public relations Archives - Sherrilynne Starkie

October 22, 2018 by sherrilynne 9 Comments

Top 7 leads to draw audiences in

Sometimes getting the first, or lead, paragraph right is the hardest thing about writing a story. Whether it’s a blog post, a short video or podcast or even an opinion column, get it right, and the rest of the content will flow. Remember there are seven main lead sentence styles that can set the scene to draw audiences in. Try writing one or two of these then choose the one that you feel works best.

Summary lead

This answers the 5Ws of the story, (who, what, where, how, why, when) in one sentence and is usually the best choice for a news story. A Company is launching A Product at A Trade Show taking place On A Date, in A Town. The reader gets the all the facts at a glance and can make a decision about where it’s worthwhile to read on.

Question lead

Good for longer feature stories or op-eds, this lead can be effective in drawing readers in. What has wheels, is green and everyone is jumping on it? The environmental bandwagon is rolling through marketing departments of large corporations all over the western world as companies seek to appeal to ethically motivated millennials. This raises curiosity with the question and explains issue being discussed in the answer. Avoid using questions that require a yes/no answer. Have you made your will yet? The risk is the reader will think: No I’m not interested, and then hit delete. Or, he or she might think: Yes so I don’t need this info, and then hit delete.

Factual lead

Using statistics and hard facts up front can gain immediate interest and encourages the reader to go further into the story. Fifty per cent of working mothers fail to prepare healthy family meals because they ‘just don’t have the time’, according to a survey conducted by A Meal Preparation Company. The target audience will identify regardless of which side of the issue they fall on.

Quotation lead 1

Drawing on well-known sayings and famous quotes gives immediate context. Mark Twain once said that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated; this could also be said of a faithful PR tool…the news release. Most people are familiar withe the quote and they understand it to mean: don’t take reports at face value. They now have the context to read on to find out why the news release remains a useful communications tool.

Quotation lead 2

This one is a first cousin of the factual lead and is a great way to report on events and speeches and for comment stories. It pushes a quote from someone featured in the story to the top “There was no collusion. Everybody knows there was no collusion” is a good example of quotation lead for a story about a recent Trump rally. “I don’t think I’ll have a career after this.” This quote led many of the news stories that resulted when Kathy Griffen apologized for her bad-taste Trump joke.

Anecdotal lead

This lead offers the reader a glimpse at the feelings, results and specifics of the story you are writing. For example: “Leo Muldoon, now 78 and gone grey, grew up on the farm where he nearly died Sept. 21, one of 12 kids raised in an old brick homestead with no running water, set deep on a fertile plain around Dunrobin.” This is the opening sentence of a three-sentence lead paragraph used to tell a story of a survivor of a weather disaster.

Descriptive lead

This is where you draw a picture with words to put your reader into the scene and is very effective for longer feature stories. It was a dark and stormy night. This example clichéd but it makes the point. Here’s a longer example: Sitting in the food court of a busy suburban mall, the yummy mummies were ignoring their designer prams while greedily gulping down lattes and exchanging lively banter among themselves. Readers can picture themselves in the scene and, in a sense, become part of the story.

Sometimes it takes a little expert help to make a good story great. Use the form below to contact me to discuss how to tell your own story.

October 15, 2018 by sherrilynne 1 Comment

A digital media framework for smart marketing communications

Balancing activities across owned, earned, shared and paid media strategies is the best way to get a demonstrable return on investment (ROI) for today’s marketing and communications campaigns. This is the integrated digital media framework I use with my clients, no matter the challenge. A client recently asked me to explain it to senior management and what follows is summary of my presentation.

How Canadians use Social Media

Canadians love social media. Eighty-four per cent of Canadians are on Facebook and almost 80 per cent use it daily. YouTube is used by 59 per cent of Canadians and almost half of those use it daily. Almost half of Canada’s population, 46 per cent, are on LinkedIn. Only 20 per cent of those use it daily. This is because people post their CVs, and then tend to forget about it. This is changing. LinkedIn is introducing more social features and is becoming more content friendly.

You may have heard rumours that Twitter is dead and nobody uses it anymore. But, Twitter is alive and well in Canada. Forty-two per cent of us are on Twitter and 45 per cent of users are on it daily. This is where we go for breaking news and to connect with journalists, policymakers and politicians.

Almost 38 per cent of Canadians is on Pinterest, an image-based social network. Another 37 per cent are on Instagram and of these, 61 per cent use it daily. This is important because the majority of Instagram users are in the 22 to 35-year-old age group. This is where you reach the millennial generation.

Canadian Media Consumption Trends

At the same time, mainstream media is in decline in Canada. We’re leaving mainstream media in droves. Time spent reading newspapers is down 75 per cent since 2011. Magazine reading time down 77.5 per cent. TV watching time is down 6.9 per cent. (Don’t let that number fool you. It includes time spent watching Showtime, HBO and Netflix. If limited to Canadian terrestrial TV such as CTV or CBC and Global the number would be about 80 per cent.) Radio listening time is down 25.6 per cent since 2011.
What’s not down? Time spent on the Internet. It’s through the roof. The number of minutes each of us spends each day online up one 119 per cent since 2011. This upward trend is being driven by the adoption of smartphones. People are not limited to desktop computers. Everything is being driven by mobile.An Integrated Digital Media Framework

Most people think of media as being in two blocks: social media and mainstream media. But, my challenge to you is to put that paradigm aside and think about the four main groups media types. They are: earned, shared, owned and paid.

Earned Media is what PR people like me used to depend upon. Before 2005 our goal was to get our clients in the news. Or conversely, to keep their names out of the news. We focused on this almost entirely. Now, in the digital context, the definition of Earned Media it is much broader. It includes other influencers such as members of the public who have large or loyal social media followings.
Shared Media includes social media but it’s more. It includes partnerships, alliances, syndicates and more.
Owned Media is self-published content. Before 2005 this would have included customer magazines, flyers or newsletters. Today Owned Media includes digital content, and the central hub is usually the company website.
When people see the term Paid Media they often think ‘advertising means huge budgets’. This is not necessarily true thanks to pay per click models which put advertising within reach for most organizations.

No matter the communications challenge–marketing, advocacy, community relations, employee engagement–the best solutions have pieces from all four quarters of the digital media landscape. A balanced communications strategy is going to maximize the return on investment.

Digital Media Framework Example

Here’s an example to demonstrates a marketing challenge…getting the new apartment block of a not-for-profit organization rented out. All four media quadrants are represented. In the Earned Media we have publicity and media relations playing a big role. Adding other influencers will broaden this. Company employees as ambassadors, for example. Most employees have social media accounts. They could be sharing stories about their work and the company’s missions and achievements on their own networks to help build awareness of the new apartments. Encouraging residents’ to leave Google Reviews will drive the apartments’ website up search rankings and build word of mouth.

Social media is the mainstay of Shared Media tactics. Our campaign research indicated that Facebook and Twitter were the best channels to promote the apartments. This means posting stories and managing conversations to keep the community engaged. Also, we included monitoring to see beyond our own channels. Where are relevant conversations happening on social media? Should we insert ourselves into those conversations, or work to attract participants over to our own properties?

Under Owned Media, we looked at designing campaign landing pages to drive rental inquiries. A recommendation is to showcase stories about apartment dwellers and community life on the website. Video content is encouraged because almost 80 per cent of all Internet activity is video consumption. To build authority we recommended ensuring that all content is search optimized. Google is prescriptive about how to present information. So this was a priority to help get apartment website to the top of Google search rankings.

For Paid Media, we recognize the company is a not-for-profit enterprise, so advertising budgets are small. Still, it’s important to include paid tactics because of the way that the social media algorithms work. Without putting paid behind communication it’s increasingly difficult to get a ranked in the news feed. But, putting a couple of dollars behind content can create a great springboard to organic viral reach. We recommended Facebook and Twitter ads, native ads and sponsored content. Native ads are stories that look and feel like an editorial but are paid for. In the old days, we used to call it advertorial. We also recommended Google AdWords. These reach people who are much closer to making a rental decision.

In Summary

Media is not limited to social or mainstream paradigms. Instead, we have four digital media types that can be leveraged for business communications. Click To TweetEvery communication strategy should have component pieces from each of those four corners. The recipe is adjusted for every problem, but these are the basic building blocks of a successful strategy to achieve business goals and see a good return on investment for marketing and communications efforts.

Want to find out how to implement this framework in your business? Contact me using the form below.

September 12, 2018 by sherrilynne 4 Comments

Do John Naisbitt’s Megatrend predictions still hold true for 2018?

Google John Naisbitt and you’ll find more than 1,300 web pages, most of the referencing his 1982 seminal work Megatrends. In it, Naisbitt identifies the global trends that will form the future political and economic world. His predictions, seen with hindsight, make pretty interesting reading. In 2006 a time when social media was just starting to take off, I wrote a summary list of his predictions, (and provided my feedback on each point). Now 12 years later let’s see what, if anything, has changed in the trajectory of the megatrends that Naisbitt had predicted.

Megatrends in today’s world

The shift from a post-industrial to an information society in which information becomes a major resource and a major industry. (This one was right on the money.) (It still is!)

The move away from national economies towards a global one forcing the adjustment to a world of interdependent communities. (Corporate globalisation is well underway. Many large free trade zones have been established. But, the north/south divide hasn’t begun to be addressed nor the religious tensions cause major divisions.) (Trade wars are underway for the first time in decades. NAFTA is under threat. China and Russia are aligning against the West. Are we seeing a regression here? Maybe it’s just a Trump blip?)

Short-term profits become less important as companies adopt long-range planning to maintain steady growth. (This will require a fundamental change in human nature. Greed is a human condition.) (No change here. Panama Papers, Wells Fargo, Volkswagen.)

Centralized hierarchical structures become a thing of the past as flatter decentralised corporations become more nimble to cope with the accelerating pace of change. (He got this one right.) (A bit of a reversal here. A handful of companies, such as Facebook and Google, dominate global markets. They expand their ranges of influence by buying competitors and branching into new realms such as the driverless vehicle.)

Dependence on institutional help declines as people become more self-reliant. (This moves back and forth depending on left/right swinging governments. The Boomers thought,”all you need is love”. It hasn’t quite turned out that way.) (The Gig Economy with so many people working independently or in short-term positions is evidence that this megatrend is still going strong.)

Megatrend: Populism

A gradual shift from representative to participatory democracy including consensual management. (People spurn the polling stations. But social media is definitely opening up new avenues for participation.) (Populism is alive and well, and the democratic process has brought surprising changes in the past two years, i.e. Brexit and the Trump presidency. So Naisbitt’s prediction here holds true.)

Eroding hierarchies give way to social networks as a way of solving community problems. (Care in the community, but does it work?) (This prediction is still right on the money. Ask anyone working in news or publishing. Or the taxi business. Or the hotel business.)

The break up of a unified society into diverse groups of people with different tastes and values. (Psychographics and narrow casting!) (Yes and this feeds the point above as social media technologies have exacerbated these divisions.)

In 1982, Megatrends was the result of almost ten years of research. It was on The New York Times Best Seller List for two years, mostly as No. 1. It was published in 57 countries and sold more than 14 million copies. It’s as relevant today. Get it and John Naisbitt’s other books here.

September 2, 2018 by sherrilynne 2 Comments

Rules for good media relations

Many companies fail to include media relations as part of their content marketing strategies. This means they are walking away from opportunities to gain exposure to massive audiences, getting the SEO benefits of backlinks from high authority websites and often, winning a Google Page One ranking for their priority keywords. Successful digital marketing and communications depend upon Owned, Paid and Shared media strategies, and Earned media is an essential part of the mix. Here are six rules for building positive relationships with reporters and news professionals that will help in landing quality editorial coverage.

1. Deal honestly

Not only is honesty the best policy in most things in life, in PR it’s just common sense. No tricks, evasion or hiding the facts; with the media that’s just like waving a red flag to a bull. Be accurate, helpful and have integrity in all your dealings.

2. Work for the reporter

Remember journalists are your most important clients. Serve them well by providing interesting, timely stories that their audiences want to hear. Meet their deadlines. Know their beats. Help them out; even if your assistance doesn’t relate to the company you work for. Your reputation among media professionals is a valuable asset.

3. Don’t nag or plead

News is just that, news. If the story is weak or ill-targeted, no amount of pleading will get you coverage. And, when your story runs, and it isn’t what you had hoped for (not long enough, wrong angle) don’t whine. It’s ok to point out factual inaccuracies, but respect the journalist’s treatment of the news.

4. Don’t ask for a kill

Trying to kill a hard story is a fool’s errand. If you want the media to cover your good news, you’ll have to accept that they’ll cover your bad news too. Asking for kills will only damage your relationships, and that’s never a good thing.

5. Never spray & pray

Use only well-targeted pitches. Angle your stories to suit the needs of each reporter. If a journalist is constantly receiving irrelevant news from you, he’ll hit the Del key without giving your release a glance. Think before you click send.

6. Be clean

Regularly clean your media contact database. People move around all the time, it’s your job to know when and where they go. It’s all part of serving the media well.

Contact me!

Interesting in learning how to super power your content marketing by adding earned media strategies and tactics? Let’s set up a time for a free telephone consultation.

August 24, 2018 by sherrilynne 1 Comment

New marketing & communications matchmaking service

Clients are always asking me if I know anyone looking for a marketing or communications job. Or, people in my network reach out to let me know that they’re looking for something new, should the right opportunity come up. Or, I write a smart digital marketing strategy for a client, and they need to hire someone to implement it. This is a regular thing. Really regular.

So much so that I’ve decided to add matchmaking to the range of services I offer. My network is broad and varied enough that I often can make a match of the day of request. Other times, I need to tap my second degree connections.

Clients like that the candidates that I refer have already been vetted and have the skills, experience and aptitudes they want. It shortens their recruitment process significantly, and it saves them the toil of going through sometimes hundreds of applicants’ CVs and dozens of interviews trying to find the right person to join their teams.

I’m currently looking to fill two positions, both in the Ottawa area:

Manager, Policy & Research Development

One is a great opportunity in a dynamic not-for-profit organization–a trade council. The role is right for a someone with government relations experience looking for personal and professional development and an increased level of responsibility. Understanding of government operations is a must as are great oral and written communications skills. You need a driver’s licence and be willing to travel. Bilingual candidates are preferred.

Web Content Writer

The next role is for a web content writer. My client is looking for an experienced, talented writer to join a successful in-house content marketing team. The right candidates have five years professional writing experience and know the B2B software space.

Interested in finding out more about either opportunity? Use the form below and I’ll send you more details.

Interested in learning more about my new matchmaking service? Use the form below to set up a call.