Name: Tressa Robbins
Email:
Bio: A country girl at heart, who loves the city, I’ve worked in marketing, consultative sales, and media relations for the better part of 20 years. The skills acquired from these positions certainly come in handy in my present role as vice president, BurrellesLuce Media Contacts. This is an exciting time of change in the world of media and I want to initiate conversations on news to assist and support public relations professionals in the industry. In my personal time, love the outdoors, boating, fishing, riding 4-wheelers (ATVs) and being mom to my three dogs. Twitter: @TressaLynne; LinkedIn: TressaLynne; Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Posts by Tressa Robbins:
- Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100
- Matt Harrington, president and CEO of Edelman U.S.
- Peter Land, SVP, communications, at PepsiCo Beverages Americas
- Martin Murtland, VP, solutions for corporate communications for Dow Jones Inc.
- PR now has more opportunity and voice as it relates to corporate strategy. In other words, PR professionals are gaining more access to the C-suite.
- The future (of PR) is about confidence and being nimble. According to Land, we must be able to move incredibly fast and confident to walk into our CEO’s office and make suggestions.
- The move away from “agency of record” was briefly discussed because corporations have multiple needs (e.g., advertising, digital, creative, B2B, direct to consumer, etc.)
- The next decade in public relations is predicted to be the most exciting in history thus far. It may seem like it’s “back to the future,” as some have lost sight of fundamental best practices, but we must now come back to this strategic consulting in shaping views, per Hynes.
- 91 percent of journalists search Google to do their job (“expert” is a common search term)
- 89 percent use blogs
- 64 percent are using social networks
- They want the news in easy-to-identify, digestible sections.
- They are looking for images, quotes, video, backgrounders, fact sheets.
- Tag the information so it’s easily found.
- Give them the full embed code for multimedia.
- Put your news in a feed.
- Make it available on social sites.
- Aggregate your news/social content in one place.
- First (obviously) create the video. Expensive equipment or production studio time is not needed; you can use your own flipcam or other video recorder.
- Build your own YouTube channel by choosing a name. The name should include your company’s or one that reflects the product/service category you’re associated with. Register it and you’ll receive a URL reading youtube.com/user/[yourfullnamehere].
- Create a profile and upload an avatar or video screenshot that catches peoples’ attention.
- YouTube has different types of accounts. Idugboe recommends “Guru” to stand above the crowd.
- You can upload your own images and backgrounds to create a look consistent with your website, blog, business cards, etc.
- To help build your brand and your online community, check all relevant options under “Modules”
- If you want viewers to always see the latest and greatest, click “Edit” on the screen’s top right. At “Featured Video” click “Use the Most Recent”
- Embed your YouTube videos on your website and blog.
- Link your channel and videos everywhere possible to maximize visibility (making sure to follow the rules of proper engagement).
- Leverage your current network, and let YouTube help grow and expand it.
- If applicable, notify local newspapers, TV and any other media outlets via press releases, to alert their audiences to your video.
- Clients and CEOs like to see big names on the media list – even when it’s not appropriate. It’s the PR practitioner’s job to provide good counsel. Set a realistic and common level of expectations.
- Once that’s established, research the writers on your list. Not just what beat they cover, but what they are writing about. What are they passionate about? How does your story tie-in to these things; in other words, why should the journalist or blogger care?
- And be sure to check (or double check), journalist, blogger, and community guidelines before pitching. When in doubt, go without.
- PR pro and blogger Dave Fleet offered some advice. One piece is to “Sign your name. Trolls send anonymous messages. Good PR people don’t.” (Am I the only one who gets a mental image here?)
- Stephanie Quilao, in her (now retired) Back in Skinny Jeans blog, wrote an open letter to those pitching her. I’m a huge fan of “telling it like it is” and she bares no bones here. Among her advice was:
- Use the name of the blogger when pitching: “My name, Stephanie Quilao, is written all over my blog on every post and in the “About” page, so use it. Do not address me “Dear Blogger,” “Hello Back in Skinny Jeans” or “Hey Fit Blogger!” Yes, I’ve gotten versions of the “Hey you!” When you don’t use my name, it tells me that you are either lazy, cold, or don’t really give a rat’s [expletive deleted] about who I am.”
- “Stop talking at me and talk with me. Eight out of ten times, this is how your pitch sounds to me, ‘Dear Stephanie, us, us, us, us, {insert product name}, us, us, us, us, {insert press release}, us, us, us, us, enough about us, let’s talk more about us, and what you’ll tell your readers about us…’ You sound like the adults in Charlie Brown, and I tune out because we’re not having a conversation, you’re shoving your agenda at me.”
- Avoid large email attachments. Sally Whittle wrote on her Getting Ink blog, “… and attachments. Dear God, why are we still having this bloody conversation? Only today, I got a 5MB attachment attached to a random press release – twice, because the PR agency hasn’t cleaned its data lately. If you’re using WiFi on a public hotspot or you’re using a 3G dongle or BlackBerry, downloading huge chunks of data is not fun. HUGE waste of time. Don’t do it.”
- In a U.K. PR Week article, Mark Borkwoski says: “PR spam is as contagious as chlamydia and has the same effect. It can cause sterility in the people infected.” While the analogy here is a bit crude, it certainly gets the point across.
- Develop meaningful relationships; learn to effectively communicate. Lou Hoffman sums up relationship-building between PR and the media by saying, “If the PR profession jumped on this bandwagon, we would go a long way toward resolving what the warden in Cool Hand Luke called, ‘a failure to communicate.’”
The Future of Public Relations: Seizing the Opportunity
July 19th, 2010
I wasn’t able to attend this year’s Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit workshop (in New York) in person earlier this month. However, I did have the opportunity to attend virtually.
Speakers for the panel “The Future of Public Relations: Seizing the Opportunity” consisted of:
I’ve listed some of the key points that I heard in the podcast. (NOTE: Unfortunately since there was only audio and no video, I was unable to keep track of exactly who was speaking at some times – so my apologies, in advance, to the panel if I’ve not credited you with your quotes.)
Hynes talked about marketing, advertising, public relations, etc. all being separate departments with separate budgets, as this is the business model that’s served well in the past. However, in reality, the future of the industry is about communicating the brand of the organization. What are the goals as a whole and what are the skill sets that match those strategic goals? This is the time for organizations to think about the fundamental concept of moving away from managing information or news to shaping and directing conversation.
Companies must influence the influencers. The concept of third-party advocacy has never been more important than it is now.
As in any discussion of PR these days, the conversation moved to changes in ROI and measurement and analytics. We all know we should get away from ad value equivalency, but what do we use in its place (aside from media value)? How do you know your campaign is a success? There are many tools out there that measure “online buzz.” Yet what does that really mean? It goes back to where you start – when you set your goals, they must be measurable. Measurable goals will drive your reporting and allow you to determine which strategies were successful.
So, what does the future look like for public relations?
What would you add? What does the future of PR look like in your mind’s eye? If you attended the conference virtually, what are some of the points you took away from it. Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
Media Relations 2.0: What Journalists Really Want from PR
June 28th, 2010Last week, I attended a webinar by Sally Falkow, APR, and Rebecca Lieb, on how Internet technology and social networking affects news media and as a result, the public relations and media relations practitioner.
For those of you who attended last year’s PRSA International conference and heard Arianna Huffington open the keynote address with, “The 
press release is dead…” or those who read Tom Forenski’s rant a few years ago, “Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!,” may be surprised to learn the press release, like traditional media, is NOT dead. Falkow told us the news has changed, but journalists still want information. The way that journalists work is evolving so we need to provide this information in different ways.
Lieb quoted some statistics on how journalists work today:
In addition, Lieb went on to say that over 75 percent of reporters view blogs as helpful in providing story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue. And, almost half of reporters say they are “lurkers” on social networking sites.
So, what do journalists really want and need from PR?
She says, “Deconstruct the press release into special sections and tag the information. By using news tags, a newspaper or news site could pull together larger numbers of news stories and the PR industry would be helping news publishers to gather the facts and present them in a near-publishable format.”
Bottom line: if you aren’t telling your story, then someone’s telling it for you. If the media can’t find the information they need from you, they will find it elsewhere – and you may not like what they find!
The media in general is expected to provide more than just a print story, or just a video clip – it’s also on the web. What is your organization doing to feed the media’s hunger for content?
Want more tips and best practices for working with the media and giving journalists what they want and need? Visit the BurrellesLuce Resource Center which provides FREE white papers, tip sheets, and more. And be sure to sign-up for this month’s newsletter, “When Press Releases Go Bad” or view an archive of last month’s newsletter, “Staying Ahead of the Media Relations Curve.”
How to Leverage YouTube in Your PR Campaign
May 24th, 2010At the PRSA International Conference, last fall, I attended the “PR Needs YouTube” panel discussion and subsequently wrote a recap of the session. We were told that in September 2009, Americans conducted 3.5 billion searches on YouTube. In April 2010, just seven months later, that number is even higher at 3.7 billion searches, according to comScore.
An AdAge article stated that some marketers have just about given up on the traditional path to broadcast media coverage – instead of pitching their stories to reporters, they are directly engaging consumers through original content they and their agencies have created. “And while they haven’t completely abandoned traditional media outlets, big-name marketers such as Procter & Gamble, Best Buy, MasterCard and Coldwell Banker are among those who have taken matters into their own hands by creating content and bringing it straight to consumers.”
And, it’s not just broadcast news using video anymore. A large number of traditional print outlets have online affiliate sites that are complementing text with video – even radio stations are getting into the game by incorporating videos into their websites.
If you aren’t already utilizing YouTube in your public relations efforts, it’s definitely time to sit up and take notice! (My colleague Denise Giacin recently discussed a similar topic in her blog post, “YouTube Turns Five … Are You Tuned In?”)
So, how do you get started? Here are some tips from Douglas Idugboe at smedio:
From there you’ll then want to:
In addition to cross-marketing to your existing network and the media, you’re probably asking “How do I optimize the video for SEO?” In the video below, Greg Jarboe provides three tips for video search engine optimization from the International Search Summit in London last week:
Do you have additional tips on using video for PR for the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers? Are you using YouTube or other video sharing sites? Care to share any examples of successful (or unsuccessful) cases of video used in public relations campaigns?
Defining Public Relations Spam
May 3rd, 2010
Flickr Image: Darren Foreman
In my last BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas post, I shared some rather entertaining excerpts from journalists and bloggers regarding how they feel about “PR spam.” This post will discuss, “what exactly is PR spam?”
I mentioned before Drew Kerr’s definition of PR spam – “impersonal e-mail blasts that contain completely irrelevant information” – which sums it up nicely. But how do you spot PR spam? Neville Hobson of The Hobson & Holtz Report wrote these detailed descriptors of PR spam:
1. The product or service being pitched by email is so obviously not one that I would have much interest in, a fact that would be very easily apparent if the pitcher had taken even a cursory glance at this blog or listened to my podcast.
2. The email includes an unsolicited Word document attachment. And it’s worth noting that not everyone uses Word. I do but the pitcher doesn’t know that.
3. The pitcher writes a pseudo-friendly greeting but it only looks like a bad database mail merge. My favorite: “Hi, Neville ,” (notice the space between my name and the final comma). A close second is the simple “Hi ,” with that same space (yes, I’ve had lots of emails like that).
4. The email contains nothing but the text of a press release. That sin is compounded when the email subject line says (you guessed it) ‘press release’ or ‘latest announcement from XYZ Company.’ The nail’s in the coffin when the email also includes the press release as a Word attachment with lots of font and other document formatting.
Hobson wrote this nearly two years ago. So why are we still talking about this topic today? Sadly, it’s because PR spam is even more of an issue now than then. The more technology advances, the easier it is to spam – even unintentionally.
Some point the finger at “lazy PR flacks,” and yes, every profession has some, but doesn’t apply to most that I know. Some point the finger at the companies that provide media lists, media directories, and media database services. In my humble opinion, that’s just shooting the messenger.
So, here’s what I think it’s really about. It’s about client expectation and targeting.
If you take the time to do this, then surely you won’t be accused of being a PR spammer! What would you add to the list? How do you know when you’ve been the subject of PR spam? What are you doing to make sure your activities are staying off of the “PR naughty list?”
Are You Conducting Media Relations or Committing PR Spam?
April 12th, 2010
Flickr Image: Hergarty David
Media relations and PR professionals today are beleaguered to not only deliver exposure through traditional media channels, but to also engage bloggers, stakeholders, key influencers and, in many cases, direct consumers.
How do you know if you are conducting a valid media relations campaign or are just contributing to PR spam? I like Drew Kerr’s definition of PR spam: “Impersonal email blasts that contain completely irrelevant information.” Although, clear and concise, it should also be noted that even well intentioned PR professionals can be seen as spammers if they aren’t aware of suggested guidelines or following best practices.
So, in the spirit of Spring and all things new, I thought I’d share some of the, um, more entertaining excerpts I’ve read on this topic and save the lecture for another day.
I can’t wait to hear your PR spam anecdotes or comments – please add to this BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas post.
