How to: make your PR and marketing believable – Mashable.com
Nobody trusts a PR these days, right? If that’s the case, the industry isn’t alone in suffering a trust deficit – as politicians, journalists, bankers, estate agents and footballers will attest. It’s an issue that organisations like the CIPR campaign on to try to raise the industry’s shabby image. Who would think that we’d be so bad at the way we present ourselves? The truth, as ever, is more nuanced. So I was interested to read an online account of what leading PR Rohit Bhargava calls a ‘believabilty crisis’ recently and his solution to this: be likeable.

Bhargava spoke [at the Mashable Connect 2011 conference] about what he calls Likeonomics, which “explains the new affinity economy where the most likeable people, ideas and organizations [sic] are the ones we believe in, buy from and get inspired by.”

Sounds like stating the bleeding obvious. But the reality, as too many people in the public eye discover every day to their cost, is not quite as simple. If I get some time (ever), Bhargava’s book will be worth a read.