Catching Flack

Monday, I laid out the three skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy
• Writing
• Pitching

In Monday’s post, I talked about being a strategist. Yesterday, I talked about writing. Today, let’s talk about pitching.

At first glance, pitching might appear to be the most tactical element of PR and not one of the three essential skills. But in fact, it is the most important. It’s the “relations” part of “public relations.”

For after you set your strategy and develop your materials, you have to venture out into the world and connect with other people to spread your message. And more often than not, that involves making a pitch.

Again, I find myself appalled by the poor pitching skills I observe in our industry. It’s not for lack of trying — lord knows that PR pitches are hurtling around the world at blazing speed every day. It’s for lack of understanding the “relationship” part of pitching and PR.

Whenever you are pitching someone, whether it is to suggest that they do a story on your company or client or whether it is to get them to hire you or your agency, you must approach it from a relationship perspective. You have to ask yourself:

• What do I have to offer this person?
• What are their problems and what opportunities do they have, and how can I help them solve their problems and achieve their goals?
• When and how would be the best way to connect with this person?

Notice, neither of the above involves “getting a hit,” PR jargon for convincing a journalist to do a story on the subject you pitched them. That’s what’s in it for you if you do it right, but first you have to figure out what’s in it for the person you are pitching. If you don’t do that, 9 times of 10 your pitch will fail.

The key to figuring out the answers to the three bullet points above is getting out of your own head and your own problems and doing some research on your targets. Honestly, with the Internet this has never been easier, whether it’s a journalist or blogger you are pitching or a business exec. And remember to use your ears to listen to the other person — they will almost always tell you what they need if you give them a chance.

I’ll leave you with this sage advice:

“God gave you two ears and one mouth. So listen twice as much as you talk.”

Yesterday, I laid out the three skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy
• Writing
• Pitching

In yesterday’s post, I talked about being a strategist. Today, let’s talk about writing. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about pitching.

As I’ve said repeatedly on this blog, the paucity of good PR writers is baffling. It may be the single biggest reason we are a fringe profession (Yes, we are. We are about 1% of the size of the advertising industry, for comparison, and we have fewer discernible industry standards than licensed plumbers).

It would be impossible to lay out a quick plan for becoming a better writer. But here are my essential tips:

• Get a good editor. Everyone, including the best writers on the planet, run their work past editors. Good editors help you shape your work and your writing style, forcing you to dig deeper and provide your readers with more and better information.
• Develop your ears and your eye. Your ears hear words and ideas you can incorporate into your writing. Your eyes draw you to good writers you can learn from. Pay attention to these senses and work to develop them.
• Simplify. Use the fewest, shortest words possible. Believe me, no one is impressed with multi-syllabic words for their own sake. One of my favorite current writers is the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon. He uses lots of complicated words, and so I started to read his books with a dictionary by my side. Damned if each of those words wasn’t the exact right word at the right time to express the nuance and depth of his thought! That’s when you use big long words — when you have no other choice.
• Rewrite if you need to. Unless you are sure that your draft is the best you can do, give yourself permission to rewrite. All the best writers do it. It’s magic, really — rewriting helps you clarify your thoughts and exposes whatever weaknesses were hidden in your first draft.

Good writing is hard, and good writers, generally, aren’t born that way. They develop over time, with the help of good editors and by their own perseverance. If you want to be a better writer, and you should, commit yourself to it over the balance of your career.

There are three essential skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy
• Writing
• Pitching

In today’s post, let’s talk about how to be a strategist. Tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll cover the next two.

Being a strategist is the hardest part of PR, which is why the best strategists get the big bucks and the best jobs. Developing your strategic skills is the work of a lifetime, and should start when you are young, just getting into the business world.

The first thing you should do is undergo a personality assessment. Seriously. Something like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test or an equivalent. You might also avail yourself of a career assessment by a career counselor. These will tell you where your innate skills are and what your style is, so you can develop your strategic personality accordingly. Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO, but everyone has strategic skills if they know their strengths and weaknesses.

In PR, the next step is to understand the following:

• Bosses and others above you, such as clients
• The media and communications environment
• How to work with your peers and subordinates

Again, there’s a world of resources to help you with these tasks.

The last part of the recipe is the hardest: learning to think for yourself. Here’s where no one else can help you. You have to be confident in your judgements and be prepared to take the heat when you’re either unpopular or wrong.

You’ll know you’re succeeding when people turn to you and ask for strategic advice (like how to solve a big problem, not where to go for lunch). The better your advice, the farther up the food chain you will go.

Tomorrow: the keys to being a better writer.

For your weekend viewing pleasure, here’s a video of four giants and “founding fathers” of the modern PR industry — Harold Burson, Daniel Edelman, Al Golin, and David Finn — talking with PRWeek about the business.

We’re in a recession. If your business is going gangbusters, keep going! But if your business is softening or contracting, or if you’re afraid of that happening next year, you’ve got to think up some new ideas.

You know what they say: you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

My pal Doug Simon of D S Simon Productions, never one to sit back and wait, has announced an innovation that should at least spur you to think differently: “Financial Crisis PR Insurance.” Here’s how it works:

Clients pay a small insurance premium on top of the price for their Satellite Media Tour, corporate video, Internet Media Tour or other D S Simon service. On the project’s start date, the three-month low for the Dow Industrial Index is recorded. If at any point during the project the Dow falls 1,500 points below this recorded low, clients have the option to cancel their project, paying only the premium.

Says Simon:

“Marketers need to be more aggressive to avoid a major sales drop during the current economic turmoil,” said Douglas Simon, President & CEO of D S Simon Productions. “This insurance lets you plan marketing initiatives with the security of knowing that if the economic crisis widens, you can cancel the initiative without paying for it.”

There are thousands of press releases issued every day, and most of them get almost no coverage and generate almost no awareness. Yet the press release is still the number one tactic in the PR arsenal.

Most practitioners, it would seem, have at least realized that press releases are now more than just one-way announcements to the media, and are really just Internet content. Still, they do little with their releases except send them out to the media and hope for pickup — the old “spray and pray” tactic.

What if there was a way to guarantee unfiltered pickup of your release by major media like Newsweek.com or latimes.com? Where a link to your release appeared right on the home page of one of these major media outlets, each of which get tens of thousands of unique visitors per day.

That’s the promise of Newsforce Ad Network, a new service that aims to do just that.

Here’s the deal: they buy display ads on these major media sites, which they fill with your press release. They even help you optimize your headline and content so that it will generate the most interest among visitors to the 283 media sites currently in their network.

Dana Todd, CMO of Newsforce, says the company is making progress explaining the concept to digital marketers, but that PR people have been slow to see the value of this distribution method. They’re a bit scared off by the price ($995 and up) and they’re mostly stuck in the old PR model of seeking “earned media.”

Memo to my PR colleagues: take a look at the demo of Newsforce here. Tell me if you can really tell the difference between the Newsforce links and an “earned media” story. It’s not as great as you think and it’s getting less important every day.

Twitter, the microblogging site, is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the online and PR worlds.

Last week, PR 2.0 guru Brian Solis announced the creation of @micropr, a Twitter identity media and others can use to ask for assistance with stories and other information.

Previously, Solis posted a wide-ranging guide to using Twitter for communications.

If you’re not on board the Twitter express, this would be a good time to get started. Take a tip from someone who has been through many an economic cycle: there’s no time like the present to make yourself more valuable by understanding the latest technologies and tools. Those are the people it’s hardest to cut when the cutting begins.

As it happens, my colleagues and I at Bulldog Reporter have jumped on this train as well, and we’ll be presenting the first-ever webinar panel of Twittering journalists in a conference call on Thursday, Dec. 11.

Journalists Speak Out on Twitter for PR: How the Media Uses Social Networks

Speakers:

Brian Stelter, Reporter, The New York Times

Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Consumer Technology Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Author, “Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company”

Ina Fried, Senior Writer, CNET News

Chris O’Brien, Business Columnist, San Jose Mercury News

Dan Patterson, Digital Audio Manager, ABC News

More Twitter resources:

Twitter Wiki — newbies corner

Ogilvy PR’s blog — Lots of good and easy-to-understand Twitter posts

So GM and Chrysler say they “get it” and that their CEOs won’t be flying in corporate jets when they return to DC this week for Round Two of begging/arm-twisting/cajoling/blackmailing Congress into forking over billions of dollars to their companies. (Ford hasn’t said yet what its CEO will do to get to Washington)

“We’ve gotten the message,” said GM spokesperson Tom Wilkinson.

Really? News reports out of Detroit suggest that so far, all they have “gotten” is that it would be beyond dumb to show up in Washington aboard three separate corporate jets, which cost about $20,000 each for a round-trip from the Motor City.

I’m not sure they’ve “gotten” the message that Congress and especially the public wants to see and hear a lot more from the Big Three than “give us the money or we’ll ef-up the country by going bankrupt.”

So I’m going to make believe for a moment that I’m sitting in a conference room at GM or Chrysler being asked to give my best PR advice on how to get the public on our side going into these hearings:

• Drive from Detroit to DC in Ford/GM/Chrysler cars or trucks!! This is the biggest no-brainer of all time.
• Get dealers, suppliers, union men and women, and multi-generation car owners to join your caravan.
• Drive through as many Congressional districts as you can on the way and stop once or twice in each to make note of the auto industry’s impact on that area.
• Send out PR info to Big Three dealers and other auto-related businesses across the country in every other Congressional district giving them talking points and simple PR guidance on how to get local coverage of the impact that the Big Three have in their town.
• Suspend all new car advertising — all of it! — for the 48 hours prior to the hearing, and replace it with heart-rending stories of Big Three employees, suppliers and car owners who would be hurt if the companies were to go under.
• When you get to Washington, have an awesome press conference on the steps of the Capitol with all your constituencies present, and make your case for the bailout, using as many personal stories as possible.

Oh, and one more thing: have an actual plausible plan that everyone can grasp about how you will use the money to stave off bankruptcy and get your companies back on the right track.

Here’s a quick report on the poll we did a couple of weeks ago on possible PR budget cutbacks in 2009.

We didn’t get a robust response, but the trend was unmistakable:

• 73% of agency respondents said they had heard about client-side PR budget cutbacks
• 53% of client-side respondents said they were cutting their budget going into 2009; 32% said no, they weren’t, and 16% said they hadn’t decided yet.

As a contractor myself, I’m cheered by the fact that about 1/3 of internal budgets aren’t dropping going into 2009. That’s at least a glimmer of hope. And I think as an industry indicator, it could mean that industrywide budget cutbacks may not be as severe as some are predicting.

I was thinking about post-Thanksgiving leftovers and realized I had some leftovers in my files to share with the Catching Flack readership. To wit:

• PR Fuel: Free tips and advice from eReleases.com
• Free PR tips and articles from eZine Articles
• PRArticle Library: A trove of articles on a variety of PR topics
• Library of PR Articles from AllBusiness.com
• Steven R. Van Hook’s All About Public Relations

Enjoy!