Five questions to ask when hiring a PR firm

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By Molly Borchers, Senior Account Executive

Good communications can make the difference between winning and losing. It can elevate small companies to the national stage. It can help businesses keep their noses clean in front of investors and the public. It can generate sales, leaving the competition in the dust. Clearly, it’s important, but many companies don’t have the internal resources to do it on their own.

That begs the question: How do you find a PR firm that can help you achieve your unique business goals in the most cost-effective way? Choosing a PR firm can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. There are so many firms out there: how do you know what to look for? Here are five questions that can help:

1. What is the spectrum of services you provide? Many PR agencies do little more than media pitching, but public relations is so much more than just getting your company’s name in print. Last year, Arik Hanson wrote about the skills that the PR pro of the future should possess, and I argue that many of these skills are necessary today. When hiring PR experts, look for a full-spectrum communications agency. Seek a firm who knows digital PR, video, multimedia, graphics, social media, employee outreach, and crisis communications. A firm with well-rounded capabilities can promote your company more effectively than a simple media relations shop. Remember: the goal is to make your cash register ring. If the firms you interview don’t know how to integrate media relations into a larger communications strategy, move on to the next. And that’s a good segue into the next question you should ask…
2. How do you evaluate results? Again, you shouldn’t seek an agency with short-sighted measurement goals. Media impressions and advertising equivalency alone do not move the needle on ROI. Those aren’t results; they’re metrics. You should only work with agencies that can tell the difference.
3. How do you stay on top of trends? I recently blogged about the importance of being a ‘know-it-all’ (in the least annoying way, of course!). Agencies who have a clear pulse on emerging industry trends are flexible and adaptable. It’s likely that they’ll be more creative in their approach. Agencies that aren’t on the cutting-edge of new best practices or technology are more likely to stick with a traditional approach, which is becoming less-and-less effective. Your PR agency should be a team of trend-spotters. Rely on them to proactively identify ways for your company to leverage new trends. Remember you’re paying them to be on the lookout for new ideas and opportunities to benefit your organization.
4. Can you provide a case study of one of your successful campaigns? This is your opportunity to hear how the agency defines results. It is crucial that your expectation of good results is in line with the agency’s. Also, this gives you the opportunity to see what kind of clients are on the agency’s roster. You’ll want to pay attention to whether they’ve worked with established brands, and if they have experience working with clients in your industry.
5. Is there anything else you can help us with? To circle back to question #1, you should seek to hire a full-spectrum communications agency. You may be looking for help with media relations, but perhaps the agency can also help you produce video, develop graphics, write grants, execute events, write a crisis communication plan, or help manage your social media accounts. Your organization would surely find it more efficient to work with one partner to manage these disparate needs.

Here are a few other things to consider:

• Seek a true communications partner, not just a vendor. When clients treat their PR agencies like vendors, it stifles results and can harm the relationship. Think of your communications consultant as an extension of your team. The team needs to know your industry and the details of your business in order to do their best, most creative work. Be willing to invest in the relationship and help them stay informed on what your company is doing.
• Pay for strategy, not tactics. Companies who look for a PR firm to fill a tactical need are missing out. If you’re already paying a company to write press releases or create videos, why not leverage their creative, strategic thinking. We love to make you look good in front of your boss. Why not take advantage of additional brainpower to come up with strategies that support your company’s overall business goals? 
• You can’t be absent from the process. Companies hire PR firms to develop campaigns and provide strategic counsel. But firms also help ease a resource burden – to take over work that the internal team is too busy to do. Even though things might get busy, you still need to be involved. You can’t remove yourself completely from the process. Whether we need you to serve as a spokesperson, provide approval, keep us in the loop with what’s happening at your company, or to bounce an idea around, the results are always better when everyone participates.

Being a Know-it-All Isn’t Such a Bad Thing

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By: Molly Borchers, Sr. Account Executive

@MollyBorchers

The know-it-all: you know that person. It seems everyone has one or two in their life. The not-so-humble person who elicits an eye roll every time he/she begins to speak. The person who pontificates on everything, and the minute you bring up something new, they claim to have known about it yesterday. They’re annoying, right?

But in the field of communication, we have a responsibility to be know-it-alls in the least obnoxious way. What do I mean?

The other day, Chance Shay and I went to a presentation on influencer marketing where Mark Fidelman quoted Google’s Eric Schmidt, saying that every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of time up to 2003. Every day it seems that there is more and more information to be consumed, and it’s tougher and tougher to cut through the noise. That presents a challenge for marketers because it makes it more difficult to reach customers in a meaningful way. But it’s also a challenge because technology is forcing us to do more than ever before. We have to be the experts. We have to filter through the junk for our clients so they don’t have to. We have to be ahead of trends so we can present the best possible ideas for our clients. Phew!

It’s a tall order, but that’s why I make it a personal mission to be a know-it-all. And in the best way possible: you won’t find me bloviating at the water cooler. But I do like to share trends and important articles with my clients the second that they’re relevant. I also think it’s important to incorporate up-to-date information into my work in real-time so I’m serving clients to the best of my ability.

That means taking time daily to stay on top of it all. But I’m no magician and I don’t have a 25^th hour in my day. To make it work without being a time suck, I use a number of resources and work-hacks. Here are some of my favorites: 

·       

The Skimm: a daily enewsletter that skims the headlines & provides the most important information in a simplified manner.

·        The Muckrack newsroom: I visit this once a day to read the stories that are the most tweeted by major journalists.

·        To accompany that, I subscribe to the Muckrack enewsletter. I hate email newsletters just like any other schmuck. So if I sign up for one, I like it to do multiple things for me. This one also highlights the day’s most important news but it also reports on changes at major publications.

·        Newsle: enewsletter with news stories that feature your Facebook friends & email contacts. This serves as an alternate way to monitor for client stories, but it’s also a great tool for networking. What better way to reach out to a contact than by sending a quick note? “I saw your article in Forbes! Congratulations! And by the way, I’d love to catch up soon.”

·        Twitter lists: I have created twitter lists for media, colleagues in the industry, brands I’ve got my eye on, and clients/partners. I also get push notifications to my iPhone every time @BreakingNews tweets.

·        Feedly: the RSS reader of choice to keep up on all my favorite industry blogs, including but not limited to: Mashable, TechCrunch, PRDaily, All Things D, The Verge, Fast Company, Venture Beat, Forbes, NYT Bits, Inc., Waxing Unlyrical, Sarahsfav.es, Spin Sucks, Brian Solis, and more.

·        MediaGazer & TechMeme: MediaGazer aggregates the day’s top news stories and TechMeme does the same for the tech industry.

·        Cir.ca iPhone app: a beautiful iPhone app with the day’s top headlines, presented in a user-friendly format. Perfect for when I’ve got five minutes in between meetings or I’m waiting in line at the grocery store.

·        The Li.St: One of my favorite enewsletters from media veterans Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol (Huffington Post, Mediaite, Business Insider, Mediabistro). It comes out only a few times a week, but I read it to the end every time.

·        TED and NPR iPhone apps: I only have time to consume my beloved TED talks or NPR while I’m driving, running, or at the gym. These apps make it possible.

What are some of your favorite tools for being a know-it-all? Feel free to tell me in the comments. 

Why You Should Use Infographics to Communicate Visually

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By Vincent Derama, Design Specialist 

For a business, it is important to send the right message to your audience, but it is equally important that the audience can understand your message. After all, not everyone is an expert. Today, any individual can access the Internet and find very specific answers to very specific questions, but if their questions involve you or your message, how do you know that they’ll remember that information?

Information graphs or “infographs” are visual tools that communicate information simply and aesthetically. They take profuse and in-depth knowledge and present it clearly and concisely through visual representation. Infographs typically contain statistical information about a specific topic or field of work, but have also been adapted to communicate themes and ideas as well.

The value of infographics as a communication tool can be attributed to the way our brain processes information. For instance, right now you’re reading this article, line by line, taking in everything in the chronological order it was written. Because we read in a linear pattern, our brain cannot process information faster than we can supply it. The brain can process visual information up to 60,000 times faster than text, however. When you look at a picture of, let’s say a beach, every element of the photo is interpreted simultaneously, so you know the image is of a beach. Even when viewed separately, say separate images of palm trees, sand, or waves, you can infer that a beach is connected to these themes. However, after just describing a beach to you, you had to process that information linearly (e.g. palm trees -> sand -> waves = probably a beach).

Infographics are a valuable communication tool. When communicating with your audience, as a business or otherwise, an infograph brings a level of professionalism and expertise in a given topic through your ability to clearly convey complex data or information. Additionally, people want more visual content. In fact, there has been an 800 percent increase in “infographic” searches on Google throughout the past two years. The viral potential for visual content is at its highest. Who knows, maybe your next infographic could be your breakout in Internet immortality.

How to Handle Crisis Communications

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By Julie Wright, President

If you’re at the center of a crisis when one hits, like it did April 15 when two bombs killed and maimed spectators and participants at the Boston Marathon, make this your mantra:

Communicate early. Communicate often. And communicate accurately.

Communicating early, when facts are still coming in and very little can be confirmed or validated, means at least letting stakeholders know that:

1. You’re on it.
2. You care.

Social media might be among the first places you let people know that your organization is working to fact find and planning to release more information as it becomes available and verified. If you’ve pre-planned your crisis communications, you will have some prepared responses to many potential crisis scenarios so that your posts are a keystroke away and do not need vetting or wordsmithing under high stress. If you have an important message that you need to get out, use social media and ask people to share your message. Many people will be glad to help.

It’s important to show people as early as possible that you are the best and most reliable source of information about your crisis and that you care. Do not assume that they realize you’re as upset, saddened, shocked or dismayed as they are. Tell them so. And if your attorneys tell you not to comment at all, just keep in mind that their primary goal is winning in the courtroom or negotiating table. They might win there, but if you don’t communicate early and empathetically, you lose in the court of public opinion that may cost you more dearly than any court-mandated settlement. (Just sayin’. If the lawyers start driving the communications strategy, it’s game over. Think of BP in the Gulf of Mexico or Toyota with its faulty brakes.)

 

If people were harmed, you care deeply and are empathetic. If people have been inconvenienced, you’re sympathetic and are working furiously to ensure that everything is returned to business as usual.

The lawyers want to be sure that you’re not excessively admitting to responsibility for their inconvenience or injuries. This is valid, but it is a terrible and irreparable mistake to withhold any response and, as a result, project an image of callousness. You cannot be too compassionate. And compassion does not mean taking responsibility.

Think about this: What if the CEO of Carnival Cruises had gotten himself airlifted to the ship adrift and suffered alongside his customers? I would feel entirely differently about the problems Carnival and its passengers have suffered through if I knew its executives shared in the discomfort. And the headline would not be: “Boss of Carnival Adds Insult to Misery By Going to Basketball Game as 4,000 Suffer Aboard ‘Stinking Stricken Ship’…”.

Communicating often is essential because media coverage can be around the clock. If it’s an evolving situation, plan to hold media briefings every few hours. Listen closely on social media so you can correct misinformation that is getting passed around as it happens. Use your social media channels to release details in between media briefings. Establish a hashtag for your crisis communications on Twitter so that people can more closely follow the ‘official’ information source.

The frequency of your communications are a way of showing that you care about your stakeholders and are serving their needs and not just your own. Today, people make judgments based on your organization’s behavior and not just a carefully crafted message labored over by your attorneys, senior executives and others.

Inaccurate information can un-do all of your tremendous communications. To increase the likelihood that accurate information is presented on a timely basis, your crisis plan should have designated spokespeople, chains of command and reporting structures so that people in the field, on the scene or troubleshooting the issue know the protocol for providing updates. They should have the names and contact information of the crisis team, there should be a clear method of capturing and reporting out the information to the crisis team, and everyone in the field should know not to speak to but instead properly redirect the media and to limit internal speculation.

Stress degrades decision making, so successful communications in a crisis are typically based on a pre-existing communication plan that reasonably anticipates various crisis situations and develops responses so that they’re at the ready when a crisis hits.

Whether you have a plan or are planning on the fly, just repeat after me: communicate early, communicate often and communicate accurately.

Hospitality Marketing: Going Mobile in the Digital Age

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By Rebecca Gardon, Account Executive 

Hotel management consultant Robert A. Rauch of R.A. Rauch & Associates recently hosted his second annual Hotel Forecast and Digital Marketing Conference with additional presentation by e-marketer Adam Brownstein. Brownstein is co-founder of buuteeq, a firm that provides a digital marketing system for hotels. Both presentations offered great food for thought for hospitality marketers.

In his opening, Rauch boldly stated that the information age is over and that we have entered a “digital tsunami age.” He explained that the hospitality landscape is evolving quickly as customers increasingly turn to online and mobile platforms for all forms of communication, sharing, planning and booking. But, now more than ever, the digital landscape is also driving all aspects of customer service and engagement, before, during and after a trip.

Brownstein later noted that while mobile traffic makes up 15 percent of current hotel website traffic volumes, smartphone activity has tripled in the last year alone. Approximately 30 percent of website traffic and 65 percent of same-day hotel reservations now come via mobile phones. He also noted that 57 percent of mobile users will not recommend a hotel with a bad mobile site.

What makes a good mobile site? In a nutshell, it should automatically deliver a tailored experience. A few ways to accomplish this include:

• Resizing and compressing images and enlarging text
• Displaying contact information prominently
• Linking seamlessly to maps
• Not using outdated flash technology
• Using a mobile optimized booking engine
• Running mobile-only promotions to target on-the-go travelers with last-minute deals

But having a mobile site is only one piece of the puzzle. Both Rauch and Brownstein agreed that in today’s instantaneous speed of ingesting information, a hotel’s main site and mobile site also should:

• Not skimp on high-quality photos! Photos sell a hotel even before marketing copy, with nearly 73 percent of users clicking on photos of rooms after visiting the homepage. 
• Keep things simple. As soon as a guest decides a site requires too much focus, effort, or time to find what they need, they will likely move on with without booking a room.

More advice for hoteliers included making sure their brand is on social media, and providing guests the opportunity to book through every applicable platform, such as the hotel’s Facebook page. Rauch also recommended that hotels integrate their TripAdvisor feed on their website. His reasoning? TripAdvisor is a great driver of bookings but also a leak. When potential guests are forced to leave a hotel’s site to read reviews of the property, they end up also reading the competitions’. Lastly, while TripAdvisor is still the leading trusted source of travel reviews, Rauch said to keep an eye on Google. The relentless competitor has made strong forays in hospitality and therefore hotels should at the very least have a presence on Google+ and Google Places.

The lessons imparted by Rauch and Brownstein can be applied to just about any business. Is yours effectively capturing today’s digital generation?

Hashtags: You’re Doing it Wrong

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By Chancelor Shay, Account Executive

You just wrote a solid 115-character quip on your deeper analysis of a common observation that you’re sure will get at least five retweets and a handful of favorites from your followers. But you have 140 characters worth of space. You can’t just waste 25 characters, but the current draft already reflects perfect wording. What do you do? Of course! Add a hashtag!

That seems to be the thought process behind many of the tweets I see stream across my somewhat-cluttered Twitter stream. As a professional communicator, it’s bothersome that these tweeters don’t have the courtesy to ask themselves, “How does this add value to my message for my followers?” Meaningless hashtags are so prevalent that I considered whether or not the majority of tweeters understand what a hashtag is and its purpose. It’s not as absurd a question as I thought, made apparent when lifelong broadcaster and Emmy Award recipient Vin Scully asked “What is hashtag?” on live TV.

The simple answer to Scully’s question, of course, is a search indexing tool for Twitter that allows the site to more easily sort messages focused on a specific topic. The hashtag allows for a collective discussion around a single topic, whether it be a conference or trade show, current event of interest to masses of people, or an informational theme such as “dailymotivation” or “fitnesstips.” This helps the Twitter community build their social network with people who provide content they’d enjoy.

But just how the use of texting has evolved from its initial purpose as it’s been adopted, so too has the hashtag.  

We’ve seen the “hashtag as the punch line of a joke” tweets. Ending a message about a trip to Dog Beach might be #Wetdogsmellairfreshener. Capping off a confession of love for Nutella we could expect #NoreallyIcouldeatNutellaateverymeal. Or concluding an observation of road workers sitting down on their lunch break someone might announce #Mytaxdollarsarepayingforyoutoeatasandwich. I’m not convinced others will search any of those hashtags with interest in joining the conversation.

Then there are hashtags that were invented specifically so that anyone interested can join the conversation and offer an opinion. These are hashtags like #WeCan’tDateIfYou and #ThingsshorterthanKimKardasiansmarriage. Rather than being a reactionary product to something else, there is no reasoning for these hashtags to exist beyond the fact that they can exist.

The variations of hashtags are so vast that, in their quest for constant irony as a counter culture, hipsters adopted the hashtag #hashtag. Is it ironic? More like self defeating.

So are hashtags a trend? Will they go the way of Ed Hardy T-shirts and Von Dutch trucker hats?

Essentially, as online conversing continues to become the status quo, the hashtag is showing characteristics of natural language. People are manipulating, misusing and experimenting with it. They’re the opposite of a trend because they’re not one thing and are constantly evolving. In that sense, I guess, explaining the “right” way to use a hashtag is like explaining the right way to deliver a joke or what facial expression is correct for the subject of discussion. You can’t define what’s “right.” In the same way you can’t stop that one co-worker from winking after each sarcastic statement he makes, you can’t stop tweeters from hashtagging every other word in their message. But you can unfollow them. #Winning 

Four PR Trends

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By Grant Wright, CEO

Looking at past trends in an evolving industry can be a poor predictor of future trends—whether you’re talking about the stock market or the PR field.

Witness Facebook (a 9-year-old), Twitter (a 7-year-old), Instagram and Tout (both 2 year olds). These are among only a few of the game changers that disrupted the publishing industry. Each is a relative toddler by traditional business standards, and not that many years before their existence I don’t recall anyone predicting them. But their global impact on the human condition is already established.

The trend impacting the PR industry, therefore, is not which new social tool will take off, but that game changers are now the norm. Expect and anticipate them.

Here are four things (among many) I see near through long term impacting PR.

The Story Stays

We like a good yarn. Stories have been told throughout human history and they’re not going away anytime soon. So while the delivery method may continue to break speed records in the unprecedented data age we’re now in, if there isn’t a compelling story to whatever the communication is, it won’t leave the station.

In creating your communications, think about your story. How compelling is it or could it be, and why should others care? And if you don’t have one, then either create one or rethink your communication strategy for most effective resource use.

Multimedia Explosion

We are a sensorial species, and with the written word there’s a terrible lack of engagement of the senses. True, imagination can help make up for that. However, the way I imagine Utopia and you do can be very different, meaning there’s a significant control loss of the intended message. But what if I could not only tell you a story, but also engage you in it by your five senses? Instant communication around the planet is now possible with video covering sight and sound that will only increase. But I think it’s only a matter of time before technology allows for an online cook ‘book’ to not only convey with what and how something’s made, but also how it should look, feel and even smell and taste.

Additive Manufacturing

 …aka 3-D Printing will change everything, and this means for PR too.  I think 3-D printing is truly Roddenberry’s Star Trek replicator come to life like the cell phone, and why I see it profoundly impacting PR is that currently the world’s societies are built largely around traditionally manufactured goods and related services – shoes manufactured in China are consumed in the USA; medical implants created in New York are used in Canada; an airplane is created and assembled from many different places; etc. Things today are still made for us and we don’t make things for ourselves. PR supports all of this ‘traditional’ world commerce that in the next decade will dramatically change with the advent of 3-D printing for the masses. Like intangibles such as information value decreasing with increased accessibility, so will the value of physical goods change. As it does, PR will change as well, becoming less about conveying a compelling call to action to buy consumer products, say, and more about strategically helping communicate things like B2B opportunities, services expertise, key events, experience opportunities, and political and societal agendas.

Local & Smaller

It’s well established doctrine for good communication to know thy audience, and reach them where they are. With billions of us now having our heads buried in our smartphones more than we’d like to admit, guess where audiences are? Sure, we’re still driving down the freeway ready to notice a billboard, pouring over that quaint thing called a newspaper at Starbucks occasionally, and watching commercials whip by as we watch our favorite DVR’d show.  But increasingly we’re more interested in our immediate environs – our local neighborhood - than otherwise. So as opposed to a broad shotgun approach, PR will increasingly need a precise rifle approach tailored to local geography and interests. And in doing so rely less on large real estate like a full magazine, in-depth television reporting or a regional newspaper spread, but instead plan for consumption to be increasingly on a screen just four or five inches wide—that if it’s showing a picture of a rose, soon enough will probably smell just as sweet.

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