Little kids can be a treasure trove of wisdom waiting to burst open, and I may have had my “A-ha!” moment a few weeks ago through an awesome little tyke.

I was invited over to a friend’s place to watch the Patriots game surrounded with good company and good food.  Among all the chatty adults was an adorable toddler not more than 3-years-old making the rounds with all the guests.  He had a beaming smile and was very well-behaved.

Of course, kids will be kids, and even though the Pats were on their way to a victory over the Jets, the boy could care less about the score and was too busy occupying himself with none other than the popular Angry Birds game, the mobile app game developed by Rovio where players use a slingshot to launch birds at pigs stationed on or within various structures.

It occurred to me as I watched him focus on that game that at 3-years-old, this little boy was being kept entertained completely by technology.  His attention was being held captive by the sights and sounds of the worldwide web and through mobile phone applications.   Then it dawned on me.   The toys and games I played with when I was a little kid have been outdated and made obsolete.   Consider me ancient!

But what was worse, I further thought, is that the technology available to kids today has destroyed their creativity and imaginations.  When I was a kid, I transformed an old refrigerator box into a house for my dolls and I to have tea parties in!  When I was a kid, I flew around my back yard with a towel tied around my neck pretending to be Supergirl!  When I was a kid, I didn’t have iPhone game apps or the internet to tell me how to be creative or teach me how to play.  My imagination was my babysitter, not Angry Birds!

Then something else happened.  The little boy put Angry Birds down and started to flap his arms up and down as he tiptoed around the house in circles while whistling.  The little boy was pretending to be one of the Angry Birds in the game.  He was, dare I say, using his imagination to create his own game inspired by the iPad he was just tinkering with.

And just like that, my theory that technology is plotting to kill kids’ imaginations was disproved and upstaged by an adorable, make believe Angry Bird with a beaming smile.  Imaginations of kids today have not been replaced by technology.  Rather, technology has only offered a plethora of venues for kids to come up with great new ideas for their own make believe worlds.

So what does any of this have to do with PR?  Today’s PR professional is not your father’s PR professional.  Our typewriters have been replaced by laptops.  Our fax machines have been replaced by emails.  Our landlines have been replaced by cell phones.  Technology has clearly changed the way we conduct business just like it has changed the way kids come up with their make believe games.

But no matter what fancy bells and whistles are thrown onto our desks, PR professionals still rely on our own creative ingenuities when crafting the perfect pitch or brainstorming the perfect branding strategy for our clients, just like how the little boy still relied on his own imagination when turning himself into an Angry Bird. Technology has changed the PR industry, but without our creative imaginations there would be no PR industry.

It’s nearly impossible to execute a PR or marketing campaign without getting involved with social media at some level.

The benefits of exuding your brand’s personality on Facebook and Twitter, and interacting with consumers in a fun, pithy manner far outweigh the drawbacks of opening yourself up to public criticism. The problem is that social media can take on a life of its own and accounts can grow to require a lot of time and attention. In some cases, if resources are scarce, brands are forced to reevaluate their audiences and focus their time and energy on one channel over another.

That’s why, when I read fellow social media junkie and industry insider Zeny Huang’s recent opinion piece, “4 Reasons Google+ Brand Pages Will Be Better Than Facebook’s” on Mashable earlier this month, I paused to think, “Could it be?”

Though there’s much we still need to learn about Google+, Huang highlights two potential areas where I do believe this newcomer may have a leg up in this race: search and analytics. As Huang notes, Google has long been a leader in both of those fields. It’s still a guessing game at this point, but it will definitely be interesting to see how brands begin to use Google+ for their marketing and PR efforts, and if they’re able to effectively break into your “circle.”

What do you think? Based on what you’ve seen and read, does Google+ hold a candle to Facebook and Twitter when it comes to helping brands interact with consumers?

Though resistant at first, over the past few years I and the rest of the folks at Matter have come to embrace Twitter as an incredibly useful, powerful — and sometimes even fun — vehicle for connecting and communicating. Some of us would even go so far as to say we love Twitter now. Along the way, I’ve learned to keep the following tips in mind, which definitely apply to my fellow PR professionals:

1.) Follow and engage with relevant media. Doing so will keep you on your toes and in the loop. I can’t even count the number of times me or my colleagues have scored an interview opportunity, a competitive advantage, or saved ourselves from an ill-timed phone call simply by paying attention to what the people we pitch are tweeting at any given moment.

2.) Follow your peers. It takes a village to stay on top of the latest news, statistics, resources and “uh oh” moments happening in the wacky world where PR, marketing and social media intersect. Following and engaging with other PR professionals helps all of us pick up on things we should be paying attention to and doing…and helps us avoid the same mistakes others are making, as well.

3.) Keep at it. Sure, we’ve all let ourselves lapse from time to time. But if your last tweet was “Trying to figure out how to use the Twitter” back in January 2009, chances are your clients and colleagues aren’t exactly going to see you as the most credible and knowledgeable expert on social media and communications trends.

4.) Show personality, not poor judgment. Sharing emotions, pop culture tidbits and slice of life observations are a great way to build a following, demonstrate authenticity, and actually enjoy tweeting. But on the web, there is no real “delete” button, since just about everything is captured and cached and seen by someone the second it goes out. So if you’re tweeting in the heat of the moment, step away and take a deep breath before you hit send. If you’re commenting on politics or considering an update that some would consider TMI…all the more reason to truly stop and think before you tweet.

5.) Don’t drink and tweet. It’s never as cute or witty as you thought it was when you sober up. Trust me.

Technology continues to enhance our creativity and change the way we communicate and market to our clients’ target audiences. Regardless of what communication channels we use and what those individual messages are, there is one common trend that PR pros cannot ignore: The demand for and potential use of video in all that we do.

In November, we seized this opportunity and added professional video capabilities to our extensive lineup of services. What that means is that all video work is now done in-house, giving us, and our clients, full creative control over the content, concept, design and production of our client’s stories. And just as social media challenged us to think more succinctly (for example, in just 140 characters), integrating video into our programs challenges us to think visually about our clients’ messages.

We’re pretty sharp people, so I use the word “challenge” carefully here, but who couldn’t use a little inspiration? We’re constantly looking to other videos as sources for new ideas and new ways to present interviews, text treatments, animations and talking heads. What’s been done? What hasn’t been done? How can we engage our audiences and present this information in a new, innovative way?

In January, TED founder Chris Anderson announced a new initiative called Ads Worth Spreading. After receiving thousands of video entries, TED’s panel of experts recently announced the winners of the competition. This fantastic round-up of noteworthy videos has definitely served as a source of artistic and visual story-telling inspiration for us here at Matter.

So we ask, what videos have inspired you and your creative team?

As I snuggled into bed on this past week’s snowy Wednesday evening I realized I forgot to watch the President’s Speech in Tucson. Fortunately my smartphone was charging nearby so I opened my YouTube app and caught up on my current events. I smiled to myself as I thought of the iconic images of past Presidential speeches, families gathered around the radio waiting with bated breath over crackling speakers. Not quite the same scene today is it?

This got me thinking. First of all it’s incredible that we live in an age with such a wealth of information that I knew beyond a doubt that the video would already be uploaded, in HD quality of course, to YouTube if not several other sites. I spoke with a friend about this idea and she told me she had gotten stuck at work but followed live-bloggers on Twitter during the speech and eventually went to WhiteHouse.gov to live stream the video to her desk.

While in general I see this information overload as a privilege of our generation I couldn’t help but wonder, are we missing unifying moments as a nation because of convenience? My parents always watched Presidential speeches as a family and when the news came on at 6:00 PM they say, “you either saw it or you didn’t no DVR-ing broadcasts like you do.” I know I’ll never forget the pure horror I felt on 9/11 as I watched the live broadcasts of the twin towers falling, but I took some solace in the fact that I knew the whole nation was watching, and we all felt the same way.

That being said, social media allows each and every one of us to connect personally to news, and to borrow Twitter’s slogan, now we can ‘join the conversation’.

So what do you think? Are we sacrificing a human connection for convenience? Or perhaps with our ability to be a part of the news on our own terms now maybe we’re more unified than ever.

As a newbie to the PR world, I’m learning something new every day. The same could be said, however, for the PR world itself. The other day, Mashable.com featured a piece called “10 Predictions for the News Media in 2011”, which discussed predictions about the manner in which people will gather news in the year 2011 (from smartphones, iPads, etc.). While this article touched on some of what I have already learned since starting at Matter, it baffled me nonetheless. It also serves as a great continuation of my colleague Lauren’s post about effective PR news tools, as it highlighted the up and coming channels for news media – forcing PR professionals to keep up.

As technology advances, people are getting their news from all different kinds of sources – Mashable lists social media, interactive television and mobile devices just to name a few. We no longer live in a simple print, television or radio world, and it’s our jobs as PR professionals to get the news out to whoever wants it and from whatever source they want it from. Taking a step back to look at how far social media networks have progressed in such a short period of time, it is amazing to think where it will go next!

Mashable predicts that location-based news (news driven/delivered to your phone based on where you are geographically) will pick up from the small percentage that uses it now – about 4% today. As one of the last people without a smart phone (Mom: if you’re reading this, I’d like a Droid please!), I haven’t experienced the news or social media apps that come along with this new industry. Luckily, my colleagues show me all of their news forums listed on their phones, along with all of their social media platforms – all on just one of seven screens that their phone allows. What!? In a quick poll around the office, it seems that Twitter and specific news sites (AP, CNN, etc.) are the most popular ways my colleagues get their news on the go.

With new media opportunities on the horizon, there seems to be no limit to where news will be available. What’s your favorite way to get your news, or what do you hope to see in 2011?

This is an exciting day at Matter (and not just because tonight is our weekly staff basketball game.)

Today we’re officially announcing the addition of professional video capabilities to the PR services we offer our clients.

If you’re online, chances are you watch video, too. (Nearly 85 percent of U.S. Internet users viewed online video last  month.) So you know how important video has become as a way of getting messages across.

Our consumer and high-tech clients know it, too. That’s why we’re excited to begin offering tons of video content – news releases, newsletters, product demonstrations, customer testimonials, newsroom-ready B-roll, viral videos.

We’ve already got several video projects under way. Something tells me we’ll be keeping the new video team awfully busy.

Memo to communications professionals: If video isn’t in your PR and marketing toolkits, it should be.

Why do you need video? Because:

• YouTube streams more than 1.2 billion videos every day, according to TechCrunch
• 90% of 2009-2010 broadcast TV was on Internet
• Microsites with video are 53 times more likely to get on the front page of Google Search, according to Forrester Research
• More than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video online in June 2010, according to ComScore, that’s more than 100 videos per viewer
• Approximately 85  percent of the total U.S. Internet audience regularly views online video
• Media websites increasingly depend on outside video. In fact, one well-respected newspaper has asked for a video series to be created for their website.
  • 90 percent of radio websites now use video.
  • 87 percent of newspaper websites now use video.
  • 76 percent of magazine websites now use video.

Ok, so now that you’re on the video bandwagon, here are five helpful tips (or so I hope), from storyboarding and preproduction to merchandizing:

1. Speak the words, don’t write a script. Account for pauses, music transitions, and most importantly, how naturally the words flow together. Skip long words. Use phrases (that’s how most people talk).
2. Stock imagery can be a  great way to give more pizzazz to flatter footage, but be cognizant of where/how it was used previously
3. Think about customizing videos, with different calls to action that make the viewer interact with the message
4. Optimize your video – the description should be keyword rich, place links in the description and the video itself.
5. One video does not all audiences serve, so think about how to maximize any video you have (and/or buy). Can you create products messages for tradeshows? Use mini-segments to pitch the media? Tell a better corporate story to potential employees?

See you on the big screen.

Peter Shankman makes all the right moves.

The guy is brilliant and, if you’re in PR, you can’t help but know that he has a cat named Karma and, when he’s not jumping from an insane altitude, he’s training for an Ironman. Oh, and he’s the founder and CEO of a PR/journalism game-changing company called Help a Reporter Out (HARO).

HARO was founded on Facebook in 2008 and has since grown to be THE social media services company that connects writers and sources. In my opinion, two things make HARO particularly unique: It’s a free service for all involved and it’s a no-BS community where PR pros are held accountable for the pitches they send. Users get booted for spammy, spray-and-pray pitches and, as a result, HARO is somewhat of a safe haven for members of the media.

The lucrative HARO “sponsorship” program that Shankman created is also noteworthy. He places advertisements at the start of each email, which are chock-full of media queries, and the open rates are said (by HARO) to be about 75 percent.

In fact, this business model is so remarkable that, just last week, Shankman announced that his little enterprise had been scooped up by Vocus, a company that provides on-demand software for public relations management and manages the press release distribution service called PRWeb.

We join the industry in congratulating Peter Shankman on this significant accomplishment. According to a Mashable story, he will continue to build the HARO brand with the help of the folks at Vocus and, more importantly, the service will remain free. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for HARO – and continuing to use this fantastic service to supplement our daily PR activities and outreach!

I’ve been at Matter for almost five years and in the PR agency biz for a dozen. I can safely say that I have never experienced a busier, more demanding time than Matter is experiencing right now (yes, yes…much better than the alternative!). Between new clients, new projects, new people, multiple launches and an upcoming tradeshow (at which several of our clients will be present…oh, and we have our own booth!), we are are all redlining. A slightly less obvious, but perhaps more persistent demand on us all is “staying informed” through reading/watching/listening to content related to our clients, industry and interests. (Information overload is familiar to you, no?)

We have tools to combat this threat on our sanity, however. They are called organization and efficiency.

While I believe it is critical for everyone to have a productivity system, there is no right one for everybody and others explain those better than I would anyway. I’m going to focus this post just on my favorite tools for managing information, which is an important part of any productivity system.

Information sources

News, correspondence, status updates, brilliant musings in 140 characters…these are the streams of my personal fire hose.

1. Email – at work, we use Microsoft Outlook / Exchange. For personal email, I have a couple Gmail accounts (each with a distinct purpose). My preference for Gmail has less to do with liking Google’s way of handling email (it’s fine, but it doesn’t wow me) and more to do with the tight integration with other Google tools (see below).  My iPhone is indispensable for being able to check them all from one screen. I aim for Inbox Zero in each. I’m probably 80% there. I am a liberal user of “unsubscribe” and “add sender to blocked list” functions.

2. Twitter (and related) – I’m in a constant on again / off again struggle with Twitter. (I think it is tremendously valuable for businesses and I personally hate using it.) During “on” cycles, I use TweetDeck on the computer and Echofon (formerly TwitterFon) for my iPhone.

3. RSS – I’ve tried a bunch and have settled on Google Reader. Again, this is more because of my desire to centralize on Google than because of a particular preference for its handling of RSS.

4. Social networking sites – I have LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Plaxo profiles, but Facebook is the only site that I actually use. I don’t love some of the newer features, but it has helped me re-establish some old relationships and strengthen existing ones. And there’s definitely some decent entertainment value.

5. General news – I have the luxury of reading daily industry news summaries my teams put together for our clients, so the only news source I actively go to daily(-ish) is the New York Times. At my computer I go to the site and Iaside from industry-specific stuff

Information processing

I have a rule that any session checking Google Reader must end with zero unread items. Here’s how I do it:

1. Scan headlines and preview posts that look interesting (ignore posts that don’t)

2. For posts that I can / want to read in preview mode (e.g., aren’t too long, don’t have embedded audio or video), I do

3. For posts that don’t lend themselves to preview reading, I click through to the full post. If it’s too long or off topic for that moment, but I want to read it later, I use the Firefox add-on Read It Later and, naturally, its iPhone app. (Tip: I like to save things for offline viewing, too, so I can read things on planes or trains.)

4. Items that I want to save long-term all find their way to Evernote. No more bookmarks of the browser or social variety for me!

Email processing is similarly simple and decisive. I preview subject lines and open items that appear interesting (or required), while delete those that don’t. Upon opening an item, I either…

1. Do and delete / file

2. Respond and delete / file

3. Delegate and delete / file

Information capture and storage

Matter has a server for client and company files, but increasingly, we are also turning to Google Docs. In addition to the ubiquitous access it provides and the fact that it’s right there in your Google account with Reader, Gmail, Tasks, Calendar, etc., the benefit of Google Docs is it allows easy collaboration and version control without the hassle and confusion of emailing drafts around. If I won’t have access to the server or the cloud, I rely on Lexar JumpDrives (yes, a client plug, but it’s true!)

Finally, for capture of offline info, I love Field Notes and Gold Fibre Retro Writing Pads. (I’m a sucker for Old School.)

My preference is to simplify, consolidate and prioritize whenever possible (hard to do in this biz!), so there is WAY more absent than present on my list. This isn’t to say there aren’t other good tools out there. I’ve tried a bunch and these are just my current favorites.

More interestingly, though, what are YOURS?