Find New Buzzwords.

Most communications professionals have been guilty or using, and overusing buzzwords every now and then. Why do we do this, even when we know it's wrong? Even when we know it reflects poorly on us as communications professionals? Even when we know influencers hate it? Further, even when we know these words end up as e-mails in spam folders and cause a glazing (or even rolling) of eyes for those who read them? So why do we use them a lot? It's obvious, because it's the words most people want to read/hear and they are easy to understand.

This week, I invite you to try and be more creative. Pull out your thesaurus and try something new. You may find it to be more successful.

Here are some overused buzzwords you should try to stay away from:

leading

solution

best

innovative/innovate/innovator

leader

top

unique

great

extensive

leading provider

exclusive

premier

flexible

award winning/winner

dynamic

fastest

smart

state of the art

cutting edge

biggest

easy to uselargest

real time

5 Social Tips for Women to Increase Media Exposure

Locate and follow journalists and bloggers online.

Most journalists and bloggers have a Twitter handle or another online source to share content and ask questions. Take the time to follow them and read what they are working on. Get to know them on some level and join in the conversation when you can. This will help you build a relationship with them. The key is to think, how can I benefit them rather than how can they benefit me.

Leave a trail so others can follow you.

We live in a time of digital technology and we want instant answers to our questions. Journalists highly rely on the Internet for resources, and you should watch your own SEO. Make sure you have an online presence and use hyperlinks and other connections online to build your own SEO. This will make it easy for others to find and learn about you. Further, if you're going to build a social media outlet for yourself, make sure it represents yourself well. Think of your overall objective always.

Produce interesting content.

Use your website, blog or social media outlet to showcase some of your best and most interesting work, thoughts, creations, etc. Position yourself in the industry as someone who produces thought-worthy content. This does not mean you should blog or tweet just anything. Try to stay up on the news and trends, then look for unique angle that excites you and provides value. Then, learn basic SEO to try and position yourself better.

Be your best publicist.

Utilize social media releases and pitch yourself with viable story ideas to guest post on blogs with higher visibility traffic. Develop a microblogging strategy that encompasses a combination of publishing and publicity. Look for existing industry groups on social networks to increase your reach by participating in industry chats on Twitter, niche networks and message boards.

Be a resource to reporters.

Instead of pitching yourself, let them come to you with inquiries. Sign up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to receive daily email blasts with reporter queries from your local daily to the New York Times. Look for the stories you can serve as an expert resource to or provide helpful information to and respond.

Customer Service and Social Media

We live in time of instant communication. Thanks to social media we can send or post messages and pictures, or share experiences within a second. Now, businesses are finding that social media is a new challenge for their customer service. In recent years angry customers have become increasingly more confrontational, militant and aggressive online.

Businesses are finding that even though social media has helped them register complaints so that they can make informed decisions to better serve customers, they're finding that it can also lead to outrageous, unmitigated abuse of customer service personnel, and cannot be relied upon as fact.

Organizations, stores and restaurants know that bad customer service exists, but recently more and more customers are coming in looking for a fights, wanting to post a scanting review, wanting retribution for an unknown or yet-to-occur transgression. Businesses have reported that today, it's not uncommon for customers to scram at a employee, to insult their intelligence, call them horrible names and even threaten to have them fired. They don't want resolution to their problem, they want to know their complaint resulted in the person being terminated.

Some angry customers have taken pictures with their camera phones, threatening to have them fired, and some people will post the photos with hateful commentary and even name them on their Facebook and Twitter pages. One employee even said a customer videotaped an entire conversation with a customer service rep on his phone. The customer posted it on YouTube with the rep's name, referred to her as "a stupid pig" and encouraged further confrontation from strangers. He tagged the large organization's Facbook page, so its members and co-workers all saw the video berating and humiliating the rep. It was quickly removed.

So many times companies have found online reviews of the organization and staff that include unfounded claims of racism and theft, reviews that are sexually explicit and overtly racist themselves and a good number are almost entirely false, based in the childish frustration that the customer simply didn't get his or her way, even when the demand was unreasonable and the customer was offered every possible solution.

I can't believe this is what some people have stooped to. I hope you are not one of them.

Scott Takes a Diet at Glass House in MOA

For the next month, a man will be living in a glass apartment at the Mall of America, to showcase his quest to eat better and exercise more on display for the world to see. The apartment is complete with la iving room, flat-screen TV and kitchen. Doesn't sound to terrible does it?, but, why is he doing it?

Yes, it does sound like a stunt of reality TV, but he's the focus of an unconventional marketing campaign from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN, whose long-running "Do' campaign aims to show how simple activities can improve health.

More than 60 percent of MN adults are obese or overweight, costing the state $1 billion a year to treat diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other conditions, according to a study by the MN Department of Health and Blue Cross. The epidemic is a huge driver to rising health costs.

The irony isn't lost on him, but Scott, 45, said he doesn't want his last name made public for privacy reasons. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife of 15 months, a stocky golden retriever and a youthful Yorkshire terrier. Although he works as a self-employed actor who does voice-overs corporate events to make ends meet, he's not doing this to further his career or for the stipend he's earning from Blue Cross.

The 20-by-30 foot apartment is glass on all walls and has an exercise bike in it. He said he's got high cholesterol and is 40 to 50 pounds overweight. Putting his life on display for the Blue Cross marketing campaign means he'll have a team of nutritionists and medical doctors working with him to teach him better habits. He'll walk the mall and work out in his apartment. He'll shop for groceries, but also figure out how to make healthier choices at the food court.

Through the month, he'll be blogging, tweeting and sharing his thoughts on Facebook, all with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield branding. "This is like having a great big workout partner and having people try this with me," he said.

Blue Cross said that this isn't a contest where Scott will be expected to lose an unhealthy amount of weight. The goal is to find a few things he loves to do and find better ways to eat; it's more about him learning new habits that can last a lifetime, rather than making some drastic change that doesn't last.

Follow Scott on Twitter or Facebook by searching: thehumandoing

What Good Public Relations Cannot Do

Often I've heard about some one's bad experience with a PR firm that has spiraled into a strong dislike for PR people. It's painful to hear criticisms and generalizations about my business, but I can't resist jumping in to diagnose the problem myself. My feeling is that 95% of client-agency problems comes down to one thing: expectations. On both sides. Expectations for publicity outcomes, service levels and overall return-on-investment are not always articulated during the courtship, or even the negotiation phase of the relationship. However, many times clients have circled back later usually causing misunderstanding and disappointment. This has caused me to think about a few things that event the best PR programs cannot accomplish:

Replace a sales and marketing campaign. PR is actually a very unreliable tool when it comes to driving sales of a product or service. Yes, a strong publicity placement can make the phone ring, but a PR campaign more typically works to drive brand visibility and favorability over time. It's just not a demand generation tool.

Serve as as cheap or "free" advertising. A good way to look at the difference is like this, use advertising for frequency, but PR for depth. Altogether a good, social PR campaign usually has increased visibility as a long-term goal, it's very difficult to achieve an ad-like level of control and frequency with earned coverage.

Overcome a bad product or customer service. PR can help repair customer relations after a service interruption or problem, but unhappy consumers will always share their feelings, and social media is a powerful megaphone. What's more typical PR tactics like implied endorsement from third-party expert or celebrity can actually make matters worse if there's too great a contrast between the PR and the reality.

Make you famous. PR can help you build a brand or personal reputation, and raise your profile in professional circles, but it won't make you an overnight celebrity.

Cure a crisis. Most situations we term "PR crises" result from poor business practices, not faulty communications. Yes, a good crisis program will help you prepare for a problem or issue, and sound communications handling can mitigate its effects, but PR can do little in the face of unethical or shortsighted actions.