Public Relations

social media tools… 15 Great Twitter Apps for PR Pros by Janet Krenn

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For a three-year-old toddler, Twitter sure has a lot of toys! Seriously, there are thousands of applications available that you can use to expand your twitter-bilities.

Here are 15 that I think are highly useful for PR professionals.

Get Your PR Message Out

1. Twitterfeed automatically tweets your blog titles, streamlining your online campaigns.

2. Twiddeo allows you to upload video from your phone or computer and posts a short url to your twitter account.

Manage the Timing of Your PR Message

3. Tweetlater  is a handy tool, especially for the PR professional. If you want to post reminders of an upcoming event, schedule them through Tweetlater.

4. Vacatweet can keep you active on the Twitter-sphere by responding to your messages while you’re on vacation.

Monitor Your PR Campaigns

5. Tweetburner not only generates shortened urls, the application will allow your to post the url to your Twitter account and track clicks and re-tweets of your url.

6. StrawPoll lets you put a quick poll on your Twitter page. A great tool if you’re looking for simple feedback.

7. Tweetnews  can track news-related tweets on Twitter.

Show Off your Publications or other Promotional Documents

8. FileSocial allows you to upload documents to their site and post a link to those documents on Twitter.

9. TwitDoc  is similar to FileSocial, with the added bonus of drag-and-drop functionality. But this function is only available for Adobe AIR users!

Meet People, Follow, and Be Followed

10. Twitdir  is one of the many Twitter directories that allows you to search for Twitterers by location, email, and alias.

11. Twitterlocal allows you to find people actively tweeting in an geographic area that you define.

12. Twollo  compares your tweets to other users to try and suggest people you might want to be friends with.

Manage Multiple Accounts

13. Splitweet compiles multiple Twitter accounts, allowing you to easily post to any of your accounts. You can also track keywords.
14. TweetDeck also compiles multiple Twitter accounts, and although I know it is vastly more popular than Splitweet, I’m just not as into it!

15. ??

I know I promised 15, so I’ll ask you: What do you think is another highly useful twitter application for public relations professionals?

JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com

pr stratgey… Tip Sheets as a Successful PR Tactic by Brian Camen

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The media calls my team because of the relationships we have built, the reputation of my employer, and the sources we can offer. I work for a top-ranked graduate school. Our “clients” are faculty members (around fifty Ph.D.’s), each experts in their field.

Last summer, my team created a media tip sheet for the Olympics. With the help of my director, I took the lead on it, and this tip sheet set off three months during which our team was trying to fulfill multiple inquires per day.

Media tip sheets are under utilized, but really simple to create. If there is a major local, national, or international event occurring and you have multiple experts that can take different angles on the event, why not let the media know that you’re there for them?

Here’s what I recommend if you’d like to create a source-based media tip sheet:

1. Introduction–What news story/event & why is your company qualified to discuss.
2. Multiple Experts-–Be sure to include multiple experts that can comment on different perspectives of the news story/event.
3. Credibility–What makes each expert credible to discuss the topic? No credibility means no media attention.
4. What your expert is prepared to say–-A brief description about what your expert is prepared to say.
5. Contact information–Do you like it when things are made easy for you? Well so does the media. Don’t forget to put direct contact information for your experts.

The tip sheets I prepared featured nine different professors and senior officials who were experts on different business angles of the Olympics. We had representatives who could talk about topics such as China’s government, their environment, the branding of the Olympics, disaster and emergency planning, and more. The tip sheet also featured recent stories in school publications about students who played a role in the Olympics.

As you can guess, the tip sheet paid off. Our expert sources were featured in many local, national, and international print and broadcast outlets. The inquiries came pouring in but didn’t end when the Olympics completed. The media tip sheet created a domino effect. Journalists knew our sources were efficient, reliable, and could be trusted.

All you need to do is create a one-sheet featuring a paragraph about each expert stating why they’re qualified to comment, what they’re prepared to say, and direct contact info. This campaign was so successful because we made it easy for the media.

BRIAN CAMEN is a Public Relations Coordinator at a top-ranked international b-school in Glendale, AZ. Read his blog The PR Practitioner (http://www.theprpractitioner.com). He can be reached at brian.camen@gmail.com or @BrianCamen

what is public relations… Marketing VS Public Relations–The final showdown(?) by Janet Krenn

New Professionals PR Blog 5 Comments

Knowing the difference between marketing and public relations seems like a scholarly exercise… until you consider applying for a PR job under the supervisory umbrella of the marketing department, or you have to write a marketing plan to define how your company will use public relations to achieve marketing goals.

So what is the difference between between public relations and marketing? I’ve looked at several sites to try to come up with an answer.

What’s the difference?

Marketing: Definitions and Partial Definitions

  • “…marketing exists to sense, serve, and satisfy customer needs at a profit.” (from Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, republished)
  • “marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit” (Philip Kotler)
  • “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” (American Marketing Association)

Public Relations: Definitions and Partial Definitions

  • “Public relations exists to produce goodwill in the company’s various publics so that the publics do not interfere in the firm’s profit-making ability.” (from Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, republished)
  • “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” (Public Relations Society of America)

The Visual Description
Perhaps the most interesting comparison of public relations and marketing come from an older, but still very relevant  post on The Brand-Builder Blog.

What are the Major Differences?

Role within the Organization
In a company, marketing promotes goods and services to consumers. These activities are projected from the company outward. Public relations works to “help the organization and its publics adapt mutually to one another”, according to one professor. PR activities should strive to have a back-and-forth relationship with the world outside the company, by projecting information and working with others. In other words, putting the “relationship” in public relations.

Measures of Success
Because the goal of marketing is sales, the success of their efforts can be measured in profits. The goal of PR is to build positive impressions of their client or company. So publics’ perceptions become the measurement tool in public relations.

Is there Overlap?

Positioning
Jack Trout, a prolific author on the subject, would say that positioning is the process of “owning space in a person’s mind.” For example, what company do you think of when I say the word “happy”? For about 75% of people, Disney comes to mind (Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin). Disney “owns” the word happy.

Marketing and public relations work in tandem to position a company. Marketing does the research to determine what the position of the company is and should be. Public relations promotes the image and position of the company through events and news.

How Do You Think Marketing and PR are Different or Related?

Do you think marketing and PR are more related than different? Do you think I missed some key similarities or differences? Leave comments!

JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com

pr strategy… Distribute the “Necessary-but-Not-Hot-News” Press Release by Shirley Skeel

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You’ve got your press release ready. Now what?

The Annapolis Group list serve (for independent liberal arts colleges) had a flutter of activity recently about the fine art of sending out press releases. Is mass mailing still acceptable? How do you keep harried reporters informed, but not irritated?

One media relations officer said that, for local coverage, she mass-mails to a standard distribution list. For national coverage, she begins with the news services, such as EuerkAlert and the News Media Yellow Book, and chooses specific newsrooms.

Another officer said he is very choosy about where he sends each press release. He always sends individual emails, and he suggests that if an email “looks like a blast (even a small one)” reporters “will toss it.”

I disagree. Speaking as a former reporter, reporters are single-minded creatures—They want a story. That’s it. Whether it comes in an email blast or off the back of a corn flake box does not matter.

I do agree that you have to be choosy to prevent reporter ennui. I use “email blasts” or individual mailings, or a combination, depending on the story—but even with the blasts, I hand pick the recipients each time.

However the art can get pretty icky, sticky, tricky. There are times when you and your institution are proud of an event, but it’s as likely to get press coverage as my husband is to give up smoking (sorry darling). And the last thing you want is for reporters to stop opening your emails because you send out too many flimsy releases.

So far my approach has been NOT to send the “necessary but not hot news” release to individual reporters. Instead I send it to general news desks, such as tips@newspaper.com (but what if the news editor opens this!!??) and to community media who just may take an interest. If my institutional conscience is really nagging, I also send it to a few known beat reporters with a gentle note asking them to pass it on if someone happens to be collecting stories on this topic.

It’s not perfect. And I’ve known at least one purist who would say, “Just don’t send them out.” That’s tough to swallow.

What strategies do you use to get out those “necessary-but-not-hot” releases?


SHIRLEY SKEEL is Media Relations Manager at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She can be reached at sskeel@pugetsound.edu

your pr career… One Year Down, 60 More To Go! by Courtney Vaught

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As one of my co-workers said, 23 is not an envious age. You are trying to find your place in the workforce; you aren’t sure what you really want to do with your life; you have far too many awkward moments, and things are uncertain—especially in this economy.

Now you have at least one year of experience behind you. Whether you’re happy with your current company or thinking of moving on, take time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished. In doing so, you might get a better idea of where you want to go and how to get there.

I’d like to share some of the advice I received from a career consulting professional who’s been in the business for 25 years. His name is Jeff Vaught, but I call him Dad. (Don’t think I’m mentioning him just because he is family; he really does have some great insights into career development.)

Before you start thinking promotion or job search, first, ask yourself:

  • What are your professional goals?
  • Does your current position allow you to pursue your goals?

If you want to continue along the path you’re in currently, ask yourself:

  • What have you done to earn a promotion?
  • Can you handle the greater responsibility?
  • What added value will you bring?

If your employer is a little too comfortable with you in your current position and will not consider a promotion, then start looking elsewhere. Remember to stay stealthy during the search, and take extra precautions.

  • If posting your resume while employed, keep it confidential—don’t list the name of your current employer.
  • Don’t take calls during work unless it’s easy to do so—running out in the hall to talk on your cell phone is painfully obvious.
  • Don’t fall into the counter offer trap—if you’ve tried to negotiate a promotion with your employer and they didn’t listen to your concerns, don’t assume things will change if you stay

Do you have questions or concerns about where your career is headed? Do you have other suggestions to share? Leave comments!
We are all in the same boat and can always use the advice.

COURTNEY VAUGHT is a member-at-large of PRSA New Professionals Section. You can reach her at vaughtc20@gmail.com or @CourtV. If you have more in-depth career questions for her dad, Jeff Vaught, you can reach him at jejucoal78@msn.com.