Author: Martin Keller

 

On February 9, HARO —Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the free service that links journalists looking for viable sources to clients of PR companies — sponsored a four-person panel of national scribes to talk about the do’s and don’ts of the PR world in their world.

The hour-plus conference (paid) call didn’t provide any deep revelations to seasoned PR practitioners, IMHO (and you will recognize some of the topics below that they covered on this blog). But it did a good job of re-enforcing basic and not-so-basic tips on how journalists like to be pitched, among other topics. In other words, it was a refresher course for the crusty and perhaps, some practical help for those innocents just treading into the field.

On the call were HARO founder and panel moderator, Peter Shankman, the small business reporter from The Wall Street Journal, a travel writer for USA Today, a freelance journalist for Crain’s Business News in New York and other publications and a contributor to AOL — who covers the Weird News beat and also does work for other media outlets.

Here were some highlights:

• Strong Subject lines are very important: Rarely do the terms “Press Release” ring anyone’s bell. Write an intriguing headline.

 

• Know what the reporter covers and read some of their stuff before pitching.

 

• Personalize your email; mass email blasts are a turn-off that beg for the Delete button.

 

• Identify a strong news hook. See what’s happening in the news cycle and if your subject, client, product fits in. Then shape your pitch.

 

• Is it wise to qualify news release marked as Embargoed news? The WSJ reporter says they never honor embargoed releases. The others were less forceful on that front. Use discretion.

 

• All of them spoke very highly of HARO as a helpful service that some people, however, abuse on occasion by pitching off- topic — which will get you booted off HARO yesterday.

 

• Brevity is always a plus on a pitch.

 

• The panel unanimously turned thumbs down on pitches made through social media like Facebook and Twitter, Fax and the U.S. mail — for me this was the eye-opener of the hour. Use their email first. Be prudent about follow up phone calls. Know when the reporter’s deadlines are and respect them.

• Most panelists rely on press releases only for facts; rarely does a news release move any of them to write a story, so really work on your pitch.

 

• Never send attachments.

 

• Never send products (unless asked) — or gifts. Most newsrooms cannot accept gifts valued over $20.

 

• You can ask a reporter for face time over coffee or lunch but most will say no; they don’t have time. The Weird News guy however was a little more flexible and liked the idea, although he’s outside of San Diego in a small town.

 

• The panelists all described the best pitches as those that are current to news making — which means you might actually have to watch TV, listen to radio and read the newspaper and web news aggregators (believe it or not, a few people I know in this profession never do!)

 

• It’s fine to provide background to reporters for future news stories, esp. if you missed being part of something they just wrote about and you want your client on their radar.

 

Let me know what your questions and tips are and we’ll address in a future column. Happy pitching!

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Marketing Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

Almost a month through the first year of the new year and at least two major crisis’s have dominated the news of late, the Tucson shootings and the upheaval in Egypt. Sorry, weather fanatics, big snow and numbing cold don’t cut it, it’s January. Of all the coverage on the tragedies and triumphs in the Congresswoman Giffords event, perhaps the most revealing — aside from NPR’s rush to pronounce her dead before all the facts were in, a crisis in itself — is how little the Safeway Grocery has played in the story.

Although it was the site of this terrible news story, you never heard from the owner or manager — at least in the coverage I’ve seen (although the Safeway organization did issue a news release January 13 setting up a fund for the victims families). Perhaps it was wise on their part. Sometimes in a crisis of this scope, not saying anything is the best course unless called on to do so. Or perhaps there was/is no crisis plan in place at this national food retailer.

Jumping to the other side of the globe, events in Cairo this past week, on the heels of the revolt in Tunisia, have been driven in part by social media tools to the point where the teetering government has tried to block Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. The crisis is being driven by and often reported on through these channels —although the real crisis is the result of 30 years of one-man rule, reported widespread corruption, huge divides bewteen haves and have nots and police state tactics.

What roles should people take in crisis situations is one reason to have an effective crisis plan in place. In November, the global PR warhorse Weber Shandwick announced it had created a “crisis simulator” called Firebell that creates “… an authentic, real-time experience of being under attack on social media channels. This proprietary application allows clients to participate in a real-time dialogue in a secure, off-the-Internet environment.”

Ring the Firebell

How well will such preparation work once a real crisis takes place for one of its clients remains to be seen. But the strategic thinking behind it is right:

According to Chris Perry, president of Digital Communications at Weber Shandwick, “Communications leaders need to understand that it’s not a matter of if an online crisis is going to happen, but when – and be prepared. How a company responds to a crisis in today’s social environment is vastly different than even the recent past; a formal statement to the press no longer suffices. It’s about a living dialogue with a company’s constituents.”

The web is alive every second and information travels almost instantaneously to all parts of the planet, whether it’s inaccurate information or dead-on facts, or the varying shades and nuances in between. How are you going to deal with that?

Here’s Firebell news release for more insights.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/weber-shandwick-launches-social-crisis-simulator-firebell-108940364.html

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Marketing Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

The odometer on the old Gregorian calendar turned over again.

Salutations and Warm Greetings for the New Year.

What does 2011 offer people and organizations looking for media coverage? Whoa, slow down. What are your resolutions for the new season? Better yet, is making any resolution even a good idea when so many things on the media front are in flux?

There are many crystal balls aglow this time of the new year and most are flickering, because as we all know, the horses at the track will run the race they run. Winners and losers will emerge and few will foretell the real outcome. That said, I turn your attention to David Carr, the man behind the curtain at The New York Times who writes the weekly Media Equation column for the Old Gray Mare of journalism.

The Internet: Destroyer of Kingdoms, Creator of Empires

I have been searching for a suitable first blog for this third day of 2011 and I did not really need to search far. It was, as it were, in my own backyard. Mr. Carr is a former Minneapolis editor, writer, reporter and olde friend, with whom — Name-Dropping Disclosure — I had the endearing privilege and engaging survival skills to work with at a weekly paper here in the Twin Cities back in the ‘80s, the good/bad old days. This was well before the tech wonks in the military saw fit to make the technology transfer to the private sector of this mega-monster, The Internet, destroyer of kingdoms, creator of empires.

The Great Mashup of 2011

David’s piece — linked here — http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/business/media/03carr.html?_r=2&src=dayp to make your life easier, at least this early in the year, since it is surely to become more complicated later — is a must-read. And re-read. We will return to its messages and meaning in future blogs as various media industries strive to deal with the chaos and find a discernable path out of the digital wilderness. And with any wit, luck or fortitude, we may all learn some new ways of relating publically to our constituents, target markets, media contacts, etc.

What do you think 2011 holds for media and PR? Share your brightest — or least flickering ideas with this blog — and win valuable prizes.

Happy New Year.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

Lists and more lists should be on every PR person’s list right now because end-of-year lists are cropping up in the media like crab grass (or whatever it is that grows) on a Chia Pet stocking stuffer. It’s List-o-mania, baby!

Do you have a client who would quality for a Best Of list this year? Were you a frequent newsmaker? Got a product that is a must-have for the New Year?! How about some superlative feat or stat that would rank on a list for some newsworthy distinction over the past decade — the first decade of the 21^st century?

Pitch a list and check it twice because news readers, as “they” say of their news anchors in England — when they aren’t yelling to the Royals “Off with their Heads” during student tuition riots — are looking for the naughty and the nice right now. As long as it can fit on a list for 2010 or 2011 as the holidays fall upon us.

In the spirit of the season, which really begin at Thanksgiving now it seems, or is it All Hallow’s Eve, Media Savant has compiled this short but kinda succinct list of PR Turkeys in 2010. Our judges, flown in to cast ballots on nice, donated Gulf Stream Jets belonging to bailed out Wall Street bankers and a few congresspersons not yet under indictment, landed just after the massive Twin Cities blizzard this past Sunday. They were actually airborne over the Metro Dome when the big stained bed sheet, er, fiberglass fabric panels ripped from all that snow and crashed down on that fake, malodorous turf that sports fans of all stripes have so long loathed these past 29 years.

OK, I made that last part up about the bankster jets and the flying over the snowdome. But you can’t make up the First Annual PR Turkeys of the Year. You can’t make up reality and that’s why these feathered winners are so richly deserving of their gilded Gobbler trophies! With no further ado, here are the PR birds of prey:

Number 5: National Catholic League: Had they heeded their mother’s advice, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it all,” the National Catholic League might have been better off in its latest role as an art critic. But no, its spokesman, William Donahue, publically denounced a controversial anti-AIDS work that the Smithsonian eventually pulled (cowards) titled “Fire in My Belly” as anti-Christian. The publicity about the piece spread faster than a naughty Brittney Spears YouTube video. One pundit at the Star Tribune actually thanked Donahue for making the comments because now millions of people would be aware of the work and the artist, who died of AIDs-related issues in 1992.

Number 4: Target: For not seeing the tsunami of bad publicity that would come at them — much of it generated via social media, including a semi-successful boycott that even sent the stock price down a few flights of stairs — when they donated to an organization that backed the GOP candidate for Minnesota Governor Tom Emmer. What pluck! And it easily earned them the Gobbler. Emmer, who has an anti-gay, anti-abortion platform, recently conceded that race after a recount. But there’s no word on whether he’ll return or pay back the funds he’d received. Social media is an unfettered force of nature now and will play an even bigger role in our lives and the media next year (why do you think that Zuckerberg kid is “The Person of the Year”?). What were they thinking at the Bullseye?

Number 3: The Military Flacks who Enabled Gen. Stanley McChrystal to be Fired: It’s one thing to exercise your constitutional rights as a general to criticize the Commander in Chief’s (losing) strategy in Afghanistan, now a war older than Vietnam, to a Rolling Stone reporter, however stupidly and ill-considered they were. But it’s a whole ‘nother deal for the general’s handlers to have given said scribe virtually total access to the many-starred general for days on end. Maybe they’d been hitting the local hookah pipes too hard that week. Whatever their excuse, the general got sacked, the reporter got a book deal — and lots of overexposure in the media — while Obama recently feasted on a warm turkey dinner on Air Force One returning from the war front, the sun reflecting hard off the 2010 Gobbler award mounted below in front of some bedoiun tent that doubles as a Taliban poker palace every other Friday. But not hard enough for all the PR dudes associated with this open fire-hose fiasco to lose some stripes.

Number 2: BP: How many ways can you foul your message after your collapsed oil rig and drill has fouled the Gulf and the livelihoods of thousands along the south coast? BP made so many public relations mistakes it would take a book to discuss them all. Perhaps its most disingenuous and egregious statements were those that pleaded ignorance to how this could happen and to just how extensive the problem really was. Exacerbated, some say, by the chemicals the oil giant widely sprayed to disperse the slicks, the gulf mess is still making some news and causing more alleged damage to the ecosystem, the gulf economy and the seafood chain. BP pretty much remains in their sleeper hold strategy while petro prices creep up over 3 or 4 bucks or more for the holidays. Meanwhile, countless lawsuits flap in the wind like a parade of ripped fishing nets, stretched out from Pensacola to Grand Isle, La.

Turkey of the Year: The Vatican: Not to pick on the Catholics this holy and wholly commercialized season (Hell, they educated me), but their truly offensive lack of a coherent strategy to deal with sexual abuse issues that arose in Wisconsin this year after it was alleged that a priest had serially abused many deaf students in his care would be downright astonishing were it not so tragically awful. Crisis Communications 101? Not even close. How about Worst PR Practices Ever? Complete with denial, downplay, defer and other damnable “d” words that the Pope’s PR pontificators piled on throughout the news cycle…. Deplorable also comes to mind.

For its unexpected — and totally unnecessary encore — the back peddling of this powerful global organization a few months later when his Holiness recently quipped that maybe condom use might not be such a bad thing after all, was worthy of a bunch of Chinese acrobats on the high wire working without a net. As you know yourself, there were many PR blunders that came close to these death-defying feats in 2010 but the votes tipped finally in favor of the long robes with the big and tall hats. And so we on the committee scratch our heads in celebratory disbelief, another year of relating publically gone into the record books.

Finally, as we skid into Christmas and 2011, a fond thanks for reading this and other blogs in the library. And to all, a good night and a merrier tomorrow.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

Press Releases, Tweets — even, or especially, email subject lines — demand strong, catchy headlines. Imagine the volume of words that cross an editor’s or reporter’s eyes each hour! Guess which subjects they will be drawn to? Those that creatively thread the needle of journalism are the ones that will get sewn into the fabric of a feature story or news item. And that thread is your header.

A quick search of the past week’s headlines is instructive. This week the New Oxford American Dictionary named its word of the year Refudiate. And you have to admit that it’s a pretty “nifty” word, as Sarah Palin might say. In fact, it’s Alaska’s Governor Quit who coined the term. She’s got to feel pretty darn good about it, too, the designation from the Oxford word wonks coming in the same seven days that her reality show about Alaska — but mostly about her and her overexposed family and her simplistic political views — is breaking viewing records on TLC cable, such as they are. I have to admit, a sneak peak I stole the other night for 15 minutes revealed unusually high production values and tons of beauty shots of the inspiring scenery of the distant state where you can see Russia.

You can refudiate her politics all you want. But SP remains a headline grabber, despite the fact that she’s making fishing-boat-loads of money doing all this stuff in the guise of being some Teabag politico that believes she’s qualified for higher office.

Make Your Reporter Connection

Rather than dial up her BoobTube brand of Palintology online, I urge you instead to consider the power of good headline grabbers at another place. It comes this week from “Bill and Steve Harrison’s Reporter Connection” (if you haven’t joined yet, you should. It hooks up reporters with sources, like HARO does. Join here:

http://www.reporterconnection.com/11-15-2010.htm

The Harrison’s write, “Long before Diane Sawyer became the anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, she did an interview in which she spoke about what kind of stories producers love, and what makes a great headline. For example, Sawyer talks about how this sentence: ‘This is a committee meeting which is very important politically,’ becomes more compelling when re-written as ‘This is a political time bomb – disguised as another government meeting.’ Take a quick read of this brief interview for other interesting nuggets.”

The power of the headline….Send me a few you’re proud of and I’ll post them. I promise I will not publically or bloglically refudiate any of them.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

The first Winter Storm Watch has been issued for the Twin Cities area this weekend, with a possible 5-8 inches of heavy wet snow. Hardware stores are downright giddy. Weatherpersons on TV glow with qualified excitement (hoping the storm will track through these parts). Fans of winter are oiling snowmobiles, waxing skies and sharpening skates (despite the lakes being liquid as Everclear). City dump trucks are being retrofitted with big blades and loaded with sand.

Public Relations people — some who still have leaves to rake — are putting up their best seasonal pitches for the Holidays. Or they should be. If your company is doing something cool for the Yule, has a new product that’s geared toward the approaching winter — or even if you have a Turkey idea for Thanksgiving, or an idea that’s lovably “a turkey” — it’s time to make some noise about it.

Lisa Chapman, the totally awesome Marketing blogger on this site, has written an insightful blog about this subject that I encourage you to read and heed (her yard must be free of fall’s free-fall debris). Events that benefit charities, anything with kids or giving, you know, that sentimental feeling that tugs at the heart this time of year — it’s all there on Lisa’s blog. Plus she tells you how to do it (so I don’t have to)!

Check it out. Make your PR Holiday pitch list, check it twice. Media Santa’s, Festivus’ producers and assignment desk gnomes are waiting to hear from you.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

It’s appropriate penning this blog on the Day After the Day of The Dead election date. The votes are in, the surprises are in. The Republicans are back — in most places! Seems like only yesterday they were here (shall we call them Zombies?!). Is this the change we can believe in? For many Democrats who served for decades and are suddenly today looking for a new line of work, it probably is.

Let’s go back to a seemingly simpler time when an elected politician stated, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Great words that echo through time and transcend partisan political lines. Of course it was John. F Kennedy who uttered them near the close of his inaugural address in 1961.

But this blog is not about politics, or great American rhetoric (or zombies), it’s about PR issues, so let’s look at this sentence. It’s as powerful a piece of American patriotism, summoning fellow country men and women to serve their nation’s ideals in whatever capacity that has ever been written. But Kennedy didn’t write it. His speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, did. Sorenson died the day before the election. But his gifted use of language in this one line of a speech, simple but poetic, clever but not self-serving, brief but powerful and enduring, will live on.

Strong writers breathe life into words. If your public relations m.o. doesn’t start and end with a proven writer crafting your headlines, making the content in subsequent paragraphs stand out and leaving a memorable impression on those who read your news releases, Tweets or other communiqués, you are already at a disadvantage.

We’re not talking about having the commas in all the right places (that’s what good copy editors are for). But we are talking about what one longtime business journalist in the Twin Cities always insists on, whether it’s his own copy, that of a fellow journalist or a PR person that just bombarded him again with a pitch and press release: “Make it sing!”

Despite the preponderance of words in all the communication channels of the 21^st century — and the corrosive effect text messaging is having on language and attention spans — good writing is still a highly valued skill, and a talent that can’t always be taught. Treat your written PR pieces for the gems that they should be. And if you have a truly gifted writer on staff, bump that scribe a raise, before he or she runs off for another profession.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

Search Engine Optimization & PR: Google Me This

I am not a Geek. Let’s get that out there right away. I’m a former pop culture writer and editor and now a PR guy, a flack, a publicist (mostly, 8-5 anyway) with some good ideas and communication skills. And like most people I know, I try to keep abreast of the technologies and social media implications of the profession and try to leverage them to the client’s advantage. The occasional webinar or seminar helps.

Over the years, however, I’ve relied on close colleagues and friends — and the occasional kindness of strangers — who are Geekish to lead me through the forest. Some days we are in the thick, others days we reach the clearing. Ten years ago, clients started asking about search engine rankings, what today is conventionally called SEO — Search Engine Optimization.

“How do I come up better in searches?”

“Good question. Let’s see who can help you with that.” And I’d call up the guys who knew how to help.

Today, I offer the latest SEO insights from the giant that practically invented search, Google. It’s very contemporary, even providing a section on mobile sites. Of course, if you’re like me, some of it may be pure Geek to you. Understood. Share it with the teckie in your org, or your own Geek Friends. But scan it for insights to try and stay current —at least on the thinking — even if the moving parts piece of this leaves you cold and uncertain.

Here’s the link to it: Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

See you in the forest clearing. Bring marshmallows. We’ll do smores and talk PR and stuff.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

Timing is everything, like any old Catskill comic, successful business person and even Ecclesiastes — a book in the Bible — will tell you. Cliched? Absolutely. And mostly true. As the good book says, “To every thing there is a season” — including (if you extrapolate enough) a right time to launch a PR campaign: A time to be born, a time to die, a time to gather ye media relations materials together to sow the good word of your business.

But when to start?

In my 20-year experience, I’ve seen PR campaigns launch that were premature, right on time and late. Depending on what you want to publicize and how early your target media contacts need to receive information, the best general advice is the be a good Boy or Girl Scout: Be prepared for a good launch that will not tax your business, because your people and systems need to be in sync throughout the organization so the holy light of media can shineth upon thou.

Case in point: A company I started working with several years ago had a breakthrough green product in an industry but we moved too early to promote it. The sales force was not in place, the website was subpar and even local dealers were not yet all aware of the benefits of this product to sell their customers.

Nonetheless, a collective decision was made to push out the pitch letters and a first news release (we had a comprehensive Media Kit in place for more information and insights about the product, the company, its principals and the product benefits). Fortunately, we managed to get some publicity locally and in the trade press, which created momentum both inside the company and among those on sales side and among dealers. Today we are all working together still, and the company is growing at a good rate.

But in reality, we should have waited a year. But that’s hindsight.

A recent New York Times article deals with this same issue. I know you’ll read it and say, “Sure, it’s a good problem to have.” But unless you enjoy getting swamped in your boat, be vigilant and circumspect about your timing. Here are the choice elements of the Times piece:

“Mr. LaCava, Eric Heinbockel and Fabian Kaempfer are the founders of Chocomize, a Web-based company that lets its customers create their own chocolate bars from more than 100 ingredients. Its Web site opened for business late last year; then, in June, the company was briefly noted in O, the Oprah Magazine. The mention was tiny — just 36 words in a wee stripe on the bottom of a page. Nevertheless, things went haywire.

“Our server crashed,” says Mr. LaCava, recalling how their orders quintupled overnight. “The phone was ringing round the clock. We’d thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to be in Oprah! We’re going to be making so many more bars!’ We didn’t think: ‘People are going to be calling us every second of the day.’”

Other than a dedicated server, there were two more things that Chocomize lacked: employees and a white-chocolate machine big enough to meet demand. Mr. LaCava, who is 23, describes the experience this way: ‘growing pains.’”

To avoid those kinds of growing pains — or at least to take the edge off them — be ready to reap the fruits of any public exposure in the media. Otherwise, sayeth your prayers so you can survive the blessing of a ‘good problem to have.’ ”

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585