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From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
It’s a skill so seemingly simple that we often overlook its importance. For creative minds, brainstorming ideas might come as easy as breathing. But for the rest of us, sometimes it takes a little inspiration to get our juices flowing.
We’ve all been there—a deadline looming, our mind spinning and the coffee running low, and we just can’t put our finger on that perfect idea. As PR professionals, we constantly churn out strategic plans and counsel to reach our clients’ objectives. Whether coming up with a campaign concept, a topic for a column or inspired talking points, generating the idea(s) can often be the hardest part. Given this, I thought I’d share some tips that I’ve found useful when at your wit’s end:
1) Plan. What’s the (business) problem you’re trying to solve? When applicable, try to always first come up with the overall plan for your task. Arriving at the best answers requires asking the right questions. For example, if writing an article, first identify your audience, tone, purpose and other aspects. Having all the little things set in stone often makes it easier to come up with the more important part—the topic. Developing a solution is near impossible if you don’t first have a clear understanding of the problem.
2) Read. When I’m at a loss, sometimes it helps to take a little inspiration from others and just start reading. Industry blogs, news sites and other relevant materials can help you identify trends or play off of current topics—and can often be the key to arriving at that “aha!” moment.
3) Ask. Your colleagues are one of your best resources for effective brainstorming. Two heads are often better than one, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. And, when possible, brainstorm as a group. Thinking with multiple minds can often be much more effective than going solo, giving you a springboard off of which to bounce ideas and second and third opinions that help to guide your thoughts.
4) Think (strategically) outside the box. Don’t be afraid to let your thoughts stray a bit when brainstorming. Give yourself a time limit—say, 10 minutes—and just let your mind wander, writing down (if it helps) every thought that crosses your mind. As you think, your thoughts will begin to build on top of each other, expand and, hopefully, morph into something actionable. Once time’s up and you’ve thrown out all your thoughts, it also helps to go back and take a deeper look and try to find ways to connect them. Connecting and relating individual ideas often helps you come up with larger, better ones that can encompass multiple concepts at once.
5) Take a break. The saying “sleep on it” applies just as well to brainstorming. If you’re really struggling, often taking a few minutes away from the task at hand can give you the mental stimulation you need. Heading out for lunch, a walk around the block, or even a quick bathroom (or coffee) break can sometimes be enough to put you in the right state of mind.
No matter what your task, you can’t get anywhere without a good idea. Strategic thinking is the key to generating compelling content for any client. So, next time you’re not feeling creative, consider the above brainstorming tips to help you conjure up that winning idea.
What are your best tips for effective brainstorming?
Every few months, it seems, there is a dust up over the role of PR teams in editing articles on Wikipedia.
Most recently, several publications (notably Vice’s Motherboard) reported on the work of a firm devoted almost entirely to editing Wikipedia articles on behalf of various clients. When the firm’s work was discovered, many editors found themselves in hot water with the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia. Their clients, including several named by Motherboard in its article, found themselves unhappily facing negative press.
Situations like these are akin to unforced errors in sports—when an attempt to make a positive play turns into an unexpectedly negative situation (fumble!).
In an effort to maintain neutrality and accuracy and to avoid promotional articles, Wikipedia maintains fairly strict guidelines regarding who can edit entries. It specifically prohibits the conflict-of-interest issues that can arise when PR teams do not disclose their relationships with clients whose entries they are writing.
It is important for PR professionals to note that, to violate Wikipedia’s policies, you don’t have to actually write content that is misleading or inaccurate. You simply have to make edits on behalf of a paying client. Disclosing your relationship with that client can result in your edits being declined, while choosing not to disclose your position as a paid agent can have much more harmful consequences down the road.
For a project as large and unwieldy as Wikipedia, efforts to remain a trusted, neutral and accurate source of information for the public are critical to its success. Certainly, though, anyone who has researched a paper or an article knows that vague, incomplete or misleading articles are not uncommon. This can be frustrating when your organization or client is the one being misrepresented. Nonetheless, for the Wikipedia model to work and for PR teams to maintain their integrity, transparency is crucial.
Too many public relations crises are caused by a practitioner’s decision not to reveal his or her affiliation with a client. As more and more PR work moves into the digital sphere, where content can be scrutinized by a huge number of readers at any time, it is more important than ever to be transparent about the work of your PR team.
At Communiqué PR, one of our guiding values is to always act with integrity: “Our outcomes, and ultimately our successes, are driven by honesty and transparency.”
Good PR teams push for more transparency and accountability, not less, and work to build better trust in a company. When the opposite happens, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, it will create more PR headaches—not solve them.
To avoid this kind of unforced error, apply what we’ll call the “Wikipedia test” and ask yourself and your team:
- Am I appropriately disclosing my role as a PR agent?
- Will this action create long-term PR problems for my client, even if it solves an immediate issue?
- Am I helping to improve transparency and accountability for my firm and for my clients?
And, in the meantime, now might be a good time to brush up on Wikipedia’s guidelines.
Yesterday, in the midst of cramming for a midterm, my computer decided to freeze. Panicked, I ran through all the usual restart motions, but nothing seemed to work. I bolted down to the Apple store, stressing that my hours of work were gone due to this unexpected computer crash. As I walked into the busy store with no appointment, I braced myself for the long night of studying that was bound to follow due to this “crisis” and the large amount of people in the store. I was pleasantly surprised though when I was ushered to the Genius Bar after explaining my situation. The Apple employee ran a diagnostics test on my computer, located the problem, fixed it for the time being, and gave me the step-by-step instructions for how to fix my computer to avoid this problem in the future. What was even better was that this employee did all of this in a matter of 15 minutes. In this desperate time, I was reminded why I continue to buy Apple products.
After this experience, I got to thinking about customer service. We live in a customer-based world. It seems that no matter what business class I’m taking at school, whether it is advertising, finance, sales, etc., we are always being told that customer service is essential in the business world today. Customers are constantly looking at your product or service compared to your competitor’s, so why not save them the time of researching this and give them the added value they’re searching for. This competitive edge is easily attained by stepping up your customer service game.
PR Daily has some great tips for how to implement customer service within your own company.
First, additional training may be needed in customer service. It is important though that all employees set this as a priority. Customers will be confused (or you may even lose the customer) if all your employees are not providing the same level of service. The article points out a very important fact, “customer retention costs less than customer acquisition,” so put in that extra effort to keep your clients.
It is also important to encourage employees to resolve customer problems. Customers are more satisfied if they do not have to hunt down people higher up in the company to get their problems solved. Work with your employees to think of creative solutions to your customer’s problem. Clients will be much happier if solving their problem only takes one interaction with your company than many along the way.
Customers also value your company actually listening to them. Ask them questions about their experience and what you can do to improve upon it. Having an open dialogue is important, but actually acting on this feedback is what counts.
The final tip is looking at what other companies are doing. Even though a company may not be in your particular industry, you can still learn from their customer service programs. Some standout companies known for providing continual excellent customer service are Nordstrom, Amazon, Apple, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s. In summary, without your clients you don’t have a business. Keep them happy and you’ll keep their business and also attract more customers. Great customer service is always good PR for your company.
For other reads on customer service, refer to these posts on the Communiqué PR Blog:
After a Tesla Model S caught fire in early October, the company’s stock prices momentarily fell as the public became wary of the Tesla brand. Numerous blog posts and websites depicted the all-electric Model S engulfed in flames on a busy highway. The incident occurred after a piece of metal punctured the high-tech armor plating of the battery compartment. The event provided Tesla with a PR dilemma, but the company wisely addressed the incident head on, and eventually used the event to prove how safe the Model S truly is.
After independent testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, (NHTSA) the Model S was announced to be the safest car in history. But, the car fire led the public to believe otherwise. With the stock prices plummeting, Tesla needed to implement a PR strategy to drive the critics away. The information came from Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. From Musk’s Twitter, he linked a blog post that he wrote on the company website. In the blog, Musk mentioned facts that revealed the true safety of the car. The company, still in its infancy (selling more than 2,250 Roadsters since 2008 and an initial order for 6,500 of the Model S in October of 2011) has logged millions of miles with limited incidents.
Musk posted in his blog about the fire ratio of his electric vehicle compared to the other standard gasoline-powered cars. Musk pointed out that, “One for every 100 million miles driven in a Tesla” has resulted in a fire, “while one gas-powered vehicle catches fire for every 20 million miles traveled.”
Due to the popularity of the Model S, and the growing popularity of the electric vehicle, the event was not about to go unnoticed. This car fire threatened to be a press nightmare. Although the news came with minor consequences to shareholders and the view of the company, the CEO used this press spotlight opportunity to prove how safe his cars truly are. Tesla even went one step further to underscore their great customer relations by providing the affected owner with a loaner Tesla.
Tesla turned a situation that had the potential to end very badly into an opportunity to sell their product even harder. The lesson here is to not be overwhelmed during such an event. It is vital to address the situation and the concerns the consumers might have head on. By staying true to their product, Tesla’s PR strategy avoided a potential company crisis.
If you’re anything like me, the last thing you want to do is to spend 15 minutes or more on the phone or engaged in correspondence with a customer service representative via instant message or email. Let’s face it, by the time we’re reaching out to them for assistance—especially when we rely on their service for something critical (like access to streaming video so we can unwind after a stressful day), we’re already frustrated that we couldn’t easily resolve the issue ourselves and need immediate satisfaction.
This is often when the tedious questions begin. You know the ones I’m talking about: when some unsuspecting customer service representative robotically asks exactly the same questions that you already answered via the automated system that directed your service call to the representative in the first place. It’s times like these that I often practice my deep breathing skills and try to harness a Zen-like state, so that I won’t accidentally say something (or many things) unkind that might ruin that person’s day. It’s not really their fault, right? They’re just the unfortunate soul who stands between me and the final episode of “The Walking Dead” season three, and they don’t understand that if I don’t watch it now, I won’t be ready to watch the first episode of season four with my friends this weekend! OK, just breathe deep for 10 seconds….
This week I was thrilled to read about a customer service representative who just may have gone where no man has gone before—and to his company’s benefit. It started very innocently, when Netflix customer “Norm” requested assistance via instant chat for an issue he was having when streaming an episode of “Parks and Recreation.” Rather than receiving a generic “How can I help you?” response, Norm received the following: “This is Capt. Mike of the good ship Netflix. Which member of the crew am I speaking with today?”
What? Did that customer service representative just respond as a character that was possibly inspired by “Star Trek?” He did indeed, and immediately, Norm was on board the good ship and happily participating in a 16-minute exchange as Lt. Norm, who has an engineering problem to report. By the end of the interaction, Lt. Norm was not only satisfied, but entertained, and so happy with the interchange that he told Capt. Mike that the chat “happens to be the best customer service experience I think I ever had.”
The good news for the good ship Netflix didn’t end there, however, as the entire conversation was featured in a Reddit post titled, “Best. Customer. Service. Exchange. Ever.” After that, the conversation went viral, it has been picked up by numerous media outlets and, according to Reddit comments, someone claiming to be a Netflix CSR stated that customers are now starting chats looking for help from Capt. Mike.
Other Reddit reader comments expressed the unfortunate truth that in today’s era of highly controlled and scripted customer service programs, many companies would fire or at least reprimand a CSR for bringing such levity to the situation. In this case, we are all fortunate that Netflix is not one of those companies and that they trust their CSRs to use their people skills to create a positive experience, rather than relying on a stale script.
Ensuring that excellent service is provided to customers is critical to a company’s customer retention and brand reputation. It’s rare that any of us take time to compliment a company for a job well done, but if we’re unhappy with a service we receive, you better believe we want to talk about it. According to Sprout Social, 74 percent of consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchases. So, in today’s socially-networked world, bad word-of-mouth can cripple a company’s reputation.
The good news is, a bad experience or customer complaint can be turned into a positive customer experience and, in some cases, can turn a formerly unhappy customer into an advocate for your brand. According to Social Media Today, 95 percent of unhappy customers will return to your business if an issue is resolved quickly and efficiently. Or, in Lt. Norm’s case, when the issue is resolved with humor.
Even if you don’t have a Capt. Mike in your customer service department, providing excellent customer service can be achieved in simple ways. Here are a few best practices to consider:
1. Acknowledge the problem promptly and whenever possible, in real-time. Today’s consumers are more connected than ever and expect swift responses. According to social media expert Jay Baer, 42 percent of consumers who complain about a company through social media channels expect a response within 60 minutes.
2. Demonstrate that you care about the consumer’s complaint—and mean it. Start by actually listening to customers and letting them know you are concerned about their issue. By doing so, you demonstrate interest in what they’re saying and if they feel you care about them, they’re more likely to care about you.
3. Do your best to resolve the issue and make it better, even if it’s not your fault. Maybe the customer is actually wrong. The product works, but they aren’t using it correctly. That’s not the point. Going above and beyond for a customer is an investment opportunity with potential to reach far more customers and improve your brand’s perception.
4. Follow up. It’s often the smallest gestures that have the biggest impact. Following up after a problem has been resolved is a great way to ensure the customer is satisfied and it gives you an opportunity to let them know that you hope to keep their business in the future.
For further customer service inspiration, and a reason to smile, I recommend reading the entire exchange between Capt. Mike and Lt. Norm, which can be found here.
Over the summer, while I worked at Communiqué full time, I would receive upwards of 40 emails a day, and I’m just an intern. Emails are one of the most commonly used forms of communication because we now live in a world where large amounts of information need to be shared in very little time. Everything from scheduling to pitching to advertising can be done through email. With a strong emphasis on technology and efficiency in today’s world, emails appear to be everyone’s favorite mode of communication. What does this mean for old-fashioned mediums of communication such as the telephone? Is it a device of the past that will soon be forgotten?
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article discussing phone use in the world of business. Millennials, typically defined as people born between 1981 and the early 2000s, are constantly texting, messaging or emailing. Offices seem to be quieter with the constant ring of the telephone replaced by the gentle tapping of a keyboard. Some would argue that speaking on the phone is disruptive and email is not only the preferred way to communicate but also the only way they choose to converse. Kevin Castle, a 32-year-old chief technology officer at Technossus, finds his phone so bothersome that he unplugs it and places it in the closet. Is the phone that inferior to email?
Personally, I do not share the same hatred for the phone that Kevin does. Though I regularly use email and find that it is beneficial in its own way, I do think the phone offers things that emails fail to. I have always enjoyed speaking to people on the phone because it is more personal, easier to convey your message, and is more efficient when you are on a deadline.
This summer I did my first set of call downs. We had pitched a story to a large number of journalists and I was asked to follow up with them a few days later. Though I was intimidated before I began, I found that most people were direct and honest about their interest or lack thereof in the pitch, allowing me to quickly decipher what the next step would be. During this process, I reached one journalist who expressed interest, but had never received the initial email. It turns out his email address had not been updated on the website. Had I not called, we would have missed an excellent opportunity for our client.
After this experience, I realized the importance of the phone. It is easy to get wrapped up in technology and forget that the phone, a dated mode of communication, is still an effective one. After staring at a computer screen for the majority of their day, most people appreciate the personal interaction that the phone provides. It allows you to build relationships and catch errors that technology will not. Obviously, there are situations in which email is the appropriate method to use, however, phone skills should continue to be developed and practiced because the phone is a valuable tool that should be relied on and not forgotten.