Yes, there are few things more predictable than making predictions for the New Year – from economic forecasting to sports prognostications to fashion trends to celebrity “dead pool” games.  Cliché or not, they can be fun. But often they serve a serious purpose too.  In the public relations and public affairs worlds, we at Goff [...]

Facebook’s decision to buy Instagram in April was more than just another tech-focused, media-hyped story about people making a lot of money selling a trendy product.  According to technology experts, the purchase officially marked the end of the Web 2.0 era and the start of something new – the age of mobile. What this really [...]

Recently Google opened up its social network, Google+, to brands, companies and organizations.  Since the launch, there has been a lot of chatter about what this means for businesses and other social media competitors such as Facebook. The current social media landscape includes a range of sites that have established their own niche and built [...]

Many companies rely on dozens of social media accounts to reach different audiences.  Maintaining a regular presence on all of these channels can be time-consuming and challenging.  Some companies have linked their accounts so that a post to one account will automatically be posted to the other accounts. While linking your social media accounts is [...]

Between e-mails, texts, tweets, status updates, old-fashioned phone calls, and words printed on paper, the manner in which we communicate with one another has changed drastically in recent years.  Some business professionals are having a difficult time keeping up with the new rules that help us understand what is acceptable, unacceptable, and grammatically incorrect. That’s [...]

During the Civil War, Chicago Times Editor Wilbur F. Storey supposedly told one of his reporters, “Telegraph fully all news you can get, and when there is no news, send rumors.” With orders like that, it is no wonder that government and military leaders, among others, became suspicious of what they read in the newspapers [...]

As a historian in the communications business, I’m hopelessly captivated by new ways to tell an old story. I recently read an article about how QR codes – a technology I’ve been slower to embrace than most of my co-workers – can bring history to life in a virtual instant … even in cemeteries. QR [...]

Minnesota consistently leads the nation in voter turnout rates in presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial elections.  Yet election participation rates for municipal elections are often far less than the rates for statewide contests, even though these elected officials often have the most impact on our community and businesses at the local level. Mayors and city council [...]

From Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern-day tweets In recent years the public relations and public affairs professions have changed dramatically, from the rise of the Internet to the prominence of social media.  Despite the dizzying improvements in technology, however, human communications, organization and persuasion are still rooted in long-standing practices – indeed, shaped by unchanging human [...]

I have proudly been a self-proclaimed social media Luddite. After a misspent early career in politics which included a lot of rhetorical bomb throwing, I eventually learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in public on most occasions.  This became a professional necessity when I moved into the public relations and public affairs consulting [...]