Tag Archives: pitching

How to pitch Op-Eds to USA Today

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I’ve spent this week in Washington, DC at the PRSA Counselors to Higher Education Senior Summit, talking with current readMedia clients and learning about the issues higher ed communicators face. The sessions yesterday were held at the headquarters of USA Today in McLean, Va., and included a panel discussion with three USA Today editors.

I snagged this quick video during the Q&A session, after a participant asked about how to pitch Op-Ed pieces:

There are some great reminders for PR folks: know the outlet you’re pitching and how they operate, be relevant and provocative, and remember that a story idea that doesn’t get picked up the first time around can often be repurposed or repackaged later on.

Visualization: Telling your story without words

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The number one skill an effective communications professional needs? Writing, of course. It’s no accident that most college public relations programs are housed in the journalism department. Clear, concise, effective writing technique is critical to conveying your organization’s message – to the media, to employees, to investors, to the community.

But as information overload continues to shrink our attention spans, it becomes increasingly important to figure out faster and more compelling ways to tell stories. Written pieces certainly have their place and purpose, but an eye-catching chart, infographic, or photo set may convey your message more memorably and in less time. Presenting information graphically forces us to trim away the superfluous details that can clutter our writing. If you’re pitching a story to a swamped journalist or busy blogger, getting right to the point is always appreciated. Often an infographic can do this better than your writing can.

Two of my favorite “just for fun” blogs are Strange Maps and Flowing Data, which both curate interesting data visualizations from across the Web (I also check out Information Is Beautiful on occasion). One of the primary reasons I keep up with these blogs (other than the fact they’re just plain fascinating) is that I can consume the content pretty quickly. Whereas a 1,000-word blog post requires 20 minutes of my time to get through, I can check out a stunning graphic in just a few minutes. I’m also more likely to share an interesting chart or graphic to Facebook or Twitter.

Need another example? Think about how effective The Oatmeal is at presenting information. Their comics are funny and memorable, but also educational. One of my favorite Oatmeal posts is 20 Things Worth Knowing About Beer (shocker). Sure, this could have been written as a list-style blog post and contained all the same information, but it’s so much richer and more compelling when presented visually (and much more viral).

PR pros, especially those of us who are “classically trained” in journalistic writing, tend to talk (write) too much. I’m certainly guilty (heck, I’ve just devoted 400 words to a post about how we should write less and use data visualization more). We’re verbal people who use words as our go-to tool for telling a story. Often it doesn’t occur to us to present information in a different format.

Sometimes we need to think beyond words on a page or screen. How can we quickly and compellingly convey our stories, in a way that will engage audiences and encourage them to share the information? Try some eye candy. Find a graphic artist (or experiment yourself) and adapt wordy stories to appealing visualizations. Information is indeed beautiful.

What Twitter lists have done for me lately

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ChecklistA classic ISTJ, I’m a sucker for making lists. To-do lists, chore lists, action items – writing things down helps me organize a plan of attack. Which is why it may surprise you that I’ve done very little with Twitter lists in the few months since the feature was launched. However, I’ve found lists helpful in a few ways and am hoping to experiment with them more in the coming weeks. Here’s where I am:

Geographic Sorting

Twitter use among individuals and small businesses in my area has exploded in the last year. Initially, I followed nearly everyone locally I could find. That included every small restuarant, dry cleaner, college kid, gamer or media outlet. Creating an “Albany” Twitter list has allowed me to corral all of those people in one place without actually having to follow them. I now can focus on only following the local Twitter accounts that really provide me value. They show up in my stream, while I can casually keep tabs on the rest (who I don’t follow directly but follow via my Albany list) by just checking the list every now and then. It’s easy and risk-free for me to add someone to my Albany list; I don’t have to contemplate whether or not I think that person/business adds enough value to follow them.

Reporter and Blogger Pitching

I’ve created a “Pitching” Twitter list that’s comprised of the reporters and bloggers I’m currently pitching on behalf of my clients. The list is private, so only I can see it. It allows me to keep tabs on what’s on the mind of these writers, which can be helpful in generating story angles or even just finding and “in” or a commonality to get a conversation going with them. I also look to see what lists those reporters/bloggers have either created and been added to, and it’s led me to several new outlets that I might have otherwise not known about or considered pitching.

Gauging “Value” of Twitter Accounts

I’m squarely in the camp that number of Twitter followers is in no way correlated with how interesting, useful or worth my time a particular person is. But like most people, I’m still conditioned to look at a big follower count and wonder if someone is a “big deal” or not. With spammy following schemes, it can sometimes be difficult to tell right off the bat if a Twitter user has organically and legitimately grown their following or not. But lists have made that a bit easier (and some believe, even made follower counts irrelevant). If someone has 8,000 followers and is only on 12 lists, then to me that’s an indication that not many people value what that person has to say (auto-follow bots aren’t generally in the habit of putting people on lists, yet). I’m not saying that “value” can be reduced to a simple ratio of followers to lists, but as a “first glance” metric, I’ve found it useful in helping me red flag accounts that I may want to pass on following for the time being.

Twitter lists will continue to evolve and develop, especially since they have already been integrated into third party apps like TweetDeck and Seesmic. I can see lists being extremely useful for events and conferences, for example. Personally, I’m planning to experiment more with private lists to help me sort and keep track of my own Twitter ecosystem, and then also eventually start to follow other people’s lists (why reinvent the wheel?) of useful people in my field. (One of the issues I see with lists right now is that they’re highly personal and not definitive – how many lists of “PR professionals” or “Dawgs fans” are out there right now? Few are likely to be comprehensive and as of right now it’s not possible to merge multiple lists from different Twitter users. But I digress.)

What innovative ways have you been using Twitter lists? Share away in the comments.

Photo via Flickr user numstead