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Insights for Leaders Navigating
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.

Results From ABC Legal Services: Driving Technology Innovation in the Legal Industry

We’re excited to share results from our work with one of our newest clients, ABC Legal Services. ABC Legal is the nation’s leading provider of process and court filing services and is the official process server to the U.S. Department of Justice. The company also owns Docketly, an appearance counsel provider that has created an efficient, cloud-based platform to connect attorneys and high-volume law firms.

Like many businesses in 2020, ABC Legal had to pivot operations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the company halted its process serving and partnered with its employees to assemble thousands of protective equipment kits that were distributed to its team nationwide. These kits helped the company resume process serving options safely and provide individuals with the legal services they need.

Prior to COVID, the legal industry has been historically resistant to adopt emerging technologies and change its traditional processes. ABC Legal has helped educate the industry and increase the availability of tools that allow everyone to have “their day in court.” As courts modernize and regulations evolve, ABC Legal continues to advance its technology and business processes to provide faster, easier and more reliable solutions to legal professionals and legal support to those who need it.

Since February, ABC Legal has created nearly 500 new roles to support the resurgence of the economy during the pandemic, and to continue increasing the availability of legal services. This impressive growth is a result of the company’s agility as a cloud-based solution and through its established use of legal technology and proprietary AI. 

We kicked off our engagement with the company in July to begin its public relations program and create a media presence. In the last several months, we’ve focused on executive announcements and proactive media outreach to raise awareness of the company within the legal industry.

 

Below is a snapshot of some of the coverage we’ve secured on behalf of ABC Legal thus far.

 

We’re excited to continue working with the team and help increase awareness of the innovation they are driving to provide more individuals with access to the justice system.

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Fostering Team Spirit and Connecting While Working Remotely

The social and emotional impact is not insignificant.

Our team has been working remotely since March 4. We are fortunate that we all transitioned to working from home without much disruption. Our IT infrastructure was already cloud-based, making the functional aspects of the transition seamless. And we have a highly functional team, made up of individuals who take pride in their work. They have proven their ability to maintain productivity and quality while working from remote locations.

However, as many teams have discovered during the past year, the more challenging aspects of working remotely have been the social and emotional isolation. The inadvertent connections, conversations and sharing of information (personal and professional) that happen naturally in the office, are harder to orchestrate when everyone is dispersed.

Here are a few of the things we’ve done to help navigate these remote pandemic times:

  • Morning Stand-up Meetings: Each morning we connect as a team via MS Teams. Pre-COVID, this was a 15-minute quick-to-the-point meeting. Each person would share his or her projects and deadlines for the day. Sometimes we would use extra time to brainstorm or discuss a particular challenge or campaign. Since working remotely, this meeting has evolved. While we all still talk through our project lists, we have extended the meeting and use the morning call to chat and catch up regarding topics beyond work. Discussion topics range from sharing weekend plans, TV/movie recommendations, current news/events, recipes, gift ideas, hiking suggestions, day-trip ideas, and much more. The meeting has helped fill a need to connect with each other.
  • Happy Hours: At the start of the pandemic there was a wave of Zoom Happy Hours. But after a day filled with Zoom calls, I was not compelled to jump on another video call, even if I had cocktail in hand. Yet I missed those “down time” gatherings with my colleagues. We tried unstructured happy hour Zoom calls with varying success. Then we learned about playing Codenames online. As a competitive, close-knit group, this was a great find. Our happy-hour gatherings took on new energy. We rotate the code spymaster and change up the teams from call to call. We conduct on average one Codenames/Happy Hour per month.
  • Holiday Challenges: We created a Spooktacular Halloween Challenge after learning about a Halloween Bingo game one of our clients created for its team. Lauren created a challenge list of activities. We would send in/share photos as we accomplished the task or activity. Each task had a point value. At the end of the challenge, Lauren tallied up the points. The winners – Megan, Christie and AnnMarie received prizes (e.g., Fran’s Halloween Gift Basket, Glassy Baby, etc.) shipped to their homes – and bragging rights! The shared photos generated lots of discussion and engagement across the team – and helped us all get in the Halloween/Fall spirit. The Holiday-themed Challenge is underway now!

 

Below are a few additional tips for creating social connection and mitigating some of the challenges of remote working:

  1. Be gentle and patient with yourself and others. It is a time of increased anxiety and tension for most of us.
  2. Take time to step away. Give yourself permission to take a walk or get a break. It is particularly challenging to maintain work/life balance when we are all working from home and our work is always present.
  3. As we are not visible to our colleagues, it can be helpful to communicate more often than we might if we were all in the space place.

 

What are some of the ways you are maintaining engagement with your colleagues?

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The Intersection of Earned and Social Media – Where the Magic Happens

We have written often in this blog about the value of earned media, but I’d like to dig a little deeper into how it can help better build your brand. How can you reinforce positive perceptions of a company, support media pitching efforts, and ultimately strengthen the value of media placements? Social media might be the answer, albeit not a quick fix. With time and consistency, effective use of social media in three ways can bolster your brand credibility and land you even more impactful media coverage.

First, according to Muck Rack’s most recent State of Journalism Study, more than half (59%) of journalists say they “usually” or “always” consult branded social media profiles when reporting on an organization, and 29% will “sometimes” check these profiles. Twitter remains the leading social media network among journalists at 85%, with LinkedIn being the platform they plan to spend the most time on after Twitter in the coming year. Therefore, an investment in content marketing and expanding your company’s social media presence may not only improve your ability to reach customers, partners and other stakeholders, it also could pay dividends in your pursuit of earned media.

Next, as PR professionals, we know the importance of relationship-building in the media-pitching process. However, interacting with journalists and media outlets on social media can also extend your reach. Social media is an ideal vehicle for nurturing authentic and mutually beneficial connections with media covering your industry. Following, sharing and commenting on a journalist’s content on Twitter and LinkedIn in an altruistic way could make yours a name they recognize in their crowded email inbox and thus make them more likely to open and consider your pitch.

Finally, the easiest tip to deploy: Utilizing some simple social media tools in your daily work can go a long way to expanding your visibility. By incorporating social sharing links and buttons in press releases and on blog posts you give your followers a quick and easy way to share your news with an audience you might otherwise never touch. Using hashtags is another way to spread your message and monitor your reach and success.

So, as you lay out your strategies for 2021, remember to include the many facets of social media in your media relations plan to grow your brand credibility, reinforce your pitching efforts and position your company as a thought leader.

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Back to the Basics – Key Messages

Key messages are the bread and butter of public relations. They offer anyone representing a brand a collection of approved messages that can be confidently shared through any form of communication. Whether you’re preparing a spokesperson for an interview or developing a pitch, clearly reflecting key messages into all campaigns and written materials will ensure that your client’s brand stays consistent and on topic.

While it may not be the most glamorous project, creating key messages is an essential component to properly reach a target audience with a strong, unified message. A good set of key messages will be similar to an elevator pitch, concisely communicating what sets the brand apart in under a minute. Whether you are looking to create key messages for a new client or refresh a collection that may be outdated, below are three key takeaways I learned from an episode of The PR Pod, an essential PR podcast for budding public relations professionals, that you should always keep in mind when creating this foundational material.

Put in the time for preliminary research

Research and think about the key messages that audiences need to hear and understand. Having a firm grasp of your client’s industry is helpful and you’ll want to understand the narrative the company wants to share. One good way to do this is to develop a Q&A. This helps get all the basic information a journalist would inquire about in one location. You should also identify communication goals and target audience with the client. Finally, it’s a good idea to look at the competitor landscape to pinpoint the differentiating components the brand possesses.

Aim for three to four concise key messages

Once the preliminary research and discussions take place, devote one to three hours to crafting these messages. This can be tough and often will require more than one pass through to get the result you desire. Take time to ensure each word is impactful, supports the company’s mission, and aligns with the established expectations. Typically, public relations professionals aim to have a collection of three to four concise messages supported with proof points. The first one should be a summarizing statement describing the business that shares the most important information. Then, after you flush it out, you can go into more description illustrating what, how and why the company is different and its unique offerings. To ensure your messages are credible, you will need proof points. Proof points are concrete examples or data that support the claims that you’re making in your key messages.

Buffer in extra time for the review process

When the first draft is complete, it can still take hours to create the end product a client may desire. Buffer in extra time for the approval process both internally and externally. Before sending it off to clients, it can take several rounds of internal edits from a variety of coworkers to get it in a good place. Once it’s in your client’s hands, set aside time to address feedback and make additional edits before the key messages are finalized. This whole process can take anywhere from a week to several weeks and is crucial to avoid disparity across all written and spoken communications.

After refining, solidifying and testing the messages to ensure they resonate with the target audiences you can begin to use them for all of the company’s communications. No matter where you are in your professional career, as a public relations professional, it is crucial to create, or learn if already developed, a client’s top key messages and routinely reassess them to ensure they still meet the company’s needs and those of the target audience.   

 

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Five Ways to Continue Learning in PR

As working professionals in any industry, continuing education is key to job security, career advancement and client success. PR is no different. In fact, the evolution of the media landscape and social media platforms, and the integration of marketing and public relations, are all the more reason to seek opportunities to learn the latest methods, refresh our skills, and gain a competitive edge over other industry professionals.

But what might continuing education look like? Is it pursuing a master’s degree? Is it earning an APR? Is it attending conferences? There are many ways PR professionals can elevate and polish their skills. Outlined below are five suggestions to help individuals determine which options are the best fit for them.

 

  1. Social Media

Scrolling on social media has earned a bad rep as being a waste of time. However, it can actually be a great way to stay on our toes. Information on social media is always changing, and the medium is arguably one of the easiest ways to share stories. Because of this, social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter have become a go-to way for people to share their professional successes and failures. The posts our network shares are teaming with valuable insights that can teach us best practices. The posts might also help us avoid making the same mistake one of our colleagues recently made.

Another way to use social media to our benefit is by searching hashtags like #PRPro or #PRTips and monitoring the conversations to glean helpful career info. Further, we might find mentoring or networking opportunities – both valuable components of continued learning.

 

  1. Conferences

Conferences and events are a commonly used way to stay in-the-know. Conferences teach practical PR strategies and tactics, catered to a variety of sectors. For example, there are PR conferences for education, food and beverage, tech, crisis communications, travel and tourism, health and much more. Industry leaders come together to share their lessons learned and how they’re adapting to market and technology changes – a topic especially relevant during a pandemic.

 

  1. Traditional Education

Recently, Tesla made headlines with its decision to eliminate its PR department. Some of the PR team was reassigned within the company, taking on roles in external relations, employee experience or content design and development. While there are serious negative ramifications that could result from removing the PR department, the move demonstrates a trend that other companies might choose to follow. Writing for PR Daily, Ted Kitterman highlighted the importance of being a well-rounded PR professional by saying, “PR pros can make themselves indispensable by becoming business experts who have communications knowledge.” 

Some individuals might find it useful to pursue another degree to strengthen their business prowess or expand their skillset. For example, if someone has a bachelor’s degree in communications, they might choose to pursue a master’s degree in business or advertising or pursue a certificate in graphic design. Being well rounded can give us a leg up when pitching a new client, providing counsel to an existing client, or weathering internal company changes.

 

  1. Reading

With our phones at our disposal, we can easily access a wealth of industry knowledge from blogs, news websites, books and more. Reading is one of the most common means of continual learning. And like social media, the information shared is always changing. PR pros should seek out materials that deliver smart insights, do’s and don’ts and examples of PR campaigns in the industry. Major PR publications include PR Daily, PRNews, O’Dwyer’s, PRsay, Cision Blog and HubSpot Blog. Business outlets like Entrepreneur and Forbes are also great resources.

 

  1. Podcasts

No time to read? Podcasts are a great alternative. Listening to podcasts injects learning into everyday life, with little to no disruption to our schedules. Whether we’re making breakfast, going for a walk or commuting, podcasts can teach us while we multitask. For ideas on podcasts to listen to, check out Cision’s recommendations.

 

Our challenge as public relations professionals is to keep ourselves informed about new and emerging technologies and techniques so that we are able to provide clients with the very best counsel and service we can. While much of our learning comes on the job, we must also take advantage of online and in-person opportunities to learn. Regardless of our place in our professional lives, we must continue to hone our skills so that we remain on the cutting edge of the techniques and technologies that define our profession.

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Pitching to Media: Which Positions Should You Target?

Pitching to media is one of the most important avenues to earning coverage for your client. Pitching involves researching, identifying, messaging and contacting journalists who you believe will cover your client’s announcement. It is essential that you are targeting the right people with your pitch.

To determine the best fit for a pitch, look at the topic or “beat” of each contact. If a journalist’s beat is not explained in their job title, read a few of their recent stories to get a sense of the topics they cover. After you have recognized contacts within a relevant beat, narrow down your pitching list to the titles and roles of media contacts which accept pitches or can assign news stories. Below is an overview of common titles within a media outlet and if they should be prioritized for pitching.

  • A Publisher oversees the commercial success of the publication. They ensure that the outlet can recruit and maintain advertisers and subscriptions. Publishers do not assign or contribute content, so they are not an appropriate contact for pitching.
  • An Editor-in-Chief oversees high-level organizational operations. They are often in charge of hiring staff, determining the look and feel of a publication, editing and fact-checking copy, and sometimes writing articles themselves. Editors-in-chief are more likely to assign stories at smaller publications where resources are limited. Avoid pitching to editors-in-chief at larger publications.
  • A Managing Editor is tasked with maintaining the day-to-day operations of a media outlet. This means they may generate story ideas, plan and assign content, and oversee commissions of stories and art. They also create editorial calendars and supervise editorial staff. For these reasons, managing editors are one of the best contacts for pitching at an outlet.
  • An Editor-at-Large is an editor at the publication who also contributes content on a regular or semi-regular basis. Editors-at-large are distinguished from writers because they do not need approval from another editor before writing stories. They are a good contact for pitching.
  • A Senior Editor works under the direction of the managing editor and is often in charge of a specific section within the publication. They will guide the editorial content of their team of editors and writers. Senior editors are an adequate pitching contact if they cover a beat important to your announcement.
  • A Deputy Editor often works under a Senior editor. They may help with copywriting and editing or may write themselves. This position varies greatly from organization to organization so the true day-to-day of a deputy editor is not certain. For this reason, they are not a great contact for pitching.
  • A Senior Writer may help with editing and proofreading for their department but does not have the organizational responsibilities of an editor. Senior writers have more agency than staff writers in determining the content they cover, but they still must have stories approved by their editors. Only pitch to senior editors operating within a relevant beat.
  • A Staff Writer contributes content to the publication from within the outlet. This is the most junior role within a media outlet, and there is little freedom to determine content direction. Pitching should be prioritized to more senior contacts.
  • A Reporter/Journalist is most similar to the role of staff writers, except they often will travel for their role rather than remaining in the office. Similar to staff writers, it is best to prioritize pitching to contacts with more power in determining what content they cover.

These job descriptions should help explain who may be best to target with a pitch. It is important to remember however that job titles are fluid and may vary from organization to organization. At smaller publications, tasks are more likely to be shared. At larger organizations, the roles may be more distinguished. This list should serve as a starting point, but not an end-all-be-all of media pitching.

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