Gearheads: The Sterling Communications Blog

My Favorite Things: Apps for PR Pros

In a constantly-evolving world with groundbreaking applications for smartphones launching every day, we PR professionals can make use of many of these to suit our on-the-go jobs.  While most of these aren’t as exciting as an app that helps a blind man navigate or determine denominations of dollars, they’re still very helpful in getting through a day in the public relations industry. Here are some of my favorites:

CNN

A news application is a must-have for public relations professionals. I like CNN because it gives me updates on the most important news on my screen, but for everyday news I simply open the app and cruise through the happenings of the day. I have news that I can follow and save, as well as local news right at my fingertips.

“Car Goes Falls,” or Why Proofreading is Important

Today the San Francisco Chronicle ran an online AP story about a fatal accident in Los Angeles. A car plunged off the third story of a parking garage and landed upside down, killing the driver. Within a couple hours, the story had more than 40 comments on it... not one of them regarding the actual story. No, every single comment was poking fun at the headline:

“1 dead after car goes falls from LA parking garage.”

Admittedly, some of the comments were pretty funny (“1 fired after copy editor goes fails” and “I can haz journalizm degree?” were a couple of my faves). SFgate.com later fixed the headline, but the damage was already done – a painful reminder of how a simple typo can distract people from the actual news and simultaneously damage credibility.

As PR professionals, we are often tasked with writing on behalf of executives or even entire companies. We all make typos and spelling errors from time to time, but when it’s more than your own reputation on the line, you want to be sure your writing is clear and error-free. Here are a few of my favorite proofreading tips:

Does Your Content Match Reader Habits?

Media consumption is changing. Look no further than the New York Times recent announcement that they will begin charging for content as proof. No longer can stale advertising models support quality content.

So where is your audience getting their news? Despite paywalls, the answer is still: the Web.

According to a Pew Research study announced a little more than a month ago, "For the first time, more people said they got news from the Web more than newspapers."

With the change in the method people are consuming news, how do PR practitioners ensure their content is being seen not only by the media, but also by potential customers?

Three letters: S-E-O.

Search Engine Optimization has become an important part of the savvy PR practitioner's toolkit.

Here are three tips to get your pitches, press releases and other PR collateral online to work double-time, providing both SEO and PR functions.

1. Know your audience. Who are you trying to reach - CIOs, CSOs or engineers at a few target companies?
2. Use your resources. Do you have a list of important keywords already? Make sure they are weaved throughout all your materials.
3. Determine which keywords work. Use Google to seach competing keywords (e.g., Los Gatos attorney vs Los Gatos lawyer. Which has more results? There's your winner.)

Editor's note: This post is the first in a three-part series on SEO. Next time, we'll look at keyword phrases - how to choose them, what to focus on and why your phrases need to go beyond media to include actual customers.

PR Hindsight: Does “BP” stand for Bungled Publicity?

This article is part of an occasional series where Sterling Communications examines PR efforts that have missed the mark, and posits how things could have been done differently.

Before I joined Sterling Communications in 1998, I spent four years with a crisis management consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Many of our clients were oil and chemical companies, and in fact, as my swan song, I worked on an emergency planning “tabletop” exercise with BP, related to the Alaska pipeline. So I was very interested to hear NPR’s lengthy report today, “BP: A Textbook Example of How Not to Handle PR” from reporter Elizabeth Shogren.

Two things jumped out at me when I heard the story while putting on my makeup:

1) As part of a downsizing effort, BP had reduced the budget for — and ultimately, the staff of — its Public & Government Affairs (PG&A) office. So when the crunch came, it had to rely on outside crisis communications experts.

Now, I’m all for using experts for hire; I’d be out of a job otherwise.