It’s Important

We know vacations are a boon to our mental health, and we might have some awareness that they’re beneficial to our physical health – but chances are vacations are even more important than you realize. Taking part in leisure activities is shown to lead to lower blood pressure, lower stress hormones and smaller waists, and one study found vacations lead to a significantly lower risk of mortality. That’s right – taking a break from time to time can actually contribute to your long-term survival!

Interestingly, even if we have an understanding of the benefits vacations offer our bodies, it’s often harder for us to recognize that vacations are actually critical to being effective at work. Do you know that some scientists have found that stress shrinks your brain (an effect that can be reversed after a period of rest)? Even small vacations actually change your brain waves, leading to improved reaction times, clarity and creativity.

So, when you jokingly (or not so jokingly) exclaim, “I need a vacation!” the truth is, you really do.

For me, because I’m truly nutty as a fruitcake and addicted to goal-setting, I often make mental health-related goals for myself that I hope to achieve while on vacation. During some breaks, I seek to jump start my creative juices by trying new things, while other times I pause to reflect on the directions I’m taking my business and my life. This time, I’ll be doing something especially radical: striving to turn my thoughts off almost completely – to be 100% in the moment, with no thoughts whatsoever (no easy feat for an OCD gal like myself, but I’m hoping it will lead to a helpful recharging).

What vacations or mini-breaks do you have coming up this summer, and what do you hope to accomplish (or avoid) as a result? Let us know in the comments, and if you haven’t decided when your next break is, start planning!

Image: Meawpong3405 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

Between Pinterest’s rise to fame as the third most popular social network in the U.S. by some accounts and Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of the mobile photo sharing app Instagram – a company that was just two years old – it’s easy to see that if content is still king, visual content rules the social web in 2012. There’s been a lot of interesting discussion about the trend toward more visual content/learning, and strong visuals are clearly here to stay as an increasingly important element in any PR program.

As solo PR pros with budgets that are often more limited, the ability to find free, high-quality images online for use in blog posts, presentations, and on social networks – and edit them using free tools –  is now more essential than ever. But don’t just search Google Images and copy something from there (this is tantamount to stealing).  There are many resources and tools available for no cost, high quality visuals – our favorites follow.

Free Image Downloads

1. FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Quickly downloading photos from this online database of free images is especially easy since no registration is required. Though each image on this site can be purchased as a higher resolution file, internet-ready images are available for immediate download free of charge, provided you adhere to the site’s Terms of Services and provide attribution to the original photographer. On FreeDigitalPhotos.net, this means inserting a hyperlink to the contributor’s profile page if the image is to be used online, or publishing the following credit along with photos used in printed materials: “Image: [NAME] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”

2. StockFreeImages.com
Though there’s one extra step to using this site in that you have to register first, this online collection of 431,000+ images operates similarly to FreeDigitalPhotos.net: give proper credit to the author, and use of the image is entirely free. On this site, an HTML credit line is automatically generated upon download that looks something like this: “© [NAME] | <a href=”http://www.stockfreeimages.com/”>Stock Free Images</a>”

3. Stock.xchng
Like the resource listed above, users must register and sign in to access the 350,000+ quality stock photos by more than 30,000 photographers found on this site. All images here are entirely free as long as users stick to the rules found in their Image License Agreement, which specifies where/when you can and can’t use an image. There’s also an option to contact the photographer if you’d like to use their image for purposes other than those allowed in the agreement.

4. Compfight
It’s a common misconception that all images on Flickr are freely available for use. Not true! Compfight is a search tool that allows you to filter Flickr images and view only those available through Creative Commons or for Commercial use (depending on your needs).

On Flickr, the “license” terms for each image are in the right sidebar – click the words “some rights reserved” to see the details. Some images are shared with permission to “remix” (which means you can crop it, or add a title on top of it, for example), while some are not. Most “some rights reserved” images ask for attribution.

5. iStockphoto’s Free Photo of the Week
Every week this site posts a new image, accessible from its home page, that it makes available for free (to give users a reason to keep coming back). You may not have use for the image today, but it never hurts to download these into a folder and save for the future.

Of course, sometimes paying a relatively small fee (usually around $2, depending on size) to a site like iStockphoto.com or Shutterstock for the perfect image is worth it. But if you’re just looking to jazz up a boring PowerPoint or illustrate a blog post, the sites above can often fill the bill.

Free Photo Editing

Our long-time favorite editing tool, Picnik, was shuttered by acquiring company Google in April (some of its features have been incorporated into Google+).   We’re currently trying out the following:.

1. PicMonkey
PicMonkey is certainly an appropriate Picnik replacement, as the service was actually started by former Picnik engineers. PicMonkey is free and doesn’t require registration (checkout the rather advanced human touchup tools – it’s hard to beat a good teeth whitener and wrinkle remover!).

2. BeFunky
Another photo editing site where registration isn’t required, BeFunky comes with all of the basics like the ability to fix red-eye or bad lighting, but also insists that it has “more effects than any other photo editor, and features you won’t find anywhere else.”

3. Aviary
Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. This site allows for photo editing with tools like the Image Editor, Screen Capture, Vector Editor, Image Markup, and more

Do you have any favorite resources or tools we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

For example:
I love to sing — but no one ever accused me of being the next American Idol. I’m more of a sing-a-long at the pub after one too many-kind of singer. No use trying to pursue it any further than that – no one would pay me to sing, so I don’t focus my time on making that happen.

On the other hand, I’m pretty good at large-scale project management: corralling disperse people, companies and information to make a long-term program work or a big deliverable come together within deadlines. Over the years, a number of clients have paid me pretty well to do this activity, and I have the gray hairs to prove it. I’ve discovered that though this can be a lucrative business offering for me, I’d rather work with someone else to manage the truly enormous projects.

What does this mean for you?
These are just a couple of my own personal examples of knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. It’s often a challenge to stay centered and not get pulled away from our areas of focus, but recognizing what to relentlessly pursue – and perhaps even more importantly, when to pass – is critical to avoiding burnout and thriving as a successful, profitable consultant.

If you haven’t lately, be brutally honest with yourself and take some time to think through where you should be focusing. Share your experiences and decisions with us in the comments!

In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

I’m not really interested in belaboring the debate (if you’ve been reading marketing blogs for a while, you may have seen it’s a pretty tired topic). To me, there’s nothing more boring than an unnecessary, hair-splitting debate over semantics. But I think it’s interesting to consider that connotations change over time, and as PR pros it’s our job to adapt.

Most people familiar with the term personal branding have never heard of the shysters who gave it a bad name in the early days. To them it’s something altogether different. I’ve managed to avoid the term by talking about authentically building your profile, visibility, credibility, reputation and awareness. But when you say personal branding, people know what you’re talking about more quickly, and virtually all of the “normal people” (outside the social media fishbowl) associate it with the alternative words we use instead.

I’m arguing that “personal branding” as a term has moved beyond the literal translation of the two words contained in it.

Modern, established professionals – the wise readers of this blog at least – know that human beings aren’t something to be talked about “like a shampoo” (believe it or not, there was a book written that said exactly that). They know that putting your best foot forward doesn’t involve faking it, and no one I’ve spoken to has even heard of the controversy around the term (in fact, I recently learned that one of the largest mentoring organizations in the U.S. has a “Brand Me” session as part of its program for disadvantaged youth).

So, there’s no use in fighting it – personal branding as a term seems here to stay. If the vast majority of people are using a term to refer to something, but you refuse to say that term and instead insist on using other words, aren’t you sort of like Martha Stewart saying “herbs” with a hard “h”?

Everyone has their line in the promotional sand (and mine tends to be more conservative than most), but that conservatism will no longer include a ban on the term “personal brand.”

Very interested to hear what you think in the comments. Do you have any negative connotations associated with term “personal brand”? Have you ever changed your use of terms you once avoided?