Social media has become such an integral part of our life, it’s easy to forget it’s been around a relatively short time. Facebook started in February 2004. Twitter in March 2006, Linkedin in 2002.
Yet just because you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, does that make you an expert? Would you know how to best use them to generate more business? Would you even have the time in your working day to use them? Read more
The next time you are reading a newspaper or trade magazine, do this one thing. Take a look at the story, not for content, but for style. You’ll notice that the whole story is summarised in the first paragraph. Then it’s up to you to decide if it’s relevant enough to continue reading. This is precisely what makes a good press release. It needs to grab the reader in the first paragraph. Read more
Picture the scene. You’re a marketing manager of a company and you decide you need to bring in external support to help you manage your brand awareness. You know the choice you make will reflect on you, and the company’s business objectives. It’s also a sizeable chunk of your marketing budget. So how do you go about choosing one?
Here at Pison PR we have worked with dozens and dozens of businesses, and here are some of the most frequent myths we challenge:
Well, no. The worst example of this we’ve seen was when we were on a pitch list of 15 agencies, can you imagine how frivolous that must have looked to the senior management?!
These sort of ‘beauty parades’ are really counter productive for companies – they reveal a lack of clarity of what their communications objectives should be; a flagrant waste of time for the marketeer (and all the agency time, which is rarely chargeable) and are frankly that ‘scattergun’ request for help shows a lack of knowledge.
What works better is to ask around your contacts which PR agencies they recommend, ask your leading trade magazine editor for a list of the PR agencies they rate the most.
Of course you’ve got to meet the agencies, but ‘pitch’ has certain connotations, so you wouldn’t really be getting like for like from different size agencies. Larger agencies might throw lots of resource into the moment of fame… but remember, it’s not the glitzy ‘down on one knee, champagne-proposal’ that matters, it’s the long term happy marriage. Many agencies use their top people in the pitch, but they might not be the team on your account day to day.
Our preferred alternative is an ‘exploratory meeting’. A conversation with the people who will be working with you. That’s a win-win in our books. You don’t have to be power-pointed and we get to find out more about your communications challenges.
Creativity is certainly something to include in the mix, but for our money, the key questions to ask would be:
– can you work with them?
– how will they report back so you know how the project is progressing? Ask to see a examples
– who is going to be on your account?
– what have they done that is similar?
– can you speak to one or two of their existing clients?
To be honest, we really need to know if you have enough budget for a banquet or a cupcake. Give a range if you want, but some indication of budget is really vital. If you know what you want to achieve and what budget you have to do it, makes the whole process so much clearer.
Don’t ask for day rates, because these are always a red herring. It doesn’t take into account how long something will take/and the skill base that is being put on the job. It’s like asking a taxi driver how much a specific journey will cost – and they just give you a quote per roundabout. We prefer to work on a campaign basis, giving an indication on what we expect to achieve.
Really? Large agencies are great, but then, so are small ones. You need to be judging on outcomes, not on postcodes.
Haha we love this one! Honestly, you could get awareness of your company if it becomes insolvent or some other disaster befalls it. You need to be far more specific. We know that clients get the best out of their PR if they can be as specific as possible about what they want to achieve. So we run a Communications Clarity Workshop to help you hone your objectives – you might even find you have the skills and resources in house to do you own PR!
In the last decade social media has contributed massively to PR and how businesses communicate with their publics; and with the recent news that YouTube has taken over Facebook as the largest social network, receiving more than one billion unique visitors every month, businesses need to move to video if they want to ensure they are communicating with all of their stakeholders.
Here are a few tips on how to prepare for your video coverage.
No one knows your business as well as you do, but unfortunately video speech is something that cannot be improvised, even if the subject is something you know very well. This is because you need to keep your speech within a specific time frame, and to do so you should write a script and record yourself to ensure it is within the time allocated. It also means that you won’t use fillers such as ‘erm’ as often as your speech will be nearby to read from.
It is important to allocate the speaker role to someone who is confident and reflects the image your business wants to give. Sometimes the business’s MD or an employee works best as it shows the transparency of the organisation. However, if there is no one suitable, the best way to maintain professionalism is to use an actor, or if the video will be of visual material, a voiceover.
Ensure your script starts off with a hook which grabs the audience’s attention. If the video does not attract its audience then viewers will not listen to the message you are trying to put across to them. Use rhetorical questions to draw the listeners in as they will relate better to what you are saying if it is addressed to them.
If the video is limited with time, only give one message per video as you don’t want to confuse the listener and the message you are trying to get across. Keeping things simple will allow you to communicate more clearly and more effectively.
Write the script as if you are targeting the listener and focus on the message you are sending to them. Instead of using pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘My’, steer towards ‘You’ and ‘Your’, this will give a more conversational element to your video and encourage two-way communication with your publics.
Even if the videos are short, collecting additional footage on a range topics will always help when editing your videos for the best visual material, and even if it isn’t used, it is important to keep a record of the work you are doing.
If you’re interested in creating a company video, get in touch with us.Sadly, there are always business disasters. But often it’s not the disaster that lingers in the memory… it’s how a company deals with it.
PR doesn’t have a magic wand, but what it can do is help with communication. If there is an incident, in the absence of information, rumour and speculation are rife.
The role of any comms team is to:
Take for example the propane tanker fire on the M56 yesterday. Thankfully it didn’t result in any fatalities, but there was considerable traffic holdups and it impacted on many many people – not least of all Calor, the firm involved. And this is how they dealt with it on their website – a big thumbs up to them for some great crisis PR.
This is exactly the advice we give our clients – whether it’s a logistics firm or a manufacturer – or in fact, anyone, because no one is exempt. Have you ever had an incident like this? What did you do?
And if you would like to talk to us about putting a plan in place… email us right now. You never know what’s around the corner.
Exhibitions are a great way to showcase your products and services… but aren’t they expensive? Not just the exhibition space, the stand, the photography, the literature, the ‘giveaways’, but also the accommodation, travel and having key staff out of the business. So it’s crazy not to make the most of the show by getting just the right people to it. You can’t leave that to chance. So here are ten great ways to make the most of an exhibition.
Publicity vs. Public Relations: Are They the Same Thing?
Pison PR is for brands that want to stand out. We help clients communicate better and push boundaries because it gets results and delivers what they need.
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