On May 11, our main feature will be the Leadership Special, an article profiling industry professionals who are showing outstanding examples of leadership. This can be within their agency/company, as an industry thought leader, or even beyond the PR industry. If you have someone you’d like to suggest, please send an e-mail to .

We have finally run through most of our op-ed queue, and are looking for new thought leadership pieces. If you had previously sent one that did not run (and it is evergreen), send again. If you have had an idea banging around in the back of your head, send it on.

PRWeek is now accepting nominations for its second-annual “40 under 40” feature, to be published in the December 8 issue. This special feature will profile 40 agency, corporate, and nonprofit professionals, as well as educators, under the age of 40 that are doing outstanding work for their clients/companies and for the PR industry as a whole. Individuals featured on the list will demonstrate innovative thinking, strong determination, and results that indicate a long and successful career in the PR industry. Those individuals profiled on last year’s list are not eligible for inclusion in this year’s feature.

To nominate someone, please download the entry form here and e-mail to . Individuals nominated must be under the age of 40 as of 12/8/08. Entry forms must not exceed two pages. Please contact Erica Iacono at [email protected] with any questions. All nominations must be received by 5pm EST on September 15.

So, we’ve started doing some video. I’ve already enjoyed the stuff we’ve done. But I’m also open to suggestions. What types of videos would you like to see?

If you had as an audience the rockstars of the C-suite (a clever way of saying blue chip company CEOs), what one question would you ask them re: their thoughts about the PR industry?

I’m planning an upcoming market focus on mobile for the May 19 issue. Now, while I understand that mobile marketing hasn’t taken off in the US as it has in Europe and Asia, I didn’t realize how true that was until I started researching to find PR campaigns that incorporate mobile. When I put a Profnet out asking for recent campaigns with a mobile components, 99% of the responses involved traveling exhibits. Seriously. And many firms are willing to discuss the work they do on behalf of mobile content providers, but have struggled to suggest actual campaigns that are using mobile tactics. So, if your firm is working on such campaigns, please feel free to email me at .

We released our Book of Lists on Monday. This year, we dropped the movie and 15 minutes of fame categories replaced then with agency Web sites we liked and didn’t like, and corporate blogs we liked and didn’t like.

We went through a lot of agency Web sites and, in our opinion, found most were average, some were very bad, and few were really good. This should be disheartening to the industry. Here are some of the most troubling elements that you might want to fix up, if your Web site is guilty of having (or not having) these.

In somewhat of a particular order.

1) RSS feed. PR agencies are in the message disseminating business. More than a few of your audience members prefer to get their information this way. It’s not difficult or expensive to set up.

2) Boring or poorly created homepage. If your homepage doesn’t resonate with your brand, it has failed. If it is not sharp-looking, with proper white space, clean aesthetics, and simple navigation, you are risking a terrible first impression.

3) Avatars. In the words of those irascible , DO NOT WANT. Web sites with one take forever to load, and the avatars are either annoying or engage in terrible attempts at humor.

4) Thought leadership. If your Web site just features static content, you are not giving anyone a reason to return to your site, you are not increasing your results in Google, and you are not positioning your agency as a thought leader.

5) Flash and PDF news releases. See above. Google does not read Flash and PDFs well, if at all. Make sure the site is all HTML with meta tags and optimization. Otherwise, your rankings will suffer.

If you have more examples of bad sites - or more rules to follow, please do so in the comments.

As you might suspect, we have a number of Op-Ed submissions every week. While we try to sort through them and publish in a timely basis, sometimes it takes a while for them to run.

We always accept Op-Eds that deal with an important communications message, but here’s a hint for quicker placement: try to tailor your Op-Ed to a specific feature or issue. The best way to figure this out is to look at our editorial calendar here. I would suggest pitching an Op-Ed up to three weeks in advance (making note of what issue you’re targeting) and submit it 10 days before the publication date.

For the August 27th issue, we’ve replaced the Automotive focus with a focus titled “Agency Innovators.” Basically, we’re looking to profile individuals at PR agencies that have a unique vision for the future of not only their agencies, but also the industry and practice of PR in general. Feel free to suggest anyone you think may be relevant, either by commenting here or emailing: .

I have to insist, kindly, that if you send a news release about a new hire or a new win, you check our brief blog inbrief.prweekblogs.com before you ask if we’ve received it. If a brief on your release is up there, that means we’ve definitely received it.