How about some ‘information integrity’??!!

All our press releases (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

What puts off journalist friends most, when you churn out information on behalf of a client, in the form of a press kit or a media release is this – factual errors.

Might sound so rudimentary, but as a matter of fact such errors creep in while we battle with deadlines, or with over-enthusiasm to send out the release so that we help the journo meet the deadline?

It’s the journalist’s responsibility to check the facts in any story – that said, if you are representing a client, you are the custodian of the facts mentioned in any media information that disseminates from your end.

Factual errors are not the big ones like the client concealing the facts or misrepresenting reality, in a crisis situation. Simple errors like getting the name of the person/product spelt wrong, getting the timeline of events wrong, or just spelling the CEO’s surname wrong – such errors come easily to the notice of the consumer – the reader of the viewer of the news, when and if it finally gets there.

And if it does, at stake is the credibility of the journalist, the media house, and your own client. In most cases, such mistakes creep in, in minor details which we tend to take for granted.

As a PR pro, make sure that the eye for detail is in play, every time, with every client. When you claim to manage reputation of clients, the least expected from you is to ensure information integrity.

To err in information is a big fail in the world of PR and reputation management!

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Who in PR is promising you the moon?

Does you PR advisor tell you this – come what may, we will make sure that we get
your company covered in the media – in a nutshell, call it a “column cm guarantee”?

Nothing can be far from a blatant lie, and honestly, PR never works that way in any
part of the globe.

As a matter fact, if you have a long term PR/communication strategy for your company in mind,
you must quietly stay away from such ‘column space coverage’ guarantors!

Look at the media (and the journalist fraternity) as end consumers of your content. They have their their own creativity constraints – and its in a sense a battle between classy content, the most crucial advertisers (who walk away with a chunk of the col cms), and the editor who wields the wand as to what the reader must see and know!

The same analogy can be drawn to all kinds of media – print, television, online and so on. Add to this, the clutter of competition in your own industry – which is only increasing by the day!

In all this, if someone walks up to you and gives you as assurance of guaranteed coverage, it can be only if you are gullible enough to think that any of us in the PR business wield that influence.

The fact is, none of us, yes, NONE of us have that, and to some extent, it would be an insult to the independent thinking of the media if we imagine such a thing!

While we could be your company’s image advisors, we are just facilitators to friends in the media – sometimes involuntarily pushing information we perceive as useful, and at times offering a helping hand when sought. We are only catering to the content needs of the journalist fraternity, and this is in their own terms.

In all this, we also see how well we could position our client PR needs, and offer some expertise in creating media oriented content, which will be relevant and consumed!

Look at PR advisors as partners in your long term communication strategy execution plan. Not as someone who could just wave a magic wand and get you instant headlines in the next mornings newspapers! And by the way, such a magic wand never exists with any PR advisor!

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Is your PR armor packed with ‘twinterviews’?!

A good PR pro constantly looks around to beef up his communication armor with the right kind of tools. There are so many of them, and with the advent of the 24/7 barrage of information powered by social media, you have a new kind of ammunition that is kindling the imagination of communication professionals.

Yes, welcome to the world of “twinterviews”.

If you are consulting a client for their PR strategy, it is high time you suggested twinterviews to them; and same to your friends in the media fraternity.

Twinterviews, as the name suggest are twitter + interviews – so brevity and factual accuracy is at the core of them.  As compared to some of the other tools in our communication armor, the time and energies that need to be invested in doing twinterviews is the least.

In the media world-over, twinterviews are catching up fast as a powerful tool – that help organizations and their spokesperson to state powerfully points regarding any issue – it could be a product launch, a employee engagement issue, a shareholder issue or even a crisis that is just sprouting up for the organistion.

The biggest advantage of a twinterview is that the Q & A format can be shared in advance, and the response, loaded with accurate facts, be scripted to fit in the power of brevity – in 140 characters that is. Once this is done, the interview (twinterview) can be run at the most opportune media time – depending on the trends, and the availability of the target ‘resources’ on the time line. As it is with any other tweeting event, the chances of re-run, and emphasize what is needed (RT) etc as available options for the communicators.

Taking twinterviews to the next level, interaction with a group of journos across the globe, by a targeted announcement, can also lead to a twit-conference.

So, are you ready to add ‘twinterviews’ to your communication armor?

How about a twinterview today?