Introduction

Hi there-
Welcome to the New World PR blog. My name is Lyn Mettler and I run a public relations firm and web PR company, both based in Charleston, S.C. I have always been interested in how the Web and PR meet and how organizations can best leverage the power of the Internet to promote their businesses. I must confess I am totally fascinated with the subject. My husband and co-workers will be happy that I have another outlet where I can discuss all this, what I think is cool, stuff!

In my early days in PR, about 8-10 years ago, I started to combine the two fields by encouraging the businesses I worked for, Borders Books & Music and later Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), to engage the latest online tools. First, that meant collecting emails and alerting people of events taking place at the Borders Indianapolis store where I was in charge of events and publicity. Later, at IUPUI, it became creating the university’s very first online newsroom to provide easy access to information for journalists.

Over the last few years, more exciting stuff has started to evolve and, yes, start to take over the world! Blogs, Podcasts, Wikipedia, YouTube, Del.icio.us… the list goes on. Ah, what fodder for my PR mind! PR has definitely entered a “new world” of media to target. So for a while I was encouraging Mettler Public Relations clients to use some of these amazing and fun technologies to begin to engage their audiences, but recently, I decided it needed a whole focus of its own and I started a second company, Step Ahead Web Strategies, to address these tools from a PR point of view.

I hope this blog provides my, hopefully, interesting two cents on some of the most talked about stories of the day as they relate to technology and the field of public relations. I could talk all day on some of this stuff, but I will try my hardest to keep my comments brief, informative, but fun to read. I’ve been a freelance writer, as well, for a long time and I try to keep my writing conversational and engaging. So that said, I’d better cut this post short. Thanks for reading and I hope you come back for much more.

Lyn Mettler