Here’s another reason not to rely on Wikipedia as a trusted source of knowledge for anything.

A new study published in the Public Relations Journal shows that a stunning 60 percent of articles about specific companies contained factual errors.

The research was conducted by Marcia W. DiStaso, Ph.D., co-chair of PRSA’s National Research Committee and an assistant professor of public relations at Penn State University. She surveyed 1,284 PR professionals to find out how they use Wikipedia or correct errors they find there.

“It does not surprise me that so many Wikipedia entries contain factual errors,” said DiStaso. “What is surprising, however, is that 25 percent of survey respondents indicated they are not familiar with the Wikipedia articles for their company or clients. At some point most, if not all, companies will determine they need to change something in their Wikipedia entries. Without clear, consistent rules from Wikipedia regarding how factual corrections can be made this will be a very difficult learning process for public relations professionals.”

Wikipedia’s editing process is so cumbersome, that some people just don’t bother. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, told the Associated Press last fall that Wikipedia is losing the crowd that keeps it updated. The typical profile of a contributor is “a 26-year-old geeky maole” who moves on to ther ventures and leaves the website.

Administrators are working to simplify the way users can contribute and edit materials. Finally.

If you’re in PR, or you do your own publicity, do you use Wikipedia? Do you find it difficult to use? Do you regularly monitor it? Have you tried to submit a Wiklipedia entry for your client but it got rejected? Share your story in the Comments section below.

Attention publicists who are coming to the IBPA Publishing University this weekend in San Francisco.

Can I buy you coffee? I’m arriving mid-day on Friday, and I’ll be presenting on three panels on Saturday. But I’m staying over on Saturday night.

Email me at JStewart (at) PublicityHound.com and let’s see if we can coordinate our schedules.   

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Follow These PR Rules If You Want To Raise Some Real Capital. http://t.co/OFOfjLof

Submit series of articles to papers in rich suburbs via NAPS. Expensive, but might be worth it for you. http://ow.ly/93OKP

Don’t let companies talk you into buying expensive media directories. Read this first, then decide: http://ow.ly/93P9y

3 ways to reinvent yourself on LinkedIn. http://t.co/r68rqIB4

5 ways to increase your Facebook fan engagement. http://ow.ly/95lve

3 critical details to include in your database of reporters, editors, broadcasters. http://t.co/syldFCmW

13 ways to cross-promote on social media sites. http://ow.ly/96rkf

How NOT to do PR: An interview with Peter Shankman who started HARO. http://ow.ly/96uGI

10 common self-publishing scams that can drain your bank account. http://ow.ly/96t3D

5 ways to take back your reputation on the web. http://ow.ly/98eAO

If you do your own publicity, or you’re a publicist who has a small number of clients, you probably don’t have to spend thousands of  dollars on those massive media directories that are as big as phone books.

Here’s why:

1. You’re paying for thousands of listings. Yet you’ll use a small fraction of them. So why pay for what you don’t need?
      
      
2. Many of those listings are out of date by the time they get to you.  Pervasive layoffs in the newspaper industry, and frequent staff turnover at TV and radio stations, mean the revolving door is always in motion.   

      

3. Media relations is all about building relationships. You can’t build relationships with thousands of journalists and broadcasters.
      
      
4. With a big database of journalists at your fingertips, you’ll be tempted to send email blasts to many of them even though you know darn well that they despise them. (Repeat after me: “I will not send email blasts to journalists.”)

      

5. Many of the big databases don’t include golden nuggets of information that you can find yourself online. That’s because many of the companies that sell media lists collect their information by asking journalists to fill out questionnaires. When I worked in a newsroom, I hated answering those questionnaires because they were a time suck. And it seemed like they all arrived in the mail within a few weeks of each other.  I completed them as quickly as possible. Other journalists do, too.

By spending some time online researching a half dozen key reporters, editors or talk show hosts, you can gather details that you’ll never find in those big databases. 

For example,  in about 10 minutes, I discovered a treasure trove of personal information about Deborah Kotz, former health reporter for U.S. News & World Report who now writes a consumer health blog for the  Boston Globe. By spending time at her blog, I learned that Kotz had thought about her risk of staying on birth control pills until she reaches menopause, and lamented the dearth of research on the long-term use of contraceptives by women. You will NEVER find juicy details like that in the big media directories. 

So how about creating your own?

Join me at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Feb. 16, when I present the webinar “How to Create Your Own Database of Valuable Media Contacts.” Register here.

If you’re trying to generate publicity for yourself, or you’re a publicist, you’ll learn about the types of information to include in your database, shortcuts that will help find the best contacts quickly, and the most important details to include in each entry.

I’m offering a huge bonus for everyone who registers: a package of eight templates, the same ones I use, so you don’t have to start from scratch. These will be PDFs and you’ll have to recreate them depending on what program you’re  using to build your database. More about that on Thursday.

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow @PublicityHound on Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook tips for food trucks.  http://ow.ly/7MOeO RT@mysurveyexpert #foodtrucks

Are women in PR just grown up “mean girls”? Weigh in athttp://ow.ly/7LXGe

Want a story in Fast Company? Writer says you must answer these 4 questions first: http://ow.ly/7LaI1

How to bait your hook for retweets. http://ow.ly/7JrsU

Why You Can’t Read a Kindle During Take-off—4 Theories.http://ow.ly/7IWGf

7 reasons to embrace nasty comments at your blog.http://ow.ly/7HZZI #blogging

10 types of writer’s block and how to overcome them.http://ow.ly/7HdpL #writingtips

Top 15 tech bloggers and tweeters in 2011. (PR people, save this list.) http://ow.ly/7JS8m

Pitching journalists? Google their name. You’ll find valuable tidbits you can weave into yr pitch. #publicity

Website traffic shouldn’t be the goal of your blog. [I disagree! Read my comment] http://ow.ly/7MO6R #seo #blogs

The next time a reporter interviews you, and you don’t know the answer to a question, resist the urge to panic.

Too many interview subjects think reporters expect them to know all the answers to every potential question.

Reporters don’t. All they want is a good story. 

Here, then, are five reasons why it’s OK to say “I don’t know” during an interview and how that simple little phrase can actually keep you out of trouble.
     
     
1. Reporters, particularly TV reporters, sometimes know very little about the topic of their story and need you to educate them.

They often don’t have time to do research. Sometimes they’re covering the beat as a fill-in for another reporter who’s on vacation and they’re clueless about the subject matter. If they ask  you a question and you say “I don’t know,” they won’t hold it against you if they’re in the dark, too. 
     
    
2. The phrase “I don’t know” is a boring sound bite.

I can’t remember the last time I saw that phrase printed in a news story, or lifted from a broadcast interview and played on the air. That’s because it adds absolutely nothing to the story. Reporters want the sizzling, sexy sound bites.    
     
    
3. The question might be completely irrelevant to the story.

When I started working as a reporter and lacked confidence, one of my worst fears was looking dumb in front of news sources. Rather than just saying, “I really don’t know a lot about this topic. Can you help me understand it?,” I’d ask any question that I thought was relevant, or stall for time until I could think of a better one. 

If the question is irrelevant to the story, you can say so. And then come back with “A far better question is….” or “What people really want to know is…”

That little technique, by the way, is a wonderful way to bridge from a question you really don’t want to answer to your key message. Smart reporters might not let you get away with it, but novice reporters probably will.    
     
    
4. If you try to pretend like you know what you’re talking about, and you don’t, your answer  can include wrong information that comes back to haunt you.

The reporter asks a tough question. You panic and start babbling. The reporter includes a quote from you, and quotes from several others who refute what you just said. Embarrassing. 
     
     
5.  The urge to respond to every question can lead to little white lies.

Of course you’d never lie to a reporter. You’re not that dumb.

But I’ve seen case after case in which intertiew subjects think they owe reporters an answer to every question. “The qustion must be important or the reporter would never have asked it,” they think. So they say something—anything—and pretty soon they’re stretching the truth.

If the reporter asks a question and you don’t know the answer, you can always say, “I don’t know. But I can find out the answer to that question and get back to you. When’s your deadline?”

What about you? If you’ve been interviewed, what have you said when you didn’t know the answer to a question?

If you’re a journalist, I’d love to see any other tips you can add to this list.

Publicists, share this post with your clients. And, as always, share this on the social media sites.

Barbara Roy

This week’s Help this Hound question is from Barbara Roy, a communications specialist  in Oakland City, IN:

“I  need ideas on how to promote an upcoming charity car raffle in 2012 through the Mad Mac Foundation, a group that sponsors educational programs for at-risk youth.

“Proceeds from the raffle will be used to get teenagers, who illegally race their cars on street, into the classroom where they can learn how to build tuner cars from the ground up. The training will help them transfer their skills, which they’ve been using illegally, into career paths that might include auto engineering and design, auto repair, and creating video games that involve cars.  The curriculum includes science, technology, engineering and math.

“Two cars will be given away during the July raffle.

“The winter months will be spent on materials prep and strategy. But beginning in January, we’ll focus more on going after sponsors and businesses to carry the raffle tickets.  I could really use recommendations on how to gain mass awareness for this nationwide event. 

“We will have branding, messaging and content on the website by January, as well as a Facebook event page.  Can your Hounds offer their best ideas?”

If you have ideas, please comment.

At least once a seek, somebody asks, “Where can I find a good publicist?”

A far more important question should be, “What are the most important qualities I should look for in a publicist?”

Once you know that, then you can start looking.

Here are 15 qualities I’ve identified, with help from my readers. Use them as a checklist when looking for your candidates, and ranking them. The publicist you choose might not have all of these traits, but do your best to make sure that the person you eventually choose has most of them:  

1. Experience, with a strong track record of successes. This is at the top of the list for a good reason.
     
2. Impeccable oral and written communication skills.
     
3. They are well-groomed and present themselves well.  Remember that they will be representing YOU in front of the media.
     
4. Creative. They should suggest one idea after another on an ongoing basis, even after you’ve been working with them for months. How do you find this out during the interview? Ask them to describe for you several things they did they’re proudest of—things that took real creativity to accomlish. But also ask their references.  
     

     And ask them what they do once they’ve scored a major media hit for you. Here are 15 ways that publicist Michelle Tennant publicizes her clients’ publicity.

  
1. Curious. Make note of how many questions the publicist asks you during the interview. They should be curious about your background, experience, business philosophies—things that might lend themselves to story ideas later. Beware of the publicists who seem disinterested in you and talk only about themselves.
     
2. A sense of urgency. Make note of how quickly the candidate responds to your phone calls and emails. Do you have to wait a day or two for the publicist to get back to you? If so, that kind of responsiveness to media requests will be deadly.
     
3. Disciplined follow-up. If your interview process is slower than you had hoped, and they don’t hear from you for a week or two, do they follow up with you to see where the project stands—and do so without being a pest? When working with the media, follow-up is critical.
     
4. Outgoing, energetic and determined. These should be given more points than “a big name.” I’ve met a few well-known public relations people whose names I had heard for years. But when I met them, they looked tired and listless, as though they wished they were working in any job other than P.R. Maybe they had a bad day. Or maybe they’re always like this.
     
5. Honest. You can ask question designed to get them to talk honestly about themselves and their past experiences. (“What’s the worst mistake you ever made when working for a client?” “What kind of client isn’t a good fit for you?”) If they dodge the questions, beware. The perfect publicist will be honest with you.   
     
6. They offer value beyond what you would expect. You can find out more about this when you check references.
     
7. Friendly. This is imperative. They don’t need to be chummy with you or with their media contacts. But they must be open and approachable. And they must know how to accept “no” gracefully from gruff reporters.
     
8. Professional from start to finish. Your reputation with the media hinges on how your publicist performs.
     
9. Trustworthy. Was the publicist able to earn your trust without making outrageous claims or promises? If so, she can probably earn the media’s trust, too.     
     
10. Confident. Publicists deal with rejection almost daily. They have to bounce back from every “no thanks” they hear, knowing they’re that much closer to a “yes.” 
      
11. Enthusiastic. I wouldn’t hire someone to promote me who was less than enthusiastic about me or my business. You shouldn’t either. 

Now that you know the 11 traits to look for, consider the one thing that you can’t research, look for, or ask about. Instead, you feel it in your gut. It’s chemistry.

If, during an interview with a candidate, you just can’t see yourself taking direction from him, that’s a red flag. So is the feeling that “there’s something about her that bothers me, but I can’t pinpoint it.”

If you’ve hired a publicist who’s darn near close to perfect,  what traits did you notice that you’d add to this list? Publicists, am I wrong about any of these?

It used to be easy to find the movers and shakers who were the most influential people within their topic areas. But not anymore, thanks to social media.

PR and marketing pros who need to find the heavy-hitter  journalists, talk show hosts, bloggers, authors, experts and Facebook users who are discussing a particular topic right now, can slog their way through a variety of tools.

They can use Klout, which measures online influence, but only for those who are on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Klout’s generic score ignores how often that person is quoted or discussed in traditional media.

Google Alerts can tell you instantly which bloggers are discussing certain topics. But the alerts don’t measure the blogger’s influence.

A new tool from Appinions, a New York company, tracks traditional and social media to round out a true picture of influence. It’s a subscription-based service that matches influencers to specific topics, based on opinions it finds from news reports, blogs, tweets, TV transcripts and social networks.
     
    
Give Your Clients an Edge

Within seconds, PR and marketing people can identify the most influential people who can move the needles of influence. Then, they can lead their clients to those experts to comment on a blog post, write a letter to the editor, pitch a story, offer background information for a journalist’s article, or offer commentary for an author’s forthcoming book—long before the client’s competitors are even aware that there’s a hot topic being discussed.

Watch this short video to see how it works.

Larry Levy, CEO of Appinions, will give you a free demonstration, perfect for PR and marketing pros, during a webinar I’m hosting from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 13. Register today because we have room for only 50 people.

Levy will explain the three key elements that the service measures to determine influence:

• Are trusted writers and publications covering the influencer’s opinions?
      
• Is the influencer’s opinion being shared, retweeted, quoted, requoted and linked?
    
• When did a certain topic or issue first emerge, and who introduced it?

The ideal company for this service is a PR or marketing agency that has multiple clients and does at least $5 million a year in revenue.

One of the biggest myths of press releases is that they must contain news.

That was true two decades ago when we wrote press releases primarily for journalists and we had to worry about insulting them with trivia about our business.

But now that we post them online, mostly to pull traffic to our websites, we’re free to write about whatever we wish.

Here, then, are 13 press release topics when your pockets are empty and there’s absolutely nothing newsworthy to write about. They’re excerpted from my free email course on 89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases. (PR people, take the course to sharpen your press release skills. And then use the tips below when you’re scrounging for ideas to publicize your clients.)

Publicity Hounds who have a subscription to Expertclick, The Yearbook of Experts, which lets you post up to 52 press releases a year, will find these tips particularly helpful.

1.  Take a Stand on a Controversial Topic

Controversial topics can include everything from the old standbys such as abortion and gun control to local issues like proposed zoning laws.

When you’re done with the press release, generate extra publicity by writing a letter to the editor of your local or national newspaper. How to Use Newspaper & Magazine Editorial Pages shows you all the ways you can rally support for your cause or issue by using editorial pages, from writing letters to asking for a meeting with the newspaper editorial board.

2.  Write About Your Blog 

If you’ve started blogging for business, write a press release about it so people who want information on your topic can find it. Or devote the release to some of the things you mentioned in a specific post.

This blog, for example, helps people solve problems writing press releases, and I encourage people to submit questions to me. It also teaches people how to use social media sites to self-promote. I could write two press releases, or more, just telling reades about ways they can use this blog. You can, too.

Visit other bloggers who blog on the same topic, or a similar topic, and post comments at their blogs. By linking back to your blog from your comments, you will improve the page ranking of your own blog.

3. Lead Readers to Free Articles at Your Website

If you have free articles that solve people’s problems, or entertain them, say so.

Are your articles arranged by category? Are they updated monthly? Do you let the media, ezine publishers, newsletter editors and bloggers reprint them? Do you feature articles from other industry experts?

4. Tell People Where to Find You on Social Media Sites

Smart Publicity Hounds use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Quora profiles to position themselves as the go-to sources in their industries.

Do you post your photos and videos to Flickr? Do you have a YouTube channel chock full of helpful how-to videos? (Here’s mine.)

5.  Create Your Own Holiday

Create your own day, week or month of the year, or your own holiday, at Chases Calendar of Events. The listing is free. You can then use that holiday as a springboard to even more publicity.

The topic doesn’t have to be serious. In fact, the more fun, the better. I love Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day.

6. Make a Prediction

Predict something that ties into your area of expertise—or not.

Predict when gasoline prices, the stock market or interest rates will rise and fall. For fun, predict who will win the Super Bowl or when the first snowfall will occur in your area. Predict the winner of local or national elections.

7. Issue a Proclamation

Congratulate the local high school football team for winning a state title, or a local business for celebrating its 10th anniversary.

8. Write Tips That Tie into an Upcoming Holiday

Professional orgnizers can write about how to stay organized during the Christmas holidays. A child safety expert can offer tips on how to keep kids safe during fireworks season on the Fourth of July.

9.  Identify A Trend You’re Seeing in Your Business or Industry

You don’t even have to think very hard to identify a trend you’re seeing. How has your customers’ behavior changed the way you do business? What’s happening with your orders? Is your nonprofit serving more people in a particular age group or income level?

If you want to cheat, Google “Top trends in the (fill in the blank) industry” and write about one of those.

10.  Comment on Breaking News

This one’s easy. The news can tie into your business or industry—or not. If you’re an expert who welcomes interview requests for radio talk shows, say so in the release. See 6 ways to tie your pitch to breaking news for PR and publicity.

11. What Event Are You Attending?

Most people don’t think it’s a big deal if they attend a trade show or industry conference. But why not turn this into a publicity opportunity?

Write a press release telling people that you’d welcome meeting them. Encourage them to ask you questions about problems they’re facing.

12. Take a Poll or Survey

Sites like Survey Monkey make simple polling a breeze.  You can also take a poll on Facebook. Don’t forget to write a follow-up press release that reports on the results of the poll.

13. Explain How to Solve a Problem

Press releases offering tips and advice are often the very best for pulling traffic to your website. That’s becauase you can dazzle readers with your expertise, help them solve their problem, and then link to a website where they can find more information about a product or service you sell that can help them even more.

What topics do you write about when the idea well is dry?

Tools to Help You:    

How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound

Keywords: The Magic Magnets That Pull Journalists & Consumes to Your Press Releases

The New Rules of Press Releases: How to Write them for Consumers, Not Only for Journalists

The Big Press Release Samples Ebook: Press Releases for Every Occasion and Industry