Your PR Guy

Three Writing Tips for Better Media Relations

Organizing and cataloging my books the other day, I found one of my old journalism textbooks. Feeling nostalgic, I dusted off the cover. It was The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing.  One of my favorite reads!

But it didn't occur to me until today that The Word should also be the standard by which public relations professionals follow for good writing. I am going as far to say it should be a must-read for anyone writing for public consumption. That includes bloggers who identify as citizen journalists, or bloggers writing on behalf of a corporation or client. 

During our Hoosier PRSA annual Meet the Media and Half Day with a Pro luncheon, one of the journalists mentioned that writing news was key to getting coverage in his paper. Publicity just won't due.

As a former journalist, I could relate. Here's three points you might have forgotten but should always keep on the top of your mind.

Quotes: "News, to a remarkable degree, is what people say and how they say it -- as actors in events, kibitzers, witnesses, informants, as movers and shakers, and as the moved and the shaken."

Points to remember:

1. Write so that quotes sound conversational, like real people uttered the words.
2. Collect quotes from your clients. Interview them just like a reporter would.
3. Weave quotes seamlessly into your news release so that it reads like a news story.

Tone: "Tone ultimately determines whether your reader is pleased or not. Sentence structure has something to do with it, but tone is primarily generated by the choice of words. Plain, short, familiar words produce one distinct tone; fancy polysyllables another. 

Points to remember:

1. Read allow what you write. Does it sound conversational? Do you hear rhythm?
2. Choose the familiar words over the abstract ones.
3. Put your verbs to work.

Leads: "A good lead makes a clear statement of the essential news point and when possible includes a detail that distinguishes the story from others of its kind."

Points to remember:

1. You lead should be your pitch to journalists. Especially focus on "a detail that distinguishes [your] story from others of its kind."
2. Make you lead newsworthy.
3. Try to write it in no more than 140 characters. (For you social media PR-types like me, you know why this is true.) Journalists are going online too. And some like being pitched through Twitter.

While you might think journalists are your primary audience, they are not. Journalists are always thinking about their readers. And so should you.

Who Says Ghost Blogging Is Unethical?

There's a bit of a wrinkle in the underwear of Indianapolis public relations professionals (and others, I suppose) about the ethics of ghost blogging. Or, should I say the lack of ethics in the practice of ghost blogging. Over on the Hoosier PRSA Blog, Elizabeth Friedland (@efriedland) is thumping PR pros with chapter and verse ethics from the holy grail of our profession -- The Statement of Professional Values.Talk about fundamentalism, geez! Give it a rest!

I feel so dirty and sinful after such a beating. There is redemption, Elizabeth. The fact that ghost blogging happens is as evident and necessary as any other writing for public consumption. Here's Friedland's POV:

Because ghost blogging says a blog is from one author when in fact it was written by someone else, thereby not being honest as to who wrote what, it deceives the public.

So let me get this straight. If Person "A" writes a blog post for Company "B" and Company "B's" name appears on the post, that is ghost blogging? Let's look at it a different way. If a celeb's dirty tell-all tome hits the shelves of Borders, but the celeb never penned a word, but takes credit for the scandalous write-up -- that's ghost writing? Is my stint of ghost writing articles for a CEO unethical? I never got credit for those, the CEO's byline was published not mine.

Elizabeth, in the publishing world we call that work-for-hire. It's yet another way for people to pay their bills, or buy another round at Nicky Blaines. 

If ghost blogging is unethical as writing publicly consumed, then news release writing is unethical, copywriting is unethical, ghost writing is unethical and we are all damned to burn in writer's hell.

Is Your Twitter to Big For Your Pants? And Relationships?

Geoff Livingston wrote, "Everyone always seems fascinated with Twitter follower counts." But is the size of your followers on Twitter a gauge of how well you're building relationships that matter through Twitter?

Livingston and Beth Kanter wanted to find out. Kanter was added to the official Twitter recommended list of people to follow. According to Livingston's little experiment, Kanter attracted lots of followers, but engagement suffered. " Generally speaking," Livingston observed, "with more casual followers you lose engagement and influence power."

There's several points we can pull from this:

1. Take your Twitter off steroids. Organic growth is better.
2. Follow only people and institutions that interest you.
3. Build relationships with those you follow.
4. Take those relationships offline. Actually meet. Get some lunch together.

We've allowed computers to supplant our offline relationship building and that cause our business, even personal lives to suffer. But with social media, we have an amazing opportunity to create more deeper relationships with people -- business or personal -- by using social media tools, like Twitter, to create more opportunities to meet offline.

Tweet Me Small: 9 Twitter Resources You Don't Want To Miss

 
Twitter keeps surprising me. Actually, not Twitter, but the values of Twitter for public relations. And this list of resources are also testament that social media belongs in the PR bucket. So, I'm compiling this for your benefit, but also for mine. You'll see more coming from me on this:

1. What 100K Twitter Followers Get You 
2. Using Chris Brogan's Archimedes Principle To Leverage Nonprofits on Twitter Suggested User List
3. Are You A Trust Agent
4. Should Twitter Recommend More Charities
5. Twitter Boost Social Entrepreneurs
6. The Tweet Smell of Success
7. Seth Godin's Non Post About Nonprofits: Deers in the Headlights
8. The Problem with Non
9. Using Metrics To Harvest Insights About Your Social Media Strategy

Truly an interesting thread of Tweeterific information for business and non-profit should follow, you'll hear more from me on this in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy and let me know what you think.

Public Relations Strategy Tip: How to optimize your client's blog for search

Most Internet traffic is driven by search engines, and search optimization means developing web content that maximizes the number of visitors to that content. Let me qualify that. You want the right traffic from the right people interested in what you're delivering.

So how is this done?

Linking Strategies

• Inbound linking, that is links pointing to your site are seen as a vote for your content's relevancy. That's especially true if the the other site has similar content and is ranked higher than yours.
• Outbound linking shows that you're linking to relevant content and outbound links can help your readers find more information than you can possible write in your content. Check out what Google says about outbound linking.

You can create all the outbound links you want, but there seems to be more weight given to inbound links from an SEO perspective. In order to get them, you must do a couple of things:

Join the conversation and visit other blogs. Read that content and leave an INTELLIGENT comment. That get's the conversation started, because that blogger may come to your site and do the same. Or, if your site has content that's particularly apropos to his (or her's), voila inbound link. 

Link to Your Own Posts

Your blog or website should be a compendium of information for your visitors. They are visiting your blog/website because they want answers. So give them answers and make those answers easily accessible. For example, if you want to know more about sponsored conversations, try one of these posts:

• How to Make Sponsored Conversations Work for You
• To Sponsor, or Not Sponsor Sponsored Conversations Online

Or, if you want to learn more about these.

• Building Your Blog Traffic With StumbleUpon
• Writers Who get SEO Strategy Are Valuable

Choosing Good Keywords

Choosing good keywords is important, especially in areas that are less saturated. And, there are several good keyword tools you van use. Google AdWords is good, as is Google's Search-based Keyword Tool.

There's an art to using keywords. Use to many and you lose readability. (Remember, your key audience is people, not Google's bots.) Nonetheless, you should use keywords in your page titles, and in subtitles. I've also been told that increasing the font size to H3 makes a difference too. 

Five Tips to get Your Company into Social Media

In the past, I've talked to companies about using social media, but many senior managers and small business owners look at me with a wary eye. They don't know much about social media beyond what their children tell them. So who do you help your company toe-dip into social media?

Think about these five tips from The Forrester Blog:

1. Gain customer intelligence about your brand or product.
2. Learn more about colleagues and job candidates.
3. Test the power of scalable intimacy with friends and brands.
4. Test the power of socializing content.
5. Rate and review products you sell or you have used.

As you follow this steps, please feel free to follow me on twitter (@yourprguy) or email me at rodger [at] yourprguy [dot] com.