MGAers and representatives from our client, Vaisala, hit the red carpet last week at the annual PRSA Colorado Gold Pick Awards. MGA and Vaisala took home a Gold Pick for Media Relations – Business to Business and a Silver Pick for Advertorials for the Vaisala Across America tour. We were also honored to see our own Matt Rodriguez receive the Joe Fuentes Rookie of the Year Award.

What do social media, teacher training and the Capitol dome restoration all have in common? They are all elements of existing mining industry outreach programs targeting teachers, students, Colorado residents and decision makers.

MGA is proud to once again participate in PRSA Colorado’s annual Shadow Day, hosting two students today and sharing our knowledge about the public relations profession. To celebrate Shadow Day and promote resources available to them, we thought we’d also put a spotlight on resources available through the Council of Public Relations Firms.

Remember when everybody started listening to your favorite band so you had to stop listening to that band? Or how you saw “Clerks” before it was cool? How many people will be saying, “I liked the Women’s Bean Project (WBP) before they were in Wal-Mart?”

Hours before and in anticipation of last week’s first presidential debate, the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government hosted a panel discussion titled “Politics as Theater.” As a KSG alumnus, I watched with great interest. Are there takeaways from this discussion and from the debate relevant to public relations professionals and the clients they serve? Absolutely.

MGA recently embarked on a national media relations campaign for a client in the environmental measurement and monitoring industry. Even though MGA has done a lot of media relations over the years, our client was new to the process. The campaign was focused around a national product launch that consisted of a cross-country tour, Vaisala Across America, to over 40 cities in 16 weeks. The MGA team pitched media from Fargo to New York City and everything in between. For those of you new to media outreach, below are a few tips that we relied on throughout the tour.

Two studies have just been released about how and where Americans are watching television. Of course, television is a relative term right now since so many enjoy their favorite shows using different platforms.

Strange news caught my eye recently. Eaten face and severed limb news appeared simultaneously. They were ghoulish to the point of prompting the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to reiterate, with tongue in disease-free cheek, its “No Zombie Apocalypse” statement. From a public relations perspective, this was a clever way to re-broadcast and reinforce the mission of the CDC.

I’m opening my secret vault of PR and social media resources for others to enjoy. Whether you’re helping a client develop online content, trying to convince your client Facebook isn’t scary, seeking juicy inside information from the pros, figuring out how to use various platforms for business-to-business marketing, or you just want to stay up on the latest news, trends and strategies in the social media and digital spaces, visit some of my favorite social media and PR-focused blogs. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

To me, summer isn’t only 90-degree weather or going to Jazz in the Park. Summertime also means summer reading. Ever since elementary school, I have always read during my summer breaks. Before the official day of summer (which for me is the first day I hear Will Smith’s Summertime playing on the radio), I write out a list of books I want to read and then go place them on hold at the public library.