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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.
Our “Publication Spotlight” series is designed to showcase publications that resonate with clients and future clients. This week’s spotlight is on Payload, a publication that provides daily insights on the most important news impacting the space economy. Below is a Q&A that provides insight into commonly asked questions.
Q: What is Payload and when was it established?
Payload, a new digital media company that was established this year, is a daily newsletter covering the business and policy of space – an industry that’s growing very large, very quickly. Space exploration is currently a $350 billion a year market and is forecast to grow to $1.4 trillion by 2030.
As technology becomes a larger part of the world’s economy, more media companies are launching around niche business and policy verticals, such as cybersecurity, biotechnology and now space. Payload sees an opportunity in being able to provide marketers with a place to reach high-level space influencers.
Q: Who is its audience?
For years, space coverage has focused on the consumer-facing aspect of space travel rather than the business and societal implications of the industry. Payload’s coverage aims to go a step deeper by providing business and policy information about the space industry. There are an estimated 2.19 million workers in the U.S. aerospace and defense industry.
Q: Does Payload offer a newsletter? What does it entail and how do I sign up for it?
Payload’s flagship product, a daily newsletter, features a combination of original reporting, news curation and industry analysis. Readers can subscribe through the Payload website.
Like many new media companies, Payload’s business model revolves around sponsorships to its newsletter. In the future, the editors plan complementary things like events and podcasts, and perhaps additional newsletters.
Q: How do you submit content to Payload?
Those who are interested in submitting content can share news and updates with Ryan Duffy, founding editor, at Payload. Ryan was previously at Morning Brew, where he launched and wrote the company’s Emerging Tech Brew, a triweekly newsletter about machine learning, autonomous vehicles, VR and a variety of tech trends.
As the space industry experiences unprecedented growth, I suspect publications that provide a niche perspective, such as Payload, will increase in popularity.
While publications that cover the complex technology within the space industry are foundational resources, there is equal value in helping readers understand the business and policy implications, as well. I like to think of it as the yin-and-yang intersection, where business perspective and industry trends complement each other to provide a comprehensive snapshot. Balance is key.
As PR professionals, we are information brokers. We endeavor to provide clear and accurate information to specific audiences on behalf of our clients. This work is the “what” of this profession, but the “how” is where the real work comes in. Our work often requires intellectual horsepower, the ability to write, and creativity, among other things.
Relationship building is another essential skill. To do our jobs effectively, we must build, nurture and maintain relationships with many players, including media, clients, industry partners and colleagues.
At this time of year, particularly amid the persisting upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels appropriate to recognize the people who enable us to accomplish all we do. We are perpetually grateful for the following:
- Journalists. We rely on them to cover our news and provide us with information, guidance and insight. They make our jobs possible, and they reciprocate by providing us with information and feedback to help us improve. Amid economic challenges, journalists have adroitly covered an ever-expanding amount of news, literally doing more with less.
- Clients. We are profoundly grateful that they trust us to share their stories. Our clients continue to challenge us to grow and evolve while making our work worthwhile and rewarding.
- Coworkers, partners and freelancers. These are the people who generously offer their talents and support our work in ways large and small. Our team proves the saying that success is virtually impossible without teamwork. Recognition and gratitude are default positions for this team. This attitude empowers us to support each other in times of overload and struggle to keep our commitments to our clients and teammates. Our continuing success, above all else, stems from the strength of our relationships.
- Family. Our families and support systems provide much-appreciated encouragement in normal times. The relocation of our workspaces to our living rooms and guest bedrooms had required a new level of accommodation and understanding. We are grateful for their support and for reminding us that it might be a good idea to get outside once in a while.
I also want to recap some small and large milestones we marked as a team this year:
- We celebrated the firm’s 17th anniversary with a virtual group cooking class
- We gathered for countless virtual morning meetings, sharing weekend plans and favorite Teams backgrounds in addition to our project priorities and successes
- At least five of us have moved, with two purchasing their first homes and one completing a home remodel
- One of us returned from maternity leave while another took time off to welcome his first child
- One of us was married, and another got engaged
- We marked first days of school, one kindergarten and one college, as well as high school and college graduations
- We welcomed new pets and said farewell to others
- We weathered a historic heatwave, power outages and internet service interruptions, as well as flooding
- We worked from multiple states and at least two locations outside the U.S.
- We welcomed new team members and bid farewell to others, including launching two interns and welcoming two more
- We marked birthdays and work anniversaries on virtual happy hours and are preparing for our first in-person holiday celebration in a couple of years
- We gathered for two (socially distanced) group walks and an outdoor happy hour
In PR, the relationships we develop are essential to our work. Through the challenges and upheaval of this pandemic, we are grateful for strong connections that endure adding joy to our days and making our work so rewarding.
The public relations industry is always evolving. As such, PR pros must remain on our toes to adapt to new techniques and business trends, refresh our skills, and gain a competitive edge over other industry professionals. Central to the success of a PR pro is our ability to learn. We must keep ourselves informed about new and emerging technologies and techniques so that we are able to provide clients with the very best counsel and service we can.
What learning skills do PR pros need to be successful? Outlined below are five examples.
Translating Complex Topics
As a PR professional, it is routine to take a subject we had zero knowledge about in the morning and become an expert on it by 4 p.m. that same day. We are tasked with reducing the complexities of enormous operations with lots of moving parts into an email or even a subject line that a reporter might be inclined to click on. While the timeframe we have to do this in may be a tad more flexible, it can often be challenging to ensure the optimal outcome for our client.
Be it hosted PBX solutions, geospatial intelligence or cloud-based ERP solutions, it is essential for communications professionals to have the ability to research, understand, translate and communicate complex technology and solutions into clear messaging for the non-technical business user.
Curious Nature
While it is common to be curious about something we don’t know, what keeps us more curious is when we start learning it. Having an initial knowledge of any subject will let our curiosity flow in the right direction and help us become even more eager to learn. We will know what questions we need answered, which makes way for focused learning. To develop or stimulate curiosity, we must seek out opportunities to ask better questions and challenge conventional processes. As we do, we can find better answers outside of existing boundaries.
Asking Questions
Expert learners are also expert at asking questions. Great learners ask intentional questions that will lead them to the root of an issue so they can understand it better. All communications professionals must hone our question-asking skills. Knowing how to navigate an interview with an executive, subject matter expert, client or other key stakeholders gives us the critical information we need to communicate the message we are tasked to oversee. Preparing good questions is a start but having the background to nimbly adjust during the discussion often makes all the difference.
Listening
Once we’ve done the research and asked thought-provoking questions, it’s time to listen. Only when we keenly listen can we have the level of understanding needed to engage with key audiences. Through active listening, we can tailor messages especially for each audience, who are then able to relate to what the client is communicating. The better PR pros listen, the better we speak and write.
Assessing Outcomes
Reflection and introspection in learning are crucial, and the more accurate, the better. Both under- and overconfidence in our knowledge and abilities can lead us to fail to perform at our best. The same is true in PR. Measurement of a PR campaign reveals what’s working and what’s not – it enables us to learn from the project to drive better results in the future. Moreover, evaluating outcomes and reporting the results and takeaways of our PR efforts helps justify PR spending and value-add to our clients.
Public relations is a lifelong learning commitment. As such, PR pros must cultivate the five key learning skills outlined above in order to be successful and drive the best results for the clients we support.
As individuals advance in their PR agency careers, they are often given new roles and responsibilities around business development. Senior account executives, account managers, account directors and vice presidents may all play a role in winning new business, whether it’s leading the development of the presentation, participating in a new business meeting, or assisting with research.
Having well-developed skills in business development can be very helpful to advancing one’s career. However, for some individuals these skills don’t come naturally. In this blog, I’ll share a few tips that may be helpful for individuals looking to develop skills in this area.
Adopt the right mindset
The first thing to remember is that your success in business development depends on creating a connection and goodwill with a prospective client and uncovering their needs. It’s about identifying how you (and your team) can add value and help the prospect achieve their top business objectives.
Many people make the mistake of overselling or trying to share how their expertise might be relevant, but this can backfire, especially if they haven’t done the proper due diligence. Business development is about connection and discovery, and it’s about service before self-interest.
Given this, you’ll want to prepare your list of questions to aid you in the discovery process. Often the prospective client has a limited amount of time, so you need to focus on the things that matter most, and you need to listen carefully to responses. Develop active listening skills, which often begin with learning how to paraphrase what your client has said for better understanding.
Asking the Right Questions
Depending on the prospective client and how well you know them, it may make sense to begin the discussion with a focus on gaining a sense of how your contacts are doing both professionally and personally. What are the projects they enjoy working on the most? What are they most proud of accomplishing in the past year? What are their top objectives for the coming year? Why are their objectives important, what’s at stake and what is keeping them up at night?
Again, it’s vital to pay close attention to the answers and listen for opportunities for mutual wins. Paraphrase what you’ve heard in a way that demonstrates understanding and empathy.
Once You’ve Identified a Win-Win
Share your initial idea and insert something like, “Given what you’ve said about…, would it be helpful if we developed a proposal to help you with… .”
At this stage, you’ll be in a terrific position to gain a sense of the prospect’s thoughts and whether they have budget to support the work. If your contacts do not have a budget, you’ll want to find out who does so you can begin to relationship-build with them.
Broadening Your Network
Finally, you’ll want to ask for introductions to others you should meet within the coming weeks. To do this you might ask if they would be willing to introduce you to others in your business unit who are well connected, have budget and frequently need help.
The goal here is to connect with formal leaders as well as their deputies or influencers. The deputies are individuals who can share insight into the decision maker and help you understand their goals, motivations, interest, schedules and workloads.
Putting This Into Action
In advance of discussions with prospective clients, it’s often helpful to develop a script or an outline of the points you want to cover and commit it to memory. You may also want to role-play with a third person who can observe and critique your messages.
Measuring Success
As you self-evaluate your business development skills, consider how you’ll measure your success. Some easy ways to know if your actions are effective might include gaining an opportunity to develop a proposal for work, securing introductions to other leaders or influencers in the organization, or coming up with a new idea that you can act on to secure work.
Ultimately, you want to connect with people to understand their objectives and problems, so you can discover ways to help them. As trusted advisors, PR professionals can help clients achieve important communication objectives while at the same time freeing up their time for more valuable, meaningful and scalable work.
Earlier this year, I came across a report by Propel that analyzed 1 million pitches sent to journalists to better understand if email pitches result in media coverage. That report found that of more than 726,000 emails sent, only 29% were opened, 3% got a response and 8% resulted in media coverage.
Yet, a new report from Agility PR Solutions found that less than 30% of PR and communications professionals reported an increase in the difficulty of earning coverage between June 2020 and May 2021. And that 38% reported that it was about the same difficulty level while a combined 35% say that earning coverage has become somewhat less difficult or much less difficult.
So, why is it that, while so few emails are opened, PR professionals aren’t finding it increasingly difficult to secure coverage?
Tailored Outreach
Agility PR Solutions’ report found that nearly 75% of respondents pitch less than 100 media contacts. Which, when you consider some individuals are reporting pitching more than 500 contacts, is quite small.
With every pitch or announcement, the press list needs to be tailored. When building a media list, it’s important to stop and ask, “Why would this reporter care?” and more importantly, “Why would their readers care?” If there isn’t a clear answer, don’t pitch them.
This approach is crucial to securing media coverage, but also to building lasting relationships that you can utilize for the long-term.
Adding Value
When asking why a reporter would care about your pitch, that’s when you should uncover the value of your offering. Are you providing them with unique data, an interview with a prominent thought leader, unique multi-media assets or a compelling story angle? If not, reconsider your pitch and determine how you can offer value.
While we often view the main goal of pitching as securing coverage (because it is), it can be helpful to shift the focus to supporting a journalist’s reporting. By treating the reporter like a client and being thoughtful about what your offer, you’ll likely be more successful in securing coverage.
PR professionals are continuing to get creative in what they are offering to journalists that may be of interest. According to the report:
- 45% of PR and communications professionals provide video footage
- 44% offer exclusive interviews
- 38% provide external links to web pages, documents, etc.
- 35% share high-quality images
New Forms of Coverage
With reporters stretched thin, many outlets are increasingly accepting and seeking contributed content. This is a great way to secure coverage that supports an organization’s key messages and highlights an executive’s thought leadership platform.
When developing a pitch, consider if the angle you’re offering would also make a compelling contributed piece. If a reporter doesn’t have the time to cover the topic, but still finds it interesting, there is still an opportunity to secure coverage.
It’s no secret that media are inundated with pitches, so in order to capture their attention and be successful in driving results, outreach needs to be thoughtful, creative and strategic.
Life and work in the era of COVID-19 have taken big blows. The impact on performance at work and our rest at home has been profound, and it’s an ongoing story. The pandemic that hasn’t really ended yet has prompted mental health professionals to rethink some of the longstanding ideas about stress, motivation and fatigue – and the best ways to handle them.
In recent years, and especially in the wake of disastrous domestic events, we’ve taken to using the term PTSD to describe a wide range of calamitous emotional experiences. But the term’s use may not be accurate. When we use the term, we’re using a phrase first coined in 1915, to describe the condition of troops recovering from combat in World War I (“shell shock” was another name for it).
George A. Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, argues that we vastly overestimate how common PTSD is, and we likewise often fail to recognize how resilient people really are. In his latest book, The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD, he offers many relatively new ideas about stress and the fact that how to handle it can actually make things worse.
No one-size-fits-all thinking
Bonanno writes: “A group of mindfulness experts recently cautioned, in a paper published in a leading psychology journal, that misinformation about the effectiveness of mindfulness can mislead people, and can even lead to harm.” Studies and case reports “have linked meditation to serious side effects, including increased anxiety, panic, disorientation, hallucinations, and depersonalization—the feeling of being disconnected from oneself.”
Bonanno says ending trauma calls for flexibility — realizing that there is no “one-size-fits-all” ways to handle trauma. “All of this research points to the same basic conclusion: coping and emotion regulation strategies are inherently neither good nor bad,” Bonanno says. “Every strategy has costs and benefits, and a given strategy is effective only insofar as it helps us meet the demands of a specific situation.”
COVID information fatigue
Among the more inescapable ways fatigue has crashed into our lives is a special brand of tiredness that we can’t seem to escape: COVID news fatigue. It’s distinct from the physical fatigue that accompanies actual diagnosis of COVID-19, but it’s no less real than the disease itself. It’s a result of the constant drumbeat of information – some hopeful, much of it depressing – that’s accompanied the worst global public-health crisis in literally 100 years.
With COVID fatigue, “You’re tired in your soul — emotionally, psychologically, socially, spiritually, you are just tired and not motivated,” said Dr. Carl Lambert, assistant professor of family medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, on the American Medical Association website.
The World Health Organization offers its own counsel: “Minimize watching, reading or listening to news that causes you to feel anxious or distressed; seek information only from trusted sources … Get the facts; not rumors and misinformation. Facts can help to minimize fears.”
Lambert counsels, “[M]aintain hope that things will get better. That feeds into what’s happening nowadays with the vaccine and all these other avenues that are providing hope. If there’s anything that you can do to maintain hope, that’s really the way to go.”
Workplace: Hothouse for stress
The workplace is a main incubator for stress and fatigue, as where we do our work has changed in recent years, and certainly since COVID-19 made working from home more than a pleasant option. The disconnection from colleagues and the collegial environment of the original workplace can be corrosive, making one constantly feel outside the action. And the homebound stressors we got a break from when we left home to go to work are there with WFH employees all day long.
University of Washington recreation fitness manager Jeff Palmer suggests several exercise-focused tips for staying motivated and minimizing fatigue that include starting your day with a plan or schedule, squeezing in shorter bouts of activity, practicing healthy and mindful eating, and noticing how good exercise makes you feel.
Motivation traps
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Bror Saxberg, vice president of Learning Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Richard Clark, a professor emeritus of psychology and technology at the University of Southern California, identified four motivation traps we’re prone to in the workplace:
Trap 1: Values Mismatch
“When a task doesn’t connect with or contribute to something workers value, they won’t be motivated to do it,” Clark and Saxberg say.
How to help: Learn what the employee cares about and connect it to the task. Managers often make the mistake of thinking about what motivates them, assuming the same is true of their employees.
Trap 2: Lack of Self-Efficacy
“When workers believe they lack the capacity to carry out a task, they won’t be motivated to do it,” the educators say.
How to help: Build the employee’s sense of confidence, competence and self-efficacy by pointing out times in the past when they’ve successfully tackled similar challenges, or share examples of others who’ve overcome the same challenges.
Trap 3: Disruptive Emotions
“When workers are consumed with negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, or depression, they won’t be motivated to carry out a task,” they say.
How to help: In private, tell the employee you want to understand why they are upset, and engage in active listening. Be nonjudgmental by asking what the employee believes is causing them to be upset. Then, summarize what they said back to them and ask if they understood. If they say “no,” apologize and tell them you are listening carefully and ask if they would “please try again.”
Trap 4: Attribution Errors
“When employees can’t accurately identify the reason for their struggles with a task, or when they attribute their struggles to a reason beyond their control, they won’t be motivated to do it.”
How to help: Help the employee think clearly about the causes of their struggles with a task. Attribution errors often happen when employees hunt for excuses not to perform a given task. “Helping the employee identify exactly why the task seems insurmountable can help them move past such avoidance.”