We recently reported on the Seattle Police Department’s  attempts to endear itself to the public via helpful block-by-block crime tweets. Now we find that the PD’s communications team might just be perfect for social media—they certainly have a sense of humor.

In case you missed the memo, earlier this month the states of Washington and Colorado became the first in our nation to legalize the possession and use of marijuana “for recreational purposes”–no prescription required, man. We mention this because the Seattle PD just unveiled a page on its crime blotter blog titled “Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle.”

The page, quite obviously tailored to Seattle residents with certain…habits, includes the answers to such probing questions as “Will police officers be able to smoke marijuana?” and “What happens if I get pulled over and I’m sober, but an officer or his K9 buddy smells the ounce of Super Skunk I’ve got in my trunk?” The page’s author, veteran crime reporter Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, advises those caught with marijuana before the law goes into effect on Dec. 6 to “hold your breath.”

So, like, we find this all endlessly amusing and stuff, but it’s also a great example of good PR on the department’s behalf.

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Edelman announced today that it has hired Michael J. Berland of WPP’s Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates to act as CEO of a newly-formed research and analytics business known as Edelman Berland.

The new company will be integrated with StrategyOne, Edelman’s existing market research firm, but the StrategyOne brand will live on with current CEO Steve Lombardo working under a yet-to-be-announced title.

In announcing the hire, company CEO Richard Edelman said, “I have known and admired Mike Berland’s work for close to a decade. When it comes to fully integrating research with PR programs and partnering with both account teams and clients, he is simply the best.”

Berland, an acclaimed author and veteran strategic adviser to political figureheads like Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, most recently served as president of Washington, D.C. based PSB, where he put his market research experience to use in serving clients in politics and other fields around the world.

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Big names, big news: Eastwick–a tech communications agency that helped build some of Silicon Valley’s biggest brands over more than two decades in the business–has officially launched a new independent consulting firm called SocialxDesign (read “Social by Design” or “SxD” if you don’t feel like typing it out). The firm’s prime movers comprise a team of PR industry veterans whose resumes run from the offices of scruffy tech start-ups all the way to the White House and the State Department.

New firms open every day, but SocialxDesign is different: Led by Eastwick CEO Barbara Bates, White House PR man Toby Chaudhuri and Deloitte vet Giovanni Rodriguez, SxD describes itself in a press release as “a new strategy consulting firm focused on helping businesses, government agencies and NGOs remake themselves for the socially networked economy” by expanding services, reducing costs and creating real-world value within their respective markets. The group lists its three primary services as “Discovery, Design and Delivery” while throwing in a few key phrases like “quantitative audit”, “strategic positioning” and “technology implementation.”

Sounds good, but what does it mean?

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Today in things you may not know: It’s tough to run a successful restaurant in New York City! For readers looking to open the East Village small plates-fusion gastropub of their dreams (you know who you are), look no further than the newly formed Metro Restaurant Marketing Group – they launched today in Manhattan, and they’re fresher than a well-made mint julep! These foodie Svengalis specialize in “social media, e-marketing and public relations” to help eatery clients stand out in a city with more than 24,000 of ‘em.

Of course, such things don’t happen in a vacuum: The heads behind Metro are also associated with Long Island’s masters of hospitality, WordHampton Public Relations. Restaurant owners and PR pros looking to enter the edible arena should keep an eye out. The rest us will practice using our Instagram filters just in case anyone actually DOES want to check out the sweet lobster rolls we ate last night.

Did anyone watch that show Glass House on ABC the other day? Number one, it’s awful. Like really awful, even for a bad reality show.

Number two, as far as CBS is concerned, it’s nothing but a knock-off of their show Big Brother. The network has already tried (unsuccessfully) to stop ABC from airing the show by taking the issue to court. CBS alleges copyright infringement and the stealing of trade secrets. There are even a few former Big Brother staffers working on Glass House, according to TheWrap.

So, CBS has issued a press release announcing its “new show” Dancing On the Stars. Zing! The release is after the jump. And if it’s any consolation, ratings for the show were kind of bad.

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Remember how we had that discussion last week about knowing where the line is and not crossing it with crazy media pitches? Let us now direct our attention to the latest from Fleishman-Hillard in Canada.

In an effort to promote its client BackCheck, a company that does background checks on prospective employees and others, Fleishman-Hillard in Vancouver sent out a release noting that a check on Luka Rocco Magnotta would’ve given a heads up about anything suspicious. Magnotta has been in the news as the prime suspect in the torture and murder of his lover Lin Jun in Canada. Magnotta then allegedly cannibalized Jun and sent parts of his body (a hand and foot) to political offices.

The F-H release, which was available via Canada Newswire, has since been removed. And F-H Canada’s president and senior partner John Blyth has issued an apology.

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Kristopher Brooks published a press release on his Tumblr and blog announcing that he’d been hired as a reporter for the News Journal in Wilmington, D.E. In it, he gave a bio, some info about the staff at the paper, and said he’s starting on April 16.

Brooks’ press release quickly became “old news” because he was fired yesterday afternoon “for improper use of the newspaper’s logo on his personal sites,” JimRomenesko.com reports.

Brooks told Romenesko that, as a fan of the NBA, he noticed that teams frequently send releases about new players and thought it must be because the teams are proud of who’s on the team. (PR firms presumably do the same thing for the same reason.) Since news organizations normally don’t do that unless it’s a big get, Brooks decided to make the announcement on his own.

It’s absurd to fire a qualified reporter over something like this. They could’ve just asked the guy to take the offending logo off the release if it’s that big of a deal. But then again, I guess that’s why “newspaper reporter” landed on the list of worst jobs.

Last week, we reported on results from a PRNewswire/Crowd Factory study that found Twitter drives more traffic to press releases than Facebook. So how do you make your press release more Twitter friendly?

-“It starts with the headline,” says Sarah Skerik, PRNewswire’s VP of social media. “The press releases that got the most shares and views were those that had headlines that were in the range of 120 characters, which makes them the perfect tweetable link.”

The number of characters is important for retweeting.

“You need to leave retweet space to remove any barriers for audiences,” said Tom Becktold, SVP of marketing at Business Wire. “A lot of people want to add a little comment so leave 20 or 30 characters.”

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Are you looking for a free site to send out your press releases? British tech PR agency Vitis has just released the first of several studies evaluating the free services, and found that just a sliver of them are getting your release on to Google News.

Vitis examined 60 services and only five percent of them got the job done.

The sites did better at getting releases on to Google’s search index: 49 percent did that.

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PR Newswire teamed up with digital marketing platform Crowd Factory to analyze the activity surrounding thousands of press releases over a number of months. According to the research, 48 percent of press release sharing happens on Facebook and 37 percent on Twitter. However, each share on Twitter results in 30 percent more views.

Ken Dowell, EVP at PR Newswire said in a statement, “We have known for some time that Twitter was more heavily used for news and business purposes, and the numbers confirm that Twitter takes the lead for driving traffic back to press releases.”

The study also found that multimedia components drive more traffic to a release than text only. Adding a photo increased engagement by 14 percent and adding a photo, video, and audio increased engagement by 3.5 times.

After the jump, we have the infographic that sums up the research findings.

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