The 5 Resolutions Common to PR and Marketing Professionals

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We are a few months into the new year and it’s that time when we begin to reevaluate the resolutions we originally set. Were we being overly optimistic? Are these goals still achievable? Do we restart again?

The New Year has always marked a great starting point for assessing the changes we want to make in our lives both personally and professionally. The personal goals seem to be easier to make while professional goals sometimes get shoved to the side.

With the fast-pace and pervasive changes that occur within public relations and marketing, it’s important that we as PR and marketing professionals set meaningful goals and track our success toward them throughout the year. In speaking with colleagues within this field, what are some of the common resolutions we set for ourselves?

1. Set a content strategy at the beginning of the year. Lofty, yes, I know. But as professionals responsible for content marketing and thought leadership, knowing what topics to focus on according to a set calendar greatly speeds the delivery and production of great thought leadership pieces, white papers, blogs, e-Books and many other content deliverables.

Aligning topics with the content calendars for relevant media publications is also critical to success. If you know a certain trade publication will focus on health for the month of February then aligning your content accordingly will not only make it easier for your teams to deliver. It will also make it more likely that it gets published so you can reap the rewards of utilizing the information in multiple outputs across multiple channels.

2. Use data to drive strategy. While marketing and communications was once a more ambiguous and subjective art form rather than a science, it is now becoming easier to track results of activities due to the introduction of technology. In fact, many companies now demand to see results such as the number of new leads, the click-thru rates, and share of voice.

And as PR and marketing professionals, we too should demand and want to see the results of our labor. Knowing what messaging works and why for which type of customer is key to delivering even better communications and campaigns moving forward. It benefits everyone when we “work smarter and not harder” and being informed about how our past activity has performed is an important step to achieving that.

3. Don’t make perfect the enemy of good.  This quote, often attributed to the French writer, Voltaire, really resonates with many in the PR and marketing profession. As writers and creators of content and design, there is often a pride that comes with a beautifully written piece, a new innovative spin on an overly discussed topic or a flawless pictorial of a convoluted concept.

After all, these are the moments we live for the times we get to deliver into the world a masterpiece that shows our years of schooling and experience. It’s times like these though that we must remember Voltaire’s words of wisdom for it is easy to get caught up in trying to make perfect what is already seen as great by many.

4. Read more but don’t get lost. As great PR, media relations and marketing professionals it’s often in our nature (and part of the job) to learn what’s going on in the world around us. We want and need to know what our competitors said in the New York Times yesterday or what topic is trending with our consumers/buyers.

While the expectations and deliverables can pile on us quickly, it’s nearly impossible to do our jobs (or do them well) without taking time out to understand the market, read what consumers are saying and stay ahead of the next big news story or product development. The caution here is that while reading and being aware of the industries we serve is critical to success, it can also consume hours and hours without realizing the time that’s gone by.

5. Find the best local coffee (or tea). The markets and the news never stop from east coast to west coast or one country to the next so there is always something going on and someone awake to report on it. As marketers and PR professionals we often are early to rise and are rarely without a pile of stories or new strategies to deliver. Finding the best caffeinated beverage, therefore, is key.

If you’ll be consuming it daily (or multiple times a day), then the taste is critical, but the cost must be reasonable as well. We’re marketers, we’re media relations you can’t fool us. We can write great thought leadership for the best coffee in town. We can create amazing brand awareness and even help you generate new leads and customers. Yes, we’ll work in trade for great coffee or tea.

Using Thought Leadership to Make Your Organization Appear Larger Than Life

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Throughout my career, whenever I have done a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis with a health IT startup one of the most common weaknesses or threats their executives offer is the small size of their organizations. They may have the greatest innovation in healthcare since the Xray, but they fear it’s going to be difficult to get cost-conscious providers or payers to implement the technology or even listen to their pitch when it comes from an organization they don’t know.

Of course, that problem isn’t limited to health IT. It’s common across most industries. Unless an organization is in that 2.5% of all companies that Geoffrey Moore classified as “innovators,” or maybe the 13.5% that are “early adopters,” most organizations are too risk-averse to try a new product or service from an unknown entity.

So what’s the solution? Stop being an unknown. That’s where a thought leadership campaign can be a difference-maker.

In my latest post for the Forbes Agency Council, I explain how thought leadership can take a small organization and, following the advice of Chinese general Sun Tzu, make it look larger than life. Here’s a quick excerpt:

“You can use this to your advantage by engaging in an organized, consistent thought leadership program that shares that knowledge and helps you get prospects and customers aligned with your way of thinking. Once they believe in what you’re saying, you can guide the conversation more effectively and negate your competitors’ bigger marketing budgets. When you do that through earned media, such as media interviews or bylined articles that are accepted for publication, rather than paying for advertising or content, your thought leadership will carry even more weight and can have a halo effect.”

The post then covers five keys to taking advantage of this strategy, including:

  1. Offer different types of content. This is especially important if your media universe is small. The more different types of content you can offer (articles, infographics, eBooks, etc.) the more tools you have to reach an audience.
  2. Know things that others don’t (or at least don’t share). No one wants to hear the same old ideas being hashed out. Most businesses are started, and products are introduced, because there is a belief that there has to be a better way to do something than what currently exists. Share those ideas with others.
  3. Be controversial. This is especially true these days, in the era of social media when it seems like everyone is up in arms over everything. Taking strong stands instead of playing it safe and bland generally moves you to the front of the line in the media’s eyes.
  4. Make the content understandable. People won’t buy what they don’t understand. Keep explanations in thought leadership pieces simple and you will have a much better chance of reaching a broader audience.
  5. Reduce, reuse, recycle. In a small organization it can be difficult to get enough time with the subject matter experts to constantly develop new content. But all content doesn’t have to be new. Look for ways to re-purpose content (or pieces of it) in various formats to get the best mileage out of every piece you create.

Those are the highlights. For a more in-depth explanation of these points (and a lot of other great ideas from other contributors) be sure to head over to the Forbes Agency Council blog. It will be time well spent.

Crisis Communications: The PR Emergency Department

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You wake up and reach for your phone. Despite the many times you’ve heard it’s not healthy to check your email before your feet even hit the floor in the morning you immediately check your email.

This time, at the top of your inbox, is a message from your biggest client. It came through just after 6 a.m. At the top of the message is the first indication that your day is going to be interesting that good ol’ red “Urgent” exclamation mark.

The subject line reads “CALL ME ASAP.” You accept the fact that starting the coffee machine will have to wait awhile.

If you have been in PR for much time at all, some version of the above scenario has happened to you. The crisis could be any number of things.

In the healthcare industry, it could be a data breach that compromised thousands of electronic health records; a lawsuit; a massive bill from insurance; a disgruntled former employee spreading rumors on social media; or an important piece of medical equipment malfunctioning.

For nearly all enterprise organizations, and a good number of small to midsized business, a good PR firm is the first place they turn in the middle of a crisis. If you have done your job well as an agency, and earned the trust of your client, you are their emergency room in these situations. So you better have your scrubs on and your scalpel ready at all times.

When it comes to crisis communications, nothing is more important than having a solid predetermined plan in place. Before any sort of fire drill ever hits and the alarm starts blaring, the agency and the client should have had several proactive discussions during which they identified scenarios that might damage the brand or cast the company in a negative light. From there, messaging needs to be developed for each of those situations.

Of course, no one can anticipate every possible crisis. But if the most likely ones have been targeted, you can take your base messaging and create draft responses that are ready should one of those scenarios occur.

It likely won’t be the exact situation you planned for, but it will be close enough that you will only need to make tweaks and edits rather than developing your message from scratch in an already stressful situation. Better to hash out these responses over coffee and donuts when everyone is in a good mood, rather than at six in the morning when you haven’t even had the chance to brush your teeth, let alone get some caffeine into your bloodstream.

Once you have the messaging, you have a huge chunk of your prep work done. But it needs to be part of a larger plan that also includes:

A team leader from both the company and the agency

These two will be the main points of contact to keep leadership in the loop and field incoming calls from media to coordinate responses and/or interviews.

A spokesperson

It depends on the severity and level of attention the crisis has caused, but this should almost always be a C-level decision-maker whose name and voice carries the appropriate weight. This is the person who will give interviews and to whose name the statement will be attributed.

Internal communications

It is incredibly important that someone is assigned to internal communication to keep employees posted on the steps being taken during a crisis. There might be information that isn’t appropriate for you to share company-wide, but you need to share at least some details.

If not, staff will begin talking among themselves, to their families, and maybe even posting on social media. They can’t be in the dark.

On top of that, reporters might take some shots in the dark and start randomly reaching out to anyone who works for the company. If your staff hasn’t been told the plan, including that they should forward any media on to the company’s comms team, the problem can spin out of control fast. And once that happens, it’s nearly impossible to course-correct.

It might not be fun to imagine worst-case scenarios. It might even raise your heart rate. But once you do it, and your teams has a nice, neat folder saved on a shared drive somewhere with all the documents and procedures necessary for an organized response to an emergency, you will rest much easier.

You might even be able to pour a cup of coffee before you spend the rest of the day firing off emails and fielding phone calls.