketing plan. Though competition for likes is fierce, many companies rely on Facebook for finding more customers. And brands that seem to have no place in social media build massive fan bases online. How do they do it? How have some small businesses gone from 200 to more than 200,000 likes … Read more

A string of tweets this morning had critics across the country turning their cross hairs on The Onion, a media outlet focused on delivering satire. A scare that prompted response from officers on Capitol Hill now has social media marketers asking: How far is too far? Let’s review. The Onion sent this message this morning via Twitter: Breaking: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol … Read more

Search giant will host workshops for businesses Face it, without a strong Internet presence some local businesses might as well not even exist. But optimizing your website for the search engines takes time and know-how. Business owners without the bucks to hire that swanky Internet marketing agency have a rare opportunity to learn from Google employees when the search giant hosts a series of free workshops … Read more

Are you tired of Internet press releases falling flat, frustrated because they receive just a few thousand headline impressions? Are you dying for just one reporter to call and ask about your company? Maybe your business has a new CEO or adopted a highway to clean up trash, and nobody knows. You need some online PR. Businesses have options for marketing themselves online –  social media, … Read more

A Washington Post reporter interviewed Blendtec founder Tom Dickson this week for a story about kitchen appliances. Already a YouTube sensation, Dickson said the journalist found out about his company from an unlikely source. “She said the only reason she called is because her 21-year-old son said mine is the best blender in the world,” Dickson said in an interview in Salt Lake City. This illustrates … Read more