Flack's Revenge

PR Manager's Secret to Client and Team Success? Try RSOI!

Managing PR teams comes with its share of challenges.  You want your teams to have what they need to succeed - the information, resources and support of clients and management.  You want to make sure that they have the proper training and know-how, and are well steeped in PR best practices and the proscribed methods of the agency.

Above and beyond that, you want to get out of the way and let them do their jobs.  Nothing saps morality more quickly than constant status checks and endless reporting procedures.  The latter also adds a big time sink.

At the same time, as a manager you need to make sure that the teams are firing on all cylinders, and hitting the mark in terms of generating results.  You need information.

There is no better recipe for taking the temperature of clients than to connect with them live, in real time.  That means sitting in on the team calls, and often picking up the phone to speak with them in between.  This is not necessarily to check up on the PR team and foster some kind of nefarious back channel of communications.  It is to show that you are there, that you care and are adding value to the account.

Also, it is critical to have planning and review cycles, and work together with the team and client to develop a PR plan that lays out the anticipated program road map for the next 6 months, and sets measurable goals.

I have found that you can take the pulse of an account in just 3-5 minutes, by having the team deliver an oral RSOI report for each.  RSOI is an acronym (pr. "R-Soy") that stands for Results, Setbacks, Opportunities and Initiatives, as follows:

Results:  Is the team generating results that meet the client's expectations?  What specific results have been delivered recently, and how do these mesh with goals defined in the PR plan?  This is arguably the most important part of the equation, because without results nothing else really matters.

Setbacks:  Any program sometimes suffers setbacks, and it is instructive to get the bad as well as the good on the table for discussion and planning.

Opportunities:  Looking ahead, what are the opportunities that the team can leverage to make some noise and advance the goals of the program?  This generally does not refer to one-off opportunities, but major trends or developments.  Is there big news from the client side on the horizon?  Has a top competitor gone belly up?  Did the Wall Street Journal or Gartner just identify a trend that indicates the need for your client's solution?  It is important that your team be on the lookout for marketplace trends and related news developments that can be used to help move the ball forward.

Initiatives:  It is important to have a shared sense of mission with clients, and part of this means working together on initiatives towards goals.  In evaluating where the program has been and where it is going, it helps to understand what initiatives - e.g. projects, such as trade shows, tours, events  - are in the works, and what this means for how the team will be spending its time.

RSOI provides a window into the status and direction of accounts, and can be an indispensable tool for getting a good sense of what is happening across teams and clients.

What Sold me on Twitter

My news radar has been tuned to "Twitter + PR" for awhile now, so I guess it is time that I shared my latest thoughts about the service.

Initially I was very skeptical about it.  Twitter seemed like just one more distraction, one more information channel to feed and another social network to master.  Do people really care what I am doing or thinking from moment to moment?  And do we need more noise, I wondered?

Anyway, I have since reconsidered.  What led to the turnabout?

I have to admit, peer pressure played a large role.  When something gets a lot of buzz, you want to better understand it before dismissing it out of hand.

As a PR person, though, what clinched it for me was the cajoling of my sister-in-law's brother Tony, a Web 2.0 entrepreneur who got coverage for his company on TechCrunch through Twitter.

When I asked him how he did this, he told me that it was really pretty simple.

Tony followed the TechCrunch writer on Twitter and at some point discovered that they had mutual leisure-time interests, which led to Tony reaching out, a dialog and eventual coverage.

As I said in one of my posts on multi-channel engagement:

...multiple channels mean many different ways to engage.  Collectively, the various communications and social media channels surround people.  They lend context and tone to communications. The more channels you can master, and the more you participate in the various channels, the more your communications can be on target and in context. 

Frequently, multiple channels can work together ... When done right, your approach is not considered something to be avoided, or even pitching, but becomes part of the conversation.

Twitter represents one such channel that is becoming increasingly important.  And, as I also blogged previously, some are encouraging the use of Twitter as a preferred channel for delivering pitches.

This also led me to wonder about whether there is a directory of journalists on Twitter.  I searched a bit and found this site called Media People Using Twitter, started by The Creative Team, a PR shop out of North Carolina.   It is a Wiki, so people can ostensibly add to it.

Not a tremendous list, but those in tech PR should recognize some very respected tech journo names.

For those just getting started on Twitter, there are many resources out there.  I found much of it not to be very helpful, including this video which is cute but very high level.   This one page I found on PCMech.com (Twitter: The User Manual You Can't Find) offers some excellent and easy-to-follow tips.

But there is no substitute for just jumping in, it is easy enough to get started.  I have by no means mastered it but am working at becoming a more prolific Twitterer or Tweeter or whatever.  If you want to follow me and keep me honest at this, please do so by clicking here.

Silver Lining in Enterprise Tech Spending

The New York Times had a couple of excellent articles yesterday, which should be of interest to tech PR and social media PR folks.

There is a silver lining in enterprise tech spending numbers, and it is in the clouds (both literally and figuratively).

The article: Gartner Tech Forecast: Cloudy and Getting Cloudier breaks down a recent Gartner report on the subject:

Spending on information technology worldwide, Gartner projects, will grow at a rate a bit higher than global economic growth — up 10 percent (4.5 percent adjusted for a weak dollar), to $3.4 trillion this year. The weakness in the United States will be offset by the strength in emerging economies...

But the information technology sector has become so large and so central to the world’s economy that the spending total is not the place to look. The top-line numbers, almost inevitably, mask the ferment beneath.

The "ferment," according to writer Steve Lohr's analysis of the Gartner report, relates to the impact and growth of cloud computing, a technology which I have previously blogged about.   Cloud computing (Wikipedia definition) is having a disruptive effect on the IT sector.  Its adoption will mean good things for those who supply related hardware, software and services, and bad things for other tech vendors.

If you are in tech PR, what are you seeing in terms of the state of business?

Also, in A Campaign Not Filtered by the Press, David Carr wrote about how Barack Obama is a taking his campaign directly to the people via social and mobile technologies.

Reimagining PR: Out from Behind the Curtains

Lying on the beach for five days at a stretch - as I have done while on vacation in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina this week - puts one in a reflective mood.  And one of the things I have been thinking about is that it would be nice to offer a positive counterbalance to my PR Death Watch series, my blog chronicle of the growing number of anachronisms in our field.

After all, it is fairly easy to pick off the profession's old and tired habits, and ingrained ways of working that no longer seem to be effective.  But what about positive signs of change?  Why not propose a vision of where PR should go next, and how we can adapt and continue to grow?

There were many good questions raised in the comments and posts I referenced last week in PR Apocalypse Now.  My Reimagining PR series will strive to answer these questions and lay out a roadmap and direction, based on my own thoughts and by referencing the writings of others who are speaking out on the topic.

One positive development has been that PR people are increasingly coming out from behind the curtains, proving to the world that we can speak in our own genuine voices, and be smart and articulate.  This may be no great revelation to people who actually work in the field, but might come as a surprise to those who hold a cynical view of PR.

For too long we have labored in obscurity.  "You are not the story!" we have constantly been reminded.  Although this approach seemed to work well for years, it has not done us any favors because it has not promoted an understanding of the field, and, not understanding or knowing, people tend to assume the worst. 

Now, whether it is on their own blogs, or by commenting or posting on others', or through Twitter, PR are people are revealing themselves, cultivating their online personalities and personal brands (there is a cool blog to check out that is devoted to the topic of personal brands).

In growing numbers, PR people are launching their own blogs (see Brendan Cooper's PR Friendly list for August, which cites the top 100 PR blogs - I am thrilled that Flack's Revenge is now on the list).

Back in May, Web 2.0 Working Group member Stowe Boyd proposed something called MicroPR as an antidote to pitch spam:

So, this is an additional argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model. In the open, that can't lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God.

Blogging and other forms of social media have driven an ethos of greater transparency.  While all this transparency presents obvious challenges to those who want discipline and control in communications, it also presents opportunities for those who are first wiling to acknowledge reality and then take this understanding and adapt.

We are PR, hear us roar, it is a beautiful thing!

Hail to Election Season

I don't do political PR, and this blog only dabbles in politics, yet as a PR person I must say I love campaign season.

Particularly when it comes to something as prominent as a presidential election, there is no better time to study communications strategies with the goal of learning about what works well and what doesn't. 

You can learn a lot about candidates by watching how they react to world events of the day, and by considering how they talk about their policies, campaign themes and how they communicate news and milestones.

On a second level, assuming you are behind the candidate, you want to be assured that he or she is savvy in terms of communicating and harnessing all available communications channels, as this will come in handy in governing and carrying out policies should the person win the election. (of course, the opposite applies too; as we have seen, sophisticated communications gambits can also be used to advance  ill-conceived policies  - see my post Stepford Wonks).

Finally, from a purely technical viewpoint - regardless of how you feel about the candidates and their policies - election season offers a good opportunity to watch a race and see how the candidates' moves effect media coverage and the polls - and to deconstruct all this so that you can learn and apply these lessons to your field of PR.

The media often helps by conveniently breaking things down, as much coverage these days focuses on tactics and the race rather than the so-called substance  (we can debate over whether this is a good or bad thing, but let's face it, it is a reality).

For example, just today the Washington Post had a great article about the Obama campaign's extensive use of online and mobile communications channels - see Obama's Wide Web.  And, just a few days ago, the NY Times covered the ups and downs of responding to smears on the campaign trail in the article How to Erase that Smea..., offering a lesson in reputation management.

Just Send us the Press Release Please!

I joined the PR profession by way of engineering to sales support to tech marketing and then sales, until I finally realized that the career aptitude test that I took way back in the beginning - right after I graduated, the one that said "no, dummy you are not an engineer or a sales guy, you are a PR executive"  - was actually right, even though I had little idea at the time what a PR exec was or did.

And when I was in the marketing rung of my career, and just starting to flirt with PR, us marketing types used to wink knowingly amongst ourselves when discussing the proper role of the press releases in PR. The good journalists, it was said, viewed press releases as the last resort for a good story.  In short, the mere existence of a press release did not equate to a good story, and vice versa - good journalists could sniff out and write stories without the crutch of a press release.

However my experiences in the real world, working first as a freelancer and then at a PR agency for a total for twelve years has not squared with this assumption.  It seems that, for all the criticism of press releases - both the quantity and quality of them - the news media is conditioned to expect that anything newsworthy should be accompanied by a press release.

Unfailingly, when we set out to promote any kind of news, a good segment of the target media list asks to see a press release before committing to a briefing.  That is why I am convinced that the press release, whether it is a traditional one or of the updated social media release variety, is not going away anytime soon.

And that is why I implore our teams, regardless of what other materials we are using to support the campaigns, to also include press releases.  It it just easier than explaining why we don't have one, and if putting the information in press release format somehow validates its news value, then why not?

Crowdsourcing and Collaborating on the News

My colleague Chris Michaels blogged just the other day about crowd sourcing news in his post on Fusion PR forum. 

This is the flip side to User-generated PR, a topic I just wrote about.  Crowd sourcing and collaborating on news covers the demand side, drawing on the reach (if not wisdom) of the crowds to connect bloggers and news writers with sources and story fodder.  It is a fascinating concept, and one that illustrates yet another way that the PR business is changing every day in response to Web 2.0 and social media.

One such service that has gotten lots of attention lately is HelpAReporter.com.  Peter Shankman, the site's creator, lives and works not far from Fusion PR's office.  He came in as a guest speaker for our internal education series this week.  It sounds like his service is really starting to get some traction.

I have signed up, and it is indeed sending a steady pipeline of qualified inquiries, three times a day.

Also, I learned about Sally Whittle's GettingInk website when she commented on my blog.  According to Sally:

This service has been running for several months now, as has a UK blog (run by me) called Getting Ink Requests, which provides free media requests by email, RSS, Twitter and on the blog itself. We're still quite new but have more than 1,500 regular subscribers and growing!

Another site I learned about recently is Andy Fowler's NewsVetter.  We got to chatting based on a conversation thread on my blog about poor PR writing   (with blogging you get collaboration, knowledge discovery and networking all rolled into one, isn't it a beautiful thing?)

I spoke with Andy at length about his novel concept.  He has developed a site (still in beta) that lets people not only submit stories, but also provides a format that guides users through the process of writing a pitch.  It provides pointers along the way, alongside entry fields for different parts of the pitch, and a handy checklist at the end.

If it is not cure for poor PR writing, at least it gets you thinking about how to organize your thoughts.

Further, the site promises:

News media review the submissions, provide feedback in the form of ratings and comments and, if warranted, contact news presenters to discuss possible publication of their story ideas.

He lets you share the pitch publicly, or you can mark it as private and instruct the site to forward your pitch to the desired targets.

On the demand side, reporters can sign up and indicate their interests.  This is a key difference from the more established media databases, which are not opt-in (the last time I checked, anyway).

It seems the positioning he is taking is to be a step up from the sites that simply broker story opportunities and PR connections.  His site seems to want to go to the next step to ensure that interchanges are productive.  He spoke about some interesting plans such as adding all kinds of metrics tracking.

Andy impressed me with his research, and is obviously well connected.  He has spoken with many influential people and it seems like he put a lot of thought and effort into the site.

Andy has some ambitious plans and may well be interested in taking on the heavyweights like Cision and Vocus.  Although he has quite a ways to go, some very respected names in tech journalism that tech PR folks like myself know well and respect have signed on,  earning credibility  points with me and showing me that he may just be onto something with NewsVetter.

Here are a couple of other interesting concepts that I will explore further and blog about in a future post:

Fast Company writer Francisco Dao has created a Fast Company Buzz Pitch portal for people to pitch their buzz worthy stories.  People vote for the submitted ideas, and the highest rated ones make his column.

And a service called Handshake 2.0, which my colleague Bennie pointed out to me today, appears to do the same thing.

PR Apocalypse Now

There was a new round of teeth gnashing over the state and future of PR driven by posts on some of the highest profile blogs earlier this week.

Anyone who cares about the field should have a quick read here if you haven't already tuned into the dialog.  The posts, combined with what must be hundreds of comments, collectively showed an intense debate and many different sides of the issue.  Commenters included names you will recognize  - those who have been vocal about PR's evolving role - and many others.

Here's a blow by blow (not literally, but almost) account and analysis:

First Rubel riffed off Scoble's post about a PR-less launch, and the diminishing need for PR to help bloggers find stories (Scoble's post is a good read on how information flows and people find stories to write about these days).

Steve Rubel said in his post Does the Thrill of the Chase Make PR Obsolete?

It's my view that increasingly, bloggers (and maybe journos too) simply don't want our help. Many bloggers - particularly those who cover tech - love to discover new things and experience them on their own, unaided by PR.

So you have Rubel, one of the top bloggers who also happens to work in the field for one of the largest agencies, openly questioning the relevancy of PR for bloggers and journalists.

(OK, I have sometimes been critical of the field, and also work in it, but have never questioned our relevancy and besides I don't have nearly the megaphone that Rubel does).

He ends his post on a note of "adapt or die" which I can't argue with, that has formed the basis of my PR Death Watch series.

Mark Hopkins on Mashable had some positive things to say about PR's evolving role, and how we can adapt, in his post The Changing Role of Public Relations:

Those that position themselves in the mindset that they aren’t gatekeepers for information but connectors for entrepreneurs and resources for journalists will achieve the most success for the clients they do represent.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch said in his provocatively titled post The PR Roadblock on the Road to Blissful Blogging:

I can't speak for big media who’ve been in the game for years and years, but from my experience blogging for a few years, I agree that PR as a profession is broken...  PR is the last refuge when I am attacking a story...  they keep trying to put out the fires I am starting.

What I think is happening is that the over eager (and admittedly sometimes clueless) PR hordes are colliding with the realities of a social media dominated world (in which people just to have to tell the world exactly what is on their minds, no holding back, need to fill all those Tweets and posts) creating a caustic brew that I fully expect will implode in an apocalypse at any time.

The blogosphere and PR communities will square off, breaking into small camps that take up crude weapons, duking it out, Road Warrior style, until one side kills off the other (actually, that would be  something as many PR people are themselves bloggers these days).

Seriously, like the debate over pitch spam, it gets tiresome after awhile and one hopes that we all learn our lessons, adapt, and just move on.

I also think this increasingly points to the need for evolving approaches to PR measurement.

It is simple math, as media multiplies, attention divides, and it will increasingly become more of a challenge for PR to prove its value.

When compared with other marketing vehicles, PR has been shown to deliver outsized returns in the past (see my post on Fusion PR Forum) and those who know what they are doing will continue to do so.  Nothing like good solid ROI to silence the critics and prove value.

Turning PR into a Sales Lead Generation Machine

In my last post I discussed that the best job security for PR in a down economy is to make sure your programs are really working (of course, you should always strive for this).  And the more your efforts can be shown to have a real impact on sales, the better the "insurance" against cutbacks in the program.

Fusion PR CEO Jordan Chanofsky blogged about this a couple of months ago in an  excellent and detailed post on the Fusion PR Forum.  I provide excerpts from this below, and a few more additional thoughts.

It’s easy to say that PR is part of the selling process. And it is. But to get more specific, I present three reasonably simple ways to make the connection more apparent. I’m overlooking the fact (which is hopefully and abundantly obvious) that PR is a selling tool and the media that we garner is perhaps the best sales support activity.

First, PR needs to be “pegged” to interactive marketing strategies. When combined, these tools are a strong support system for the sales force... For example, we suggest creating a balanced approach of SEM (paid advertising) and SEO... Then use tags within search and social media optimized press releases to maximize impact by helping to ensure that customers are surrounded by a client’s literature when a related search is done.

Another example of integration might be using a press release as the content for an email direct-to-customer campaign rather than adopting overt selling copy. This is especially relevant when the news has tangible selling substance such as a new product or technology. PR copy in advertorials, landing pages and microsites is an extension of this point.

Second, PR does play an active role in customer outreach (in this framework we’ve questioned and considered whether or not “PR” is a correct term for our industry). Over the years, we’ve collaborated with customers, media, and analysts to meet with clients in the context of educational briefings, updates, round tables, and media opportunities. It doesn’t take much to transform these gatherings into sales meetings.

Third, coordinate with the sales force. If sales is reaching out to a particular geography or vertical then the PR effort should shadow the initiative to maximize and broaden the impact. Consider what may be intuitive, but not always top of mind such as: bloghubs (blogs focused on specific areas that are not the megablogs), local broadcast, chamber of commerce events (where customers can participate), customer events (at related conferences), and PR programs set to draw customers to the sales efforts (i.e. distribution of a media alert re: an education briefing on small business storage solutions at the local chamber of commerce).

Also, why not take the advice from my User-Generated PR post and make sure that your clients are listed in the wealth of online buyers' guides, directories and references - and that the entries are both up-to-date and interesting?  If search engines are a buyer's first stop, online references are frequently the second.

Make sure you cover what I'll call the buy-side research analysts in your efforts.  Sure, it is great to get into the reports of any and all analysts.   But getting on the radars and into the reports of those who sell information and advice to end user organizations (in tech PR, we call these IT advisory firms, the Gartners of the world) is a great way to build credibility and generate qualified leads. 

Make sure you are doing enough bread and butter product PR.  Yeah, an upgrade sometimes does not make a terribly exciting announcement, but it boosts SEO and gives people searching on the related keywords a pointer to info on your products.

It is also important to focus on the vertical industry publications, especially with stories that document customer benefits and ROI.

Our clients have found that great product reviews get the sales phone ringing, so don't neglect the publication testing labs.

Finally, and most important, speak with your clients about their sales efforts.  Are they tracking the connection to PR?  Is there any way to monitor buying signs like increased registration on product info pages back to the program?  Is there some way to implement a closed loop system that makes it easy to connect PR results with sales activity?

PR Job Security in a Down Economy

We were discussing the state of business in a manager's meeting today and the conversation turned to a refrain we have been hearing from people in the industry including friends, clients and investors. 

The buzz is that the single biggest favor PR agencies can be doing for their clients these days in light of the down economy is to make sure that their campaigns are delivering solid ROI.  And compelling ROI now means PR  results that drive customer demand and keep the sales pipeline brimming with leads.

Many people don't understand PR and view it as a sort of the read headed step child of the marketing mix, capable of delivering primarily soft benefits.  It has not helped that many in our profession pursue coverage for the sake of coverage, without much regard for strategy or the connection between PR placements and the buying and selling processes.

There is no better time than now to take a good hard look at your PR practices and programs and make sure they are working.   This means showing some connection between PR results and common objectives such boosting awareness and building brand.  And the most compelling results these days are ones that can be shown to have a direct and real impact on revenue.

I'll be blogging more about PR and demand generation, so please stay tuned, and thanks for reading.