Countless articles have been written on the importance of sites like Twitter and Facebook to bring customers to your business, but one of the most often neglected is also one of the highest trafficked website on the Internet. Pinterest is growing by the day and drives more traffic than staples like Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit manage combined. With numbers that top many of the traditional social media sites, if your company doesn’t have a Pinterest page, you are missing out on a massive opportunity.

Unlike Twitter or even Facebook and Google+, Pinterest is driven by pictures. People will share the content you create if it is visually interesting, and that also means making your pictures large and high quality. Small icons will not cut it on Pinterest. The more attention your images receive, the more likely they will be shared by others.

The food and beverage PR industry is quite unique in the ways that it doles out its accolades. All industries have their taste makers to be sure, but food and beverage companies more or less rely on the tongues of known experts to sell their wares to the general public.

Perhaps because food is so essential to the day to day lives of all people, they prefer to have someone else take the heat for any bad decisions. In any case, here are the reasons that food and beverage companies, especially new food and beverage companies, must appeal to taste makers in the industry.

As any true child of the 80s knows, Gargamel is far from a friendly face. Bent on capturing Smurfs to turn them into gold, eat them for lunch, or just destroy them, Gargamel is enough to terrify any Smurf… and likely the 80’s child that still lives within many of us.

It thus goes without saying that, as a marketer, you don’t want to scare your audience away like Gargamel. Papa Smurf is a preferable role model (if you’re set on an 80s cartoon star as your social media analogy, like we are here).

A public relations campaign can be an effective and cost effective tool for businesses that want to build awareness of their brand. Many business owners are unaware of just how important public relations is, preferring instead to place an emphasis on advertising. Business owners should consider how advertising is viewed as opposed to the neutral coverage of a product. Public relations campaigns are all about establishing credibility and the endorsement of a neutral third party is often given far more credence than the business’s own advertising.

Viral Marketing

The days of hiding in the shadows are over for the modern day celebrity. In order to stay relevant and gain continued popularity these Hollywood stars need to perform to a daily off-screenjuggling act. Between raising children,entertainment careers, appearances and more – to say that a Hollywood celebrity mother’s life is hectic is an understatement!

@DrewBarrymore –Business Mom

Sometimes, when sending out public relations messages, it can be the basic things that trip you up. There you are, creating excellent public relations messages, following press protocols … then waiting and waiting and waiting. For nothing. But, it may not be the actual content of the message that is keeping your PR from being received and published.

Ronn Torossian reminds you to make sure you have taken care of these simple fixes before worrying that your messaging might be off.

January has been quite a month for Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman. Stuck at the center of a swirling media storm after his bizarre postgame interview, after the ‘Hawks beat the 49ers in the NFC Championship, Sherman has transformed that attention into a brand boosting PR win. Sure, a lot of people who really couldn’t care less think he’s a blowhard, but legions of football fans love the guy they hadn’t heard of just a few weeks ago. The proof is in the numbers.

A few benchmarks that can help tell the story of Sherman’s PR blitz in real numbers: