Giving a Speech

In the PR business today, some people think speechwriting seems to be becoming a "lost art" and has turned into typing 140-character tweets for our clients. Ian Griffin explains otherwise in his article over "Speechwriting in the age of social media". Here are some quality tips on how to engage your audience with some digital flair:

• Research your audience by using LinkedIn Groups and Polls (Ex: Say your target audience are dentists. You would check out their LinkedIn page to see what's top of mind in their field, like their self-interests.
• Make your speech interactive by using audience polls or flipcam recording (check out polleverywhere.com for free live audience polls).
• To keep your audience from drifting away by use of phone texts or an iPads, encourage your audience to participate digitally!
• Finally, evaluate your speech through social media streams for feedback that will keep going days after it's been given.

Speeches are direct ways of presenting your product or plan and by using these simple steps, you can keep your audience engaged and excited for more!

Effective Voicemail to the Media

The most important way to reach the audience of your product or plan is the use of the media. In order for the media to pitch your idea, you must get in touch with them, most likely by a call or voice mail. Here are voice mail tips on how to emphasize great points about the benefits of your product or plan:

• Give a 30-second professional pitch. Practice your message until you sound natural and enthusiastic. Speak loudly and be sure to leave out vocal pauses, like "ummms".
• Remember that the voice mail is like an audition for the interview.
• Never leave more than one voice mail a day and if after three times, you don't hear back, you should assume that there is no interest in your idea.
• When following up with an email or fax to the media, never say "did you get my email (or fax)?" Always say that you are following up and then start your pitch.
• Be sure to leave your number at the beginning of the message and at the end. Speak quickly while pitching the idea, but slowly when leaving your number.

The most important thing to remember when leaving a voice mail to the media is that it should be professional and you should sound excited about pitching your idea, because that is how you sell to your audience.

Building Relationships With Reporters

By positioning yourself as a good source to the media, you've immediately opened up a door to an audience. Whatever product or ideas you want to be heard, you're many steps closer when you have a strong relationship with a reporter. Here are some tips on how to create and maintain a good source to the media:

• Know your audience and be able to solve any problems the publications aims at.
• Speak freely (Ex: If you are an accounting firm's PR rep, be able to explain what's working and not working in your firm and what your views are on trends facing the profession).
• Once you develop a relationship with a reporter and that reporter comes to you often, be reliable to that reporter (Ex: Keep in touch with the reporter on a regular basis to offer help of any sort).
• Press releases are an expedient way to announce certain news, but make sure they are fitting to the mission of their publications.

By building a trusting relationship with a reporter, you should have faith that they will produce an article that is accurate and fair.

Successful PR Writing Tips

Most of a PR representative's day is filled with writing (media releases, social networking, emails, etc.) and they must know that most of their success is determined by how well they communicate clearly. Here are some tips to help keep your reader engaged.

• Use strong action words that fill your message with emphasis.
• By keeping your nouns and verbs within 8 words of each other, it makes it easier for your reader to understand who is doing what.
• Use sentence connectors to follow complex sentences. By using words like however, thus, etc., it helps your reader navigate through the text.
• Always state new information first and old information second. By doing so, you establish familiar ground and work into new ground.
• Problem-Solution-Action paradigm - Write a problem, propose a solution, and state an action plan.

By using these simple writing tips, one can be confident that their message is effective and straight to the point.

Dealing With a Foreign Audience (PR)

It may be easy to keep the interest of clients in your own country, but dealing with a foreign audience is a little more difficult. Here are some tips on how to maintain the foreign audience by recognizing cross cultural differences.

• Language and Culture - Maintain good translations when advertising a product. (Ex: Ford launched a car called the "Pinto" in Brazil and they were unsuccessful because the Brazilians did not want to buy a car meaning "small male genitals".
• The Written Word - Look at and integrate the cross cultural particulars of the target audience. Some cultures want colorful and inspirational writing while others may just want factual and objective.
• Communication Channels - Be aware of the different primary sources of information each culture has (Ex: Radio, television, Internet, the press, etc.).
• PR Materials - The publicity materials your campaign involves must be appropriate to each culture you advertise to. Logos may mean one thing in one culture and something else in another.

Build campaigns that target (appeal) the audience to which you are advertising. 

How to Respond to Criticism

When restoring an image, there are certain strategies that you may guide with repairing an organizations image.

•  Denial - Indicating that the crisis committed has either not happened or it is not your organizations' fault.
• Evading Responsibility - Minimizing an organizations responsibility to the crisis (Ex: Saying that the actions taken place were with a good intent).
• Reducing Offensiveness - A strategy used to minimize the harm committed by the crisis and prove that it was not aimed purposely at anyone.
• Corrective Action - Putting the crisis behind you and stating that it will never happen again because you've already performed preventative actions that will keep it from occurring again.

By using these strategies, one has the ability to create a swift escape from a very detrimental situation. Note that you may use more than one of these strategies in order to restore one's image, especially if the consequences are more severe.

Crisis Management

Crisis planning is like buying insurance. Purchasing automobile insurance is a way of planning for the worst case scenario, similar to how a crisis management plan is an important step for planning on the worst case scenario occurring for any organization. A crisis management plan helps manage any crisis as well as prevent a similar crisis occurring in the future. Below are brief critical steps to crisis management:

• Bring the entire crisis communication team together at a specific location - Determining where everyone should meet so that a plan can be arranged.
• Create a crisis management mission - Everyone on the team needs to be on the same page with a clear goal of the crisis.
• Identify your organization's most important public's and communicate with them first (e.g., employees, news media, stockholders, customers, etc.)
• Assign roles to each team member - Crisis manager liaison (Communicator between upper-level managers and crisis team), employee liaison (communicates to all the employees), spokesperson (publicly announces recent updates), etc.
• Disseminate the plan - Make sure each team member knows exactly what they are doing in case of a crisis and regularly update the plan.

It's also important that everyone in the organization understands the procedure of handling a crisis. This prevents panic and bad decision making in the organization. A clear crisis management plan has the ability to prevent further damage to the organization, prevent similar future crises, and keep a positive and confident quality to business decisions.

Great PR Representative Qualities

Here are some helpful tips on what companies/organizations look for when hiring a PR representative:

• A long list of clients in which the PR representative is happy to share about. Having plenty of references shows off their experience as a public relations professional. Having online and broadcast media outlets proves a strong candidate that will be able to sell/persuade a product quickly. Ex: When hiring a PR representative who specializes in commercial real estate, their knowledge of the field will get nowhere if they don't have contacts to back it up.
• A representative that not only maintains already established relationships, but constantly cultivate new relationships.
• Someone who approached a client's PR campaign with specific angles to target audiences instead of a cookie-cutter approach.

Keeping a Fresh Relationship With the Media

Maintaining good relationships with the media will lay the foundations of a successful PR firm. Here are some helpful tips for dealing with the press:

• By feeding good stories to journalists, you will make them come back for more, which is great publicity.
• When speaking with the media, you need to remember that unless you confirm that what you're saying is off the record, anything you say can and will be referenced in a story.

Dealing with the media is easy and fearless as long as you present your story with a fresh angle.

• Relate your business or product to a human interest story.
• Make sure the message you're trying to get across can be summed up within a few sentences. By making it clear and concise, people are more likely to read your story.

Maintaining Positive Relationships With the Public

One of the more obvious strategies of maintaining good PR is access.

• By providing access to public opinion leaders or other businesses, it entails answering emails, telephone calls, letters, and other forms of communication to simply show that you are willing to answer any complaints or queries rather than including third parties in negative reactions.

By networking you can develop relationships with similar companies that already have great relationships with the public.

• Ex: If you're representing a company that is seeking to increase recycling efforts, than you might consider developing a strong relationship with a nearby organization that already has some sort of environmental enhancement program that the public has been supporting.
• When communicating with another organization, trust proves your level of confidence and willingness to create a good relationship. Along with trust, comes dependability. The other organization needs to know that the organization you're representing is going to do what they set out to do.