In an article about PR from a website on the internet that's also about PR, "People check Facebook to see pictures of their friends and family, laugh at the latest memes and learn about breaking news."

This is intriguing and novel. Apparently people don't want to see wretched bald-faced self promotion. Turns out Engagement is key on Social media. When content is too "promoty" they tend to just scroll on by.

Brands should think about what kind of news feeds a customer would like to see. "Consider an exotic tourist destination such as Australia. Its Facebook page attracts attention effortlessly through quality images of white sand beaches, cuddly koala bears and colourful larakeets. At present, the page has more than 6 million “likes,” and it’s not uncommon for hundreds of thousands of people to engage with individual posts."

By Aaron Stares

For this week I did a little something different and set out to write something that celebrates the worst-handled PR in 2014. November is an odd month, past halloween, there's some turkey in there, but way before presents and trees. Late December is a time for reflection and considering all the horrible mistakes we made in the last year. It's a time for us to consider all those times we stuffed our feet, toes first, into our slobbery maws and make a shortlist of actions we will resolve not to take in the coming year to try and avoid that. 

That said, I know it's a little pre-imptive, but here are some of the things orginizations have said that I'm sure they wish they could take back. Borrowing from a list by Michelle Nati I've gathered a couple of the doozies.

The NYPD asked its followers for photos posted with the hashtag #mynypd and was flooded with police brutality pics.

.

J.P. Morgan to have an open Twitter Q & A session, but decides it's a bad call after receiving a 6 hour tirade. 

Diane Schwartz wrote an article titled The Epic List of Useless PR Tactics. I broke a personal edict and read something with the term "epic" in the title. There's a disturbing trend toward the use of the term epic in the last few years. There's an awful hive-think mentality that latches on to shiny new words. Words like awesome and epic and outrageous are fantastic adjectives that have had their bite dulled, like the circus lion that's had its teeth pulled and just angrily flaps an impotent maw, by over use. Maybe over use isn't accurate. Misuse would be more appropriate.

If something is epic it's enormous, it's transcendent. To be epic something must be so good that literally everyone in the world needs to hear about it, and it will be so good that it will stick around for centuries so they can. The best cup of coffee is not epic. It can be delicious or hot or even hot as Hell. The term epic has been over applied, and that's really all I'm getting at.