@dvocable

Good Communications Is about Talking Like a Real Person Annotated

“I learned to just say what I have to say, and worry less about how I’m coming across. This is especially important for a freelancer. With the limited time a client has to look for freelancers, they will appreciate proposals that are straightforward and to the point, while ignoring those that place more importance on making a good impression. The same applies to anyone looking for information online.”

How to Write a Social Media Press Release Annotated

It should be presented as a story that has value to readers first, because if it happens to be picked up by a journalist, you’ve just made his job easier by presenting an angle.

Some of my industry colleagues and I had a discussion on whether it is better to work in a big agency or in a small/ medium size agency for say a PR professional with 1-3 years of experience.

Lets say big agencies are those with more than 3 branch offices in India with more than 50 employees. Small/ medium size agencies can be those in a particular city, work through affiliates in other cities, and have around 10-20 employees.

While the popular belief is that a big agency is a better place to work comparatively, there might be some advantages of working in a small agency as well.  

A stint at a small agency can provide a good exposure to things that you might miss at a bigger agency. In smaller agencies, you manage added responsibilities and thus learn more faster. A PR Account Executive level professional might be doing what an Account Manager in some big agency is doing. Thus, you learn to manage this and that and so on.

For instance in a small agency, if you are working on a particular account, you might be required to interface with the client yourself, network with the media, make the reports yourself, and handle everything yourself all the activities that come with the account.

Additionally, if you know how to negotiate well, you can demand a bigger pay packet. That said, there are small agencies that are way below the industry standards when it comes to paying their employees.

Now what happens at a big agency? These agencies typically have different departments to take care of different things like the media monitoring department, the media team that go out to distribute the press releases, the client servicing team that interface with the clients, the accounts planning team, etc. You learn to wok under established systems and protocols that are in place. The agency name looks good in your resume. There might be big clients and you learn to work together with their global PR agencies in other countries.

On the other hand regarding the pay scale, there are salary brackets and you cannot expect the agency to favor you out of the rest and give you a better pay unless you are a super performer. That said, big agencies often pay well.

Maybe every young PR professional in the early years should at least experience the work atmospheres at both a big agency and a relatively smaller agency. Grinding oneself and mastering the art in these diverse environments – the combined experience can be a loaded one when you are some years old in the industry.

If you are on the new Blogger, then you might be wondering how to display your latest posts on your sidebar. The old Blogger used to allow a display of upto 10 of the last posts. Now the new Blogger doesn’t have any such feature.

You can run your blog feed through the Feed Page Element and have the latest 5 posts on display. But 5?? Those five might already be there on your blog mainpage.

So we using Blogger blogs are often searching around on the web how to display at least 10 or more of our latest posts on the sidebar. Of course this is not a new discussion and many experts have written about it. There are hacks by Hoctro, Hackosphere, and Beautiful Beta.

However if you do not want all that modifications in the above hacks, there is another way to get the last 15 (or all) posts using Feedburner BuzzBoost. Of course you need to using Feedburner for this.

What is BuzzBoost? According to Feedburner, BuzzBoost republishes your burned feed’s content as go-anywhere HTML. To set this up, log in to your Feedburner account, go to the ‘Publicise’ tab, choose ‘BuzzBoost’, and follow the instructions there, and activate the service. On the page that followed, copy the html code into your blog where you want the latest posts to appear.

There are some customisation options available with this service. For instance, you can set the number of items to display, option of displaying the item author name, displaying parts of the item contents, etc. There are instructions given there on how you can apply your own styles. To see a live example, check out the ‘Latest posts’ column at the bottom of this blog.

By the way, I’m not a techie and this is just an alternative I discovered, and thought might be useful to someone.

This is called the YouTube for authors and readers of short stories. The site is called 1000 keyboards. I have no clue if this will become as big as YouTube. However, the concept is interesting and unique.

There are 8 categories of stories – comedy, drama, fan fiction, fantasy and sci-fi, horror, mystery & crime, romance, and thriller. There are other categories like Popular authors, Popular stories, New stories, Top recent stories, etc. you can search for stories by tags as well.

I wonder why will writers submit their stories when they are not getting any rewards for it. I read somewhere that writers who say they don’t write for money are either liars or idiots. And I completely adhere to the philosophy. I mean you completely write your heart out and that becomes the content of some website and they earn million of advertising bucks from it. I write on ezine articles just to get a link love. That’s all. That said, there are those who will say ‘we write because we love to write and money doesn’t matter’. Well, if YouTube can work, maybe so this can. Or is this different? Let’s see.

And I do want to test the waters and see how it goes. Possible benefit I can guess is that there is a 0.1% chance somebody notices my writing and wants to become my publisher. Let’s see that too.

As an occasional fiction-writer, I have submitted an old story of mine called Night of Dying. Simply put, it is about an old man and one night. Check it out and feel free to leave your comments or rate the story.

Here is a section of the story -

He passes by the dry garden, round the thorny shrubs and finally the yellow-leaves path. He recognises them by their dark magnitudes. The night has its advantages. Everything is black while daylight would have mockingly displayed their piteousness.

The dusty veranda stands ahead but yet he has to overcome five steps to reach the top.

He pauses. He stops and looks around. Is there a whisper? From behind the trees? Surely it can’t the trees. They can only lament – life is getting raped over and over again. He knows his is different, a bit. He pulls himself towards the trees. He knows he is brave. He used to be. And strong. Yet a cloud of trepidation and qualms hangs above his head and inside his fainted heart. Every step leads to an area darker than the previous. He eagers to look back. But he daren’t. And he can’t go any further.

The full story is here. This is my profile page at 1000 keywords.

I would love it if 1000 keyboards integrate their services with blogs and social networking sites. suppose I have a blog where I write my short stories. Can I publish them on 1000Keyboards simultaneously through my RSS feed? also, can I display my stories on 1000 keywords on Facebook? If enabled, this would become an useful tool then to many.

I need to be able to edit my story as well. What if I see some mistakes or want to make it better after submitting it.

Google News has started accepting comments (only in the US for now) on its search results pages. These comments can be made by those people who are mentioned in the particular news story on that search result page. They can do so by emailing their comments to news-comments@google.com. Reporters/ news publishers can also comment on their own stories. See an example of a comment here.

What are the fallouts on the PR industry? At first glance, this certainly looks good. With this development, we can say that media stories are not the end of everything. Even after being published, we can have our say in articles that mention us/ our clients. Steve Rubel from Micropersuasion writes ‘this is certainly a boon for PR professionals who have longed for a way to respond to what is largely an automated system’. Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration pointed out that this could provide a bit of a respite in neutralising negative publicity. Remember though, this is just online. Stories on news portals get published on their print editions as well. Many times, it is the circulation of print editions that news publications boast about, not their online page views.

On the other hand, Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped wrote that this feature might also aid to dilute news reports; imagine, say, an Associated Press reporter who researched some weeks to come up with an incredibly fact-checked piece about food poisoning with Acme Inc’s products. Acme Inc, trying to prevent an image scandal, now issues a factually wrong but well-written counter-statement to Google News, who will put it next to the news bits. Readers might now figure, ‘Oh, AP got it wrong I guess, there’s the counter-statement right there, I’ll move on to other news.’

How much are we/ our clients willing to participate?

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land wrote that it all depends on whether news-makers find it worthwhile to participate. I agree. Wonder how many times I could persuade my clients to comment on a news story that featured them or their companies. They would just want me to handle it for them. So as Steve asked, could PR agencies comment on behalf of their clients? If no, corporate communications managers have an additional responsibility coming up for them.

One question that I feel like asking reading all these is that ‘don’t we have online news portals providing this already?’  We have many news portals like The Economic Times and The Financial Express providing the comment box to its readers and many more are following suit. Here in India, I hardly find any PR agency advising the client to comment on a story publicly online. They would rather contact the news publisher directly. Even if it is a negative news, there are other methods they indulge in.

Or imagine a scenario if this becomes the norm. If we get a negative coverage in a newspaper and somebody pointed it out to us and we reply, ‘Oh! look at what I wrote in on Google News Comments on that story. The journalist got all the facts wrong’. 

Will this become a publicity tool?
Suppose I’m a small company and somehow my name/ company name appeared in a tiny corner of a big industry story, would I want to add a comment on the story page in Google News detailing about my company and products? Would this bring me/ my company more visibility?

Can this lead to debates?
Suppose there is a story that compares two competing brands. If one of them comments on the story in Google News highlighting its finer points, will the other follow suit? 

Will Google News become part of your media monitoring daily?
I see PR agencies using Google News only to monitor aggregated coverage on their clients from other news sources. In other words, they use Google News as a research and search tool and that was it. Now with this development, Google News will have its own content. These content needs to be monitored.

Whatever way, if this becomes big, expect more responsibility on online news search engines
So we talked about the need to participate/ manage the social media? Now manage the news search engines as well. Soon Yahoo News and the other upcoming search portals is likely to come out with something of its own and online news searches will never be that simple again.

Gartner Urges Caution on Virtual-World Business

Often as PR professionals, we wonder when is the best time of the day to pick up the phone and pitch a story to a journalist. Getting a journalist at the right time increases our chances of getting a successful pitch. You might not want to catch a journalist when he/she is interviewing someone, writing a story, or running around in the field. But if you caught him/ her at a good time when he/she is in an open frame of mind and willing to listen to ideas, you can explain properly what you have in mind.

This is a guest post by Ajay Jain, a journalist who has written for publications such as The Financial Express, Business Standard, and Outlook Business on various subjects including business, sports, travel, youth, environment, technology and current affairs. He also blogs at Tech Gazing and Green Dioxide.

He explains here how a day goes for journalists and what time of the day PR people should contact them to get maximum attention from them.

Read on…

If you are never sure when to pitch to a journalist for your client’s story, take a tip from the birds: catch the worm early.

Because the best window of opportunity a journalist offers is between 10 and 11 in the morning. Earlier than this, and you run the risk of being asked to come over to help with the household chores. And no journalist can say what the day will be like after 11am.

It is this late morning hour when journalists are usually most relaxed. They hit the road after that, often because a PR professional like you may have sent an invitation for a press conference. After leaving home, and usually till around 4pm is the time for attending conferences, conducting interviews, or being on the phone. Barging in can be tricky – you may not get the desired attention and the story may just get routine treatment.

Around 4 – 4.30pm in the evening is also not a bad time. It is that buffer zone between getting all the dope for the stories and getting down to writing. Between 5 – 7pm is the time to call if you are in a suicidal mood. Not only is it time to write, but also when panic buttons are being pressed to arrange for what is missing for the stories. Unless you have a front page exclusive to offer in which case all sins can be forgiven, avoid it.

Calling in the morning has the advantage of also helping the reporter plan the day. Nothing will cheer him or her up more than an exclusive landing in the lap in the early hours itself. It will also mean a wee-bit of a soft corner for you in the future because the reporter earns the stripes of the day not by attending your press conference or by punching in your release, but with the exclusives filed. Of course, this also means you should have worked everything out with your client the previous day, ready to make the call at 10am.

What does your experience say?

PR 2.0 – Silicon Valley Annotated

62 ways to improve your press releases Annotated

Online PR is a subset of public relations that uses traditional PR tools and techniques in a new medium – the Internet. Since the Internet has radically changed the way we communicate, source, and use news & information; to reach our public we have to know where they are reading, listening or viewing online.

Online PR is a practice that is fascinating and a personal favorite. Adopting an online PR strategy is a must today if you are handling a technology client. That said it is not restricted to technology companies. There are dozens of lists of companies outside the technology vertical that have successfully benefited from well-planned online PR campaigns. (see blogging case studies)

A few days back when an opportunity presented itself, I quickly bounced off some questions to Sally Falkow, President of Expansion Plus Inc., a renowned Internet marketing and PR company.

Sally is a PR veteran of more than 25 years of experience is a thought leader in Internet marketing strategy and an expert in social media. Her blog ‘Proactive’ was one of the first PR blogs. She is the Co-Founder and Developer of the social media and content syndication tool, PRESSfeed, which was developed specifically for PR use online. Having accorded ‘Expert Author’ status on WebProNews, she has also authored several widely-regarded books on web strategies and online PR. She is a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR) and has just completed a research study on how bloggers source and use news, which will be presented at the SNCR symposium later this year.

Fast 5 Q&A’s with Sally:

Q1. What are some of the challenges that online PR practices are likely to face in the coming years?

The biggest challenge is understanding the social media mores and the tools – and how to be a participant in the conversation, not how to control or spin a message to an audience. Social media participant refer to themselves as ‘the people formerly known as the audience’.

Q2. How should PR professionals/ PR agencies gear up to face these challenges?

Read up, familiarise yourself with the social media, and learn to participate. There are a few good sources of data on social media. Some of these are Social Media Club, Brian Solis (he is one of the founders of social media club, The Leading Edge), and the Bulldog Reporter blog I write.

Q3. Suppose today, a prominent blog has written something negative about your client, what is the best way to go about addressing this?

First and foremost – be sure you have online reputation monitoring in place so that you catch any comments like this right away. Getting to it early is vital.

Contact the blogger offline if possible and see if you can give them your side of the story. Be aware that whatever you say or email them will be ‘on the record’ and will probably be used in the blog. So think it through carefully before you respond.

If it is a genuine situation – the comment is verified and correct – you have to address how you will handle the issue. If it is not true you have to get your side of the story out as fast as possible in as many credible online news sources as you can. Be open and willing to talk to the blogger/s.

Q4. Some tips on developing a online crisis communications plan?

Have a fully functional online news room. Use RSS feeds. As with any crisis plan think it all through and plan for the worst possible scenario. Have you friends/allies/safe points in place before you need them. Identify the influencers in your space. Make contact and get to know then long before you need them in a crisis. Find the evangelists who love your products. Support them and help them to get their message out. Provide online tools for them to create positive content about you.

Q5. How do you measure the effectiveness of an online PR campaign?

As with any campaign you measure against your objectives:

- Search visibility

- Thought leadership

- Traffic to the site/newsroom

- Referred traffic from your RSS feeds

- Articles picked up on other sites

- Is your news being featured in online News engines like Yahoo News

- Is it showing up in Google in their Universal search results

- Online news coverage in other sites

- Social media coverage – digg, del.icio.us, etc.

- Blog coverage – positive

- Reaches from journalists – print and online

Download to read a case study on a successful online PR campaign.

Sally Falkow will facilitate a Workshop on ‘Strategic Online PR’, which will be held in Singapore from 20 – 21 September, 2007, and organised by Universal Network Intelligence. Those interested to have more information can email with subject code ‘SOPR-I’.

CBC Journalists Cannot Add News Sources as Facebook Friends Annotated

China’s handouts to journalists skew media coverage Annotated