I will always remember being called to account because the final document the Client saw had several typos. Presentation counts in this field.

PR firms attempt to influence the major media who in turn help persuade viewers, listeners and readers to think or act in a particular way. The people who enter the profession and those in the media usually have a gift of gab, a facility with the written word, a decent IQ and a certain love affair with risk.

Fortune tellers dont make much money. But most PR firms charge a substantial amount of money to present their client, product or service in a positive light to the media. People are continuously reporting polls or surveys as if they are fact, when, in truth, often the questions asked are the reason for the results tendered. Trends are so swift these days, just when buzz begins, another bee is buzzing a different tune.

Here is the PR agency drill. A brainstorming session consists of several persons who try and identify a project, tag line or campaign hook that will capture the right response from the media while delivering the Client message. Then a qualified person writes the plan, another person interfaces with the Client and still other people pitch the media. Often times in large firms, a separate TV department usually has close ties with the producers of various programming. You can pitch the same story to ten different venues, and come up with ten different responses. It is an expensive process.

Since everyone is trying for the biggest hits first, and the spots are truly limited, the pitchers have to be focused and persistent. Then it becomes a numbers game. The more balls you throw, the more likely you are to get a strike. The more strikes you pitch, the more likely your team will win, and the competition will be beaten. The more consistent your story, the more believed you will be. The more you can afford to spend, the more you get to use credible spokespeople to help tell your story. It is a numbers game.

So by all means pitch Oprah first if you have a story that will hug her heart. Next work the syndicated morning shows. Then try the syndicated writers at the major news services when your news is hard and important. Talk to AOL when you have the money, or put it in the movie theatre, the newest venue for enlightening if not annoying a captive audience.

But you can also tell your story with incredible reach and exciting response if you
use newspaper mat features to newspapers nationwide via Points of Persuasion Syndicate. For $2100, your message gets faxed to 10,000 plus print and online newspaper outlets immediately. Newspapers use the free columns. Your message gets printed exactly as you tell it, or your captioned color illustration tells the story just the way you approved it. Youve increased your chances of the public reading a product or service mention, youve had the help of expert PR people with years of presentation skills behind them, your story will stay on their editorial website for six months to a year, and you get quarterly usage reports to help impress you if you are the business owner or your Clients if you are an agency.

Best of all, the educated, well-off suburban consumer gets time to find out something informational that can help them and their family live a better life. It seems likely that any marketer would find this a low-budget risk worth taking.

The reputation of a company or organization is an intangible asset, but it is an extremely important and valuable asset. Some people believe and have written that a good reputation is an organization’s most priceless asset. Unfortunately businesses face inevitable crisis situations with the potential to seriously damage a good reputation.

One may ask what can be done to establish a good reputation, keep that good reputation and when hit by a crisis, repair a damaged reputation? Is there a prescription out there that provides some solid advice on this subject? Well, the PR Doctor researched the subject and was referred to a book entitled The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation. Creating, Protecting and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset, and authored by Ronald J. Alsop.

Mr. Alsop provides information on lessons learned from real world company and organization crises and provides a roadmap with his 18 Immutable Laws. He breaks those 18 laws into 3 parts. Part 1 is about establishing a good reputation. Part 2 deals with keeping that good reputation and then Part 3 presents information on repairing a damaged reputation.

Part 1 – Establishing A Good Reputation Law One: Maximize Your Most Powerful Asset_

Law Two: Know Thyself – Measure Your Reputation Law Three: Learn to Play to Many Audiences_

Law Four: Live Your Values and Ethics Law Five: Be a Model Citizen_

Law Six: Convey a Compelling Corporate Vision_

Law Seven: Create Emotional Appeal Part 2 – Keeping A Good Reputation Law Eight: Recognize Your Shortcomings Law Nine: Stay Vigilant Law Ten: Make Your Employees Your Reputation Champions Law Eleven: Control the Internet Before It Controls You Law Twelve: Speak with a Single Voice Law Thirteen: Beware the Dangers of Reputation Rub-off Part 3 – Repairing A Damaged Reputation Law Fourteen: Manage Crises with Finesse Law Fifteen: Fix It Right the First Time Law Sixteen: Never Underestimate the Public’s Cynicism Law Seventeen: Remember – Being Defensive Is Offensive Law Eighteen: If All Else Fails, Change Your Name For a good summary of each of the 18 laws, please go to: www.bizsum.com

Public relations writing when writing press releases can be a real challenge.

When writing press releases the most important part is the headline or title.

This is the information the media reads first so it has to grab their attention.

How can you write better press releases that get used instead of deleted?

Well the headline is essential when writing press releases.

Take this real life example of public relations writing.

“Triple Bottom-line Community Net Benefit Decision Time for Sustainable Economic Development Decisions Needed Says Economist”

This is an actual headline on a media release from MacroPlan Australia published in The Australian newspapers Media Section on Nov 13, 2003.

Would you want to read more if you got this on your fax machine or email inbox? How can you write better headlines and improve the likelihood of your media release making the cut?

Writing a good title for a media release is essential for effective public relations writing. Here are my Top 9 Tips for Writing Better Headlines:

1. KEEP IT TO ONE LINE.

More than one line and you are likely to lose a busy journalist who would receive hundreds of media releases a day.

2. EDIT FOR BREVITY.

You probably won’t achieve point one on the first go. Rewrite and edit every time. Remember with headlines that less is more; so keep it to five words or less.

3. DON’T TRY AND BE TOO SMART.

Writing headlines for the print medium is a real art form. Leave it to the professionals, namely, newspaper sub-editors. Remember that newspaper headlines have to sell papers, your headline has to engage one reader – a cynical journalist or editor with a ‘so what, who cares’ attitude.

4. WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF THE STORY?

The headline should summarise the story and answer the who, what, why, when and where.

5. USE A BIGGER FONT SIZE THAN THE REST OF THE RELEASE.

Don’t go smaller than size 12 for the main body of the text and use size 14 or 16 font or bigger for your headline or title.

6. USE THE SAME FONT STYLE AS YOUR TEXT.

Never change font styles in a release. Times New Roman is the most accepted and professional.

7. USE BOLD TO MAKE IT STAND OUT.

8. CENTRE IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE.

9. ALWAYS SPELL CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK FOR TYPOS.

Nothing harms your credibility more than a typo in the headline!

“For our volunteers,” Tan said, “volunteering with children may be as good for their health as a gym membership. For our children, the wisdom that our older adults have is priceless.” He added that, due to their enjoyment of working with children, the volunteers may be more willing to keep up with this approach in the long term, compared with traditional exercise programs.

Tan also explained that the focus on African American women was due to their prevalence in the two community groups from which the study participants were recruited, but he said the results are likely the same for all older people.

The data was gathered from participants in the Experience Corps (EC) program, a community-based initiative that places older adults as volunteers in public elementary schools. This information was then compared to surveys of non-volunteers enrolled in the Baltimore Women’s Health and Aging Studies.

Tan’s research builds on the results of a 2006 study of the EC program, which showed that 15 hours of volunteer work per week at an elementary school nearly doubled a sedentary older adult’s activity level. The new study demonstrates that the increased activity can remain high for at least three years.

Another Johns Hopkins-based investigation of the EC program was published in the December 2008 issue of The Gerontologist. A research team led by Michelle Carlson, PhD, reported similar findings about EC’s potential cognitive benefits for participants.

She and her colleagues found that EC volunteers showed greater improvements in memory and executive function than those who did not participate in the program. In fact, the older adults with the lowest baseline performance in these areas those most at risk for health disparities demonstrated the most significant gains.

Both studies highlighted above show that everyday activity interventions (e.g., EC) can appeal to older adults’ desires to remain socially engaged and productive in their post-retirement years. Simultaneously, these activities provide measurable physical and cognitive health benefits.

For 2009, the employee winner was Amy Hansen, a front office coordinator at the Englewood location. She selected Judis House because itincreases awareness of the needsgrieving children have regarding loss of a loved one. The program extendsgrief support services to schools, faith-based groups, hospices and other caregivers in the community.

Rocky Mountain Urgent Care and Family Medicine leaders will in the next year encourage employees to volunteer at Judis House, including providinga monthly hot meal for all the participants.

To read more about the community outreach program at Rocky Mountain Urgent Care & Family Medicine, see the relatedarticles below.

Even with all of these major considerations and changes, venturing out on a volunteer work project abroad will more than likely turn out to be the experience of a lifetime for those who put their heart into their charity volunteer work overseas. Charity work abroad gives people unique opportunities to live and work in another land and experience the people and the culture, not as a tourist but on the same level that the local citizens live their daily lives. This in and of itself provides those who undertake overseas volunteer work with a unique perspective on the world and other countries that will be with them throughout their lives.

In addition to the experiences and perspectives that will endure in their memories, a person who embarks on travel abroad volunteer work will also expand their horizons by learning new languages, making new friends, and feeling like they have a second home in another part of the world. With all of this in mind, it is no wonder why international volunteer work is becoming a more popular pursuit for those who have the ability to get involved.

Choosing to participate in a volunteer work program abroad is a wonderful idea for a number of very positive reasons. On a more self-centered note, anyone who gives up their time and energy to offer their services and expertise to a voluntary charity organization will have a wonderful entry to include in their resume. At the same time, most administrators of charity work overseas programs are more than happy to write you a glowing letter of recommendation as a token of thanks for the services you rendered.

For those who are planning to go on to graduate school of some type after their overseas volunteer work, it can be noted that volunteer work is something that is well respected in school admissions offices. This one factor alone can be something on which your whole future hinges in the most positive of ways. There are many people who have returned from a break from schooling or a sabbatical from work where they took advantage of a volunteer work opportunity to find that their school or job prospects had improved greatly because of their desire to use their time serving other people.

There is really no lack of choices when it comes to travel abroad volunteer work opportunities in this day and age. No matter what your particular interests are or what type of charitable efforts you are most inclined to support, you will no doubt find options that will feel right for you. While rendering service of any type to any kind of voluntary charity organization is satisfying, working with a program that you have a special connection with will be even more gratifying.

Community service section

Some job-seekers place a community service section in their resume. This shows that the job applicant is a well- rounded individual who cares deeply about community. It also shows a level of dedication that would be highly prized in an employee. By listing your volunteer work in a separate section, you can really highlight it, making it stand out from the rest of the resume. If you are applying for a job in the public sector or with a non-profit organization, this might be a particularly effective way of showcasing your talents.

Integrating your volunteer work into your experience section

While you should certainly not indicate that you held a paid position when you were actually a volunteer, there is nothing inherently wrong with listing your volunteer work in the experience section of your resume. Certainly, volunteer work requires skills, training, and, in some cases, educational qualifications. An internship is a perfect example of volunteer work that can help you immensely in your career.

However, resist the urge to list “volunteer” as a job title. Instead, if you volunteered as an editorial assistant, list “editorial assistant” on your resume. If you coordinated volunteers, write “volunteer coordinator.” In the description that follows the job title, you can explain that the position was unpaid. Such a technique focuses attention on what you’ve accomplished, rather than whether you were compensated for it. The job titles are what will capture the attention of the resume reviewer, and so you should craft your resume accordingly.

Don’t hide your achievements

Be sure to spell out exactly what you achieved as a result of your volunteer efforts. For instance, did you expand a volunteer force of five to thirty? Did you prepare a news report which aired on broadcast television? Did you raise $10,000 in a fundraising campaign? The more specific you are in talking about your achievements, the more likely you are to impress the individual who reviews your resume.

Highlight what you’ve learned

Serving as a volunteer can be an incredible learning experience. Therefore, you should consider listing the skills you learned while volunteering. For example, you might have learned how to run a computer program or how to edit videotape. In this way, you can demonstrate how your volunteer work expanded your knowledge base.

Don’t stop volunteering

Don’t stop volunteering, once you’ve found a paying job. Donating a few hours a week to volunteer work can help to sharpen your skills, further preparing you for the next job down the road.

There are many reasons to volunteer while youre travelling and there are literally thousands of charities and organisations that look for help from passing travellers.

Many ask for donations or fees to cover costs, others operate as profitable businesses but the list below is just a few that cost little or nothing to become involved and help out:

1. WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), Worldwide

Board and lodging is offered in exchange for a days work on the farm. Stays available from one week to many years, and with thousands of hosts available in 53 countries there is an opportunity suitable for everyone. Contact: WWOOF.

For more information, check out A First-Timers Guide to WWOOF-ing.

2. Turtle Teams, Worldwide

A generic name for the thousands of small groups that help threatened sea turtles. Most groups are based on one or two nesting beacheswhich are typically at risk from over exploitation-and appreciate help for even just one night.

Search for groups at the local tourist office close to any tropical beach and help a species come off the endangered list. More information can be found at these larger organisations: www.seaturtles.org and www.cccturtle.org.

“This is one more piece of evidence that volunteer programs that are designed to increase the health of the volunteers can help older adults be more physically active,” says Erwin Tan, Ph.D., assistant professor of geriatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the study, which appeared online January 29 in the Journals of Gerontology. “Anything that increases a level of activity for a long period of time is a huge plus, but the real news here is that this particular kind of volunteer work benefits children and the educational system as well as the volunteers, demonstrating the potential benefits for what many are calling an intergenerational social contract.”

Tan says the focus on black woman was due to their preponderance in two community groups from which study subjects were recruited, but he believes the results would be the same for all elderly.

He says exercise is a critical factor in maintaining people’s health as they age. But his study also suggests that volunteer work can be designed to be a potential win-win for the elderly and the community.

For the new study, Tan and his team repeatedly surveyed and collected medical information on 71 black women, older than 65, involved in the Experience Corps (EC) Baltimore, a volunteer program developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Aging, which places elderly volunteers in kindergarten through third grade classrooms to be mentors and tutors for 15 hours a week.

That group was compared to survey and medical information gleaned from 150 black women from the Baltimore Woman’s Health and Aging Studies (WHAS) a group of 1,400 women, older than 65, who live in 12 zip codes in Baltimore city and county and whose medical records have been tracked by Johns Hopkins since 1992.

Each participant filled out the Minnesota Leisure Time Physical Activity Questionnaire (MLTPAQ) at the start of the study and each year for three years. This questionnaire, which measures activity levels by rating calorie consumption, asks question about how a person spends free time and time on such things as household chores, exercise and leisure recreational activities.

When the researchers compared women from both groups who had little or no activity at the start of the study, women from the EC group burned twice as many calories as women in the WAHS group. This study shows that this increased physical activity was sustained throughout the three-year study period.

“Although our original eight-month study also showed this increase, the fact that it was sustained for three years illustrates the potential for a sustainable, long-lasting lifestyle change,” says Tan. “And since this program has such a strong community-help component, it fits nicely with our new president’s call to citizens to get involved and get active.”

The American Red Cross has been responding to national disasters for the past century, and there has been no significant outbreak of disease in any shelter that it has supported. The Katrina situation, however, was unlike any the organization had faced before. The unprecedented scale and impact of the disaster and the enormous population of displaced people, many of them chronically ill, demanded an extensive network of long-term shelters and posed an array of new public health challenges. There are long-established, well-defined standards for meeting the public health needs of displaced populations; the challenge was to ensure that these standards would be met despite the enormous variations in the size, location, facilities, capability, and integrity of the far-flung shelters that had been conscripted after the hurricane.

Our role was to assess as many of the shelters as possible, rapidly identify immediate and longer-term needs and problems, and develop a plan for a response that was fully coordinated with the local authorities, who, with their federal counterparts, commanded the needed resources. At the moment of Joyce’s offer of help, I needed copies of the lists of doctors and nurses who were available for deployment. Joyce immediately addressed herself to the task with energy and intensity, grasping the piles of loose sheets and making her way to the copy machine.

Like the water in Lake Pontchartrain, which waited for a breach in a levee to unleash its power on the adjacent neighborhoods, a reservoir of potentially catastrophic communicable diseases lies ready to explode into an epidemic that can overwhelm a vulnerable population confined to overcrowded quarters. The early warning system for such outbreaks consists of health care providers who can detect unusual patterns in their clinical practice. But when the health-protection infrastructure of an entire geographic area is destroyed, ordinary symptoms begin to carry extraordinary meaning. Diarrhea containing blood might signify dysentery. Patients with cough might be harboring tuberculosis. In an overcrowded shelter, an untreated person with tuberculosis places the entire population at risk. One must be extremely vigilant, recognizing that every symptom in a displaced person, no matter how innocuous it would seem in normal practice, might be the leading edge of a destructive wave of infectious disease.

In a little over four days, our multidisciplinary and interagency teams assessed more than 200 shelters housing nearly 30,000 people. Amazingly, in a majority of cases, the basic public health needs were being met. There were inspiring stories of local communities rising up to provide for their unexpected guests; nearly all native Baton Rouge residents had someone new staying in their homes. Nearly every hotel housed displaced families, extended families, and pets. Nearly every large shelter had created a clinic, staffed by local doctors and nurses furnished with medicines and supplies, to provide medical care.

Coordination on the ground is imperative. The American Red Cross was caring for more than 50,000 displaced people. There were more than 9000 hospital beds in New Orleans that could no longer be used for sick patients. Many of the New Orleans health care and public health workers had also been displaced, but many wanted to help, perhaps believing that immersion in the care of others would assuage the pain of their own losses. The clinics in the larger shelters were improvised but were generally providing good medical support, given the limited resources available.

When Katrina hit, the immediate national response among health care professionals mirrored the response to the Asian tsunami last December: everyone wanted to help. But because Katrina had invaded U.S. shores, many well-intentioned clinicians and health care organizations simply self-deployed and traveled to Louisiana, where their arrival compounded the overall disorganization of the effort to provide health care to a population that did not normally have great access to care. They were writing prescriptions for medications that couldn’t be filled, for diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. Lacking an assigned role within a properly planned framework, many found themselves sitting on their hands, doing nothing for which they had been trained.

I soon found myself saying, “We are here for the people of Louisiana” a mantra that I repeated endlessly to the eager volunteers who arrived in uncoordinated fashion. I am fortunate to have been trained in emergency medicine, public health, and disaster response. But in the first days and weeks after this disaster, my clinical skills were my least useful qualities. I was helping to manage more than 100 doctors and nurses deployed on public health missions throughout the state, virtually all of whom had been waiting around to do something. Every one of them wanted and expected to save lives and alleviate suffering, but it was still logistically impossible for them to use their skills in the way they expected. Clearly, there was a disconnect between the aspirations of the army of volunteers and the actual needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

In the immediate aftermath of a disaster involving large, displaced populations, doctors, as difficult as it might be to accept, are one of the least useful commodities. The first priorities, standards in the developing world, are security and safety for the population, then water, sanitation, food, and shelter. Once the humanitarian-aid staff is safe from danger, the most effective way to save lives is to ensure the availability of clean water, secure a place for bodily wastes away from the water supply, and then vaccinate every child younger than 15 against measles. Only after these needs have been addressed can curative care become operational.

Unfortunately, the skill set for such a response was not on the curriculum vitae of any of the health care workers who had shown up to volunteer. All the eager, superbly trained doctors and nurses who told me “I’m here to help” almost always meant that they were ready to deliver care in the same way they did at home. But the burden of the initial emergency response is on logistics, not on the provision of direct care. Indeed, attempts to provide direct care in a setting with no coordination or infrastructure can distract from the urgent mission of establishing basic human security and meeting immediate needs.

Through those early days of frantically assessing the safety and needs of the population and planning the medium-term response, Joyce was one of the most valuable members of our team. Without question, without complaint, she made copies, gave directions, and ferried people around in her car. Her only expectation was to help. She had dropped everything to volunteer; she had left her work, her daughter, and her grandchildren behind and, having missed the flight she planned to take, had driven alone across several states to Baton Rouge. At the end of her two-week session, she would return to her life, another of the many anonymous volunteers who responded to the crisis. Once back at home, she would resume her usual work as a thoracic surgeon.