If you lead an association, you may have a limited amount of time and resources to promote your story to key audiences. Social media – including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram – is a cost-effective way to help enhance and raise awareness of the industries an association represents. Using social media will connect you to your membership, inform and engage with your industry and raise your brand awareness. In addition, social media gives you important analytics. 

t’s 5 p.m. on a Friday and you get a call from the Houston Chronicle asking for an interview with your client or company. You have two hours before deadline. What do you do? Ignore the request at your peril, as this can be reported as “so and so had no comment,” which can sound incriminating, albeit unfairly. To avoid that all-too-common scenario, here are four things you SHOULD do when the media calls:

Are you talking to your PR program in a baby voice? Come on. You can do it. You will get results. I just know you can do it! If you’re not being strategic, that’s just what you’re doing: using baby tactics to achieve grown-up results in your public relations campaigns.

Whether big or small, all businesses will benefit from great PR storytelling. That story will engage your audiences – including customers, perspective customers and investors – to learn more about your products or services. People are naturally inquisitive. When you meet someone at a party, you want to know where they come from, what they do and who they might know at the party and how. Rather than coming right out and asking 50 questions, you might take time to get to know them. It’s the same with a business. When you are deciding whether or not to purchase from them, you want to know who they are, where they come from and how they ‘got to the party.’ This is where storytelling comes in.

TED Talks – whether on Technology, Education, Design or anything else – are the epitome of storytelling: compelling, inspirational and mesmerizing. If you’re a public relations professional or marketer, you’re a storyteller too. But how do you tell stories for your client that successfully use the TED-style laws of communication? Here are 3 top tips:

If you’re a blogger, social media influencer or marketer, check out these three top tools for creating and sharing your content. Readability Test Tool Don’t be dense! Is your writing impenetrable, are you using bigger words than you need to and are your sentences too long? Even though you might be capable of writing for the New York Review of Books, you really shouldn’t. Blogs in general should strive for readers with a grade level of around 8. Although a level of 10-12 is roughly the reading level on completion of high school, experts say 8 is what to shoot for. This blog has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 8.7.

If you like to be inspired by experts in your field, you’re in good company. Many of us will scour the internet, listen to TED talks or visit popular sites like Mashable or Hacker News for ideas and inspiration. Public relations is no different. Stay on top of trends and social media channels but know the basics With an industry changing at breakneck speed, it’s a great idea to look to the experts periodically for best practice, industry insight and the know-how techniques that keep us sharp. Here are three of my favorite books on public relations and social media marketing.

Former Baylor University President Ken Starr should have known better. PR adviser Merrie Spaeth should have known better. In fact, everyone who watched the TV interview did know better that either Starr was uncoachable or he was not coached very well at all. Either way, it was the consummate example of how not to do media training, i.e., while the cameras are rolling.