The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

When the news of GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, broke over the weekend, Barack Obama was quick to issue an order to his campaign workers to “back off.” 

Family members of candidates aren’t fair game, he warned.

“We don’t go after people’s families, we don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant…And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”

But what about the rest of us?

Should anti-abortion or abortion-rights advocates piggyback onto this news event to further their cause or issue?

What about opponents or proponents of condoms in schools? What about churches? Abortion clinics? Adoption agencies? Roe v. Wade backers and opponents? Parents groups?

Is the pregnancy fair game?  

It most certainly is, just as the pride—or not—that Michelle Obama felt for her country was a legitimate issue after she commented publicly about it.  As for Sarah Palin, she thrust her family into the spotlight, warts and all, when she accepted the nomination. (This photo of Bristol was taken Friday during her mother’s acceptance speech in Dayton, Ohio.) 

What about you? Do you work for a company or agency that will be piggybacking onto the issue of the pregnancy for publicity? Or have you decided to let it rest? What are you telling your spokesperson?

If you’re an author, speaker or expert whose topic ties into this news, will you be writing press releases or blogging about your opinions? Will you be offering yourself as a source to the media and bloggers? Why or why not?

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Crisis Communications, Nonprofits, PR Consultants/Publicists, Pitching the Media, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 9/2/2008: 9:27 am: By Joan
Comments: 30 Comments

Response to the two teleseminars I’m hosting today and tomorrow on “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything–Ethically & Powerfully” has been overwhelming.

I sold the last of the 100 seats on Tuesday morning. (You can still sign up to receive the MP3 audio and electronic transcripts, however.)

Anybody who has a LinkedIn profile must know how to squeeze every last drop of networking out of every single connection.  Or, like many people on LinkedIn have sadly discovered, that long list of names you’ve collected is…well…nothing more than a long list of names.

Many of the 100 people who were on today’s call own a business or work for PR firms.  For them, LinkedIn is a no-brainer.

Social networking is a much harder sell, however, in large companies, based on some of these comments I’ve heard:

“Our boss wants total control over our image.”

(Tell the boss there is no such thing as total control over your image.  Just ask Dell computers, Wal-Mart or any other company that’s been skewered by bloggers and in online discussion groups.)

“We’d rather spend our efforts getting stories in The New York Times and USA Today.”

(Guess where many of those reporters search for sources?  On social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and at blogs.)

“We’ve decided that Web 2.0 isn’t where we want to spend our time.”

(Too bad.  Your clients, vendors, shareholders, competitors and hundreds of potential customers spend lots of time using social media and Web 2.0 to connect with their key audiences, often with great results.)

Popular blogger and internal communications expert Steve Crescenzo says that two years ago, everybody was talking about Web 2.0 and social media.  Today, the smart companies have stopped talking about it and they’re DOING it.

“I talk to hundreds of communicators every year in my seminars and consulting work, and go into dozens of companies.  And I can tell you this: The time for big talk and theories about social media is over. The time to actually use these tools to dramatically improve how you communicate is now.”

Steve is conference organizer for The Social Media Summit Sept. 10-12 in Chicago, sponsored by Ragan Communications.  I attended Ragan’s “unconference” on social media last year in Chicago and it was fabulous–sort of an unstructured, free-flowing day in which so many tips and ideas were bouncing around that I couldn’t type my notes fast enough.

This year’s Social Media Summit will include example after example of how companies are using podcasts, message boards, social networking sites, video, widgets and other Web 2.0 applications to get closer to their key audiences.  You’ll even get a peek at Web 3.0.

The conference includes one track for internal communications and a separate track for external and marketing communications.

I’ll be there and I hope you’ll be, too.

I worked out a special arrangement with Ragan.  Publicity Hounds save $100 on the price of registration, plus an additional $100 if you register by Friday using this link.

See you in Chicago!

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Crisis Communications, PR Consultants/Publicists, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Social networking, Video
posted On: 7/16/2008: 9:34 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

When seven people in the Chicago area died in 1982 after ingesting Tylenol capsules which had been laced with potassium cyanide poison, Johnson & Johnson moved quickly to manage the crisis.

The company embedded journalists in meetings with top management so they could hear first-hand all the issues and problems the company faced. That move, and others, were brilliant. Johnson & Johnson remains as perhaps the greatest example of how a company should manage a crisis.

The tactic of embedding reporters can be just as effective if your company is experiencing a crisis on a smaller scale, too. An article in the June issue of PR Tactics, written by Ron McGee, a professor journalism at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, recommends that PR professionals include embedding reporters in their crisis communications plans. 

“An electric company PR practitioner who asks a reporter to follow the daily activities of a techician, for example, is likely ot be met with a yawn…That electrical company technician who was so boring suddenly becomes much more interesting to a reporter when the lights don’t work for several days.” 

Ron’s tips include:

• Identify certain workers who have the knowledge and personality to represent your organization.
• Perform practice drills. The employees you’ve identified should spend time showing mock reporters what they’d do. Offer feedback.
• Sell the idea of transparency to management before a crisis.

The media will scrutinize your organization during a crisis anyway. Embedding reporters will help them cover your story from the inside where they have a close-up view of what’s happening, and access to your experts who can help them understand it.

In an interview I conducted with crisis manager Jonathan Bernstein on How to Keep the Media Wolves at Bay, Jonathan said companies that are open and honest and show they have nothing to hide have a huge advantage over those that do stupid things like say “no comment.” 

Posted In: Crisis Communications
posted On: 6/5/2008: 10:58 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

It could be a lawsuit against your company.

Or a health department violation against your restaurant.

Or a post at somebody’s blog, written by a rabble-rouser who wants to drag your name through the mud and destroy your business.

If it’s bad news and it’s online, it could live on forever.  Anybody who uses the search engines to research companies can find it.  That is, unless you know how to bury it.

Enter Glen Selig, a former TV investigative reporter who today writes and distributes press releases for his clients to bury or “push down” the bad news on the organic search list.  That’s the list that appears on the left side of the screen when you type a keyword or keyword phrase into a search engine like Google.

“You still need something newsworthy to disseminate, but then it’s about strategy and technique,” says Glen of PressReleasePros.com.

I’d go one step further and say you don’t even need something newsworthy to write about. 

Let’s say you sell jewelry.  Three years ago, a consumer group incorrectly accused you of selling fake gems.  Their accusations appeared online and kept popping up in the searching engines when people typed certain keyword phrases about gems.

Here’s how you could bury it:

—Write and distribute a press release about your new money-back guarantee.

—Write and distribute another release about how to buy gems.

—And then another on what to do if you love jewelry, but you’re allergic to certain types of metal.

—And then another on the most popular types of gems.

—And then another on what to look for when buying gems.

Get the idea?  You aren’t writing these releases for journalists.  You’re writing them for consumers.  If journalists find them, that’s great.  But the whole point of the exercise is to bury the bad news. The more press releases you write, the further down the list the bad news will fall. Even if it ends up on page 3 or 4 in the organic search list, most consumers wouldn’t bother looking that far into the list. 

“I help large and small companies use this secret weapon all the time,” says Selig.  “And it works like a charm.”

He distributes his press releases through his own company, PRNewsChannel, so they get picked up by Google News, Ask.com, Yahoo and MSN.

You can hire someone like Glen to write and distribute press releases for you.  Or you can do it yourself with help from my free email tutorial called “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.” 

Posted In: Blogs, Crisis Communications, PR Consultants/Publicists, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 5/6/2008: 1:01 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Here’s the list of public relations tactics American Airlines adopted after canceling  more than 3,000 flights this month:

According to PRWeek, it:

—Enlisted its seven-person PR team, other staffers and Weber Shandwick, its PR firm, to inform the public about the reasons for the delay.

—Handed out press releases to customers at some of its largest hubs.

—Sent millions of emails to its AAdvantage members.

—Launched a corporate blog.  (And a crummy blog, at that. Why do companies launch corporate blogs when they’re in the middle of a crisis? Why don’t they launch them long before a crisis occurs, so they don’t have to waste precious time handling the crisis AND  learning how to blog?)

—Sent twice-daily press releases to reporters.

—Held three news conferences.

—Used bulletin boards and the Intranet to distribute updates and talking points to employees.  

To add to the airlines’ woes, disgruntled employees have launched a new website, “Tell Your AA Story,” which invites passengers and employees to share their nightmares about the airlines. 

OK, Publicity Hounds. What else should American Airlines have done?

Posted In: Blogs, Crisis Communications, PR Consultants/Publicists, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 4/25/2008: 7:12 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment