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Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
One of Communiqué PR’s major communications objectives for our clients is driving editorial coverage. Editorial coverage can help secure exposure for your client and provides a chance to engage with journalists, who can provide a third-party (often expert) opinion on what a client does.
The tactics used to secure editorial coverage vary, but a few online services have become popular as a way to connect businesses with journalists. Below are a few communications services available to PR folks and journalists alike that promise to connect sources with journalists.
Founded by Peter Shankman, HARO has been around (initially as a Facebook group) since 2008. Vocus currently owns the service. HARO works by sending out an email blast to subscribers three times a day, organizing journalists’ current source needs by coverage area/ industry. Journalists submit queries about a story they’re currently covering (e.g., looking for companies who have found success using predictive analytics), and provide contact information to which a source can reply. HARO uses a freemium model—the initial service is free, but subscription plans offer additional benefits.
Unlike HARO, ProfNet (started in 1992) is not a free service for sources. However, similarly to HARO, ProfNet also uses emails with queries from journalists and others requesting sources for stories or other projects on which they’re working.
Rather than using an email blast, SourceBottle allows users to search its website for journalist queries matching a client’s story and/or expertise.
For more information on this service, check out the blog post we recently wrote about MuckRack. The service is membership-based and incorporates journalists’ Twitter feeds so that you know when a journalist is writing about a client’s company, industry or competitors.
The development and growing popularity of each of these services speaks to how the media and PR industries continue to change and evolve with technology.
Do you use a service like the ones above to connect with media? What is your experience with these types of services?
As an intern at Communiqué, I am only in the office three times a week. Because of this, I must effectively communicate with our team while I am in the office. As with most workplaces, our main source of communication at Communiqué is email. Because of this, we have a large amount of email coming through our inboxes each day –most people can relate.
Because of the large volume and my limited hours, it is critical that my emails both catch people’s attention and effectively communicate their message to the team, since oftentimes I won’t be in the office to follow up right away.
In the pursuit of understanding how to most effectively craft emails, I came across “Write E-mails That People Won’t Ignore” on the Harvard Business Review. This search also led me to find other useful suggestions at Forbes and CBSNews. Based on these resources, I compiled a list of best practices for drafting an effective email.
1.) Stick to standard capitalization and punctuation. Harvard Business Review
When writing an email, conventions may be one of your last priorities. Punctuation and grammar might seem irrelevant and time consuming in the midst of a busy day, but they are important when drafting an email. If you choose to skip this step, your email can come across as rushed and careless, which will affect the way it’s received. If you weren’t willing to take the extra time to write your email with proper grammar, why would the recipient take their time to thoughtfully read it?
Additionally, punctuation and grammar are integral in conveying a message. If you neglect these conventions, the point of your email might get lost in translation – meaning you will probably need to follow up and clarify items, taking you a lot more time than you might have initially spent if you slowed down on your first draft.
1) When emotions rise, slow down. Forbes
If you receive a rude email from someone that gets you fired up, the best thing to do is ignore it for a while. Depicting tone in an email is extremely difficult and can lead to emotions escalating too quickly. Take a break from the thread to calm down and gain better perspective on the situation so that you don’t send something you will later regret.
2) Don’t resend unanswered mail. Forbes
In the PR industry, pitches are constantly being sent to journalists and reporters – and it isn’t uncommon that we don’t receive a response. If time passes and you don’t receive a response, do not forward the same exact email – if a reporter or journalist has already seen and deleted the email, this practice can be impersonal and spam-like.
Instead, try sending an email that says, “I know you’ve been busy, did you happen to get an opportunity to see the note I sent you about ___?” This is a respectful way to remind the recipient about the note, and gives them an opportunity to articulate their disinterest or interest.
This applies across the board, not only in PR. A polite note saying, “I’m bringing this to the top of your inbox because I know you’re busy and don’t want you to have to sift to find this. Have you had time to think about ___?” is an excellent way to gently remind someone about an action item or deliverable.
3) Keep the subject line relevant. CBSNews
If an email thread continues for a long period of time, chances are the subject line no longer matches the content of the messages. Take the time to change the subject line of the email thread to make it relevant to the current discussion. Not only will this help both you and recipients stay organized, but it will catch the attention of people who might file the email away not understanding the content of the thread or their involvement based on an inaccurate subject line.
4) Consider mobile viewers. Communiqué PR
Email is frequently checked on mobile devices rather than desktop computers. Having long pieces of text can be very daunting, especially when seen on a mobile phone screen. An email that is made up of long paragraphs and requires a lot of scrolling on a mobile device is likely going to be skimmed or ignored. Breaking up an email into shorter paragraphs, bullets, numbers and lists makes the text more approachable and easier to absorb—this applies to both mobile and desktop viewers. Considering what an email might look like on a mobile phone will help you design a message that gets to the point without disregarding important aspects.
Composing an effective email is extremely important – it’s a primary avenue for information around the world. Take the time to communicate your message effectively by considering the best practices given above.
For more helpful tips on emails view the CPR Blog:
We’ve all been there as PR professionals. You deliver a pitch to a reporter via email and then you…wait. And you wait a little more and then you send a follow up email. Still nothing. At this point, you realize you have to resort to a call down in hopes of capturing his or her attention, which is often dreaded by us PR professionals. Let’s be honest, none of us like to be greeted with gruff reporters who are on deadlines and don’t want to be bothered.
A similar sentiment can be said for communications to clients and colleagues. We often spend hours writing several emails back and forth when really, all that time could be replaced with a five-minute phone conversation. So why, in today’s day and age, are we so opposed to using a tool that once revolutionized the way we communicated?
A recent blog post from Harvard Business Review’s Dan Pallotta has an interesting take on picking up the phone. He says, “Just Call Someone Already.” Dan claims the telephone which was once an important and valuable domain of communication for exchanging ideas and information is now considered annoying. He claims that email exchanges allow us to avoid authentic communication and cause us to be less efficient and productive. Why spend time drafting emails, reviewing them to ensure they’re clear and that nothing can be taken amiss when we could just pick up the phone?
Dan notes that if you want to be innovative and take a risk, try calling someone with whom you have an issue to discuss, and if you want to be extra courageous, do it without sending emails to set up an appointment. Dan also says, when your phone rings, pick it up. I know I’ve been guilty of letting my phone calls go straight to voicemail, and rather than giving the caller a ring back, I sometimes address his or her needs via email.
However, when I do get up the willpower to pick up the phone, I find that it’s a much faster and personal way of resolving issues, making decisions, coming to agreements and even securing media interviews. Not only is it much more efficient, but I also feel a stronger connection to the person I’m speaking to than I would if I sent an email.
In today’s business world where we experience email overload on a daily basis, I know I would sure appreciate a phone call and the opportunity to replace some of my email interactions with human interactions.
As a young economist, Michael E. Porter wrote a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review in 1979 that ignited a revolution in the field of strategy. So compelling was his “The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy” that it helped inform and mold an entire generation of academic research and business practice, and stretched across nations, regions, corporations, and lately healthcare and philanthropy.
Porter initially postulated that the essential job of the strategist is “to understand and cope with competition,” the first force, but that managers often defined competition much too narrowly, limiting it to only direct competition. Competition, he asserted, goes well beyond established industry rivals. In fact, competition can include four significant other competitive forces: the bargaining power of buyers/customers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of potential new entrants, and the threat of substitute products or services. These extended rivalries are what define “an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.”
Michael also introduced the intense and benign nature of those competitive forces and how they affected return on investment and profitability. If, for example, the forces are benign, in fields such as software, soft drinks and toiletries, he surmised, many companies are profitable. If forces are intense, as they are in the airline industry, textiles and hotels, among many, almost nobody earns significant ROI. Industry structure drives competition, he insists, “not whether an industry produces a product or service, is emerging or mature, high tech or low tech, regulated or unregulated.”
How might this relate to your next campaign in the highly competitive PR industry? Porter offers that “The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulations. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious.”
Wise PR strategists will take that into account as they begin to build a relationship with a client. Just competing against the client’s biggest competitor will not be enough. The strategist must take a more global, 360-degree view of the market and its structure or structures to gain the upper hand. In Porter’s terms, for example, rivals Airbus and Boeing, and the airlines that place huge orders for aircraft, carry big weight, while the threat of new competition or the threat of substitutes, and power of suppliers, is weaker, or more benign.
Conversely, there was a fierce rivalry in his example of the photographic film industry, where Kodak and Fuji ruled supreme, until the birth of digital photography – where a substitute product then became the first strategic priority.
Wily PR strategists must study and determine the strength of each competitive force affecting their client’s industry or service. Is your client new to the game with a disruptive product or service? Or is it the veteran who must compete with the newcomer? What is the bargaining power among your client’s customers or potential customers within the given industry? How well do you understand them? Is a new, improved version or substitute about to derail your client’s product or service?
Pay attention to the five forces that shape business strategy. They can also help define and energize your PR strategy as you work to fulfill your client’s business objectives in a competitive landscape.
Have you heard the saying, “Timing is everything”? Well, it applies to not only relationships, but also the business world, especially when it comes to press and media releases. Once you’ve spent the time crafting the perfect messaging for your release, you want to ensure it makes the right splash. To do so, you definitely need to consider carefully when you send pitches and press releases.
Ragan.com recently posted an article on the topic, “The best (and worst) days, times to send press releases,” that highlights data gathered from wire distribution service, Marketwire.
Compare securing news coverage to meeting a celebrity: You have a better chance of meeting a celebrity and shaking hands if you are one-on-one, than if you see a celebrity in a sea of thousands of adoring fans where you’ll likely get lost in the crowd. The same is true for a press release. You don’t want to compete with thousands of other press releases going across the wire at the same date and time to grab the attention of a journalist or reader.
Marketwire’s data suggests that Mondays and Tuesdays are the most popular day of the week to send out a press release. Tuesdays attract the most releases, with Fridays being the least popular day of the week. Marketwire has also found that 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET are when the majority of press releases cross the wire. Most organizations that we work with typically select this timing because the belief is that the early bird gets the worm, but this means stiff competition at the editor’s desk. It can be hard to get noticed amongst the crowd.
Here are some tips to help you get the attention you need:
- Try a unique time slot. One of my colleagues at Communique shared that PR Newswire advised her to send out a press release at an odd time– for example, at 11:47 a.m. This can help elevate visibility because it’s not received in a larger flood of releases scheduled for typical times (like 9 a.m.).
- Change it up. If you have flexibility, test out different distribution dates and times and pay close attention to the analytics that many of the wire services offer. You can see when a press release secures the most pickup and tailor your distribution approach accordingly.
- Do extra work on the side. Don’t rely solely on the wire. Post the press release to your company’s website, spread the news via social media and email the announcement to targeted editors.
The right timing could help you make the splash you are hoping for. Anyone in the PR industry can appreciate the time and thought that goes into a press release—let it live up to its full potential by thinking through the timing it crosses the wire.
While social media platforms continue to grow and increase in popularity for both companies and individuals, Facebook generally caters to users’ personal lives. Because the platform is typically personal, Facebook profiles have become notorious for preventing opportunities and leaving bad impressions due to inappropriate content and/or pictures.
If you are my age (early 20s) and just finishing college, you have heard a horror story or two about someone’s inappropriate Facebook being mentioned during a job interview. However, if you properly maintain your Facebook profile, it can provide networking opportunities and add credibility to your personal brand. The trick is making sure your profile is ready for any type of scrutiny.
How can you go about maintaining and revising your profile’s content so that you’d be happy with anyone seeing it? This isn’t typically an easy undertaking. Facebook’s constantly changing privacy settings can make it difficult and tedious to control who sees what you’ve posted and monitor everything that’s on your profile. Historically, the only way to clean up a Facebook profile has been deleting and beginning anew, or doing a substantial amount of searching through your history to remove unseemly items. Neither of these “solutions” is ideal; I don’t want to delete my Facebook and lose all of the content that’s on there, but I also don’t want to sift through my status updates from 2006.
But there’s hope. I’m excited to share a new app that provides a much more convenient remedy for cleaning up your Facebook profile as you work on your personal brand.
SimpleWash allows you to search text on your Facebook profile, including comments, posts and photo captions, and lets you edit them accordingly. If you ever posted a joke to your friend’s page that you would feel uncomfortable sharing with your boss, SimpleWash will assist you in finding it and erasing it.
Targeted to recent college graduates that will be entering the professional world, the creators wanted to provide a way for people to clean up their profiles and make them presentable. After being named App of the Week by ABCNews.com, David Steinberg, one of the creators, said, “We wanted to give [Facebook] users a choice to control what potential employers might see.” After using SimpleWash, I can feel comfortable with the content currently on my Facebook profile, and I have an understanding of everything that’s on it.
Here at CPR, we are strong believers in making social media work for you. Employers look to Facebook as a reflection of your online brand. Therefore, your Facebook is part of your online brand, and it is important that the comments you have made and photos you are in match your ideal public persona.
Facebook profiles have the potential to be useful networking and branding tools, if used correctly. After all, Facebook reached 1 billion users in 2012 – that’s a lot of potential connections. However, if you created your Facebook page before you embarked on your career, or never thought through connecting personal and professional profiles, there is likely content that could misrepresent the professional persona you’re hoping to create. Working with SimpleWash is a time effective way to deal with this common issue.