Public Relations

Years ago I was working at Maclean’s magazine and writing primarily for The People Page. The items on the page were short – about a paragraph in length and each short piece needed a strong headline.

I loved writing for The People Page. First off, it was the most-read page in the magazine and I liked the challenge of putting interesting, entertaining and informative stories into 100 words or less. And I love writing headlines. It’s not as easy as you think to be smart and witty in five words and describe the article.

Fast forward to now. Social media demands short, snappy and interesting pieces. All those late nights of struggling to turn a two-hour interview into a 100 words is paying off for our clients. I understand not only how to keep it short; I know why it’s important. As communicators, we only have seconds to capture someone’s attention and we’re competing with a lot of “stuff” for that attention. Knowing your audience is key, understanding what your objectives are is important and seeing the world in one-sentence connections is valuable.

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Nothing gets our juices flowing in the AHA PR office more than the opportunity to pitch media and bloggers. Coming up with the right idea that will get a journalist or blogger to learn more about a client’s organization or their product or service takes more effort than most people outside of PR realize. It is part art, part science and part magic – I think.

While we still believe that there is value in a news release, more and more these days, we find ourselves developing pitches for a specific journalist or blogger. We write the pitch as if we were writing it for an editor – with stats, facts and why this story idea is relevant to the readership or audience of that journalist. It is an interesting process and one that takes the effort of several of the AHA crew. We put the pitch through its paces, reviewing it through the eyes of a busy journalist who receives a lot of pitches in a day. We look at it with the “who cares” lens – and ask why anyone would care about this information?  If we can’t confidently explain who would care and why – the pitch needs to be reworked. And if we keep hitting the who cares phase and we can’t get past it – sometimes, we need to go back and speak with our client about taking a different angle or, perhaps, coming to terms with the fact that while this information is of value to a specific audience relevant to their organization, that it may not be of value to a larger, more public audience.

Ragan.com has a great piece written by tech journalist David Pogue of the New York Times. We’re big fans of Pogue’s work – not only does he know his stuff, he is a genuinely nice guy and he’s really funny. (Several years ago, he was a speaker at the Ragan Social Media Conference and there was a technical glitch with his presentation. Pogue sat down at the grand piano on the stage and performed a fun, lively little number taking a poke at communicators and reporters for us while the challenges were being fixed.)

In this piece Pogue shows two pitches that got his attention. Getting the attention of the New York Times tech journalist is a pretty great thing – this is worth a read.

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When we are developing a communications plan for a client’s organization, I like to go and spend time there. Depending on the client, that might mean sitting in the employee cafeteria, the lobby or anywhere that staff might gather and chat. Sometimes that means I ride the elevator up and down a few times or go to the coffee shop closest to their office. It is so I can get a sense of the people behind the brand. Because really, that is who delivers on your brand promise. And one of the components of great PR is authentically communicating your brand promise to your stakeholder group.

There are some incredible people that work for your organization that deliver on your brand promise every day. They bring your brand to life and they make real connections with the people that purchase your goods or services. They make your organization a success through each action and interaction they have with your stakeholders.

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There is an interesting post on how B2B PR will fail in 2010 on Ragan.com. It’s worth a read for several reasons – not the least of which is the list it provides on what type of content will be important for us to do our work.

At our Vancouver PR agency (and in every city that AHA is in), content has always been important. The stories that we tell on behalf of our clients are at the heart of what we do – we share relevant, authentic and interesting information. We engage, connect and actively listen – not just to what we think will be said, but we pay attention to what is being said. That, however is a blog post for another day.

More and more we, at AHA, find ourselves working with clients to develop their stories, to help them to tell those stores and to distribute them using technology. (Understanding, of course, where the target community lives – either online or offline.) We also work to encourage and facilitate the conversation between our client’s organization and the stakeholder group.

Great content can be found in blogs, in infographics (the incredible charts and graphs that can now be created), in customer stories and testimonials, in podcasts and videocasts, in games and on mobile apps, on Facebook and Twitter, in stats, in produced video or audio programs, on websites, in speeches, in e-newsletters and even in songs.

It is important to understand the community or stakeholders that your organization wants to connect with and it is equally important to appreciate how they want to participate in the conversation.

AHA has a crew of exceptional communicators – talented writers and editors, producers and project managers. We are focused on creating engaging, authentic, relevant content for our clients. It has to fit in within the overall strategic objectives. It has to be current, smart and interesting – whether that means funny, informative or creative.

Content is important – and we know it.

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