The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations thusly:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

Which is just an awful definition, reeking of the stale conference room and whiteboards crowded with b-school jargon. Merriam-Webster has a slightly better explanation:

the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution

PR is about getting the word out about your product, cause or service. I’d consider myself a semi-professional PR practitioner, busy trying to “induce” the public to do something increasingly unknown in 21st century America: read a book. And not just any book. My book, fiction, of all things, by an unknown author.

So, I’m always interested in new ways of “inducing” (why not just say “persuading”?) the public. I attended a session on movie marketing put on by the DC Film Salon. A pair of PR stars gave a presentation on how they got the word out about indie films, including some creative tactics like having screenings for “tastemakers.”

But the room was filled with cash-poor independent filmmakers. How could they afford these PR services? And, moreover, would this be a good use of their limited funds? I asked if there was any way to connect the parties and screenings to the most important metric of all – ticket sales. But there’s no way to accurately measure the impact of PR.

Which is what inspired me to write How Do You Measure PR? It’s on the blog FlackRabbit, published by my friend Margie Newman, who is perhaps the smartest PR person I know. We’ll see what answers her readers come up with.

On the streets of DC, there is a proliferation of well-meaning people soliciting for good causes. It’s not just the holidays, they’re parked on sidewalks year-round. Clever, too, for they patrol in two-person teams and stake out opposite ends of the block. I have been known to walk in the street or pretend to talk on my iPhone to avoid them.

Do You Have a Minute is a post I wrote for FlackRabbit, a blog on PR. My argument: these street teams cheapen the reputation of the charities they represent.

Last night, I attended the Elements of Publicity Workshop put on by Amanda Miller Littlejohn and Jacqueline Lara of Mopwater PR. These two charming and knowledgeable ladies covered a lot of ground in just a two-hour session:

• How to develop your message
• How to create a “news hook” for your story
• How to pitch to local, national and social media.

What I liked about the workshop was that Amanda and Jacqueline have a lot of practical experience in real-world PR. Their talk was spiced with useful examples and anecdotes from their work. They didn’t just tell you how to pitch a story to a reporter, they shared what should be in the email subject line and the best time to make a follow-up phone call.

This is a good workshop for people who don’t want theory but want to know tactics – the practical steps they can take to get media coverage for their product or cause. Want to know what should be in a press kit? Should a backgrounder be in print or electronic format? Should you do a social media release? How do you deal with a TV producer? All of this was covered in the workshop.

Workshop attendees consisted of small business owners, entrepreneurs and managers of small nonprofits – exactly the type of people who will do PR themselves, lacking the budget to hire a firm. The workshop was a really good fit for their needs and Amanda and Jacqueline tailored the class toward them. It was a very interactive session, with lots of Q&A and idea-sharing.

As someone who’s promoting his own book (Murder in Ocean Hall), I left with a lot of useful ideas to pursue, including things I had never thought of before (people still listen to radio?).

Elements of Publicity is just one of a series of low-cost workshops that Mopwater PR is teaching on blogging, social media and publicity.

I wrote a little piece on making your blog look good on the iPhone for FlackRabbit, my friend Margie Newman’s blog. FlackRabbit is filled with useful thoughts on social media and PR. She’s a communications professional who really gets the web – there’s not many of them out there.

Technically, I’m not in PR. But I’ve worked long enough in web strategy and communications to have strong feelings on the subject.

Look for more articles on FlackRabbit in the coming months!