The February edition of Insights from the PR blogosphere is the first of what we hope will become a regular feature. For now, we are keeping our roundups monthly but may decide to pick up the pace and deliver weekly roundups in the future. As always, we welcome our readers’ thoughts.

10 ways to get coverage in local press
What does your client do? (No, really)
This is merely a sample of the great content published by the Getting Ink blog. Their post on knowing what your client does and being able to explain it in 20 words or less should act as a warning. Stay away from hyperbole and meaningless buzzwords!

For beginners, Linda Jones’s post on generating local coverage provides a helpful list of things to keep in mind. Don’t make the mistake of sending every story to the news desk, find out who writes about the kind of story you’re pitching and take a targeted approach. On a similar note to Linda’s post, Cece from PR Meets Marketing shares four tips startups can use to generate media coverage.

Angryjournalist.com — Things Are Tough All Over
Over the past few days, the Angry Journalist link has made multiple appearances in my Google Reader, being picked up by the likes of Michael Tangeman and Tom Murphy. It seems the AngryJournalist inspired Kevin from the Bad Pitch Blog to remind us of the inevitable - for each of us the day will come when an angry journalist gives us an ear full. He suggests we don’t take it personally.
The Future of Blog Outreach
How Far Should We Really Go to Please Bloggers?
Conversations about blogger relations continue with Melanie Seasons weighing in on what she thinks the future of blogger outreach holds and Jennifer Mattern questioning how far out of our way we should go to please bloggers. This continues to be a hot issue and it’s something we need to write more about, our most recent post on the topic being Fiction: Bloggers are different from other journalists. For those engaging in blogger relations, Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a helpful post that compares six ways to identify top bloggers in any niche.

PR Agency Review Tips, No. 436
When I saw this post by Scott Baradel, I was disappointed we hadn’t thought of it first. The images say it all. Who’s on your account team, really?

Taking issue with tech PR stories drive national coverage
Bring back the news release; forget about social media releases
In his post about catching the attention of national media, Stephen Waddington outlines the challenges PR agencies face and makes some recommendations, saying securing national coverage “requires creativity aligned with the current news agenda, with a fast turnaround best achieved through the use of pre-packaged comment. PRs need to scrutinise the media constantly, hit the phones and make sure spokespeople are available for follow-up.” His post on writing news releases is similarly sagacious. He suggests we get back to basics and focus on writing good news copy.

The junk man talks about PR
I love this post. If Julie gave a similar speech, I’m sure she would get a standing ovation. After having no luck with PR agencies, some companies see better results by taking the work in-house. Julie explains why this isn’t always the best solution and shares advice on how clients and PR agencies can work together to create an environment that’s conducive to success.

Access CNW: A Good Step Forward
Dave Fleet offers CNW some feedback on Access CNW, a new tool that allows their clients to have more control over the news distribution process. We’ve just started testing the tool but are excited at the thought of being able to mange the formatting and editing process online, rather than by phone or email.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, blogger relations, journalists, Access CNW

In case you missed any of these posts the first time around, here’s a roundup of everything we published this month.

Francis
Fiction: PR can’t be measured - Take 2
Fiction: PR can’t be measured - Take 3
RIP, Halifax Daily News
Entrepreneurs should never retire, entrepreneur says
Waterloo’s ‘dormcubator’ a brilliant idea worth duplicating

Danny
How much is enough?
It’s not always about the proof points
The benefit of being in the room

Linda
Components of an integrated PR program: Awards
Components of an integrated PR program: Speaking opportunities
Components of an integrated program: Bylined articles
Learning your whole story from internal knowledge-keepers

Jill
David Akin’s four biggest complaints about PR
PR writing: Stay away from meaningless buzzwords
Evaluating editorial calendar opportunities

inmedia
Canadians rule the media, eh?
No sandwich required
More bad news for the newsroom

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, PR measurement, public relations measurement, public relations programs, PR programs, Halifax Daily News, PR writing, public relations writing, editorial calendars

In today’s instalment of my series about the various components of an integrated PR program, I will talk a little bit about awards.

Publications and conferences have award programs that invite companies that are active in their sectors to nominate themselves for awards. Other awards programs select the nominees and winners based on set criteria, or are selected by esteemed judges and the companies vying for the award have no input or sway in whether they are considered for the award.

How award programs work and the benefits derived from winning such an award can vary widely.

Some awards submissions cost a considerable amount of money in order to even submit a nomination for consideration. In my opinion, any award that you’re paying for is not likely to hold much sway with your prospects as the value is diminished when it’s easily determined that the distinction was bought and paid for.

Nominations themselves can consist of simply a form filled out by a company representative or be as in-depth as requiring support letters and recommendations as well as extensive company documentation. For those private companies preparing complicated nominations, be cognizant of whether the submission process requires you to divulge your financial statements and if so, consider whether the value that would be derived from winning is worth providing your competitors with your company’s revenue and sales data.

Just as preparing a roadmap for editorial calendars and speaking opportunities is helpful for determining your planning horizon, so to is including a nomination schedule for awards. Keep an eye on when submissions are due and what components you’ll need to gather and manage your time accordingly.

Awards for which the winners are selected by expert judges, without the influence of the company itself, are of the most value as they’re entirely impartial and the product or company can legitimately consider their win as signifying that they are genuine leaders in the area for which they’re being recognized. The submission process is easiest too, as no action is required until if and when you’ve already won and the awards organizers are looking to build out profile for collateral or coverage in the associated publication.

Once you’ve won an award, it’s a good idea to publicize it in the form of a news release and a link on your web site. This not only increases your search engine results but also can provide useful ammunition to any prospects that are deliberating on whether to buy your solution. Sometimes the fact that your company or product is award winning can seal the deal as it offers third party validation and will help them sell it up the decision-making chain internally.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, award nominations, awards, public relations program, PR program

Late last year, Linda wrote a primer on editorial calendars. If you are unfamiliar with editorial calendars, you should take a few minutes to read her post.

Although they are put together predominantly by advertising departments looking to focus advertising spends from particular market segments in specific issues, editorial calendars can also provide PR practitioners with a good indication of the types of content the publications are interested in featuring. Depending on the kind of editorial coverage you are seeking, your research may uncover many seemingly relevant editorial calendar opportunities, or just a few. In great part, this will depend on the size of your media landscape, which essentially refers to the number and kinds of media that write about your business, customers, products or services.

To build a comprehensive list of editorial calendar opportunities, you should review the calendars made available by your Tier 1 media targets, those who you believe are likely to have an interest in your story and are the most influential in your space. Once you have done this, you can use an aggregator service like MyEdCals to fill in any blanks. Whatever you do, don’t rely on an aggregator service to do all the work for you. Many are not comprehensive enough and may contain errors.

Once you begin researching editorial calendar opportunities, you will notice many publications provide a very brief description of the stories they are planning to publish. The vague descriptions they offer leave many companies with a long list of editorial calendar opportunities to evaluate. Having a complete picture of the medias’ interest in a specific topic or set of topics can be beneficial, especially when working with customers in different verticals. However, few businesses have the resources necessary to pursue every editorial calendar opportunity that presents itself. Evaluation and prioritization is necessary.

When trying to decide which editorial calendar opportunities are worth investigating, it’s important to keep in mind your business objectives and any success metrics you have agreed upon with your public relations agency or internal team. Some opportunities may appear to be exactly what you are looking for but are in publications that are not typically read by your target audience. In other cases, the description of the opportunity may be very general, listing only “medical technology” or “business intelligence solutions” as the topic, but be in a publication that is widely read by your target audience. When trying to build mindshare in a specific location, geographical distribution may also be an important factor to consider.

The bottom line is that you should only dedicate resources to investigating editorial calendar opportunities that have the potential to move you closer towards meeting business objectives. As long as you have a clear sense of which media are the most influential in your space, selecting the right opportunities to investigate should not be difficult. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by a long list of publications planning to write about the topics that are important to your business. Focus on pursuing the kind of media coverage that will have the largest impact on your objectives and start the investigation process by going after the most high-value opportunities.

Technorati Tags: editorial calendars, editorial opportunities, media coverage, media relations, PR, public relations

Late yesterday, Gawker purported to spill the beans on the secret to all good PR: a sandwich.  The post’s author espoused the virtues of buying reporters lunch and building a face-to-face relationship, and that truly that face time is the secret to all good PR. While I won’t object to the value that’s derived from face-to-face meetings and relationships built, it’s a lot easier said than done when your key media targets are not just around the corner and able to meet up for lunch but instead are part of the global media marketplace, reporting from places as far afield as Hong Kong, Australia, the Netherlands, or throughout the U.S. as do some of our key targets for our clients. If we are truly talking to the correct targets and bringing them the components of our client’s story that they need and want, it’s that intersection of interest that results in positive coverage, not whether we’ve broken bread with the reporter.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, relationship building

itWorld Canada leads its morning news bulletin this morning with a story about a new initiative at technology-focused University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada — a so-called “dormcubator” that will see one of the school’s residences retooled to accommodate 70 students who, it is hoped, will collaborate on new ventures in web, mobile and digital media applications.

Many of the business people quoted in the story applaud the innovative move but caution that it will fail if the proper real-world mentorship is not offered along with the physical infrastructure. It’s a key observation that too many Canadian technology ventures, while brilliant in the development department, are inadequate in the management department.

I am encouraged that the new residence, which will be completed over the summer and begin its programming with the beginning of the new school year in September, has already accepted applicants from the arts, business and other non-technical disciplines. It takes more than just a brilliant idea to create a successful new company.

We’ll keep an eye on this initiative and let our readers know how it’s working.

Technorati Tags: University of Waterloo, dormcubator

In the world of the PR agency, you can never really achieve enough. The nature of the client-agency relationship dictates that clients will always demand more of their PR firm, even if it outperforms all expectations. And why not? It certainly keeps the agency on its toes and companies need to ensure that they continue to generate high value from their PR program. Still, for the PR practitioners working diligently day in and day out, it can sometimes feel like a lot of effort for little thanks. So how do PR folk stay positive in the face of seemingly insurmountable expectation?

For a start, good communication with clients is an important step. Even if the expectation remains tough, ongoing feedback, both positive and otherwise, ensures that the relationship is about more than just the results and helps the PR function to become a more integrated part of the client’s marketing mix. This is beneficial to both sides.

But in addition, PR agencies need to become internally aware of the value of what they are delivering for their clients, and it may require elements other than feedback to bring this perspective to bear.

Probably the most effective way to do this is through the setting of objectives. By establishing in advance with a client what kinds of results would constitute success, it is a simple process to then determine if what is being delivered meets those criteria. Even with set objectives, the client’s appetite for greater and improved results is likely to be undiminished, but the achievement of such objectives offers the PR worker an element of satisfaction that is as vital in this profession as it is in any other.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, client relationships

As part of my continuing series of Francis’s favourite PR fictions, subtitled “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives,” I have written a couple of posts on PR measurement addressing the common myth that straight lines can’t be drawn between a company’s PR efforts and any kind of real evaluative yardsticks. I return to the topic today because I am getting some interesting comments on the subject. Clearly, it’s something that people are keen to explore.

Our approach here at inmedia is to measure outputs, outcomes and impact. In my first post, I described what we mean by outputs, which are little more than the critical path, or a list of how much PR stuff the client is buying. While most PR agencies and practitioners will set clear parameters for their outputs, too few are prepared to go any further than that.

We insist that every program go at least one step beyond this minimal evaluation to set, and measure performance against, objectives for outcomes, or the amount, nature and content of the media and analyst coverage our efforts are expected to generate. In my more than 20 years as a communications practitioner, I have found distressingly few others who will commit to being held accountable for the actual results of their programs in clear, unambiguous terms that allow the client to make a rational ROI analysis about whether the promised level of media and analyst engagement is worth the cost of the program.

Fortunately, there is a growing and increasingly sophisticated audience of both practitioners and clients insisting on this. Many are deploying simple yardsticks that go well beyond what I call “thud value,” or the noise the clippings book makes when you drop it on the boardroom table in the hopes the client will be impressed by the sheer number of column inches. These yardsticks, which we commonly use, include determining which media outlets and analyst firms are the most influential — we designate them Tier 1 — and then telling the client exactly how well the program is expected to do in terms of percentage of Tier 1 targets engaged, types of stories, the nature of the messaging, numbers of analyst briefings, speaking engagements, and so on.

Many practitioners go well beyond this to provide granular analysis of the actual content of the media coverage. Although few of our B2B technology clients generate the volumes of media coverage that make such a statistical exercise either practical or meaningful, I am a huge advocate of media content analysis as both a strategic research and a program evaluation tool. I will write more about this topic in a future post on PR measurement because it deserves fuller treatment.

My second post described how even measuring outcomes often falls short of meaningful evaluation, especially in cases, admittedly rare but real nonetheless, where there is masses of coverage but no persistent impact on the client’s business objectives.

Which brings me to the final, most critical, hardest to implement and most elusive category of objectives we strive to track, impact. I will present case studies over my next several posts to illustrate how many of these have been used to help our clients calculate a reliable and meaningful ROI on their PR spend, but here is a range of common metrics that can be used to measure the impact a program has on everyday business objectives:

• Web traffic, measured in hits to a company site, Google mentions, search engine rankings, and so on.
• Demand creation, or what used to be known as lead generation. I like the newer term because it distinguishes between mere enquiries and actual demand for the product or service.
• Sales cycle acceleration.
• Customer interest in the media coverage.
• Investment secured.
• Increased sales, revenues and profit. (Now THAT is what we’re really talkin’ about!)

I’d be intrigued to hear from others as to what they think of these metrics, and also to hear about other yardsticks that are used. Subsequent posts will deal with how the data required to deploy these metrics can be gathered, as well as presenting, as mentioned, specific case study examples.

Technorati Tags: public relations, media relations, PR measurement, public relations measurement, marketing measurement, measurable public relations programs, measurable marketing, measurable PR, ROI, return on investment, B2B, high tech public relations, high tech PR

This blog post is part of a series on integrated PR programs. Last week, I wrote about bylined articles. Today, I would like to address speaking opportunities.

Why should company representatives do speaking engagements? There are a number of good reasons for your company’s representatives to speak publicly – chief of which is to build the company’s reputation as a leader in its space and for the executive speaking to build their profile amongst stakeholders, peers, competitors, potential customers and the general public. Public speaking can support business objectives like recruitment, increasing market awareness and seeking potential partners. Like the other tactics this series addresses, speaking opportunities is but one of a number of public relations activities that make up a complete program that supports your business objectives as a whole.

In what venues can our company speak? Trade organizations, associations and special interest groups have regular meetings that may be suitable for your company to speak at. Speaking at community events, such as awards shows affiliated with your company’s corporate social responsibility program or personal charitable endeavours can be advantageous as it helps to build both personal and corporate goodwill. Conferences and trade shows that speak directly to your particular market are probably the events that have the highest value as the audience is made up of your peers and prospects.

What kinds of speaking opportunities exist? A distinction should be made between types of speaking engagements, those that the speaker pays for and those that are earned based on reputation, expertise and strength and appropriateness of the proposed speaking topic. In our opinion, the former, like their print “editorial” counterpart, can be devalued by the audience as not being worthy of their attention because it is implied that it will be little more than a commercial for the company. This sort of speaking engagement, in my opinion, would be more considered advertising than a true PR opportunity. That said, many reputable conferences and events only allow paying exhibitors the opportunity to present to their audiences. Other events have a broad spectrum of opportunities based on the subject matter, the technical detail of and the expected audience of the event. For example, a biotechnology-focused conference may offer scientific symposia as well as technology demonstrations and expert panels.

What formats are typically used? The format of a speaking opportunity varies widely from event to event. Sometimes, participation in a panel enables the speaker to take part in a conversation with multiple experts and acts as a dialog between leaders in a chosen field. Some speaking opportunities may be brief introductions about your company or technology while others present the chance to host a workshop that demonstrates your technology to potential partners and customers. Speeches can be an hour or more long, or last just 15 minutes or so; they can be interactive or a monologue only. Whatever the format, be sure that it enables you to get your key messages across and that it well positions the speaker and the company.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, PR program, public relations program, speaking opportunities,

This morning, I attended CNW Group’s Breakfast and media event, The Changing Landscape of Canadian Media and the Increasing Role of the Web in News Reporting. During the one- hour session, David Akin, Parliamentary correspondent for CTV National News Ottawa, shared four complaints about the way he sees public relations being practiced as means to help the audience avoid making some classic mistakes.

David’s first complaint was that many companies don’t make it easy enough for the media to locate their online media center and get in touch with public relations contacts. He showed us several web sites, both government and corporate, noting the many clicks required to find each media centre, and the varying levels of contact detail they provided.

As a broadcast reporter who often works outside regular business hours and is subject to strict deadlines, he stressed the importance of making detailed contact information available. He recommended providing contact names rather than general numbers, direct phone numbers rather than those that go straight to voicemail, mobile numbers and contacts who also can be reached outside business hours. When multiple public relations contacts are listed, he also advised identifying each person’s responsibilities and areas of expertise.

Like many people working in the media business, David uses a BlackBerry to read many of his emails. He reminded us that on mobile devices and in Microsoft Outlook, email subject lines are often cut short. With only a few characters to catch a journalists’ attention, we have to use them wisely. “Company name news release” doesn’t cut it. To illustrate, he shared an email sent to him by the public relations team representing the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics which used a similar subject line and, in the body of the email, provided nothing more than a note directing media to a URL where they could sign in to view press release. Ouch.

David’s final two complaints were that many public relations professionals don’t use enough links in their press releases and often don’t make photos and videos easily accessible. He suggested using links throughout news releases to point to background information about products or partners that are mentioned but not described in detail. When it came time to discuss the availability of photos and videos, he reminded the audience that making broadcast-quality videos and print-quality photos available online simplifies the work of journalists and can sometimes be the defining factor in a story being covered.

David shared some great advice, much of which coincides with our best practices approach. For anyone who needed reminding, this was a great wake up call. We can’t forget that one of our major roles is to make the media’s job as easy as possible.

Technorati Tags: CNW, David Akin, public relations, media relations, PR best practices