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Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Recently, PRSourceCode released some interesting data from a survey they conducted with technology-focused journalists and PR professionals. The goal of the survey was to identify the best practices for building relationships with technology journalists.
The survey revealed some significant and useful insight. One area that I found particularly interesting was an examination of the methods PR pros rely on to pitch journalists versus the ways journalists prefer to be pitched.
According to the survey, the top methods used by PR practitioners to pitch journalists include:
- Email – 100%
- Phone – 70%
- Twitter – 42%
- Comments on journalist’s blog – 23%
- LinkedIn – 15%
On the flipside, the top methods preferred by journalists to receive pitches are:
- Email – 99%
- Phone – 43%
- LinkedIn – 35%
- Twitter – 32%
- Comments on their blog – 13%
Notice that pitching journalists through LinkedIn is the fifth most-used method for PR pros while journalists have indicated that LinkedIn is their third most-preferred method for being pitched.
I’m connected to a number of journalists on LinkedIn and comment as appropriate on their LinkedIn updates. But admittedly, I’ve never used LinkedIn to pitch them. Email and phone will always be the go-to methods for reaching out to journalists, but after seeing the survey results I’m going to seriously consider LinkedIn as well. My one caveat would be to ensure that journalists I regularly pitch have indicated that it is OK to use LinkedIn as a channel for pitching.
Figuring out the most effective way to communicate is a key factor in the success of any relationship and the same holds true for relationships PR practitioners build with journalists.
For more information and to download the full report, visit the PRSouceCode website:
www.prsourcecode.com/2013TopTechcommunicators.
We live in a world of communication overload. I know that I get overwhelmed managing two email addresses, a Facebook account, Twitter account, Google+ and a LinkedIn account. I receive thousands of messages each day across these platforms, but realistically there are not enough hours in the day to read them all. So the question is, how do people select what to read?
I had the opportunity to attend a PRSA event titled, “Social Media Writing Bootcamp.” During the session, led by Ann Wylie, a communications and social media guru, we learned the reasons why people read and share via social media and tips for being heard. Because there are so many messages suffocating individuals, people pick what they will read based on two questions:
- What’s in it for me?
- What do I have to do?
The majority of readers select and share information that is interesting, entertaining, helpful or funny. As social media writers, we need to develop content that is relevant, interesting and easy, in order to be heard. I’ve outlined some tips Wylie shared during her session below.
- Be Relevant. To be relevant, be an informer. Wylie suggests sharing tipsheets, studies, white papers speeches and webinars. Social media channels should not just be a venue for distributing press releases. In fact, that should be a small portion. Most posts should be about the reader, use “you”, and focus on how-to guides.
Using numbers in the headlines can also help drive traffic. Have you ever noticed how websites like Buzzfeed always use odd numbers in catchy headlines? Apparently there is method to their madness. Odd numbers do better.
Wylie also shared the 70/20/10 test. This means that 70 percent of your Twitter content should be sharing tips and tricks. 20 percent should be joining conversations, introducing people, answering questions and commenting on other posts. Only 10 percent should be “chirping” or talking about yourself, whether it is a company or an individual. For example, tweet like JetBlue:
@JetBlue: If you’re traveling today, be sure to check your flight status. Weather in the Northeast is causing delays. http://bit.ly/jbalert
- Be Interesting. Social media posts need to be interesting, catchy and thought provoking. Wylie suggests writing in the V.O.B., voice of the blog, not the voice of the company. You want posts to have a personality versus being corporate speak. A good exercise is to decide what that voice will be, and be consistent. Are you the favorite uncle? Jon Stewart? Anderson Cooper? A good test is to read your tweet after saying, “Hey! Did you hear?”
Wylie pointed to the FBI as a great example. Most companies will not have content as engaging as the FBI, but you can learn from their catchy phrases. Three tips for tweeting like the FBI? Find the drama, push the verb and choose interesting nouns. Here’s an example:
@FBIPressOffice: Con Artist Who Scammed Nuns Gets His Due: How a New Jersey man defrauded an order of nuns and others out of mo… http://1.usa.gov/15ubCi6
- Be Easy. The last tip is how readers decide if they’ll click based on how much effort is required. To help elevate your posts, cut through the clutter and make your posts and blogs easy to scan. You don’t want readers to have to work to view your content. Blogs and online material should be clear and concise. The easier your tweet is to read, the more likely you’ll get picked up in a sea of social media messages.
Ragan.com does a great job of publishing blog posts that are short and easy to scan. The headlines are also catchy and include odd numbers. Here’s an example:
5 signs PR is the wrong career for you
There were many other takeaways from the social media bootcamp and if you have an opportunity, I’d highly recommend attending a future session. As PR professionals, we are tasked with constantly learning, improving and adapting to our changing communications culture. It is great to have professional resources like PRSA to help with continued education and provide a forum for exchanging ideas.
What are your tips for posting to social media channels?
Today marks my first anniversary as a full-time employee at Communiqué PR. Although I interned with the company off and on throughout my time at the University of Washington (go Huskies!), transitioning from interning to working full time has provided a few valuable lessons. For anyone embarking on their first year in the industry, or in the professional world in general, here’s some of what I’ve learned.
Say yes to everything new that comes your way. At Communiqué, I have a wide range of responsibilities, and have had the opportunity to work with many different clients, businesses and technologies. This diverse experience keeps things interesting and allows me to figure out about which part of PR, and business, I’m most passionate. Starting out, it’s certainly tempting to stick to what‘s comfortable and that which you’re explicitly chartered. Taking on new, unfamiliar projects can be intimidating. However, I encourage anyone just starting out to say “yes” to new tasks. When you’re beginning your career, saying “yes” to every opportunity to learn and experience something new can only help.
Accept criticism. It can be a little intimidating to have multiple voices chime in about a project on which you’re working. However, rather than getting discouraged by this process, I’ve learned to truly value feedback and criticism. When editing a press release, for example, looking carefully at what colleagues have modified is an education in itself. Just like when in school, you want to improve your work with time, not remain static. Criticism can often produce inspiration, especially in a creative atmosphere. Learn to love the red marks.
Take advantage of your colleagues’ experience. When you’re new to a field, instances often arise in which you feel overwhelmed and underprepared. A quick five-minute conversation with a coworker about how he or she has handled similar situations can be very enlightening. Coworkers can also be a source of advice and coaching outside of daily tasks. I’ve received invaluable guidance from everyone at Communiqué PR about career direction, networking, apartment hunting—you name it. Your colleagues have likely experienced similar challenges and opportunities, and therefore have a wealth of information and insight.
It’s been an incredible year with Communiqué. Working with our team and clients is a rewarding and educating experience. I’m excited for what the next year will bring and what lessons I’ll come away with in another 12 months’ time.
In order to celebrate one of our colleague’s embarking on a journey to San Francisco, the whole Communiqué PR team recently visited Seattle’s Fremont Brewing Company. It was my first time there, but before I even walked through the door, I could feel the energy from the outdoor seating area. It was full of smiling people enjoying a glass of beer on a sunny summer evening not far from Lake Union.
Picture Courtesy of Fremont Brewing Company
While we were appreciating the atmosphere and, of course, cold glasses of beer, something in our conversation sparked a debate. We noticed that there were no signs outside the brewery to identify it as the Fremont Brewing Company. The only identifier was the label printed on the glass. So why wasn’t the label on a large sign outside the building, informing Seattle of this amazing spot? As a student studying marketing and an aspiring PR professional, I was confused. I know that I haven’t been in the business long, but this goes against what I have learned about marketing. Businesses usually aim to gain exposure in order to create a strong brand, which then influences people’s purchasing decisions. However, Fremont Brewing Company didn’t even have a sign – how could this build a brand with a clearly strong following?
Lucky for us, we discovered we were sitting next to the owner, Matt Lincecum. Naturally, we asked about the lack of signage. I was particularly intrigued because I drive past the brewery every night on my way home from the office. On more than one occasion, I’ve looked for a sign to connect a name to this spot that never fails to draw a crowd (even on a cloudy day).
Matt shared his reasoning behind this: The lack of signage sparks people’s curiosity about the brewery and instantly creates an exclusive feel that makes people want to stop by and become a part of it. As he explained this, I realized he had executed this unconventional approach perfectly. I personally and completely fell into Matt’s trap! I constantly mention the “mysterious place” to my friends, wanting to know what was drawing in such a crowd, and suggesting we try it out.
My next question was, if you didn’t happen to pass the brewery, how would you know it existed? The answer in the case of Fremont Brewing Co. is, according to Matt, word of mouth. Matt has harnessed the power of customer references to succeed in a growing industry in which there is plenty of competition.
After seeing the prosperity of Fremont Brewing Company, I have a few questions about the approaches I’ve learned in my marketing classes. Clearly, there are different paths to successfully marketing a business and creating a strong brand. Matt’s unconventional approach, disregarding signage and traditional marketing, has been hugely successful – the constant crowds outside of the brewery are a testament to this. So the question becomes, if you have a well-received and successful product, service or business, do you need to spend time and effort gaining exposure? Or can word of mouth and intrigue suffice? Please share your comments below – we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
On a separate note, all of us at Communiqué PR – now that we’re fans and likely regular visitors – would like to thank Fremont Brewing company for a great evening and especially Matt Lincecum for sharing some of his business tips. If you are ever looking for a PR team to further enhance your already successful word-of-mouth approach, we’d love to work with you.
Over the course of my communications career – too many years to mention, practicing in both agency and in-house environments – I am often surprised by the lack of communication among communications professionals. While we strive to develop strategic and effective communications for outward facing audiences, all too often we fail to communicate within our own organizations.
Today we know that for any company to be successful it needs to clearly communicate its brand and culture to its employees. By doing so, companies can provide an understanding of expectations and encourage greater individual autonomy within the organization. The effort to communicate – not just from top to bottom, but laterally – helps to improve employee morale and productivity, positively impacting the company’s bottom line.
Even if a company thinks it has the best intentions for encouraging communication and collaboration, it sometimes encounters barriers that prevent the sharing of information among peers. While the list of challenges to an internal communications effort is long, some of the worst offenders include territoriality over projects or activities, rivalry in competitive environments that pit teams or individuals against one another, and a general lack of motivation to communicate with peers that we may not know as well as others or have contact with regularly. Additional barriers to sharing and receiving information include personal values, generational and personality differences, gender and unrelated “noise” from individual personal lives such as family responsibilities, looming financial and social obligations, and the like.
While there is no “one size fits all” solution to the challenges impacting internal communications, here are a few tips to kick-start your effort to create an environment that encourages communication and collaboration:
Set the Tone During the Hiring Process
Before my first day at Communiqué PR, my bosses encouraged me to read the agency blog and provided expectations and historical information about the company that helped me to better understand the culture within the organization.
Talk it Out
During my first week, I enjoyed valuable 1:1 meetings where I was given with the agency’s mission and vision statements, reinforcing my understanding of the agency’s culture. During the meeting I received an individualized Performance Effectiveness Plan that outlined my responsibilities and allowed me to set specific, personal goals. The 1:1 meetings continue on a weekly basis, allowing me to revisit goals with my supervisor and to communicate any work-related concerns I might have. It’s my meeting and I set the agenda.
As a manager, I also believe it’s important to share with members of my teams the “bigger picture” objectives for the clients with whom we’re working. Limiting my colleagues’ knowledge to only “need to know” information encourages distance rather than engagement. Sharing broader objectives encourages individuals to be creative and feel confident exploring and suggesting strategies and tactics that are valuable to our overall effort.
Meet Your Team
Meetings are not a new concept, but in an agency environment where client service takes priority, sometimes internal communications get lost at the bottom of our to-do lists. Team meetings need to remain a priority. At Communiqué PR, we hold twice-monthly management and team lunch meetings during which everyone has the opportunity to share information about client activities and receive updates on agency business. Often, these discussions generate valuable brainstorming sessions among members and shed light on opportunities and challenges that may not have already been considered.
Get a Little Closer
Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt; familiarity can encourage collaboration where it might otherwise be lacking. Get to know your peers during informal company-sponsored events and social activities. If your company doesn’t already have a plan in place for fun, team-building activities, offer to take ownership of planning these and encourage your peers to participate. Take a colleague out for coffee and learn more about their background and values. Building relationships with one another makes us more likely to offer help to a colleague when it’s most needed – none of us is in this game alone.
Use Your Tools
Technology has provided excellent tools for internal communications. The most obvious and a great way to back-up verbal communications is to send an email. Additionally, collaboration tools such as Smartsheet, help our team to organize, coordinate, prioritize and delegate client activities and company business.
Celebrate Your Success
Last but certainly not least, take time to celebrate your successes – no matter how small. Did you get that certain writer to respond to your pitch with interest? Success! Did the story actually get placed? Success! Did the client actually compliment you for a job well done? Success! When your colleagues are successful in their efforts, celebrate with them. Showing your interest in the efforts of your colleagues will go a long way in building relationships that ultimately result in better collaboration and communication and success for your company.
For several years we have heard a familiar refrain: Print journalism is on the decline, large news organizations are struggling, and much original reporting and storytelling is shifting to online-based outlets and blogs.
In mid-August, though, news broke that AOL planned to close a number of its Patch blogs, which had promised to deliver news and content on a hyper-local level. By the end of that week, the company had closed 150 of these blogs and laid off somewhere in the vicinity of 500 writers. The move may be an important step toward profitability for Patch, but it was jarring to see so many blogs shut down at once, especially when they have often been billed as the future of journalism.
Certainly, the fate, good or bad, of Patch doesn’t indicate that the role of blogs in reporting is suddenly on the decline. But it is a reminder that the media industry is constantly changing – and even areas considered new and trendy aren’t safe. What does this imply for public relations professionals?
Primarily, it means that beyond just pitching story concepts, PR teams need to be prepared to generate original content on behalf of their own companies and clients, and proactively push this content out more than ever.
At Communiqué, we’ve had success creating and distributing content in a number of ways. Here are a few places to start:
- Stay on top of editorial trends. With the closing of so many Patch sites, what are the other avenues we should be pursuing as PR professionals? Many cities and neighborhoods have their own hyper-local news blogs. Seattle’s own Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, for example, is thriving, and it continues to be an incredible source of neighborhood-level news and content. Sites like these prove the hyper-local news model can work very well.There are also some very interesting developments in the mobile space, like Quartz (QZ.com), a news site entirely optimized for mobile consumption. It’s very new – formed by Atlantic Media Company in 2012, and its staff covers business and economic trends. In the last year, it has picked up some heavy hitters in journalism, a sign of optimism for mobile-optimized news outlets. Then there’s Medium, a relatively new project from former Twitter CEO Ev Williams. Medium lets users create their own articles, short- or long-form, which are shared among both registered users and guests on Medium.com. It provides a simple online writing and editing interface, but is geared more toward thoughtful, cerebral writing than other services like Blogger. It also links with Twitter accounts, which can help raise the profile of your CEO or other leadership interested in authoring articles.
- Maintain, curate and share your own blog. It’s fairly standard for businesses to maintain a blog these days. Given how quickly the media environment can change, particularly online, maintaining a well-curated company blog can be a strong way to keep your message visible, controlled and positive. But if no one reads it, is it really helping? To be successful, you’ll need your team to share blog posts with stakeholders including journalists, customers and your own employees. That means it is critical that you…
- …Don’t fall asleep at the social media wheel. Blogs may come and go, but social media user-ship and influence continues to rise. The obvious choices – Twitter and Facebook – remain strong engagement, marketing and public relations tools. But don’t ignore other social media opportunities to share your content. LinkedIn has recently expanded the ways that companies and “influencer” users can post original articles. We’ve previously discussed this here. Other services, like Storify, let users create stories based around social media usage. And, while Google Plus may not be the trendiest platform this year, sharing your content on Google’s social network can help your content place higher in search results, making it a useful and relevant tool for all of us in the PR industry.
- Pitch bylined articles. Pitching contributed and bylined articles to editors is a tried and true PR tactic. It’s something that we have had continued success with at Communiqué PR, and we’ve seen the benefits for thought leadership and visibility for our clients. Pitching well-developed, thoughtful and timely pieces helps position your company as a leader and your PR team as a trusted source of information and content for reporters and editors.
- Be creative! More and more, PR teams are being asked to be the creative minds behind content, and that means thinking like an editor. What do people want to read? Sometimes, this means using visual content to your advantage, whether on your own blog or when pitching stories to media. This may mean developing click-through photo galleries, or pitching stories in the “listicle” format popularized by sites like Buzzfeed and Mashable.
The ever changing media landscape can create many challenges for PR teams, as we all know. Keeping track of the latest outlets, beats and blogs is hard. But each day, there are new opportunities to create and share content, like those detailed above. Staying on top of these opportunities is an exciting proposition for all of us at Communiqué PR!