Insights for Leaders Navigating
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.
Accurate and precise language is essential for communicating a writer’s intended meaning. There is a risk, if you do not choose your words carefully, that your reader will be forced to pause and decipher your meaning or that your word message will be conveyed inaccurately or lost entirely. Either way, your writing loses credibility, and in the latter case, you may end up confusing or misinforming a reader.
Imagine, for example, if I had used “later” in the previous sentence rather than “latter.” You likely would have understood my meaning from the context, but you’d have less confidence in my message (not to mention my writing skills) because I used the incorrect word.
It is always my intention in written communication to be as precise and accurate as possible. Communicating exactly the message I intend becomes even more critical when writing for a client, and their credibility rests on my words.
I often find myself reaching for guidance to clarify or confirm the best word for a particular sentence, and based on a very informal survey, so do my teammates. Below are some of our most commonly confusing combos.
-
Among or between
The rule of thumb is that “between” refers to two items, while “among” is appropriate when referring to more than two parties. However, AP Style outlines an exception indicating that “between is the correct word when expressing the relationships of three or more items considered one pair at a time.” This exception would come into play, for example, if describing the rivalries between the Seahawks, the 49ers and the Cowboys.
-
Capitol or capital
While the word “capital” can have many meanings, from an accumulation of wealth or a good idea to an uppercase letter or a city, “capitol” only refers to the building in which a legislature operates. Furthermore, AP Style calls for capital letters when referring to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington or the respective state capitols, such as the Virginia Capitol in Richmond.
-
Complement or compliment
If I find myself questioning which of these words I should use in a sentence, it helps if I focus on the similarity of the word “complement” to its meaning; to complete or perfect something. “Compliment,” on the other hand, is a form of flattery or praise. It would be accurate to say, for example, that the diners gave the sommelier several compliments for the perfect recommendation she made of red wine to complement their delicious meal.
-
Continual or continuous
Both these words refer to frequency, but “continuous” (or continuously) describes an action that happens without ceasing, while “continual” (or continually) refers to a recurring act that occurs frequently or regularly. The key to distinguishing between these two-word families is to determine if the action ever stopped. For example, the heart beats continuously while storms could continually batter a city during a heavy hurricane season.
-
Contrasted to or contrasted with
AP Style guidelines state that “contrasted to” should be used when the intention is to indicate that two items “have opposite characteristics,” while “contrasted with” should be used when illustrating similarities and differences among two or more things. Therefore, it is accurate to contrast the sun’s brightness to that of the moon, whereas you’d contrast the quality of summer light with those of the other seasons.
-
Historic or historical
Though these two words are similar in meaning, when used incorrectly, they can entirely change the connotation of a sentence.
You should reserve the use of “historic” for describing people, places or events that hold a prominent place in history. While “historic” describes something significant in history, “historical” identifies something from an earlier time. For example, a person would use historical documents to learn how participants felt about their involvement in signing a historic peace treaty.
-
Imply or infer
The best way to distinguish between these two often confused words is to remember that one conveys a message while the other describes that a message is received. Whey you imply, you offer a hint without directly stating what you mean, while inference is a conclusion. A writer who uses imprecise language, for example, may imply an unintended meaning, and readers may infer that the writer’s poor word choice suggests a lack of understanding of the subject matter.
-
Misinformation or disinformation
Particularly culturally relevant lately, the distinction between these two words relies on intent. As an article earlier this year from Business Insider clarified, “misinformation” is an overall description of “false or out-of-context information that is presented as fact regardless of an intent to deceive.” The article continued, “disinformation is a type of misinformation that is intentionally false and intended to deceive or mislead.” Sharing a rumor that your favorite pizzeria is closing before finding out that information is false is an example of misinformation. If a rival pizza shop owner shared the same false information, knowing it was incorrect, that same news would be considered disinformation.
-
Myriad or myriad of
The Oxford English Dictionary defines myriad as both an adjective, meaning countless or great in number, and a noun, defined as many items. It is technically correct to use “myriad of” when using myriad as a noun. However, AP Style designates the word as an adjective. Therefore, it is accurate to say that there are myriad words in the English language that are confusing.
-
Systemic or systematic
Systematic describes how an action is completed based on a system or in an organized manner. Systemic refers to something that happens inside a system or within the system. For example, if every child at daycare has head lice, it is a systemic problem. In contrast, to describe how the infestation spread, one would say that it progressed systematically from classroom to classroom.
There are many examples of tricky word pairs, so if you find yourself uncertain about which word to use, Grammarly.com or the AP Stylebook are helpful resources. If specific terms regularly confuse you, let us know in the comments.
The recent UN climate report, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), demonstrates a dire necessity for organizations worldwide to take a stand against climate change and mitigate further climate-related damage.
The UN’s IPCC is the world’s leading authority on climate science, and its recent report confirms the undeniable tie between human activity and climate change—as well as the Earth currently being on track to exceed an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius within 20 years.
Understandably, businesses may be hesitant to share their efforts and solidarity on climate initiatives through social media because they often come under fire from consumer activists. And critics are especially vocal when a company’s messaging on social media lacks honesty or authenticity.
Nonetheless, it is still crucial for companies to communicate their positions and plans to address climate change.
Below are some critical points to consider for effectively building and communicating a company’s current and future commitment to environmental sustainability:
Messaging should be true to the brand and the actions they are taking. Authentic sustainability messaging should focus on the company’s activities around sustainability initiatives. Executives are responsible for ensuring that the content is truthful, leading the company to incorporate data supporting claims and update customers on their progress. PR partners can pose guiding questions to the company to help build out key messages.
While a brand may not be a leader in environmental impact assessment or developing sustainable initiatives, it’s OK to openly acknowledge areas that need improvement and how the company plans to address issues. Consumers value honesty and continuous improvement, and this type of vulnerability can be well-received by consumers and employees alike.
Incorporate concrete statistics and science-based facts that demonstrate that the company is working towards strategic, measurable goals—not simply capitalizing on feel-good storytelling. These steps are essential to developing sustainability messaging that is authentic to the company and its brand.
Another aspect of effective sustainability messaging is its accessibility.
Whether the company is putting out its Environmental, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) plan or a social media statement, the company should be mindful of its audience and what kind of language is most appropriate. A company won’t always direct environmental messaging toward stakeholders or investors, for example, and jargon can make it more difficult for the public to resonate with its statements.
Companies should make sure their stakeholders understand their initiatives and can engage with their sustainability initiatives. To build trust with the general public, the messaging should be as clear and transparent as possible about the company’s initiatives and current progress. As an example, Patagonia’s dedicated Climate Crisis webpage outlines how the company is eliminating its carbon emissions by 2025 and its progress toward these goals.
Messaging should be inclusive and people-centric. Climate change impacts the poorest, equatorial regions of the world the hardest, making it easier for people in more privileged positions to dismiss them. However, a company’s environmental messaging should be inclusive and incorporate the stories of those heavily impacted by climate change. This inclusivity will make it easier for audiences to have empathy and support change.
Companies can take this opportunity to raise awareness of the extent of climate change around the world, as well as in their own backyards. Finally, it is vital to highlight how race and environmental health are connected. For example, studies show a significant disparity in U.S. air pollution depending on where a person lives.
Ultimately, organizations and the customers they serve should all be working together toward similar goals of investing in a healthier planet and home. Climate change will eventually impact everyone, no matter where they live. However, by effectively communicating their commitment to sustainability, companies can both raise awareness of sustainability issues and build trust with consumers that they prioritize contributing to a healthier shared environment.
I recently watched Dark Waters, which depicts the toxic chemical spills scandal that ultimately led to U.S. chemicals giant DuPont paying $671 million to settle more than 3,500 lawsuits in 2017. I had never heard of the scandal before watching the film, and learning more about it has consumed my free time since then. I highly recommend starting with this New York Times article for more details.
For background, DuPont’s plant in Parkersburg, W. Va., contaminated the local water supply with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C-8, which manufacturers use in products such as Teflon. The contamination had a “probable link with six illnesses” among the local population, including kidney and testicular cancer. However, products manufactured with C-8 were an essential part of DuPont’s business, worth $1 billion in annual profit.
DuPont, which had used C-8 since the 1950s, knew since the early ‘80s that the chemical was toxic to humans but only agreed in 2006 to phase out its use. Though the company continued to deny wrongdoing, it’s become one of the classic cases in which business leaders pursued a strategy that could cause human harm long after the risks had come to their attention.
Another article in The Intercept outlines DuPont’s media relations strategy through the ‘80s and ‘90s.
According to the article, DuPont prepared and rehearsed the media strategy if word of the contamination reached the public. In 1984, a DuPont PR team drafted the first of several “standby press releases” and its guide for dealing with the potential press interest offered assurances that only “small quantities of C-8” are discharged to the Ohio River and that these “extremely low” levels would have no adverse effects. They wrote, “When a hypothetical reporter, who presumably learned that DuPont was choosing not to invest in a system to reduce emissions, asks whether the company’s decision was based on money, the document advises answering ‘No.’”
In 1989, DuPont purchased local fields with contaminated water wells and listed its decision because it was in “the interests of protecting our plant site from public liability.” But if the hypothetical reporter were to ask whether DuPont purchased the land because of the water contamination, the suggested answer listed in the standby release was to deny it and to state instead that “it made good business sense to do so.”
In 1990, scientists discovered how C-8 might cause at least one form of cancer in humans. In 1991, it became clear not just that C-8-exposed rats had elevated chances of developing testicular tumors but that the mechanism by which they developed the tumors could apply to humans. That same year DuPont also discovered that C-8 was present in a landfill near the plant, which it estimated could expel waste containing 100 times its internal maximum safety level. All these events once again spurred DuPont to draft contingency press releases and rehearse its media strategy. In this case, one of the draft releases from 1991 stated that DuPont studies showed that “C-8 has no known toxic or ill health effects in humans at the concentrations detected.”
None of these press materials saw the light of day. According to The Intercept, it was almost two decades until the public understood how toxic C-8 was and how widely it had spread.
The unfortunate situation with DuPont is an excellent reminder to us about the importance of ethics in public relations.
Since protecting the reputation and valuation of a company is foundational to PR, an unfortunate belief is that the term “public relations ethics” is an oxymoron: either an unreal possibility or the practice of deception. However, PR pros know ethics and trust are at the center of what we do.
PRSA outlines its code of ethics and professional values on its website. Included in its list of professional values are advocacy and honesty. They define advocacy as serving “the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for those we represent. We provide a voice in the marketplace of ideas, facts, and viewpoints to aid informed public debate.” PRSA defines honesty as adhering to “the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.”
The PR Council, of which Communique PR is a member, also has a code of ethics. See here for more information. They also provide some excellent guides, for instance, Handling Ethical Concerns: A Guide for Managers, Social Media Do’s and Don’ts, and Ethics as Culture Discussion Leader Workbook.
If company spokespeople and PR reps lie or omit the truth, it may mean the company will survive the day or temporarily escape the consequences. But ultimately, taking this path means an organization trades a precious resource – credibility. Unethical PR practices do not work in the long run. Instead, we must choose honesty and integrity.
Most, if not all, PR professionals are often left wondering if their pitch was opened and what the targeted reporters thought of it. Well, now we have some insight into whether or not journalists are opening email pitches or filing them away.
Recently, a report by Propel analyzed 1 million pitches sent to journalists to better understand if email pitches result in media coverage. Not only did the report analyze if emails resulted in coverage, but when pitches were opened, if they got a response and when journalists are pitched.
Below are some of the most interesting findings from the report:
- 8% of PR pitches result in media coverage
- Of more than 726,000 emails sent, only 29% were opened and only 3% got a response
- Most pitches are sent between 9-11 a.m.
- About 82% of pitches are opened within the first four hours of it being sent
So, with this data in mind, here are a few best practices when developing and distributing pitches.
Ask for Feedback
If you receive a response from a reporter, understand the value in that, even if they don’t want to pursue the story you presented. If a reporter turns down your story idea inquire as to why. This will do two important things. First, it’ll provide you with information about what didn’t work about the pitch. Perhaps there wasn’t enough supporting data or it wasn’t timely enough. Second, it will demonstrate to the reporter that you are committed to sharing story ideas that are valuable to them and tailored to their beat and interests. Building relationships with influential reporters is a key component of successful media relations.
Get Creative
Of course, story ideas require unique angles, controversial perspectives and more to be of interest to a reporter, but you also need to get creative in your pitching strategies and presentation.
Try pitching a reporter at different times of the day or test out different types of formatting for your pitches. This will give you an opportunity to determine if a specific style, pitch length, time or element seems to be more effective in capturing reporters’ attention.
Additionally, ask your colleagues what has worked best for them. Among all individuals conducting media outreach, there should be a trove of information to help inform what will be most effective.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Subject Line
If less than 30% of emails are opened, then there is no doubt that the subject line is crucial. Subject lines should be clear, concise and compelling. An effective subject line will likely be the difference between an opened vs. an unopened email, so give it just as much thought as the pitch itself.
Monitor Coverage
If there are a few select reporters that are highly relevant to a particular client, monitor their work closely. It will not only help you understand the topics that interest them and the style of their writing, but you may also find opportunities to send the journalist a one-off idea, source or stat relevant to their most recent piece. Not all outreach should be in the form of a formal campaign.
Media relations is a key foundation to public relations strategies. In order to be effective in capturing media’s attention and building relationships, it is critical to present ideas and resources that are valuable to each reporter.
One of the most exciting parts of a survey is analyzing responses because you’re likely to find patterns in the data that help you better understand your assumptions and learn about your topic of interest. However, like many elements in the process, your analysis and conclusions can be inaccurate without research, forethought, and expert input.
This blog is the culmination of my three-part blog series, which started with Thoughtful Survey Design, on defining your population and survey purpose, followed by Intentional Query Design, on question types and tips for writing queries. In this blog, I’ll cover how to share your data.
I hope this blog can be a springboard for further study about survey analysis. Many people focus their entire careers on statistics, data science, and data visualization, so if you don’t fully understand something, I recommend seeking help from one of these experts. Ensuring accuracy is crucial because numbers have a unique power for many people as they seem to be objective pieces of evidence. However, data can easily be misinterpreted or misconstrued.
Once you’ve closed your survey, pulled the results, cleaned up the data, and comb through your data to find trends and identify outliers. Qualitative data includes labels, names, and descriptive information that can either be unordered (nominal) or ordered (ordinal). In comparison, quantitative data reflects the measurement of a quantity where the difference between integers is the same throughout the scale.
When finding trends within qualitative data, look for frequency calculations like proportion, percent, and ratio. Even if numbers represent qualitative data, you can’t calculate means, standard deviations, or other statistics because the intervals between responses may differ.
When analyzing quantitative data, there are generally three qualities that describe data.
- The range defines the possibilities of a particular piece of data.
- The central tendency, often represented by the mean, the median, or the mode, suggests an expected value for a specific population.
- The variability, often quantified with the standard deviation or with percentiles, describes where individual pieces of data end up within the range. These three elements act as a summary of that data for your sample.
One fantastic way to discover trends and convey data is to use data visualizations such as histograms, scatter plots, maps, timelines, and word clouds, among other options. Data visualizations allow you and your audience to visually see trends.
Once you have your calculated statistics, the next step is to draw conclusions through inference, taking many data points and uses them to draw a general conclusion. One key element to remember when forming inferences is that your sample’s demographics should reflect the characteristics of the population. Ideally, your sample should be random and representative of the entire population.
To effectively extrapolate to your population, it’s essential to collect enough samples. Check out this sample size calculator to ensure you have adequate responses from your population, but a sample size of 30 is generally the minimum.
When sharing your findings, you may have multiple categories of audiences, including the respondents, current and potential customers, stakeholders, or media, and each may need a different set of messaging or visuals.
In addition to understanding the key findings, stakeholders may want to see your survey methodology, population descriptions, statistical significance claims, and notes about pervasive trends and notable outliers. Others may make future decisions or pose future surveys based on your work, so helping them be as educated on the data as possible may give them confidence.
The media is likely to appreciate newsworthy information. Often this means timely survey findings, which can include information that shows conflict, is relevant to many people, has proximity to their beat or geographic location, relates to well-known cultural figures, or appeals to emotion.
Here are some final tips to keep in mind when developing the messaging for each audience:
- Share your sample size, estimated population size, any bias you encountered, and, if applicable, your self-selection bias rate.
- Think about the numeracy of the readers and how you may need to provide additional context to help them accurately digest the statistics you provide.
- Remember and emphasize that correlation does not imply causation.
- If possible, share anonymized and well-formatted data with journalists to allow them to verify your findings or potentially identify other trends.
Surveys are a powerful mode of social research. With forethought and intentionality, a survey’s conclusions can be compelling and allow stakeholders to leverage the data for future business decisions.
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
– Albert Einstein
Einstein may have been selling himself short, but he raised a valid point. Often, pursuing curiosity can result in successful outcomes.
How often have you dismissed something – a memo, an email, a news article, or a social-media thread – because it wasn’t interesting? Or have you been in an audience and tuned out the speaker because what they were saying didn’t connect with you?
These are all instances when your curiosity diminishes to a halt. And why not? It’s easy to disregard and ignore the mundane, or conversely, gloss over the finer details of esoteric and complex matters.
However, a lack of curiosity can be enemy no. 1 when it comes to writing, researching, reporting and unlocking creativity. A lack of inquisitiveness impedes the influx of new ideas, while a curious mind puts you on the path toward answering the ever-important question “Why?” And for PR professionals, being creative and answering the “Why?” is at the essence of the work we do.
Think about it: Drafting a press release for a new product and need to emphasize the product’s importance? Or amid a PR crisis and need to craft positive messaging to save the day? Creativity is at the heart of these tasks and is critical to achieving success in our work. And, as research has shown, curiosity breeds creativity.
So, in the realm of PR, how do we harness curiosity to unlock creativity? Here are a few tips that might help.
Practice Active Listening
Learning to listen is truly a skill, as active listening is critical to understanding vital information. Maybe you need to connect with a corporate leader or subject matter expert to obtain essential details about a company announcement, a new product launch, or an upcoming event. Active listening helps you secure all the information you need.
It can be easy to regard the importance of active listening as cliché, but to successfully listen requires effort. One must concentrate on absorbing the information and respond to it appropriately. Focusing on the speaker requires the listener to tune out their physiological noise, distractions, and wandering thoughts. It also requires the listener to digest the information without letting their own biases interfere.
The successful practice of active listening will not only result in understanding another person’s message, but it will also help broaden your knowledge with the perspectives of others.
Read and Write Frequently
Reading a wide range of material is essential to cultivating ideas. For instance, when working on news stories, reporters often immerse themselves in reviewing source material such as public records, financial reports, and other relevant articles. Additionally, reading reviews and soliciting the input of others can help spark ideas and result in gained knowledge or insights. Maybe you agree with what’s being said or written – or perhaps you think a counterpoint is needed.
Writing also can help you process the information you digest and stumble upon new ideas to write about or pursue. These ideas can come while researching a topic for another project you’re working on and result in many avenues for you to explore.
Follow Your Curiosity – and Stay Curious
For those who remain curious, the good news is that they will never run out of ideas. Curiosity leads to input for the creative well; there is always something new to explore or another perspective to consider.
If you stumble upon something that intrigues or surprises you, don’t hesitate to explore it further. When your curiosity is piqued, it increases your creativity. Follow your interests and maintain a curious mind. In doing so, you will attain the knowledge you need to be successful and maybe even surprise yourself with what you’re able to achieve.