Posts Tagged ‘media relations’
Follow the Path of Least Resistance
Hallelujah! You know someone who knows someone in the very media organization where you’re trying to get coverage. That second someone may be the very person you think is most likely to be interested in the something you’re pushing.
Quite often the first someone may be working within your own organisation, perhaps in a different section to you. Read the rest of this entry »
From Mail to Maker’s Mark: A Scale for Assessing Flack-Reporter Relationships
The Coffee-Serving Security Guard © by Qole Pejorian
Every PR pro has been in the scenario: the team is gathered in a conference room. The topic of media comes up, and various names are bandied about. Then the boss growls, “who has a relationship with that reporter?” The implication is clear: in a business of connections, the person doing the pitching should have some sort of tie to the writer/editor/blogger in question.
Invariably, someone pipes up, claiming they have a relationship with the reporter in question. But the word “relationship” is fuzzy, Read the rest of this entry »
There’s at Least Two Sides to a Story
oxygen supply © by clurr
Should you be successful in generating coverage, you may also be providing oxygen for your opposition.
The media likes to feel as though they’re presenting both sides (or more) of a story. So if there’s an obvious counterpoint to what you’re promoting, expect them to go there. Sometimes you might be surprised at what will be generated.
Your Correspondent has done PR work for a national association which promotes the many health benefits of breastfeeding. However, our success at raising awareness saw the nation’s leading anti-depression organisation put out its own media release. Read the rest of this entry »
Want to Upset a Reporter? Call to ‘Follow Up’ on Your Email
Phone Talkin © by Martin Cathrae
Journalists, as a group, have a lot of pet peeves: sources who want to go off the record for no good reason, overly literal editors, the Oxford comma. But the biggest complaint? Getting calls from flacks who want to make sure that their email arrived. We live in 2013: the email always arrives.
Jeffrey Young, an otherwise calm and thoughtful Huffington Post reporter, once wished death on PR pros who dare to waste his time following up on an email (“DIE IN A FIRE,” he tweeted). Read the rest of this entry »
Dunbar’s Number, Your Brain and Why Scaling Media Relations is a Bad Idea
my brains - let me show you them © by Liz Henry
Public relations today faces a vexing problem: our brains aren’t big enough to keep up with the promise of the technology that we now have available to us. Now, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on my peers, the reality is that, regardless of industry, no one has a brain big enough to deal with the increasing power of tools that allow for great social interconnectedness.
According to Robin Dunbar, most of us can only maintain meaningful social connections with about 150 people: Dunbar’s Number. As detailed in a thoughtful Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile last month, the 150 number comes up again and again: it’s historically been the size of a military company, of an ideally sized factory, of the average Christmas-card list of a British family. Read the rest of this entry »
Isaac Lessons Learned
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Hurricane Isaac makes landfall. © by Official U.S. Navy Imagery
Well New Orleans is finally surfacing after Hurricane Isaac made an appearance in our city. As a communicator it was hard to be without power. No power may mean no AC and everything in your fridge is spoiling but to a communicator no power means no TV and no internet. I was so desperate for information and to connect with the outside world that I went as low as to “watch” the radio. Read the rest of this entry »
Media Relations 101:Beware of the Sound Bite Trap
Sharp AQUOS LCD TV © by Kansir
One of the problems of working in the media is that you really never turn off. Since TV is ubiquitous, us media types are always analyzing the press to see how we would have handled certain situations differently.
I often find myself saying about media disasters, “How the hell did that happen?” And I am finding myself saying this ever more often during an election year, when we are presented with daily media screw ups. Read the rest of this entry »
Sensitivity Training is Key For Effective Interviewing Skills
"Jungle Bird" (Photo by Ron Chenoy, US Presswire)
Spurred by this week’s post over on PR Daily about when should a PR pro interrupt an interview, I was motivated to write something about last Sunday’s interesting and rather amusing interruption by “Jungle Bird” during the Bob Costas interview with U.S. Open Champ Webb Simpson. In case you live in a cozy apartment at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and missed this video clip, it is rather amusing.
Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z00nX1zqo4 Read the rest of this entry »
