Don’t Be or Believe the Stereotypes – PR Tip 16

In PR and in journalism, there are lots of stereotypes in play. People love them and love to band everyone together into a generic category that is ripe for ridicule and scorn. Soooo much fun! There are biases and assumptions, condemnation and narcissism, bullies and airheads – in both camps. The challenge of working in an always-on, globally connected world driven, in large part, by social media, is how do we work together without becoming jaded, bitter curmudgeons that are no fun at parties?

First, it would be good to just be nicer. Nicer in person, nicer in email, nicer on Twitter…especially nicer on Twitter. I don’t mean nicer in the Southern way when folks say “isn’t she sweet” or “bless your heart” and not mean it. I mean really….be….nicer. Treat people around you with the professional respect you’d like to be treated with, especially when they don’t deserve it.

This is more than just being polite. Nice is also about doing your job well so that the people you work with can easily do theirs better. It’s about being prepared, organized and on time. It’s about paying attention and showing a genuine interest in what the other person is saying, or at least trying to say.

It’s about doing the research required to make sure you’re reaching out to the right person, or doing the research needed before an interview so that you don’t waste everyone’s time. This can be particularly hard when you have a gauntlet of back-to-back interviews and the interviewee isn’t particular engaging.

Being nice is also recognizing you’re going to run into people every day at different stages of their careers, and sometimes they just might not know better yet. The PR person that is overly excited or the reporter that thinks snide is a good interview technique can be annoying to everyone, but it’s usually a sign the person is just trying to figure out how to do a challenging job in an unforgiving environment. It can also be taking the time to stop and think for a second what might have happened outside your own interaction with them that might be throwing their game off.

Reporters and PR folks are just people. They get up in the morning, brush their teeth, send their kids to school, pay their taxes, etc. There are hundreds of things that can happen on any given day that can impact how they are perceived in the brief moment you might interact with them. It’s a shame most people, on either side of the fence, don’t take the time to step back and give someone the benefit of doubt. Because you know, it’s so much easier to take to Twitter and try and shame them.

One of the things that makes my skin crawl on Twitter is #PRFail. Yes, sometimes PR people pitch the wrong person, but reporters also get things wrong. We all do because that’s human nature. The truth is, PR and journalists inhabit the same world and we’re all moving at a break-neck pace. It would be a much nicer world if we could all, bless our hearts, be a little more polite.

Create a Story Telling Engine - Tip 14

Good stories just don’t happen. Like an engine, they need multiple components to work together in order to make something happen. The engine in your car doesn’t run on gasoline alone, it takes oil, coolant and a spark to get things started.  Just like a story.

Stories need to combine a variety of elements to get the reader from start to finish. Many companies forget this and try to build stories using only one facet of their company – their products. The problem is products are only part of a company’s whole story. Sure, products are often the protagonist in the story, but if that is the only aspect told, then the story is limited.

A better approach is to define a narrative that includes the marketplace, the customer and the company as a whole. Now, companies have an opportunity to articulate how a product benefits the target customer, how it offers something unique or fills a gap in the market, and how it fits in the company’s short and long terms plans to win.

The risk with only telling one line of a story is that it leaves a lot up to the imagination of the reader. Basically, the storyteller is asking the reader to connect all the dots themselves – why the product matters to customers, what are the competitive differentiators and where the company fits in the marketplace. That’s a lot to ask of any reader.

A good PR program should be, in essence, a story telling engine for the company. The market, customers, investors and other interested parties all need to understand where the company is going and how each move it makes fits in the longer, broader narrative.  To do this, PR needs to dig deeper into the company’s business and market objectives to understand the story in long form.

A deeper understanding of what is happening in the market is needed so the PR team can maximize how announcements fit into events that are shaping the respective industry. PR must also be willing to take the time to understand the company’s products and appreciate what goes into bringing a specific product to market. Finally, PR needs to understand what is driving customers to look for the products and technologies a company sells, so they can match their company’s narrative to the story a prospect wants to hear.

This takes time and can’t be done on the fly. This idea of creating a story telling engine is fundamental to transforming public relations from passive to active and into a program that creates real, long-term value for a company and not just quick hits that few remember.

52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip 12: Find the Current

One of the most interesting aspects of public relations is how it, if executed well, can enable a company to leverage current trends and market developments to its advantage. PR can help companies latch onto emerging market drivers to help boost awareness, demonstrate thought leadership and drive interest. It can preset expectations ahead of big product launches and defuse the actions of close competitors.  

This current can also be very effective in helping shape a market by your company’s strengths and the competitors’ weaknesses, by articulating how your features and functionality better match where the market is going and how it is better suited to help customers get there. To be most effective with this, you should leverage a broad range of communication channels from media interviews, analyst discussions, speaking opportunities, customer events, blogs, social media and probably several others I’m neglecting to mention.

Finding the current can also help elevate a company that seems to get stuck talking about what it makes and not what is driving the need for its products to market. With this granular level of focus with its media relations, a company can miss out on opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership. Given how many stories are written each day about trends shaping the market, the pending impact of regulation or even what the next season’s trends will be, these are great opportunities. These forward looking opportunities don’t focus on what a company makes, but demonstrates that your company is thinking about how the market is changing as it designs, develops and brings new products and services to market.

Companies can also link to current market trends to explain how a business was negatively impacted by events outside its control. This is not to suggest that outside market forces can become the complete scapegoat, but they can help shade when something didn’t go as planned.

Regardless of how you want to leverage market trends and shifts, it’s important to know what they are so you can position your company effectively. Social media, conversations with key industry influencers, reading analyst reports and blogs, are all good ways to keep your toe in the water to feel which way the current is flowing.

52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip 11: Develop an Authentic Voice(s)

Anyone that works in PR can tell you, there is a lot of writing. We write case studies, press releases, contributed articles, pitches, FAQs, media alerts, award submissions, speaking abstracts, event materials, website copy, bios and probably a hundred other things during the course of an average month. While some of these types of writing overlap in terms of style, most require a unique style of writing to be effective. With each, you’re telling a story, but how quickly you tell it, and how you structure the writing will be different.

Add to this, is the need to hone your voice as a PR person so that when you reach out to media, write a blog, correspond with clients or present at conferences, it is authentic so people understand who you are. Developing an authentic voice is hard because the strictures that govern so much of our writing don’t support creativity or originality. When I work with people on our team, editing things they’ve written, I rarely rewrite it for them; instead I prefer to provide guidance as to what the piece needs to cover. It’s up to them to put the language in their own voice.

When I write, I know which message I think should be given the most weight, where to use humor or make a particular point with the voice I want heard, but I don’t often find it in the first draft. Like any writer, I can get caught up in my own head as I write, running an idea down until there is nothing left to say in the first draft. It’s usually on the second or third pass that I layer in the right tone, craft the right symbolism and make the piece my own. 

Going beyond the voice we need to develop as a PR person, is ensuring that our voice doesn’t obscure the voice of the client or company for which we write. We have clients that like their writing loose and edgy and others that are as conservative as they come, focusing on the bits and pieces of what they do by habit.

Additionally, as a PR practitioner, you will regularly be asked to ghostwrite for an executive. This can be a speech, blog, press release quote, etc. The challenge will be to step out of your own “voice” and into the voice of the person you’re writing for. To do this, you have to know them, which can sometimes be a challenge if you’re just starting out and get limited face time with an executive. If this is the case, try and find videos of the person speaking at a conference or listen to interviews that have been recorded. It’s easy to fall back into writing in your voice when you don’t have access to the person or any samples to review, but you have to remember that the person is not you, does not have your experiences and doesn’t necessarily want to project the image that you might want them to.

Having the ability and talent to be authentic and help others sound authentic is a skill to be nurtured and will be highly valuable in today’s competitive marketplace.

52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip 10: Forget the Formula

One of the worst traps a PR person can fall into is getting stuck using the same formula for PR campaigns. This is true for people just entering the field and for folks like me that have been at it for 20+ years. We develop habits, make assumptions based on past campaigns, get comfortable with a certain set of tactics, and believe that because something worked once (or a hundred times), it will work again. Sometimes it does, so the habit continues to become engrained.

The danger is that you become stale as a PR practitioner and fail to leverage new techniques, opportunities or tactics that can help you achieve more than you were able to before. A primary example is how press releases are written. Many press releases are still written in the inverted pyramid style, even when the news is too minor to be of interest to the media. The rise in social media and news aggregation sites makes this type of announcement more important though, and enhances your ability to talk directly to the end customer, partner, investor or anyone else that you are trying to influence. Because you know the media won’t care, you can free up the way the release is written, providing a more feature-like reading experience for anyone that reads it on Yahoo!, WSJ.com, LightReading.com, etc. Because you’re not relying on telling the story through the journalist, you can talk directly to the audience, tell a deeper story and put the news into the right context. It also allows you to tell more stories about a company’s development as it evolves, showcasing how each move or change fits into a master plan.

Events are another staple in the PR world and helping the sales team plan another customer event or plan a product launch party can be tedious when everyone else involved would rather be doing something else. It’s easy to do what has been done before, mostly because you know the potential roadblocks that might exist and can navigate them through to a successful completion. But this is an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective to an event that has become tired. Think about ways for the customers to interact with each other and your team in a new and exciting way, make customer gifts original and thought provoking, find a speaker that doesn’t fit the normal profile or host a dinner somewhere unexpected. The value with this approach is if you do it right, you create a special memory for the customer that is tied specifically to your company’s brand so that every time they remember it, they think fondly of your company.

The final area to cover, and I know there are hundreds more that could be explored, is pitching. The standard pitch process has become so mundane that many press don’t even read 1/3 of what comes into their e-mail inbox. That’s because the formula most often used is something like this:

Dear Reporter:

I hope this e-mail finds you well. I wanted to see if I could get time on your calendar for a conversation with XXX Company to talk about their new XXXX product. The product is designed to help customers achieve outstanding results with their internal management operations, saving them from now unneeded capital costs and reducing operational burn…

If you’d like to schedule a call, please let me know if Tuesday or Wednesday of next week work.

Best,

            PR Person

There is nothing inherently wrong with the pitch above, but I’m willing to bet that it looks a lot like hundreds of other pitches a reporter sees every day. So how can you break the formula? It can be as simple as a start that mentions a recent story the reporter wrote and why it made you think that the reporter would be interested in what your company or client wants to talk about. The pitch above is also positioned as a one-way conversation with the reporter in a passive listening voice, instead of inviting the journalists to a conversation about a topic that is driving  the market, a topic that they are clearly interested in based on the stories they’ve been writing.

I once pitched Doug Gross at CNN with a subject that read “So I see you’re writing about porn…” because I read on twitter that he was writing about how Twitter was looking to hide 6-second Vine sex tapes from unsuspecting users. The pitch got an almost immediate response from Doug, who called it the best pitch he’d gotten all year, and started a dialog about a client that most likely wouldn’t have happened if I’d used a formulaic pitch.

If you have ideas of other ways, or other areas, where PR folks could forget the formula and try something new and fresh, please post them in the comments section. 

52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip 7: Don’t be a flak

If there was ever a four letter word in PR, it’s flak. It’s used by media and execs, in the movies and on TV as a joke and as a slur -- and is 100 percent the wrong image for our industry and for any PR professional. The idea that PR is run by brainless individuals that just do the bidding of some executive is a stereotype we can’t afford.

So let’s put that aside for a minute and talk about what a PR person should be and what our industry should represent. PR is the steward of the company message and the chief protector of the company’s brand and image. PR helps the company appreciate how it is understood, the difference between its brand identity and brand knowledge, and how everything from trends to competitive threats to company evolution will impact the market. We are the calm in the storm when a crisis hits, and the first line of defense when things go wrong. We help the CEO articulate his message, the CFO provide context to the street and the CTO turn technology jargon into comprehendible English.

We are planners. We help a company understand how to shape its message through media engagement, speaking opportunities, contributed articles, awards and social media. We focus on the bigger messaging framework to ensure the company talks about itself as a whole, instead of focusing on the individual pieces. We make sure analysts understand where the company is going, why it has picked this direction and how this journey will benefit customers, investors, partners and employees. We ensure that our company spokespeople are prepped before an interview so that they know what the reporter is writing about, details about their interview style and insight into their knowledge of the market, company and technology. We also make sure that the reporter has what they need to be successful – providing access to customers, partners, experts, information and ideas that help tell a bigger story than any one press release might indicate.

We do all of this before we ever pick up the phone and call a reporter. In truth, for a good PR person, 90% of our job is done before the media are approached. So why do reporters love to feed the stereotype that PR people are flaks? There are probably dozens of reasons that would require a couch and a degree different than mine, but I think the main reason is some PR people often set themselves up as simply the messenger.   

A key value a good PR person brings to their clients or company is to serve both the internal needs as well as the needs of the reporter. To do that effectively, you have to earn the trust of both groups and then work to build upon that trust and maintain it. You have to really understand what your company or client is trying to do and why their approach has merit in the marketplace. You have to understand how a product will impact a customer or market and how it differs from a competitor.

When we decide to work with new clients, I always tell them that they are not going to like everything I say to them. They might fire us for that, but one of the things they are paying our firm for is our opinion. If they decide to do something we think will have negative repercussions, we provide alternative options and tell them what we think might happen if they continue down that path. We’ll do everything we can to keep what we might think will happen from happening, but we don’t back down if our experience, insight and expertise are telling us something different. 

I’m not worried about ruffling feathers, soothing egos or simply cashing a check. I’m concerned with how the company presents itself and how it is perceived. My focus from a program development and strategy perspective is on the long game: how little pieces here and bigger pieces there will help form a complete picture of the company, its prospects and relative market value. Reporters come and go, beats change, executives move on, but your reputation follows you wherever you go. So…don’t be a flak.

52 Tips for Strong PR – A 2014 Users Guide Tip 6: Be Social Online and Off

Social networking is everywhere. You can use it to book a reservation, review a restaurant, ogle at a friend’s vacation photos, find out who’s writing about what, interact with an old friend and make new ones. There are”Follow Fridays”, “must reads”, “likes”, “check-ins” and dozens of other ways to interact on today’s social networks. Online social networks have become so pervasive that social networking has overtaken porn as the No. 1 activity on the web, according to a recent story in Fast Company.

But do social networks really enable you to form real connections? There was a great story last week by Casey Johnston of ArsTechnica titled “How we ruin social networks, Facebook specifically.” In the story, Casey writes, “But the ability to keep tabs on someone without having to be proactive about it—no writing an e-mail, making a phone call, etc.—became the unique selling factor of Facebook….Facebook became a rich opportunity for ‘convert[ing] latent ties into weak ties,’ connections that are valuable because they are with people who are sufficiently distant socially to bring in new information and opportunities.”

“Weak ties” is the key phrase here. Can you really create a connection with someone when the only contact is online? I’ve “favorited” and “retweeted” hundreds of stories by editors on Twitter but that doesn’t mean I’ve engaged with anyone. I’ve “liked” posts on Facebook and have accumulated over 750 connections on LinkedIn, but does that mean anything? Maybe.

I think one of the traps PR people can fall into today is relying too heavily on online social media and ignore the social networks they can create offline. This can be as simple as jumping on a call a few minutes early to chat with a reporter or calling them for no other reason but to check in. It can be coffee or cocktails at a conference or breakfast at a trade show. It could be simply helping connect them with someone for a story they have to write to meet a deadline. And I mean a story that doesn’t include your company or client.

Trade shows and conferences are great ways to extend your social network in real life. We manage the press room at ITEXPO, one of the business technology industry’s top conferences on IP communications. Our job there is to make sure the media attending gets the most they can out of the show. During the few days the reporters are with us, they are slammed with sessions, briefings, keynotes and conversations. To give them some respite, we take them out one night for drinks and dinner, with no agenda but to give them a break from the craziness. When the telecom show SUPERCOMM still existed, we partnered with the great folks at Engage PR to host “No Pitch Nights” at Chicago White Sox and Cubs games. At these events, the only pitch was on the field. The connections we make during these events are anything but weak because they were built on real conversations and understandings, of mutual respect and discovering the things we had in common.

The tip here is to make sure you’re forming connections online and off so that your relationships are multi-dimensional and meaningful.  Whether you’re comparing trade rumors for a favorite sports team, swapping stories on business travel nightmares or sharing what your kids are up to these days, it’s all about creating real connections. When you are able to cultivate these types of relationships, it will help you cut through the inbox clutter and secure a conversation for your company or client. When the story runs, then you can share it on social media and see how many “likes” you get from all the people you really don’t know.

Hashtagology 101 - A Slightly Slanted New Lexicon for a #HashtaggedWorld

The word hashtag is part of the modern lexicon, even earning a definition in the Oxford Dictionary. We were recently having a conversation about creating a hashtag for an upcoming client event. As one team member pointed out, it’s all about creating a mechanism to track a conversation. Granted, this has to be kept in the context of social media, and with the limits placed on conversations on certain platforms (Twitter’s 140 character count for instance), but it seems to me that the concept of hashtags and hashtagging could easily become about more than that. So in the interest of wasting time on a Friday afternoon, here are some potential outgrowths of the use of hashtags to further the proverbial conversation and expand its fundamental usage and lexicology far beyond reasonable or practical usage:

·         Hashtagology – the study of hashtags and their use in social conversations

·         Hashtagographer – a person that studies hashtags and probably makes a living as a social media expert. Probably needs a bit more sun.

·         Hashtagimifcation – the point when the hashtag becomes the thing, instead of the thing that is was originally created to support

·         Hashtagterbation – a series of tweets between a certain set of people that includes an increasing number of conversational specific tweets relevant to this conversation only

·         Hashtaggery – the creation of a hashtag to see how far and wide it travels across social networks (i.e. a Twitterific game of tag)

·         Hashtaganigans – creation of a hashtag specifically designed to tweek someone else, all in fun of course. For mean usage, see next entry.

·         Hashtagslapped – the twitter version of the B@!CH slap, only used by “mean girls” and wannabes

·         Hashtagvolent – the hashtag to be used to describe the people who regularly and maliciously hashtagslap others or better known as people that need a #realitycheck #timeout

·         Hashtagtentious – arrogant or pretentious use of hashtags, used just to show how smart someone thinks they are, or might be #aintnoeinstein

·         Hashtagologist – a combination of connected hashtags used in tweets that all make a specific point, but when used independently aren’t very appealing (like a French Gimlet, when all ingredients are mixed together, it’s a cool drink on summer afternoon but independently don’t make a lot of sense to drink by themselves. I mean, who drinks St-Germain?)

·         Hashtagged – when a hashtag is created to call attention to a specific person or event, or if a person is called out specifically at an event (e.g., #NorthWest, #DennisRodmanNKorea)

·         Hashtagaphobe – someone, maybe someone reasonable, that has an unnatural fear of hashtags

·         Hashtagaddict – someone that uses hashtags for everything, including usage outside of social networks #rockstardefinition

·         Hashtagelicious – a wonderful new hashtag created that is just too good not to share or use

·         Hashtagitude – when a hashtag is used as the equivalent of two snaps up (e.g. #WhatHaveYouDoneForMeLately #GetBackToWork, #Rude, #waitaminutenow) and you know who I’m talking about @JMcDonaldPR

·         Hashtagified – mostly used in the Southern United States, used to mean that a concept has been used to death and is now on its deathbed

Any and all others are welcome until this topic is #hashtagified #jumptheshark.

2012 – Top Ten Reasons to Embrace Honesty in PR and Pitching

Over the course of my career, I’ve met a lot of charlatans. You know the type, entrepreneurs or big company marketing types that spout numbers and stats over breakfast, claim market leadership over lunch and are deep into revolutionizing industries by the time last call is rung as they tell their story one final time over a final dirty martini at 2 am. And while I admire their enthusiasm, support their idealism and in general, am as easily charmed by them as are most others, I typically don’t believe a word they say.

So what got me started on this topic? I read a really interesting blog post today on ReadWriteWeb by Rieva Lesonski called “How to Get Bloggers to Write about Your Startup: Insiders Advice.” She provides solid advice about relevance, using supporting stats, presenting your pitching using lists (see – I’ve embraced that recommendation in this post!) and ensuring you are reaching out to people that care about your industry. I thought, however, that the blog post failed to mention a key element that is probably more important today than ever before: honesty.  

There are two reasons why honesty is so critical in today’s 24/7 news cycle: first is that honesty equates to authenticity, and is a critical element for building long-term relationships; and as Rieva points out, the Internet’s insatiable appetite for news and information creates the ability for bloggers, journalists and media organizations to fact check stats and figures easier than ever before. Many times, however, given the rapid pace of today’s news cycle, fact checking has been sacrificed on the altar of speed and unique page views, so the reporters want and need to trust you. The good news is that reporters and bloggers are rational, inquisitive people that are often skeptical in nature, so they can tell when someone is blowing too much smoke with no evidence of a fire. But they are really busy, their organizations are understaffed, and they are required to cover multiple beats that push the limits of what they can possibly have deep, first-hand knowledge of in all the markets they cover.

To be clear, honesty is what keeps the reporter engaged. Sure, numbers to back up your honesty is great, as is the ability to tie your truth into market trends, but ultimately it comes down to a reporter’s willingness to believe what you tell them and then convince their readers that they haven’t been duped.

So to stay true to my headline, my Top Ten Reasons to Embrace Honesty in PR and Pitching:

10.   Relationships are built on trust

9.       The time and intelligence of the blogger/reporter needs to be respected

8.       Pinocchio couldn’t pull it off and neither can you

7.       Integrity is something that is very hard to get back

6.       There is always someone out there waiting to call you out

5.       Long-term planning (for your company or your career) cannot be based on hype

4.       No one likes to have their pants on fire

3.       Spin is fine, spinning a web is not

2.       Authenticity is memorable

1.       Truth will always win out

It’s never easy to play the role of bad cop to clients when the excitement they are trying to generate is based a little too much on fiction and not enough on fact. I have had to counsel clients in the past that if they over reach in their messaging, they will permanently damage their reputations (and ability to succeed) and ours. As you can imagine, that doesn’t always engender my firm, or me, to certain clients. But, as I said above, the truth will always win out, and authenticity and honesty will always get you further than fiction. I would rather be a few-client, honest broker than a have a portfolio of companies that prefer fiction to fact.

2012 – Pause and Take a Breath

In a 365 day, 24/7 news cycle, it’s hard to take a breath these days. Add to this frenzy the fast news cycles of online media and the opinion-driven style of today’s blogs and twitter feeds, it’s sometimes difficult to understand when enough is enough. PR teams feel the pressure to be a part of every story, on every news outlet and have teams ready to respond to any negative tweet or post. While I am not suggesting that you don’t have to be vigilant to protect your company’s
brand and value, I am suggesting that we are sometimes victims of our own need
to be relevant.

This is why I’m recommending that when things happen, or fail to happen, it’s always best to pause, take a breath and evaluate what, if any, response or action is needed. There
are absolutely times when a response is warranted but many times, the crisis identified
is not a true crisis. It might be inconvenient, unfortunate or even embarrassing for a company or individual but it does not warrant the revving up of the corporate spin cycle. It is best to plan for the best and worst case scenarios, but a good PR company will have a standard plan in place that just needs to be followed with the pertinent details that are available.

There was a recent story in NC about the sitting Governor deciding not to run again. She didn’t give any reasons, just told reporters that she wasn’t going to seek re-election. The media had a field day examining why she wasn’t going to run. When it seemed like the story was winding down, one of the news outlets decided to interview local PR people to get their reaction to her decision to not explain her reasons. Every single one of them said she was in the wrong and that she should have explained her reasons to the media, that the public had a right to know and they would have counseled her to be more forthcoming. When I read those stories, my thought was “of course that’s what they would say, it’s their job to create news cycles.” And that’s just what they did, created an unnecessary news cycle about something they weren’t personally involved in on a subject that they had no insight into. The PR people were creating the news cycle for
their own benefit, not because they were adding any new information to the story.

News cycles like this spin up every day. It’s inevitable when the “always on” news media and a culture that believes we have a right to know everything about everyone that we find mildly interesting. We don’t and it’s important for PR people, and the companies they represent, to understand and appreciate this fact.

While I’m not advocating that companies adopt a “no comment” policy when something negative occurs, I am suggesting that they pause and think before they react and engage. The good thing about the current news cycle is that if you blink, the media is off chasing the next story, about the next issue or trend or dastardly act by someone else.

2012 – Fast Forward to the End

A friend of mine, Neil Rock (www.neilrockgroup.com) is a fantastic motivational speaker whose primary message is based on the simple principal that you have to visualize your goals, write them down and then physically post them somewhere visible so they can remind you every day of what you hope to accomplish.

As we start the 2012 planning process, it’s important to remember what the goal is for the year and put programs in place that make it accomplishable. The goal can be operational (demonstrate the value of a professional services organization), geographical (show relevance of products in new markets), financial (articulate revenue growth, vertical market relevance and/or channel development), leadership (ensure the market understands how the company is impacting the industry), or any one of a dozen other legitimate goals that a company, and its marketing department, might develop.

Many times, these goals are set within a company, shared internally and never spoken of again until December rolls around and executives want to see how the company performed against these goals.  It’s easy to get caught up in the next news release, trade show, conference or webinar and forget that all of these items should be vehicles to help your company achieve one or more of its objectives. 

For PR, the goals could be as simple as cultivating 10 new “champions” within the press and analyst community. To us, a champion is a press or analyst that follows the company regularly and understands what it’s trying to achieve and, at some level, believes your company will be able to achieve these goals. They understand how all the pieces of your company fit together and how each part plays a role in your company’s ability to win. These are reporters and analysts that don’t just write about your company when you have announcements, but also include you in stories they create about market trends and they view your company as an influencer in the industry.

Let’s take a look at that goal and break down how it can be achieved.

·         Identify 15 press/analysts that you’d like to convert from passive to active followers of your company.

·         Create a matrix of their recent coverage to understand what they cover specifically and how they treat information about your type of products and/or services within their coverage.

·         Invite them for a deep dive or “lunch and learn” where they get access to company executives (CEO, CTO, COO) that normally aren’t part of your briefing team.

·         Create pitches that are relevant to what they are writing about, not just their beat.

·         When pitching or briefing, reference recent articles to show that you’re paying attention to their work.

·         Create a six month story arch that gives them unique access into how your company thinks and how it plans to win in the marketplace, and then update them as you achieve these metrics.

·         Offer to become a technical resource on issues they are covering, even if this potentially means interviews conducted don’t result in immediate coverage.

·         Check in with them regularly to ask what they are working on and make suggestions about topics they haven’t covered yet that apply to their beat.

When identifying the 15 prospects, you’ll need to understand which companies they are currently covering and if they have any existing biases or favorites among your competitors. If they do, go ahead and include them, but realize this is a harder objective to achieve but often much more rewarding.

At the end of 2012, review how this program went and make adjustments with certain press/analysts that you weren’t able to cultivate. If some just aren’t interested, then pick others that you can begin to work with during the following six months.

It’s important to remember that at the core of any press or analyst relationship is trust. That they trust you to give them honest, relevant information and that you’re willing to help them do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Break that trust and you can lose these relationships forever.

No matter what category your 2012 goals lie in, developing a step-by-step plan to actually achieve them is critical. Successful PR programs require constant attention – once you’ve visualized where you want to be, remember to actively revisit and evolve the track you’ve put in place to get there and you’ll be closing a successful 2012 before you know it.

What's the Plan, Stan?

As you start your 2012 planning, the first thing most companies do is map out what they want to announce and when.  There are road map considerations, revenue to recognize and industry trade shows to consider as decisions are made and schedules finalized.  These product and feature announcements are the backbone of most company’s announcement strategy for the year.  Add in a few customer announcements and a partner or two and companies think they have a well-rounded, complete plan for the New Year.

But do they really?  Using the model above, the company is setting out to talk about what they make and who they sell to.  That’s clearly important, but is it enough?  That depends on what the company wants to be over the next 12 – 18 months.  If they want to only be a product or technology company, than this is probably an okay strategy to leverage.

If the company wants to be seen as more than just a collection of products and more as a strategic asset to their customers, a viable partner to other vendors and a leader in their industry, then that plan isn’t strong enough to help them achieve these goals.

The issue is that companies are comprised of more than the products they make or the technologies they leverage.  To grow, they need to demonstrate they are good partners and have strong prospects for growth over time.  Companies need to showcase how their products fit into over market trends and provide comment on how their team is the right one to make thing happen.  Companies need to demonstrate the value it presents (as a company and with their products) as part of a wider industry solution and articulate their long-term strategy for market expansion.  Successful companies are a combination of all these things.  As PR people, it’s our job to help them find ways to tell these stories.

The easy answer is to use press releases.  This can be particularly effective when you weave elements of multiple threads into the fabric of the press release story.  Blending these threads into quotes for partners, company executives and analysts is a good way to go as it provides the human context to explain why a company is doing something.

The goal is to move beyond the press release and into the interview itself.  This is where a strong media trainer can help.  It’s one thing to approve a press release quote when reading it but another to practice it.  It’s easy for a spokesperson to fall back into the trap of discussing product features and “speeds and feeds” during an interview and forget to put these product attributes into context.  While your company is proud of what its accomplished, without context the importance of your announcement can be lost or simply relegated to a three paragraph story that simply regurgitates the facts.  The challenge for PR people is to help their spokespeople understand the proper context by announcement, news outlet and reporter.  More about this in the next blog.

Industry Leader of…None

I recently did a search on PRNewswire for certain key terms that I know drive reporters crazy. Companies love to use these terms and PR writers often fall back on them as a descriptor when nothing else is appropriate.  That’s where the problem lies – these words are used as filler when nothing else comes to mind to make a more contextual or interesting descriptor.  So, a company launching a new product becomes an “industry leader” and launching an interesting new product is instead launching a “breakthrough” “innovation” with “advanced” capabilities.

These words might sound good on paper but, in fact, these words have become so ubiquitous that they actually mean nothing.  In my recent research through PR Newswire, I searched for these words in press releases issued on a specific day. The date I choose doesn’t really matter but for records sake, it was October 31, 2011 at 10:54 am. Bear in mind that the search ran was just for releases issued that day before 10:54 AM EDT. These are the results:

• 1,253 “innovative”
• 903 “advanced”
• 202 “global leader”
• 123 “breakthrough” or “groundbreaking”

We all know that there weren’t 1,253 truly innovative products or services announced on October 31, 2011, by 10:54 AM EDT. There probably weren’t 1,253 truly innovative products announced in all of 2011. So what does that mean for PR writers? It means using the word “innovative” to describe your company’s (or client’s) products isn’t that innovative anymore.

Every industry is packed with vernacular and buzz words that mean something to someone. The problem is when these buzz words go mainstream, they lose the original context that help define the meaning. Writing for PR should be about context, not buzzwords. You need to craft a story that helps readers understand how the announcement fits into their industry, their needs and their lives.

Mark Twain once said, “Don’t say the old lady screamed-bring her on and let her scream.” Translate this into PR writing and you get: “Don’t say the product is innovative, bring it out and tell us how and why it’s innovative.”

This is harder said than done because, let’s face it, not everything that a company announces is as groundbreaking as the company likes to think. That doesn’t mean it’s not news, it just means that you have to work a little harder to make it newsworthy.

Ears Not Eyeballs

I was recently asked to speak to a group of small business owners about marketing strategies in a down economy. My talk focused on finding the right media, tailoring the right message and creating meaningful metrics to ensure that message gets through and cultivates the desired action. One of my co-presenters put up two slides that I found interesting. The first one made me think, and the second to think “no duh.” Yes, I know, I’m sometimes amazingly profound.

The first slide had the statement that read, “Content is infinite, Attention is finite.” With thousands of websites, hundreds of blogs and an ungodly amount of Twitter feeds, content is everywhere and about any topic you could possibly want to search. Some folks will tell you that the trick is getting all eyeballs everywhere to visit your website or subscribe to your feeds. But there is a significant problem with this objective. You don’t really know who these eyeballs belong to, or if they even belong to someone you are trying to motivate to some kind of action. Given how much information is out there, how can you really tell if the eyeballs you get are actually paying a blinks-worth of attention?

This is where we come to the Ears Not Eyeballs analogy. These are metaphorical ears mind you, not actual “ears,” but should be thought of as the people that visit any of your communications channels and listen to what you have to say with open ears.

Facebook is a good example of Eyeballs and not Ears for most business-to-business companies. Facebook is a fantastic social media site for people. During the small business meeting, I asked how many of the audience went on Facebook to see pictures of their relatives, catch up with friends and let folks know what they are doing. Every hand went up. I then asked how many logged on to find or learn about products or services that were relevant to their business. Not a single hand went up. And yet there are thousands of B2B companies out there spending a fortune of time and money on Facebook pages.

These same companies, while embracing social media, haven’t updated how they fundamentally communicate. They are still saying the same things, just over a new channel. Their websites, press releases, twitter feeds, etc. are the same inward facing, attribute-laded marketing speak that leaves the reader to interpret how it relates to them. In today’s content saturated world, companies need to articulate how what they offer can make a difference to their target market on a personal and professional level.

We counsel our clients that each communication a company makes should provide, at a minimum, the following three things:

1. How the product/services/thingy will impact the market;

2. How the product/services/thingy will impact the target customer; and

3. How the product/services/thingy will impact company itself.

Answering these three simple questions will help put your communications into context and that’s the goal because context is relevant. Relevance is what helps your target audience put aside everything else they have going on in their heads to focus on your communication. They clear out their kids’ soccer practice schedule, the grocery store list for dinner, the spreadsheet that is due by COB and focus on what you’re saying. And, most importantly, relevance can transform eyeballs into ears.

Look Right, Look Left, Look Right Again

When you were a kid, your Mom always told you to “look right, look left, look right again” before crossing the street.

That’s pretty good advice that can easily be applied to a company’s PR and marketing programs. Too often, companies rush out (across the metaphorical street) and embrace the latest online programs because they don’t want to look like they aren’t “with it.” Social networking is a good example.

Not every company in the world needs a Facebook fan page…..or a Twitter account….or YouTube channel. None of these programs will make you successful on their own and certainly none of them are silver bullets that will enable you to leap frog your competitors. First, you have to look to make sure you’re customers are actively engaged at a professional level, and that they want to connect with you on any given platform.

The truth is, I’ve seen hundreds of companies launch social networking programs only to realize they don’t have the content required to make it meaningful or can’t attract an audience that cares.

The sad part is some corporate execs, in their rush to be relevant, don’t apply the same business diligence to PR and marketing programs as they do to other aspects of their business. So to take it back to the basics (just like Mama taught):

Social networking, Twitter, etc should only be part of your marketing programs if:

• LOOK RIGHT - A significant part of your target market(s) are willing to engage
• LOOK LEFT - The format provides a opportunity to demonstrate leadership, shape opinions or participate in debate; and
• LOOK RIGHT AGAIN - It’s integrated into, and not separate from, other marketing and PR programs.

So before you fall prey to the social networking charlatans or run headfirst into time-consuming and irrelevant programs, take a hard look at your customer base on see if they would prefer a social network that is online or in person.

2010 – Get Your Head in the Game

2009 was tough. Your company got beat down, you got more “noes” than “yeses,” and the best bet might be just to hunker down and wait until all market indicators are point up, right?

Wrong.

Now I’m not saying it’s time to break the bank, but it is time to start planning what you do, and just as importantly, how you measure if you have been successful or not. To be successful you have to plan, and careful planning includes understanding your core assets, what the market wants to hear (and what they have already heard), and how each program element can contribute to achieve your goals. It all starts, though, with having goals, of knowing where you want your company to be, being realistic in what you can achieve in a given time frame and then making adjustments along the way as the market and your company evolves.

As stated, the first step in planning your marketing, communications and public relations programs is to understand what your marketing goal is for the year. Ask yourself, “How do I want public perception of my company to change by the end of the year?” or “In what ways do I want to change the way my company interacts with its target audiences?” When you have that answer, you can start to build, and measure, programs to help make that goal a reality. Before you jump into any program, list what you are currently doing and then consider why the industry isn’t already making this connection between your company’s contributions and the business issue you are solving.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll look at the different types of goals companies can set for themselves and then discuss some recommendations as to how you set and measure programs throughout the year. We’ll look at the following categories: thought leadership, market leadership, lead generation, competitive threat offsets and category creation.

Let’s say your objective for 2010 is that you want the industry to recognize the contributions your company has made to solve a critical business issue for your customers. I would put this into the “thought leadership” category and your next step would be to create a campaign to help you achieve this goal.

Step 1: Before doing anything, you’ll need to inventory what you can credibly say publically about your company’s products, how it solves a specific business issue and what your customer base is willing to let you showcase about how you are helping them solve it. Next, you’ll need to take a critical eye to what your product does compared to your closest competitors to make sure that you’re not leading with a feature or functionality that will be considered a “me too” in the marketplace. It’s always good to look to define a market need by your product’s strengths and your competitor’s weaknesses!

Step 2: Now look at who within the industry is writing about the business or technology issue you’re addressing with your company’s products. Are there two or three analysts that regularly report on this market or that are frequently quoted in the trade media about this topic? Are there editors that write about the topic either in their regular columns, features or as part of their blogs? Is there someone that leverages Twitter to talk about this topic and usually generates a lot of “retweets” about what they post? If the market doesn’t currently give your company credit for solving this issue, a good place to start is with the industry analysts that are covering your market.

Step 3: Evaluate what the people in Step 2 are writing about and develop an understanding of the stories they are trying to tell and what stories they have already told.

Step 4: This is the tricky part. You’re going to need to leverage information from all three steps above to create a compelling story that articulates how your company is helping its customers solve this business issue. Your story will have to be informative, relevant and new.

Step 5: You might think you are done once the article(s), report(s), etc. come out , but you still need to see how this story is changing the way people think about you. Once the campaign is launched, are you getting more inbound leads or getting requests for additional interviews? Is your sales team telling you they are spending less time in meetings explaining what you bring to market and instead focusing on selling? Essentially, having a story published, did you achieve the goal of changing the perception of your company? The metrics you create will be specific to what you are trying to accomplish and it’s always a plus to understand what these are before you begin.

My next blog will focus on lead generation goals and make some recommendations about ways to help create pull from the marketplace.

Owning Your Online Identity

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Oh My! There are thousands of social networking sites today that enable you to create, and maintain, a personal space online. This ability allows us to reconnect with old friends, stay on top of what friends and family are doing, and learn more about topics of interest.

While this level of Internet interaction is exciting and generally beneficial, blending personal and professional contacts into the same social networking identities can be problematic. For better or worse, the way you are around your friends and family is different than the way you are around people you know through work. And while your best friend from college will be excited you saw U2 (Coldplay, Green Day, whomever) last Wednesday night, the client you have a meeting with on Thursday probably won’t be as thrilled.

Even more complications arise when you use social media to promote a social or political view. Most likely, your friends share similar views as you do on areas that matter most to you. But can you say for sure that your professional contacts do as well? You might want to believe that if your views aren’t the same, they will appreciate your opinion, or better yet, that they have to take you for what you are. But that’s naïve. They don’t have to take you for who you are, especially in today’s job market that features a dozen people just like you in your own zip code.

What’s the answer? Maintain a healthy separation between your personal and professional online identiies. Use different profiles to connect with friends and business contacts, or segment your contacts into categories that are relevant to how you know them. When you have something to share that might interest your business friends-- post to that group or profile. When you finally manage to get Aunt Pearl to share her brownie recipe, keep that info private to friends and family.

Let’s face it-- business is about putting your best foot forward. In today’s globally-connected marketplace, that first step might be online. With that in mind, it is critical that the professional image you create on social networks is the one that represents you in the best possible light and is the one your company, partners, customers, potential customers and influencers will want to be associated with when the relationship moves from online to in person.