52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip #1: Be the Calm

PR is an ever-changing, swirling, mess of a profession. It can be the calm before the storm or the tempest that sweeps everything out from under you. You’ve got to keep up with a thousand different details that might change at any given moment. And part of your job is to be the calm in that storm.

When the reporter is screaming about a deadline or the client is going ballistic over a story he’s not in, your job is to stay calm and rise above. When the conference room isn’t packed before your client’s session starts or the reporter includes that juicy bit someone said but shouldn’t have, you need to remain calm. Storms swirl, all boats rise, calm. 

You want to be a resource when needed, a conspirator when required and a voice of reason when everyone else in the room has drunk the Kool-Aid. But you can’t be anything of these things if you don’t remain, you guessed it, calm…and rational.

There is a time and place for big ideas, for amazing campaigns and PR stunts that wow the world (crop circles anyone?), but there is more often a time for being the PR person that folks can count on. Reporters count on you to pitch an interesting story, to understand the details enough to help them get back the first blush of interest, and to ensure they have the access they need to write something unique and interesting and a story that other people want to read and share.

Your clients want to know that you have things handled when they go off the rails, or just seem to. They want to know that you can fix things, even when you can’t, or that at least you’ll make sure they don’t happen again. Because things will go wrong, events won’t turn out as expected, coverage won’t always be favorable. I remember an event we were part of a few years ago that had an unfortunate choice in venue and some of the attending press didn’t like it. I talked to a couple of the irked media and helped smooth things over, but the PR folks from another vendor went for Option B: they were “outraged” and “embarrassed” and unabashedly “apologetic” and built what could have been a molehill of a problem into a mountain. They even hosted, at their headquarters thousands of miles from the event, a six hour crisis situation meeting for something that was solved with a change of venue and a few soft spoken words at the airport bar.

Basically, in our world, everyone has the right to ride the madness but us, because going off the deep end doesn’t buy us anything. Doesn’t give us more credibility with reporters or gain us more respect from clients or executives. It doesn’t win you points with conference and award organizers, or gain you followers on Twitter.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying we can’t get mad or be direct, firm or contrary. It just means we should do it calmly, in a rational manner. This is especially true when a real crisis hits your company or client. One thing that will help it to have contingency plans in place long before a crisis hits but as important as that pre-planning is, you'll go a long way in helping your company resolve, overcome or weather a crisis if you're the calm voice in the storm.

 

 

What is Black, White and Read All Over? The Internet.

Remember when the answer to that question used to be “the newspaper?” Well, now we start this new decade with fewer newspapers according to research from Vocus in its State of the Media Report released late last week. Vocus found that just last year alone 293 newspapers folded with nearly 100 closing its doors in the first quarter.

293 newspapers folded last year.

In this age where anyone and everyone with an opinion can become a global online star in minutes, newspapers were just too slow to adapt to the realities of the living, breathing, organism that is the Internet. The Internet is to the newspapers as Napster was to CDs. Remember when sharing music threatened to kill CD sales? Now, copyright laws make it illegal to share music online. While I don’t think anyone is going to jail for sharing links to news on Twitter, the Internet essentially ravaged newsrooms last year. Early retirements and buy-outs have forced many long-time favorites from The Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today to move into blogging.

As an agency PR professional, I still read the paper and have it delivered to my home on the weekend. But 85 percent of the news and trend-spotting information I gather comes from Twitter, TV, breaking news text messages and online news sites. Unfortunately for the traditional newspaper, the instant access afforded by the Internet is the best way to get information these days. In fact, some newspapers have transitioned to print, online and mobile to share news; the State of the Media Report found that nine online newspapers launched last year.

In many ways, the newspaper is still relevant. You can’t get in-depth reporting on the real players in the Wall Street bailouts, the plans to move an incinerator to your neighborhood or the strategy behind the next generation iPhone unless you read the paper. As a professional communicator that needs to understand the business issues that impact clients, I can’t claim to fully understand the nuances of Net Neutrality or changes at the FCC without reading the newspaper. At my first agency gig, my boss told me that I had to read everything to be successful in this business. With newspapers disappearing, the game of media relations has changed dramatically. But clients still expect us to understand the industry and policy issues that impact their business, so if you are serious about business communications, I encourage you to maintain a subscription to your local paper.

Magazines are not exempt from the fate that took many newspapers out of circulation last year. Now more than ever, PR pros need to be creative in pitching and maintaining relationships. In my next post, I will share my top tips on how to be versatile and capitalize on new opportunities presented by the changes at magazines.