The importance of sitting in on interviews
While I wouldn’t call it a groundswell by any means, I was startled to encounter not one but two articles in a week that challenged the notion of having a public relations/corporate communications person sit in on interviews.
The first was this interview with Yann Martel by The Guardian‘s Stephen Moss, who admits that his first move is to ‘rather rudely insist that the young woman who is steering him round the UK and Ireland on the publicity tour for his new novel, Beatrice and Virgil, absent herself from the room while we talk.’
Ahem. I’m guessing Stephen Moss is a tad old school, shall we say, in terms of his views on PR folks? I think I might perhaps counter with the notion that anyone smart enough to get a more than one million dollar advance from a publisher in this day and age can probably figure out how to take a taxi by himself and get to an appointed meeting in a hotel, especially in a country where his own mother tongue is spoken. And that, therefore, the young woman’s role might have been just a bit more than merely that of courier/chaperone.
But then I saw this article from the fine folks at Knight Science Journalism Tracker at MIT, in which the suggestion was made that disclosure is necessary when a public information officer (who fills the role of a corporate communications or public relations person) sits in on an interview – and that the situation should be avoided at all costs to avoid having the interview ‘influenced.’ Read more »
Some more social media tips and experiences from authors
It was nice to wake up to the lovely comment from my client Andrew Smith on my previous post, the hilarious video of Dennis Cass talking to his publicist about using social media to market his book.
Andrew’s right – Twitter in particular and social media in general are such overwhelming and customizable experiences that it’s really bewildering when you first try to get involved and leverage it for business goals. One of the things I really enjoy about working with authors, (aside from the fact that you can count on them to do some of the writing for you – because let’s face it, public relations is about writing compelling copy in exactly the right way – and then tweaking it and repurposing it and coming up with yet another catchy angle that will help you reach another segment of your target audience) – where was I? Oh yes – while authors (not the ones I work with!) may sometimes be a bit off in the EQ department, they’re rarely slouches when it comes to IQ. Read more »
Social media for authors
While still researching my forthcoming post on book social networking sites, I wanted to share this video with you. Thanks to Sarah Caldwell of Princeton University Press for bringing it to my attention. I think it’ll be required viewing for the next new author with whom I start working – just so s/he’ll be forewarned of the phone calls to come.
Talking social media to PR students
This morning I did my first-ever guest lecture/talk at the post-secondary level, to fourth-year public relations students taking one of Dr. DeNel Rehberg Sedo’s courses at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, NS.
DeNel found me via a guest post I’d done on Kimberly Walsh’s East Coast by Choice blog and a comment I’d left on her own blog, where she’d reviewed Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, The Lacuna. She took at look at my blog and got in touch via email to ask me to do a guest lecture to her class. Once we worked out the time and date logistics (since my East Coast sojourn was back in 1973 and I was pretty sure she didn’t have budget to fly me to Halifax), I stopped procrastinating about needing a computer with more juice, bought a refurbished iMac, and mastered Skype for once and for all.
My first test run on Skype taught me a valuable lesson: makeup required for Skype video because even north light produces glare, and I didn’t want to look like a burn victim with unhealed skin grafts (no offense intended). That meant an earlier start for me, but that’s ok – I didn’t want to scare people or rattle myself (although I have to say, the great advantage of doing an in-person talk is that you don’t have to look at yourself while you’re doing it – at least not after the rehearsing-in-front-of-a-mirror segment of the procedure is over).
DeNel and I agreed to try to keep the experience as technologically simple as possible. I emailed her the link to the presentation I planned to use (which I’d found on my friend Allen Gibson’s blog) so she could run the PowerPoint and I could focus on trying to make sense.
Here it is:
Framing versus spin
One of the reasons I chose to call my consultancy No Spin PR was because serious public relations practitioners are always hopelessly frustrated by the word spin being applied to what they do.
It’s a derogatory term, and I believe there are some terms and words that can never be reclaimed (in this I differ from the hiphop artists who have ‘reclaimed’ the ‘en’ word – in my view it would be better to let that one fade away to the point that 23rd-century folk who encounter it would have to ask what it meant).
Implicit in the word spin is the idea that deception is involved, facts are being turned on their heads, and/or there’s so much fast talking going on the truth would be unrecognizable even if it were part of the mix. The ‘truth’ is, it’s as much of an insult to call a public relations practitioner a ‘spin doctor’ as it is to call a woman a ‘chick.’ And it is a female-dominated profession, although not yet at the most senior levels. Read more »
Social media could drive a public relations renaissance
So you’re all up to speed on the new rules of engagement for marketing and public relations and how important it is to abandon control of the ‘message’ and engage with your various audiences (the people formerly categorized as ‘stakeholders’ although this term is now out of favour as well, I’m not quite sure why) and the importance of ‘transparency’ and the fact that you’d better get on the social media bandwagon because at the rate things are going, there won’t be many mainstream media outlets left to whom you can tell your corporate story.
That static Web 1.0 web site you spent so much money on two or three years ago is sneered at and in order to maintain your search engine rankings you feel under increasing pressure to add a blog and feed it with content. Then you have to master Twitter to promote your blog and no one will read your media release unless it’s a social media release which means you’ve got to start shooting amateur video you can post on YouTube and you haven’t mastered Facebook and now you’re being told you need to create a Facebook group page and instead of ever being done with this whole business of communicating so you can get on with growing and running your business, you end up feeling like you’re even farther behind than when you started. Read more »
Using PitchEngine to create your own ‘agency newsroom’
Since the debut of the social media press release (SMPR) in May 2006, I’ve been exploring various options for tapping into the media-rich potential of templated releases.
No Spin PR has been working on a variety of projects since its unlaunch in November 2008, and has been looking at PR 2.0 press release distribution methods as well as the creation of various kinds of social media press releases (SMPRs). Distribution can be an expensive process, especially if clients’ target stakeholders are global.
While the PR Squared template linked to above may represent the industry gold standard, it’s unusable for me as it comes in PDF format. It also doesn’t address the distribution issue.
Enter Pitch Engine. Not only does it supply all the functionality and features of the SMPR template, it makes distribution a snap. With a single click you’ve sent the shortened URL for your hosted release out via Twitter. With another click you’ve shared it with your Facebook friends. One more click and it’s gone out via Friend Feed as well.
Pitch Engine allows you to post your releases either categorized by brand or in simple chronological order. Releases stay live on the site for 30 days. You can also create a newsroom for the individual brands you manage, although that service isn’t free (it’s currently US$50 a month or US$550/year for this feature).
One of the things I like best about the SMPR is its “News Facts” section. I first encountered these when working with UK companies, who used to put them at the bottom of their releases under a “Notes for Editors” heading, sort of the press release equivalent of a footnote. I’m a bit of a demon about citing my sources (except when I forget and think I’ve found something all on my own, which does occasionally happen, but not often) and still write the occasional research paper, so I love this feature. And I’m enjoying the repackaging of a tradition I’ve always found charmingly quaint.
For me the biggest bonus is the ability to create a media newsroom for my company and add my own branding to that portion of the site. It also means potential clients interested in working with No Spin PR can see samples of my work and get a sense of other clients and whether we’d be a good fit. So welcome to the No Spin PR Media Newsroom. Stop by from time to time. There’s a whole lot more where that came from.
Oh – Pitch Engine also tracks the number of times your press release has been viewed. (Although I hope it doesn’t track my own viewing of the releases because I’ve been rather lost in admiration of my own handiwork and would hate to skew the stats.) And you can subscribe to an RSS feed for an individual ‘brand’ or all the releases from a particular newsroom.
Crimes against Twitter: how mainstream media and marketers are messing up
The bewildered who aren’t yet tweeting may well be puzzled by the plethora of articles they’re suddenly reading in publications as far flung as the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, The Guardian, The Spectator, Business Week…. Certainly the English-speaking world is suddenly all atwitter about Twitter (or at least the portion of it who still read either real or virtual newspapers and magazines). Read more »
21st Century public relations
I wouldn’t say this was the world’s best video, but it does make a few good points.
1. Writing well is the single most important foundation skill for PR practitioners.
2. Knowing your client’s business (which includes knowing what’s going on in your client’s industry and in the business world in general) is the single greatest value add you get when you hire a PR firm or public relations professional.
3. Love the line about needing a ‘spine or a backbone to tell clients what they need to hear.’ This is about managing expectations: ‘tell them some things that they may not want to hear.’ Read more »
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