Disaster Management: When Not to Send a Press Release
A lot of my clients are doing a one-off piece of public relations because they need news done quickly. People generally come to to you with urgent press release needs when something has gone horribly awry; I do a fair bit of disaster management here at OvernightPR. I’m good at that kind of PR, and though it may sound like I’m shooting myself in the foot when I say this–given that I specialize in press releases written quickly–your best bet isn’t always to address your disaster with a press release. Let’s look at when a press release is a good way to get the news out and manage your problem:
- Legal Issues
- Legal issues–especially investor-related legal issues–generally have specific requirements for what you can talk about, when you should discuss it, and how you need to distribute the news. If your lawyer advises you send a press release, don’t quibble.
- Corrections
- If you made a mistake in a previous public statement, it’s probably best to issue the correction in the same manner. No one likes eating ‘umble pie, but own up to the mistake and try to move on, and you’ll be better off than if you let the impression that you’re dishonest fester in your audience’s minds.
- Urgent news
- If your disaster is a real-life honest to goodness breaking news disaster of the “we need to recall our product before it kills someone” sort, alternative measures of PR may not be the solution you need. The wire services work hard to get your news out to journalists as quickly and accurately as they can, so you might as well make use of that skill set and stick by the traditional method.
Those are the three big areas of disaster where you definitely want to make sure that you’ve put a lot of thought into your decision before ruling out a press release as your method of communication. So when is it more appropriate to look at alternative measures?
- Community Management
- There are times when you’ve done nothing illegal and you don’t have immediately pressing lifesaving news. Maybe you’ve made a mistake less in the “we issued a factually incorrect statement” way and more in the “we screwed up” fashion. Press releases are a very impersonal tool to try and repair a relationship with your community. Look at a more direct means of communicating, then. One example I may talk about in a later post is using an open letter to repair community relations.
- Customer Service
- This is related to “Community Management”, but with a key difference. One of the nightmares that social media has brought to the average executive in a company is that social media means that if one of your customer-facing employees is having a bad day, you can quickly find yourself having a social media-driven PR nightmare. An example of this is the recent Ocean Marketing meltdown that more or less illustrated the perfect storm of “employee having a bad day” and “social media PR disaster” I’m talking about here. This wasn’t an example of a mistake made at the corporate decision-making level, and issuing a press release (which N-Control, the company represented by Ocean Marketing, did end up doing) isn’t going to fix the problem. When you’re trying to correct a customer-centered issue, take a customer-centered approach and talk to them in the same arena that they’re already in.
- When Another Company is Involved
- Disaster management PR is tricky enough when one company is involved; when you have two or more, it gets even trickier. In that respect, whether you’re dealing with a public disappointment over an announced contract that fell through or you’re trying to put some spin on the fact that one of your big clients just elected to not renew a long-running contract with you, using channels other than press releases can help you maintain some control of the story without escalating the issue into a press release war. Those may be kind of fun to watch from the outside, but they look anything but professional.
At a macro level, it comes to this: public-facing disaster PR is frequently handled best via methods other than press releases. When you have other outside issues influencing your method of discussion, though, you would be ill-advised to ignore them.
Social Media “Marketing” is Just PR in a Snazzy Suit
There’s a simple truth to the social media marketing world that people don’t talk about: the term social media “marketing” is something of a lie. More precisely, while there are scammers and spammers aplenty, if you’re using social media as a means to bring in revenue by establishing a dialog between your brand and those who are interested in your product or services, you can’t really call what you’re doing social media “marketing.”
It sounds an awful lot like social media PR to me.
It’s something I have to get off my chest. I run a social media marketing firm, sure. But many of the skills that I use, either in advising clients or in using the various channels, reads like what you should do when you’re being a responsible public relations representative who’s reaching out to a journalist to pitch a story. Everyone’s a potential source of a sudden massive Twitter revolt, so you need to treat everyone you encounter online as if they had the potential to direct the attention of a hundred thousand potential clients at your brand. With that thought in mind, here’s a quick primer on how to convert those traditional PR skills into social media marketing ones.
Yes, this is a new look
I’ve grown weary of the old template (a heavily customized version of the quite excellent Sketchy Theme) and have installed, instead, a template that looked like it had practically been made specifically for OvernightPR called Vermillion. Many thanks to Benoit Burgener for his hard work in making this excellent theme; I suspect that you’ll see me tampering around with the theme a bit in the near future. If you see anything alarming break, please let me know.
In general, I think that you’ll find that the new layout is similar enough to the old one that if you’ve made any use of the site in the past you shouldn’t have any problems. Most of the footer content has been moved to the “Additional Content” pulldown–especially once I replace the “tags” with a lifestream that pulls my Twitter and LinkedIn posts.
New content being posted today, too. Exciting times, I know!
4 PR Tips to Consider Before You Sell Your Business
This post coming–once again–from a reaction to John Jantsch‘s Duct Tape Marketing Blog, where Jantsch interviews author John Warrillow (who has written Built to Sell) posits that your business is worthless if it “depends on you.” Obviously, Mr. Warrillow is approaching this from the point of view of someone who looks to develop businesses that will be sold, along the road, as their principle money maker for the owner and founder of the business. I’d take exception to some of his points; I don’t think that you need to plan for your business to 1) employ people after you’re done with it or even 2) employ you forever. The simple fact’s that, over a 5 year period, most small businesses are going to go belly-up anyway. It’s part of the nature of owning a small business. That doesn’t make it worthless. If you’ve gotten along in your business, helped out other businesses or organizations, and paid your bills for the duration of the run, I’d say you did pretty well. If you’re looking to turn a one-man shop into a national (or multinational!) empire, I’d say having an exit plan in mind is probably a good idea, then. Especially if you’re looking to take the company public, since investors are much happier when they’re putting money in a business that doesn’t depend on one person to run.
So why is a PR Blog writing about this? If you intend to run your business such that it can be sold off one day and still operate as well as it ever did, there are some public relations implications that you need to consider. Let’s list ‘em:
- Consider Your Brand’s “Face”: It’s ironic that John Warrilow is writing about the necessity of building a business that you can sell on a blog like Duct Tape Marketing, because John Jantsch is so tied up in that business that it’s impossible to think of DTM without him. If your brand’s “face” is you, the owner, then when you leave, the company’s going to suffer. Put your strength behind your brand instead of putting it behind yourself.
- Consider Your Brand’s Culture: Small, quirky, and plucky work well for any number of companies, including some of my favorites; if that culture is a big attraction to your clients, your sale just got a lot harder, not just because fewer people want to buy businesses run in a “quirky” fashion, but also because you will quickly find that your business customers realize when they aren’t getting the same experience that they had been.
- Consider Your Brand’s Presence: I counsel my clients to follow a social media regimen that’s roughly 30 minutes a day (Here’s a breakdown of my recommended daily social media workout). If you’re doing anything like that yourself, you can bet that suddenly vanishing off the social media space will alienate a sector of your customers. If you’re managing your brand’s social media presence, you’d better have good documentation on what it is that you do so that you can pass that along to the next guy.
- Consider Your Business’s Customers: What happens to them? While you might not care too much what happens to the customers of a business that you no longer own, having a string of companies that stop servicing customers once you’ve sold ‘em will eventually catch up to you. Further, it’s going to impact your ability to sell your business, if your model’s sustainable for someone else or not.
All of these relate to how your business’s public policy decisions influence your ability to sell it and move on, so think about those things if you pick up a copy of “Built to Sell” in the future.
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Lose the Flab From Your Social Media Regimen
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Since the holidays, I’ve been on the South Beach diet to lose some of those 20 extra pounds that magically appeared on my midsection this year (wonder how that happened!). That’s inspired me to start providing my social media clients with a lean, mean regimen for their social media program. It’s worked for them, and you can use it, too. While this is a post that’s more appropriate on my social media business blog (where it will get to eventually), it’s valuable PR strategy, too. It is lean, mean, and anyone can do it to get more out of their social media efforts.
Here’s your new social media workout plan:
- Hit up your social media services 3x a day for about 10 minutes each time. Identify which services are most effective for you and use those more often. I generally say 10 minutes before work, 10 at lunch, and 10 minutes after the day is done.
- If you’re using an analytics program like Google Analytics, use your natural search queries to tell you what phrases people are finding you for. Are those phrases you want to be found for? Then use them in your social media. Is your audience coming from keywords that don’t convert? Use better keywords in your social media.
- If you aren’t measuring analytics, go to Google.com/analytics and do so.
- Basic morning routine for Twitter:
- Identify two or three twitter personalities that always have something interesting to say. Each morning, retweet something they’ve posted.
- Find a blog or two that writes in your space. Tweet links to the interesting articles that they’ve written
- Write a blog yourself? Make sure that you put your content in your tweets.
- Look over your replies and DM’s and answer all appropriately
- Finally, using a client like TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop, set up searches for words or phrases that are pertinent to what you do. Reply to other twitter posters who post using those terms.
- This should take 10 – 15 minutes every day, once you get it to a system.
- Basic afternoon routine for Facebook;
- Check out your wall. Have you gotten new fans? Welcome them with a quick message.
- Have you had any kind of event recently? Post pictures / video / whatever on it.
- Run Facebook searches for terms that are pertinent to your organization. Have your fan page become a fan of other organizations that have similar interests.
- Look over your wall for comments and reply; empty out inbox and reply as well
- Post 2 -3 links to interesting information that is related to your organization
- This takes 10 – 15 minutes when it’s done
- LinkedIn Evening routine
- Look for questions on the groups that you belong to. Answer two that you can legitimately offer an interesting and informed opinion on.
- Been to a networking event? Run searches on people who’s cards you have. Find them on LinkedIn and follow ‘em.
- Has anyone in your network changed job positions or posted another important status update? Drop ‘em a note commenting on it.
- This is 5 – 10 minutes of work.
- Blogging / Internet Evening routine
- Set up Google Alerts on keywords that are pertinent to your interests. Get emails daily and check the links that Google sends you out. Generally, I recommend an alert on your brand, on your market, and on yourself as well. Read the alerts for links / ideas for the other social media outlets and click through on the interesting ones.
- Leave comments on any blog post that you actually read. Yes, every single one. They have to have something interesting to say, but don’t need to be Shakespeare.
- This takes 10 minutes or so.
There’s your daily workout. Stick to it for 3 months and come back for a checkup.
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For @jesselamb
…because he was so politely insistent about it:
The Feb 9, 2010 Daily Rundown.
Click on the stunningly good-looking man above to listen to the audio clip.
OvernightPR’s First Article on CommunityMX
A friend of mine has written articles for Community MX for a while now, and he mentioned to me that they’ve been looking for content writers. I’m contributing to the site, now, and they have posted my first article there. It’s part 1 of a two part series about optimizing their pre-built site templates to make them more search friendly. Here’s a quick excerpt:
This two part article series discusses some of the basics of structuring a web site to help with Search Optimization, and then applies these optimization tactics to two different CommunityMX JumpStarts, Siberia and Stelvio Pass.
This is Part 1 of 2, and discusses the theory of search optimization, keyword research, buying a domain, and structuring a web site. Part 2 brings this theory and prep work into practice using some of Community MX’s excellent JumpStart templates. We’ll be including and editing little snippets of these JumpStarts in this article, but you’ll be best served if you download both of the JumpStarts now.
Take a moment and check it out. CommunityMX has a lot of resources, the membership’s pretty low cost, and, well, I’m not above driving traffic to the site to show them that my articles are worthwhile. 
Doterati Hosts Blogger, Marketer Panel & Mixer
Orlando, FL (18 September 2009) –Bloggers and marketers don’t always have the best professional relationship, but doterati, central Florida’s interactive marketing & media association, is looking to help the two groups see eye to eye and learn how to help each other. Starting with a moderated panel consisting of marketers from Massey Communications and the bloggers behind MyThoughtsIdeasAndRamblings.com, BrainFoggles.com, and Steven-Sanders.com, doterati will give guests a chance to ask questions and listen to the panelists share ideas.
Kicking off IZEA Fest the evening before it starts, “Blogger, Meet Marketer. Marketer, Meet Blogger.” is a chance to learn how to approach a blogger (if you’re a marketer) or a place to learn the care and feeding of marketers (if you’re a blogger).
Whether you are a blogger, marketer, PR agency or a company looking to gain exposure on the hundreds of millions of blogs on the Interwebs, this session will give you an inside look into the mindset of all the parties involved in generating online buzz and ROI through effective blogging. Join doterati and our excellent panelists or an afternoon of networking, education and a free cocktail!
Who should come:
- Bloggers
- Marketers
- PR Pros
- Small Business Owners
- Digerati
Event Details
Who: doterati
What: Blogger Meet Marketer, Marketer Meet Blogger
When:Thursday, October 1st
Panel Discussion 1pm-4pm
Cocktails and Networking 4pm – 5:30pm
IZEA Bus to Howl O’Scream 6pm
Where:
Renaissance Orlando Hotel at Sea World
6677 Sea Harbor Drive
Orlando, FL 32821
Register at: http://izeablogpanel.eventbrite.com/
Cost
$39 for Doterati Members, IZEAFest Ticket Holders, Orlando Ad Fed Members & AMA Members
$49 for Non-Members
Attendees receive one free drink ticket.
Contact Info
VP Marketing Greg Rollett
marketing@doterati.com
doterati.com
321.438.4442
About doterati
Doterati is a 501 c 6 organization from Orlando, FL whose mission is to advance the interactive marketing, media and technology community by serving as an association for professional development, education, community networking and overall inspiration for our digital society.
Become a member and expand your personal and professional network, accelerate your knowledge and embed yourself in the layers of our growing interactive community. Volunteer and gain access to front-row action at events, planning and organizational think tanking. Our radar sweeps for digital brand marketers, Web developers, agencies, creatives, students, entrepreneurs, consultants, start-ups, big-thinkers and everyone in between. Learn more at http://www.doterati.com.
Luxury Cruise Ships Square Off in AvidCruiser.com’s Luxury Cruise Line Review
From big names like Regent Seven Seas Cruises to relative unknowns like SeaDream Yacht Club, award-winning travel journalist & publisher Ralph Grizzle offers his advice on the best pick for the luxury cruise of a lifetime
Asheville, NC (PRWEB) August 12, 2009 — There’s no question that luxury cruise lines are offering deeper discounts now than they ever have before, with savings of up to 70% off regular pricing and air included, but if you’ve got the opportunity to take a luxury cruise this year, which one should you choose?
Let award-winning travel journalist give you his considered opinion at www.avidcruiser.com. His article, “The Razor’s Edge: Who’s The Best? Luxury Cruise Lines Square Off” (http://bit.ly/fuwvA) tackles this issue from the perspective of a journalist who has sailed on more than 200 cruises and written more than 500 articles about cruising.
In the past few months, Grizzle has cruised with Crystal Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, Silversea Cruises, and SeaDream Yacht Club. His article discusses which of these lines he enjoyed the most, as well as which luxury line he thinks does the best job at delivering an up-market cruise vacation.
“Many of the visitors to my web site, as well as people I meet during my travels, have asked me which luxury cruise line is the best,” Grizzle says. “Of course, there is no easy answer, because the luxury lines are all so good at what they deliver. That said, before you reach the final period indicating the end of my article, you will have your answer.”
About The Avid Cruiser:
The Avid Cruiser is a one-stop source for information about cruises, with photo essays, interviews with friendly staff members, and even a full glossy print magazine that covers the new destinations, ships, cruises, and adventures that any cruiser–avid expert or first time traveler–can set sail on to bring home memories that will last a lifetime. For more information, visit www.avidcruiser.com or www.avidcruiser.com/blog.
About Ralph Grizzle:
An avid traveler and an award-winning journalist, Ralph Grizzle produces articles, video and photos that are inspiring and informative, personal and passionate. A journalism graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he has specialized in travel writing for more than two decades.
Contact:
Ralph Grizzle
Avid Travel Media, Inc
828-398-0570
www.avidcruiser.com