Author Archives: amy mengel

About amy mengel

I head up inbound marketing efforts for readMedia, a company in Albany, NY that provides PR software for governments, nonprofits, small businesses and schools.

Michael Sebastian reveals how ‘PR Daily’ gets to your inbox

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PR Daily

If you work in PR, you’re likely among the 50,000+ subscribe to Ragan.com’s PR Daily e-mail newsletter (and if you aren’t, you should be). Editor Michael Sebastian and his team put together the best links to PR-related articles and blog posts from around the web each day — with plenty of fun and snarky commentary added, free of charge. I’ve often wondered how he does it, and Michael agreed to give me the inside scoop on how PR Daily happens:

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in PR.

Michael Sebastian

I worked in journalism—newspapers, magazines, book research—and took a job with Ragan in January 2007 to be part of its maiden Web editorial staff. So, I started covering the corporate communications industry—PR, marketing, internal comms, speechwriting, and the emerging world of social media. (I wrote a weekly column for Ragan about the corporate blogosphere called Blog Dogger—not my choice for the name. I wanted to call it Bloggy Style, but the powers-that-be nixed it.)

I digress.

At nearly the same time, we launched MyRagan.com, which at the time was pretty groundbreaking. It was the first social network for the industry. I was—and continue to be—the managing editor of the site.

In 2008, I started writing Ragan’s PR Junkie blog and the success of that spawned PR Daily, which we began developing in December 2008. It launched in March 2009. The audience is a mix of PR professionals—corporate, agency (big and small), and independent or freelance pros—marketing pros, internal communicators, members of the media professionals, and social media enthusiasts. It’s grown, steadily. We also saw a spike in traffic when we incorporated the share buttons below each item.

How do you go about curating articles for inclusion in PR Daily?

I wouldn’t say it’s a process, more like controlled chaos!

Currently, the site is updated twice daily—at midnight Central Time (when the page turns over from the previous day) and around 9 or 10 a.m. CT. The stuff that goes live at midnight is the previous day’s late breaking news and the evergreen how-to items. The morning update is meant to reflect what’s in the morning papers.

Of course, this news is directly or indirectly related to the PR industry. So, first thing I do each morning is check my e-mail, and I go right for the dozen or so e-mail newsletters I receive. These e-newsletters cover PR and advertising, general news, and gossip. Then I see what the PR Daily contributors have sent. That’s where I start. From there I check The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, then I head over to Twitter to see what’s going on.

The e-mail alerts, the write-ups and heads-ups (is that the plural of “heads-up”? Sounds weird.) from the PR Daily contributors, and what’s in the NYT, WSJ, and on Twitter give me a pretty good feeling for what’s going on. After that I’ll visit some blogs to see their take on things and check if there’s under-the-radar stuff I’ve missed.

As a side note, people often ask if I subscribe to RSS feeds. I do, but I hardly use them. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to remember my RSS passwords. Do they even take passwords? See, that’s how removed I am from RSS. Twitter is my new RSS reader.

What do you look for when determining whether or not an article/post should be included in PR Daily?

The items must have some connection to PR. Of course, one could argue that almost everything has to do with PR—and it’s a valid argument—but if you subscribe to that too closely—as an editor, at least—then next thing you know you’re just scraping the top headlines from the Times and giving it a little topspin. PR Daily readers don’t want that.

In addition to being PR-related, stories should be useful (and by that I’m mainly referring to tip sheets and how-tos), interesting (survey results fit this bill), sexy (company X gets into a PR mess—that kind of thing), or just bizarre—a plum, as we call them—such as, “11 notes written to thieves.” True, that has nothing to do with PR, but damn that one was funny.

You’ve been adding team members recently. What are their roles and how do you manage this growing team?

They [the team] are all remote, so they send me stuff throughout the day, though usually the stuff comes in late at night or early in the morning. If it’s timely, I make sure it runs that day; if they send an evergreen item—you know, 10 tips for Facebook, or something—then I might hold it if things are getting tight that morning.

I’ll also say that when contributors join the PR Daily roster they often grow into more than just writers for the website. For instance, Jackson Wightman—the first PR Daily contributor, and a very funny French Canadian (don’t hold it against him)—just took part in a webinar for PR Daily and he’ll be doing more in the future.

Susan Young, a veteran reporter and PR pro in Dallas, is developing a super-top-secret project for Ragan. Matthew Royse, a man bursting with knowledge and enthusiasm about PR and social media (seriously, this guy loves talking about social media), has worked with Ragan on other projects, too. Recently, we just added Claire Celsi, a PR pro in Des Moines, Iowa, to the roster. She’s a great writer—and prolific, knowledgeable, talented.

Clearly, I’m a fan of the contributors.

The fulltime editorial staff at Ragan is wonderful, too. Roula Amire, the managing editor of Ragan.com, is my rock; Rob Reinalda, the executive editor at Ragan, is my guru; Jessica Levco, Ragan’s healthcare editor, is my comic relief.

All great people to work with.

There are several PR-related daily newsletters (PRSA, SmartBrief on Social Media, etc.). How do you differentiate PR Daily and make it valuable to your audience?

My boss, Mark Ragan, gave me carte blanche to create PR Daily. He trusted my vision and my voice for the project, and he’s supported me in that ever since.

I look at PR Daily as the bastard child of Gawker and Open Forum. News, advice, oddities, trends, humor, and most of all, VOICE. Beside the content, PR Daily has voice.

Reading industry publications—online or off—is important, but it can also feel tedious, like it’s part of your job, like you’d much rather be reading that US Weekly, Elle, or Esquire, but you have to read this industry pub first.

I know PR Daily will never compete with a mainstream pub or gossip blog in terms of peoples’ attentions, but I also want them to look forward to PR—to learn something useful and interesting, laugh, and share it with their friends or network. I also hope it attracts people to an industry publication who may have never read one in the past.

And really, what I’m doing is an extension of the Ragan brand; it’s been approaching industry publications in this manner since the company launched in 1969.

The future is all about growth! We’re expanding to Europe; we’re going to continue to grow staff; we’re going to increase the frequency of the updates on the site; and we’re developing Smartphone and iPad apps.

What big changes do you see on the horizon for PR practitioners in 2010? What is the biggest challenge they will face?

Content. Creation.

This is something my boss, Mark Ragan, was talking about years ago and you’re really seeing it happen now, particularly at larger agencies. The gaping hole left by newsroom cuts–and the new ethos of online journalism (key words, gossip, et cetera)–has given companies a chance to produce news and content.

If the reporters covering an industry are getting laid off–or getting shuffled to other parts of the newsroom–then companies should create their own content. And I don’t mean in press release form. I mean in the same way you’d see an article appear on The Huffington Post, with art, video maybe, and, most of all, voice—and not the stuffy corporate kind. If the content is good, people will visit, say, General Electric’s sponsored news page to read news and opinion. It creates another point of contact with consumers.

And don’t get me wrong, I know critics might toss around the word Orwellian. That’s a valid concern. Last thing we want is for companies to report on news without an independent media validating that stuff. I suppose I see it more in the way professional sports teams kick out content. Head over to any professional team’s website and you’ll find a professional writer/reporter–usually a very talented one–writing articles and curating content about the team.

Anyway, someone’s going to need fill that gap for companies and brands. Why not PR?

Social media in three hours: Government communications

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I was in Washington, DC, earlier this week to present a workshop at ALI’s “Social Media for Government” conference. A three-hour workshop. While I initially worried about how I was going to fill that much time, it actually went by pretty quickly. I think the 25 students survived, and maybe even learned something.

Since so many conferences feature speakers just using slides and talking at the audience, I wanted to be sure that I got the class involved. It’s easy to talk about social media, but another thing entirely to do it. The first part of the workshop involved splitting the class into groups. I asked each group to find things they had in common and write a collective “Twitter bio” in 160 characters or less that described the group, and also give three hashtags about their group.

The teams stayed together throughout the workshop. I shared some information about how the media landscape is changing and how traditional media and social media are still important. One of the most important strategies for communicating to the media and directly to audiences? Content creation. I gave examples of several organizations that are doing a great job of creating lively, interesting, multimedia content that appeals to mainstream media and to the public – the kind of content that gets written about, linked to, and shared.

Each team was assigned a “content creation channel” – video, podcasting, blogging or microblogging/aggregation. The teams had 25 minutes to create a piece of content about the workshop. I didn’t give too much guidance, I just told them to be creative and stick to their channel. Each group shared their content to a Posterous site I created for the class: http://smgov2010.posterous.com

The results are fun and I think (hope) the class enjoyed getting to do something participatory and creative, versus listening to me ramble on for three hours! My slides from the session are embedded below (and also on the Posterous site):

Social Media for Government

View more presentations from Amy Mengel.

Social Media continues to be a challenge for many in government, who constantly struggle with complex processes and layers of approvals in order to get anything accomplished (social or not). Earning buy-in is tough, and articulating the value of social media engagement with higher-ups and then gaining enough flexibility to execute social strategies and campaigns outside of traditional, strict oversight rules that exist in most government organizations is still an uphill battle. One organization I spoke with must have every single tweet approved. Seriously.

Still, it was good to see a group of government communicators excited and interested in social media and attempting to figure out how to make it work in their organization. Hopefully I was able to help some of them move a little closer to integrating social media into their communications plans.

Where’s the love for local public relations?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about differences between national and local media lately. The topic has been the subject of my last two posts over on Newsworthy, the readMedia blog, and I’ve been listening intently at the PR conferences I’ve been attending when journalists take the stage for panel discussions. Some have been representing national media outlets, like Slate.com, USA Today, and The New York Times. Others are local reporters for TV networks, metro daily newspapers or hyperlocal web sites. The differences in what these journalists expect from PR people are stark. But more on that later.

First, let’s talk about why solid, locally focused PR gets very little attention among the PR blogosphere/trade press/twitterati. When’s the last time you’ve seen PR Week highlight a kickass local PR success story? Of course, it’s sexier to talk about big brands with big budgets like Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble or Intel. Their PR and social media campaigns try to reach as broad a consumer audience as possible, sometimes within a vertical, but usually regardless of geography.

With location-based networking (Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla) all the rage and talk of hyperlocal journalism reaching a fever pitch, it surprises me that more attention isn’t being paid to local PR. Why is it that the primary discussions in and about our industry are focused on behemoth national or global brands, or even on smaller brands who are deemed “successful” at public relations by virtue of landing stories in national outlets? Do they have a monopoly on newsworthy content?

Hardly. There are thousands of small businesses and non-profits across the country that are doing a bang up job of telling their stories — to the audience that matters to them! If you’re a local organization focused on recruiting volunteers, publicizing events and providing services to a particular county or town, your public relations strategy had better focus on reaching local audiences. That means pitching local media, reaching out to local bloggers and developing a social media presence that local constituents can find and interact with. A hit in The New York Times is great, but you’re far likelier to move the needle on organizational goals if you focus on the channels that your local audiences use to get information.

In many cases, that still means the local newspaper and TV stations. Social media and alternative media have yet to supplant these traditional outlets locally as a primary source of information (according to Pew). Often new media (like local blogs and citizen journalists) take their cues from what mainstream media is writing about, and much of the information that’s shared in social networks originates in traditional media (Pew estimates over 90 percent).

So, reaching local media is key if geography matters to your organization. And fortunately, local journalists want to get your news. This was the main difference that came up over and over again in the journalist panels I’ve been listening to over the last few weeks. Here’s how it would go:

Well-known journalist from renowned national media outlet: “I hate being bothered. I get 955 emails a day. I probably don’t care about your story. I will never cover your groundbreaking or charity event. If you’re going to pitch me, you should read and research everything I’ve written for the last six months. You should tailor your pitch directly to me, and it had better be the absolute perfect story for my readers, and you’d better be able to convey the entire pitch to me in one or two sentences. Don’t send me press releases. Don’t send me any photos or videos or attachments unless I ask for them. And don’t keep bothering me to see if I got your email, because I probably don’t care.”

Small-town journalist from local TV news station: “I want to know about everything happening in this town, and especially how it affects the people who live and work here. I absolutely will cover a groundbreaking or charity event if it’s local and has an impact on residents. When you send me press releases, make sure they’re well-written and have all the information I need. Extras like photos and other documentation can be helpful. Make sure the title of the email and press release convey the key information I need to know. Be responsive when I call for follow-up information or interviews.”

Slight hyperbole, but that was essentially the gist. National reporters are busy and over-pitched, and they get a lot of bad pitches so they don’t trust press releases. They don’t have time for long pitches. They don’t do reportorial journalism, because they don’t have to. They get so many story ideas pitched to them that they rarely have a hard time filling the “news hole” each day.

On the local side, these journalists are also busy, but they rely on local organizations to help them develop content. They are all about reportorial journalism – the who, what, when, where, why of what’s happening in their town. They rely on press releases and PR people to help them find out what’s interesting and important. They are the 75 percent of journalists who say that receiving high-quality, targeted emailed press releases is helpful! And they don’t want “New! Whiter, brighter toothpaste!” press releases, they want to know about local students who complete a peer education program at an area nonprofit, or about a new program of study being added at a local college.

As much as industry outsiders (and the PR industry itself) love to bash on PR and declare that press releases are dead, it’s simply not true when it comes to local public relations. I see so many readMedia clients send solid, relevant, newsworthy press releases every day to local media, and these releases get picked up and their information ends up in front of their target audience. Shel Holtz said it best: “The role of media relations professionals is to inform journalists of their organizations’ news.”

You can talk about revolutions or evolutions or solutions for public relations in the digital age, and trump up fancy PR campaigns from big brands and continue to chase down national media hits. But let’s not forget that a lot of basic, fundamental media relations tactics are still very effective at the local level. If you’re a local organization, isn’t that where you want to be successful?

Yes, I’m still here…

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It’s been quiet around the blog lately. I’ve been traveling a lot for work (and some for fun) and blogging has taken a back seat. Plus, it seems like I haven’t felt like I’ve had too much to say. I’m resolving to get back on track, though.

Here’s some of what I’ve been up to over the last six weeks:

I guest lectured on social media to a graduate-level PR class at The College of Saint Rose and talked with them about how social media has influenced and changed PR over the last several years. The class is working on a social media strategy for a local non-profit and I gave them some ideas for ways to encourage volunteering and fundraising via content marketing. My slides from the class are below (and they’re pretty bland – I usually try to jazz up presentations more!)

Social Media and Public Relations
View more presentations from Amy Mengel.

I was a member of a panel of speakers on social media at the 2010 Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference at the NYS Museum. I had never heard of this group before, but it’s fantastic! This national organization has chapters all over the US and brings together 10th graders from different schools for a weekend devoted to leadership and community service. The kids were excited, energetic and inquisitive. For my part of the panel, I talked to them about how social networking is an important component of online reputation management. When they’re applying for jobs or scholarships, people are going to Google them. They need to make sure that their social activity (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, other online postings) reflects the type of person they want to show to the world. I also taught them how to Call the Dawgs.

I read Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I received a copy of the book at last October’s Inbound Marketing Summit, when it was pretty new, but never got around to reading it. I thought it would be interesting to wait to read it until almost a year after it was published and see how well it held up. I’m generally not one to like social media books (or even business books in general). I’ll probably save my observations on the book for another post in the coming weeks.

I flew three round-trips to BWI for conferences about PR in higher education and communications in government. I talked with lots of readMedia clients (and hopefully future clients) about effective ways of reaching hyperlocal media, how to manage enterprise-level PR and communications within complex organizations, and how to ensure social media is baked into PR best practices so that it becomes a natural extension of communications activities. I go back to BWI in two weeks to present a workshop on social media for government communicators. I’m going to be the mayor of that airport in no time.

I finally pulled together a group of smart, hard-working people to help me keep Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley moving forward. The event has grown so much in the last year and was more than I could handle on my own – so I’m now happy to have a team behind me making it happen. We took a break from our typical early morning programming in June and instead hosted a social media happy hour at a local biergarten. Networking was greatly enhanced. We’re looking forward to bringing back regularly scheduled programming in August.

So, this post is a total cop-out, but I plan to be back to blogging (semi) regularly soon. Stay tuned…

Find me in print and on the road this summer

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I’ll be hitting the road quite a bit this summer attending various communications conferences. A few organizers are even crazy enough to let me speak!

First on the schedule is ALI’s Social Media for Government conference (#smgov) in July in Washington, DC. I’ll be presenting a three-hour (yikes!) pre-conference workshop about “How to blend traditional and non-traditional new media into your government communications plan” on July 12. I plan to share several examples of readMedia clients and other organizations who are successfully adopting modern public relations strategies that incorporate web communications, social media, traditional media relations and multimedia. The rest of the conference kicks off the next day and features a variety of sessions and speakers from local, state and federal government organizations.

If you’re interested in attending the conference, you can save $400 off current registration rates if you sign up by next Thursday, May 20. Click here for more info.

At the end of July, I’m heading to the Windy City to drink good beer with Allan Schoenberg and Mike Pilarz speak at the eduWeb conference about how colleges and universities can generate hyperlocal media coverage in print and online by publicizing student accomplishments in their hometowns. I’ll go over the results of the recent study readMedia conducted that asked editors and publishers of community newspapers for their opinions about hometown news content, and I’ll also discuss how to get more of this content to live online (currently only half of hometown news is published to the web, even though editors say that it’s engaging and important to their audience).

If you work in higher education PR or web communications, you won’t want to miss eduWeb. The schedule is packed and there will be something for everyone. Click here for more info.

Lastly, the Age of Conversation 3 is finally on sale at Amazon! The book is a collaborative effort of more than 171 authors, each contributing an essay on a particular aspect of how to implement social media strategy. All proceeds benefit the Make-a-Wish foundation. You can grab your copy using the widget below:

Where are you headed this summer? What conferences and meetings are on your radar?