Carefully designed by an experienced PR professional, here is a reference-guide-handbook you can pick up and use immediately to serve your clients better, faster, and less expensively. Horton gives you short, easy-to-find, action-oriented explanations, dictionary-style, backed up by plenty of references to lead you to additional necessary information elsewhere. You'll also get an entire chapter devoted to hundreds of online sites ranked by their work value to you day-by-day--getting a fast take on exactly the information you need, when and how you need it. Each entry defines a topic; explains how it fits into public relations practice and why you should know it; discusses who uses it; suggests why it should be used to communicate more effectively and how to use it tactically. Horton's summaries of information from dozens of sources is clear and logical.

Throughout his book, Horton strives to use simple language and to avoid burying practitioners in geek speak. He makes you aware of the opportunities and dangers of online in a way that balances the practical aspects of using and not using online resources daily work. An experienced navigator himself of the online world and the creator and webmaster of a website used widely by other PR practitioners, Horton brings to the book an understanding of the needs of others who want to get started and become proficient in online PR right away, without having to climb a long, high learning curve. The way the book is organized, and the things Horton has selected and how he presents them, accomplishes just that. The result is an easily accessed, quickly usable reference to the dynamics of Internet and Web usages, experienced and inexperienced PR professionals alike, and for their colleagues teaching or learning the profession in colleges and universities worldwide.