The problem facing most organizations is how to create great content that will get noticed and shared as information volumes continue to increase. We all know that most people have too much information to process – so how can your organization hope to break through the clutter, filters and competition to get noticed? For starters, your communications team should start to think like a newsroom. Before we explore how to shift your mindset to that of a newsroom, let’s start by looking at the past and present state of content marketing from my perspective.

Past

Before we called it content marketing, we called it marketing communications. Your team of marketing professionals – including corporate communications, marketing communications and public relations professionals – would develop content in line with the communications needs of the organization. You started with target audiences and determined what needed to be communicated to those audiences on an annual, quarterly or monthly basis.

The outputs were typically annual reports, brochures, newsletters, case studies, data sheets and white papers – to name a few. Over the past decade, more and more of these materials became digital – and in recent years, a heck of a lot more social. The underlying content was written for the masses and typically written in marketing speak. The content wasn’t particularly captivating or relevant to the audience and was one-sided in nature. That is, content was written to communicate what the company wanted to communicate to an audience – not necessarily what the audience wanted to read about (not to mention share). This was the world of content marketing in the mass communications age.

Present

Today, your brand has more channels to communicate through – and more audiences to communicate with. Every single channel is interactive – it’s two-way, where your audience has a powerful voice (sometimes more powerful and influential than your own). As such, your content creation has evolved to the most sophisticated state it’s ever been. You’re finally talking with your audiences, and you’re responding to their information needs in new ways. You’re becoming a lot more personable in the process, and giving your audiences a chance to see who you really are as a brand. It’s great, isn’t it?

If you’re lucky, you have an army of internal and agency resources dedicated to helping you fuel the content machine – cranking out all sorts of content to keep the feeds full and to keep people clicking and sharing. Then there are those organizations who desperately need more resources to produce content – they simply don’t have the budget or staff needed to keep up with all the communications channels. These are the organizations that haven’t posted to the LinkedIn Company Page in months (or a year), only have a couple of videos on YouTube and only reply to Twitter Followers here and there (when they’re bored in a meeting or know they need to give an update on social to management sometime soon).

Sure, if you’re posting on a regular basis, you have more friends and followers than you did last quarter, and Google Analytics reports have never looked so good. Traffic equals leads and that’s got everyone singing your praises… but it’s not going to be enough next year. You’re not the only one posting to these channels now – and your audience is becoming even more picky about what they look for in good content, as more and more content becomes available in their streams. It’s time to evolve. The future of content marketing is here.

Future

Whether your future is this week or next year, the future is focused on producing better content faster than ever before. You are now CNN for your brand. Now that your brand is its own news organization, you’re responsible for producing the best content you can to keep your audience tuning in week after week. To do this, you have to act like a newsroom. If you’ve never worked in a newsroom, you’ll need somebody on your team that has. Here is what the future of your content marketing operation looks like:

• More than a few people on your internal and external communications teams have a degree in journalism – some of them have actually worked for a newspaper or broadcast news organization (they’re like real journalists)
• Your team – which now consists of marketers, journalists, copywriters, designers, videographers, developers, social media specialists, analytics and SEO professionals and more – holds a daily standup meeting to determine what content you need to produce today
• The team monitors trending news stories, memes and other popular content to find opportunities to position your brand and its content around what people are talking about today – or to determine its own content that will become the news of the day
• The team creates content that is quickly consumed, ‘liked’ and shared by the community – enabling the team to generate its own trending content on a daily basis – using analytics and real-time data from the community, the team makes adjustments on the fly or repurposes content in different formats across other social channels to drive engagement
• The paid media specialists on the team take trending content and apply sponsored content or ‘native advertising’ tactics to amplify the content and reach a greater audience
• The content hub for your brand – whether a section on your website, a blog or some other central content resource – is visited daily (or several times per day) by your audiences, because they don’t want to miss your next post; your brand is media
• Your content is far more entertaining, relevant and engaging than it’s ever been, and your fans and followers love you for it – they love your brand because of the great content you’re sharing
• Everyone on your content team has some dashboard or analytics tool up in their browser, looking at performance in real-time and optimizing the approach on-the-fly to improve results
• Every piece of content you produce is based on insights – and every piece of content you produce generates results that can be tracked and quantified at some level (there’s real ROI tied to your content performance)
• You end the day with a review of what worked and what didn’t, and start to plan the next batch of content for tonight, tomorrow, different time zones or regions, or event over the weekend or holidays – and this is just for the unplanned content

Sound far-fetched? It’s not. There are hundreds of brands now using some modification of this approach to create content that is more relevant and engaging for their fans. Your audiences demand great content for their like or follow – if you don’t deliver, they’ll go find some other brand that will. They’re hungry for great content… will you give it to them?

What do you think? Does your team think and work like a newsroom today? Do you want to act more like a newsroom? How is your team evolving to improve the way it plans, produces and shares content?

As always, thank you for reading the blog and let us know if you have any suggestions for content. All the best!

When I first started talking about earned, owned and paid (and no, I was far from the first to start talking about it), I would describe the owned channel as brands owning the media channel, and would use the example of Nike being its own ESPN. In other words, you would eventually go to Nike’s website for news and information on all things sports. When we talk about content marketing trends and brands AS media today, that’s what we’re talking about.

The funny thing is, half the people I talked to about that thought it was crazy talk. Brands as media – silly marketer. The other half got it. Fast-forward a couple of years and we’re all talking about brand journalism, content marketing and the new favorite, native advertising. Every brand seems to be working on some form of content hub, and overall, this is a good thing. Brands are working diligently to open up lines of communication between the brand and the consumers in ways we haven’t seen before – and they’re doing it with clever brand stories and content that resonates with consumers on a personal level.

Brands that are winning in the brands as media game have figured out that the skillfully told brand stories, and the completely unrelated content that serves the information needs of the community, serves to build audience and promote loyalty, conversations and sharing more than ever before.

We’re in the midst of a content revolution, where brands are finding it more fruitful to produce their own content, earning the communication channels they use to reach you and me. You’re seeing this today with The Coca-Cola Company’s new Journey Homepage, where the company’s website has been transformed into an online magazine (shameless plug, read my recap on CES on Journey here).

It’s the essence of the strategies behind American Express’ OpenForum, which provides news and information for small businesses on par with Inc. or Entepreneur magazine’s content. And then there’s RedBull’s (awesome) content sites, which have become the destination for all things action and adventure sports – with an amazing range of multimedia content available that dazzles viewers and makes us all wish we had wings. More and more brands are building out sites built around content. It’s also the foundation of HubSpot’s content marketing machine.

Smart brands are realizing that you can build much deeper relationships – and drive much stronger engagement – around content that your audience is genuinely interested in than you can from that tired old marketing content you’ve been producing for years. Nobody wants to read your brochure, but they might be interested in real life stories about what people are doing with your products or services. Better yet, they might love your brand more if you share content they’re interested in that has nothing to do with your products and services.

You don’t need to have millions of dollars in your marketing budget to leverage content marketing to transform your website or blog into an earned media channel. I’d argue any brand has amazing, untapped content marketing potential. Every company that’s in business today has stories to tell, they just need help telling them. Once you figure out the type of content your audience finds most valuable, you really just have to create it to start building your community, start opening up lines of conversation, begin to stimulate meaningful brand-with-consumer conversations, and encourage sharing and reciprocal word-of-mouth among those audiences. Sounds easy enough, right?

Really though, how can you start leveraging this “your brand as media” approach? Here are a couple of thoughts…

It’s About Them, Not You

Lose the brochureware content on your site. Get to know your audiences interests and act like a media channel. Think like a producer or assignment editor for that matter. Turn around and start looking at your organization through the lens of journalism. What stories do you tell to people that come to visit your office or interview for a job that you don’t share outside of your company? How did the company get started? Why did the founders strike out on their own? Remember that time when you almost went out of business? How did you turn things around? What about that one employee you have that does something amazing outside of work? That might be interesting to somebody that reads the article you post.

Look Outside of Your Organization

Brands don’t need to rely solely on brand journalism – that is, telling their own brand stories – to find success with content marketing. Some of the best examples of content marketing out there today rely on artful aggregation of the best content from around the Web. In some ways, I would argue this is the premise behind OpenForum. Technically, OpenForum has recruited a virtual army of the best bloggers from around the Web to produce content for their site. But they’re aggregating the best content in one place, for the purpose of serving their community of small business owners. What information is hard to find in your industry – or what “best content” can you pull together in one place as a service for your audience?

Think Local

How many of you have seen your community newspaper fold in recent years? It’s harder and harder for local papers to survive in today’s media climate. While many have successfully evolved, new models and increased competition for advertising dollars have created tremendous hurdles for local papers to get content out the door. If your business serves a geographic radius – an area around your business – you have an opportunity to curate or develop original content the serves that information need on a local level. You could hire a professionally-trained journalist – somebody with 3-5 years of reporting experience – probably for less than your local advertising budget annually. You would reach an equal or greater audience with a well done local news site – and that content would pay dividends over time, as you gradually recruit more and more traffic from organic search, subscriptions to your site, and inbound links from social media sharing. I’m not suggesting you scrap advertising – but consider adding more content to your website as a service to the community.

Test And Learn

The best way to learn about the type of content your audience will best respond to is to share and test. Start sharing content you think they’ll like and see what happens. Leverage analytics and real-person listening to discover patterns in your content. What’s “real-person listening?” It’s listening with real people to what your audience has to say about your brand and the content you share. Take note of the actions taken on the content you share – the likes, tweets, shares and comments you generate. What type of content do they share the most? Does that content tend to be in video form, have lots of great pictures or is it plain old text? How does time of day effect sharing? Try posting content during the workday or on a Sunday and see when your audience is most active. The more you learn about the type of content, performance across each channel and the best time to post content, the better you will be at planning your content calendar.

Have a Home Base

You may leverage dozens of channels to share your content. Just make sure you have a home base for your content. More often than not, this should be your website or a blog (or both). All the content you share across social channels should pull people back to your home base, where they can discover and consume more of your content.

Boost the Reach of Your Content

Leverage your social media channels to help extend the reach of your content beyond your site. Pin images to pinboards on Pinterest. Create clever Vine videos to capture the interest of users in that channel, and pull them through to your site. Update your Facebook Pages and ask users for their feedback on stories. Tweet your articles and include locally-relevant keywords or hashtags to reach local audiences (or cc influencers in your local area to help you get the word out). Post a picture-of-the-day to your Instagram for your business – even if it’s a picture of your daily specials or a new product you’ve just stocked on the shelves. You don’t have to do it all, but do some of it and expand your efforts over time to figure out what works best for you.

Remember, the key point here is that your brand can be the media today. You can make your own news by leveraging a content marketing area on your website, and using social media to connect with audiences in new ways. All the information is out here on the Internet for you – it’s up to you what you do with it. And if you don’t want to do the work required to help your organization grow, hire a professional to help do it for you.

What do you think? Have you tried to connect with audiences through sharing your brand stories? What success have you found so far – or what makes this approach difficult from your perspective? Share your thoughts below – I’m happy to answer questions you might have.

(Image Credit: Brand Journalism via Metzger Associates)

As a continuation of my series on messaging and positioning development from earlier this year, I wanted to make my next installment about how you can prepare for interview questions journalists might ask – but this advice could help you prepare for any interaction where you want to have exactly the right answer queued up.

Before sharing my tips for question and answer planning, I’d like to share a quick story about my days as a TA (teacher’s assistant) for the Mass Communications 101 Course at Utica College of Syracuse University. Each week I was responsible for administering the current events quiz. The quiz was simple – I would develop questions from the previous week’s headlines in The New York Times.

All students were required to read the newspaper each day in preparation for the quiz. Most students would cram before the quiz – and my friends on the lacrosse team would try to pry the questions out of me in advance. I never budged, but it’s true, if they knew the questions in advance, the quizzes would have been much easier. From my perspective, they already had the questions in advance – they just had to think about it. I think this is true for most interview scenarios as well. If you think about it, you can predict most of the questions you’re going to get in an interview.

How to Prepare a Question List

Let’s use the example of preparing for a journalist interview. If you read a few of the journalist’s recent articles, review their staff bio and check out a couple of their recent tweets, you’ll quickly get a feel for his/her personality. From here, put yourself in the journalist’s shoes. If you were interviewing you about the topic you’ll be talking about during the interview, what questions would you ask? What questions would yield the best responses – or sound bites – for the story they’ll write? What questions hard questions would you ask? What questions would you ask, even though you know it’s unlikely the other person would want to answer them? If you put yourself in the mindset of the reporter, it should be relatively easy to generate a list of 12 or so questions you could expect to get in the interview.

Now Come Up With the Worst-Possible Questions

Everyone has at least one skeleton in their closet. Maybe it’s something as innocent as a party picture you were tagged in on Facebook, or something more serious like a DUI conviction. Let’s assume the journalist you’re interviewing with has access to all the information from your life, what’s the worst possible question they could ask you? Why do I suggest you prepare for this question? Because in most cases – unless you’re a celebrity or politician – you’re probably not going to get that question. If you prepare for the worst, the rest of the “hard” questions will seem that much easier.

Ask Your Peers for Questions

Ask people on your management team what questions they would ask if they were interviewing you for the story. Your team is typically tuned-in to the most commonly-asked questions they encounter through their interactions with people outside your organization. You should come up with a couple more options for the list.

Now Answer Those Questions

Now that you have a list of questions you might ask, work on answering them one by one. Read the questions and answers out loud and work on your answer delivery. You want to answer questions concisely and with confidence. Better yet, have somebody on your team ask you the questions, to help you refine your timing even more. Feel free to have your mock interviewer through a couple of unplanned questions in there, to help you practice your improvisational skills – your ability to adapt to the interview and answer questions on the fly.

Now Practice Some More

The more you practice answering questions, the better you will be at it. The more preparation you put into preparing for the interview, the more likely you will communicate the right information at the right time – and reduce your risk of saying something stupid.

Develop Your Own Questions

Most journalists talk to hundreds of sources in a given year. They are most-likely an expert in your market and what’s going on in your industry. Develop your own set of questions you can throw back at the journalist during the conversation, to make the discussion more interactive and to help put you at ease during the exchange. Some of my favorite questions to ask journalists – particularly trade journalists – include the following:

• Who is doing the best job in our industry?
• What is the coolest product or service you’ve seen come to market the past three months?
• How has our industry changed in the past three years?
• What trends in our industry are you most excited about?
• What types of stories are you most interested in covering?
• What are your pet peeves when it comes to dealing with PR professionals or interviewees like me?
• How can I be a better source for you in the future?
• What question did you not ask me that you’ll wish you did when you start to work on your story?

These questions go a long way at giving you information you can use after the interview is over. I’d argue that they also help to differentiate you from the other sources the journalist is talking about. Most journalists like to talk about what they know from my experience. Don’t be afraid to tap into their knowledge and expertise, you might uncover that one nugget of wisdom you’ve been hoping for.

Parting Wisdom

If you ever get a question you don’t want to answer – or can’t for some reason, such as legal restrictions or getting yourself in trouble with the PR department, simply be honest with the reporter and they will typically respect your decision. It’s far better to justify your no-answer than to simply say “no comment.” Journalists hate to hear “no comment.” As an example, consider saying something like, “I’m not able to answer that question for you today, but here’s what I can tell you…” or “I’m not authorized to answer that question for our organization, but would be happy to work on providing you with a response following this interview.” Then do your best to follow-up on that latter example.

Again, if you read some of the articles the journalist has written, you’ll start to pick up on a pattern of answers that provide clues to the types of questions you might encounter during your interview.

What would you add? What tips do you follow to prepare for interviews? Share your ideas in the comments below.

NOTE: An incomplete draft of this post was originally published yesterday. I’m not sure how this happened – I apologize to anybody who read or shared the incomplete (and incoherent) draft.

(Image Credit: Question Mark? by LibertyGrace0 / Flickr)

For those of you that need to get a job – you know, like yesterday – I thought it would be helpful to share my perspective on the skills I believe most employers are looking for in a PR hire. The reality is, if you’re a recent grad and don’t have these skills, you’ll have a harder time finding that first job. If you’re an undergraduate, learn from this post – so you’ll be in a better place 2, 3 or 4 years from now.

First, Writing Skills

No matter what you’ve heard about all that sexy social media stuff, you still need to know how to write in PR. Ideally you majored in Journalism (or English) – or your PR or Communications program had a heavy concentration of writing-related courses. You should be able to walk into your first job interview with any (or all) of the following:

• Sample articles you wrote (bonus points if you had them published) – the best examples from my perspective are newspaper articles (online or print) and magazine articles (again, bonus points if you have both consumer and business examples)
• A variety of writing samples – articles on a wide-range of subjects, press release samples, blog posts and perhaps entire press kits
• New media writing sample examples – blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts are great – no, not your personal ones, but rather ones you wrote on behalf of an organization
• Long-form writing, such as research reports or in-depth public relations plans

If you don’t have writing samples like those referenced above, consider seeking out internships this summer and volunteering to write anything you can to build up your portfolio. You may want to take on a client of your own to start gathering work examples – consider helping out a family or friend with their business, or volunteer for a local non-profit organization or church.

Bonus tip: Keep in mind that most prospective employers will give you a writing test or have you write something on the spot during the screening process. Writing proficiency will be the difference between you getting a second interview and a rejection letter.

Second, Internship Experience

Whether through your coursework or on your own during breaks, you should be able to share your experience across a couple of different internships. Ideally, with agencies or larger organizations. You should be able to show examples of stories you pitched and placed, or campaigns you worked on and generated results for. Being able to demonstrate that you can work in the communications department or on an account team and be a contributor on day-one is a huge plus for prospective employers. The more “real” work you can show, the better.

Bonus tip: sure you can talk about your internship experience, but if you prepare a case study or presentation on the work you did, you would make a stronger impression. Being able to talk about the results you generated and the impact they had is more impressive than showing a press release you wrote. Focus on the results.

Third, Social Media Experience

I put social media experience third for a reason. It’s less important than the examples I shared above. That said, this experience will put you ahead of candidates who are your equal when it comes to writing and internship experience. If you’ve developed your own presence in social media throughout college – writing a blog, or building a following on Facebook, Instagram or any other social media, this experience is particularly relevant for getting your first job. You need to be able to demonstrate you are proficient in using these tools, because clients and organizations are looking for employees who can help manage their brand voices across these channels. Bonus points if you’re using emerging channels like Vine, Pinterest, Tumblr or SnapChat – just a couple that are of particular importance at the moment.

With this set of skills, it’s more important that you understand how to use the tools than the content you’ve shared here. You should be able to demonstrate that you understand the fundamental differences in how these tools work – whether it’s conducting research to identify influencers, or you’re well-versed in some new tips and tricks for using the platforms beyond their core capabilities. For example, if you’re using Pinterest images on a blog and driving traffic back and forth in some unique way, this would impress most interviewers. If you used these social platforms to build an audience for a client during an internship or coursework, even better. Finally, if you know how to use analytics tools – either those built into the platforms, or third-party apps for reporting on audience growth, community activity or traffic generated from these platforms, event better.

Bonus tip: most employers will check you out on social media. Make sure your accounts are up-to-date before you apply for a job. It wouldn’t hurt to have a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter account and a Facebook profile for starters. You might want to “check-in” on Foursquare – or Tweet – when you arrive for your interview. I’m surprised by how many people I’ve interviewed for social media jobs that don’t do this. We want to see that you know how to use these tools – and that you’ve done your legwork to check us out before you show up as well.

Fourth, Multimedia Experience

I don’t expect most students to have the following skills out of college. If they have all the skills mentioned above, but also bring these unique ones to the table, it’s hard to pass up on the hire. So what are these skills? Here are a couple that stand out:

• You have a blog you’re managing that generates revenue (e.g. you have ads on your blog or use AdWords to generate money from your blog) – this shows that you know how to not only produce content that attracts and audience, but that you’re also able to setup and customize a blog – these are advanced skills.
• You know how to use Photoshop or the equivalent to alter images – this can be as simple as putting words over a funny cat picture or graphic, or something more advanced like creating your own infographics. If you know how to use image editing software, this is an incredibly relevant skill for public relations and content marketing today.
• You know how to shoot, edit and post video to platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. If you are skilled with video, and can actually show a video you produced and generated views on, this will make you stand out. Most people I work with are still learning how to do this.
• You know something about SEO – like how the Google Panda update changes the game for how content is ranked on Google. You know how to conduct keyword research and leverage SEO tactics to help people discover your content on blogs and websites. Typically, if you have a blog as mentioned in the bullet above, you have some of these skills already.
• Finally, you know how to code. This one is far-fetched, but if you know how to program – not just HTML, but a little PHP or Javascript, you probably don’t need to get a job. You can probably do your own thing and make more money right out of college (if you’re not already doing that). That said, if you have these skills, good for you. I’ll probably want to hear from you.

I’m not saying that you NEED to have these skills above to get your first job – but if you DO have these skills, you won’t be looking for a job very long. The more skills from this list that you have, the better your chances of getting a job in PR or marketing. The PR industry has changed dramatically in the 15 years since I graduated. At the time, if you had a couple of internships and a strong writing portfolio, you were a shoe-in at most agencies. Nowadays, there are far more graduates out there, and fewer jobs to go around. There’s a supply and demand problem in the market today and you can increase your odds of success by adding more to your resume before you hit the job hunt trail.

What skills from this list do you have? If you’re a prospective employer, do you agree or disagree with my assessment? What experience should new hires have on day one, versus what they can learn on the job? Please share your thoughts below.

Before I get to the two most effective media relations tactics for 2013, let’s agree that the smile and dial approach doesn’t work anymore.  In the example I shared above, I used the ‘smile and dial’ approach to land that first placement. Back then, if you called enough reporters, you would eventually find a couple willing to listen to your pitch – and perhaps one or two that would write a story. When I think back to what I was actually doing, I was interrupting busy journalists with pitches that probably had nothing to do with the stories they wrote about on a daily basis. While I’ve long since learned my lessons (and taken my fair share of tongue lashings from irritated journalists), I worry about the young professionals who are still calling down a media list trying to get anybody to write about the story they’re pitching. It’s wrong and it gives the PR profession a bad name – even if media relations is only a small subset of all the elements of public relations (for you purists out there).

It’s my intention with this post to introduce you to a new, more-effective approaches to media relations that are far more effective over the long-term. If you’re patient enough to follow this prescription I’m about to write out for you, I guarantee you’ll generate more publicity than you ever did smiling and dialing. The question is, are you willing to do the work that’s required to get you there, or will you continue to resort to outdated tactics that weaken your relationships with the media?

For starters, the media environment – and therefore the media relations environment – is 24/7 today. It’s real-time and always-on. If you work in media relations today, you have to be always-on as well. There are two major approaches to media relations that work well in today’s 24/7 news environment: inbound media relations and real-time media relations. Here’s my breakdown on each. Hands down, these two tactical approaches to media relations are the most effective approaches ever developed. When carefully executed, they will yield the results you’re looking for. I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

Inbound Media Relations

I hope by now that you’re familiar with inbound marketing, a term coined by HubSpot, referring a fundamental shift away from interruption-based marketing tactics (like telemarketing or direct mail) to inbound or “pull” based marketing tactics that attract interested audiences to your marketing messages. A good example of inbound marketing is a blog jam-packed with useful information your prospects and other target audiences want to read. The magic of inbound marketing is that when interested target audiences are looking for you – that is, they’re ready to research a product or service or ready to buy it, they find YOU.

With media relations, you can adapt the same approach for reaching journalists and bloggers. If you build a news blog for example, and treat it as your owned media channel, you can publish your news on a regular basis. You can showcase your expertise and build an audience around your content without the support of the media. You are the media in this example. An interesting thing happens when you do this well – you actually attract journalists and bloggers to your content, and they’ll often want to interview you or quote you in their stories (without you having to pitch them). This is nirvana for a media relations professional. So how can you do it? Here are a few steps to consider:

1. Make a list of all the stories you have to tell – the stuff you wish journalists would write about

2. Put your journalist hat on and write the stories yourself – use the inverted pyramid style of writing and answer the questions who, what, why, when, where and how in your first couple of paragraphs

3. Do keyword research – and consider writing posts related to what your target audiences are searching for

4. Balance your blog content – between what people are searching for and what you want to communicate – make your mission in life to be the best blog on the subject matter most important to your organization’s business; this is the stuff you should know the most about

5. Write about it frequently – good inbound media relations is about quality and quantity; of course, you have to be relevant too – I’ll assume you can be if you follow the rules above

6. Monitor, measure and learn from your audience – they’ll love some of your content, and they’ll hate some of it – write more of the stuff they love. Also, take note of the things your readers search to find your content (Google Analytics will help you here). Write more of that stuff. Also take note of the stuff they’re searching for (or commenting about) that you haven’t written about yet (Google Site Search via Google Analytics, or monitoring your blog comments is your #1 resource here)

7. Continue to build your audience – through subscriptions and a high-level of “touch” across your community.

8. Make it easy for journalists and bloggers to reach you – make it easy to request interviews and quotes and to include you in their stories. If you follow the tips above, you’ll quickly be generating publicity opportunities without having to pitch another journalist again.

I know, I know, it sounds like pie in the sky. Don’t I realize you’ve got to have something to show in this month’s status report? Yes, I realize you don’t have the luxury of time to adapt this approach to your current media relations programs. I also believe if you work this approach into your current efforts over time, that you’ll gradually be able to transition from interruption-based media relations to inbound media relations. What do you have to lose? It works… just ask all the inbound marketers out there. You know, the ones you read about in the stories you should have been included in.

If you want to be a master of inbound media relations, subscribe to the content provided by companies like HubSpot and Pardot. If you’re open to learning new things, these companies will teach you everything you need to know about attracting more people to your content – and helping you escape the trap of tried and true interruption-based media relations tactics.

Real-Time Media Relations

Real-time media relations is the most exciting area of media relations at the moment. It requires less patience than my inbound media relations suggestion above, but it also requires a lot more work. You have to be tuned-in to everything going on in the media world in real-time. Real-time media relations – also referred to as real-time PR or “newsjacking” – is the process of inserting your spokespeople or proactive story ideas into the news cycle. David Meerman Scott, one of my favorite marketing experts, has been writing a lot on this subject lately. I strongly suggest that you subscribe to and read the information David is writing about. I also encourage you to read his books if you haven’t already. His latest focuses on this topic and will quickly get you up to speed on far more insights than I can communicate in this section of my post.

That said, here are some quick tips for starting to think in terms of real-time media relations.

1. What are the top news sources in your industry – that is, the outlets that reach the highest concentration of your target audiences?

2. What are the top topics you can speak about? Start thinking about the news events that create an opportunity for you to comment. If you work for a document shredding company, you’ll want to be on high-alert for stories about consumer personal information falling into the wrong hands or stories related to identify theft. If you work for an accounting firm, any changes to the tax code or seasonal tax-related events create publicity opportunities for your spokespeople to comment on.

3. Have a contact list prepared – have a target list on-hand for all the top media outlets you care about – consider reaching out to these organizations in advance to get on their radar. Using the suggestion above, let the local news station know about your identify theft expert. If a story about identity theft comes up, you’re spokesperson is available to head over to the station on short-notice to be interviewed on tonight’s newscast.

4. Follow the inbound media relations tips above and write your own stories about these topics. You can use these posts as background on your experts when a story breaks. Rather than writing out the entire pitch, you can simply share a link to the post and offer to have your expert available for immediate comment.

5. Take things a step further – prepare some media responses in advance. If you suspect certain types of stories will happen – hail storms for roofers, plummeting or rising interest rates for mortgage lenders, family vacations for fuel efficient vehicles, etc. – prepare your responses or sound bites in advance to help journalists evaluate the quality of the sources you have available.

6. Leverage crisis planning preparation for proactive news angle development – think of all the possible types of stories you might see on the evening news that could create an opportunity for your spokespeople to comment. Then be prepared in advance with pitches and a response plan that enables your after hours staff to quickly capitalize on stories as they’re breaking.

7. Be adaptive to the unexpected – you can’t plan for everything. Work to be the most nimble organization you can be when it comes to working with the media. A great recent example can be found in Oreo’s response to the power outage during this year’s Super Bowl. Read David Meerman Scott’s summary of the events here. It’s a great example of how brands can capitalize on breaking news to score publicity and brand love. Would you have thought a power outage could be an opportunity to generate publicity for cookies? That’s the real-time media relations game.

In Conclusion

Inbound media relations and real-time media relations are the two most-effective tactics for generating significant publicity results for yourself, your organization or the clients you represent today. Please sound off on the strategies and tactics you use to generate publicity today – or back me up on why these two tactics should be at the top of any public relations program in 2013.

 What do you think? Is inbound media relations worth the effort required to make it work? Is real-time media relations effective for unknown brands and spokespeople, or only the big guys? What other tactics do you find effective? Am I wrong about “smiling and dialing”? I want to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

(Image Credit: Two by Matti Mattilla / Flickr)

Maybe it was growing up in the plant business that gave me this perspective. After all, in the plant business, you take some seeds and some cow dung and turn it into something beautiful that people want to pay good money for. I think there’s a parallel behind that experience and the work I do bringing brand stories to life today. No matter how strong the smell of manure, I know I can make it flourish with just the right amount of tender loving care.

If you find yourself stuck with a client that at first seems like a dud, take a step back and try to look for the real stories behind the brand. Shadow the founders of the company as they give a tour to high school students and hear the stories they tell about how the company got started. Listen to the old-timers talk about how they weathered the tough times, or what it was like to work for the company in it’s glory days. If it’s a new company – or a new line of products the company is bringing to market – seek out and search for the spokespeople that are most passionate about the brand. Everybody was excited about the business at one time or another – that excitement is often where the best stories are hiding.

At some point in the history of every company, people were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make it interesting to consumers. Imagine the first time somebody was asked to promote laundry soap or a vacuum cleaner. They probably seemed like the worst ideas in the world at first, but somebody with an open mind turned those products into something amazing. Those people paved the way for the Tide stain stick, or the Dyson line of vacuum cleaners, arguably two newsworthy products today. Some clever communications professionals paved the way to make those products something we’d want to read about and ultimately spend our hard-earned money on.

Every brand has a story to tell, and it’s our job as communicators – as brand journalists – to find those stories and tell them in a way that generates excitement. Back to the toilet example, the product ended up being an innovative new toilet seat that was responsible for my first PR success. The toilet seat was heated and had technology built into it that ate bad smells. It also happened to have a wireless remote control that controlled a built-in warm water washlet – you can use your imagination on that one. Believe it or not, it was one of the hottest tech products of that year – featured in all sorts of mainstream consumer media, including Time magazine. But it was a just a toilet seat… there couldn’t possibly be a story there, right?

Chances are, your brand is flush with stories stronger than the toilet seat one. Can you find those stories for the brands you’re working with? I promise you, the stories are there if you look hard enough. Don’t buy into the trap that there’s not an angle there – there’s always an angle if you look hard enough. What stories have you uncovered where others wouldn’t have? I want to hear from you.

This post was inspired by my participation in the Solo PR Summit this evening. I had the opportunity to speak on a panel about how independent PR professionals can leverage BIG company campaign ideas for small company campaign executions. A special thanks goes out to Kellye Crane (@KellyeCrane) for organizing the event and inviting me to speak, to Ashley Callahan (@AshHazie) for reminding me that every brand has a story to tell, to my other co-panelists Aime Ertley (@AimeeErtley) and Candace McCafferty (@CandaceMcC) for making our panel rock; and a special hat tip to @RedMediaPR for an effective use of peer pressure to get me to write this post tonight. I hope everyone has a great day two at the @SoloPR Summit. Cheers!

(Image Credit: Putting the Ventilation Tube and the Toilet Seat by Sustainable Sanitation / Flickr)

If I’m asking you to share your story, it’s only fair I share mine. I wrote for my high school newspaper and loved it. I edited our class yearbook in high school and loved it. I even spent my free time at home working on an underground newspaper (much harder in the days of typewriters) – which I also loved.

Despite all this love, I decided to major in Criminal Justice, Economic Crime Investigation (ECI for short) at Utica College of Syracuse University. When I made this decision, I had no idea “economic crime investigation” involved so much math. While all the accounting classes have come in handy over the years, it wasn’t for me and I switched my major to Public Relations & Journalism at the end of my sophomore year.

So what led me to PR and journalism? Less math. I literally flipped through the course catalog and found the major with the least math requirements for graduation. I was also interested in the “Journalism,” “Advertising,” and “Public Speaking” courses listed as core requirements. At the time I changed my major to “Public Relations & Journalism” (known affectionately as “PR/J” at Utica College), I had no idea what “public relations” was. Lucky for me, this major stuck and the rest – as they say – is history.

Then again, I have my doubts about whether I would have stuck with PR or journalism at a big school. I was lucky to be at a small school (most of my classes had about 20 students in them). We had fun professors who genuinely cared about the quality of education in the program and gave us a lot of practical, real-world experience. They made learning fun.

At the time, Utica College was the only school to mix students majoring in journalism and public relations together. Some majored in one or the other, while others like me majored in both. It doesn’t seem so weird today, but back then majoring in public relations and journalism sounded like an oxymoron. And you’ll note, this blog is about public relations and journalism – so the influence of Utica College of Syracuse University has clearly stuck.

One of my favorite memories of my “Introduction to Public Relations” course was having to pitch stories to other students. Our professor would brink in this old red phone and make PR majors pitch the journalism majors – in front of the class of course. Then he would turn the tables on us and make the journalism majors pitch the PR majors. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that one class exercise would be among the most practical preparation for our career.

While I could talk all day about the glory days, let’s go back to my original question… how did you end up in PR or journalism? Did you go to college for it, or did you switch careers later on? Did you start in PR and end up in journalism (or vice-versa)? Tell us your story!

(Image Credit: Forward by -= Bruce Berrien =- / Flickr)

The unsung heroes behind the success of Super Bowl advertising – at least in recent years – are the PR teams that work to generate buzz, anticipation and excitement for the ads before they air. It wasn’t that long ago that we had to wait to be surprised during commercial breaks on the big day. Now, particularly with the dollars at stake – and also in the age of social media, where buzz needs to be seeded a bit – success requires a full-on assault of all marketing disciplines.

While every marketing discipline is represented in the successful execution of a Super Bowl advertising campaign, PR deserves the MVP trophy. It’s the PR teams getting early publicity for the spots (you can watch almost every spot that’s going to air on Sunday online right now). It’s also the PR teams that have to deal with early conflicts related to the advertising. For example, SodaStream had their ad rejected. Volkswagen is under some heat for their ad. Every year there’s even more challenges in pulling off a successful Super Bowl execution.

It really is the Super Bowl of advertising (and PR, and social media, and search engine marketing, and insert other marketing disciplines). So while the ad agencies get all the credit for coming up with the actual ideas (though many of the ideas for this year once again revolve around getting ideas from creative consumers like you and me – Doritos and Coca-Cola both tapped the wisdom of crowds for their spots), the PR teams deserve equal praise for making those 30-seconds last for a couple of weeks.

So who are you rooting for on the big day? Take a look at the early releases for Taco Bell, Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, Doritos, SodaStream, and Mercedes-Benz if you haven’t already. It’s going to be a great competition, and hopefully the best spot will win. If this year is like recent years, it will be the best-promoted spots that get the most attention. And for that, we thank the PR teams.

What do you think? Would Super Bowl commercials generate the same amount of buzz with zero PR effort behind them? Do some ads get more credit than they deserve because they have stronger PR support? I think so.

UPDATE: I’ve watched ALL the spots I could find online and was happy to see some brands (and their agencies) are planning to keep their creative in their pants until Sunday. I’ll give props to Chrysler, Blackberry (BBDO London), Oreo (Wieden & Kennedy), E-Trade (Grey New York – the baby is back), M&Ms (BBDO), Milk Processor Education Program (Deutsch NY), Subway, Time Warner Cable, and Samsung (72andSunny). As of this update, none of these brands have tipped their hand.

I’ll give half props to Best Buy (CP+B), Budweiser Black Crown (Anomaly), Tide (Saatchi & Saatchi), Cars.com (McGarryBowen), Lincoln (Hudson Rouge), Coca-Cola (Wieden & Kennedy), Bud Light (Translation), Wonderful Pistachios (Psy will sing a new version of Gangnam Style), GoDaddy.com, Fiat, and Doritos for saving something for game day. These brands shared some element of their creative – either as a teaser or as part of a “pick the winning spot” competition – but still left room for us to pay attention on Sunday. My vote for the Doritos spot? Despite “Fashionista Daddy” coming from my hood, I had to go with “Fetch”… hilarious.

Prepare Your Spokesperson with Talking Points and Key Messages

This is the most obvious step, but I know firsthand that many busy executives don’t prepare for interviews as much as they should. Many spokespeople believe they know the subject matter so well that they can answer any question that comes up. This does little to maintain consistency in your responses and to keep your spokespeople on message. Before every interview, give your spokesperson a summary (bullet points work best) of the key points to hit on in the interview. You can pull these from your press release or pitch letter, or from your messaging and positioning plan. If the interview is over the phone, scribble notes on a pad of paper or use instant messaging to remind your spokesperson of key points during the flow of the interview, to help keep them on track. Most journalists don’t like it when the PR person is hovering over the interview. It’s best to lurk in the background on phone interviews. If the interview is in-person, you’ll have to take a more active role in guiding the interview back on track if it starts to get off message. For this reason, I prefer phone interviews (or having the opportunity to answer journalist questions via email in advance or as an alternative to interviews for the best chance at staying on message).

Brief Your Spokesperson on the Journalist and Story in Advance

More important than the key messages you want to communicate in the interview, your spokesperson needs to understand what the journalist’s needs are first and foremost. It’s up to you to brief the spokesperson on what the journalist is all about. What types of stories do they right about the topic your spokesperson will be discussing today, what recent stories have they written on the topic (have your spokesperson read these in advance), what is the background of the journalist (are they technical, junior/senior, freelancer, etc.), and what is the editorial focus of the publication and what audiences do they serve. Most media relations databases have pitch tips and other information to help you understand the journalist in advance. Read these, but also assume that the information could be wrong. Do your own homework and READ what they’ve written to best prepare your spokesperson.

Finally, what was it that convinced the journalist to talk to you in the first place? This is the key message the journalist will be looking for, so make sure your spokesperson meets their needs head-on before going off on your message points for the interview. It’s better to serve the needs of the journalist first and foremost to secure your inclusion in the story. Prepare your talking points specific to the story in advance. For bonus points, bring something to the table that doesn’t benefit you at all, but rather helps to make the journalist’s story better. Do you have access to a research report that is relevant to the story? Do you know another great source on the topic the journalist should talk to (even if it’s a competitor)? Journalists will appreciate the effort to help them write a better story – and more often than not, your spokesperson will be featured more prominently in the story when you do this.

Anticipate the Tough Questions – And Have a Great Answer

Make a list of the most-likely questions a journalist might ask in the interview. Start with the specific story they’re working on, then think about the questions they might ask after reviewing the information on your website or searching the web for background on your company. If you had a spell of bad press in the recent past, you should assume a good journalist is going to ask about it and how things are going now. Any organization should have a running list of the most frequently-asked questions (FAQs) journalists ask, with prepared responses for all of them. As you encounter new questions in interviews, add them to the list. Organize your questions by categories, such as company information (e.g. revenue, key business deals, number of employees, etc.), products (e.g. market share, competitors, new releases, technical questions, etc.), and story-specific questions.

Once you’ve created your master list of questions, work with your team to develop great responses to all of them. What makes a great response? An answer you’d be happy to see in print. Keep this list of questions on your intranet or some other central resource where your team can refer to it often, add to it and be familiar with how they should handle these questions. You don’t want everyone saying, “I can’t answer that question,” “Let me get back to you with an answer,” or the worst of them all, “No comment.” Give journalists the answers they are looking for and you will get more love in the story.

Prepare Your Spokespeople with Bridging and Redirection Skills

Your spokespeople should be trained (see my next point) to use bridging and redirection skills in their interviews to stay on track and avoid answering questions they aren’t prepared for. Watch any press conference with the POTUS to see a master at these skills. If you’re not familiar with bridging and redirection, bridging is answering and question and using it to bring the interview back to a main point or key message the spokesperson is trying to deliver.

For example, if asked something like, “You shut down a plant in a small town in the midwest. What are you doing to get those people new jobs?”, your bridging response might be something like, “Our HR department has career training and transition placement for all of those workers – many have found new jobs already. What I’m most excited about is the 1,000 new jobs we’re bringing to our new plant in that other city this year.”

With redirection, your spokesperson answers a question, but not necessarily the question asked by the reporter. Using the same question above, a redirection response might be something like, “That’s a great question Mark. The truth is, we had to make some tough decisions last year – which is how we were able to exceed our numbers this quarter. With the launch of our new products this quarter, we expect to turn in another strong performance this quarter.” I hate it when people, particularly politicians, don’t answer the question – but it’s a necessary evil when facing tough questions in an interview. The best approach is to have an answer. When you don’t have an answer, these approaches can help you avoid an interview spiraling out of control.

Train Your Spokespeople

Don’t go to the driving range to practice hitting golf balls if you’ve never had a golf lesson. You’ll be practicing the wrong way to swing a club and hit the ball. The same goes for media interviews. Don’t practice your responses without getting some media training. Everyone on your team that will actively be talking with journalists as part of your PR program should be media trained. A good media trainer can develop your spokespeople in the following areas:

• How to familiarize yourself with the journalist’s coverage area and the media outlet
• What to expect from different types of journalists and interview scenarios
• How to rehearse responses and be prepared for unforeseen questions
• How to manage combative or hostile interviews
• How to stay on-message and give consistent responses to FAQs
• How to use bridging and redirection effectively to stay on track
• How to maintain control in the interview and deliver all your messages in the time allotted
• How to handle live television, radio or web-streamed interviews – including on-camera techniques, what to wear on the interview day and other “small things” that impact the success of your interview
• How to consistently deliver key messages via “sound bites”
• How to handle on-the-fly interviews, when a journalist calls them out of the blue and starts asking questions
• How to use body language and tone of voice to communicate key points
• Planning for the worst, what to do when it all goes wrong

I could write a dozen blog posts on interview preparation and media training, but I believe the basics above will help you prepare any spokesperson for their next media interview. To my point on practice and repetition above, the more your spokespeople do it, the better they will get at it. Just make sure they start with a solid foundation of best practices for handling interviews. The more prepared your spokespeople are for an interview, the better they will perform.

What tips and tricks do you use to prepare spokespeople for interviews? What advice would you add for spokespeople preparing for an interview? Please share your thoughts below.

(Image Credit: Apollo 11 Video Restoration Press Conference / Newseum By NASA Goddard Photo and Video / Flickr)