Are PR professionals afraid of the “New Rules”?
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If you haven’t read “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman Scott, you’re missing out on a top guide on how public relations has changed and “how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing” to reach your buyers directly. You can find the book at his website www.webinknow.com or from Amazon and other online bookstores.
I re-read the book this past weekend (the revised 2010 edition), and there’s one section that I didn’t feel represented PR professionals properly – or, at least, not the PR professionals I know, most of whom are in Arizona. In chapter 7, “The New Rules of News Releases,” he writes that “many PR professionals have a fear of the unknown. They don’t understand how to communicate directly with consumers and want to live in the past, when there was no choice but to use the media as a mouthpiece….I also think there’s a widely held view about the purity of the press release as a tool for the press. PR professionals don’t want to know that hundreds of millions of people have the power to read their releases directly. It’s easier to imagine a closed audience of a dozen reporters.”
The book is brilliant and has helped completely change the way we look at public relations. I don’t think he has quite captured the issue here, however. Granted, he travels a lot more than I do and talks to way Read More→
Confessions of a closet introvert
By · CommentsOne of my favorite blogs, www.repmanblog.com, posted recently about “introverts making a go of it in professions dominated by extroverts.” Blogger Steve Cody admits that he has taken improvisation and stand-up comedy to get over his innate shyness.
How many of us in public relations are actually introverts and not extroverts? In her post this winter about her shyness, blogger Dushka Zapata writes that “according to the Meyers [sic] Briggs type indicator, an ‘extrovert’ and an ‘introvert’ are defined based on where they get their energy. An extrovert is ‘energized by the outer world of people and things’ and an introvert is ‘energized by the inner world of thoughts and ideas.’”
This difference must be what makes some of us PR people gravitate towards writing (my favorite) and some of us towards event planning (would rather have a root canal). What part of PR do you hate? That will probably tell you a lot about which side you fall on, introvert or extrovert.
Graphic from http://myers.team-technology.co.uk
First newspapers, now the U.S. post office
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Whenever there is a revolution, something is often left in its wake, and that apparently is the U.S. postal service.
In the words of the US Postmaster General, Jack Potter, there has been a macro change in society and all posts around the world are challenged by the diversion of hard copy to electronic medium. Unlike other postal services in other parts of the world, the USPS is constrained by regulations and cannot expand into other areas. Facing a huge mountain of debt, they are proposing that delivery on Saturdays be eliminated. Another likely possibility is a significant hike in postal prices after 2010.
While the speed and convenience of electronic delivery are well understood, nothing quite captures the thrill and quaintness of receiving a handwritten letter. Perhaps the USPS will eventually privatize somehow. I would hate to see this element of American society disappear, but as I watch teens and twentysomethings with their individual smart phones, I don’t doubt that 30 years from now when my generation has gone, our modes of communication will be housed in museums as curious oddities.
The benefits of a digital age on press releases
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I was contacted by www.prmoment.com, which analyzes UK coverage of the world’s leading brands, to offer my perspective on the effects and impact of the digital age on press releases.
I believe that its impact has been mostly positive. Press releases in particular are now shorter, full of interesting multimedia components, and much easier to disseminate to segmented audiences. My prediction is that press releases will evolve in the next five years and will be called something else, and the traditional format we love to hate will finally dissolve. The combined brevity and complexity of such social media tools as twitter will continue to force PR professionals to craft more highly condensed pieces of information in an ever-widening array of formats to please individual audiences.
You can read the full article here, and find out what other highly regarded pundits are predicting.
Does this sound familiar? “…a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse.”
This is the theme of many new social media books on the market now – the disruption of society, the inability to adapt, the loss of the industrial age as replaced by the information age as replaced by an even faster information age.
Yet, Alvin Toffler wrote these words as long ago as 1970, when his groundbreaking work “Future Shock” was published. He points out that “for most Peace Corps men (a bit dated gender reference there!), in fact most travelers, have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not.” Read More→
Use Twitter to help break a story
By · CommentsDon’t forget that social media tools such as Twitter are helpful for reaching the circles of influence on your target demographic. Search Engine Marketing Specialist Anthony Kirlew has the guest post today about his experience helping a friend see the journalistic benefit of Twitter:
Anthony Kirlew
Recently, I was speaking with a friend who is looking to launch a new website for his business. He is extremely sharp when it comes to business but he is not fully dialed into the Web or social media. His new business is an RV Park, so he immediately told me that he did not think that his audience would be on Twitter, due to the demographics. I assured him that having a presence on Twitter may be more valuable to him than he might initially expect.
First, I told him that I could do some searches for him to find out if (and what) people were tweeting about RVs and RV Parks in the area he is looking to launch, and if so, what they were saying. I also mentioned that lots of journalists are on Twitter and Read More→
Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
By · CommentsAs more and more “citizen journalists” go online via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media, there is greater likelihood of typos and misspellings. In the online world as opposed to traditional media, there are no formal editors to proofread work. Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
Peter Faur
My friend Peter Faur of Phoenix-based “Right Point Communications” and I are of like mind. In his blog, RightPoint, he writes about communications and includes a helpful grammar tip at the end of every post. I asked him to provide his input on grammar and spelling, and he shared with me this guest post:
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“The Miami Herald’s ombudsman, or reader’s advocate, recently asked a veteran teacher to review the Jan. 18 edition of the newspaper for grammatical errors. He was shocked that Elaine Kenzel found 133 errors. Read More→
Blaming the luger not such a good PR strategy
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Photo found at www.boston.com
Henry Blodgett has an interesting post on the Olympic committee’s take on the unfortunate death of the Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. After an investigation, they are laying the blame on Nodar. As Blodgett puts it:
“In other words, Nodar’s death had nothing to do with the fact that, because of the track design, he was going 90 miles per hour (15 mph faster than older tracks), had only a few milliseconds to “make correct entrance into curve 16″ after exiting Curve 15 (which the lugers have dubbed the 50-50 curve on account of your odds of exiting it without crashing), and then flew out of a track that, with a small nod to safety, could easily have been covered with netting, Plexiglas, or higher walls and not flanked by immovable steel poles.” Read More→
Blogging to Drive Business: Book Review
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Here’s a good overview for anyone in business who wants to learn more about how to use a blog to create a relevant audience and drive more business. As the authors point out, there are three parts to blogging: 1) the specific technical instructions to set up your blog and add information to it, 2) what you need to know to get eyeballs looking at it, and 3) how to leverage your blog with other marketing efforts.
Even though I have been blogging for Valley PR Blog for 2 years, I found this book helpful and more practical than some other blogging books I’ve read. There are plenty of factoids in the book to persuade even the most reluctant blogger, such as the news that online media is the only area of media currently growing. Blogging helps people communicate with large numbers of people quickly and publicly. Blogs have grown from 5 million in 2005 to 133 million in 2008. If one of your competitors is continually blogging about your industry and you aren’t, search engines will find your competitor’s blog and place it, not yours, high on the list of search results when someone searches for one or more terms in your industry. Read More→
Podcasting can provide compelling content
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Farrell Kramer
Our guest blogger today is Farrell Kramer, founder and president of the PR firm Farrell Kramer Communications. We first met a couple of years ago when he conducted a podcast about my book, Press Releases are not a PR Strategy. He has been podcasting for himself and for clients since early 2006. You can find him on Twitter as @farrellkramer.
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The explosion in Twitter and Facebook by communicators of all types has created a desperate need for compelling content. In today’s world, you’re only as exciting as your last tweet or status update. But a steady diet Read More→
