Hi, everyone. In this post, I mentioned Dave B. and I came up with a long list of potential post topics before we even registered MaxDisclosure.com.
Here it is. We’ve written about many of these topics, there are others we may never write about. Either way, they’re up for grabs. See something we haven’t written about and feel like you’ve got something to offer? Send us a guest post. Hell, send us a post if we did cover it and you think we were all fucked up.
It’s our professional responsibility to write about our career field. Join in.
- Role on the staff
- Responsibility to subordinate unit PAOs
- A PA training program for soldiers
- The shit everyone thinks is your job
- Marketing stories
- Positives of command information
- Managing your own staff
- Being the deputy
- Career managing
- Dealing with civilians
- SRC-45 units
- Operational relevance
- Colliding with IO
- Commanders: Make your PAO do these things
- Developing a PA strategy
- Competing against other units for attention
- Put down the camera
- Nobody cares about your social media stats
- Tactical public affairs
- Your relationship the your commander
- PAO to the commander or the command
- Advocating for public release / IG similarities
- OPSEC and You
- Media Relations on background
- Crisis Communication
- Supporting your Enterprise: the “non-PA” communications you can work on
- Social media strategy, audiences and messages
- PAG, RTQ and Briefing Cards
- Do you need to create another logo
- The Army needs fewer Facebook pages
- Cliche phrases and how to avoid them
- Responding to media queries
- Long term relationships with reporters
- Leaks and anonymous sources
- Weekly: PA in the Press
- Reoccurring: Command Information done right
- Terrible design and you
- The value of I Don’t Know
- Identifying and working with reporters’ agendas
- Reoccurring: Reporters’ experience with PAOs on recent stories/projects
- What your peers in the civilian world are doing
- Public Affairs Cowboys
- Train your commander to use you correctly
- Special treatment
- PAOs on _____: what the military is saying in open source, what it isn’t and why that matters (cyber, readiness, resilience, boots on the ground)
- Just answer the question: the ethics of messaging the American public
- What your Deputy S/G/J3 needs from the PAO
- An anonymous source on anonymous sources
- Confirming the obvious
- What to do when your HHQ is shit
- PAD/MPAD Command goals
- International/NATO PA
- The good things DINFOS teaches you
- Garrison newspapers: really?!
- Political Public Affairs (National Guard)
- Produce 1,000 words a day
- Is it time for PA warrant officers?
- Big Wins
- Why every office needs a fish tank
- Battling Bureaucracy
- What if someone else control’s your commanders message? (speechwriter, CIG, XO, etc)
- The media analysis your Commander needs
- Engaging vs. Advertising
- Pandering, Click-Bait and Gimmicks: is it real communication?
- Building your organization’s credibility/expertise
- Why do we need to pay so much attention to the media? (Sports team comparison)
- Steal your boss’s copy of 7 Habits
- Be good enough to be the S3
- Don’t be a fucking slob
- Don’t close early. Open early, and close late.
- Texting with your boy, Jeff Davis
- Disregard alarm
- #notaterrorist
- Angry and Frustrated
- Sometimes the Truth is Just the Truth
- Be part of the solution
- Are you a man or a muppet
- What’s your commander’s position
- You could and should start a blog
- Always be messaging
- Unprecedented momentum
- You can do anything you want
- Your only limited resource is time
- Nothing’s ever easy
- Too slow for the real world, too fast for the government
- My boss loves Twitter
- Chief of Staff is not my boss
- Copy Editing – who gives a shit?
- Too much hot sauce
- Use OneNote
- Nothing personal, you dumbass.
- Volume chart – when to dial it up to 10, when not to
- Save it for the media, asshole. (Don’t PAO the PAO)
- Something shitty is going to happen.
- The two handed door
- Graphic Awareness
- Is it googleable?
- I’ll provide coffee. Why don’t you provide expertise?
- WHY is one of the 5 W’s. Timely and contextual. The other W’s are the easy ones.
- WHY is challenging. WHY can be viewed as risky, or propaganda.
- Risk without gain? Or gain without risk? (Stating our policy)
- Here, I’ve already got a draft for you.
- What’s the trick to standing out among your peer PAOs, G????
- Or, you could just write your best-guess Public Affairs guidance
- It’s okay if it’s complete garbage — but since you’re spending time (even if it’s five minutes) then make it not garbage
- Their agenda and your agenda
- Clean clear correct
- Know more than your boss
- The Mobile Command Center
- Stop copying and pasting; PA is not that hard (we didn’t learn it from anyone)
(Photo by Spc. Andrew Ingram, DVIDS)
