Karen Katz will take over as CEO of Neiman Marcus in October. Like many new CEOs, she wants to take the company where it's never been.

She's not thinking of global market or brand extensions or new product lines.

She wants this well-known, upscale brand to embrace social media. As Katz said in the most recent issue of Fast Company:

"We have to use the digital domain to reach even more people and be a resource to

Clients often ask how they should get into social media. They're thinking about if and how social media can impact their bottom line.

The first place they should look is inside their organization and make certain their company's personnel policies outline appropriate social media use.

Anyone can set up a blog, Facebook, or Twitter account in a matter of minutes. And then there are thousands of forums and opportunities to

I conducted a little experiment a few weeks ago. I needed to come up with some ideas to help a prospect solve a problem she has marketing her service. The challenge was how to sell cost reduction as opposed to revenue growth. Revenue growth is (at least I thought) an easier sell in difficult economic times.

I hadn't encountered this challenge before, but I knew other communication professionals probably had. Why not turn to the wisdom

Social media is emotional. It's personal. It functions in real time.

In short, it runs counter to all forms of marketing regulated industries have used for years. The social media guidelines from most regulators (whether FTC, FDA, FINRA, etc.) are still in development. This leads to a lot of:

"The regulators won't let us."

"What if we interpret the guidelines incorrectly?"

"We

At Amazon's 2009 shareholders meeting, CEO Jeff Bezos told the assembled crowd that "advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Bezos' line caused the audience to go silent.

Did they see this coming?

Amazon launched these ads in November and have since released a second version of them. Interestingly, talk of the Apple tablet

Peter Shankman was the featured speaker at yesterday's NAMA/PRSA meeting in Nashville. Peter is the founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), an e-mail that goes out three times a day to 125,000 subscribers, filled with requests from reporters for sources on whatever story they're working at the moment. We use it to see if our clients would be a good fit for any of the stories and, if so, pitch them.

Peter shared his four rules

The aftermath of Lane Kiffin's departure from the University of Tennessee has many lessons for future coaches and business people alike.

We'll address Kiffin's decision in a future post.

More interesting right now is the press conference where Kiffin announced his departure and what it illustrates about the future of media relations. Here is the raw footage of the negotiations between university PR representatives and the

CEOs at all our client companies have asked us, “What should we be doing with social media?”

The answer to that question has many dimensions, including culture, industry, available resources, industry regulations, etc.

We don’t have all the answers. At the same time, we understand the importance of exploring the issue. Atkinson Public Relations has created the CEO Guide to Social Media to do exactly