Today’s guest post is authored by Katrina Dene, the Bateman Group’s summer intern and a third-year journalism student at the University of Oregon. Katrina looks at how the use of technology and recent emergence of social media have impacted both the practice and study of PR in equally significant ways.

As I enter my third year of college and take my first steps toward a career in public relations, one thing became abundantly clear to me during my summer internship at the Bateman Group — technology has had equally a profound impact on the study of PR as it has on the practice of PR. The senior PR practitioners at the Bateman Group were quick to point out when they were in college; the majority of academic programs geared towards the study of PR were woefully out of touch with what was being practiced in the field. They were genuinely surprised when I informed them that the classroom experience has evolved dramatically in 20 years. To say it’s taken a quantum leap since the members of Generation X were college students would be a huge understatement. Gone are the days when students showed up to class with just a pen and a notebook, furiously taking hand-written notes as the professor lectured or worked the chalkboard. Today, I still show up to a lecture with my pen and notebook, but also with my laptop, BlackBerry and, of course, my i>Clicker.

i>Clicker Remote

The University of Oregon, along with many other schools, has implemented the i>Clicker system in quite a few of its lectures. For those unfamiliar, an i>Clicker is a remote control-driven auto responder device that allows professors to ask multiple choice questions and instantly present a graph of the results. Amazing what technology can do, right? It’s an instant progress report for the teacher to determine if they’re getting their message across by quizzing the students in real time.

As far as student/teacher relations go; however, this is actually a little troublesome. I am no longer Katrina Dene, third-year student. I am now a serial number with 89% accuracy for in-class pop quizzes. I become an arbitrary number on an arbitrary scale. While this new use of technology has its advantages, particularly within large classes of 100+ students, professors should not lose site of the importance of building true relationships with their student and finding new ways to engage them both on- and off-line. Interestingly, the emergence of social media has helped.

In another one of my classes, the structure of our lectures was impacted directly by social media, perhaps to an extreme. Instead of the traditional lecture, questions and response format, our class added video chat and instant message via Skype along with Twitter micro-blogging to the mix. As an alternative to listening to lectures on the PR trade, we “Skyped” with real-world professionals, other professors, graduate students and government officials who relayed their personal experiences for us to learn by example. Furthermore, students were not only encouraged to raise their hands to ask questions, but also Tweet the inquires to our class hash tag on Twitter. In turn, our graduate teaching fellows were hard at work monitoring the hash tag activity and answering questions for the 160-person class.

So what does this say about the future of communications in the teaching of communications? Well, social media has allowed us to build and maintain a network of relationships both inside and outside of the university like never before possible. Using video chat enabled us to learn from industry experts and working professionals from all over the world. But has this shift damaged the treasured teacher/student relationship? I ponder this while remembering one basic principal: One strong relationship is more powerful than ten weak ones. More traditionally: Quantity does not necessarily ensure quality.

Yes, the integration of technology with the college classroom has made the experience much more automated and a bit less personal.  On the flip side, social media has made the opportunity to take a more active role in one’s own education easier than ever before.  The members of Generation Y have grown to accept two-way communication between student and teacher to be the norm. The classroom has evolved from a place of simply consuming information and reciting it back to one where students have become active participants in the creation of content and the learning experience itself. What better way to prepare us for an economy where successful entry requires you to do much more than just intern. You must also cultivate a personal network of influencers, seek out mentors, take time to volunteer, keep up on current events, follow the stock market, maintain a personal blog and basically do whatever it takes to stick out in today’s uber-competitive job market. Learning today is much different than learning yesterday, the key is to adapt and apply each change in a way that allows you to be better equipped for tomorrow.

We’re back with the next installment of our series, the New J-School, where we examine the evolving nature of journalism in today’s digital age.

There is certainly no shortage of blog posts talking about the emergence of social media as a priority communication channel for news. Print magazines are dropping like flies due to declining ad revenue, and newspapers are investing heavily in their online properties as chatter of page views and re-tweets fill the newsrooms. We’ve recently dedicated a lot of virtual ink to the topic at Bateman Banter, because it is a crucial part of our daily activity. After you read this, you should check out this great post on the traditional vs. digital media battle that my wise colleague Amy penned after her trip to SXSW this year.

Most everyone agrees that social and digital media must be an integrated part of any communications strategy today. This is why rather than give that topic more air time; I’m going to take a different angle. I would like to celebrate print publications.

Perhaps this is going to make me sound like a fossil, but I ENJOY reading the paper, and I LOVE curling up with a good magazine. The content that I find in magazines, and my ability to truly consume and digest the information contained in them, is dramatically different than my online experience. When I am reading news online, I am quickly scanning headlines, clicking to see comments, and forwarding the good stuff along to colleagues or clients. Just as journalists need to break a story, I want to be the first to read the news and send around the most insightful stories with a dash of my own color commentary. Consuming print media, however, is an entirely different experience.

When I am reading the paper, I am lounging back with a cup of Stumptown, discussing an interesting article with my husband, or just reading in luxurious silence (ok so that is a bit of a lie, but only because the past 8 months my mornings start at 6 am with a silly little critter who isn’t old enough to care about the New York Times yet).

And magazines… Ahh they hold a piece of my heart. I save them for trips on the subway, stolen moments sitting in the sun with a refreshing glass of mint iced tea. Anyone with a baby knows that reading books sadly goes the way of the dodo, at least until your brain returns to a fully functioning entity, but diving into a well-researched, thoughtful article can mimic that transformative feeling that a good book can elicit. Reading a piece that a writer spent days or weeks developing– considering every word carefully, incorporating references and evidence to support a thesis, throwing in some drama and twists that make you turn the page to see what happens next– that is something to be savored, and not something that I can experience in 140 characters. These are not hastily crafted, grammatically disappointing news briefs, but rather well-written, thoughtful analyses of events, people, companies, services, or whatever.

In this warp speed, micro-content consumption world in which we live and work, we are so focused on knowing what is happening next, that we oftentimes neglect applying critical thought to what happened the day before, let alone what is currently happening.

So while I was reading one of my delicious magazines as my yummy son was taking a long nap, I saw this ad from the Magazine Publishers of America. As cheesy as it sounds, I became teary-eyed. The “Magazines, the Power of Print” campaign ad is below. Take a read. Granted, this is designed to reinvigorate magazine advertising, but I like to think it also serves as a reminder that there is room in this increasingly crowded, noisy media world for both mediums. I also hope it serves as a reminder to journalists that we still WANT that type of content; breaking news certainly serves its purpose, but a thoroughly researched, well-written story cannot be replaced.

Today’s post is the third in our series introduced in January on Bateman Banter called The New J-School in which we examine the evolving nature of journalism in today’s digital age.

Tom Foremski, publisher of Silicon Valley Watcher, recently posted this interesting piece entitled MediaWatch: Journalists Won’t Report News Unless It Can Drive Page Views, which was based on a recent panel moderated by well-known media watcher Sam Whitmore. Tom pulls out this excerpt from the conversation:

“It’s now a luxury for a reporter to write a story about an obscure, but important topic. That used to be a job requirement. Now it’s a career risk. Example: let’s say an interesting startup has a new and different idea. Many reporters now won’t touch it because (a) the story won’t generate page views, and (b) few people search on terms germane to that startup. Potential SEO performance is now a key factor in what gets assigned.

Two reporters from two different publications this month both told us the same thing: if you want to write a story on an interesting but obscure topic, you had better feed the beast by writing a second story about the iPad or Facebook or something else that delivers page views and good SEO.”

Tom summarizes:
“Page view journalism also means that smaller companies will be crowded out by their larger competitors. And with the current media tsunami out there, if you aren’t seen by your potential customers, you don’t exist.”

As we have several start-ups on our client roster, we have experienced first-hand the impact of the changing landscape of the media and page view-driven journalism. Getting coverage for an unknown brand has always been challenging, even with existing media relationships, but the economics of online journalism has changed the game a bit. And I get it ─ we are a generation of headline and excerpt readers, and news outlets are fighting for our eyeballs. Literally, fighting. The frenzy created around announcements from various news outlets that they would be breaking embargoes is an indication that the gloves are off.

If any of you follow journalists on Twitter, you will see them vigorously promoting their own content. Personally, this feels a bit sad to me, like companies begging people to come into their booth at a tradeshow, luring them in with sticky Jolly Ranchers or USB drives shaped like hands. I understand it has to be done. Tom points out that journalists are just following their management’s direction: “It’s not the journalists who are at fault, it is their management, and their management is merely following the actual economics of online journalism.”

We certainly try and help out, employing various tactics to promote our client’s coverage, but I agree with Tom in thinking that this model is not sustainable for media properties. And frankly, it’s also boring. Combing through various online publications, I’m hard pressed to find an article not written about the iPad, Facebook or Twitter. Interesting topics, sure, but not interesting enough to read about their every move, every day.  I look to the media to give me a new perspective on current events, or help me discover a company/service/product that can somehow enhance my experience.  If we make a comparison to the consumer world, I don’t want to read about Nobu or Shake Weights every day. Sure, they are cool, but everyone goes there/uses them (or wants to!), and I would rather discover hidden treasures like the new brick oven pizza place that opened in my neighborhood, or a magical tool that can help me get more sleep while raising a newborn.

So how can we change this? We’ve talked about the corporate blog as a platform for thought leadership. More and more companies are investing in their own blogs as a place to share their perspective on the industry. Also, as Tom mentions, media outlets will need to get more creative with their revenue-generating activities: “Multi-revenues means incorporating lead generation, affiliate marketing, custom advertising packages, virtual currencies, and more.”

Call me old school, but I still believe that if your client is solving a problem in the market in a unique, differentiated way, you should be able to secure your client press. Not in a gimmicky, “we shot our CEO out of a cannon” type of way, but in the thoughtful approach that PR practitioners have used since Edward Bernays opened the first PR shop in 1919 and pioneered the use of “third party authorities” to plead his clients’ causes.

To do this, you need to think like a journalist and make sure you have pulled together a compelling and supported story. This underscores the importance of having all of your “tools” in place: legitimately tying your story to a current trend or news event; having customer references that can speak to how a certain technology has impacted their business; hard data to support your angle; accessible spokespeople able to speak freely about the topic; third party references that can comment on the industry as a whole; etc.

A recent surveyfrom CareerCast.com has gotten our industry in quite a tizzy. The survey looked at over 200 different professions and came up with a list of the Ten Most Stressful Jobs. Public Relations Officer came in at #8. It’s also worth noting that PR pros, advertising execs and CEOs were the only three office jobs in the top ten, alongside firefighters and police officers, and pilots!

Being on this list reminds me of a directory my alma mater, Williams College, was on for the 100 Colleges with the most unattractive women. Although we were excited to be listed toward the bottom, it wasn’t that sweet to be included to begin with. I have a similar feeling here, but unlike during my college days, this situation encourages some critical thinking as to why we in the PR field are on this list, and what could be changed to get us off it.

Here is what CareerCast has to say as to why PR is stressful:

Stress Rank: 193
Stress Score: 78.523
Unemployment: Low*
Hours Per Day: 9
Time Pressure: High
Competition: Very High

Public relations specialists make speeches and give presentations, often in front of large crowds. Because it is a highly competitive field, specialists must work quickly and creatively to meet deadlines. In addition, some PR officers are required to interact with potentially hostile members of the media.

I’ve written about the latter part of this statement beforehand; the threat of public mockery and humiliation at the hands of a spiteful journalist if you make an honest, if not careless, mistake, can keep a PR pro up at night. The other criteria, however, seem fairly applicable to almost any client service position. Here are a few of my thoughts on the challenges we face in PR, and some ways to address them.

Measurement
Measurement can be challenging. As with many marketing communications practices, it is a crucial element to any program.  Budgets are tight and companies need to understand where their PR dollar is going. Measuring PR success is not always a simple equation, however; many of our clients want to be able to track sales leads and market impact. For some clients, success is more easily tracked- take the example of a consumer-downloaded product. A recent product launch that the Panda Security team of Bill Bourdon, Shannon Walsh, Jeana Tahnk and Amy Ziari managed resulted in 213 feature articles, 7,803 blog posts, 28,000 YouTube video views and 930 Tweets. This generated 200,000 visits to the product micro-site, all in a 24-hour period (go team!). The numbers were impressive, but they also drove some pretty significant business impact.

For other clients, measurement is more nuanced. An enterprise software sales cycle is very long, and leads are not always easily tracked, so direct sales impact from PR is not always a realistic benchmark. Sentiment and market position are also challenging, as they are subjective. Last year we were tasked with helping one of our clients transition their focus from one market to another. We created and executed our plan and generated some pretty impressive results in six months (100% increase in feature articles; 556 Blog posts; 721 Tweets), but these numbers alone don’t really address our larger objective- did we successfully transition the company’s perception?

How did we address it?
One of the things I am most proud of at the Bateman Group is how we gear every program toward having an impact on our clients’ businesses. Although big numbers are impressive, we really try to work with our clients to align our efforts with their business objectives and make sure that our writing, editorial and speaking campaigns target and resonate with their audience, whether it is a consumer or an enterprise architect. We collaborate on metrics will move the needle, and hold ourselves accountable to them. Sometimes this is sheer article volume or coverage in certain publications, other times it is increasing association with a given competitor or industry term.

We’ve developed a measurement system called Bateman Benchmarks. We feel our system does a pretty great job at objectively tracking our successes and generating un-biased, automated analysis to see how the media and industry’s perception changes due to our efforts. It is not perfect, but it has been incredibly useful in evaluating our practices to make sure we are approaching client work in the right way, and for our clients to demonstrate the impact of PR to the rest of the company. For the market transition example cited above, Bateman Benchmarks gave us a way to compare our client’s share of voice versus its competitors. We were able to evaluate how their association with their “new” industry changed during the six month timeframe, and measure the sentiment of the coverage. Coupled with the quantitative metrics, this gave us a really strong understanding of how we moved the needle on overall perception.

There are no guarantees.
I can’t tell you how many times I have patiently and persistently worked on securing a high-profile interview or panel only to have something happen at the last minute, dashing my hopes and dreams. I remember a recent situation where we created a beautiful pitch tied to a news event, identified the perfect target, secured interest and had an engaging briefing…and then the customer reference pulled out. On the one hand, it was a huge success for scoring the high profile interview; however since the reporter did not end up publishing a story, that success didn’t really translate to our end goal. Another example–for one of my consumer clients, I secured a spot in a major consumer magazine’s holiday gift guide, a huge sales  driver. Days before the issue was going to print, the editor let me know that they had to cut a few pages from the magazine due to a decline in ad sales, and my client’s product was on one of those pages. Bummer.

How do we address this?
This one isn’t as simple. The mercurial nature of the media (and, on occasion, the ad dollars that drive their publications) means that things happen that are beyond our control but that can affect our end result. To avoid similiar situations, we try to make sure that all of the moving parts are as foolproof and prepared as possible. References are confirmed, embargo dates are agreed upon, products are working, and spokespeople are prepped. The behind-the-scenes work that goes into pitching and coordinating an interview is extensive, but it’s not done in vain. And we also try to anticipate every potential problem and pre-emptively address them. For example, with my gift guide scenario, because that wasn’t my first rodeo, I knew I couldn’t put all of my eggs in that one basket. I had also focused on a few other higher-tier outlets and managed to secure placements in several other gift guides as well to soften the blow in case one fell through.

At the end of the day, some outcomes are simply impossible to avoid, even if you enter in with all of your Is dotted and your Ts crossed. The best that you can do is be as prepared as possible going into them, and be nimble enough to change course if obstacles arise. Despite the stress that these things can cause us, we try to minimize those stresses by being prepared—something most of us in this industry learn early on after a couple of painful mistakes.

These are just the realities of our industry (isn’t that a nicer way of saying stresses? I think so). Does PR belong on the most stressful careers list? Perhaps. But I would venture to guess that any profession involved in client (or public) service could lobby for a spot on this not-so-coveted list. Lastly, in terms of my college list, you know, I just did a quick Google search to find it and was unable to get past the “most attractive student body” listings. Maybe it was an urban legend created by some disgruntled alums? Sigh. One will never know.

Behold the April Fool’s Day edition of the Bateman Buzz Meter (technically #4), our semi-regular ranking of recent newsworthy events based on PR and Social Media effectiveness.  As always, please comment on any current news headlines or PR stunts you think are worthy of the Buzz Meter we may have missed.

(Remember to click on the image to view it in full screen)

]]> http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/04/bateman-buzz-meter-april-fools-day-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/03/pr-blunders/ http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/03/pr-blunders/#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:05:11 +0000 Tyler Perry http://www.batemanbanter.com/?p=474

Much to the glee of journalists and the chagrin of PR practitioners, another “PR blunder” has hit the airwaves, this time under the pen of the folks at TechCrunch. Although I am always shocked by the carelessness exhibited by people pitching journalists when they KNOW if they make a mistake, there is a good chance they will be publicly chastised and humiliated by the recipient (enter in waves of awkwardness as you think of 80s high school movies…or your own high school movie), I am even more stunned by the passionate anger expressed in some of the comments people make about these honest mistakes. Take this one, for example:

i think future posts should embarass (sic) the hell out of PR Flacks and not omit their names or companies.
that is the only way they will learn.
by disguising their identity, you still save them face to screw up again.

Spelling error aside, taken out of context this could be in reference to fur-wearing celebutants or people that don’t clean up their dog poop forcing you to be ostracized in your office when you step in it rather than someone that was a bit careless and hasty to hit the send button while doing their job. I am not saying that this isn’t “embarassing” – it pains me just as much to read these terrible pitch letters as it does to watch the aftermath of “PR is the bane of the my existence” posts – but I am often floored by the anger directed towards the PR industry. I don’t want to get into a huge discussion about why this is, or a debate about the validity and need for public relations–if you are reading this blog, you probably understand the value that we bring to our clients–but I do want to suggest two things.

One: If you work in PR, pull yourself together. These slipups happen, but our industry is under constant scrutiny and there are journalists out there just WAITING for an opportunity to pounce on you. Social media means they can do so immediately, with no cooling off period. Take your time in doing your research and writing your emails so you aren’t pitching an infrastructure software product upgrade to Wired magazine or Oprah, or addressing a journalist as “insert name here.”  It is that simple.

Two: this goes out to those that take sadistic pleasure in these types of mistakes. To you, I also say pull yourself together. The anger is bizarre and actually scary in the “I will hunt you down” sense. Seriously. I’ve been doing this a long time and I have seen my fair share of journalist errors, including those that have sent my client into a furious frenzy or a legal scramble. I can also bet that the crazies ardently posting response after response to every entry from Michael Arrington shouldn’t be throwing stones in a glass house either.  Every well-known brand I can think of would be nowhere today without a solid communications strategy. To compete in this crowded marketplace, companies big and small must be able to communicate their value proposition and differentiators. (So I lied; I dabbled into the value of PR just a bit. I couldn’t help myself. ) So to the crazies: PR is not going away. For the health and safety of others, please redirect your energy into something more productive, like your own business, or learning to be more accepting of people less perfect than yourself.