Tag Archive for 'Public Relations'

How To Really Irritate a Journo in The First 5 Seconds

Published
by
Robynn
on April 4, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 7 Comments

It’s simple. If you start a phone call with “Hi, how are you?” you are looking for trouble.

Perhaps you’ve heard that public relations people are sometimes referred to as PR sales people? This is not because the poor journalists aren’t savvy enough to know the difference, it’s because people in our own PR industry are creating this perception - often unwittingly. In fact, some are so unconscious to the effect that their sloppy PR habits have, that they get upset and exclaim “how rude!” when an exasperated journalist doesn’t want to hear another irrelevant PR pitch.

I think I need a quick disclaimer here: I am not saying that journalists should be excused for being rude, there is no excuse for that. But after hearing some of their stories, I can understand why blood pressure levels rise as often as they do. 

Ok, so getting back to the PR/sales person comparison. Here’s what you can do to avoid a negative impression when making your call:

- Introduce yourself upfront.
Only untrained telemarketers selling dodgy products start a conversation with a bubbly “hi, how are you?” in an attempt to “build rapport”. The only thing this does is build scepticism. First say who you are and what company you’re calling from. No-one wants to make small talk when they don’t know who they’re dealing with; journalists generally don’t want to make small talk at all.

- You don’t need to be everyone’s best friend.
Get to the point and then be friendly, in that order. Once you’ve built a good relationship with a journalist, then you can chat away about your weekend plans and the weather. But up until that point, simply give the journalists what they need in a professional manner.

Please, for your own sake and for the sanity of the journalists you’re dealing with, understand why “hi, how are you?” just doesn’t work. Then pass on the tip to all of your colleagues too (despite its obviousness), because somewhere out there some PR people are unknowingly sabotaging all your hard media relations work.

What’s obvious to one is obviously not obvious to everyone.

Popularity: 7% [?]


PR Awards - Creating More Division?

Published
by
Robynn
on March 27, 2008
in Public Relations
. 4 Comments

PRISA’s PRISM AwardsThe 11th PRISA PRISM Awards took place last night in Midrand, with the Gautrain Project walking away with the top awards. According to the comments appearing on Bizcommunity, several people aren’t happy about this and are looking for comments from PRISA.

But before I get into that, I’d firstly like to say well done to everyone who won awards. Then, secondly, I’d like to ask why I seem to be the only one (please let me be wrong) congratulating people/companies on their efforts. Yes, I hear the argument that the competition is only open to PRISA members (apparently that’s a misperception though - see comments below) and it’s always the usual suspects that take part. I also know that many award-deserving companies don’t feel the need to register with PRISA and will therefore never be acknowledged in these awards. So yes, the pool from which the winning PR campaigns are chosen is possibly not very deep.

But nevertheless, these PR companies took the initiative and went to the effort of submitting their case studies to get acknowledgement for their work. There’s nothing wrong with winning an award for that, irrespective of how many companies actually took part. A Marketingweb article earlier this week asked people to list top SA PR practitioners or companies, ahead of the PRISA awards ceremony. It was sad to see that so few took the opportunity to congratulate their peers and colleagues. So once again, congratulations to all the winning (and award-deserving) companies!

Coming back to the Gautrain issue, I don’t know how PRISA’s judging process works and until we know that, no-one can really objectively criticise their decision. Ideally, the key journalists’ who cover the Gautrain project should have been asked for their opinions on the effectiveness of the Gautrain’s PR team. It is a “Media Relations” award, isn’t it?

Just to let you know, I am not a PRISA member. I do, however, feel that we need a strong, healthy industry body and I’ve been keen to chat to some of the PRISA board members about this - if only they would’ve returned my calls.

I’ve just visited the PRISA website to see if I could find any media releases about the awards, but alas their newsroom link doesn’t work in Firefox and their home page still says that “judging is taking place now”.

Popularity: 8% [?]


Wine, Facebook, SEO, Farming and Darts…

Published
by
Robynn
on March 27, 2008
in WebPR
. 11 Comments

Add to that a food demonstration and this made for one of the most interesting and diverse PR-Net meetings I’ve attended in a while. It was held on Tuesday night at the QuirkStation (the offices of Quirk eMarketing) in Cape Town. With the exception of the food and wine, you’re wondering how the strange combination of elements in the title relates to public relations, right?

Well, in the case of the irrigation practices of the Perdeberg farming cooperative, it didn’t. But we politely listened to Kobus from Perdeberg Wines in exchange for the boxes of wine he shared with us during the evening. Thanks Perdeberg! Their PR company, Wired Communications, are doing some interesting work online. They’ve created the Clink to Win Facebook application to create awareness for the little wine brand - “it’s the one with the Zebra” we were told. Well done to them for trying something new.

After hearing about the details and successes of this online PR campaign, Rob Stokes, head of Quirk, introduced his newly launched venture to the PR-Net group. Despite recovering from flu, Rob gave a jam-packed presentation where he explained the importance of online reputation management and how BrandsEye helps companies track and rate their online reputation. I think that Rob and his team of QuirkStars must be congratulated for the excellent and pioneering work they’ve done on BrandsEye. It looks like a world-class product, which will transform the way PR, marketing and communications companies/departments manage their online reputation.

Of course, I’m particularly chuffed that my partner, Scott, was lucky enough to hit the right spot on the dart board to win a one-month trial of BrandsEye! :)

I’ll report back on my experience so you can see how it works for Encyclomedia.

Popularity: 38% [?]


The Back and Forth Journey of a Newspaper Story

Published
by
Robynn
on March 17, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 1 Comment

You write a great media release and the newspaper journalist you’re pitching the story to decides to use it. You celebrate and feel very chuffed with yourself, excitedly tell your colleagues and possibly even call up your client. The next morning you rush out to the shop and get your copy of the newspaper and enthusiastically page through to find your article. You reach the end and realise that you must’ve missed it in your haste, so you page through again…and again…

Suddenly the shattering realisation hits that your wonderful article simply wasn’t printed.

For those of you nodding and remembering the excitement and disappointment of your early PR days, you know that there are various factors that affect the longevity of your media release - irrespective of whether the journalist liked it or not. But for the benefit of those who still climb the emotional roller-coaster with every daily newspaper, here are just a few things to keep in mind.

  • The news editor controls what stories the journalists work on. It’s fine to pitch your idea to a journalist directly (news editors are in any case pretty busy people), but just understand that it needs to get the nod from the news editor too before the journalist invests any more time in the article.
  • In the case of Die Burger’s newsroom, your story needs to survive six daily meetings where the placement of each and every article gets discussed.
  • Once the article leaves the journalist’s desktop, it will pass through about nine other people before finally going to print. If any one of these people find fault with something in your article, it will quickly get edited or simply get cut altogether.
  • Important breaking news or hard news will always replace the softer news stories. If you’ve pitched your newly-formulated-fool-proof-muffin-mix minutes before the onset of a national crisis, hard luck. Of course, if you’ve pitched your idea after the journalists start scrambling to cover the big news, then perhaps you should consider a more appropriate career.

Don’t ask me why the odd press release (in its exact original form) finds its way through to the printed paper from time to time. Count yourself lucky when this happens, very, very lucky.

Popularity: 6% [?]


The Do’s and Don’ts of PR Follow-Up Calls

Published
by
Robynn
on March 13, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 3 Comments

Follow-up calls can either build relationships or build frustration. The majority of journalists surveyed by Encyclomedia on this topic have experienced the latter, far too often than they’d like. So let’s take a quick look at some of the mistakes that PR practitioners make when following up on the media releases they’ve sent.

Don’t expect journalists to have a memory like an elephant
An editor shared her frustration with me yesterday. She had just received a call from a PR person who was following up on a press release sent in August last year. No jokes. “I wish I had the kind of memory that could recall detail from that far back,” the editor said. “I get a lot of phone calls asking me if I used a press release, and often it is months after the release was sent.”

Don’t expect journalists to be clairvoyant
A phone call that starts with “Hi, did you get my email?” can only ever receive a frustrated response. Here’s an example of a conversation I received from another journalist recently:

PRO: Hi, I’m phoning to see if you got my email I sent on Friday?
Journalist: Well, let’s start with who you are and what was the email about…

Journalists receive hundreds of emails every day. De Waal Steyn told me earlier this week that he receives between 500 and 800 emails a day, across eight different mailboxes. He’s not alone in this.

So if you need to follow up on a specific email, start by stating the day and time it was sent, the subject line and the overall topic of the media release. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to enter into a productive conversation with the journalist.

Don’t ask questions when you can find the answer yourself
If you sent a media release to an online journalist, there is absolutely no need for you to call and ask if the journalist ever used the release. Simply search their website using your keywords and you’ll have your answer in seconds.

Don’t hound a journalist
Some PR companies have apparently developed the habit of calling to ask if they can send a media release, calling to ask if the journalist received it, calling to say that they are sending more pics, calling to ask if the journalist will use it, and so on.

A quick, clear and direct call to follow-up on an email is fine, but the “are you going to use it?” type of call every few days is not helping you to build a relationship, instead, you’ve become a nag. If your media release was well researched, targeted and relevant for the target audience, the journalist will contact you for more details.

Popularity: 10% [?]


Good PR Case Study - Vuka in Die Burger

Published
by
Robynn
on March 12, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 0 Comments

A feature article appeared yesterday in the Buite supplement of Die Burger, where a group of people (including Die Burger journalists) took a trip into Die Hel in the Gamkaskloof on their bright and eager Vuka Scutas. To Hell and back on a scooter!

It was a great PR idea - something fun, a little different and a great fit for Buite. But more importantly, according to De Waal Steyn, multimedia editor of Die Burger, Vuka’s PR people made the most of the good idea and maximised their coverage across the print and online platforms.

This is, in fact, exactly what an online or multimedia editor needs to do. He needs to link the content in the print newspaper to the online content and vice versa, without duplicating content and needing to continually add more value. Not an easy task.

De Waal explained that when it comes to hard news, the breaking news stories appear on the website as it happens, covering the 5 W’s and H. They then refer the online readers to tomorrow’s newspaper to read more about the story. The newspaper then refers readers back to the website to find more photos, videos and blog comments.

In order to leverage a soft news story or feature, the newspaper needs to direct their readers to the website to find further insights into the story, along with a photo gallery, video content and links for further information.

What Vuka did right is that they didn’t stop at simply discussing the idea with the editor of the Buite supplement, they made contact with De Waal too. They found out what type of multimedia content and other stories around the theme he would need to make it work. Which he did. You can read the story here.

This isn’t a groundbreaking or particularly remarkable case study, but rather one that simply illustrates that if you take the time to find out what a journalist needs and then work to give him what he needs, you will be building far better relationships and ultimately gain more coverage.

Popularity: 8% [?]


You want to send a fax?

Published
by
Robynn
on March 11, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 1 Comment

I met with De Waal Steyn, the multimedia editor of Die Burger, earlier today and I was completely shocked when he told me that he still receives media releases via fax. What? I almost fell over my chair - well, actually I was standing at the time, going through a tour of the beautiful, but busy Media24 offices (plasma screens everywhere you look). But I was seriously surprised that someone would consider a fax (a useless piece of uneditable text) useful to a journalist, let alone a multimedia editor.

When I asked De Waal if he had any examples of these endangered items (partly because of my disbelief and partly to help these poor PR people realise what century the rest of the world has moved into),  he promptly replied that he deletes the faxes the moment they arrive. Naturally, they are “fax to email” and of course, they serve no purpose so they do not even warrant a further look.

For those of you savvy enough to find this blog, you certainly don’t fall into the group that still faxes their media releases. But I thought that this would bring you some comic relief, because although we can all make mistakes in the way we get our messages across, it could always get worse.

Popularity: 6% [?]


Email Tip - Keep it Professional

Published
by
Robynn
on March 4, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 0 Comments

There is nothing wrong with being friendly in your emails, friendly people are far more approachable and memorable. However, beware of pretending that the journalist you are emailing is suddenly your best mate.

A good example of a bad attempt to build rapport
Here is an example of an over-familiar PR pitch that an editor forwarded to me yesterday:

Greetings [editor’s name], I hope you had a great weekend - [partner’s name] and I certainly did! We had no commitments and just lazed away - a one in a million break.

The following [client] release is for your consideration, some pics are attached,

Regards, [name]

This sounds like a brief and friendly email, something that you would expect to receive from a friend. The only problem is that the editor does not know this PR practitioner and the ice-breaker introduction - the personalised little note about the PR person’s weekend - comes across as insincere. To make it worse, the editor’s colleague received the same email, with the same “personalised” note.

I’m sure that the intention of this PR person was to genuinely build rapport, but unfortunately it was perceived very differently. Here’s what the editor felt about it:

“Why don’t PRs just cut the nonsense and get down to business? Do they really think we are stupid enough to feel special with a note like this.”

Building relationships
If your aim is to build a relationship with a journalist (which it should be), don’t send her the same message that you send to every other journalist on your list. You build a relationship with one person at a time.

The best way to build a relationship though, is to do your research and send the journalist something that is truly useful and relevant to him or her. If you continue to do that, you will build a relationship on trust, which is far stronger than a relationship based on chatting about what you did over the weekend.

Popularity: 7% [?]


Sunday = smart-day for media relations

Published
by
Robynn
on February 24, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 2 Comments

Why am I sitting in front of my computer writing this post on a Sunday afternoon, with such gorgeous weather in Cape Town? Well, it’s just to let you know that I am not the only one sitting at my desk, missing out on an extra degree of sunburn.

Journalists working for daily newspapers are hard at work right now compiling tomorrow’s newspaper. What, did you think they put the whole paper together on Friday afternoon before they left for the weekend? No, Friday’s news is old news. Their week starts today and ends on Thursday. Now some of you already know this and your eyes are glazing over, so let me get straight to the point. When a public relations practitioner or publicist gets into the office on a Monday morning, they only have four days within which to pitch their media releases to these newspaper journalists and editors – the same four days that every other PR person is trying to get through.

Be smart, call them on a Sunday. Daily newspaper journalists have been telling us here at Encyclomedia that their phones are dead quiet on a Sunday, which I’m sure comes as a welcome relief to many of them. However, they still need good content to fill the newspaper so that they can make an impact on their readers by Monday morning.

So if you have a good idea that you’ve researched, a good story that will interest the readers, then take a few minutes next Sunday and make the call. Make yourself stand out and build a better relationship with a journalist. Just think how much more effective you’ll be.

Ok, so now that I’ve said my bit, I’m off to enjoy some more sunshine.

Popularity: 4% [?]