The new blog is up and running! The new PR for the People can be found at http://tomtoronto.ca.

This free wordpress blog is now inactive. All posts and comments made prior to today have been copied to the new blog.

Please update any links, readers or bookmarks you may have to the new site. Don’t worry, it’s just like this blog, only better!

Thank you for supporting PR for the People!

Today I purchased the domain name for tomtoronto.ca, as well as web hosting services from Hostpapa.ca. After filling out the purchasing forms I was contacted within 20 minutes or so to confirm it. I missed the cell call, so they sent me an email about two minutes later.

So far the minimal interaction I have had with Hostpapa’s staff has been excellent. The response time is the fastest I’ve yet encountered, and the staff is courteous and helpful. I hope this trend continues, because I’m certain to have questions in the near future!

If you’re looking for a web host, take a look at Hostpapa’s site. You get a lot of bandwith and storage space, 99.9% uptime guarantee and a free domain registration. The three factors that swayed me were: 1) It’s Canadian; 2) It’s 100% green energy powered (by wind, I believe); and 3) They have phone and email support with a lot of availability.

Oh did I mention it’s cheap? Hostpapa and I have this in common. With a coupon I found through google, it’ll end up costing about $5.11 a month before taxes for the next three years.

Enough with the promotion. What it means is that this website will soon be moving! Stay tuned for a new and improved PR for the People,  links and details to follow.

In the meantime, if you are paying for a blog, which host are you with? Any recommendations or hosts to avoid? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!

There was an interesting topic brought up on Inside PR this week, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially while watching my mutual funds tank. The R word, recession.  With all the talk of a potential recession on the horizon, how does this affect Public Relations? Personally, I think in Canada we will experience some economic slowdown, but I think we’re in much better shape than our neighbours to the south. I’m not exactly a financial expert, so don’t make investment choices based on this blog, but if I were running a business I would put more money in PR during a recession.

In reality, I’m sure PR budgets would be cut a bit, or remain the same, hiring would slow down, all the usual impacts a recession has. But let’s take a look at some key practice areas of PR, and how I think they can play a pivotal role in a tight economy.

MarComm: I figured I would start here since this is such a common area of PR. If times are tight, I would advocate using public relations over marketing. You can accomplish a lot with a very small PR budget, through publicity, creativity and good relationships with your community. Traditional marketing can get costly, ad space doesn’t come cheap.

Investor Relations: If your stock is falling, or your business isn’t getting the returns it used to, the investors are going to want some serious reassurance. Investor relations should be a crucial facet of any business in a recession. If your ROI is coming back red, and your company remains silent, investors will be dropping out faster than Rudy Giuliani. If you employ some excellent IR, you can maintain their trust and hopefully keep them on board.

Internal Communications: I personally consider this to be the most important function of any company. Productivity and profit are directly linked to how engaged, enabled and happy the employees are. Nothing puts more strain on employee relations than a recession. Potential layoffs, salary increases and bonuses getting the axe, terms like “restructuring” being tossed around, it’s a time of high anxiety for everyone. A good internal communications plan can diffuse the tension, reassure doubts, or at the very least, keep people in the loop about what’s happening.

So there are three key areas PR can really aid a company when the chips are down. This is just my opinion, during the last recession of the early 90s I had a paper route, so I’m not speaking from experience. What do you think? If you have worked in PR through a recession, or just want to share your opinion, leave your two cents in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

I admit it; I have been a negligent blogger for the past couple of weeks. There are a lot of things on the go right now, not the least of which included an assignment for one of my PR classes. My first PR assignment ever, so I hope I start out strong! Speaking of PR classes, there’s a few nice links for students out there today, that I missed in my web-absentia.

If you are currently a student, or have been recently, I encourage you to take part in the discussion on Bob LeDrew’s blog Flacklife. He’s currently wondering about the presence (or absence) of Web 2.0 in the PR classroom. Is it being taught, used, discussed?

One instructor who is teaching Web 2.0 is Gary Schlee, who has his students on del.icio.us and blogging. Joe Thornley has taken notice and suggests blogging is a must for any new PR student. Good news for me, since I don’t think many of my fellow students are blogging!

As always, great post from Chris Clarke over on Student PR. He also mentions the online aspect of getting hired, along with networking and internship.

So the morale of the story is if you want to get in PR start trying out the new(er) web ideas. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably already well on your way!

Check back every Friday for my favourite links from the world of Public Relations.

This week just flew by! I didn’t even make a proper blog post, I’ll have to be sure to make time next week. In the meantime, here are some good links.

If you haven’t read the cluetrain manifesto, I definitely recommend it. I read it a while ago while in undergrad, thanks to a Prof who is really on the ball. He used to teach at York U, from the looks of his blog he’s now at Wilfrid Laurier, which is a shame for York. Anyway, you should read Cluetrain and draw your own conclusions. Now the 95 theses are available in a convenient slideshow format. Check them out:

If you like it so far, check out the book in its entirety here. Thanks to Michael Seaton from the Client Side Blog for posting the slideshow earlier.

If anybody follows this blog they know I love links to resources, and three great blogs delivered this week.

Chris Clarke is back with Student PR and he’s returned with a list of PR firms in Toronto, which is handy for those of us looking for a PR job. It’s great to see this blog active again!

Dave Fleet has compiled a solid list of Social Media Tips and Tools over on Fleet Street PR. Get your bookmarking finger ready before clicking over, you’ll want to save that one.

Finally, Joe Thornley has just announced the beginning of a new series on the Canadian Council of PR firms blog.  The series will feature biweekly video interviews with leaders from Canada’s finest PR firms. It sounds like an excellent series, I’m looking forward to the first post. It’s also really nice to see a video format, it’s a good diversion from the endless RSS subscriptions and readers.

So there you have it! Lots of great posts this week, I hope you enjoy them. As always, feel free to leave some of your own choice links in the comments. Have a great weekend!