PR Tools: Social Media Press Releases

Image: Flickr user Ivan Walsh

Oh joy—another PR Tools discussion!  Last we spoke, I argued for the importance for the press release in the PR industry.  I still stand by my statement that “the press release is the foundation of any earned media campaign,” but just as one must adapt to live, one must also accept change to survive in the PR industry.

In the last eighteen months, Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, such as Chatroulette, have taken off.  In order to exceed the status quo we (and other PR professionals as well) have had to adapt our styles, techniques and tools to maintain our audiences’ attention.

So how long do we have to maintain someone’s attention?  According to Wikipedia, the average adult will only focus on something for eight seconds unless the person engages in a sustained focus—the act of actively concentrating on an object or task at hand for twenty minutes or more.  This means that we have less than ten seconds to seduce our readers into an uninterrupted focus on our press release.  Catchy headlines and sub-headers are nice and dandy but what better way to tempt our readers than to include pictures, slideshows, etc. in the press release?  Websites like PitchEngine (an ELISE favorite) allow for graphics and videos to stream while the viewer reads or skims the release.  Since publishing our NCIIA March Madness for the Mind 2010 release on PitchEngine it has been viewed over 300 times.

As society begins to rely more heavily on visual news rather than the written word, the PR industry must be malleable and willing to conform to new practices and techniques that will emotionally entice the reader and motivate them to read about the story.  It isn’t enough to have a well-written story any more; graphics and visuals are necessary.  How will you incorporate them into your next PR campaign?

Tweet Well (Part 1)

Flickr user jez`

I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter.

I’m logged into it all day for ELISE, and find it to be a fantastic resource. I’ve connected with other PR pros, found out who’s talking about our clients and reached out to journalists we couldn’t track down through more conventional means. Even on days when we’re not sending tweets, we all take some time over the course of the day to make sure we’re not missing out on any big news. (How do you think we learned of Michael Jackson’s untimely demise or the earthquake in Haiti?) And services like HootSuite and TweetDeck, both of which I use daily, allow users to filter out some static by monitoring key words in which they’re especially interested.

That’s when I love Twitter. But when I hate it, my animosity sometimes overshadows my love. It’s an animosity that I also feel for advertisers who run uninteresting Super Bowl commercials, bus passengers who talk too loudly on their cell phones and retailers who don’t honor competitors’ coupons: it’s a hatred of not understanding the power and reach of your chosen platform. Think about it:

• Super Bowl advertisers have a captive audience that wants to watch commercials almost as badly as they want to watch the game; if your commercial is boring, it could provide the 30 seconds your television audience needs to go open another beer.
• On the phone on a bus? Small metal spaces tend to make sound project, and now everyone knows about that nasty fungus you picked up at the gym.
• If you’re not honoring your competitors’ discounts, people will just go make that purchase—and the rest of their purchases—at your competitors’ stores, too.

So why would you provide bad information, share too much or ignore other people in your field, in your Twitter feed? These behaviors aren’t just bad practice; they’re downright rude. Not rude in the conventional sense—nasty or insulting—just rude in that they show utter disregard for the power and reach of Twitter as a platform and the engagement of people who use it.

There are approximately 75 million registered Twitter users worldwide. That’s a lot of content to sift through. People who provide good information or entertaining content or relevant news naturally get followers. People who send out pointless or self-promoting tweets, or who tweet out too much, too often, without showing that they’re listening to the conversations happening around (or about) them naturally lose followers. Being polite in your tweets by sharing carefully selected, useful or enjoyable information instead of flooding Twitter with a stream of posts nobody cares about will get you far.

And as to that content nobody cares about? You’ll have to tune in next time for some pointers on best practices for courtesy in the Twitterverse.

Is Overshare the New Norm?

Last fall, our awesome ELISE intern, Kira Loretto, wrote a thoughtful post about the potential harm social media can inflict on your career. People are beginning to learn this: don’t post photos of yourself engaging in illegal activity without making sure that nobody you don’t want to see them, can. Don’t set your Facebook status to read: “Don’t feel like going to work today. Calling in ’sick,’” if you’re friends with your boss.

But what about the things we post on-line that aren’t damaging … just annoying? In an article about Twitter for the New York Times last month, David Carr expressed the problem that many people have with social media platforms: nobody cares what you had for breakfast. Carr makes the argument that in spite of this, Twitter is a useful tool: you just have to be selective about who you follow.

Easier said than done. Aside from proving valuable resources for information, social media services like Facebook and Twitter allow us to stay connected to old friends and far-away family members like never before. How else would I be in touch with the German exchange students who spent a year at my high school, my cousin teaching math to girls in Qatar, my continent-crossing sister? By writing a letter? Surely, you’ve never seen my handwriting.

But my desire to stay connected to people in my life means that I can’t do as Carr suggested and be selective in my following and friending, only aligning myself (virtually) with people who provide solid, useful information. It means that I’m opening myself up to dozens, if not hundreds, of posts about what my friends had for breakfast. And more than that, it means that I’m on the receiving end of a terrific amount of overshare.

I’m not alone: countless Web sites and Internet memes have been devoted to people who “suck” at social media. Aside from enthusiastic self-promoters and “app” addicts, the one group that seems most universally hated is the oversharers.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s take a little peek at your Facebook newsfeed, shall we? Your perpetually pregnant childhood friend posting about how “the morning sickness is so much worse than last time: I spent the morning throwing up!”? Overshare. Your lovelorn sorority sister who, after a date, posts: “Finally, a great date! Dinner and a movie and then …”? Overshare. All of the people you know who share break-ups, make-ups, potty stories, bedroom stories, and drunken pontifications? Over. Share.

Think of it this way: you run into an old acquaintance on the street. You haven’t seen each other in five years. Do you talk about your most recent trip to the bathroom, or your most recent trip to Bermuda? Unless you’re both gastroenterologists, I think you know what the answer should be. Use that mindset when posting to Facebook or Twitter: if you wouldn’t say it in person, it doesn’t belong on-line.

So please, folks: leave the poopy diapers, the bar brawls, and the deep moments of self introspection off your status messages and Twitter updates. These are things you should share with a select few, not the unwashed masses. It might not affect your career, but it’s guaranteed to affect your relationships with your social media contacts.

PR Tools: The Media Alert

ATTENTION! VERY IMPORTANT!

I guess I don’t have to cyber scream it, but it grabbed your attention didn’t it?  Much the same way the the media alert would.

What is a media alert?  A media alert or media advisory, is a tool used by PR professionals to interest media about an announcement or upcoming event.  Media alerts are to-the-point and answer the questions who, what, when, where and why in less than a page.  They are effective because they draw the journalist in without losing them in the extra verbiage that press releases and media kits tend to contain.

Recently, I have noticed that some PR professionals are using Twitter and Facebook statuses to promote their clients.  I understand where this trend is coming from, but I would suggest that these methods and practices are not as effective in securing TV and print coverage as the media alert.  As far as I know, journalists are not going to hop on their Twitter or Facebook accounts to find their next story.  Just look at how little journalists use other social networking sites, such as LinkedIn.  Our trip to the Philadelphia Inquirer a few weeks ago reaffirms my belief that journalists working at traditional media outlets just are not ready to fully embrace the 140 character trends sweeping the industry.  Yes, the journalist enjoys bite-sized information but sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough and clicking the provided Web link is an extra step not worth taking.  Journalists are busy, and the more work we do in advance the greater the potential for positive results.  We are nothing if not thorough at ELISE.

Five years from now the traditional media alert might be totally extinct, but as for now it still reigns as king with us.

A Few Thoughts on the 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit

Innovation Philadelphia’s 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit (#GCECS2009, if you were following it on Twitter) was held yesterday and Monday, and I had the opportunity to represent ELISE at a number of panels and discussions over the course of the conference.

If you follow us on Twitter, you’ve probably already got an idea of what I saw and who I met. But for the rest of you, I wanted to give a few of my personal highlights from GCECS.

• Elizabeth Gilbert had a lot to say about what it meant to be fully employed as a creative person. Most interesting, she shared her belief that if you’re having trouble on one creative project, you should move to another. When plagued by serious writer’s block, Gilbert began to garden—creativity in a whole new way!
• I’d never heard the term “Shiny Penny Hell,” but I know I’ve been there: it’s the moment that you have a great idea and you have no idea what to do next, so you do nothing. Facilitators Julie Lenzer Kirk and Y. Renee Lewis led us through some exercises to un-block the creative stops—literally, with a block of wood.
• I think conferences need more Pecha Kucha. It’s the Twitter equivalent of Powerpoint presentations. Highlights from Monday’s session included Shift_Design’s gorgeous rainwater capture systems and the official introduction of the newly-launched Walkshed Philadelphia, which I plan on using all the time.
• Randall Kempner, of Lemelson-supported ANDE (Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs), gave a really engaging talk during lunch on Monday. During his talk, Randall said something that relates very much to the work we do here at ELISE: Entrepreneurs are everywhere, and we need to find ways of supporting them—especially the ones who are potentially driving social change.
• It was nice to see Doug Bellenger of PhindMe speaking about Mobile Technology (I first met him two years ago when I attended BlogPhiladelphia). Doug and his co-panelists had a lot to say about mobile browsing and apps, but my biggest takeaway was perhaps one of the more obvious: if you’re going to optimize your site for mobile Web, you can’t just do it for one type of mobile device. They’re all different, and what works for the iPhone may not work at all for a Blackberry.
• The session on crowdsourcing, moderated by Matthew Fisher of Night Kitchen Interactive, presented quite a few interesting points about this community-based method of problem solving and marketing. Because word of mouth travels more quickly than before, crowdsourcing enables movements to grow internationally and exponentially. And it also allows you to facilitate long-term, two-way relationships with the people you want to reach.
• Peter Shankman’s breakfast keynote yesterday was a re-focused version of the talk he gave two weeks ago at the Philly PRSA, this time talking more about social media in general than self-promotion. Key point he made that too many people don’t get: in social media, it’s up to you not to be stupid and post things you don’t want other people to see. Because at the end of the day, social media doesn’t exist. What exists is the ability to screw up for a larger audience in less time. Sound familiar?
• My key takeaway from the Mayors’ Roundtable on Sustainability? Conferences so focused on technology should make it easier for you to charge your laptop without having to leave the room. From following the #GCECS hashtag, though, it sounded like a really fascinating session!
• I’m really interested in issues of fair use and intellectual property, so attending the panel discussion focused on “Legal Challenges of Successful Entrepreneurship in an Internet Age” was a no-brainer. Most interesting to me was the idea that trademarks operate on a strictly “use it or lose it” policy: even if you file for protection, it’s up to you to make sure that you don’t let your brand slip through your fingers by inaction.
• I met some really interesting people at the lunchtime “Unconference Gab-Fest on Creativity,” including Rich Gretzinger of Human + Nature, which produces film and video for non-profit organizations, aimed at inspiring others to take action.
• My last panel at the conference focused on entrepreneurial journalism—Web-based outlets especially. Things got a little heated over philly.com Editor Chris Krewson’s thoughts on the future of the print industry (which basically amounted to: new business model needed), but he responded very thoughtfully to the audience’s concerns, and we had a great chat after the panel about how the rules of news changing so quickly that we were possibly headed into the wild, wild west: exciting, but untamed. Also on the panel, and great to talk to after, was Paul Schutt of Issue Media Group, which publishes (among other outlets) ELISE-favorite Keystone Edge.

I’m sure that I’ll go back to re-visit these ideas and other notes I took during GCECS, but that’s it for now. Were you there? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Social Media’s Gray Area…Toeing the Line Between Invasion of Privacy and Just Being Smart About It

In this day and age, it seems like everybody and their mother has a Facebook, and for better or worse, I’m being literal. My mom hasn’t hopped on the bandwagon yet, but the point is, you can’t keep track of everyone who is out there in cyberspace reading your posted information, be it an admissions counselor, ex-boyfriend, or employer. In fact, just this week, Facebook’s user population nearly equaled that of the U.S.

Social media allows you to create an impression on people, and just as with face-to-face interactions, you would like the impression to be a good one. This freedom of expression that the Internet equips us with, through sites like Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs and even professional networking sites such as LinkedIn—while it is certainly liberating, can also be dangerous if you aren’t careful (read: you don’t use common sense). In the last few years, social media has evolved from a largely personal tool for connecting with friends, new and old, to a universe in which it is uncommon for a major public figure, large corporation, or maybe your average socially conscious PR firm not to have a Twitter account. Social media is everywhere, and like Geico’s latest advertising campaign, the little money stack with eyes,  it’s watching you.

With this in mind, a few weeks ago I read an article on the dangers of social media for your career, and it struck a chord with me. We all have moments when we are frustrated with life, but there is something to be said for not airing dirty laundry in public. For instance, if you happen to follow the company Twitter, or are Facebook friends with your co-workers, it’s probably not the best idea to publicly complain about your job. When I see my friends do this, I cringe in discomfort for them. Even law enforcement uses Facebook these days, though they won’t be writing on your wall. Just the other week, an annual party at my alma mater was broken up by the police after they read details of it on a Facebook event page.

While some might consider this an invasion of privacy, if it’s out there, someone will find it. Hear me now, people, and thank me later. Use the old rule of thumb… If you wouldn’t want your mother to see it, read it, or hear about it, then don’t post it, because like I said at the beginning, chances of that are increasing.

Social media is meant to help you, not hurt you. Freedom of expression is one of the many great things about our wonderful country, but a little self-censoring never hurt anyone (and I bet it never lost anyone their job either).

First Dates and Social Media Courtship

A few weeks ago, I was at a friend’s housewarming in Manhattan, and talk turned, as it seems to do these days, to social media.

I don’t remember how the conversation started. Somebody probably asked if we’d seen something somebody else tweeted. At some point, though, the conversation turned to best practices when using social media for work, and a friend in attendance at the party, Alex Cohen (who, I should note, was instrumental in getting ELISE on Twitter) said that deciding what social media channel to use when initiating a professional conversation was kind of like dating.

Readers of this blog will know that I love a good metaphor, so naturally I was attracted to Alex’s comparison and decided that I had to write a blog post about it. And away we go…

Say you’re at a bar with your friends. One of your friends notices that one of his friends is also there and invites him over to your table. Suddenly, West Side Story-style, everything gets quiet and everyone in the room fades into soft focus. It may not be love at first sight, but it’s something. You spend the rest of the evening ignoring your friends and talking to the guy. All too soon, it’s time to go home. You exchange information… and then you wait. Which of you is going to make first contact? Are you going to call? E-mail? Facebook stalk? Follow on Twitter? Post a love song to your MySpace page? The possibilities for getting in touch with a potential paramour these days are endless—it’s just all about the approach.

In the world of PR, it’s not too different—minus the soft focus and softer music, that is. We become acquainted with a reporter or his work, either in person; via opportunities posted to ProfNet or Help a Reporter Out; through Twitter; or by simply doing our homework. If we’ve identified that reporter as somebody we’d like to pitch, we then figure out the best approach. Do we keep it simple and send an e-mail? Kick it old school with a phone call or a fax? Or do we embrace social media and shoot for a LinkedIn invite or post to a reporter’s Facebook fanpage? Is it déclassé to pitch on Twitter for the world to see?

Pitching, like dating, is all about the approach. Does the journalist we want to pitch often tweet out information on what he’s working on and ask for input? Then he probably won’t mind if we @reply him with a 140 character pitch. Is he connected to several other PR pros on LinkedIn? Then he would probably be open to connecting with you, too. Hasn’t updated his Facebook wall in over a month? Then maybe a more traditional method of pitching, like an e-mail or a phone call, might be best.

And just like in dating, if the approach is right and you begin to see more of each other, a beautiful relationship can result.

Musings of a PR Newbie, The Young Graduate’s Perspective

As a recent college graduate, I am brand spanking new to the working world, and I have to say I like it here. While at first the prospect of spreading my wings was a little daunting, I am finding that the adjustment is not as difficult as I once anticipated. In fact, it feels more like a natural progression than the culture shock I expected, so no complaints here. Not to mention, I am very grateful to have a job in the current economy, while many of my friends and fellow members of the Class of ‘09 were not so lucky. (Let alone a job I find challenging and enjoyable, but I digress…)

Working in PR is fast paced and exciting, and I learn new things every day with the assignments that cross my desk. Pitches, press releases, messaging sessions and marketing plans are all relatively new to me. However, there are some parts of my job for which I am already prepared, and I owe that to the four years I spent in college, both in and out of the classroom.

Thanks largely to professors who favored the Socratic method, I never knew when I would be called upon to deliver an impromptu analysis of anything from the Fed’s latest bailout to Cartesian Dualism. As a result, I feel comfortable discussing just about anything with just about anyone. This is often necessary in PR, when new ideas come to the table and need to be fleshed out, given direction and strategy, and sent into the world. I’m learning on my feet in this department, but it helps to be able to communicate freely and effectively. Thanks a mil, Socrates.

On another subject, who better than a recent college grad to tackle the developing world of social media? We know Facebook and Twitter inside and out and read countless blogs as a source of entertainment (read: procrastination). I can’t count the number of times I would be writing a paper while simultaneously updating my Facebook status to bemoan its existence. Ironic, isn’t it? And while it’s often true that college students get their practice with social media in order to put off work, we make it our business to stay on top of things. PR professionals take this to the next level, using social media to create meaning with every last character of the 140 that Twitter allots.

My work at ELISE allows me to use some of my old college tricks, but the end results are proving far more valuable than any Facebook stalking expedition ever did. Tune in as the weeks go by and I undoubtedly learn more as I get my feet wet in the world of PR.

Forget Faulkner; Use a Link

In the summer of 2007, I attended the BlogPhiladelphia “unconference,” a two-day opportunity for bloggers from the Philadelphia area and beyond to talk about the rapidly growing world of social media. Twitter was a nascent and largely unadopted technology; nobody had a Flip; and the first-generation iPhone had been released just days before. (It was so new, in fact, that Web developers on site were encouraging BlogPhiladelphia attendees not to optimize their sites for the iPhone just yet.) But none of that mattered: we were all assembled at the Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel in Center City Philadelphia to talk about the power and potential of blogs.

At one point during the conference, the floor was ceded to any attendee who had something relevant to share. The guys from Viddler shared their direct-posting technology, which they’d launched a few months before. There was much discussion about Wine Library TV. And then David Dylan Thomas presented a very interesting argument: “The convention of the hyperlink has essentially changed the way we write.” David went on to explain that many sentences written for on-line outlets wouldn’t even make sense without hyperlinks. For instance, simply reading aloud or seeing in print: “The full details on the unusual traffic stop are explained here,” leaves one wondering exactly where “here” is. But when clicking on the word “here,” we get linked to the full account—a story about Pennsylvania State Troopers who delivered a baby instead of writing a speeding ticket.

Sure, you could paraphrase the story in your blog, but it’s easier for you to let the journalist tell the story himself. And it’s better for the Philadelphia Daily News, with whom the story originated, to get traffic from your link than to have you re-hash the story and make people feel like they don’t need to click through.

In the two years since BlogPhiladelphia, the way we write for social media has continued to change (Twitter, anyone?), but one thing hasn’t: the ability to be concise because of the presence of hyperlinks. The Faulknerian sentence, it seems, is gone for good, replaced by quick summaries that send the reader to the rest of the story, elsewhere. This is why we can spend three hours on Wikipedia, link-hopping until we forget what our original search term was. And it’s also why communicating in PR is getting easier. Press releases don’t need to be two pages long anymore. Instead of explaining the whole schedule of an event, for instance, we can link to the event’s Web page where the details are posted. Instead of providing a client’s life story, we can use a few relevant points and direct the recipient to a full biography page. Writing a shorter press release and embracing links allows us to spend time writing more customized pitches. And on the flip side, links allow journalists on the receiving end of our releases or pitches to pick and choose what information they want without having to spend time to weed through information they see as superfluous. That’s more time they can spend talking to you about your clients.

Added bonus: more social media-fied press releases don’t just save time—they save money. Most paid release distribution services, like PRNewswire, have a fixed cost up to a certain word count (PRN’s is 400 words). Letting links do the talking and cutting out superfluous information usually keeps us from having to pay for additional-verbage overages.

Long releases aren’t any easier to read than long novels, Mr. Faulkner. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you write, but how many people you reach. Dickens wasn’t really paid by the word, and neither are we: PR professionals get paid because of the results they generate and the input they offer. And if we can get those results while saving money and time, simply by showing that we understand the way that the link has changed writing—in our profession and otherwise—then aren’t we worth every penny?

Becoming Addictive

I’m still trying to synthesize all of my thoughts about Wednesday’s Help A Reporter Out conference call, which featured Peter Shankman and Chris Brogan bantering back and forth about social media best practices and lessons learned. The conversation was accompanied by the hashtag #broman, which provided a supplementary track to the conversation and quickly became Twitter’s #2 trending item, much to the confusion of Twitter users not on the call.

But with all of the data flying around, both on the call and over Twitter, Peter made one very salient point that stood out to me. It was salient not just because it was completely true, but also because of how funny and how memorable it was. Peter’s quip arose during the part of the conversation when somebody asked how to develop business leads through social media outlets like Twitter. After a few points were made by both Chris and Peter about creating interest in your company by tweeting out good content, Peter broke it down for us: PR professionals can best utilize social media as a marketing tool by being like crack dealers: give out a “free sample” and people will come back to see what else you have. 140 characters isn’t enough for a white paper or a communications strategy plan, but it can make people want to know more about you.

Not want. Need. And maybe that’s the biggest takeaway of the call.