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Great expectations

• Posted by Danny Sullivan
• June 16, 2008
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By Danny Sullivan

Nobody in PR really likes to talk about managing expectations (we’d all like to believe that we can get any story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal) but it is a vital component of a successful program, whether you’re client-side or with an agency.

The fact is that every story has a natural news value and, while it’s important for PR people to understand what this value is, it’s even more important that the client understands it too. Without mutual agreement about what level of media traction can be expected, you’re flying blind and all too likely to crash.

Determining the level of expectation to set can be tricky. An experienced PR practitioner should have a good idea of what constitutes a successful story, but it can sometimes be challenging to cut through the marketing rhetoric that is assembled and wholeheartedly believed by technology companies. Terms like “world’s first,” “fastest” and “smallest” are great to put alongside a new product, but are they accurate? It’s always beneficial to do some digging and ask the difficult questions early on, rather than finding out the hard way later.

Of course, even after careful analysis, it’s still possible that a story will not make the kind of impact you had hoped for. This happens, but if you’ve done the research and asked the questions, and been transparent with the client at all times, then you have given yourself the best possible chance of avoiding a painful post-mortem.

Danny Sullivan

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• Public and media relations

Revisiting a few recent posts…

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• June 13, 2008
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By Linda Forrest

A few weeks back, I wrote a post on copyright compliance, a subject near and dear to my heart given that I used to make my living in the music industry, a business that once derived much of its revenue from the proper and fair restitution for copyrighted musical compositions and master recordings. The fact that neither I nor my husband, both music industry veterans, make our current livings in music should speak volumes and somewhat inform readers as to where we stand on the issue.

Yesterday, Canada’s media was aflutter with the announcement of the introduction of new copyright legislation, meant to quell the tide of copyright infringment in this country and to update an archaic law that was in effect long in advance of the past decade’s digital revolution. Just what this means in terms of its application to PR and the appropriate handling of clippings remains to be seen but as the big hole in the plan at this point seems to be the lack of a clear plan on how to enforce the law. This has always been the challenge in the music industry as well. A running joke amongst my former music industry colleagues used to be the vision of the SOCAN police charging into Mom and Pop shops to collect tariffs and license fees for playing CDs. Rightfully, the owners of the copyright should have been paid for the “public performance” of their works, but in reality, it just wasn’t feasible to “catch” everyone infringing on these rights, so the industry let it slide. It’s been an excedingly slippery slope…

I could go on all day, but I won’t.

I did also have a comment about Francis’ post about the interview never being over and wanted to say that this extends to PR folks as well. More than once, early in my career, my name ended up in the paper when I thought that I was just having a casual, off-the-record conversation with a reporter or journalist. The last thing you want as a PR practitioner is to be caught unawares and having to respond to your client’s concerns when they read in the paper “company spokesperson, YOU, said (something that hadn’t yet been announced or ananecdotal quote that’s off message… or worse).” Always remember you are the steward of the relationship between your client and the media and act accordingly.

When dealing with the media, always ensure that the boundaries are clear. If you’re going to spill the beans on an announcement early, make sure that the reporter understands the terms of the embargo and get them to agree to the embargo in writing, if possible. Embargoes are not necessarily water tight, but they’re useful for communicating to the media that you’re keeping an announcement under wraps until the appointed date and for communicating to your client that you aim to protect that information or, (if this is the unfortunate case) that you had written agreement with the reporter or editor or outlet and that they breached that arrangement and there will be stern words and potentially further action on your part for them breaking that agreement.

Just like in life, it boils down to a) watch what you say and b) watch who you say it to!

Linda Forrest

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• Public and media relations

Social media: Approach with pragmatic enthusiasm

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• June 12, 2008
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By Leo Valiquette

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Blogs, podcasts and discussion forums. The early adopters rave about the merits of jumping on the social media bandwagon as a marketing tool that allows a company to generate brand awareness through dialogue with customers, peers, partners and the world at large. It’s all about the warm and fuzzy feelings created when customers feel that they are being heard, that their input is important to the ongoing development of a product or service. Then there’s the celebrity that comes of being a provocative source of information and insight that attracts a following and drives traffic to your business’s website.

The possibilities are endless. And therein lies the problem — running off half-cocked with giddy excitement. But as the panelists at last night’s Social Media for Business Marketing event at TheCodeFactory emphasized, social media is a set of tools, not a strategy in and of itself. It’s a medium, and as such, is still secondary to the message.

The group included Linda Moran, manager of marketing communications at Sciemetric Instruments; Bob LeDrew, senior consultant at Thornley Fallis Communications and blogger at Flacklife; Alec Saunders, CEO and co-founder of Iotum and blogger at Saunderslog.com; Peter Childs, social media strategist; and Luc Levesque, founder and GM at TravelPod and travel blogger.

It was a group passionate about the possibilities of social media, but pragmatic as well. Here are the key points the group agreed must direct any push to use social media as a marketing tool:

1. Listen to what is being said about your company, its products and its brand in the social media universe before launching your own initiatives. What is your reputation? Are there problems you can identify and resolve? Use tools like Google alerts and blog feeds to monitor the web.

2. What are your objectives in terms of brand? Who are you trying to reach? Is this target group social-media savvy? Older age groups are far less engaged with social media than younger ones. In some industry verticals, there may be some early adopters, but the majority of the decisionmakers you want to reach may still be stuck in the ’90s trying to master their email.

3. What business problem are you trying to solve? How will the use of social media address this? Which tool is best for the job — a corporate blog, a Facebook fan page, a polished piece of video on Youtube, a coordinated combination of several?

4. What kind of business outcome do you want to achieve? Such as, is there a specific number of new clients in six months that have come to you through your social media efforts?

5. Experimentation is key. If one tool isn’t yielding the outcomes you want in the specified period of time, try something else. Keep swinging until you hit something.

6. Tying revenue directly back to social media activities is just as difficult as saying with certainty that a story about your company in a major newspaper led to new business with customers X, Y and Z. But there is plenty of research that demonstrates increased web traffic converts into increased business. The trick is figuring out how to drive that traffic.

7. Time. Commitment. Consistency: If you are going to embark on something like a blog, maintaining a steady flow of new content is critical. Alec Saunders, for example, commits to three new postings a day and his traffic is through the roof (the debate’s still open on whether he actually sleeps).

8. Quality: You have to be pushing out quality, compelling content to draw and hold you audience. It’s a dog’s breakfast out there when it comes to competing for the public’s attention. The way to rise to the top is with consistency and quality.

9. Ranking high on a site like Technorati is less important than successfully engaging in dialogue with your target audience. There’s a difference between having a big audience and the right audience.

10. And lastly, if you’re in a position where you’re trying to sell the advantages of social media to a senior executive who’s slow to catch on, speak in simple terms and avoid jargon. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with your own enthusiasm.

Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Social media

Segment and conquer

• Posted by Danny Sullivan
• June 12, 2008
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By Danny Sullivan

I read with interest Neville Hobson’s recent comments on PR spam and thought it would be worth raising on this blog too.

Simply using a list building tool to create a media list of over 500 contacts and then sending out every news release to the entire list is not going to yield the kind of results you or your client wants to see. And it’ll probably ensure you end up on a spam blacklist.

In addition to spending the time to actually research each media outlet and contact on your list for its relevance to your clients’ stories, you must also segment your media into the relevant subsets of interest that they represent. And the more granular the better.

While a major product launch announcement might have broad appeal across the majority of your media, it’s unlikely that a vertically focused piece of news is relevant to everyone. By segmenting your list down to focused groups of media with specific interests, you can ensure that you only target the media that will have an interest in your news du jour.

Danny Sullivan

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• Public and media relations

The interview’s never over…

• Posted by Francis Moran
• June 11, 2008
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By Francis Moran

…until the reporter has turned off the mike, descended in the elevator, left the building and driven away. That’s what I teach executives when I do media training, but it’s amazing how tough a lesson it is to learn.

I have to admit I occasionally engaged in gotcha journalism when I toiled as an ink-smeared wretch, so I know how the game works. The reporter goes through her tough-but-fair questions and the interviewee responds, honestly but according to the script and messaging prepared so assiduously before the interview. (You did prepare assiduously before the interview, didn’t you?)

The reporter then starts packing up her gear and, ever so gently, in a manner that would make Columbo blush for his jack-booted incompetence, she asks just one or two more questions and the interview subject, relaxed now that the mike’s been put away, strays away from the script. Or maybe gallops away from it like a runaway horse.

So the perils of a traditional interview are quite clear. But they’re also quite easy to avoid with just a little diligence. Not so the scary new world of so-called “citizen journalism,” as this post points out. Anybody, anywhere can write anything and post it everywhere. So beware.

As a journalist, I reserved dirty tricks, if you want to call them that, for those who should have known better and from whom I was only going to get the truth if I defeated their legions of press secretaries and overseers. I like to think I subscribed to Pulitzer’s old dictum that the job of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and playing hardball was always part of my view of the latter.

As a blogger more interested in supporting my community of technology entrepreneurs, I don’t do drive-by interviews. I wrote previously about my operating philosophy of who I quote and how I seek their approval for doing so.

But just because I intend to be fair, don’t bet that everyone will be. So remember, the interview’s never over.

Francis Moran

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• Public and media relations