Name: Industry Insider: Guest Blogger
Bio: BurrellesLuce invites marketing and public relations professionals with valuable information and perspectives to share their thoughts.
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- Keep your skill set up-to-date
- Participating on the Internet is no longer an option
- 90 percent of social media users follow/monitor news and information daily
- 75 percent of social media users visit corporate websites after a story
- 73 percent of social media users believe social media sources with news is more timely
- Think like a newsroom
- Use social media to collect real-time feedback on the quality, tone and resonance of a conversation – listen constantly
- Let others (volunteers, employees, customers or consumers) tell the story for you
- Don’t script people – just teach them how to use social media tools effectively
- Don’t tell media what the news is – just tell them what you have and how they can use it
- Individuals as influencers are becoming increasingly important – never underestimate your audience
- Say the full message: not just “go online,” but “go online and donate”
- Mobile media is the next frontier in terms of location, platforms, video, social search, virtual collaboration and cloud computing
- Before you spend any resources, make sure audience is there; speak the right language and understand who you’re trying to influence
- Stop trying to control the message – just be part of the conversation
- You must call media on their mistakes – they are working as fast as we are, and mistakes happen; it’s our job to give them the correct information
- Claim as much real estate as you can on a TV screen – provide information for the lower-third/crawl, facts, b-roll, bulleted messages, etc.; have your spokesperson hold a prop
- Your actions must match your words
Professional Development Is A “Must” For PR Practitioners
July 9th, 2010Brittany James is a recent graduate from Quinnipiac University with a degree in public relations and a minor in marketing. Currently she is interning at Source Communications, a New York-based strategic consulting firm.
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At the end of last month, the BurrellesLuce team invited me to attend the Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit. Being a young PR professional, who had just attended my first PRSA event at the beginning of June, I was eager to partake in the day’s activities. With a lot of great companies being represented at the summit, I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed in this 
amazing learning experience.
While there were very informative “Meet the Editors” roundtables, I had the pleasure of listening to four panels that all mirrored the same message throughout regarding growing industry trends. Some of the key messages conveyed were:
During the first panel, the skills every public relations professional needs were discussed and writing was stressed to be the biggest skill. Like any PR professional knows, writing is essential to their everyday tasks and the panel talked about how being able to tell stories requires writing skills. These writing skills need to have a visual image and content, which helps to develop the full picture of what is impacting areas.
Moving more towards the social media aspect, during the other three panels I listened to, the need for more incorporation of the Internet into PR was a strong topic. In today’s PR world, there really isn’t an excuse to not be on social media and engaging with your and your clients’ audiences. Steve Momorella from TEKgroup International presented the statistics that:
In the second presentation, Tina Brown from The Daily Beast still thinks that as PR professionals we are still retro and need validation through print or TV. She went on to say how we can help shape the response of stories on the Internet by participating and also assisting to make the story go viral.
By being part of the conversation, we as PR professionals can help to position the story in a positive light. However, if there is no presence, anything can happen. As social media is continuing to grow, Bev Yehuda from Products MultiVu stated that “social media is the start of a transition away from ‘push,’ one-way communications to a world full of interactivity between PR professionals and the media.”
Being a young PR professional, what do you foresee as some future trends in the industry? How are you getting your company and/or clients into social media?
I Am Not Alone…and Other Things I Learned at the PR News Media Relations Forum
July 1st, 2010Lindsay Nichols brings a broad range of public relations expertise to Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, helping clients build relationships with key audiences and influencers and sustaining awareness about their missions. In her nine year career, Lindsay has provided media relations, public affairs, grassroots marketing, crisis communications, and healthcare communications consulting to a variety of organizations focused on a variety of industries, including social purpose, advocacy, corporate, consumer, healthcare and legal.
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From left: Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce; Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau; Howard Arenstein, CBS Radio News; Doug Stanlin, On Deadline blog, USA Today.
This post first appeared on the @OgilvyPR blog, Social Marketing exCHANGE, June 29, 2010.
I’m clearly a geek, but I’m going to proudly say it: it’s an exciting time to be in media relations.
I started my career in media a decade ago and as the field has changed, the practice of getting key messages in front of target audiences via the media has only gotten more interesting. From crafting the story idea, to hearing the spark ignite for a reporter, to reading or listening or watching the final story unfold – the entire process is exhilarating. Social media has only broadened that landscape for me – I have more choices than ever to spread my clients’ messages and make an impact with the audiences that matter. And while media relations may seem more complex then the days when I used to thumb through a media directory book to find a reporter’s name and beat, in a lot of ways I find it much more strategic and exciting.
This geeky love I have for media relations was recently nourished when I was lucky enough to attend the PR News Media Relations Next Practices Forum as a guest of sponsor BurellesLuce. I got to hear from some of the best talent in the industry across all walks of PR life including corporate veterans Stephanie Anderson of OSRAM SYLVANIA and Ed Markey of Goodyear; consulting mavens Karen Hinton of Hinton Communications and Andrew Gilman of CommCore Consulting Group; and nonprofit leaders Laura Howe of the American National Red Cross and Glen Nowak with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; among others.
And – I can’t but help but show a little pride here – Ogilvy PR had a great client showing: Mark Phillips of the USO and Colleen Wilber of America’s Promise Alliance both had wonderful insights to share. The keynote speaker was former Marriott spokesman and current Senior Director of Communications for Catholic Charities USA, Roger Conner, who shared his PR experiences both humorous and humbling.
The knowledge these speakers imparted was too much to share in detail, but some highlights were:
One of my favorite parts of the forum, the “Media/PR Smackdown,” was a panel of well-respected and much sought-after journalists Howard Arenstein, Correspondent of CBS Radio News and CBS News Radio’s Washington, DC, Bureau Manager; Doug Stanglin, Editor of the “On Deadline” blog at USA Today; and Lynn Sweet, Columnist and Washington Bureau Chief of Chicago Sun-Times. They reinforced the tried and true of the media world – don’t call unless you know the reporter’s beat, you know your pitch fits perfectly with what they cover, you’ve already sent an email, and you have a personal relationship. But they also taught me a thing or two about how journalists have embraced the recent changes to the media relations landscape. Reporters love Twitter. I can’t emphasize that enough. They love it personally, and they love it professionally. Doug Stanglin uses his Twitter as a news aggregator. Reporters also love blogs – their own and others. They no longer have one deadline a day – they have them throughout the day. And they are truly excited about sharing their news on different platforms.
So apparently I’m not the only one geeking out about media relations today.
Above all, the overwhelming message of the forum was loud and clear for me: I am not alone. I heard it from the friends I made at my table and around the room and the speakers who represented so many industries and so many types of PR. We’ve all had great ideas but neither the adequate time nor resources to get the job done well. We’ve all dealt with public crises that we didn’t see coming. We’ve all been met with overworked and under-resourced journalists who can’t (or won’t) hear us out. We’ve all had to deal with leadership who didn’t understand how the media work and expected us to move mountains with only a spoon to start digging. But we all love what we do. We love shaping stories, spreading our clients’ messages, and entering in the public conversation. We all have a passion for getting it right the first time. And we all have a zeal for where media relations has come from – and where it’s going.
And somehow, just knowing that – that I’m not alone – feels good.
You can find more about the forum on Twitter: @mrf.
Good PR Measurement Is All About Good Goal Setting
March 29th, 2010Leah Schmerl is a senior vice president at Kaplow, a New York City public relations firm. She is the leader of the firm’s Internet and e-commerce practice. Leah also spearheads Kaplow’s measurement thought-leadership and oversees the development of the agency’s measurement programs. Leah earned her Master’s degree in U.S. History from the University of California, San Diego, and is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Rochester.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the PR News PR Measurement Conference, and grappling with some of the toughest issues the PR industry faces.
In my mind, the fundamental question that united the day: how do we make sure the decision-makers within our organizations understand the 
value public relations brings to their businesses? The speakers who asked and answered these questions were brilliant and the attendees thoughtful.
Here’s my biggest “a-ha” related to the day: when presenting PR results to the C-suite, we need to “talk the talk” of those executives. Meaning, we need to make PR results relevant to the issues and concerns most critical to them.
To do that well, we must fully understand the business objectives against which executives hold PR accountable. Stop being preoccupied with delivering the fanciest metrics on the block (“marketing mix modeling” or “weighted media costs” at the end of the program. The best investment of time and resources is spent at the very start of the PR planning process. This time should be spent clearly articulating the relevant business objectives, and creating clear, measurable PR goals that map to those business objectives. If that’s done at the outset, good measurement becomes so much easier. And our results will be the kinds that make the C-suite sit up and take notice.
Another great take-away from the day: PR has many illustrative metrics available that make setting PR goals (and delivering the corresponding results) much more impactful than ever. It’s critical to examine the measurement tools available (quantitative and qualitative) and hand-pick the ones that will best “make the case” for the positive impact of PR on the organization’s specific business. This reinforced my belief that PR cannot live in a silo. We need to access the metrics available from other teams – like sales and marketing – to help us create the richest measurement reporting possible.
I left the day feeling inspired by the work my PR colleagues are doing in measurement. We’re facing some of the industry’s most challenging times. We’ve got some really smart people asking (and answering) tough questions. I’m excited by where we’re headed.
Shared Experience Becomes Experience We Share
February 16th, 2010Bill Hiniker is principal at MessagePoint Communications, a writing and consulting practice specializing in corporate and executive communications. He blogs at http://www.messagepointblog.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at messagepoint@cox.net.
Instead of being a “shared experience,” TV is quickly becoming “an experience we share.” That observation, made on a recent episode of NPR’s always-enjoyable Culturetopia podcast, really rings true for me.
I’m a first-generation television kid and am old enough to remember when the television dial was really a dial with 13 numbers. There were just three networks plus an educational channel and an independent channel or two that mostly showed old movies. Miss “The Twilight Zone,” “Ed Sullivan,” “Laugh-In” or, later, “Saturday Night Live” and you risked being left out of the lunchtime conversation.
That was pretty much the way of the world until the first video recorders began appearing in homes and offices in the 1980s. Almost overnight it became possible to borrow a missed episode of “Cheers” from a coworker who hadn’t forgotten to set his VCR (as long as he didn’t have a Beta machine).
This opened up a whole new world for communications professionals. Suddenly it became possible to record, copy, and share cassettes of the annual meeting or positive media coverage with employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
Fast forward a decade or two and digital technology made it possible to post videos on company websites and e-mail links – or even short clips – to your key publics. Even more importantly, you could forward clips of cats playing the piano or bears catching fish to your friends.
Technology has continued to advance at warp speed. You can now see most of your favorite shows online or buy them for a couple of bucks on iTunes. More than 65,000 videos are posted on YouTube every day. And someone somewhere almost certainly watched the Super Bowl on his cell phone.
With more than 100 million viewers, the Super Bowl is one of television’s few remaining shared experiences, something almost everyone watches at the same time. Maybe Michael Phelps swimming at the Summer Olympics or the finale of “American Idol” also qualify. I’d like to hear your nominations.
So what does all this mean for professional communicators?
In some ways it makes our jobs harder. We have more channels to monitor and more competition for people’s attention than ever before. We have to do a better job of training, prepping, and equipping our spokespeople, because screw-ups can live on and on in cyberspace. And we’ve got to be more prepared than ever to respond quickly, effectively, and creatively to disasters, rumors, and PR challenges that didn’t even occur to us a few years ago. Bad news can go viral faster than you can bathe in a KFC sink.
On the opportunities side of the ledger, we also have more tools at our disposal than ever before. We can respond to negative press overnight or, ideally, even quicker. We can set up dedicated YouTube channels, as Best Buy, Mercedes Benz, Apple and hundreds of other companies have done. And we can get the word out – from executive speeches to news clips – faster and to a broader audience than ever before, with a few mouse clicks.
Six decades after television took over America’s living rooms, its power to communicate, persuade, and entertain continues to grow. What are you doing to tap into the power of television in the social media age?
Life After Oprah
January 14th, 2010Abbey Franke is an Account Executive at Scott Circle Communications. She focuses on new media strategies and online communications and comes to public relations with a background in live television production. You can follow her on Twitter: @scottcircle LinkedIn: abbeyfranke or Facebook: Scott Circle.
Image: AdWeek
As Oprah tearfully announced that her upcoming 25th season would be her last, a flurry of tweets began flying before the credits even started rolling. The question on everyone’s lips (or tweets): “Who would be next?” Oprah, a towering icon of television talk, leaves behind a unique brand and some sizeable shoes to fill. As the voice that launched a thousand small businesses, authors, celebrities and lately, politicians, she has harnessed the power of her daytime audience in a way that no competitor has. Where other shows are more specialized, the Big “O” packs a punch in terms of variety, serving up everything from celebrity interviews to self-help, confessionals to contests, all with a side of fashion and fanfare. This broad base has made Oprah into a holy grail of public relations, the golden ring for communications professionals and clients to strive for.
So, who is next? Where will we turn when we have a new book to promote? An expert on multiple personality disorders to pitch? Or a golf pro ensnared in a PR-tsunami with a big apology to make? Already names are being tossed around.
Funny girl, Ellen DeGeneres seems to be the natural heir to Oprah’s talk queen crown. Her appeal is broad, although she only commands less than half of Oprah’s estimated seven million viewers. This fall has seen the two together on the cover of O, The Oprah Magazine and appearing on each other’s shows, leading many to believe that Ellen’s succession could be a natural one. Still, it’s hard to imagine her hi-jinks and dancing paired with a tell-all from Whitney Houston, much less Sarah Palin, both of whom appeared on Oprah this fall.
Rumors also suggest a Katie Couric daytime program following the end of Couric’s contract with CBS in 2011, but Couric’s image, as a sophisticated girlfriend, does not have quite the same warm, likeability of Oprah’s mentoring presence. Other names like Tyra Banks, Whoopi Goldberg, Paula Abdul and even Sarah Palin are floating around as potential daytime divas. Morning shows like Good Morning America and the Today Show offer a similar variety to Oprah’s programming, but still cannot match her numbers. And then, of course, there are the prime time and late night outlets. Leno, Letterman, and Conan remain strongholds for celebrities while Colbert and Stewart offer politicos, authors, economists and other thought leaders.
Perhaps Oprah leaves behind her a void that no one show can fill. Fans of her self-help segments may gravitate towards spin-offs Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. Viewers interested in celebrity will stick with Ellen or Tyra. Lifestyle audiences could turn to Martha Stewart, the Oprah-launched, Rachel Ray or a rumored new program for Oprah regular, home improvement/design guru Nate Berkus.
So where does this leave PR professionals? The end of Oprah could be just another step towards the increasing hyper-fragmentation of the media as niche outlets multiply on and offline. The result: continued need for greater targeting efforts, heightened listening, and connecting with audiences where they are by PR. Does this require more work than one big push for the golden Oprah standard? Probably, but the outlets for exposure expand drastically as do the opportunities for meaningful interaction. Building buzz from the bottom up is daunting and without the ultimate “stamp of approval,” individual influencers need to be discovered at every level of communications. They might look a little different than Oprah and come in the form of mommy-bloggers or local anchors, but perhaps their reach will be even more personal and their audience even more engaged.
Between now and the end of Oprah’s reign supreme, there will be undoubtedly hundreds of potential candidates to take her place. Of course, there’s still one candidate that might be the best replacement for Oprah, and that’s Oprah herself. Although the full details of her next venture have yet to be released, or even developed, what’s brewing is a network that uses Oprah’s successful show as a jumping off point, promising dozens of new programs to pitch. So, as we enter into the end of an era, how will you be tailoring your PR efforts? Who will be your big get?
Please share your thoughts with myself and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
