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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.
At Communiqué PR we are on a quest to be the strongest PR agency in Seattle – in more ways than one. How? By challenging ourselves to do 100 consecutive push-ups, which we referenced in Monday’s post on sparking creative culture.
For this challenge, we’re talking real, on-your-toes-not-on-your-knees push-ups. Our training began a few weeks ago and almost immediately, all of us saw improvement in the number of push-ups we could do. It will still take some time before we can do 100 consecutive push-ups, but we’re well on our way.
Our push-ups challenge got me thinking that there are a few connections between building a solid PR program and working toward 100 consecutive push-ups:
PR, like push-ups, requires discipline and commitment. You can’t get to 100 push-ups through slipshod or one-off training. Despite deadlines, meetings and other potential conflicts, we’re following an ambitious training program and have set aside 15 minutes three times a week to train together to meet our common goal. Similarly, an effective PR program requires buy-in and commitment from all levels of the organization. And, a press release or a tweet here and there does not a PR program make. In order to build awareness for your brand, company or product, you need a solid story, a steady drum beat of news/content, and proactive media outreach. You also need to be tenacious and be creative in working around challenges that might keep you from meeting your objectives.
PR, like push-ups, takes time. Just like getting to 100 consecutive push-ups isn’t going to happen overnight, it takes time to nurture an effective PR program. In our experience, clients who view PR as a long-term commitment versus a one-project activity see the best results. Just as building up the muscles in your arms, shoulders and chest happen over time, building relationships with the media and industry analysts, and securing articles require a commitment of time. A single PR activity, like a press release, will garner results in the short-term. However, if you want to stay top-of-mind with the media and key audiences over the long haul, you need to string together a series of PR activities, press outreach and campaigns.
PR, like push-ups, should be part of an integrated program. Push-ups will strengthen your upper body and your core, but if you want to improve your overall fitness, you need to incorporate other exercises as well. Similarly, to effectively generate awareness and recognition for your company, brand or product, PR should be part of a comprehensive communications strategy which may also include search engine optimization (SEO), social media and marketing communications. Depending on your industry and target customer, an analyst-relations program should also be part of the mix.
Just as we believe that sticking to our program and training together will enable us to meet our goal of doing 100 consecutive push-ups, we also believe that engaging a trusted PR partner, investing in PR and executing against a strategic PR plan will garner results.
For more on perfecting your push-ups, check out Man Vs. Weight’s 113 Killer Push Up Variations and Exercises.
We’ve all been there. It’s 3 p.m. and you’ve hit a wall. Your creative juices are no longer flowing and it seems like every sound, sight and smell is a distraction. But plodding through an eight-hour work day with no breaks doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get more done. In fact, many studies suggest you are more productive and creative with breaks.
According to an article in Ragan’s.com, “Survey says most PR pros eat lunch at their desks,” 69 percent of public relations professional eat lunch at their desk. That means that 69 percent of PR pros are missing out on a natural break in the day to recharge. I think that the numbers are likely very similar in many other professional services organizations. Of course, there are days when everyone needs to power through, but you can actually increase productivity by taking a break.
I’ve noticed that if I am hungry or tired or mentally drained, I make more mistakes. I’ve made it a point to take time during the day for a walk, run, lunch or errands to help step away from the computer. I often have some of my most creative thoughts away from my desk. I can then incorporate these ideas with a fresh perspective when I return. To this end, an article in Huffington Post, “Nap Benefits: 6 Reasons To Snooze On National Napping Day,” suggests that napping improves your alertness, learning and memory, creativity and productivity. Researchers discovered that after napping there is a burst of activity in the right hemisphere, the side of the brain linked to creativity.
At Communiqué Public Relations, we are continuously looking for new ways to energize our culture and inspire creativity. One of our team members spearheaded a pushup challenge where every other day at 3:30 p.m., we follow a program to get us to 100 pushups! I know that I’ve made some great progress. It is not only a fun team-building activity in which we have the option to participate, but it is a great break in the afternoon. I return to my desk rejuvenated (and a little sore) and ready to muscle through the rest of my to-do list.
No matter what you like to do with your “break,” make a point to take one. It is good for your mind, body and your job.
If you are a PR pro that values productivity and creativity, and are interested in getting to 100 pushups (totally optional), we’re hiring! Visit our careers page for more information.
One of Communiqué PR’s major communications objectives for our clients is driving editorial coverage. Editorial coverage can help secure exposure for your client and provides a chance to engage with journalists, who can provide a third-party (often expert) opinion on what a client does.
The tactics used to secure editorial coverage vary, but a few online services have become popular as a way to connect businesses with journalists. Below are a few communications services available to PR folks and journalists alike that promise to connect sources with journalists.
Founded by Peter Shankman, HARO has been around (initially as a Facebook group) since 2008. Vocus currently owns the service. HARO works by sending out an email blast to subscribers three times a day, organizing journalists’ current source needs by coverage area/ industry. Journalists submit queries about a story they’re currently covering (e.g., looking for companies who have found success using predictive analytics), and provide contact information to which a source can reply. HARO uses a freemium model—the initial service is free, but subscription plans offer additional benefits.
Unlike HARO, ProfNet (started in 1992) is not a free service for sources. However, similarly to HARO, ProfNet also uses emails with queries from journalists and others requesting sources for stories or other projects on which they’re working.
Rather than using an email blast, SourceBottle allows users to search its website for journalist queries matching a client’s story and/or expertise.
For more information on this service, check out the blog post we recently wrote about MuckRack. The service is membership-based and incorporates journalists’ Twitter feeds so that you know when a journalist is writing about a client’s company, industry or competitors.
The development and growing popularity of each of these services speaks to how the media and PR industries continue to change and evolve with technology.
Do you use a service like the ones above to connect with media? What is your experience with these types of services?
As an intern at Communiqué, I am only in the office three times a week. Because of this, I must effectively communicate with our team while I am in the office. As with most workplaces, our main source of communication at Communiqué is email. Because of this, we have a large amount of email coming through our inboxes each day –most people can relate.
Because of the large volume and my limited hours, it is critical that my emails both catch people’s attention and effectively communicate their message to the team, since oftentimes I won’t be in the office to follow up right away.
In the pursuit of understanding how to most effectively craft emails, I came across “Write E-mails That People Won’t Ignore” on the Harvard Business Review. This search also led me to find other useful suggestions at Forbes and CBSNews. Based on these resources, I compiled a list of best practices for drafting an effective email.
1.) Stick to standard capitalization and punctuation. Harvard Business Review
When writing an email, conventions may be one of your last priorities. Punctuation and grammar might seem irrelevant and time consuming in the midst of a busy day, but they are important when drafting an email. If you choose to skip this step, your email can come across as rushed and careless, which will affect the way it’s received. If you weren’t willing to take the extra time to write your email with proper grammar, why would the recipient take their time to thoughtfully read it?
Additionally, punctuation and grammar are integral in conveying a message. If you neglect these conventions, the point of your email might get lost in translation – meaning you will probably need to follow up and clarify items, taking you a lot more time than you might have initially spent if you slowed down on your first draft.
1) When emotions rise, slow down. Forbes
If you receive a rude email from someone that gets you fired up, the best thing to do is ignore it for a while. Depicting tone in an email is extremely difficult and can lead to emotions escalating too quickly. Take a break from the thread to calm down and gain better perspective on the situation so that you don’t send something you will later regret.
2) Don’t resend unanswered mail. Forbes
In the PR industry, pitches are constantly being sent to journalists and reporters – and it isn’t uncommon that we don’t receive a response. If time passes and you don’t receive a response, do not forward the same exact email – if a reporter or journalist has already seen and deleted the email, this practice can be impersonal and spam-like.
Instead, try sending an email that says, “I know you’ve been busy, did you happen to get an opportunity to see the note I sent you about ___?” This is a respectful way to remind the recipient about the note, and gives them an opportunity to articulate their disinterest or interest.
This applies across the board, not only in PR. A polite note saying, “I’m bringing this to the top of your inbox because I know you’re busy and don’t want you to have to sift to find this. Have you had time to think about ___?” is an excellent way to gently remind someone about an action item or deliverable.
3) Keep the subject line relevant. CBSNews
If an email thread continues for a long period of time, chances are the subject line no longer matches the content of the messages. Take the time to change the subject line of the email thread to make it relevant to the current discussion. Not only will this help both you and recipients stay organized, but it will catch the attention of people who might file the email away not understanding the content of the thread or their involvement based on an inaccurate subject line.
4) Consider mobile viewers. Communiqué PR
Email is frequently checked on mobile devices rather than desktop computers. Having long pieces of text can be very daunting, especially when seen on a mobile phone screen. An email that is made up of long paragraphs and requires a lot of scrolling on a mobile device is likely going to be skimmed or ignored. Breaking up an email into shorter paragraphs, bullets, numbers and lists makes the text more approachable and easier to absorb—this applies to both mobile and desktop viewers. Considering what an email might look like on a mobile phone will help you design a message that gets to the point without disregarding important aspects.
Composing an effective email is extremely important – it’s a primary avenue for information around the world. Take the time to communicate your message effectively by considering the best practices given above.
For more helpful tips on emails view the CPR Blog:
We’ve all been there as PR professionals. You deliver a pitch to a reporter via email and then you…wait. And you wait a little more and then you send a follow up email. Still nothing. At this point, you realize you have to resort to a call down in hopes of capturing his or her attention, which is often dreaded by us PR professionals. Let’s be honest, none of us like to be greeted with gruff reporters who are on deadlines and don’t want to be bothered.
A similar sentiment can be said for communications to clients and colleagues. We often spend hours writing several emails back and forth when really, all that time could be replaced with a five-minute phone conversation. So why, in today’s day and age, are we so opposed to using a tool that once revolutionized the way we communicated?
A recent blog post from Harvard Business Review’s Dan Pallotta has an interesting take on picking up the phone. He says, “Just Call Someone Already.” Dan claims the telephone which was once an important and valuable domain of communication for exchanging ideas and information is now considered annoying. He claims that email exchanges allow us to avoid authentic communication and cause us to be less efficient and productive. Why spend time drafting emails, reviewing them to ensure they’re clear and that nothing can be taken amiss when we could just pick up the phone?
Dan notes that if you want to be innovative and take a risk, try calling someone with whom you have an issue to discuss, and if you want to be extra courageous, do it without sending emails to set up an appointment. Dan also says, when your phone rings, pick it up. I know I’ve been guilty of letting my phone calls go straight to voicemail, and rather than giving the caller a ring back, I sometimes address his or her needs via email.
However, when I do get up the willpower to pick up the phone, I find that it’s a much faster and personal way of resolving issues, making decisions, coming to agreements and even securing media interviews. Not only is it much more efficient, but I also feel a stronger connection to the person I’m speaking to than I would if I sent an email.
In today’s business world where we experience email overload on a daily basis, I know I would sure appreciate a phone call and the opportunity to replace some of my email interactions with human interactions.
As a young economist, Michael E. Porter wrote a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review in 1979 that ignited a revolution in the field of strategy. So compelling was his “The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy” that it helped inform and mold an entire generation of academic research and business practice, and stretched across nations, regions, corporations, and lately healthcare and philanthropy.
Porter initially postulated that the essential job of the strategist is “to understand and cope with competition,” the first force, but that managers often defined competition much too narrowly, limiting it to only direct competition. Competition, he asserted, goes well beyond established industry rivals. In fact, competition can include four significant other competitive forces: the bargaining power of buyers/customers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of potential new entrants, and the threat of substitute products or services. These extended rivalries are what define “an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.”
Michael also introduced the intense and benign nature of those competitive forces and how they affected return on investment and profitability. If, for example, the forces are benign, in fields such as software, soft drinks and toiletries, he surmised, many companies are profitable. If forces are intense, as they are in the airline industry, textiles and hotels, among many, almost nobody earns significant ROI. Industry structure drives competition, he insists, “not whether an industry produces a product or service, is emerging or mature, high tech or low tech, regulated or unregulated.”
How might this relate to your next campaign in the highly competitive PR industry? Porter offers that “The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulations. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious.”
Wise PR strategists will take that into account as they begin to build a relationship with a client. Just competing against the client’s biggest competitor will not be enough. The strategist must take a more global, 360-degree view of the market and its structure or structures to gain the upper hand. In Porter’s terms, for example, rivals Airbus and Boeing, and the airlines that place huge orders for aircraft, carry big weight, while the threat of new competition or the threat of substitutes, and power of suppliers, is weaker, or more benign.
Conversely, there was a fierce rivalry in his example of the photographic film industry, where Kodak and Fuji ruled supreme, until the birth of digital photography – where a substitute product then became the first strategic priority.
Wily PR strategists must study and determine the strength of each competitive force affecting their client’s industry or service. Is your client new to the game with a disruptive product or service? Or is it the veteran who must compete with the newcomer? What is the bargaining power among your client’s customers or potential customers within the given industry? How well do you understand them? Is a new, improved version or substitute about to derail your client’s product or service?
Pay attention to the five forces that shape business strategy. They can also help define and energize your PR strategy as you work to fulfill your client’s business objectives in a competitive landscape.