communications

Where’s my news release? Dos and don’ts of PR distribution by Zaneta Chuniq Inpower

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The goal of every news release is to become accessible by its target audience through a selected medium. In current times, many articles may be published online via media websites and/or printed for distribution inside magazines, newspapers, newsletters, etc.

For those who have the responsibility of producing media awareness about a brand, product or client there are definite protocols to making sure that your news is read, heard and distributed successfully. As a new professional, it is important to safeguard your reputation as a PR professional and that of your company and/or business by keeping in mind these helpful tips when drafting and distributing your news release.

  1. Don’t blindly email journalists and bloggers
  2. Do use your own social media networks to distribute
  3. Do make your headline catchy and interesting
  4. Do take time to make the intro/opening engaging.
  5. Do write your news release to your audience. If its not relevant, no journalist or media source will pick up your release
  6. Do research for your pitch and have all your facts and information organized
  7. Don’t email journalists attachments! This may lead to an instant delete or even block from their inbox.
  8. Do spell check, then read your news release aloud. Any typos or grammatical errors will ultimately lead to your news being discarded and ruins your reputation as a PR professional.
  9. Do optimize your news release for SEO. Use necessary tags and relevant vocabulary for your news release to become searchable online.
  10. Don’t send any news releases that do not contain news!
  11. Don’t use fancy fonts, colors, font styles and other text attributes in your news release. Keep it simple.
  12. Don’t make your news release too long! Keep it under 650 words maximum
  13. Do include relevant links for background information. Make it easy for your journalist to conduct further research.

In summary, simply because a PR pro has submitted a news release to a journalist or editor does not mean that it will be printed or read! To help alleviate the pressure of playing the waiting game with media outlets and obsessively checking your Google Alerts or media monitoring service, the above tips will help you get your news to its desired audience.

Zaneta Chuniq InpowerZaneta Chuniq Inpower is owner and president of Chuniq PR, an independent media and marketing management firm. Additionally, she is the digital communications coordinator for Douglas J Aveda Institutes and Salons, editor  for Supreme Design Publishing and social media manager for COIN Handlers Management. Her personal interests include reading, international travel and culture and community revitalization. Inpower received her B.A. in advertising from Michigan State University. Zaneta Chuniq Inpower is a member of the Central Michigan PRSA chapter and is the PRSA New Professionals Section Executive Committee Blog Co-Chair.

Web Writing 101 by Elizabeth Rhoads

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Shortly after I had accepted my position as web content coordinator at Lycoming College, I had the opportunity to attend Neilsen Norman Group Usability Week in 2011. I’ve always considered myself to be a strong writer, but I never realized the notable differences between print and web writing.

The difference comes down to this: just because we can read at or above college level doesn’t mean we want to, especially when we’re online. Consider the atmosphere when you’re reading a book and when you’re reading something online. Usually reading a print piece lends itself to a quiet area, whereas online articles are often read on the go, with a lot of distractions.

Online content should be written with this fact in mind.

So, here are a few tips to transform your print writing into effective web content:

  • Keep all content between a sixth and eighth grade reading level
  • Use short words
  • Online text should be 50% less than the print version
  • Include information that people really need to know, rather than what you want to tell them
  • Break content into chunks (one idea and a maximum of three sentences per chunk)
  • Use bullet points – lists in bullet points are read 70% of the time (compared to 55% read in paragraph form)
  • Use a sans-serif font
  • Use size 10-12 font – don’t go any smaller, it’s hard on the eyes
  • Keep pages short, but if you need to make a page longer, include a summary at the top of the page, followed by descriptive subheading so that it’s easy to navigate

Remember, simple is better.  The simpler you keep it, the longer your audience will stay engaged with your website.

Elizabeth RhoadsElizabeth Rhoads currently works as web content coordinator for a small liberal arts college in Central Pennsylvania. She graduated from Susquehanna University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Communications. She is an alumna of the White House Internship Program.  Rhoads serves the PRSA New Professionals Section Executive Committee as programming director and chair-elect.

Intro to Government PR by Doug Matthews

Heather Sliwinski 1 Comment

I’ll be honest. I never made a formal decision to get into government communications. Would you believe that I was actually a forensic science major for my first two years of school? Yep. I wanted to be CSI before David Caruso inexplicably made it seem cool. Now, how David Caruso and “cool” found their way into the same sentence is a subject for another time. Suffice it to say, I’m a bit of a nerd at heart.

It was a combination of life experience, timely opportunities and great mentors that guided me to where I am today, and I couldn’t be happier with the result. So here’s my first bit of advice: create your own opportunities, but don’t get so focused that you fail to see the new, unexpected ones that present themselves along the way.

I joke that I was “infected” with the public service mindset. I blame my parents. My father was a career law enforcement officer and police chief, and my mother was an emergency room nurse. The first “marketing” I ever did professionally was working at the city pool, getting families to show up for “Dive-In Movies”…in between fits of whistle-blowing and telling kids to “walk, not run” on the pool deck.

So, after an epiphany while sitting in Applied Calculus II (another interesting, albeit off-topic story), I left class and changed my major to advertising and public relations. I secured my first internship as a sophomore doing marketing and events for the county recreation department. (Another aside here: get as much job experience as you can before you graduate–it’s the single best thing you can do to differentiate yourself from the thousands of other job-hunting graduates entering the work force.)

I continued that work until graduation, with a short stint in between studying in London and interning with Fleishman-Hillard. It was during this venture into corporate public relations that I had my second epiphany. The assignments were interesting enough, and the people were great, but I had trouble finding satisfaction with the work I was doing. For me, there was a satisfaction and fulfillment that I got from serving the public that I didn’t get when serving a client or a private industry.

That’s something I love most about this career: the absence of a traditional “target market.” Sure, you’ll always have specific audiences for specific programs, but government service is a great equalizer. After all, everyone needs their garbage picked up, right? And every one of you expects the lights and sirens to arrive when you call 911.

There’s also unbelievable variety in what our team does. I mentioned garbage collection and public safety, but we also do engineering. We do public health. We manage parks. We build roads. The work we do truly touches the lives of everyone who lives here in Austin and I get to be a part of that. We help people understand, appreciate and connect with the products and services they have invested in as taxpayers. We help make good government.

In my role, I get to be both the PR pro and the media pro. We run an in-house agency, with teams spanning media relations, Web development, employee communications, project management, community engagement, marketing, events and interactive media. We have our own television station and graphic design shop. The opportunities for learning and development are limited only by your desire and willingness to expand your horizons. The work environment is what you make of it: there is more space to try new things and take risks than you might think!

We do, though, have to talk about the other side of that coin. When you sign up as a public servant, you do so with the understanding that virtually everything you do is public. The work you do belongs to the taxpayers, and they can be a fickle and demanding audience. Likewise, there’s always an undercurrent of politics. Ultimately, my boss (the city manager) works for seven elected officials, so you can’t escape it. You can, though, maintain a distinct line between political and professional communication.

If it sounds interesting, you can start by looking for internships in your local jurisdiction. I learned as much interning with Orange County Parks & Recreation as I did in four years of coursework. Get involved with the International City/County Managers Association or the City/County Communications and Marketing Association. Look into public administration and public affairs courses as a supplement to your normal coursework.

The work might not be for everyone, but for someone with the passion to serve, a love for the art of governing, and the willingness to wear virtually every hat in the haberdashery (or millinery), there’s not a better job on the planet. 

 

Doug Matthews is an 18-year veteran of local government communications, currently serving as the chief communications director for the City of Austin, Texas. He served similar roles for the Florida cities of Largo and Clearwater before becoming an adopted Texan in 2009. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of South Florida.

Intro to Healthcare PR Part Two by Debbie Harvey, APR

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Let me start by saying that growing up, I never considered myself to be a science nerd.  Science was never really something around which I foresaw my adult life revolving.  As a student, it stood for spilled chemicals in laboratories, confounding physics equations and the dissection of poor, defenseless organisms.  However, a turning point that perhaps, looking back nearly 20 years later, drove me toward the scientific side of public relations was the day my best friend and I had to make up a high school biology class after hours.

The assignment wound up being a horrendous but hilarious experience—we had to dissect a fetal pig, separating and marking each organ.  While we vacillated between bouts of laughing and gagging, the lab door opened and in walked our admissions director—and actor Martin Short!  He was filming in New York City and looking at our school for his daughter at the time.  He took one look at our messy “operating table,” our filthy lab coats and our horrified faces and said, smirking, “You two aren’t enjoying this too much, I see,” to which I responded, “Imagine how this pig feels!”  I was already lobbying for the rights of the patient at a young age.

But I digress. Suffice to say, the 15-year-old me did not prophecy that the 30-(ahem)-something-year-old version would spend her days researching countless medical conditions, reading scientific abstracts, meeting with advocacy organizations, developing social media programs and media training healthcare professionals and patients.  But that’s what I do nearly every day after catching up on the morning’s news about this ever-evolving industry. And, admittedly, I still love it.  So long as no one hands me a scalpel and a pig.

How Do You Define Healthcare PR?

I’ve come to find throughout my career that healthcare PR is somewhat undefinable, which is what makes it undeniably exciting.  Healthcare is a niche that is constantly changing, given legal and regulatory challenges in spaces like social media, coupled with the powerful changes that healthcare reform has – and will continue to have – for patients, healthcare professionals, advocacy and payors.  For me, PR wasn’t a hard career choice, as it’s the perfect confluence of strategizing, socializing, researching and writing. In fact, I’m pretty sure it found me.  The healthcare focus, though, was a happy accident, one that started as just a job but wound up becoming a fulfilling career. 

Like nothing else, healthcare PR provides the satisfaction of knowing you are helping people at the end of the day: helping patients better understand what a diagnosis may mean; helping patients and loved ones manage through life’s health challenges with tools and resources to be better informed and empowered; helping discover ways to jumpstart and facilitate meaningful conversations between patients and healthcare professionals that may not have been happening. Some of the most moving moments in my career have been when I’ve helped coordinate patient speaking opportunities at client headquarters, bringing together employees across multiple disciplines to hear first-hand how their work positively impacts people’s lives.  It’s a gratifying feeling to know that an idea you had, a meeting to which you contributed or a program you built went to helping people get better and feel better at the end of the day.

Your Career Roadmap

As a new professional, you may occasionally (or often) feel like a sponge, looking to soak up as much information as you can.  Healthcare PR offers an opportunity to never lose that feeling: continuous environmental, economic and societal changes make healthcare PR a rewarding challenge, and I would encourage you to learn more about it.  At GolinHarris, we often say healthcare PR is the art and science of blending clinical understanding and knowledge with best practices of consumer marketing.  But regardless of what area of PR you may choose to pursue, seek to be challenged every day.  Read industry publications.  Get more involved with PRSA and network.  Find a mentor.  Ask questions.  Don’t balk at “no.”  Learn and adjust.  And above all, have a good time doing your job. 

Debbie HarveyDebbie Harvey, MS, APR, is a senior vice president in healthcare at GolinHarris.  She holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University in integrated marketing communications and is president-elect of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Chicago Chapter.  A Big Apple native, she has learned to love the Windy City nearly as much. Follow her on Twitter, connect with her on Facebook, or email her at dharvey@golinharris.com.

Summer Book Club–June: UnMarketing Discussion

Heather Sliwinski 4 Comments

“If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.”  That, in a nutshell, is what defines “UnMarketing”. 

Why do marketers, in a world where consumers strive to fast forward through commercials and place their phone numbers on “do not call” lists, continue to use old ways of marketing that they themselves detest?  “Why do we market to people the way we hate to be marketed to?” asks author Scott Stratten.

Enter UnMarketing: a new way of marketing based on creating connections, building relationships and continually providing value to your contacts using traditional media and social media outlets.  Stratten urges us to “Stop marketing. Start engaging.”

One of the biggest ways Stratten suggests to build relationships with consumers is by positioning yourself, or your company, as an expert in your field.  “When you position yourself as an expert with useful information for people, your marketplace will always have a need for that information,” says Stratten.  Therefore, if a consumer does not currently have use for your product, they will still be interested in communicating with you based on the knowledge you have to share.

So, you have knowledge to share and a few contacts to share with.  Stratten recommends building a social media platform.  With social media tools expanding at what seem like an exponential rate, one cannot possibly use every service.  Stratten suggests starting small.  Pick one place, be it Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and invest your time in it until you build a strong following.  Stratten outlines three steps to successfully build your platform:

1. Build traction: be consistent with your updates and spread them out over the week.  Share information and respond to others’ updates.  Create a presence.

2. Build momentum: focus on strengthening the connections you have instead of only increasing followers.  Take your conversation to another level, like meeting face-to-face at conferences or Tweetups.

3. Expand: in order to take your relationships to the next level, grow your platform to other social media sites to better engage with your connections. 

Once you have followers, it becomes important to keep your followers.  Every communication should focus on creating valuable content and keeping your followers’ trust.  Stratten emphasizes that one mediocre experience can lead a customer to shop around elsewhere:  “One of the things companies need to realize is that they are only as good as the weakest experience of their customer.  Many businesses are guilty of creating a great experience to get a first sale from you, but are really bad at keeping that level of service going.” 

Stratten describes this “Experience Gap” as the space between the best services and the worst experience a customer receives.  Every business should strive for the smallest Experience Gap because other companies can sneak in through the cracks.

Because no company can afford gaps in trust or experience, the most important rule to follow is to be authentic and transparent.  Being authentic means being yourself.  When you stop trying to be your competitor and start showing what makes you different, you play to your strengths and position yourself for success.  Being transparent means being honest.  Honesty is just a good business rule to follow anyway, and it helps keep the trust of your customers.

These concepts merely scratch the surface of UnMarketing, but they demonstrate that Stratten believes engagement and sincere relationships are the foundation for any business that can no longer be ignored.

Share your thoughts on UnMarketing below!

  1. What did you agree with and why? What did you disagree with?
  2. Stratten provided the advantages and disadvantages for each social media outlet like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Have you found a favorite site to engage with your customers?  Are there any pros or cons you would add to any of the site?
  3. UnMarketing featured an entire section on viral marketing.  Have you found success with a viral video? How did you handle the loss of control? How did you connect beyond number of views?
  4. Stratten provides helpful tips to connect with consumers using more traditional means of marketing like tradeshows, newsletters and seminars.  What other ways are you creating conversation beyond social media?  Do you think our society still finds value in traditional media?
  5. Networking is either your biggest fear or your greatest ally as a new professional.  We’ve all seen the “Card Collector” and all strive to be the “Great One”.  Stratten suggests listening to others, being yourself and enjoying the conversation, not just seeing the event as a glorified business card exchange.  What suggestions do you have for other new pros learning how to network? 
  6. What is the most valuable lesson you will take away from this book? Any specific ideas you will adopt?

Stay tuned for the announcement of our July Summer Book Club read!