Hey Jacksonville: you busy Friday? Well if you want to escape the sweltering North Florida heat and would like to boost your career and name-recognition, you should register for Kenny Harper’s Amplified Business Growth Summit.

The event will be held at the Jessie Ball DuPont Center in downtown Jacksonville, and will run from 9:00am – 4:00pm. By attending you’ll get to hear from thought leaders throughout the sales and marketing industry who will provide strategies and techniques to close more sales and increase profits.

PR/PR’s own Russell Trahan will be delivering a 35-minute presentation on marketing to local media and leveraging your own expertise to further your career.

There are spots still available, so head over to the registration page and secure your place at what should prove to be an informative, educational, and fun full day in Jacksonville.

We’ll see you there!

Do you consider yourself a fan of Instagram? Do you enjoy mindless flipping through your newsfeed uninterrupted by others? You enjoy lurking in peace, right? Well, I’ve got bad news.

Since it was acquired by Facebook, Instagram has begun the same similar platform tinkering that Facebook employs. You know what I’m talking about. One day your newsfeed suddenly looks slightly different—there’s a button where there was not a button before. The next day? Back to normal. It’s part of Facebook’s constant state of experimentation to optimize the user experience on its platform.

Instagram has become another testing ground for new features, and the latest update will not please those who prefer to just look at their followers’ photos without interaction. Instagram unveiled a new element to its interface, allowing other users to see when you’re online and browsing the app. It’s similar to the green button in Facebook Messenger that lets your friends know when you’re online and available to chat.

Basically, Instagram is letting people know your DMs are open—even if you’d rather just veg out and aimlessly explore the application.

It’s not a major update, nor is it any kind of deal breaker—like all social media platforms, we’ll complain about changes as they occur and then forget they exist until the next change comes. It’s the ebb and flow of the tech world. With the change, Instagram seems to want to promote its chat capability, and make the platform more peer-to-peer interactive without public eyes. We’ll see how the public reacts.

While Russell is still in Dallas enjoying Influence ’18, I’m here guiding the S.S. PR/PR through another busy workweek. First stop: Weekly blog!

This week we celebrate the global holiday dedicated to couch-locked consumerism: Amazon Prime Day 2018. The day that’s circled on many a calendar months in advance in anticipation of massively discounted electronics and odd knickknacks that you probably don’t need but definitely need to have. It’s a celebration, truly.

Prime Day kicked off on Monday, but unfortunately for many deal seekers, technology got in the way. Yes, Amazon crashed, and access to its website was spotty throughout the day. While many were able to take advantage of marked down 4K Smart TVs and espionage Echo Dots, a great lot spent the day frustrated and refreshing their web browsers.

The Verge reports that the outages on Amazon.com began shortly after Prime Day 2018 kicked off at 3:00pm EST, and continued throughout the afternoon. Of course those angry shoppers took to Twitter to lament the fact that they weren’t able to give a chunk of their disposable income to Jeff Bezos.

The good news is that the kinks appear to have been worked out, so you still have until 11:59pm EST tonight to take advantage of Amazon’s deals. Even further good news is that the Prime Day website outage only resulted in rage posts on social media, as opposed to, you know, Black Friday fistfights.

Will we see you in Dallas for NSA Influence 2018? We sure hope so! This year’s theme is “The Power of Choice,” a simple yet insightful notion that you can truly be the architect of your own success.

The first step in crafting your career? Attending NSA Influence 2018. Online registration is now closed, but you can still swing by the registration desk located in the Peacock Terrace at the Hilton Anatole to confirm your attendance.

As sponsors of the National Speakers Association for well over a decade, PR/PR prepares for this convention for the entire year. Russell will of course be in attendance—his Lucky 13^th!—and looking forward to catching up with familiar faces, meeting some new ones, and talking the importance of publicity for speakers, non-fiction authors, coaches and consultants.

Along with his usual spot manning the company booth, Russell will be hosting a session, as well. His presentation, “Sell Yourself Without Saying a Word,” takes place on Saturday, July 14, from 11-11:45 AM in the Sapphire Room. As Influence is always a busy event, if you’re unable to attend Russell’s session while at the convention you can use this link: https://calendly.com/prpr-20 to schedule a personal appointment during NSA ’18.

We’re excited to see you July 14^th – July 17^th in Dallas!

The windows are thick with condensation from the early morning humidity. The grass is growing faster than I can cut it. And without fail, my satellite television goes out right during the second World Cup match of the day due to mid-afternoon Florida thunderstorms. We’re in the Dog Days of Summer now.

But that means we’re nearing Independence Day—one of the only days Floridians decide to go outdoors between June – August. We can brave the heat for a barbecue, but a barbecue is the only reason.

It’s hard to believe we’re halfway through 2018, but here we are staring down one of the biggest celebrations of the year. PR/PR will be closing its offices tomorrow to partake in the festivities, but we will be open and ready to work for the remainder of the week. We hope you have a safe and Happy 4^th, and we’ll see you Thursday morning!