By Leo Valiquette
In the course of staying on top of what’s the meme of the day in the PR blogosphere, I wade through reams of commentary on social media and how it can be turned to serve a corporate communications and marketing strategy. In fact, one would think it’s no longer possible to run a marketing or public relations campaign with any effectiveness at all unless it relies heavily on channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube.
This perception has been fueled by passionate early adopters eager to explore the features and functionality of The Next Big Thing, whatever that may be. In fact, last week came word of one fellow launching a new PR outfit called 3W PR “designed to help organizations, brands and individuals navigate through the World Wide Web.”
Web 2.0 has certainly provided a dazzling array of shiny new tools for the marketing and PR toolbox. The trick is getting past the giddy rush of excitement that comes of having a new toy to play with and understanding how to use them effectively in a practical sense.
George Livingston over at the Buzz Bin reinforced that point today by extolling the virtues of having a sound grounding in traditional PR and marketing strategy to understand a particular business, its market and its value proposition, in order to develop an effective communications program.
Bottom line: Web 2.0 isn’t a standalone game complete in its shrink wrap for marketing and PR practitioners. It’s an expansion pack.
The subject warrants another look at a piece of Shel Holtz’s from a month back about where social media responsibility should reside in the enterprise and the importance of ensuring it is used with surgical precision to further the organization’s goals.
By Leo Valiquette
There’s been no shortage of commentary here and elsewhere about the value of brevity when it comes to engaging with the media. As PR practitioners, we’re often making cold contact with harried folks overwhelmed by numerous pitches that all claim to be inherently more worthy than whatever else is clogging up the inbox.
By the same token, readers must be equally busy, with equally short attention spans, so it only makes sense that written material intended for their consumption must also be short, sweet and to the point, right?
Well, not necessarily.
There is a clear difference between copy that is reader friendly and copy that isn’t. And mere length is a poor means of distinguishing one from the other. On the fiction front, I’ve torn through tomes 400 and 500 pages long in an afternoon, and struggled for days through artful prose only half that length. The style in which something is written is as important, if not more so, than length, when it comes to engaging the reader.
So what defines reader-friendly copy from that which isn’t? It’s an important question for us, as we produce for clients news releases, backgrounders, case studies and other materials that must be both informative and engaging for the media and the media’s audience.
Daily Writing Tips offers up some good pointers and refers to a fellow who has had significant influence on the business of writing, Rudolph Flesch, the man who developed the Flesch–Kincaid Readability Tests for assigning appropriate grade levels to reading material.
From our perspective, spinning a good yarn is what’s important to engaging the reader and how long that yarn will be is determined wholly by the quality of the material. The key thing is to ensure the piece has a tight focus with an obvious beginning, middle and end, written in a clear active voice. Long-winded sentences and complex vocabulary should be kept to a minimum. Lots of periods and white space are good things.
One of my profs from J-school summed it up best. When asked how long a story assignment should be, she would always answer, “Give it what it’s worth.”
By Leo Valiquette
One battle-ready sword with really, really blunt edges (hey, common sense still has to prevail): $120
One chain mail hauberk and coif (that’s a shirt and hood for the uninitiated): $300
One shield: $150
Getting some adrenaline-pumping exercise that reminds us of the time when a man’s sword had to be as sharp as his wit: Priceless
As a wordsmith by profession and preference, there is nonetheless only so much time I can spend in front of a computer weaving words into artful prose. I need to take a break and try my hand at something else for awhile, usually something that involves sweat and sore muscles. Everything in moderation, after all.
For the past several years, its been one home improvement project or another. This time around, I am finally pursuing a long-held intention to take a course with the disarming title of “Chivalrous Sword Handling,” which will inevitably lead to a greater investment in arms and armor for regular engagements sparring with actual steel weapons (With all practical considerations made for safety, of course).
Whatever your particular bent, there is no underestimating the value of regular physical activity to burn off stress and the calories accumulated from sitting at a desk all day. I’ve known more than one workaholic, with a tummy only Timmy’s could make, hit with a heart attack or similar lifestyle-related illness at far too young an age.
So a note of caution as we say goodbye to August and head into September and the flurry of work-related activity that usually goes with it. Don’t let long and busy days at the office lead you to flop for the evening at home. Even a 30-minute walk after supper can work wonders. Even better, add another 10 or 15 minutes over lunch to refocus the mind and shake out the lethargy of sitting at the desk.
It’s a cliche because its true: If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.
By Leo Valiquette
“Do what you’re supposed to do to the best of your ability and be content with the results.”
Okay, that isn’t a catchy quote from some luminary of historical note. I just made it up. But it is along the same lines of the general theme that Francis espoused the other day with that comment from Canada’s oldest Olympian, 61-year-old Ian Millar, “If you persevere long enough, if you do the right things long enough, good things will happen to you.”
These are words to take to heart for any pursuit in order to reach a state of acceptance and satisfaction, as opposed to a stressed-out state of frustrated discontent. Do the best that your skills, experience and resources allow and find satisfaction in the fact that you’ve done all you can do, rather than feel miserable that the outcome of your effort was less than desired. It’s the best way to evaluate objectively how the results could be improved and muster the courage to try again.
I raise the point because John Greer at Catching Flack blogged today about Five Ways to Make Pitching More Productive and Less Painful. He talks about how many PR people dread pitching the media due to fear of rejection and the expectation of a churlish response.
Well, as any of us in this business know, churlish rejection is a fact of life. There’s no way around it. However, as John points out, if you’ve done the necessary homework to understand the story you’re pitching, to provide relevant and factual information, and know why the journalist should be interested, there’s no reason for fear and stress. You’ve done your job to the best of your ability. If this fish won’t bite, reel in the hook and cast in another direction.
Like they say in sales, every “no” is a step closer to a “yes.”
By Leo Valiquette
I still remember the day on the schoolyard when I picked up a pair of bent twigs to serve as an imaginary pistols and offered one to my classmate for an impromptu game of cops and robbers.
“I’m not allowed to do that,” he told me solemnly.
“Do what?”
“Play with guns.”
“But it’s just a stick,” I said. “It’s not a real gun.”
I was around eight years old at the time and it came as quite a shock to learn his parent’s religious convictions precluded my classmate from participating in what I considered to be a harmless bit of fun. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and various other activities now tarnished by PC’s broad brush were an integral part of my childhood.
But, thirty years later, with a boy of my own, that perspective has obviously changed. That’s not to say my son won’t enjoy these kinds of activities with his old man (he is the proud owner of a plastic sword complete with light and sound effects, after all), but I’ve become much more sensitive over the years to the insidious influence of the almighty dollar on the marketing agenda of big business, especially when it comes to marketing merchandise to children.
Case in point. My wife is a volunteer tester for the Canadian Toy Testing Council. Every month there’s a new batch of toys that are supposed to be appropriate for children my son’s age (three+), to be tested, reviewed and, well, played with.
A recent item was a pair of over-sized foam Incredible Hulk Smash Hands that kids wear like boxing gloves. The kid is encouraged to smash and bash, with each impact generating some suitable sound effect or a quote from the Hulk’s extensive vocabulary. My son hates the things. One parent for whom my wife provides home daycare services said they wouldn’t even have accepted them for testing.
For the record, the Incredible Hulk was rated a relatively kid-friendly PG-13 (not that I put much faith in the movie ratings system. A rant on that subject you can find here from my days at the Ottawa Business Journal). There are plenty of toys out there too for the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, which also gets off easy, despite its dark and violent tone, with a PG-13 rating. The recommended age range for these toys starts at four years old.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a problem with toys being marketed to a kid who can’t even see the movie for another nine birthdays. I’m glad the marketing PR services I provide usually involve technologies and products that would bore a four-year-old to tears.
