Text 100 has been short-listed in the following categories:

Best of Use Digital

Client – Cisco Consumer Products

Campaign – Flip Your Profile

Company – Text 100 Singapore

Technology Campaign of the Year

Client – IBM Australia

Campaign – Creating a Smarter Transport Agenda for Australia

Company – Text 100 Australia

PR Consultancy of the Year

Text 100 Australia

Mid-Size Network of the Year

Text 100 Asia Pacific

Fingers crossed for a successful awards ceremony on March 30!

PR people have feelings too. Well, some of them...

weeks. Responding to a post about PR blunders on popular web-technology blog ReadWriteWeb, a commenter fired off an angry response titled “10 Nightmarish behaviors PR people hate about journalists”.

This provoked a lot of discussion in our office and, before we go any further, I want to say why I feel I can offer a balanced response; I spent 13 years as a technology journalist before leaving my own kind to live amongst the PR people in 2005, so I know what life is like on both sides of the industry.

Comments like this are deeply unconstructive. Instead of this kind of sniping, it might be a bit more useful to help both professions understand the challenges and frustrations we all face.

It’s important to understand that, from the point of view of a journalist, a lot of PR communication is not particularly useful. I’m sure that none of you highly skilled professional communicators reading this will have ever desperately pitched a weak story to whichever journalists will pick up the phone, or tried to persuade journalists to attend a completely irrelevant event just to get the numbers up, but you’ll have to take my word for it that this kind of thing happens.

Imagine trying to do your job while dozens of people every day are clamouring for your attention by phone and email, but only about 10 percent of those people have anything relevant or useful to offer.

It’s not surprising that journalists get frustrated, or that they occasionally write articles to let off a little steam, since they often have the benefit of a platform on which to voice their displeasure. PR people generally don’t have a platform from which to voice their own frustrations and, in any case, since a key goal of PR is to build good relationships with journalists, few would be willing to publicly rant about them.

So in the spirit of constructive dialogue, here are some things I did when I was a journalist that I am now deeply, deeply sorry for because I’ve seen the consequences from the other side of the fence:

• Not showing up for events or cancelling at the very last minute with a half-baked excuse – I was guilty of doing this myself many times, but now that I realise that I probably dropped a lot of PR execs into hot water with their clients and/or bosses. When a journalist agrees to attend an event or briefing, a lot of effort goes into preparing for them. It’s much better to just say upfront that you’re not interested in coming so that the place can be offered to somebody who would find it useful.
• Saying “I’ll cover your story in the next issue….” even though I probably wouldn’t. What I didn’t realise was that while I was just telling the PR what they wanted to hear to get them off my back, I was causing them a real headache because they’d tell the client to expect some media coverage that, in reality, was never happening. Again, I realise now it would have been better for everybody concerned if I was honest up front and simply told them why I wasn’t going to cover the story.
• Being excessively rude/harsh to PR people who called at a bad time or otherwise inadvertently irked me. OK, I wasn’t particularly guilty of this, because I’m a laid back kinda guy, but some of my colleagues used to treat haranguing PR people as a sport. Not everybody in the PR industry has a thick skin, when you give them an unnecessarily hard time it can have a very real personal impact.

So what do PR people really think of journalists? We love working with them and, of course, we couldn’t do our jobs without them – we just wish sometimes they’d be a bit nicer to us…

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 UK blog.

When people say they want to optimize a press release for SEO, they could be talking about two different things:

• They want to optimize the release itself so that it gets more web traffic
• They want the release to help drive traffic to a product or campaign landing page on their company website

In most cases there’s no good reason to drive web traffic to a press release. Consider the following points:

• The PR team should already have pitched the story and sent the release directly to all relevant media in the first place
• Journalists do not search on Google for relevant press releases to write about; that’s just not how it works
• By the time the release shows in search results, the story will already be old

SEO activity should focus on driving traffic to pages which will lead customers into the sales funnel, but if you’re trying to optimize a press release for the same set of keywords, you’re diluting and confusing that activity. You would be wasting resources by pushing your audience to a piece of online content that has practically zero value for them.

It makes much more sense to use a press release to help drive traffic to a relevant landing page. In order to do this effectively you need to know two things:

• The address of the page to which you want to drive traffic
• The keywords that you want to optimize on that page

The SEO team should be able to give you this information, and it’s important that the landing page and related keywords are both relevant to the content of the press release.  Make sure your press release includes a link to the landing page, using the keywords in the text that describes the link (this is what SEO people call ‘anchor text’). For example:

• Text 100 is a global technology PR agency

In this example the anchor text is “technology PR agency” and we’ve linked to a relevant landing page on the company website. This helps the search engines associate those keywords with that web page. If possible try to include the link in the first couple of paragraphs of the release’s body copy, this is where it will do the most good.

Are you ready for the big secret that nobody else will tell you? You’ve already done everything you need to optimize the release for SEO. Really, it’s that simple.

Remember, we’re not trying to drive traffic to the release itself, we’re simply using the release to improve the SEO of your chosen landing page, so there’s nothing to be gained from trying to over-optimize the rest of the release.

What happens next?

Good: If the release is hosted on the same website as the landing page (perhaps in the company’s online press center) you get a little SEO value from an internal link (links within the same site).

Better: If the release is syndicated via an online wire service, you get extra SEO value from external links (links from third-party sites)

Best: If the story gets picked up by the media and they keep the link you embedded, you get a lot of SEO value by having a keyword rich link to your landing page from an authoritative and highly relevant third party site – this is the holy grail of SEO, and it’s where PR can really contribute a lot of value.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 UK blog.

You can check out the interview here.

A brand shouldn’t create a Facebook presence simply because it wants to be on Facebook.

Your social media and PR strategies alike should map to a broader goal, whether it’s increasing brand awareness for your company, products or service; building web traffic; or whatever other goals you may have. Also similar to PR, if social media engagement is not tackled with a plan, it can have an adverse affect. So how do you best ensure a positive outcome of your social media efforts?

Here are five tips for social media, which as you’ll see are very much the same rules for traditional PR.

• Know your audience – If you’re trying to reach semiconductor engineers or service providers, is Facebook really the best place to reach them? Maybe not. But on the other hand, if you’re Victoria’s Secret, a major Facebook campaign may make a lot of sense to reach your target consumer audience. Similar to pitching traditional media that your customers would read, you want to focus social media efforts on where your audience is spending time online. And know the type of content these people want to see – all before you actually engage.
• Know the platform – Don’t use up all 140 characters on Twitter with a URL because you forgot to use a URL shortener – avoid a social media #fail by ensuring you’re conversing and sharing information in the appropriate way for that platform. Similarly, when pitching Forbes, for example, you’ll research recent coverage topics and the section(s) in which your pitch would be appropriate.
• Develop relationships – People want to feel like they’re conversing with an individual, and see personality behind a company – this is no different with social media. A PR practitioner’s favorite spokesperson is one who hits on key messages, while adding in anecdotes and showing personality, and reporters want the strong personalities and uniqueness to come through as well. Developing and fostering relationships is a critical element of any form of communication, social or traditional. Social media etiquette will help you develop relationships – if someone RTs you, thank them. If someone asks you a question, respond. All this will help develop relationships with influencers.
• Transparency – Always be up front about your company affiliation. If commenting on a blog about a new Cisco router when you work for a competitor, its fine to comment about why your company’s router is better, but you must disclose who you work for. Remember when Facebook hired an agency to conduct an anti-Google campaign “on behalf of an unnamed client?” It received a ton of media backlash and criticism. It’s no different with social media than it is with PR – be ethical, honest and transparent.
• Consistency – When building your brand’s social media presence, you need to be consistent. For example, if you’re managing a company’s corporate blog, for example, you want to ensure there are posts every few days. Not only will this refresh the website with new content and keywords, which helps your SEO, but new content will keep your visitors coming back, and give them more to engage with.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared as a guest post on the PR Breakfast Club Blog.

But then, I asked it a different question. I didn’t ask, “Oh wondrous Magic 8-Ball, which marketing communications discipline will render a Content Smackdown unto lesser marketing disciplines?”

Instead, I asked: Dudeford, what makes for great content, anyhoo?

Turns out it’s all about story.

Clients, more-and-more, get this. It doesn’t matter if the shingle outside the door says PR, Advertising, Digital Marketing, or Ghost-Written-Greeting-Cards-R-Us. They want people who can find stories in the detritus of spec sheets, positioning documents and mind-numbing conference calls. And there’s no question our target audiences–otherwise known as “people”–get it. They vastly prefer to read/view/click on stories, not product brochures.

So if it’s all about story, seems to me storytellers are the people you want. FutureBuzz thinks PR will own content, ultimately, because “PR teams possess the executive perspective on editorial which is the natural skill set to lead content.” Yeah. Maybe. Editorial perspective matters. But editorial is just one kind of storytelling. (And don’t get me started on “relationships” versus content. I have “relationships” with reporters, but no one ever went with a story because we had lunch or dinner. They wrote because I proposed a good story.) More than ever, we have the power to hop, skip and jump right over the influencers and publish on our own.

Point is: the firms that find, hire, nurture and retain great storytellers, will win.

And storytellers can come from almost any discipline (not to mention no discipline at all). The renowned late American poet, James Dickey–best known for his classic novel, Deliverance–worked in advertising for years. (And after his boss once introduced him in a new business meeting as someone who “dabbled in poetry,” Dickey reportedly sneered, “I am a poet. I dabble in advertising!”) Of course there was that great tech storyteller Steve Jobs, who figured out his company would tell stories about people who “think different.” Long before the clean tech industry emerged, a guy named Ansel Adams was telling stories about the wonders of the natural world. Here’s one worth several thousand words, in my humble opinion.

And to give a more modern, digital example, I’ve embedded a riveting story–a classic “whodunnit?”–from an amateur storyteller who gives us amazing mystery, conflict, suspense, characters (oh, the characters!) in one minute and sixteen seconds. No wonder it’s been viewed nearly two million times. (How many clicks did your last press release get?)

So, PR may own content. But to do so, our profession needs to start by asking different questions.

• Who are we interviewing, and hiring?
• Are we talking to liberal arts majors? Photographers? Filmmakers? Stop-motion-clay-animation hobbyists?
• Do WE get the difference between message, and story? Are we counselling our clients to understand the difference?
• Do we ever put aside the WSJ and the trades to expose ourselves to the bigger universe of stories?

Let us know how you see it. The Magic 8-Ball may not have all the answers, but what else should we PR pros be asking?

While many brands are able to identify their existing audiences and communities, it’s often challenging when it comes to effectively engaging with them and identifying what content is most appropriate for each platform you use to communicate. In this video, Janet talks about what “community” really means to her, her top tip for getting your brand’s community engaged, and how to make your content stand out from the clutter.

Thanks, Janet, for taking some time with us. We hope to see you at an event again soon!

When the secret was revealed to the bloggers, reaction was opposite of what the ConAgra/Ketchum team was hoping for. In fact, many bloggers felt as though they had been slapped in the face and took to the web and voiced their disgust over being tricked to eat frozen meals filled with preservatives and loads of calories – which many attendees strive to avoid daily. ConAgra and Ketchum eventually ended up cancelling any remaining “dinners” and quickly started apologizing for the switcheroo and for leaving a bad taste in anyone’s mouth (pun intended).

So why did such an elaborate stunt, designed to generate positive and “surprising” coverage, backfire? Both Ketchum and ConAgra seemed to forget two critical points about food bloggers (and bloggers in general):

1. Bloggers are passionate about the topics they cover (especially Foodies). Why else would they be blogging about it? Most bloggers start writing because they feel strongly about a particular subject – especially when it comes to food. People who are passionate about food – a.k.a “Foodies” – have an intimate relationship with the things they eat. They want to know who prepared it, where it came from (local vs. imported) and really pay attention to ingredients in their meals. So it’s only expected that then trying to fool food bloggers, who pride themselves on being foodies, into enjoying a frozen meal simply, it’s just not going to fly.
2. Bloggers are just as influential as a journalist at a major publication and expect the truth. We live in a digital age where everyone is connected to the internet, Googling everything in sight and most likely following at least a handful of blogs about topics they are passionate about. Bloggers know their audience just like every other journalist and their audience expects the truth – sometimes even more so from a blogger than from mainstream media. As a PR professional, you cannot take a blogger for granted just because they don’t work at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Bloggers are journalists and can potentially be more influential to your key demographic than other sources. Why else would we want bloggers at our events and covering our news?

As PR professionals we rely on relationships to do our jobs. From my perspective, the best way to build a relationship and gain trust is to be transparent – whether you’re working with a blogger, mainstream journalist or your neighborhood dog walker. ConAgra and Ketchum lost touch with this and probably burned some relationships along the way. What this situation really boils down to is this – no one wants to be fooled when they’re looking for a surprise. Especially when you’re hungry.

Live TV is a difficult forum to cover a complicated subject, but it has been interesting to see how quickly this matter has polarised viewpoints on how far an employer should go in dictating workplace practices.

I look at this issue from both a HR and communications perspective.

Whilst I totally understand the desire within large organisations to promote acceptable standards of behaviour, I also think it’s important for employers to have a clear focus on the culture it wishes to build and an understanding of the most effective communication approach to motivate appropriate behaviour. In an era dominated by social media there is no such thing as internal communications anymore and so careful consideration is needed on the reputation impact any workplace initiative will have not only with internal audiences, but also with prospective employees, customers and investors.

My three suggestions for any organisations wishing to impact on workplace behaviour would be to consider:

• What is the most effective way to engage employees in a discussion about creating a respectful and collaborative workplace that ensures everyone is comfortable and able to perform effectively?
• What will be the impact on employee motivation and productivity from this initiative?
• How will external stakeholders respond, and what is the likely impact on reputation both internally and externally?

The evidence shows that employee engagement is at its strongest when there are high levels of trust throughout the organisation and employees feel respected and valued for their contribution.

I would encourage all employers to engage employees by uniting teams around sound corporate values and shared goals. If an organisation can orient itself around a culture of respect, open communication and collaboration then rules or guidelines can become redundant. I also think it is important to empower people through positive communication that gives everyone a sense of their contribution to the overall success of the business.

For any new initiatives it can be more effective if employees are involved early in the and able to contribute to the overall direction being taken. Early involvement will secure early buy-in. I use the concept of ‘slowly, slowly – fast’. Which means that if you involve employees early in the planning cycle then it will take longer initially to get traction, but the ultimate buy-in is much faster. If people feel that an approach is being forced upon them then their natural reaction may be to resist, push-back or, potentially rebel.

At the end of the day we are talking about individuals and in my experience respecting people’s viewpoints and allowing them to be true to themselves gives them the chance to be the best they can be and to have fun doing so. Besides, I have an awfully untidy desk that would break many office etiquette rules, but as far as I know it hasn’t stopped me from focusing on our business goals or generating value to the company.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 Sydney blog, Digital Comms Down Under.

Unsurprisingly, the show was incredibly popular on social media channels, especially Twitter where at one stage it was the number one worldwide trending conversation. For me, the #GoBackSBS hashtag was updating too quickly to follow so I had to settle for conversing with those in my Twitter stream watching the show.

Its popularity, ratings (524K last night) and online discussion and engagement on Twitter will have SBS boss, Michael Ebeid feeling pretty chuffed this morning. It will also be interesting to see some of the social media stats from the show, such as number of tweets and keywords used in tweets, following the airing of the third and final episode on Thursday night…(watch this space).

Separately, I also mentioned on Twitter last night how I had stumbled upon an interesting campaign from NRMA which is currently using gaming as a medium to influence. NRMA’s Car Park Challenge game is a nice example of using digital tactics to engage consumers and educate them about what it considers a key issue, or PR play, beyond issuing a standard press release or hosting a media briefing. It’s certainly not a new idea, but it is a clever one. Plenty of organisations around the globe have executed similar tactics in the past, one example is Cisco with its binary game for students studying maths, science, IT, computing and programming. I would love to hear from NRMA about how this campaign goes.

So I wasn’t surprised when I logged onto the SBS Go Back To Where You Came From microsite this morning to see it too had created a simulation-type game to further enhance and amplify its message. By engaging its consumers online, the game, Asylum Exit Australia, is a great medium for SBS to use to establish a deeper connection between the audience and the brand, outside of the program’s 8:30pm-9:30pm television slots. In this case, the brand is the refugee experience and what it feels like to be put in unfathomable situations. The game’s players are allocated $9,990 AUD and are faced with making difficult decisions about leaving Australia, obtaining passports through the embassy or the black market, sourcing supplies, negotiating dangerous streets and leaving their loved ones to escape anarchy and instability.

Building a bridge and connection between the refugee experience and the Australian public is what SBS is attempting to do with Go Back To Where You Came From. Its PR and Marketing department appear to be doing this successfully by leveraging and integrating both traditional and online channels to connect to its audience and engage them in ways that simply weren’t possible 10 years ago (or even less). Something PR professionals should always consider as part of any communications campaign.

What are your thoughts?

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 Sydney Blog, Digital Comms Down Under.