An Intern’s Guide to Survival in the PR World

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By Jason Kirstein, SDSU Public Relations Major

They can teach you a lot in school, but they can never fully prepare you for the real world and your future profession. Being new to anything is a challenge, and in the fast-paced world of PR there are a few tips that will help you climb your learning curve faster and get you into the swing of things. This brief “Intern’s Guide to PR Survival” was obviously not created overnight but through a number of rough or ‘learning’ moments. However, without those moments you will never learn what it takes to make it.

1. You’re a Communicator…Communicate!

At any job, you need to be comfortable working with the rest of your colleagues. But in public relations, especially at full-service firms, it’s even more important to have good dialogue with your colleagues because everyone must work together to serve the needs of clients. Your first few weeks are critical for asking questions, but it can also be the hardest time to ask for help because you are trying to prove that you belong.

Being an intern puts you in a tough position because you are there to learn, but you might lack the confidence to ask questions. Remember that you’re in place to learn. Build the courage to speak up if you are having trouble -- you’ll be surprised how quickly people will step up to help—or at least that has been my experience at (W)right On Communications.

Once you’ve met everyone at your firm, actively engage your new colleagues in dialogue. Seek their opinions and input. This might not be the case at other businesses or firms, but at many PR firms, communication is lateral. If you need help or an opinion all you need to do is ask.

2. Understand Clients are Different

This might seem like a simple point, but unless you take the time to learn about your agency’s clients, you will never be able to perform at your full potential. Granted, you are not expected to be an expert on every client right away, but you should generally know each client’s industry and their current PR initiatives. For example, a hospitality client may be hosting an annual festival or a sustainable energy client may have just earned a major award.

One thing for certain is that every client is different, and each one presents its own opportunities and threats. The quicker you immerse yourself in your clients, the quicker you will be able to identify what needs to be done and what can be improved. This also allows you to bring something to the table, which will give your opinion and input more weight, and ultimately lead to others asking for your input.

3. Have an Open Mind

I learned the most important lesson thus far during my internship on my first day. You need to have an open mind. Whether you are a seasoned professional or an intern, there is always something new to learn. Companies and firms don’t all do things the same. Sure there will be similarities, but if you go into any job or experience with your mind already made up, the potential lessons will be missed. As an intern, your mind has to be open in order to soak up information like a sponge. Every day presents something new and you have to be able to digest and retain as much as possible.

Learning the ropes at any job is a tough and scary thing. It will not always be smooth and you might need to ask a lot of questions, but trust me -- you’re better off doing it, even if it feels intimidating at first. Interning teaches you a lot about the public relations world, but it also teaches you how to deal with new professional scenarios that school can never prepare you for. All you can do is take a deep breath and dive in head first, but with these tips, you’re sure to do better than just survive!

Three communications lessons based in science

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By Evelyn Nichols, Account Executive

Economists have long believed that people make decisions based on rational analysis of facts, weighing with objectivity the pros and cons of a given choice. However, marketers and public relations professionals have always known that people make decisions based as much, if not more, on the way they feel about their choices – rather than on actual facts and figures. The question is how do you make someone like your product, service, event or story more than your competitors’?

To the rescue is the rising field of behavioral economics. Scientists now use social, cognitive and emotional factors to understand decisions made by individuals and institutions. Although the theory that people tend to make predictable, rational decisions has been debunked, there is evidence to suggest that people have predictable patterns of irrationality, called cognitive biases. Understanding these patterns is key to creating effective messages for your products, services and pitches.

Here are three common cognitive biases and take away lessons for marketing successfully:

1. Denomination Effect
The denomination effect is the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts rather than large amounts. Spending money can be a painful experience for many consumers. It’s important to understand how people do their mental accounting. People tend to think about income in shorter time frames such as on a weekly or monthly basis and make mental trades to “afford” what they want.

Lesson Learned:
To help your customers feel a greater sense of control over and, in turn, like their spending decisions more – help them by framing payment options in smaller, less painful amounts with a comparison to a familiar, regular expense.

For instance, when you’re fundraising or marketing an iPhone app or internet service, try stating the cost in monthly amounts such as “only $2 a month–that’s less than adding chips and a drink to your lunch.” Or “make a monthly contribution of $5– that’s the same as a cup of coffee to feed a child for a month” rather than “a $60 contribution feeds a child for a year.”

2. Bandwagon effect
We all know of the bandwagon effect but its importance and relevance can result in powerful behavior changes when used correctly. In a recent energy study carried out by Cal State San Marcos in the San Marcos, Calif. researchers found that they could reduce people’s energy consumption with the help of peer pressure. Households were provided information about the average consumption of comparable households in their neighborhood. Researchers found that people who used less than the average began to use more electricity based on this information, and people who used more than average began to use less. That wasn’t exactly what energy conservation researchers intended. When they began adding smiley faces to households who were below the average in addition, both over-users and low-users reduced energy consumption. The combination of facts about normal usage rates and the cultural approval provided by the smiley face produced the desired behavior changes.

Lesson Learned:
The take away here is that people have an innate motivation to move to the social norm and, to motivate them to act outside of the norm, they need to know that their behavior change is accepted and valued. While doing outreach, try framing your messages in terms of social norms such as “everyone is doing it” or “we’re expecting record turnout” as well as providing rational information to get them to act. In addition, social media can help you visually reach “critical mass” through viral posts, retweets, and recommendations that leverage the bandwagon effect because the medium is based on it.

3. Paradox of Choice
Research has proven that complexity delays or prevents choice. People avoid making choices they view as complex because they are difficult and should be deeply considered. Less is more, as the old adage goes. But when your new product has so many awesome bells and whistles, and your audience is varied, it is hard to hold back and restrain your marketing messages to a few of the simplest and most compelling. However, that’s exactly what you have to do: Information overload causes would-be consumers to think the decision they are about to make is a complicated one rather than providing them just what they need to make a decision. A recent study of how much internet users read, found that most people spend less than four seconds on a page and get through 100 words before deciding to click to the next page.

Lesson Learned:
When writing for the web, printed materials or a pitch, know that you should keep your message to three main points and less than 100 words if you hope to keep your audience’s attention and convert them to a decision or an idea.

Based on the last comment – congratulations if you got to the end of this blog post! You have a longer attention span than the average person.

3 Tips for SEO-Friendly News Releases

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By Rebecca Chappell, Account Executive

Did you know more than 70 percent of Americans read their news online? Research also shows that 19 out of 20 journalists use search engines or news search engines during the course of their research for a story. So in a galaxy of thousands of possible search results, how can you make your news stand out?

Use keywords

One of the easiest ways to elevate a news release in a search is by the use of keywords or phrases. Choose terms wisely, and limit them. Overuse of keywords risks confusing both the reader and the search engine. A good ratio is three to five per 400-word release. But don’t count your company’s name a keyword. People who are conducting an online search for a company by name already know it exists. Instead, count more generic terms such as “San Diego PR firm.” And don’t overlook the power of a strong headline. It’s your first, and perhaps only, opportunity to grab your audience’s attention!

Integrate Hyperlinks

Also known as anchor text, hyperlinked keywords and phrases allow you to offer readers the option to explore additional information. It’s also a chance for you to direct readers to other relevant pages. For this reason, make sure at least one of your links asks for a call to action. For example, rather than always linking to a homepage, why not provide a link to where a customer could book an overnight stay, make a reservation for dinner, or purchase a product or service?

Include multimedia

You know the old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. In addition to keywords and anchor text, today’s most effective news releases often contain photos, graphics, video, and more. Apart from helping your release visually stand out from the pack, one major advantage to including multimedia is that search engines index images and video separately from text content. Not quite sure how to embed video into a document? Why not just provide a hyperlink to a video uploaded on YouTube? Bam! Now you’ve got a “multimedia press release.”

Of course there are many other SEO techniques available. It’s when you put them all together that you greatly increase the likelihood that your news will be picked up by media, consumers and search engines. What’s more, an optimized release will rank higher in search results and therefore have a longer shelf life on the Web. Love that!

Don’t Block Your Own Shot

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With newsrooms downsizing and the subsequent workload being shouldered by journalists lucky enough to retain their job, knowing a reporter's pet peeve could mean the difference between your news being covered or disregarded.

Here are a few journo pet peeves that you’ll want to be conscious of.

Sending a press release as an email attachment

As a PR professional, you have to assume every pitch you send is just one of over 250 emails a reporter receives per day. With this volume of emails, the two seconds it takes to open the attachment is two seconds too long and you can bet the house your email will be deleted. What’s more, attachments are known vehicles for viruses and phishing scams. They pose a real threat to everyone, but especially journalists. To increase the odds that your press release will get read, take the minute and a half to copy the text of your press release into the body of an email and format the accompanying image; it’s the golden rule when pitching.

Typos

Typos happen. However, make sure they don’t happen when initiating dialogue with literary professionals. These people spent countless hours, and big bucks, studying and perfecting their use of the English language. Overlooking simple rules – using “then” instead of “than” or mixing up “there” and “they’re,” for example – can be interpreted as careless. If you don’t care enough to get your press release right, why should a journo care to read it? Try thinking of all journalists as the fictional author Hank Moody from Californication, an individual whose personal mission it is to protect the written word. Proofread after you proofread.

Lengthy subject lines

Crafting your subject line can be a real balancing act. The key is to grab a reporter’s attention without your subject line getting cut off in their inbox by their email server. Typically, subject lines should be about 40 characters, including spaces. Write subject lines using the inverted pyramid model, placing less meaningful words, which may be cut off, toward the end. Emphasize the most important information, the attention-grabber, at the beginning of the subject line.

Late Friday pitching

Some argue that there is no best day to pitch journalists. With that said, journalists are people, too, and unless they’re weekend assignment editors for a news station, their weekend starts Friday at 5:01 p.m. It’s easy for journalists to disregard information over the weekend and when they’re cleaning up their inbox Monday morning, including your pitch in the list of highlighted emails destined for the trash folder is even easier. Unless you’re sending your news to a weekend assignment editor or a nightclub’s VIP manager, pitching on a late Friday afternoon should be reserved for breaking news necessitating an immediate release. Do yourself and your client a favor: get the news out earlier in the week and in the morning whenever possible.

Acknowledging these pet peeves won’t guarantee your press releases will get read, but ignoring them pretty much guarantees they won’t.

Size Matters as PR Goes Mobile

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By Grant Wright, (W)right On CEO

Is smaller better? This has been on my mind lately, especially since reading that for the first time smart phone shipments have surpassed PC sales.

According to the analysts at IDC, in the 2010 fourth quarter 101 million smart phones were shipped, a whopping 87 per cent increase from the same quarter a year prior. Meanwhile, only 92 million PCs were shipped with this representing just a 5.5 per cent increase from the same period 2009. On entire year sales, PCs still ruled at 346 million to 302 million smart phones.

But with smart phones increasingly capable for many of the functions that PCs are bought for – surfing the web, checking email - I think the trend is clear. Why lug your PC around (or camera and camcorder for that matter) when you already have much of what you need in your pocket?

From a PR industry standpoint, this has profound implications. ‘Surfing the web’ no longer means just looking up a coffee shop or checking a company’s website in a passive sense, and it no longer means using a computer to do it.

Pew study data from May 2010 found that 38 per cent of US adults who have a mobile device access the Internet with it, up from 25 percent the year prior. Pew also found that 82 per cent of US adults have a mobile device, meaning just more than 31 percent of all US adults use a mobile device to log into the Internet. And what are they doing there? 23 per cent accessed social networks, 20 per cent viewed a video and 11 per cent even contributed to a charity. With cell phone carriers’ push to implement 4G wireless networks throughout the country, these percentages will continue rising.

For example, Verizon’s brand new LTE 4G wireless network launched in December achieves 10 times the speed of their EV-DO 3G network and is already available in about 40 cities and growing – the wireless brakes are off! Stream a two hour hi-def movie to your pocket without annoying buffering? No problem!

So what are the PR implications? Well, like the devastation wrought on traditional print media when consumers could go to their computer and receive richer content faster, consumers are about to be unshackled from their chair and computers when interacting with content.

But here’s the catch – the experience is crammed into about three or four inches of screen. Your favorite artist’s new music video? Chances are increasing that it will be consumed from a four-inch window. Imagine the fourth row of dancers behind Lady Gaga now being a fraction of an inch tall and you get the idea. The great new splashy online ad? Yep, four inch window. And how many screen changes will it take to scroll through a news article? A lot.

“Ah!” you say. “Screens can be bigger!” What about the new iPad or the new Samsung tablet!? Cool, yea, but there’s a limiting factor - the form-factor of the lowly pocket or that cute little purse! Who wants to look like Urkel, all device bulked up? Most guys I know still haven’t figured out where to comfortably carry their wallet. And I just can’t see anything bigger than a smart phone as the grudging must-have accessory in women’s fashion.

And for the argument that people just won’t want to consume multi-media on a tiny device due to the inferior experience, well, that’s what the music industry thought about inferior MP3 files and their inherent quality loss. iTunes seems to be doing just fine, and in the “Price, Quality, Speed – Pick Two” game, quality of multi-media consumption so far seems in a losing battle.

I think history will record that 2011 was another game changing year, when size really came to matter for how good communications should best be adapted for an increasingly tech savvy world.

So is smaller better? It better be.

5 Reasons it Pays to Pitch the Competition

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When I suggest pitching your competitors, you might think I'm talking about pitching them overboard.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but including information on your competitors when you pitch your company/client to the media can be a best practice.

Here are at least five reasons:

1. They will look at your competitors anyhow
Any journalist worth his or her salt is going to dig around to see what other company, venue or event is similar to yours. Save them the time while also putting your competition in context. [TIP: Never say anything distasteful or disparaging about your competition.]

2. You need other examples to show a trend
Trends are newsworthy--they're current and topical, but one company's experience is not evidence of a trend. Go ahead and share data in your pitch like market growth statistics or scientific research to substantiate a trend, but also share examples of other companies or events that prove out your point. If the reporter does the story, typically he or she will lead with your client/company as the primary example. [TIP: It takes three exampeles to support a trend.]

3. Profiles are the exception, not the rule
Journalists occasionally profile companies and leaders, but typically that is a once per publication opportunity, and even in a profile of a successful company or CEO, you'll see the reporter cite examples of similar companies or the experiences of similar executives. If you don't have a stand-out product, service, event or leader to submit for a profile, try positioning your story in terms of trends in your industry (see #2) and seek to be the lead example. [TIP: This is particularly effective in more mature industries or with products or services that are viewed as commodities like financial services.]

4. It enhances your credibility
When journalists see that you've included competitor information in a pitch, the very fact that you acknowledged other companies builds your credibility and shows you understand the information they need to do their job.

5. It works
When I have used this technique, I've had journalists respond telling me how much they appreciated it. Plus, it has produced coverage, and each time, the coverage focused on my client, and the effort and extra work paid off.

It's not always the answer but can be an effective technique when needed.

A Taste of PR and Guitar

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Why is SDSU senior and classical guitarist Pauline France serenading the (W)right On team? Call it a quid pro quo.

I spent the morning of Oct. 29 sharing my passion for PR with Pauline through the "Taste of PR" program organized by the local PRSA New Pros committee. The program matched seasoned professionals as mentors with young, promising professionals just starting their careers. In exchange, after lunch, she rocked our world with a taste of her passion for music.

Pauline was an excellent candidate for this kind of program. She shared in advance what she hoped to get out of the experience so that we could do our best to deliver. And she asked terrific questions. Best of all, she captured the experience in a great blog post of her own. She seems to have taken away some of the key principles of agency life and, possibly even more impressive to this agency president, knows how to use the plural possessive (*swoon*):

"Some of the things I learned at the firm include time management, managing conflicting priorities, managing clients’ expectations and developing PR proposals. A topic that was often brought up was keeping a healthy balance between your personal and professional life, something that Julie does admirably well!"

Not sure where she got the idea I've figured out how to balance the agency with having a life. Let's just say I try...

Having her job shadow me and lunch with Chance Shay, Heather Hinman and I was a pleasure. Kudos to the New Pros committee for this program, and I encourage other agency executives to consider supporting it next year. You'll get as much as you give!

P.S. Shout out to Sandy Young for the push I needed to participate.