Congratulations to Paula Hubbs Cohen of Peoria, AZ, who won the contest for worst press release opening.   She wins a free copy of Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy and a Starbucks gift card for this marvelous entry:

“The members of the Board of Directors are collectively proud and thrilled to announce that it’s executive director, who already owns a yards long list of awards (LOL), recently one 3rd Place Honorable Mention for her outstanding ode regarding the new palate of colors that have been used and will be used in all the foundations’s press releases from now on, giving all recipients a huge selection to choose from.”

She earned extra points with her punctuation and spelling errors.  (Can you spot them?)

Her inspiration for this noteworthy entry was “a woman I used to work for who INSISTED that her name and title be prominently mentioned in the first paragraph of every single press release I wrote for her – no matter how awkward-sounding the phrasing. I would get into major-league trouble if I did not do this, and hence, used to dream about writing the most obnoxious, superlative-filled quotes for her – the problem being, she loved them. In addition, I was required to issue press releases about the most fluff stuff simply to appease her massive ego, so thanks for the opportunity to actually put pen to proverbial paper and vent some of the verbiage I apparently had stored-up for a number of years.”

Glad to provide you such catharsis, Paula, and thanks to everyone who entered!    Happy writing.

There’s a certain philosophy to social media, and I’m always searching for a good summary/explanation for those clients who are new to the concept, or who have to justify their efforts to a doubtful management team.

A recent presentation by social media strategist Lon Safko in Phoenix was very helpful in that regard.   Sponsored by Growth Nation, the event brought together an interesting collection of people who all wanted to learn more about how to apply social media in their businesses. 

Following is a summary of Lon’s major points from the presentation, which can be found on his website at www.lonsafko.com.   The only disagreement I had with the presentation was his contention that social media should not reside in public relations because PR people tend to pontificate. Public relations constantly gets a bad rap, and I admit, a lot of times it is justified. But the point I made to the crowd and will make on this blog is that you need to make sure your PR person/agency/consultant understands the difference between publicity and public relations. True public relations is not one way, but two-way, and represents the kind of relationship building and dialogue that is at the heart of social media. I am a strong proponent of making sure that social media includes team members from multiple departments, but resides primarily in the PR department.

Approaching social media takes time and effort, he says. You need to know what your brand is and who your market is and what your message is and have a plan. Honesty is wildly successful in social media. Customers are expecting you to be there and if your competition is there and you’re not, you’re at a severe disadvantage. But, there has to be a reason to have a blog or a Facebook, and strategy is the most important thing.

The value of social networks is that they lead to trust, which leads to sales. You can’t push your message out anymore, you have to hear what your customers are saying. You can use social media for insights to market to your prospects. And to make sure your target audiences are aware of it, you need to put your twitter and Facebook page information everywhere, from letterhead and business cards to websites. He asked the attendees how many people had their twitter address on their business cards, and only three or four of us raised our hands.

Time is valuable, and customers want to know “what’s in it for me.” Give them value. Give them content. They like it when they come away with a “I didn’t know that” feeling.  He mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk as an example, and if you haven’t read Gary’s book “Crush It,” I recommend it. It will show you how he compared the return from several different traditional marketing approaches, such as billboards and direct mail, versus twitter. You can’t read that book and not come away realizing that the rules have changed.

It was interesting to hear Lon talk about using the social network Second Life for meeting up with people. I am on Second Life, and I have an avatar, but I have not used it. Part of the challenge for me is having to use voice software to give commands. If you use Second Life actively, I would love to hear from you.

Having a blog positions you as an industry leader if it has good content. People learn to trust your opinion and that positions you with the competition. All you need to do is blog one time a week with something you’ve learned about your industry. The head of J.W. Marriott, Bill Marriott, sees blogging as an opportunity to hear correctly what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, so they can change it.

Lon recommended something he called “trademark sucking.”  In essence, you use what’s happening in the news, such as the recent JetBlue incident, and discuss that in your blog . Of course, you have to have a legitimate valid angle with it or people will realize you’re just trying to hop on the SEO train. 

He really stressed looking at mobile social networking. As he pointed out, most countries don’t have iPads, PCs or broadband, but they do have cell phones. Mobile phones are prevalent everywhere.  The rules of engagement have changed and you no longer control your message — your customers do, and you need to go to where they are.

He laid out a strategy for approaching social media. It really takes understanding the shift in power. Your customers are having conversations about you with or without you, so you are no longer in control of the message the way you were with traditional marketing vehicles. When you participate, however, you build trust. A website just pushes our rhetoric, but on tools like Facebook people give their honest opinion and this has more value.

Websites are becoming irrelevant. It’s the peer-to-peer communication that is driving your message. People just don’t believe website testimonials anymore. If you don’t provide a platform for your customer to have conversations, they’ll take it somewhere else. You need to be sincere, authentic, and transparent.

He’s working on a new book, Word of Mouth at the Speed of Light. The book that pushed him into social networking prominence was The Social Media Bible, which truly turned out to be a bible in size and reference capability for those new to social media.

He urged the audience to look hard at their customer demographics and the total expenses over the past year that they have undertaken. You really need to understand where the value is. You can divide the total expenses by the number of customers you gain, and that will give you the cost per customer. The act of creating a plan is actually more important than the end result, because it really helps to look at what you’re doing right and wrong.

The philosophy behind social media is it’s not about selling. You’re giving people something of value. Think about what you’re passionate about, and that is your key. People read tweets, for example, because you’re passionate about something. People want content and immediacy, not polish.

This may be hard for some marketing people to hear, but Lon says to look at what you’re doing, and if that doesn’t work, stop it. Put that time or resource into social media. You have the responsibility to monitor your brand and engage, and customers expect it.

If you haven’t seen Lon present, you should make a point to go see him, because unlike many so-called social media experts, his presentation is clear, full of good videos to break up the pacing, and energetic.  

Photo courtesy of Laird Brown Photography

You have just over a week (August 17th) for the contest — come up with a really bad opening line for a press release.   Journalists would say this shouldn’t be hard for PR people at all – prove them right for a change! 

Business book and coffee - the perfect combo!

Now’s the time to practice your absolute worst press release opening line skills.   In honor of the first anniversary of my PR Strategy Blog, I’m announcing a contest for the worst opening line(s) of a press release…

The winner will receive an autographed copy of my book and a $20 gift card from Starbucks.  

All you have to do is come up with the most wretched, adjective- and superlative-filled copy you can think of to announce a real or fictitious product, event or service.   You have til August 17th to do it, and submit it to me via linda at lindavandevrede dot com.  You’ll earn extra points for misspellings, grammatical errors, and punctuation mistakes.   Only a few lines are needed – you don’t need to craft the entire release.   Just write enough that we get the gist, however painful…

I’ll announce the winner (and any runners up) here on the blog.  “Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy” is the perfect book to give an executive or client who thinks PR is the same as sales, and that issuing releases every 2 weeks is an ideal strategy.  

To get your creative juices going, I’m including the original passage that started the  craze for creating bad opening lines for novels, from “Paul Clifford” written by Victorian author Edward Bulwer-Lytton:

When you sit down to create a press release, should you write it for the media or for your customers?

The public relations purists would say you should write it for the media, in order to keep the copy at a higher intellectual level and avoid Barnum & Bailey Circus promotional ad copy. The social media advocates might say you should write it for a broader audience to include your customers, because the press release is disseminated on the Internet.

The answer is really a hybrid of both.   PR thoughtleaders like Brian Solis and Deirdre Breckenridge write in their book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” that social media is reinventing the “aging” business of PR, and that yesterday’s PR techniques don’t work anymore. But, as they point out, social media gives you an unprecedented opportunity to make PR succeed more powerfully than ever before.

So how do you make your press release resonate with so many different audiences today?   In reality, your copy, if properly tagged on the Internet, may be accessed by reporters, bloggers, political representatives, your next door neighbor, your long-lost high school love, your teacher, customers, would-be customers, and competitors.  You may have created a target list of reporters to receive the release, but in a digital world that copy can turn up anywhere.  

After trolling through several companies’ online news releases, I’ve put together the following list of ideas to help you prepare your next release:

• Use a free service like www.pitchengine.com or a wire service such as www.prnewswire.com that will automatically walk you through the copy generation and allow you to include various tags and SEO components that will make the release easy to find by all your constituents.
• Include various multimedia (logo, photo of the service or product in use, headshot of executive) along with the copy.
• Many services allow you to “call out” executive quotes as a graphical element, so that reporters can use that information if they want (keep in mind that exec quotes in most press releases, however, are still way too stiff and calculated to sound natural).  The callouts break up the text and are visually appealing, however, even if they are not used.
• Create slightly different versions if you have an announcement that can include a lot of local flavor.   For example, a release about a software package that was developed by an Arizona team could have two versions – one for a national audience, and one for a local audience, with more detailed info about the team members’ Arizona connections. 
• You can keep the copy very factual and informational for the benefit of media, while including multimedia and links that are comparatively more “fun” for the customer base.  
• Don’t throw every piece of data into the press release, but instead link to additional information as needed.   Editors might want to follow a link to your company backgrounder, whereas customers might want to follow a link to your pricing and availability info.    It’s always good to lead the reader back to the appropriate place on your website. 
• Most people, reporters and customers alike, don’t like to feel they are being sold to.   So you can be engaging and conversational in your press release copy, but not overtly promotional.   Press release copy has become much less stilted than it was in the past (with the exception of quarterly earnings reports, which are subject to strict regulations), but this doesn’t mean you can be lax in your grammar, spelling and punctuation, or that you can get too conversational.  

The unquestionable downside of press releases that can be read by anyone on the Internet is that the copy can also exist in eternity and come back to haunt you.    Even if you work for a privately held company, that company may be acquired some day by a publicly held company, and subject to due diligence by their financial and legal team.   Just be sure that whatever you issue as a formal press release from your company is based in fact. 

If you visit the websites of wire services such as www.prnewswire.com and www.businesswire.com, you can click on the “browse releases” tab and see how big and small companies alike are preparing press releases that are visually appealing, fun to read, and still factual in nature.   The previously hard line between reporters and customers as the target audience is very fuzzy these days…

Photo credit:  VictoriaPeckham, Creative Commons License

Facebook has passed the 500 million user mark, and if ranked as a country, would now be larger than the U.S.! 

Internet marketing pro Jeff Bullas recently made 5 predictions about the future of Facebook, including this observation:

#2. Portals and Websites for Businesses

I have seen companies that have actually started using Facebook instead of their website as the first digital online Gateway for customers and online visitors. This has been facilitated by vanity and user URL’s that provide a more search engine and user friendly web address. This is dangerous because you don’t own the channel, you are only renting on Facebook’s terms but this will not deter some companies and I think that this may continue to grow and you may find Facebook encouraging this by adding more features and functionality that are business focused.

Jeff is right – you are only renting space when you create a portal on Facebook. If this enables companies to engage more with their customers, however, I believe this is a good thing. More and more people are gravitating to Facebook rather than to company websites and using Facebook as a one-stop platform in which to engage. 

Yes, you run the risk of depending on Facebook and being left high and dry if anything goes wrong with the service. But there is great value in engaging with customers where they want to be. It’s similar to the number of Arizonans who have property in Mexico, where they can only lease the land for 99 years – they can never own it.  

If you’d like to engage with me on Facebook, check out the Press Releases are not a PR Strategy page.  I post updates on how press releases are being used and abused in PR 2.0, and seek feedback from fans in order to gather info for the next edition of the book.  I’ll also be sponsoring a press release contest and book giveaway soon.

Photo credit:   Ross2085, Creative Commons License

White papers are wonderful tools for helping educate and enlighten your target audiences. The reason they have not been very successful in the past is that too many people use them as brochure-like advertisements, forgetting what the true goal of a white paper is. Created properly, they serve as a document that provides timely information about your industry and which contains valuable knowledge that positions your company in a positive light for being so helpful.

Here are 10 tips for making the most of this kind of public relations tool:

1. Choose a topic in your industry that is a timely or hot one, and pick a side. For example, if you are in the petroleum industry, a timely white paper right now would be the value of proper drilling equipment.  
2. Choose a title and subhead that clearly describe what your target audience will learn as a result of reading the white paper.   Will they learn the pros and cons of a current industry issue? Will they learn how to do their job better?
3. Leverage a lot of outside research, both paid and unpaid, to substantiate your position – industry articles, independent consultants, and analyst groups are all good authorities to quote.
4. Also as part of the research, conduct a survey of your customer base to get a read on their opinions or where they are at on a particular project. For example, as part of a white paper on Y2K when the issue was uppermost in people’s minds, we surveyed the customer base to find out how far along they were with their Y2K assessment projects.   Your customers always want to find out where they stand in terms of other people in their industry, and analysts as well value this customer base data.
5. Represent the research stats that you have gathered as graphics in your white paper to help better illustrate the data.
6. Tone is extremely important – strike an easy-to-read, informative but not promotional tone. Think of a tone that is similar to an annual report in terms of its factual nature, but slightly easier and more interesting to read.  Leave out the promotional adjectives and sales copy.   Remember, the goal is to inform, and by factually informing you end up promoting your company as a knowledgeable resource. This is much more effective than trying to create ad copy.
7. Strike for a length that enables you to thoroughly explain the issue for your readers. Too many white papers are too brief and too fluffy, or are designed in PowerPoint format. If you don’t provide information of substance, your customers won’t come back to read more.
8. A helpful component is including a photo of and Q&A with one of your experienced executives at the end. Keeping with the petroleum industry example, you could include a Q&A with the product manager of equipment that your company manufactures that is helpful for oil drilling. Typical questions could include: Why do you feel so many organizations are not familiar with all the necessary components of oil drilling? As a result of the BP incident, do you see a change in the ways that companies will approach the manufacturing and marketing of their equipment? How has your company changed its marketing strategy? How should companies evaluate the multitude of oil drilling equipment in the marketplace today?
9. Create a format for the white paper that strikes an even balance between the current trend in free downloadable ebooks, which are a bit too cartoony and very light on information of substance, and the old stodgy format of traditional media, which was very text-heavy.  
10. Make it easy for readers to access your document. Don’t require registration, just make it available for free download from your website and include mention of it in all your marketing materials.

White papers, if properly written, are extremely valuable tools for educating all of the constituents who might want to purchase your product or service or write/tweet/blog about it.

My friend Dan Sussman, like me, lost his mother recently, and over coffee today he made one of the best analogies I have ever heard to describe the weirdness you go through when you are dispersing of your parents’ belongings.   “I felt as if I were striking a set, like in the theater,” he mused.   “You look at the objects, and then you move on.” 

If that doesn’t completely describe what it’s like to go through a major life transition, I don’t know what does. Whether you’re packing up your office and leaving a job behind, or going through boxes of your mom’s belongings to figure out what to donate and what to keep, it’s exactly like taking down the set from a play.  The little dramas that played out over time were intense and very real, but after the play is over they seem out of place and in many instances, sadly, just way too specific to that particular play to be of use in another story.

This isn’t to diminish their value in any way.  Dan’s analogy just reminded me of how our lives are really only a series of different ongoing vignettes.

I hope whoever takes down my set saves and treasures my Topo Gigio key ring. 

Photo credit:  Nic’s events, creative commons license

With apologies to one of my favorite 70s bands, Chicago, does anyone really know what PR is?  Stop whatever you’re doing right now and jot down your best one-line definition.    But don’t tell me what it is, because chances are, you’re wrong.  If you’re a good friend of mine, I’ll be especially crestfallen that you don’t get it.

One of the noted textbooks on public relations by Cutlip, Center and Broom defines PR as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.”

Caught you – you were thinking it was publicity, weren’t you? Or perhaps press releases? Or maybe lots of good parties with good food?  Public relations is all about establishing relationships with your audiences, and it is two-way communication, not the one way publicity you think of with Barnum and Bailey Circus posters.     

Sending press releases at regular intervals like newsletters is not public relations.  Sending them out without knowing if the recipients truly want to receive them is not public relations.  Good PR, true PR, takes time to develop.   I like to think of the line from the movie “Shawshank Redemption,” when Andy is able to dig a tunnel our of his cell to freedom.  His success was due to “pressure and time,” according to the movie’s narrator, Morgan Freeman.

If you have good public relations already established, then you are able to minimize crises when and if they occur.  This is why I believe the efforts of BP to do damage control after the oil spill, and the efforts of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to do damage control post SB1070, will not ultimately be very successful.  Why?   You need to dig your well before you’re thirsty.  PR requires significant time and effort spent toward understanding your target audiences and developing legitimate, productive relationships with them. If you view it as something you turn on and off like a faucet, I can only feel sorry for you.

Maybe the best way to define or explain public relations is to list some of the initial steps that are involved in getting a PR presence going.  There is a lot of time spent up front, reviewing the marketing plan and the success or failure of previously employed marketing and PR strategies. Creating a target list of audiences is arduous and extremely time-consuming, and involves querying everyone on the list to ensure they truly want to receive information about the company. Building relationships with that target list takes time, particularly if they aren’t located close by. Identifying everyone in the company who can provide data that is of help to analysts and editors is time-consuming. Getting in sync with the CEO so that you can be an accurate extension of his or her thought process and help with the messaging takes time. 

The most common mistake with any definition of public relations is to view it as sales support. When PR is subjugated to the reactive nature and goals of sales, and is used as a method to drive sales, the focus unfortunately shifts from the more productive approach of “What information does my audience need”? to “What can I cram into this self-congratulatory press release that will get customers to buy?”  This unconscious shift is probably the single biggest contributor to the failure of public relations on the corporate level, and the reason why marketing and sales should be led by two separate individuals.  Public relations’s goals are goodwill and mutually beneficial relationships, not transaction-based sales activities.    If you want sales, use marketing communications.

Do you have a good definition of public relations?

Photo credit:   Joe Shlabotnik, Creative Commons license

Who among us has sailed through work environments without being part of or witnessing some sort of conflict, whether it is bullies, wet blankets, micromanagers, or troublemakers? Win at Work!/The Everybody Wins Approach to Conflict Resolution by Tucson-based author Diane L. Katz delivers an eight step “Working Circle” concept to problem-solving at work.

It’s a flexible, non-linear approach to solving issues in the workplace.  The process gets you to think, rather than follow a prescribed formula to conflicts, and that is the power of the concept. One of the key themes that Katz emphasizes in the book is that you should not go into conflict resolution with a pre-determined idea of what the other person will say, but rather with an idea of what your game plan should be and what is personally negotiable and non-negotiable.

This is a powerful way of approaching conflicts, because you focus on a different area than on trying to prepare for a debate or trying to anticipate their reaction. In order to understand one’s personal style, Katz includes a simple questionnaire that helps categorize people into one of five different styles:  attacking, confronting, problem solving, compromising, and withdrawing.

If you already have self-knowledge, you might not need to read the book. But how many of us truly understand how to approach various work conflicts? The author describes several examples of how her clients faced common problems at work, and how they use the Working Circle to analyze and solve the problem successfully, keeping in mind that success might not mean we get the result we are hoping for, but we still gain valuable insights and experience.

As Katz notes, breaking down a complex and disturbing problem often gives one a feeling of empowerment.   Part of the process is looking to your past to find examples of where you have encountered similar issues and how you dealt with them.  Have you encountered a bully before?   Have you been caught in the middle of fights and disagreements?  

The Working Circle is designed to take into account what are called the masculine and feminine approaches to conflict resolution. Rather than being gender specific, which Diane is careful to note in almost every chapter of the book,  these are just general terms to describe aggressive and avoidance approaches to conflict. The optimal solution is more collaborative.

The bottom line is that solving conflicts often takes a certain amount of courage, and the payoff is significant to personal satisfaction.    The goal of the process is to transform the individuals involved. The message of the book is don’t be intimidated by anyone or any situation. 

The Working Circle process can be applied to personal conflicts in our lives as well, and I suspect that the author’s next book will be “Win at Home!” 

Diane Katz  lives in Tucson and has a master’s degree in organizational psychology, and a PhD in conflict resolution. Win at Work! is published by Wiley and available in bookstores nationwide.  For more information, visit www.TheWorkingCircle.com.

Thanks to PR firm O’Connor Communications for bringing this book to my attention.