by By Nicole Lygo
In class on Thursday, we heard from Gini Dietrich, CEO and founder of Chicago-based marketing and communication firm Arment Dietrich, and author the popular PR and marketing blog Spin Sucks. Because of Gini’s wealth of experience in a multitude of topics, the conversation jumped from topic to topic, going everywhere from blogging advice to ethics in PR to common PR mistakes.
Gini had a lot to say about the topic of blogging. First, on inspiration, Gini said “If I think of something, I’ll blog about it.” She also jokingly noted that friends often tell her she’s not allowed to blog about them. The point was, though, that inspiration for your blog can be found everywhere. Make a note in you phone and add to it every time inspiration strikes; carry around a notebook so you won’t forget that genius idea you wanted to blog about. The next step in blogging is finding the right tone. Many people find it challenging to create a blog that is professional and still reflects their personality well. Gini’s advice was simply to be opinionated. She said that in all her experience with the Spin Sucks blog, the more opinionated she was, the more it reflected her personality. The biggest question of the afternoon though, was how to feel more confident about blogging. The answer? Keep doing it! Gini said that experience gives you confidence; the more you blog the better you feel about it.
The conversation eventually turned to ethics, something of a hot topic in PR right now. Gini said that her biggest piece of advice, advice many people seem to ignore, is don’t lie. PR is about building relationships with stakeholders, and it’s hard to build a relationship on lies. The easiest way to screw up in PR is to lie about something because as many politicians will tell you, nothing stays secret for long.
Takeaways: Don’t lie; be opinionated; practice, practice, practice.
See the entire conversation here.
Great post, Nicole! I’d like to add in something I learned from Gini’s talk last Wednesday evening – clients often expect instant results from a public relations campaign, but a strategic, integrated approach “run like a marathon” is what WORKS. I think the same concept can be applied to blogging, especially when creating blog content for a client. Maybe posting blog content that first comes to the mind, without strategically planning out that content, is not for the best? What do you think? Or should bloggers blog about what comes to them and write in the moment?
Great post Nicole! I feel you really captured a lot of the major points Gini discussed in class. Especially about how the more you blog the better you feel about it. As someone who is interested in getting in to blogging, one of the major issues I have is finding the line between being opinionated enough or just straight up complaining. When is it too much? A lot of the time I ask myself, why would anyone care? But I guess she’s right…just have to keep on doing it and I’ll get the hang of it 🙂