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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.
Half of the battle of pitching is getting a reporter to open your email. Now-a-days like many industries reporters are doing more with less. That means less time available, they need the information fast and efficiently. Before coming to Communiqué PR, I was a reporter at a small TV station and managing my inbox was a challenge. It is not uncommon to receive hundreds of emails in a day. I would scan my inbox and open messages that intrigued me, contained key words that I was interested in covering, had a personal touch or seemed to sell a sexy story.
As a PR professional now, I’ve used this experience to guide me while crafting subject lines. In addition, I came across an article from Ragan PR called, “Pitching a reporter: 7 tips for crafting irresistible subject lines” that offers good advice.
Consider the following tips next time you are tasked with putting together a pitch.
- Plug a previous story. By referencing a previous story that the reporter you are targeting has already covered not only demonstrates that you are pay attention to this reporters work, but increases the chance of the reporter opening your email. Ragan gives the example, “News tip per (Insert two to three words on story subject) story.” However, when using this tactic be cautious. Do not pitch an identical story to the one the reporter previously covered. Instead, work off of a relevant trend and ensure your pitch is adding additional depth or a new angle. Or, use the opportunity to connect with the reporter for future stories on the topic.
- Word trending. Pitches that stand out from the pack are those that are creative. Pay attention to what is happening in the word and play on those trends. Reporters will likely have key words top of mind that they are looking for when evaluating stories. For example, at the height of the recession, any story that included mention of how a business was booming or looking at the bottom line caught an editor’s attention. Ragan’s recommends TrendWatching.com as a resource for newsworthy trends.
- Play on reporters’ beats. Pay attention to a particular column or segment that a writer repeatedly covers. If you call out a column such as: “Money Matters Tip: (include four to five words summarizing your pitch)” you show the reporter the pitch is meant for them.
- Wordplay. Have fun and be creative with keywords and create new ones. For example, combine baby boomer and entrepreneur to make boomerpreneur.
- Latest slang. There is always a new funny word to work with and the media is usually pretty hip to the lingo. For words like “blamestorming” or “Belieber,” Urban Dictionary and BuzzWhack can help you locate these words to insert into your subject line. Just make sure it is intentional and relates to your story. You do not want a reporter to feel deceived.
- Read headlines=Writer better subject lines. A great resource for improving subject lines is to read more headlines. Headlines have the same goal as a subject line. You want someone to read it and want to know more. Who knows, your crafty subject line could end up being the headline. For examples of good headlines read my previous blog post, How Headlines Shape Perception.
- Stay fresh. Nobody likes the same old subject line. Once you create an eye-catching formula, make sure to update it and insert new ideas each time, especially if you are pitching the same reporter.
You want your headline to sum up your pitch in a few words and grab the reporter’s attention, so don’t make it an afterthought! Give subject lines as much thought and consideration as the body of the email. We often develop the subject line when crafting the pitch and include it in our internal review process, to get input from the team. It may seem like a lot given a subject line is only a few words, but if it doesn’t scream “open me!” the reporter may never see the strength of your story.
Teamwork. Some people love that word. Others despise it. Regardless, teams are a part of life.
As an employee, your individual success will in part depend on your ability to exist as part of a team. As a manager, the success of your department, work group or organization is a function of how well you use teams as a tool. However, most people form teams – or add to them one person at a time – without considering one key element: talent.
Talent is what drives people’s behaviors. It’s their natural strengths. This is different than skills and knowledge, which can be learned. Talents can be strengthened by an organization’s leaders to optimize employee performance.
Why is this important? Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, provides valuable insight: “Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers…we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.”
If you have the freedom to choose from among a variety of employees to create a team or add to your workforce, take the time to think about the specific talents of individuals as they relate to the tasks they will need to perform. If you do not have the freedom to hand-pick members, you should still take stock of the various talents to help you decide how to develop the individuals and the team.
The Communiqué PR team is growing. As people have joined the organization, we’ve adjusted roles and responsibilities. But we decided to take team building a step further and analyze our strengths. Using StrengthsFinder 2.0, team members took individual strength assessments. The results were very interesting.
While team members have many common skills necessary for public relations work, such as written and oral communications, developing relationships and strategy formulation, the team had a wide array of strengths. Among the six of us, there were 20 different strengths. Some were shared, but every team member had at least one unique strength.
How do these unique talents benefit a team?
Imagine you have someone on your team with an “ideation” talent. A person with this strength may do exceedingly well at providing new perspective on familiar activities. She is known for being creative, original or conceptual, and for her passion for gathering knowledge that may fuel new ideas.
Now imagine another teammate has an “analytical” talent. A person with this strength questions and challenges others in order to strengthen ideas. She connects seemingly disparate patterns and provides insightful analysis that leads to application and implementation.
Individually, these two team members may garner great results. Together, they can forge a powerful partnership.
At Communiqué PR, we’re excited to have this new-found information about our team that will allow us to combine strengths to better serve our clients.
What are some of the ways you’ve assessed talent within your organization, and how have you benefitted?
Part of delivering excellent client service is to solicit feedback. But this can be tricky. How do you set the stage or get busy managers, directors or VPs to take a few minutes to tell you how you’re doing? I have found this five-step process to be very helpful in effectively soliciting specific feedback so that we have happy clients, repeat business and good referrals.
- Determine your intention or goal for asking for feedback. Maybe your intention is to find out what your client values so you can look for additional opportunities to assist him or her. Perhaps you want to find out if your writing contains the right messages from your client’s perspective so you can improve over time. The first step in soliciting feedback is to think through what you want to accomplish.
- Communicate your intention and be as specific as possible in your request. For instance, you might write, “I want to continue to build our skills around writing effective press releases for your company and I am wondering if you could take a few minutes to provide me with feedback on our recent work. I have three areas of focus today. Specifically, I am interested in getting your thoughts on our technical accuracy, creativity and positioning. On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you feel we’re doing around developing creative and compelling press releases? How would you rate the technical accuracy of our materials? To what extent do you feel the right positioning was included in our materials?” From my experience, I am much more likely to get meaningful feedback when I explain why I want the feedback and provide some direction on the areas where I would find it constructive.
- Make it easy for the other party to give you feedback. Remember, if someone has an issue with something you are doing or not doing, it may not be easy for him or her to express it. Some people have difficulty being candid, or they are afraid if they are critical of work it will create tension or hurt feelings. If you think you’re dealing with a client who is reticent to be candid, you may want to address that issue by saying something gently yet direct, such as, “I know it is not always easy to give feedback, but I really want to make sure we’re meeting your needs. I am of the mindset that there are always ways to improve and am wondering if it would be helpful if we had a discussion about our presentation.”
- Consider the timing of your request. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Will he or she have time to consider your request for feedback in a thoughtful manner? Will he or she want to gather feedback from other folks? Be sensitive, but if you truly need feedback, suggest something like, ‘I know your time is at a premium with your conference looming, but we truly value your feedback. If we can squeeze this into our next conference call, we’d be grateful.”
- Ensure you understand the feedback you receive. My final recommendation is to make sure you listen carefully so you understand the feedback. This is critical so you can begin to generate possible solutions or alternatives. As you move into this phase you may also want to brainstorm with your client, develop an action plan, and make sure you have shared expectations about how you’ll address the feedback.
We have found feedback to be an essential part of our ability to continuously improve and deliver meaningful, ongoing results. Clearly, each client is unique and each of these steps needs to be tailored appropriately, but regular discussions and assessments of what is working and where we can adjust our activity to be more successful are essential.
With the recent headlines around the Netflix/Qwikster PR blunder, we are reminded once again the importance of developing effective messaging when communicating to key influencers – particularly consumers. Whether you are announcing a change in your business model, introducing a new product or an update to an existing service, effective messaging allows organizations to articulate its position and reasoning to influence consumer behavior, drive sales and ultimately, achieve success.
Where could have Netflix improved its communication efforts? First, the company could have developed stronger messaging that emphasized the benefits of the changes specific to consumers, not to the company and its investors. This messaging would have provided a stronger, clearer explanation to consumers that while the price change may appear exorbitant, it will enable the company to license even more streaming content for consumers to access.
In July, Netflix first announced to its 25 million subscribers that it was adjusting its offerings, separating the subscriptions for physical disc mailings from its online streaming services, and raising its prices for the monthly plan by 60 percent. In this announcement, the company did not offer any clear reason for consumers to understand the price increase beyond, “it no longer made financial sense to offer streaming and DVDs for $10.” As the U.S. economy waivers on reverting back into recession, consumers have become more conscious of their spending, and the price hike on Netflix’s service propelled many to cancel their subscription.
In hopes to regain the trust and loyalty among its consumers, Hastings utilized the company’s blog and sent an email apology to consumers, acknowledging they have been listening to their feedback over the past two months and offered to explain the changes further. Instead, Hastings combined this message to communicate another disruptive change to its service – the introduction of Qwikster, the new name for Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service. Unfortunately, the message was not positively received by consumers, and only continued fueling the disdain for the company.
Had Hastings used the opportunity to articulate how these rather significant changes would ultimately benefit the consumer, it may have helped to justify the reasoning. Instead, Hastings said the price increase was to remain intact and introduced yet another change: Netflix will spin off its DVD-by-mail feature to a completely separate entity called Qwikster, where consumers will need to create an entirely separate account to manage their DVD movie subscription.
Ask any PR professional and they will say the tactic to address consumers directly to quell any misgivings created by Netflix’s initial announcement was the right move. However, it is equally important to develop effective messaging at the beginning of any campaign, as it is for any follow up communication to key influencers. We have often shared tips on how to identify and develop key messages for any company or product in our blog, which is the fundamental “strategic foundation for success.”
What are your thoughts on how Netflix could have communicated its changes to consumers more effectively? What would you have done to address consumer concerns?
When Molly McWhinnie and I were speaking last week to the group with the Washington State Community Action Partnership, we were asked for recommendations on credit card processing for those who want enable online donations on their nonprofit organization’s website.
Since we have not had much experience with this, we decided to take our question to HARO to see what options other executives with nonprofits would make. We received responses from several individuals and are sharing the one we found to be most helpful.
Joseph Zane, a financial consultant for a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Make-a-Wish Foundation, YMCA, and Cancer is Colorblind, shared the following three tips with us.
1) Consider what types of transactions you will have. Some nonprofits take one time donations while others take recurring donations. This can greatly influence which processing option is best. Handling recurring donations is best done with a merchant account since the whole process can be automated based on the payment schedule and payment amounts. If your nonprofit rarely takes donations but would still like to have the option, consider Square, a new service which allows the iPhone to be used as a terminal without signing up for a merchant account. The fees are 2.75 percent flat, but are worth it for infrequent transactions.
2) Avoid third-party processors. Third-party processing is not a good option for most nonprofits for a number of reasons. When a third-party processor is used, it is their name that shows up on the donor’s credit card statement, instead of your nonprofit’s name. This greatly increases the chance for chargebacks (since the donor may not recognize the processor’s name) which are costly. Also, since third-party processors process your donations using their own merchant account, there is usually a lag in the time needed to give your organization the money donated. Advantages to using a third-party processor are that it’s usually easier, and may be slightly cheaper. The most well-known third-party processor is PayPal, which has special options for nonprofits.
3) Consider getting a merchant account, but be informed. Merchant accounts can often be the cheapest and easiest way for nonprofits to accept donations. However, the key to getting a good deal on a merchant account is to be well informed and know exactly what pricing structure to request. Otherwise, the process can become frustrating and complicated. A big advantage to getting a merchant account is that your nonprofit’s name will be on the donor’s credit card statement, which greatly reduces the chance for chargebacks. Also, the funds from donations will flow directly into the nonprofit’s bank account without a delay. Since the biggest disadvantage to getting a merchant account is a lack of knowledge, make sure to do your research. Make sure to demand an interchange plus pricing structure. A great website Joseph has used for his nonprofits is FeeFighters. This site provides a comparison shopping experience and allows people to get bids from a bunch of processors including the big guys and Square and PayPal. Joseph highly recommends it. Another option is Dharma Merchant Services. Dharma is a transparent, efficient, and low-price merchant option that has not gone unnoticed. Dharma serves thousands of small business in retail and service industries, as well as nonprofits, and has received many awards over the years, including “Best of Category” and “Best for Workers”.
For more information about credit card processing and solutions for nonprofits, please read the following:
- Credit Card Processing Options for Nonprofit Organizations
- How to Choose Donor Management Software for Your Nonprofit
We hope this information is helpful. If you have experience to share, please let us know.
Updated October 22, 2015
By Joni Kirk
Social media has exploded over the last several years. Companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube as well as other platforms and tools to connect with customers, employees, stakeholders and the public. With this explosion comes the simultaneous development of best practices for social media.
But one aspect of social media hasn’t been discussed at length: continuity of social media efforts during transition.
Most organizations rely on their communications and marketing team – whether internal or external – to manage their brands. And it’s likely they have a single individual who is ultimately responsible for content and online community engagement. So what happens when that person leaves?
Unfortunately, all too often there is no backup plan. The individual responsible for managing a social media program departs, and the established channels are left floundering. Engagement ceases. All of a sudden, fans and followers realize the organization has “gone dark.”
What’s the worst that can happen?
As one university found out this fall, it can mean losing control of your message and credibility. The individual responsible for managing its social media departed and its social media efforts were dramatically reduced for a month following the transition, including complete disengagement on Twitter. And in that time period, the unthinkable happened. An off-campus student was murdered, and the assailant was known to be in the area.
In a college town, people can text with two thumbs quicker than they can speak. Word began to spread that something was amiss, and rumors began to circulate that a professor was involved. The university’s emergency notification system eventually kicked into gear – the next morning as police action was wrapping up.
But in the meantime, some 10,000 Facebook fans and 2,000 Twitter followers, who were accustomed to timely information about pertinent university topics, suddenly found themselves in the dark and waiting – just waiting – for the university to provide information. The first public information came from the media, but rumors had been circulating for hours. It took until 4 p.m. the following afternoon before the university weighed in on Facebook and Twitter with details that helped set the university at ease.
While this is a worst case situation, and extremely unfortunate for everyone involved, it highlights the need for certain social media best practices, particularly in times of transition.
Have a back-up social media communicator. This contingency person should have full access to accounts, regularly review accounts to be familiar with the community’s engagement, and be ready to step in quickly for planned and unplanned situations. This is helpful for unexpected absences, such as sick days or business travel, and helps maintain continuity in the organization’s social networking communities.
Commit to a regular schedule. Social media should not just be a priority for the individual posting the comments. It should be an organizational priority to have regular communications, and individuals with social media responsibility should be held accountable for providing consistent and current content. A regular schedule also develops habitual “check ins” from fans or followers who have sought out communication from you, and keeps individuals coming back for more.
If your social media channel is going to be “offline,” let your community know. This is applicable in situations where a single person, such as a CEO, is the face of the channel. Sometimes that individual will be offline, such as a planned vacation or other extended absences. It is wise to let people know you’ll be away for a few days and unable to respond. That does not mean the channel should not be monitored by a back-up person. It simply sets expectations that engagement will not be at normal levels.
In a crisis, don’t neglect social media. Traditional crisis communication plans demonstrate the need to communicate regularly with the public. As communication techniques have morphed, it’s critical that social media be utilized during crisis for maximum public outreach.
What are other tips you have for maintaining your social media presence?