Archive for June, 2008

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How To Write A Good Communications Plan – Part 9 – Messages

08.06.16

Your analysis is done, you’ve figured out your communications strategy and you know who you’re targeting. It’s time to craft your messages. But where do you start?

Message in a bottleYour key messages help you draft all your products down the road when you’re executing your communications plan. They’ll help you stay on track and make sure you’re communicating the right things to the right people.

The messages will permeate all of your communications, so they’ll also attract a lot of attention from decision makers. It’s important you spend the time to get this section right.

This is all about what you’re trying to tell people. If people take something away from your communications, you want it to be these messages.

Your key messages should:

  • Communicate what you’re doing and why you’re doing it
  • Communicate what will be different
  • Fit with your objectives
  • Speak to all of your audiences

What you’re doing and why

The first message you’ll usually draft is the main one that says what you’re doing and why. You’ve spent time researching the initiative (ideally you’ve been involved in the planning for a while) so you know what the organization is doing and why it’s doing it. Now you just have to get it down onto paper. Sounds easy but it can be surprisingly tough.

A few simple pointers:

  • Focus on the main points – you don’t need to get into detail here
  • Be brief
  • You’re human; write like one
  • Highlight the positive side of what you’re doing. Don’t mislead, though
  • Decide what you want the stories to be about. Focus on that.

What will be different

It’s much easier for people to understand what you’re doing if you can give some context. Are you doubling money for a government program? Producing a product that’s 50% better than its predecessor?

  • Use before/after examples if appropriate
  • Explain why people should care, in terms they care about
  • Support your messages with facts if they’re available

Consider your objectives

Think about the objectives you’ve set. Whatever they are, write your messages to reflect that.

Are you trying to raise awareness for a product? Are you trying to get people to change their behaviours? Maybe you’re trying to address a contentious issue. Make sure you don’t go off in a direction that ignores the reason for you doing all of this. It’s easy to do if you’re not careful.

Include all of your audiences

Some people like to write one set of messages for each initiative and tweak them for each purpose. Some like to create one long list that addresses everyone.

Personally, I prefer to look at each audience in turn and craft messages that meet their needs.

If you know one audience is going to have concerns about a certain aspect of what you’re doing, make sure the messages for them specifically address that issue. Likewise, if they’re looking for a certain feature in your new product then make sure that’s highlighted. If you do this, you’ll find you have much less resistance to your initiative from those parties.

Your approach to this part of a communications plan is one that your personal preference can heavily influence. My take on this may not match yours. What factors do you take into account when writing your messages? What tips would you offer?

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is post number nine in a series of 13 posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. To read more of the series, check out the other posts here.

Posted in: 101, communications planning

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5 Top Online Photography Resources

08.06.15

Rays of sun through cloudsThere’s an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it applies to new media too. Presentation is an important part of a good blog post. An appropriate, good quality photo can add context and interest to your post (and humour, too, if you like).

It can be hard, though, to track down an appropriate, high quality photo with a license that lets you re-use the photo for your own needs.

Here are five sites (and a couple more utilities) to try when you’re searching for photos online.

Stock.xchng

stock.xchng is a fantastic resource of over 350,000 high-quality free photos. I discovered this site a couple of months ago and haven’t really looked back. There are none of the casual snapshots that you encounter with many other sites, and all of the photos are available in high-quality. If no free shots take your fancy when you search, the site also provides links to low-cost professional alternatives. Be sure to check out the license for each photo, but I’m yet to find one that doesn’t let you re-use the image freely.

Flickr

Most people are already familiar with Flickr, but they may not be familiar with a few services that make the site much more useful when you’re searching for useful images

Advanced Search – Perhaps the simplest route to take when you’re looking for photos for your site, Flickr’s advanced search lets you narrow your search using multiple criteria including date (useful for seasonal shots) and license.

Creative Commons – Flickr’s a great site, but it can be frustrating to search for ages, find the perfect shot then realize that you don’t have permission to use it. The Creative Commons search removes that worry. With over 25 million shots in the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License search alone, there’s plenty here to go on.

Compfight – Compfight is another cool utility that lets you narrow down your Flickr search. You can search by specific tags or text, by license type, and purely for photos that are available in a high resolution.

iStockPhoto

iStockPhoto is the one photography site where I actually buy photos. The site has over 3 million royalty-free stock images available for as little as $1. If the other sites don’t have something to fit your needs, the odds are that this one will. If you’re a decent photographer, you can make a few pennies on here too.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile is an excellent resource of free stock photography, for personal or commercial use. Well worth a look. Don’t worry, it’s not as creepy as it sounds. The name derives from a term used by traditional artist and publishers as a place to keep reference material.

Image*After

Image*After is another useful site, with perhaps the easiest-to-understand terms of use of any of these sites (other than creative commons licenses, anyway). Again, the photos on this site are free to use and redistribute, even for commercial projects.

These are my top sites for stock photography. What are your favourites?

Posted in: blogging

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How To Write A Good Communications Plan – Part 8 – Announcement

08.06.14

This is the eighth post in a series exploring how to write a good communications plan.

By now we’ve set the stage, established our objectives and strategy and chosen our audiences. Now, at last, it’s time to think about our announcements.

Announcement

492409_microphone_grab In your written plan, the announcement itself is a pretty brief section. It’s effectively an executive summary of the plan – what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

The ‘announcement’ title can be a bit misleading if your objectives and strategy don’t indicate the need for a proactive announcement. If you’ve chosen a low-profile, reactive strategy, you’ll focus more on your issues management section. As such, while this is the earliest you can start to work on this part of your plan, you may need (or want) to get to it later. I personally find it useful to have this as a one-pager to refer back to occasionally when I’m thinking about messaging and tactics later on, but this really is a section you can just as easily work on last.

This is an important point to note – the structure of your communications plan is better if it’s not dictated by a rigid template. A good communications plan format will let the planner use the content they need to and not make them force unnecessary sections into the plan.

Summarize

Outline the nature of the announcement(s) you plan to make. You’ll flesh out the messages you want to communicate and the tactics you’ll use to carry those messages later. What’s more, you’ve done most of the work for this section already. You can pull much of the content for this from your earlier analysis.

Keep it simple

While you’ve waited until late in the planning process to identify the announcement you’re making, in all likelihood this will be the first thing that executives reading and approving your plan will read. As such, you need to capture exactly what’s going on succinctly. Try to identify the announcement you’re making and why you’re making it in one or two sentences and in plain language. Remember – the executives haven’t had the benefit of doing the background research you’ve done.

Make the links

You’ve already identified the context for this initiative; make sure you briefly summarize how it fits within your organization’s broader activities.

Be honest

Don’t “spin” yourself. There can sometimes be a temptation to sugar-coat what you’re doing in the plan, to try and give ‘good news’ , but you won’t do yourself any favours by doing that. Call a spade a spade and you’ll do better in the long-run.

Over to you

We’re over half way through this series on communications planning. What do you think of the series so far? What would you add to the pointers I’ve given? What have I missed?

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is post number eight in a series of 13 posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. To read more of the series, check out a summary of the posts so far or pick from the list below:

Posted in: 101, communications planning

Tags: , , , ,

2Comments

Metallica Update: Post ‘Em All

08.06.12

A quick update on the Metallica situation – as I wondered in my earlier post about the Metallica/blogger review situation, it looks like this was a giant mis-communication that blew up in the band’s face. Metallica released a statement on their website:

“…once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was “WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record. . . that makes no sense to us!””

The band has apparently taken matters into their own hands, and posted links to the reviews themselves. Good call, guys.

The only thing missing from their statement is an apology for the screw-up. Who knows, perhaps that happened privately. It might have been better for them to come out and say it publicly though.

Regardless, I did chuckle at the thought of “…a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at [management company] Q Prime to 20 push-ups each…”

</blogostorm>

Posted in: blogger relations, crisis communications, public relations

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Metallica: …And Censorship For All

08.06.11

Metallica has done it again. Forget going after people pirating their music; this time they’ve gone after people writing about it… after inviting them to hear it.

The Story So Far

MetallicaHere’s how the story goes: Metallica representatives recently played tracks from their upcoming album to a bunch of critics/bloggers/journalists (depending on whose take on this you read). They then (surprise surprise) blogged about what they heard.

As Wired’s Listening Post blog reports:

“At no point was the writer ask[ed] to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Quietus and other websites ran pieces on the album, but were quickly contacted by Metallica’s management via a third party and told to remove the articles.”

Blogostorm

Surprise surprise – a storm has erupted in the blogosphere:

You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to tell how Metallica is coming across in these posts but in case it wasn’t clear, here’s a quote from the CNet piece:

In the wide world of music, our level of distrust first begins with the RIAA, but Metallica is running a close second.

PR Disaster

It’s hard to imagine a worse PR disaster for a band that, until this point Metallica had seemed to be warming to the Internet recently.

They’ve allowed their tunes to be sold through iTunes, they have a cool new website, Mission: Metallica and Ethan Kaplan, head of technology at Warner Bros records (who was behind the new site) gushed about some of their latest efforts at mesh 2008 recently. It seems, though, that they still have a lot to learn.

However, Metallica lost much of their credibility with fans after going after Napster a few years ago – a move that still looms large in peoples’ minds (and was the first thing out of the mouths of my colleagues when I discussed this with them today).

On top of that, consider that this revolves around an event where writers were invited to listen to the new songs, without a non-disclosure agreement… and that their reviews were largely positive by all accounts.

Recovery?

How can the band dig its way out of this situation?

Before thinking about that, you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions:

Should they just move on?

Is this situation salvageable? Given the apparent contradiction in their approach to this situation so far, perhaps it’s best for the band to ride this one out and learn from their mistakes.

Do they need to respond?

Metallica has a die-hard fan base. They’ve been around for 27 years now, and many of their fans are long-time listeners that, quite frankly, won’t be put off by a few bad articles in the press. Let’s face it, they’ve been getting those since they put out the ‘Load’ album back in the ’90s.

Still, some of the comments I’ve read recently seem to indicate that they’ve even managed to annoy some hard-core fans. Perhaps some damage-control is in order.

What To Do?

Knowing that they’re unlikely to go the Nine Inch Nails route, what could they do?

Go One Better?

Why not let those the writers listen to the full album once it’s done (along with an assurance they can write about it)? No bribing, just an honest attempt to make things better.

Personally I think this might be problematic. There’s not a lot of trust in Metallica right now, as I discussed earlier. What’s more, I’m not sure these publications would give them a second chance. The horse may have already bolted on this one (insert Ride the Lightning pun here).

Apologize

Someone, somewhere has screwed up. Maybe the band didn’t know about the advance listening and freaked out. Maybe two people in the record company got their wires crossed. Maybe someone forgot to arrange for a non-disclosure agreement. Who knows.

If the band wants to say anything about this situation, they need to apologize first. Whatever went wrong, they need to figure it out and apologize to the people involved. Don’t point fingers at the writers or make excuses. Just say sorry.

That’s my take on this one. I’m not sure I can see a way for Metallica to come out of this looking good. Their options seem to be to either ride this one out or to risk re-stirring the pot and apologizing.

I think the damage may be done. Perhaps the ‘duck and cover’ approach might be better here. What do you think?

Can you think of a way Metallica could salvage this situation?

Posted in: blogger relations, crisis communications, public relations

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Building Blog Readership: No Shortcuts. Content.

08.06.10

I spotted a question on LinkedIn today about how to increase traffic to your site. The person posing the question threw out a couple of ideas – social bookmarking and link strategies, for example, and a few people answered with a tip or two.

Most of the tips, while valid to a point, missed the mark in my opinion. They all missed the basic point – the key to building readership for your site is good content. Indeed, one of the answers gave a caveat, “…but this requires a lot of work and will also require that you be able to create quality content regularly…”

My advice: if you don’t want to work and create quality content regularly, don’t start a blog.

Shortcutting causes erosion Social bookmarking sites can boost your traffic, no question. I frequently see a jump when someone submits one of my posts to StumbleUpon. However, this is usually a temporary jump – it’s rarely (if ever) sustainable. Most of these people arrive at your site, read the page (quickly, too – traffic from these sites doesn’t stay long on my site) and leave. What’s more, you need people to vote your content up to start with.

Other people suggested putting your site’s URL in your email signatures (I’d do it on every social networking site you’re on, too). Again, this may drive a few people. SEO is important too – do your utmost to rank highly on the topics you’re writing about.

Still, all of the tips in the world won’t help you if your site is populated with garbage.

To attract – and retain – readers you need to consistently produce stuff that people want to read/watch/see. Decide who you’re writing for and write for that audience. If you’re not producing targeted stuff that grabs people, all of the other tools will only ever produce temporary spikes in traffic. Over time, good content drives people to your site and keeps them coming back. That’s what gets you ranked well in search engines, that’s what gets people to Stumble/Digg/etc your posts and that’s what gets people to link to your site.

Content 101 aside, all of the other tactics – bookmarking, linking, SEO, “top 10″ lists and more – are great ideas. But, like Hertzberg’s Hygiene Factors, without good content all the rest is useless.

What do you think? Aside from posting great content, what have you found to be the best way of generating traffic for your site?

Posted in: blogging

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Globe And Mail Ends ‘Insider’ Subscriptions – All Articles Now Free

08.06.09

The Globe and Mail newspaper, a rare hold-out in the age of free online content, removed the shackles from its website last week. As of May 31 all of the Globe’s columnists, horoscopes, puzzles and more were available for free.

Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken them this long. Their competitors – the Toronto Star being a notable example, the New York Times being another – long ago moved to this model.

I know I’m a little slow getting to this, but didn’t want to let it pass unnoticed.

Interestingly, the paper has resisted moving away from online subscriptions altogether. It has launched a new paid product called Globe Plus, which gives access to three features:

  • e-Edition- an electronic version of the daily print edition of The Globe and Mail
  • GlobeinvestorGOLD‘s investor tools
  • Access to 100 articles per month from The Globe and Mail’s archive dating back to January 1, 2000.

It remains to be seen whether this new subscription model is successful. Nonetheless, I applaud this shift to free content from a paper that was a pioneer in implementing new media through its website.

My next ‘wish’: A Digg-like system for comments like the one the CBC has implemented.

Posted in: media

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Study Examines The Impact Of PR On News

08.06.09

Courtesy of the Cardiff School of Journalism comes a fascinating study on the link between PR and news. The researchers set out to study the British media to discover how much journalists rely on PR and the wire services.

Opinion page of a newspaper To anyone who is aware of the changes going on in the mainstream media right now, there are very few surprises in the report. Essentially, today’s journalists are required to do more with less time. The resulting pressure has increased their reliance on material provided by communications professionals.

These findings do, however, add some weight behind the anecdotal stories of trends in the traditional media. Indeed:

“…our research suggests that 60% of press articles and 34% of broadcast stories come wholly or mainly from one of these ‘pre-packaged’ sources.”

One area that did surprise me, though, was the analysis of PR impact on different topics:

  • 37% of health/nature stories are based mainly or wholly on PR material (perhaps reflecting the restrictions on advertising, and hence higher reliance on PR, for pharmaceutical companies)
  • Business/consumer news and entertainment/sport news follow closely behind health/nature
  • The study found that “Politics appeared to be less PR ridden…”
    • In government-related stories, there’s a distinct difference between different media:
      • 39% of PR material found in broadcast media came from government sources
      • 21% of PR material in the press was from government
      • The broader public sector (hospitals, police, etc) provided 23% of the PR material found in the press

Interestingly, the study found that of the stories featured a single primary source, 50% of those in print media aren’t contextualized by other information. That percentage is significantly lower for broadcast media.

This is symptomatic of the challenges being faced by journalists nowadays. The pressure to produce three times as much content as they did twenty years ago means that journalists are heavily reliant on pre-packaged information and have little time to follow-up on it.

All of this provides significant opportunities for organizations (via communications professionals) to achieve favourable coverage in the mainstream media (which, as Edelman’s Trust Barometer found, is much more trusted than than official corporate communications).

Download the full report here (use Word to open).

Posted in: media, public relations

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It’s Time To Grow

08.06.06

SaplingIt’s with a mix of sadness, nervous anticipation and excitement that I can tell you I am leaving the Ontario government and moving on to pastures new.

Since moving to Canada in 2003, and joining the government in 2004, I’ve had the privilege and good fortune to work with some wonderfully smart and creative people and to make a difference in a variety of areas.

From participating in pre-budget consultations for the newly-elected government in early 2004 to leading a re-vamp of the government’s communications training, to planning and rolling-out high-profile announcements in recent months, life has never been dull.

It’s important to me to constantly strive for growth and that’s what I am doing. I have accepted a position with Thornley Fallis Communications Inc as a Senior Consultant, working out of their Toronto office.

This is a wonderfully exciting time for me, both personally and professionally. I look forward to the opportunity to learn from some of Canada’s leaders in public relations and social media, and to hopefully add my two cents to the mix along the way.

So, farewell and thank you to all my colleagues in the Ontario government. You’ve all made the last few years fly by in a blur and I’ve learned an incredible amount from you.

To my new colleagues at Thornley Fallis, I look forward to working with – and learning from – you all!

Posted in: personal

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How To Write A Good Communications Plan – Part 7 – Audiences

08.06.05

This is the seventh post in a series exploring how to write a good communications plan.

At this stage we’ve finished our analysis of the situation, set our objectives and decided on a strategy. Now it’s time to decide our audience – in other words, who we’re speaking to.

Audiences

Think back

Audience at a theatreIt’s time to decide who you want to reach with your communications.

Analyze the key groups or people you want to reach and what their needs are. Which stakeholders are key to this initiative? Who else do you need to consider?

Remember to refer back to your objectives and your strategy. Are you looking to reach a few narrow groups or a broader selection?

Be thorough

Make sure there aren’t any gaps in your chosen audiences. What angles haven’t you thought of?

Think about why you’re considering each potential audience. Where do they stand on this issue? Are they so opposed that they’ll never be happy regardless of what you do (if so, maybe you should re-focus on the people who may be receptive to your actions)? How much do they know about this (that may affect your tactics later)?

You can draw your audience from a wide range of groups. Your stakeholder analysis is an easy place to start. Look back at what you came up with. Who are your targets within this?

Some other potential sources of audiences:

  • Opinion leaders
  • Professional/business groups
  • Governments (other jurisdictions if you’re working in the public sector)
  • Industry analysts
  • Your employees
  • Online audiences (bloggers, for example)
  • Media

Be precise

If you’re looking to speak to consumers (or, if you’re in the public sector, “the public”), do your utmost to break that down and identify specific niches. Whether that’s by demographics, by interest, by previous purchase habits or whatever means appropriate, never leave yourself with “the public” or “consumers” as an audience. It may not be easy but, hey, if it were easy they wouldn’t need us communicators, right?

Just as with “the public” or “consumers,” never use a general definition of “the media.” Break it down. Look back at your environmental scan (funny how this all fits together, eh? Almost as if people have thought it through) and see who has written about this in the past. Who is interested in this subject area? Not just publications, but individual journalists where possible (some publications, like the Economist, don’t identify their authors).

If you’re targeting bloggers, think carefully. Of course, you’ve already identified and engaged with the key bloggers in your industry, right? That means you also know who is interested in this particular topic and who is likely to be receptive to your approach. Don’t just blast your material out to every blogger you identify – just as you would with media, think about what they want, what their perspective is and whether you should even approach each of them. While positive reviews in the blogosphere can be a great thing, bloggers are far more likely to turn around and complain publicly if they don’t like your pitch than journalists are.

Think ahead

Throughout, consider whether you may be able to leverage the support of any of your audiences ahead of any potential announcement, in preparation for planning your tactics later.

Conclusion

Your audience selection is critical to the success of your communications plan. Gap-filled or imprecise audience selection leads to an unfocused, ineffective roll-out of your communications. Conversely, well-defined audiences let you craft your messages and tactics appropriately to achieve your objectives.

What have I missed here? How do you approach defining your audiences?

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is post number seven in a series of 13 posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. To read more of the series, check out a summary of the posts so far or pick from the list below:

Posted in: 101, communications planning

Tags: , , , ,

2Comments
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