Category: Advertising & PR

 

Looking for additional ways to get exposure for what you do? Consider writing an opinion or editorial essay — commonly known as an Op-Ed piece. Most business sections of the daily and weekly papers have such a space and welcome contributors who know what they are talking about. The trick is to provide insights into the industry in which you work without sounding like a self-promoting foghorn. In other words, keep the piece generally free of things that your company has done and focus more on an issue in the industry merits addressing, or something in the regular news that you can address in a meaningful and hopefully original way. You can make an aside or allude to something in your own experience but don’t dwell on it. Readers sniff out such puffery and are often put off by it.

For example, the principals of a financial staff augmentation firm were interested in looking at big-picture hiring trends — including what the advantages were for using temporary staff from both the corporate side and the consultant side.

After their PR pro did a few hours of research and put together the essay, the piece provided good insights into the developing trends in the economy and illustrated how the work force was rapidly changing, with more people wanting to work more flexible schedules, or even to work five months and take the next two off to go on a dream trip. Plus with downsizing, corporations wanted the flexibility that temps provided, too, since they could not afford top talent full time and did not have to pay benefits. The editors of the local business pages liked it too (“it’s got a lot good statistics and we love that in the business section!”) — and they did not hear any bellowing foghorn in the distance.

What did the client get out of it? A load of goodwill in the business community because many people commented to them about it and some new opportunities to discuss placing their consultants in key, but short-term, high-end financial and accounting positions. Such editorials can help position you as a leader, or “thought leader,” in your industry, and they provide great content to re-purpose to your website, to share in social networks and to use as marketing collateral (this particular company had the article reprinted and available to read in all of its meeting rooms for both potential consultants and clients to read while waiting for meetings to begin).

How does it work? Pretty easy. Find something you are passionate about in your business or industry, or that you have been giving a lot of thought to. Write a brief four-or five sentence summary of it with a catchy headline. Submit to the editor, perhaps with a link to your Bio, or a short statement about who you are and what you do. Email it. Follow up with a call a week later or so if you haven’t heard back. If you get the nod, the editor will usually give you a word count (do not exceed it, since if you make more work for him or her, they will be less inclined to take or publish another such piece). Not only do Op-Ed articles help build your credibility, they sometimes lead to the opportunity to become a regular contributor to a publication. If you get this offering, take it. You’ll be surprised how many people will read your “stuff” and maybe even call you to do business as a result.

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

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A cardinal rule in media interviews is never go off the record (and conversely, watch out for what you do say on it!). It can be dangerous for you and the reporter if you do. And you don’t have to look far in today’s news to see where setting such boundaries with journalists is a good idea. Because when they aren’t set, Generals can be forced to tender their resignations and the life of that one news story just turned into a cat with eight lives more to go.

Going off the record serves no real purpose — even though most journalists will respect it (my favorite time this happened, the reporter simply put down her pen — she wasn’t using a tape recorder — and the client told their little aside. And it didn’t really add to the telling of the main story). But some journalists won’t respect it, simply because they get lazy or careless about note taking, or forget what you said wasn’t for publication. In the rare case, an off-the-record comment can contain information that blatantly contradicts a case that you might be trying to make. Granted, this happens more in hard news stories, but even in the business world, a lot of inside information or a slip of the tongue can move things in another direction, the direction you didn’t want go.

If clients have clear messages or talking points beforehand, and even do a mock interview just to get comfortable with the process, you won’t have this problem most likely. If you are unclear of what you need to say in a particular discussion during an interview or in answering a question that seems potentially loaded, it’s okay to say, “This isn’t for attribution, but let me give some background here.” The difference between saying that and going off the record is significant. Your PR person will and can often speak for you in this framework, usually before or after the media is done talking to you and the media source needs some follow-up information or clarification.

Most clients however do not want their PR peeps speaking for them on the record. Still, others will designate them to be the spokesperson for the company, or a division, or in the case of serious family or personal matter, they will strongly need someone to handle the talking. Make sure you establish this responsibility early in your working relationship.

Looking at the public relations issues related to General McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone magazine makes for a pretty great case study in how not to conduct an interview — and to know when not to go on the record, let alone off it. It’s simply amazing Michael Hastings, the reporter, had as much access as he did (the military aid/flack who set this up has also filed his quitin’ papers, it turns out). As noted in the Huffington Post online today, McChrystal’s sentiments about President Obama and the perceived failure of the president’s Afghanistan war strategy were a serious negative the military media handlers should have protected against — providing they acknowledge that they are serving their Commander-in-Chief, the president elect. The Huffington Post reports:

Michael Hastings, who wrote the profile of General Stanley McChrystal for Rolling Stone, said today that he wasn’t quite sure why the general gave him the near-total access that led to the publication of explosive comments that brought about McChrystal’s resignation.

Speaking on the phone from Afghanistan to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Hastings said he think the decision speaks to McChrsytal’s often reckless behavior:

“It was a sort of natural kind of recklessness that General McChrystal had, which has been with him through his entire career, as I understand it. And inviting me in, was a obviously a risk, as it always is when you invite a journalist in.”

DUH!

Now the military has lost a dedicated life-long general and the White House has lost another round in defense of the escalation of the conflict in, what is it they call this forlorn place with trillions of dollars in minerals and poppies, the graveyard of nations?

Reckless or candid, the McChystal comments/debacle underscore how wrong things can quickly go. The PR lessons are many and at some point, we’ll return to them again when the friendly fire has cleared and it’s safe to armchair analyze the fallout.

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

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Looking for new ways to promote your business?

How about trying an old tactic in a new way?

That’s what smart PR and Marketing folks are doing, with great success.

Try One of the Best PR Tactics

“While daily newspapers continue to struggle, a portion of the publishing industry is not only surviving, it’s thriving. And yet community papers are often overlooked by marketers. This year in particular, community newspapers offered a major opportunity. As resources continue to get cut, many papers are increasingly turning to outside sources for content, including public relations agencies and trusted article-placement services. Marketers who are able to deliver compelling content and story ideas can take advantage of the loyal audience, hyper-local focus and popular online presence that community papers provide.” – David Olson, ARAnet Inc.

(Thanks to Marketing Sherpa for the quote.)

Make Sure That the Paper’s Demographics Match Your Target

According the Newspaper Association of America, community newspaper readership is evenly split among men and women – a perfect 50% each. And very closely spread by age. Visit NAA’s Audience Profiles for more detailed demographics, including household income, education and occupation, among others.

How to Get Your Press Release Published

If you have local news, and can tell the story in a professional way, you may even have a good chance of getting it published exactly as you wrote the press release! Try this:

• Scan the paper for story style
• Write your piece in the style of the paper’s journalists
• Watch length – stay within their word count limits
• Include pictures!

Best wishes – send us an update if you try this. We want to hear about your experience.

What other PR tips work for you?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

 

In our last installment, we left you with a closing item about General Mills having to quickly snuff out a fake news release saying that the President of the United States (POTUS — in Secret Service talk) was investigating the company’s supply chain for alleged product recalls. The makers of many mainstream cereals like Wheaties (Breakfast of Lakers, er, Champions) and many other product lines jumped on the pseudo news release with a real one of their own, stating that it was indeed false and the authorities likewise would be investigating (but most likely not with POTUS, since he’s now up to his waist in Gulf oil and up to his nose in methane gas, plus holding the feet of BP officials to the fire of the “small people” along the gulf…. Careful, there are combustible elements here…).

This issue again calls for the critical importance of having a good crisis plan in place to handle a brand’s public reputation and good monitoring systems to track it. This kind of prank news can tank the stock of a publically traded company like General Mills and others within minutes (fortunately, the New York Stock Exchange was closed when the hokum release went out over PR Newswire). General Mills, however, did all the right things by quickly refuting the news release for what it was — in so many foodie words, phony baloney.

According to General Mills spokesperson, Tom Forsythe, quoted in the Twin Cities media, “We were the victim of a hoax. We found the false release and removed it within minutes, but even false information can still spread incredibly quickly on the Internet.” Got that right. The Internet some days seems built just for jackals and jackasses only. The lesson is that in the PR management of any company’s public face whether on the stock exchange or on the Web, the m.o. must constantly be, Remain Vigilant. What kind of protection or systems do you have in place to track what’s being said about you online, in social network channels, and elsewhere offline? This part of the PR world is often a highly specialized practice area and some firms and individuals are very good at doing it.

In this case, the jackal seemed to be attempting to manipulate the company’s stock price through the very traditional means of a PR distribution service that remains blameless in the incident. Seemingly undaunted by the fraud, the food maker’s stock rose 16 cents on Thursday, June 17, 2010 — a day after the false news, so no harm done. This time.

What’s curious about the event is that it occurred in the same week the NYSE halted trading of shares of the Washington Post, when the stock doubled in price in apparent erroneous trades — on the same day that the new “circuit breakers” to prevent such hanky panky were put in place. It’s a wiggly world and getting wigglier, especially with the global economy still bursting at the beltline and surrounded by all sorts of malodorous gasses while unseen forces try to game or crash the system.

A conspiracy theorist might have a real picnic with these two seemingly unrelated events at General Mills and the Washington Post. A conspiracy factualist — one who accepts that conspiracies do sometimes happen and not just in good movies, or good Old Europe where the small people are being trampled about by the cratering Euro — might simply just go make a sandwich, and remain vigilant.

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

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The last blog looked at why Public Relations should never be confused with “spin” and “hype.” Today’s edition serves up something more tasty and nutritious — one of the best resources enjoyed and highly appreciated by publicists, marketing communications folks, reporters and others. I’m talking about Help a Reporter Out — fondly known as HARO — among the many HARO-ites that utilize the FREE online service that allows reporters to post stories they’re working to PR people who then have the opportunity to pitch their clients as sources. Think of it as a killer social media PR app.

Conceived by social media guru and all around marketing/PR wiz, Peter Shankman in New York City (Google him, he’s kinda famous, is in-demand on the speaking circuit, occasionally outrageous and likes to skydive, train for the Ironman and other body-punishing disciplines), HARO is only two-plus-years old and yet its ranks have swollen to more than a 130,000 users both sides of the desk worldwide!

Three times a day, an average of 20-35 queries on subjects ranging from business to technology to life and leisure and other areas are delivered to your desktop with hungry reporters, producers and others from local newspapers to top-of-the-media-food-chain network news machines (potenially) in search of your clients. Herr Shankman floats a brief advertisement for various things with each post, from new and helpful books to professional services, cool, new or undiscovered products, and other stuff. These apparently work as powerfully as HARO’s matchmaking between PR people and media mavens. Plus they are usually a fun read since Shankman has the gift of a good scribe and the gift of gab.

There was/is a big PR news release distributor that charges a hefty fee for a similar service that doses exactly the same thing as HARO, making it out of reach for many small PR concerns with tight budgets and small staff. Not any more. HARO is a gift, don’t look it in the mouth. Subscribe today. As subscriber number 3,000-something, I have been to its mountaintop and placed a client on The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and other clients in a bunch of magazines, newspapers and websites. And I look forward to it dinging my inbox three times a day like a triple-A PR supplement that you just can’t do without.

Join the party. With the six-digit number of users, of course the competition has become fiercer — but so have the opportunities. The FREE service has been so successful that it was acquired last week by Vocus, a publicly-traded on-demand software company founded in 1992. The new buyer promises to keep it FREE and upgrade its utility even more. Stay tuned (did I mention it was FREE?!).

Now, from a fortified PR Tip to a real PR rip, in this “developing story” as they say in the real world that we will explore more on Friday: Someone today, June 16, 2010, put a phony news release on PR Newswire saying that the supply chain of General Mills — a publically traded company — was being investigated on orders from President Obama after several food product recalls. The phony news was reported by several large media orgs and later withdrawn. Talk about helping a reporter out. NOT.

Read the story here:

http://www.startribune.com/business/96474569.html?elr=KArksUUUU

We’ll chew on this more right after our Breakfast of Champions (go Celtics!) come Friday morning.

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

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Caterpillars spin cocoons. Spiders spin webs. Young kids sometimes spin to make themselves dizzy. Whirling dervishes definitely spin toward a higher power, and fitness clubs are fond of offering spin classes. But is PR spin?

Most of the public relations professionals that I know consider “spin” to be a pejorative term in their profession. It connotes fabricating something to influence public opinion. Facts, the troubling things that they can be, can’t be “spun” although they can be interpreted differently depending on how they are presented.

I think when people use the term spin, they really mean “position.” For example, a client once called and had an annual environmental report to release, complete with letter grades. “How do you want to spin these this year?” the client innocently asked.

What he really meant was, in what context should we put the grades out to the public, given that there were many variables that determined the grade score and numerous geographic locations that were being graded. The answer to his real question — How should we position the grades that reflect the realityof the environmental regions in question? — was relatively simple.

We would describe what each grade meant, but we would also (and more significantly) put the overall grade totals within the context of the region’s wider environment health. By positioning these markers against the larger issue, the public could get a genuine understanding about the general state of the environment, plus a good snapshot of which specific areas needed improvement, which ones had improved and which ones showed no change. Moreover, in the same news release, we would offer proven tips on how people could take personal responsibility on their own property, in their neighborhoods and their community to help make improvements in order to maintain a good grade, or to bump up the grade.

If we had approached this issue using the “spin” mindset, it would have given us license to play fast and loose with the facts and made the organization look disingenuous, if not duplicitous. Using spin, we could have resorted to subterfuge to gloss over the areas with lower grades, and we could have used hyperbole to inflate — or hype, another word often mistakenly used to describe PR — the area with strong B and A grades. The result would have been a much muddier environmental assessment that did not reflect the true status of the areas in question.

Still, pop culture continues to malign PR by equating it with spin or hype, most likely out of naïveté and general ignorance. The new “reality” show with celebrity Kim Kardashian reported today at PR Newser — a great little newsy and insightful PR trade website — is a good example of why I’m feeling a little dizzy at the moment.

The headline, “E! Launches PR Reality Show ‘The Spin Crowd,’ Produced By Kim Kardashian,” pretty much says it all. The show, allegedly about how to set up and manage red carpet events in Hollywood, readily falls so far from the realm of what most PR people do in many different capacities each day that it barely merits mentioning. And now that I’ve accidentally hyped it in this hallowed space, it’s time to go for a real spin and get some fresh air.

A quick show of hands: Who knows what an Editorial Calendar is?

Thought so. Nearly every magazine and many business newspapers produce an editorial calendar each year, targeting subjects that they will cover generally in any given week or month for the entire year— from regularly scheduled standing features and shorter stories to columns and other editorial content. Plus many, like the weekly Business Journals that are in many major cities, also feature a Special Focus section each week in which stories are assigned on the pre-selected topics. These can range from banking to health care to Human Resources to technology to green companies to minority-owned businesses to you name it.

The calendars are generally available as early as November and sometimes earlier in any current year. So, for example, for those reading this over the clang, sprits and gossip of your local coffee hang and having a hard time following my direction here, if you wanted to start planning for 2011 coverage, you could start it well before the new year rolls around.

These “edit cals,” as many of us call them in our breathless PR-speak (BPRS), present any company or PR practitioner a precise road map to follow. Follow it. Editors are always in search of companies to profile, experts to quote, or ideas to share about the many topics listed in the edit cal for any week or month. Pitching your story or expert two-to-four months in advance is recommended (although some magazines have lead times as long as six months or more!).

Most publications will post their edit cals online. But sometimes the myopic minions who post these magnificently helpful tools (MMWPTMHT) will place them NOT in or under any editorial section online, but in the Advertising section. Maybe they like to make a “Where’s Waldo?” sport of it, Where’s That Edit Cal?! Other publications will solicit your email address for you to obtain it. Go ahead, give it to them. You need the calendar more than you don’t want the aggravation of having your email sucked up by another online entity and having it bought and sold like so much college student information.

Edit Cals can be of great value as you execute your public relations line of duty. It is the print world’s way of saying, as the monster plant in “Little Shop of Horrors” says over and over again,” “FEED ME” (I prefer the 1960 Roger Corman-directed black-and-white movie version, featuring a very young Jack Nicholson as the masochist), if you’re following me here…

The first major summer holiday, Memorial Day, has come and gone. Only two more such long weekends will be here and vanished before you know it. Long Live Summer!

In deference to the nice weather in most parts of the country today (okay, threats are out there but so are comfy highs) — and to give my dear readers a break from my incessant PR expertise, informed rantings and sidetracked observations — this media savant would like to share another voice about “How to Manage Your Own PR: Ten tips for running a successful public-relations campaign.” I found these to be ideal for start-up or small companies that cannot at this early stage shell out for professional services yet.

Direct from the recent pages of Inc. magazine, these 10 pointers you are sure to find helpful (granted I have touched on some of them already but it’s nice for you to know, based on these tips from a big deal business source, that I am not a professional PR gasbag with absolutely no grasp of the basics).

In the future, meaning before fall is in the air, It would be great to address any questions you have about public or media relations, so feel free to email me at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or leave a Comment at the bottom of this blog and I’ll try to answer your questions in a future posting, when the grill (or is it another weekend kids’ soccer tournament?) is not calling under a blue sky with light winds, low humidity and few mosquitoes.

Enjoy the article!

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100501/how-to-manage-your-own-pr.html

Does your company have a crisis communications plan?

Regardless of size, every organization should have one for many reasons. First, you owe it to your constituents whether they are stakeholders, or users of the service you provide or the wiki you sell. Second, the public at large — and most definitely the news media — will demand to see responsible and swift action on your part to properly inform what is happening should a crisis ensue.

It’s hard not to think about what a good crisis communications plan could do for a company like Beyond Petroleum, which for the moment is deeply mired in its own PR oil slick down in the Gulf of Mexico. Undoubtedly they have such a plan, so why did it fail? Or why is it fialing? And it’s failing every hour that its underwater video footage runs parallel to the talking heads on TV and online at pick-any-site. Or is this simply a case where no amount of crisis planning can stem the petro tide of this really bad news?

Moreover this environmental tragedy has now become a PR problem all the way to the Obama White House and will spill into the fall elections most likely (although note here how the use of “spill” is appropriately used; if BP were more forthcoming, it would never have issued such a dainty word as “spill” to describe the rupturing, spewing, unrelenting gusher of oil that is flooding the gulf like a Biblical plague, and the news media would not keep re-enforcing its use by repeating it like a bad sheep mantra —“Ba Ram Spill” time and time again).

Let’s just skim the slimy surface of this issue for a moment and count five of the subtle and not-subtle ways the alleged crisis communications platforms splintered and fell into the goo:

1) Get the facts right, right away. The number of gallons of oil spewing into the gulf changed ridiculously in the first weeks of the event, soiling BP’s oily credibility right out of the pipe. Start with a bigger number, it’s easier to peel back to a smaller one once you have figured out the accurate amount blowing out of this voilcano.

2) Don’t toss the blame around. While BP has said it will do all that it can to contain the mess and compensate its victims (at least the human ones), they should have made some attempt to assume some overall responsibility for the problem in front of the congress and out in the gulf communities rather than saying or implying the other companies working on the rig should share the blame. Of course they should. But show some leadership, it has merit and demonstrates good faith, such as it is.

3) Make sure your short-term remedy is not worse than the long-term problem. A few stories generally outside of the mainstream media have covered the dispersants used to break up the oil and how it is allegedly sickening workers who have been exposed to it. Here again is another part of the PR disaster, a second head of the hydra, which could well expand in the days ahead, causing more trouble for company execs who just want their life back.

4) Don’t get punked online. Have you heard about the fake BP Twitter Feeds that have been polluting the cybergulf? Where were the company’s viral watchdogs to prevent these from even being up more than 20 minutes or more?

5) Work the crisis plan —and if the plan isn’t working, begin anew. Immediately. I’ve heard a variety of adjectives and expressions used to describe the PR effort and the people behind it and they range from “Neandrathals” to “a PR disaster” to “end of its PR rope” to “staining BP’s reputation” and many, many more. I have also read that the company is buying full-page ads as part of its PR plan. But the public, growing more cynical by the gallon of BP gas they don’t pump into their vehicles, is wise to paid media. They know and expect these mea culpa ads to appear but they are not in the end an effective way to handle the many challenges this crisis demands.

So what would you do?

It’s well established in Dr. John Gray’s best-selling book, Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, that males and females communicate differently when trying to relate to each other on different levels. While it’s a slippery slope in the universe of communications to equate this gender-based metaphor to the public relations arena, slide with me for a moment as we slip into the Twilight Zone where what you say to the public or your target market may not be heard the way you intended it to be…..

You may have hammered out your message for your latest news release on Thor’s mighty anvil, or poured over it with your PR contact until you were both soaked in sweat (sorry it’s summer — and I am out of old Greek god references). You might have trained to handle the tough questions on TV with smart sound bytes until you broke the retainer budget for the month. But something went wrong: You were not heard right.

Maybe a nuance was missed. Maybe you used a word or expression that doesn’t play well in one part of the country but works just fine in your backyard. Maybe you simply mis-framed what your message was and now you are force to play the “I misspoke” card, or resort to “let me try and rephrase that” line. And that’s okay…. happens all the time. But it doesn’t have to.

It wasn’t what you really said that made your bucket bottom fall out, it was how you were heard. Language is tricky. Communicating is a highly dynamic and fluid situation. Always consider your word choices wisely. Make your verbs the right ones, the verbiest, you might say. Can you pen something differently so that it gets heard right the first time?

Turn the tables and consider how your message will fall across that greater distance — and it is a kind of Twilight Zone — between you and the object of your communications. Your choice of words might suit the aims and intentions of whatever it is you are trying to convey. But how people hear it and more importantly, how they relate to it, is ultimately what counts.