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After young PR pros have landed the agency job they tirelessly hunted for, immersed themselves in the entry-level support role and officially launched their PR career, the next phase is something I like to call the support to strategy switch. While we were first brought on board to aid account managers in the tactical elements of the communications campaigns for their clients, we have now proved ourselves enough to take on the role as account lead.

Just like any transition, there are growing pains. Similar to the journey from college to career is the process of getting accustomed to managing client accounts. It’s time to take it up a notch. So what can you do to make the move to management as efficient and accelerated as possible? Here are a few things I’ve learned through my experience:

Let’s do a quick run down: Kodak Imaging Network fined $32,000, YesMail fined $50,000, Jumpstart fined $900,000 and ValueClick fined $2.9 million.

What did these successful, upstanding companies do to get hit with these fines?

They sent spam.

We all get spam email. “Buy this, enlarge that, etc.” It’s to the point where it seems like spammers can do whatever they want. While there will always be rogue Nigerian princes out there, the United States does have laws mandating what is and what isn’t legal for email solicitation. This law is called the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act.

How many predictions posts related to the communications world have you read in the past month? My guess would be at least 10. There have been all sorts of predictions, some interesting observations about the year ahead (such as small is big and social media crises will continue) and others just stating what we’ve already been talking about for awhile now (like content rules and measurement is in). For more smart observations about the year ahead, Shauna Nicholson makes you think with her expectations for 2012 in this post about marketing beliefs.

What started out as a customer service “don’t” for FedEx has turned into a PR “do.”

We’ve all watched—all 9 million of us!—the YouTube video of the FedEx employee carelessly tossing a computer monitor over a gate and onto the lawn of his customer. In case you haven’t, here it is:

By now you’ve likely read about the negative press Best Buy has been receiving, and you may have even read the CEO’s blog response to the coverage. This response has been receiving the predictable praise and pans from various circles of the blogosphere…and with good reason. There are some things the response managed to achieve very successful, and in my opinion there are some things Best Buy could have done better.