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Substance Over Spin

Despite all of the metrics and data at our fingertips these days, public relations is still more art than science when it comes to attaining the ultimate goal: media coverage.

Sure, reports that show impact after the fact are indispensable and all the information at our fingertips has made the task of gathering this analysis much more comprehensive. The number of unique visitors per month (UVM) to news sites, conversion rates, click-throughs, etc. are all important. But what it is measuring and analyzing is the media placement the PR team has earned.

When it comes to media outreach, it is all about the intangible ability of the PR specialist to communicate a story, pull someone in, and generate enough interest that the journalist wants to learn more. There is no algorithm or artificial intelligence that has cracked that code.

In the media relations world, you need to master subtlety, conciseness, creativity, patience, and common sense. Who are the reporters you are contacting? What is their preferred method of being contacted? What’s their beat? What have they written about recently?

Yes, we have tools that make this research much easier than it used to be. Honestly, I can’t imagine doing this job 40 years ago. The legwork had to have been exhausting. But, when it comes down to it, you are the one making the connection and, hopefully, securing the interview and/or placement.

As any PR vet will tell you, there is one thing serious reporters hate: spin. It’s an easy trap to fall into. The cliché among reporters is that anyone contacting them on behalf of a company, be it for a thought leadership article or an interview, is trying to use them as a mouthpiece for the company, product or executive they represent.

While your job is certainly to raise awareness for your client, you cannot be a part of their sales team. You are telling their story and demonstrating what makes them relevant and interesting. Members of the media will automatically roll their eyes at hyperbole, spin and overt self-promotion.

During my years in PR, I have seen examples of this plenty of times. You work with a client who insists on promoting a product launch to a reporter at a national publication, who inevitably responds (if they respond at all) with one word: “pass.”

The same goes for thought leadership. If you offer an interview by saying, “Ms. XYZ can talk to you about how their widget is revolutionizing the world of widgetry,” any reporter worth their salt will hit delete immediately.

If you say, “The world of widgetry has faced a multitude of issues during the past year due to end users dealing with (for example) data breaches. Ms. XYZ can offer concrete steps these companies can take to become more secure,” now they’re listening. If you can recruit one or two of your client’s customers to attest to the effectiveness of this approach, it drastically increases your chance of garnering interest from the media. 

When it comes to byline articles and op-eds, the same rules apply. If Ms. XYZ writes a piece littered with references to how great her company and its solutions are, it’s not going to fly with most publications from trades to large national publications. I have seen self-promotional op-eds turned down many times. I have also seen them rewritten with the self-promotion removed, and that same publication reversing course and running the article.  

This is all a balancing act. You have to meet the journalist’s standards and the client’s expectations at the same time. For both, it comes down to clear and honest communication.

You need to be armed with the reasons a reporter should be interested in your pitch, and you need to make sure your client understands that issue-driven not product-driven coverage is what will give them credibility in the industry.

Maybe someday companies will be able to enter information into an AI platform that writes the perfect pitch. Human-to-human media relations will become a profession of the past.

But let’s not dwell on that. I don’t want to give Zuckerberg any ideas and I want to keep my job.

The bottom line is we are storytellers, not spinmeisters. It takes nuance and authenticity. If you can pitch substance over spin, the results will speak for themselves.

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10 Things Your Publicist Would Do if S/he Ran Your Company

All of the below suggestions are offered by experienced publicists in the B2B arena, including myself and several colleagues at Amendola Communications. While we fully get that a public relations program is just one of many important contributions to creating a successful company along with a whip smart product development team, a terrific product, turbo-charged salespeople, and savvy marketing, to name a few each one of our recommendations below helps fuel these crucial moving parts even more. So here is what we’d prioritize if we had a few months in the driver’s seat

Item #1: Create a customer success library and keep it continuously restocked. Nothing will give you more credibility with prospects, investors, your own employees, and of course, the media, than the testimonials of thrilled customers. So as an established company with a solid customer roster of your own, why don’t you have more of these stories to broadcast to the world?

Most likely, it’s one of two primary reasons. Either your employees are too nervous to ask customers to participate in a case study, or there’s no real process in place to develop these strategic assets. And it does take a process. The next few items delve a little deeper into both of these challenges.

Item #2: Incentivize your employees to get customer success stories. Here’s the deal. The main reason employees aren’t going after customer success stories is out of fear that the customer will decline to participate. The product’s not fully in use yet they’ve run into some issues you get the idea. There is always a seemingly legitimate reason for putting off the request.

But what if getting customer success stories was part of the job description? And what if the pressure to obtain them was considerably lightened with the right tools and handsome bonuses?

One of our own most successful clients has made obtaining customer success stories part of the company’s official bonus structure. At last count, this client had more than 170 customer success stories! Money is a great motivator, people. We know this.

But money alone isn’t enough to create outstanding, detailed customer success stories

Item #3: Formalize and launch a customer adoption program. All good success stories have tangible results to report. And a customer adoption program is a terrific opportunity to establish with your customer what the metrics for success will be. From there, you can organize your efforts around seeing that the customer fully and productively adopts the appropriate components of your product to reach these targets. Typically these efforts include regular communication, benchmark reporting, and always available support. In person, on the phone, via email a combination of all three will be part of most top tier customer adoption programs.

And within a relatively short period of time, you should be able to have some successful results to report in a customer story. Oh, and couple of other significant benefits like increased customer satisfaction and retention.

Item #4: Create a “Customer Reference program.” My colleague Stacy State, a senior account director at Amendola, further advises making best use of customer testimonials by creating a spreadsheet or other document that houses:

  • Clients who can provide quotes (organized based on product/location/benefit/challenge solved)
  • Clients willing to be references (organized based on location, product/s, account manager, etc.)
  • Clients who are willing to speak at trade shows and who will have the necessary presenting skills to do so
  • Clients who allow onsite interviews of how your solution works in their setting

Item #5: Have talented storytellers on hand. Whether they reside in your in-house PR and marketing teams or with your agency partner, it’s essential that you are telling your product, company or customer story in human, attention-seizing terms. Identify and utilize those people who will be fearless at doing just that a surprisingly rare resource, by the way. Many people are intimidated by writing for corporate/business needs, and inevitably revert to “safe” corporate-speak and industry jargon.

But please listen to someone who has spent her entire career crafting stories for newspapers, companies, non-profits and others. Nothing will snuff the life out of a good story faster than peppering it with phrases like “ensure” and “going forward” and “operational efficiency.” So don’t do it! Invest in great writing. It will pay off for you, I promise.

Item #6: Develop a stable of charismatic thought leaders. There are some solid benefits to doing so. According to another colleague, Amendola senior account director Michelle Noteboom, “Once executives have established themselves as credible industry experts, media outlets will seek their opinions and be more receptive to covering company news.”

To make sure no single thought leader is stretched too thin, you’ll want to cultivate multiple spokespeople within your organization. But please don’t base this on their expertise alone. An effective thought leader is personable, warm, as good of a listener as he or she is a speaker, is eager to share knowledge, willing to participate in media training, and of course, is quickly responsive.

You can start cultivating potential thought leaders early on. My colleague and senior account director Philip Anast recommends: “Include external communications in an executive’s performance requirements, i.e. actually making it part of one’s job requirements to make oneself available for media interviews and garner media coverage.”

Item #7: Stop putting social media on the backburner. This recommendation comes courtesy of Amendola social media guru, Margaret Kelly. “In this day and age, don’t underestimate the impact of reaching clients in 280 characters with a clever phrase or video. The trick is to know your audience and social platforms. Messages on LinkedIn, where you’re likely to already be connected to C-suite members of other companies, may have more impact than messages on other platforms. If you’re trying to put sales in your pipeline, for example, LinkedIn is the best platform to engage your decision-makers,” Margaret observes.

No matter your platform, a social media program must be consistent to be successful. You can’t just flirt with social media it’s either all the way or not at all. But it takes time to see results. Viral sensations are usually the umpteenth attempt not the first, second, or even 50th.

Item #8: Break down the barriers between executives and the rest of us. Personally, I see a flatter hierarchy as the future of corporate business, but there will always be identified leaders within an organization. They need not be walled off as if their work is top secret. Account director and Amendola colleague Brandon Glenn has a great suggestion here.

“Conduct quarterly executive Q&As with employees. My old company used to do this every time quarterly earnings were released because we were public, but this could apply to any company. The idea is the executives get up in front of the company, deliver some prepared remarks about how things are going with the company financially, key business highlights, what was good about the last quarter, what they’re looking forward to in the next quarter, and so on. After, it’s opened up for employee questions, which can be asked live verbally or pre-submitted in written form,” Brandon explains.

Depending on the size of your company, consider also making everyone’s weekly work schedule transparent. Here at the agency we share our weekly projects on a common online document. It gives us all a sense of what our coworkers are working on, and is just a more helpful way to organize and be accountable for how we spend our time.

Item #9: Break down the barriers between sales and PR. Even quarterly meetings between sales and PR can make a big difference in the substance and quality of your PR messaging. My colleague Philip Anast notes, “Salespeople especially can give invaluable information to PR. They’re on the front lines of prospect interaction, so can bring a lot of the industry challenges to the fore, providing good fodder for thought leadership.”

Item #10: Break down the barriers between YOU and PR. Of course, there’s no need to micromanage PR if you have effective people overseeing it. But make time for media training and schedule monthly calls to touch base with your PR team. I’m actually surprised by how many CEOs are removed from their company’s public relations. While this demonstrates two important positives–trust in the people who oversee PR and a willingness to allow others in the organization to develop into thought leaders–a CEO who isn’t engaged in PR much at all can find herself or himself caught flatfooted at the most inopportune times when a good response is essential.

With that, my tenure running your company is over. Which is fine with me, because with these recommendations now in place, I can’t wait to get back to publicizing it!