Tag Archives: strategy

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?

Six suggestions for communicating change to employees

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Although we’ve all roared into 2010 with optimism that the recession is soon going to be behind us, many companies are faced with difficult choices in order to survive: cutting or outsourcing jobs, consolidating plants or divisions, eliminating product offerings, slashing funds for research and development, divesting a unit, or even restructuring in bankruptcy. All involve lots of change, especially for employees. What can communicators do to keep the wheels on the bus during the upheaval? Here are six recommendations:

1. Set expectations

Explain to employees what’s going to happen when. Layout a timeline of expected milestones and actions. Address critical issues upfront: how are the changes going to affect the things they’re most worried about: pay, benefits, time off, job security? Let them know what will be expected of them: do they need to fill out any paperwork, make choices about benefits or change their work schedules? The more uncertainty you can remove for them, the better.

2. Create a rhythm

Incorporate change communication into regular channels, but also consider special daily or weekly updates to keep employees abreast. Make sure that the frequency matches the amount of information available, however. Don’t schedule daily updates when it’s likely that there will only be new information each week or month. Most employees will be more comfortable knowing they can expect new information at set times versus not knowing when the next update is going to come.

3. Admit when you don’t have information

In many situations (layoffs, divestitures, bankruptcy filings) legal regulations dictate what you can disclose, when, and to whom. Sometimes even communicators themselves aren’t informed of all the details of a situation until it’s well underway, or if they are informed, they’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement and can’t reveal what they know. Other times, information just may not be available. It’s okay to tell employees that. Not every detail of a situation is going to be worked out from the first moment. It may take months before it becomes clear what’s going to happen with a particular product line, department or program. Employees would rather hear that you don’t know something versus hearing a lot of speculation.

4. Enable feedback

Whether it’s weekly roundtable meetings, an anonymous Web form, an e-mail address, or just a good old fashioned suggestion box, ensure that the communication is truly two-way. Give employees the opportunity to submit questions and air out concerns, and then answer them as promptly and thoroughly as possible. Chances are if one employee is asking about a topic, three or four others are thinking about it. Monitoring feedback is also a great way to catch rumors as they surface. Situations that involve a lot of change can be stressful, and communicators can sometimes get so caught up in making sure information gets disseminated that they forget to check the feedback loop and see where the gaps are in what employees are really hearing.

5. Dispel rumors before they get out of hand

Again, sometimes your hands may be tied with what you can confirm or deny about a situation, but to the extent possible, put the kibbosh on outlandish rumors before they get a chance to spread. Easier said than done, of course. If you can dispel something that’s patently false (and even better, replace it with the truth), do so. Fast. And frequently. Even rumors that have been put to bed end up recirculating among different employee groups.

6. Reinforce the positives

It sounds trite, but there’s always silver lining to be found. Maybe your company is still profitable and growing. Maybe your customers love you. Maybe your employees are racking up awards, patents, conference slots or other accolades. Find the bright spots and incorporate them into communication to employees.

Big changes in a company can cause fear and uncertainty among employees, but they can also lead to a stronger organization. Communicators play a major role in helping make the transition smooth and as transparent as possible, but it takes a lot of effort and planning.

Why I blog

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I’ve flogged this deceased equine before, but no foray into social media– be it blogging or anything else– should be without strategy. That emerged as a major theme from last Friday’s Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #4, which featured a panel discussion on blogging.

The panelists discussed how companies should decide what they hope to get out of a blog before they start one. That’s solid advice for companies, but it also spurred a discussion about personal blogs: Not every mommy blogger needs or wants to grow up to be Dooce. Not every technology blogger needs or wants to grow up to be Engadget.

It got me thinking about a very simple question: Why do I blog? What am I hoping to get out of this?

I started blogging nearly a year ago practically by accident. My first post explains how I had been becoming more active on Twitter and finding I had more to say than 140 characters allowed. I had been a long time reader of PR blogs but never felt as though I had anything to contribute. The last year has been quite a journey for me and after reflecting for a bit on “what does this all mean?” (blogging, not life), here’s what I came up with:

I don’t necessarily have a “strategy” for this blog. I don’t blog for page views or ad revenue. It’s one piece of a diverse online presence for me where I share conversations (both personal and professional) with colleagues, clients and friends. For me, it’s a success.

Why do YOU blog?

Social Media Smackdown: Cannondale vs. Trek

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It’s the time of year when cycling-nerds worldwide turn their eyes to France, anxiously awaiting daily stage results, jersey changes and, uh, doping allegations. I watch the Tour purely for Phil Liggett’s commentary – and to remind myself to get my butt in gear and start riding more. It’s no secret that many TdF cyclists are active on Twitter (Lance even announced the birth of his son via a tweet), but far fewer bicycle manufacturers, especially high-end ones, seem to be employing social media tools as domestiques in their quest to influence the peloton and spur genuine engagement among brand fans.

OK, enough with the lame cycling analogies. Let’s get to it. This installation of Social Media Smackdown pits Cannondale against Trek, two of the world’s largest bicycle manufacturers.

(Note: I’m a loyal Jamis girl, so I really don’t have a dog in this fight.)

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Round One: Twitter

Both brands have a Twitter presence: @RideCannondale and @TrekBikes. Each has roughly the same number of followers, but some vast differences emerge.

Trek: Following 1,032; Follwers 1,122; Tweets 158
The @TrekBikes account does a good job, despite just having started on Twitter, interacting with people and offering up useful information. A majority of its tweets are @ replies and range from helping with bike repairs, directing folks to their customer service e-mail address, sharing information on how their bikes are designed and offering encouragement to riders. The account also shares links to cycling stories on various races and events. My only real criticism is that the Twitter bio doesn’t identify who’s actually doing the tweeting for the account. It would be great to have a name to put behind the tweets. An excellent job. It also turns out that Trek has some additional accounts for its different audiences (@Trekmtb for mountain bike fans and @trek_ben for roadies).

Canondale: Following 3; Followers 1,095; Tweets 79
Another newer account on Twitter, with only 79 tweets so far, @RideCannondale doesn’t seem to understand the engagement component to Twitter. They’re only following three people! None of the tweets are @ replies. I will give them credit though – it doesn’t appear that their tweets are automated feeds from a blog. At least it seems like there’s a real person behind the account and not a bot. Many of the tweets share information about professional cycling races (Cannondale sponsors Team Liquigas) and share links to product announcements or videos. It’s not overly sales-y, though. It has the potential to be a great presence for Cannondale on the Web – but they really need to start following back and engaging with fans to get real conversation going.

Point: Trek gains the maillot jaune here for a great combination of conversation and information sharing. Cannondale needs to engage more with followers.

Round Two: Facebookcannondalefan

Trek’s Facebook fan page has 3, 325 fans, but it doesn’t appear to actually be managed by Trek! There’s a Trek group that appears to be the “official” Trek presence on Facebook. The group has 2,445 members, 187 wall posts, and four discussion threads (all with minimal activity). The group has close to 300 photos posted and most are pictures of single bicycles with no people in them.

If you check out the Trek fan page, there doesn’t appear to be any input or participation from the brand. The page is pretty weak. No wall posts from Trek Bikes (or whoever manages the page) and no content posted. Trek’s missing an opportunity here. Even if they didn’t create the fan page, they could take Coca-Cola’s lead and offer to participate or help manage the page. As it is right now, Trek’s Facebook presence is fractured among groups and the fan page.

Cannondale’s fan page on Facebook has merely two posts since 2008 andthere’s very little content posted by the page owner. More than 7,700 Facebook users have become fans of Cannondale, so even if the brand didn’t create or doesn’t manage the page, they’re missing out on an opportunity to reach interested consumers. Fans have uploaded more than 500 photos of Cannondale bikes to the page.

BUT WAIT! When I went to Cannondale’s Web site, the Facebook icon at the bottom of the page took me to a completely different fan page! This one is slickly designed with spaces for videos, promotions and events. There’s not much content on there yet and only 406 fans, but Cannondale is sharing information on the wall, posting links and sharing race results. The trouble is, this page didn’t even show up on the first page of Facebook search results for the term “Cannondale”. Having a great fan page that no one can find won’t help much. A simple fix would be to post a message on the wall of the other fan page on Facebook (you know, the one that’s accrued 7,000+ fans?!) and direct them to the new page.

Point: I hesitate to give a point to either one here. Neither brand is really maximizing its use of Facebook. Cannondale has started building out a nice page, but how are they going to migrate fans to the “correct” Facebook page? Trek has a nice little group growing, but Facebook groups don’t provide the flexibility or reach that a fan page does. It’s a draw.

Round Three: Web site

Each site begins with a landing page that asks you to select your country, so I’m basing this evaluation off the US version of each site. I was specifically looking for how “social” the sites were. Yes, I expect that each site is trying to provide product specs and information, but I wanted to see how interactive each site was, how easy it is for consumers to link to and share information, and how the brands are integrating social media tools like blogs to attract and engage with potential or current bicycle owners.

Trek’s site doesn’t link to any social profiles from its home page. The page is dominated by a link to watch a video, which takes you to a page with several videos about the Livestrong team. The videos are documentary-style and follow the team as they train, test equipment and ride in races. All have links to share or embed and there’s a prominent link to Trek’s YouTube channel. The “Trek Life” portion of the site includes four blogs (road, mountain, fitness/rec and women). The road bike blog hasn’t been updated since March, but the others are fairly current and even have a handful of comments on many of the posts. It would be  nice to have obvious RSS feed icons for all of the blogs. It also would be great if this portion of the site (or even the home page) had icons and links to other social media outposts.

Cannondale’s site is slick and visually pleasing, but not very social at first glance. There’s a tiny Twitter and Facebook icon at the bottom of the home page, but it was “below the fold” on my screen so I actually didn’t even notice it for a while. Most of the pages detail product lines (either bicycles, apparel or gear). It turns out there’s actually a fair amount of social interactivity on the site – but you have to dig a bit for it. The “Cannondale Planet” section of the Web site includes links to RSS feeds of videos, photos, and the “Ask Brad” blog. However, this section isn’t the easiest to navigate and a lot of the content isn’t that easy to share. The “News” tab takes you to some pretty cool sites that profile Cannondale’s various cycling teams, like Liquigas. This is where the site shines. It features videos from professional cyclists preparing for races, links and widgets to various cyclists’ Twitter streams, and links to news items and wallpaper images. I just wish that this cool content was more prominently featured and easier to find and share.

Point: Trek wins here for its use of blogs and video, but could take a lesson from Cannondale in making links to social outposts available on the home page. Cannondale has a lot of interesting content, but it’s not easily findable or shareable.

3302949809_95574f9444Round Four: Other social sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc.)

Trek’s YouTube channel includes 17 videos and these range from the Livestrong clips to product tours to TV commercials. The channel has 216 subscribers and some of the videos have 40,000+ views! The Trek Bikes group pool on Flickr has more than 264 members and close to 1,000 images, but I have no idea if Trek created and/or manages this group. There’s also a Trek Bikes profile on Flickr that includes a handful of promotional photos of bikes and gear, but it doesn’t seem as though Trek is doing too much with this photostream.

Cannondale did not appear to have a Flickr profile (but the name and many permutations of it are taken). There is a Cannondale group pool on Flickr with 200 members and nearly 900 photos uploaded. Again, hard to tell if Cannondale created this pool or if it was done by fans. On YouTube, Cannondale comes to life. Their channel is designed to match their Web site’s colors and theme. It features 70 videos that are sorted into playlists based on topic. The channel has 143 subscribers and has received more than 5,000 views. Brad, of the AskBrad blog, was uploading new videos as recently as this morning.

Point: Both are doing a good job utilizing video in their social media strategies, and both could take advantage of photo and leverage Flickr more. Even though Trek’s YouTube channel has gotten more views (having Lance helps), I’m going with Cannondale here. I love how they’ve designed their channel in the Team Liquigas colors and have Brad maintaining it for consistency with their Web site.

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The Final Verdict: In a sprint to the finish, Trek is the winner. Cycling is a sport with a fanatical level of engagement, so it makes sense that social media is a great fit for these fans to tap into their consumer bases. Both need to refine their Facebook strategies a little more, and Cannondale would benefit from being more engaged as a brand on Twitter. But it’s a good showing, especially when many bicycle manufacturers aren’t participating at all.

Allez!

Previous Smackdown: Columbus, Ohio vs. Columbia, S.C.
Previous Smackdown: Mountain Hardwear vs. The North Face
Previous Smackdown: Magic Hat vs. Bell’s Beer

Images via Flickr users trekbikes and Celso_Flores

Do you have “shovel-ready” communications projects?

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shovelWe all have projects that we’d just love to do for our clients or organizations, but with budgets being tightened and the economy in shambles, the money and resources aren’t necessarily there to complete them– or even to get started. So we move on to maintenance activities, doing what we can on the budget we’re given and hoping for better times ahead.

If the economy does start to turn around later this year, are you ready? If funds become available, do you have a project waiting in the wings that you can quickly pull the trigger on? As an example, maybe you’ve wanted to do a Web site redesign for your organization to integrate more social features, revamp your online newsroom, or freshen up the content. You may not have the budget now to hire a programming firm to complete the project, but that doesn’t mean that you can have plans in place. Do a thorough review of the current site. Determine what it’s lacking and take a few moments to define what the new site should accomplish and how it would help your organization reach its audience better. Create a document outlining what changes could be made and list the resources that would be required to complete them. Make it as specific as you can: seven hours of copywriting, 12 hours of code edits, nine hours of graphic design work, a few hours of content management training. Be detailed so that you could potentially turn this document into a vendor RFP or a presentation to management in the future.

It could be that your department is short-staffed right now but you can’t hire a temp, intern or full-time employee due to funding. If you suddenly could, would you have a job description ready? Do you have a sense of what projects you’d have a new employee work on and maybe even have some candidates in mind you could reach out to? Or do you have existing employees that maybe could use some refresher training or could expand their skills into new areas? Are you knowledgeable about which conferences or workshops might be a good fit? Take the time to evaluate your team and its deliverables. Figure out where the pressure points and talent gaps are and put together some plans to address them. There may not be anything you can do about it immediately, but if you’re not ready when opportunities become available, then you could miss out on the chance to add or enhance your staff.

Business decisions happen so quickly that if you aren’t prepared with a proposal that clearly defines a project’s scope, the resources involved, and the benefits it will bring to the organization, then any money that becomes available will likely go to a different department. At the very least, even if things don’t turn around as quickly as we all hope they will, you’ll have done some useful assessment of your organization, clients or team members.

Image via Flickr user lanchongzi