Don't forget about the Facebook land grab

Facebook's 'vanity URLs' became available on Friday and the land rush ensued. Facebook has taken measures to keep poaching at bay, however. You can only reserve one bit of 'URL real estate' per registered Facebook user and it's only available for accounts that have been running since May. So you can't create an account to grab space. And if you want to grab your company's name, well, you have to link it to an individual and since I use Facebook for both personal and business use, that didn't seem realistic. So Facebook has really put the kibash on any sort of branding possibilities, in my opinion. Or maybe I'm just being shortsighted with that observation.

I clicked on the right place (here) to create my vanity URL today. Facebook puts on the pressure by informing you that once you select your URL, you cannot change it. This is always the moment where I feel least creative - under pressure!

After trying several iterations of my name to no avail (there are apparently a lot of digitally-savvy Emily's out there) I finally settled on emily.live. I thought it sounded better than my boring, samey samey name. It's kind of corny, but then again, so am I. Good luck coming up with your vanity URLs - and report back what you've chosen! :-)

PR for free? A big resounding no.

The best business advice anyone ever gave me was, "never give something away for free that you're good at." Taking it further, you should know to price it well, if you're good at it.

In these credit crunchy times, people and companies get desperate. We've had a couple recent incidents where we've lost a pitch at the hands of a PR whose price was "Free." Yes, free. In these cases even the prospect found the situation a little ridiculous. And I never mince words when I tell a prospect that I do not respect that model, no matter what the supposed 'rewards' are at the end of it.

Is this starting to become an even bigger problem in the PR industry? it completely devalues our work. And you're smoking something if you think people in the industry are convinced you are going to pick up the phone and pitch a company to the press (well), and do a good writing, tracking, measurement and reporting job, all for free. That's like offering to go to jail when you haven't committed a crime. It won't help a struggling PR's career and it definitely won't dig you out of the rut you'd have to be stuck in to even consider something so crazy.

A colleague pointed out that it seems very '2001' when companies were digging themselves out of the dotcom bust. I think it's downright toxic to our industry (which you've probably picked up on). PR planning takes an incredible amount of business creativity, the execution is hard work and it is very specialised work. No matter what the situation, unless you are doing your best friend a HUGE favour, should a business service like that be given away completely free.

NB: Some type of compensation model based upon performance is a different story, and we'd agree that it can often be the right pricing model. This post is purely about proposals given for zero, nada, nothin.'

So - I'm really interested to hear if other PR's have faced this situation and what your thoughts are.