Corporate communications

Chances are, many of your clients have a corporate blog that’s going nowhere. Who’s reading it? No one. What’s on it? Nothing. Boring.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In today’s guest post, Adam Singer, head of Lewis PR‘s digital marketing practice, gives us 10 tips for shaping up a blah corporate blog. Singer has experience working with both B2B and B2C clients. And Lewis PR just recently published a new guide, “The Changing Face of Communications,” where you can get more information on a variety of comms issues. Click here for more.

Click through for the tips.

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Create a clear, strategic approach to the way you use Facebook to market your business in our new Facebook Marketing Boot Camp. The online conference and workshop starts April 24. Learn more.

During a recent expedition to Disneyland, it came to my attention that the grand opening of the park in 1955 was televised live. What?!? Yes, with Art Linkletter as a host, ABC and more than 1,000 journalists covered the story of the theme park’s opening. What an incredible feat of pure PR.

Was Disneyland news? I suppose if there were not many theme parks, it might be news. So when is a grand opening newsworthy? Why is another Apple store, the latest in New York’s Grand Central Station worth covering?

It reminds me of a most upsetting event when I was a newspaper reporter and a grizzled veteran colleague – a guy who drank only scotch – was called upon to cover the opening of a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on his beat. He threw a tantrum of swearing and slamming things and decrying the doughnut people like the newsroom had never seen. To him, covering an opening was at best fluff and at worst working for the dark side.

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Smells like bacon? Oh, that’s just the aroma of corporate leaders getting burned by bad press, crisis situations, and business downturns. It’s not anything new necessarily, but three’s a trend so why not take a closer look at three recent cases, shall we?

First we have the case of the quiet CEO — Mickey Arison, CEO of Carnival, which owns the Costa Concordia, the ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy on January 13 killing, at last count, 13 people. Pier Luigi Foschi, CEO of Costa Crociere SpA, Carnival’s Italian arm, has been speaking publicly, mostly to blame the captain, Francesco Schettino, who, with his ability to trip and fall to safety, is the luckiest mariner in the history of sea travel.

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Not unexpected news came down today: Eastman Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company was unable to sell more than 1,000 digital imaging patents to raise cash, but says it has financing to continue normal operation.

The Kodak website is filled with the usual Chapter 11 information — press release, FAQs, and links to court documents. According to the Associated Press, FTI Consulting is among the advisors helping during the process.

There’s also a video with the company’s CEO Antonio Perez talking about the reorganization. In it, his message is clear. This is a move towards Kodak’s future, not its demise.

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Makovsky + Company has launched Makovsky Corporate Advisors and hired former Burson-Marsteller exec Andrew Goldberg to run it.

Makovsky Corporate Advisors will serve CEOs, chief comms officers, and other high-level executives who are managing reputation, governance, and other business issues.

According to CEO Ken Makovsky, the new practice is part of the “strategic planning initiative” the firm worked on last year. The practice will expand the range of companies the firm works with into consumer areas like automotive and food. It will also have access to IPREX network resources.

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Best Buy has been hit with a lot of bad feedback lately. A story in Forbes predicts that Best Buy is on its way out due to a bad business model and worse customer service. The retailer waited until a few days before Christmas to tell customers a lot of them wouldn’t have some of those presents they ordered under the tree. The Consumerist reports on an in-store rep who dismissed @Twelpforce‘s solution to a customer problem (brought on by a defective product) despite the fact that the Best Buy website advises customers to use Twitter to handle customer service issues.

Business results haven’t fared well either.

So the CEO, Brian Dunn, has taken to his blog to admit mistakes and refute some of the bad-mouthing. We would provide a link, but in line with the way things are going for the retailer these days, the post won’t come up on our computer. But, both Business Insider and The Wall Street Journal paraphrase and quote the post.

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The latest news from Yahoo is its new CEO, former PayPal president Scott Thompson. The company’s last CEO, Carol Bartz, didn’t work out so well. And neither did the one before that. Or the one before that. Yahoo has changed CEOs so many times, it warranted a chart to keep track of it all in today’s Wall Street Journal (available after the jump). As you see in the graph, under Tim Koogle, the company reached a high, but he was ousted when it slumped. Yahoo hasn’t recovered to those high levels.

The WSJ charts the company’s problems over the years, detail about Thompson’s background, and how the company decided to appoint him. It also quotes Thompson, who says he wants Yahoo to be ”one of those great iconic brands.”

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PRNewser took a break over the long weekend with all of you and while we were in a food coma, a few interesting things were happening out in the world. So let’s do a quick recap shall we?

-Beyoncé is looking for a firm to revamp BeyonceOnline.com, Ad Age reported. The article says she’s unhappy that the current site doesn’t show the depth and breadth of all that is Beyoncé, and she’s getting involved with the search, seeking a new site in two days. Thoughts on this assignment?

-Walmart is still trying to get away from the 2008 Black Friday tragedy that led to the trampling death of a store worker by talking up its crowd control measures. Nevertheless, store openings Thursday evening/Friday morning got crazy with one woman taking a lesson from the pepper spray cop and zapping people to get at her discount goodies. More people across the country were shot, robbed, and arrested.

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APCO Worldwide, which has already launched a couple of things in the past few weeks, has launched something else: the Material Issues & Events offering, which will help companies as they proceed through various business situations like a merger or change in leadership.

The new service analyzes the possible outcomes to these situations, serving as an aid to messaging, outreach, and other strategic communications. Advisors working on the group include Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, former director of public affairs at the (CIA) and Ellen Mignoni, SVP in the firm’s global corporate responsibility practice.

The New York Stock Exchange has declared that tomorrow will be “Social Media Day”; a day to “explore social marketing strategy and emerging trends in corporate and political communications.”

In celebration, the NYSE has planned a number of panel discussions covering a variety of topics — “Building Your Personal Brand Online,” for example — and is bringing in a number of experts. Among the guests are CNBC Washington reporter Eamon Javers and executive director of the NFL Players Association DeMaurice Smith.

Also taking part is former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who sounds like he has no business anywhere near this event.

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