Over the years Blue Sky PR has helped launch many new restaurants. We’ve also been asked for help with promoting existing eateries that for one reason or another have needed a bit of a push.

Here are seven things that restaurant owners should be doing when launching their new venture. Read the rest of this entry »

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, will meet business leaders and entrepreneurs from across the region when he is guest of honour at a lunch being held by networking organisation the Met Club.

The luncheon takes place at Hazelwood Castle, near Tadcaster, on Wednesday 21 July, between noon and 2.30pm.

Christine Armstrong, managing director of the Met Club, said: “We are really honoured that Dr Sentamu has agreed to join us for our July lunch, and he really is someone that doesn’t need any introduction.” Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook, the world’s most used social network site, has scored major PR points after bowing to the UK’s child protection agency to boost its security with several new safety features in a bid to help stave off internet predators.

Users of the site will now be able to report any unwanted or suspicious behaviour directly to child protection groups.

And while these measures are all well and good, we are still trying to get a Facebook site taken down that is openly libellous and abusive about one of our clients and, obviously, we are not going to say who it is. Read the rest of this entry »

Flickr is a great online image resource that can help your website’s SEO, but it should also form an integral part of your social media strategy, and up to a point it’s free.

What’s really annoying about it is the companies and organisations that get an account add a few pics then forget about it, or don’t bother connecting and making friends.

Welcome to Yorkshire has had a Flickr account since March 2009, it currently has 131 images, no contacts or description of what WtY does (it promotes tourism across within the county), although its images are tagged. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing like a crisis to keep you on your toes when you work in PR, and the people at the Toyota press office must have been putting the hours in over the past couple of months after the company was forced to recall 2.3 million vehicles due to a faulty accelerator.

It’s now beginning to emerge that in the days leading up to the recall back in January (there had been others in September 2009 for a similar problem), Toyota executives debated when they should let the public know about the safety problems.

At the time group vice president for environment and public affairs Irv Miller – who has now retired from the company – said in a email to colleagues: “We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s only the fourth working day of the New Year and already we’ve received several CVs from people looking for work.

All came via email, which is fine, but only one person had actually bothered to carry out some research to find out who to get in touch with. I’m awfully sorry, but anything addressed to “Dear sir/madam” gets instantly deleted.

A large part of what public relations is all about is carrying out research, and having said that, a great part of all of our everyday lives involves some kind of investigation.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of finding our email address then why not look at the rest of the website while you’re at it? There’s only six sections, and what’s more it all free.

Here’s a great blog entry from Mark Reeve, former editor of the Birmingham Post on why he’s leaving the newspaper industry after 25 years.

He brings up some very interesting points all of which, as a former journalist myself, I agree with.

A couple of days ago I asked the blogosphere if I could I swear in my own blog, which came about after hearing something on television that really got my goat.

If could have been so easy to have gone off on one and had a good old rant – with lots of swearing for an effective punch – but I thought it’d be wiser to step back, compose myself and chose my words wisely but to not let the moment pass.

Design and brand guru Brian Minards told me via LinkedIn: “You want to swear; then effing well swear.” So here goes, and blame him. Read the rest of this entry »

Can I swear in my own blog? If so I will in my next entry. (And I really will swear, like Gordon Ramsay.)

I’ve been Tweeting since May 2008, but over the past few months I’ve slowed down. I’m fed up with the spammers, the self-appointed experts, the irrelevancies and the bores. And Stephen Fry; not that I follow him.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still relevant to so many businesses, although it’s more effective in certain sectors than other; and it’s certainly not THE answer.

However, it’s just one of many social media tools all of which are growing in importance but to be effective need to be, not only, managed correctly but used in conjunction with the rest of the marketing mix; and by that I mean online and offline because they both feed off each other.

I’d really have liked to have written this article, Twitter faux pas: 20 dreadful types of tweet, but the Daily Telegraph did it first. Enjoy it.