Since becoming involved with the internship program board two-and-a-half years ago, it has quickly become one of my favorite duties of my job, as well as a very rewarding professional experience.  Doe-Anderson is very supportive of our internship program and it shows.  The company realizes how important their knowledge and enthusiasm is to the agency’s evolution and I’ve seen firsthand the exuberance and “life” they can bring to the office.

And though they might not be as seasoned as the rest of us, interns have a lot to contribute to an agency, corporation or non-profit organization. What exactly can we learn from our younger counterparts?  The answer:  Plenty.

 1.   Share their enthusiasm.  Remember how excited you were when you landed your first internship?  My first internship was with a non-profit organization that focused on education.  I eagerly accepted any assignment my supervisor gave me, whether it was editing a press release or helping out with a research project.  We should approach our jobs with the same zeal as a brand-new intern.  Remember—a positive attitude can carry you to a higher place, but a negative one will always land you in the gutter.

2.  Be willing to do your share of grunt work.  I don’t care who you are or what professional level you are, you still need to know how—and be willing— to build a media list, assemble a press kit or make follow-up phone calls to the media.

3.  You don’t know everything…nor will you ever.  No amount of classroom work can prepare you for the workforce.  Case in point:  Prior to my second internship (at another non-profit organization), media relations was a fairly foreign concept to me.  Sure, I had read about that segment of public relations, but honestly, I had no clue how to actually do it.  Even today, I’m still learning new skills, such as figuring out the intricacies of CisionPoint.

4.  They can offer a unique perspective.  Sometimes when you’ve been working with a client for years, or even decades, it can be difficult to generate new and interesting ideas for taking their service or brand to the next level.  You know the client so well (after all, it’s your job to be their go-to expert) that sometimes you can get lost in the everyday happenings of the account.  Learn to look at your client with a fresh set of eyes.

5.  Ask questions. It’s a good thing to have an inquisitive nature, especially in this industry.  One of the greatest attributes a PR practitioner can have is being able to look at something from many angles.  This can be related back to point #3:  No matter what age or where you are in your professional development, there’s always room to learn. 

6.  Follow the rules.  Interns are usually on their best behavior; after all, they’d probably like to get a full-time gig out of this experience.  It’s the little things that matter—showing up to the office and meetings on time, following company protocol, and being polite to all employees (no matter where they fall on the totem pole) can take you to the next career level.  We all get a little lax from time-to-time, and it never hurts to be reminded of the rules.

7.  Take initiative.  Though we’ve had many different types of personalities among the students in our program, the top interns always stood out because they were self-starters.  They weren’t afraid to approach employees in different departments, call the media to pitch a story, or ask to be included on new business assignments.  Drive and eagerness can go a long way, and they are qualities that even the most experienced PR professional should possess. 

As the summer draws to a close and interns from across the country return to their respective college campuses, I hope they know how much we appreciate their efforts, even if at times it doesn’t seem that way.

When you see that fresh-faced intern sitting in the lunchroom, take a minute and get to know them.  You just might be surprised at what you could learn.    

A client came to Doe-Anderson recently and said, “We need a website up and running in three weeks.” 

Our response was, “I’m sorry, did you say ‘three weeks?’”  Holy cow!  We’re not talking about using a turnkey template from Intuit or TemplateMonster.   We’re talking about original design.

The client operates in the public eye and announced the website would be live by a certain date.  So the deadline was real. 

As we all know, client cooperation is essential when it comes to getting work finished in a timely manner.  So, step one was to outline a schedule that showed completion dates for the various phases:

• Site map and architecture
• Copy
• Design
• Programming

 Writing the copy occurred concurrently with design.  Our site map called for limited copy, meaning the designers could simply use “greeking” for content.

Basically, we gave the design team a week.  With efficiency they produced a simple design with flair.  It was quickly approved by the client.  At this point, the programmer could get to work.  She needed approximately three full days to complete and test her work.

As she began programming, copy was still being scrutinized and reworked.  This was not a problem because one of the key components of the website was to make it content managed.  This would allow us to insert and revise copy, without the use of a programmer.  In this case, we utilized WordPress, the most commonly used content-management platform.  Another which we have used successfully is Umbraco.

The advantage of using a content-managed system, such as WordPress or Umbraco, is efficiency.  The cost is less.  And it’s takes less time to make changes to copy.

When it was all said and done, we were able to launch an original website within three weeks that included six tabs, numerous pages of content, an image gallery with more than 20 illustrations and two videos.  The promise to the public was upheld. 

Image by Jordan Brock via Flickr

It all began when customers complained about the taste and quality of their pizza.  Domino’s went back into the kitchen, literally, and tried new recipes.  Not only did this result in tastier pizza, but a marketing campaign was born.  Earlier this year, Domino’s started airing ads that offered an apology to the customers for producing a substandard product and encourages them to give their new pizza a try.  According to an Ad Age article, the company reported a 14% increase in first quarter, same-store sales after the marketing blitz.  Coincidence? I think not.

And while the Domino’s campaign mainly focused on advertising, I’d like to believe it was just as much a public relations effort.  For example, Domino’s used social networks like Twitter to find out what consumers were saying about their product and as it turns out, they weren’t saying nice things.  It’s no simple task to change the public’s perception of a product or service, and Domino’s has worked hard to do so.  The company even created a website that includes a live Twitter feed of consumers’ thoughts on “the new pizza,” as well as clips of media coverage.

I commend Domino’s for their honesty and most importantly, for taking their lemons and making lemonade. It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong, and at times, it’s even harder to redeem yourself or your product. But in public relations, sometimes it pays to be wrong.

Lemonade by bootsybrown via Photobucket

 1.   Read.  A lot.  Read industry publications and blogs to learn all you can about public relations.  Sign up for Ragan’s Daily Headlines.  Check out Bulldog Reporter.   There’s a ton of interesting commentary, case studies, and other helpful information on these two sites in particular. 

 2.   Do your homework.  If you know you want to work for a particular agency or company, study them.  Visit their website and read their blog.  Many agencies have Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts as well.  Know their clients.  Ask for an informational interview.  Every agency has a different culture and it’s important to find a place where you feel comfortable and your work can shine. 

3.   Make sure your resume and cover letter are up to snuff.  You’d be surprised how candidates with wonderful experience can be eliminated from the interview pile because of poor proofreading skills. 

 4.   Take advantage of internships and job shadowing.  A good internship or job shadowing experience is invaluable, even a non-paid position.  The contacts you make at companies can help you out during your job search.  Also, having experience with industry-specific software, like Cision and Vocus , can put you head and shoulders above other entry-level candidates. 

 5.   Dress professionally.  Every company has a unique perspective on dress codes.  When in doubt, err on the conservative side.  

 6.   Have a positive attitude.  After all, no one wants to work with Debbie Downer.

    The good news is that PR isn’t going anywhere.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, employment in the field is expected to increase 24 percent through 2018.  And that’s very good news, indeed.

    Did we miss a great tip?  If so, leave us a comment.

Image by recessionstone via Flickr

While looking for Doe-Anderson client news several weeks ago, I stumbled upon a Facebook fan page that had been embedded into the home page of the Courier-Journal.com.  Intrigued, I clicked on the hyperlink and began to read about Terrell Starks, a man from Shively, Kentucky. His family has had to endure more heartache than most—not only is he battling sickle cell anemia, his older sister Dominique passed away five years ago from the same disease.   

 Reporter Laura Ungar and photographer Sam Upshaw Jr. are documenting the Starks’ family’s experience in a unique way—a Facebook fan page. I love the idea because the story can live on and readers can continue to connect with the Starks family.  This is a great example of a newspaper embracing new media and, in some way, giving the story “new life.”

A friend of mine passed along a link to Lonny Magazine recently.  If you haven’t seen it, Lonny focuses on design and style.  When I clicked on the link, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire magazine was online.  Not only is this a brilliant idea for people who like to read their news online, it’s incredibly smart.  After all, we’re not always able to get copies of magazines (particularly if they are regionally-focused or targeted towards a specific niche), so by providing the entire issue online, Lonny did its readers a great service. 

To these publications, I say ‘Bravo!’  And I’m sure your readers would agree too.

Image by JustAnotherDayDesigns via Flickr

Ah, spring time! – that lovely time of year when our thoughts turn to burgeoning blossoms, green-green grass and, my personal favorite, spring cleaning. So I figured what better time to organize the PR tool closet and have a little look-see.

I set out to do inventory: polish up some old PR favorites, toss out a few worn items and maybe even find a surprise among the dust bunnies. Moving a few other PR tools aside, I rediscovered a shiny little gizmo in the back of the closet that I almost forgot I had: CoverItLive.com. 

CoverItLive.com is definitely worth a look. It’s an easy-to-use web based blogging tool that allows you to involve and engage your readers. CiL provides a way for anyone online – a customer, client, the media – to ask questions and have them answered live. It’s a good way to supplement the launch of a new product or service and it’s already being used by thousands of bloggers and media companies. It’s interactive. It’s versatile. It’s live. And, did I mention – it’s free?

Image by up_shiraz via Flickr

CiL lets you customize your live event by creating a branded template. Then just launch it from your own Web site by cutting and pasting the code CiL provides. It’s as easy as a hyperlink.

Once your event is underway, there are plenty of tools to keep things interesting. You can show large images and video, play audio, create an instant poll or add a news flash. The site lets you preview each comment before it goes live, so no worries about inappropriate content. 

Doe-Anderson has used CoverItLive.com to conduct several live online public meetings for infrastructure projects. We promoted the events through the project Web sites and the local media. Our numbers grew with each event we held. We found that the free basic features were all we needed for a successful event, but CiL recently added the option of live video. The video feature is either ad supported or you can pay a subscription to use it ad-free.

So the next time you go looking for a shiny new tool in your PR closet, you might consider giving CoverItLive.com a try.

Crisis management pundits like to weigh in on how well the latest public nightmare is being handled by Company X or Celebrity Y, offering their expert assessment of how they’re doing.  When it’s not perceived to be going well, a common criticism is that the company or person at the center of the storm did not respond quickly enough; that they let too much time go by before acknowledging the crisis and initiating their response.  In many cases that may be absolutely true, and a recent blog post by my Doe-Anderson colleague Bob Lauder eloquently stated the need to be prepared for quick action when something goes horribly wrong.

 But jumping into the fray immediately is not always the best course of action.  Not every crisis is on the level of recalling millions of cars or an A-list celebrity with a very public problem.  And in some cases, making a knee-jerk, aggressive response may only draw additional attention to what might otherwise have been only a minor blip, seen or heard by a very few people.

It may be that an individual or group is making an allegation that is so outrageous that no rational person would give it any credibility.  In that case, no response may be a viable option.

Or, it may be that relatively few people will see whatever the criticism is.  A blogger who is persistently critical may be incredibly annoying, but checking Web traffic to the blog may reveal that very few people are actually seeing the column.  Likewise people or groups on Facebook with small numbers of friends or fans – or those with few followers on Twitter – will not have a wide audience for their rants.  And a negative YouTube video will have a tremendous amount of competition to gain many viewers.

 In such instances, it may be prudent to wait a day or two to see if the criticism is actually getting any traction with a broader audience.  To be sure, the nature of social media networks could turn an obscure comment into a full-blown crisis in a matter of hours, which is why a comprehensive communication plan should be on hand, ready for immediate implementation.  But for every PR nightmare that gets significant attention, there are hundreds of others that are non-events; potential tempests that never make it out of their teapots.

 It’s a judgment call as to whether or not an immediate, public response is required, and it’s a good idea to have someone helping make that decision who has dealt with crisis situations before and has a broader perspective on what may or may not capture the public’s or the media’s attention.  Waiting for a brief time may not be the right option, but it may well warrant consideration, at least.

 Over the weekend, I read The New York Times’ fashion critic Cathy Horyn’s blog (“Thinning Out,” published on March 24^th) about the April 2010 issues of the top fashion publications.  While she noted that the magazines were ‘thinning out,’ Horyn pointed out that online isn’t necessarily the way to go to learn about the latest trends in personal style. 

 ”But looking at clothes and brands and trends on a computer screen is a different experience, isn’t it? Magazines are diva pits, flesh-and-blood places, and they are probably less so today than 10 or 20 years ago, and of course that outsized feeling and passion for clothes is what helps stir the imagination of designers and editors alike.”

A good example of a larger-than-life profile piece. Image by winter phoenix via Flickr.

In general, I prefer to read articles (fashion or otherwise) online, but I know plenty of people who love the tangible quality that a magazine or newspaper offers.  After all, there’s just something exciting about opening the latest issue of your favorite magazine, turning the crisp, colorful page and devouring each article as if they are the last words you’ll ever read. 

 Not surprisingly, many readers of Horyn’s blog voiced their respective opinions: 

 “Old grizzled newspaper veterans would say that when major cities in the U.S. used to each have two or three major dailies, it made everyone better. For a while, there was all this consolidation in print, that, and advertising and readers seemed so easy to come by, at least for magazines, and everyone got a bit lax, and maybe the Internet is helping to whip things back in shape, woke up a sleepy industry, after things looked a bit foreboding..”—RC of New York

 “I don´t think the end of print is near.  Just like books, the pleasure of the tact will never die especially when we know that internet content is being more and more restricted.”—Augustuzs Neto of Sao Paulo

 “Let’s face it, the hey-day of mags is over, darlings. Sad to say, but it is so. Much as I love the feel, the scent and the color of an hour or two with a magazine, an hour spent online can yield SO much more information and immediacy and so much less fluff and filler.”—Visione of Hudson Valley, New York

 “My heart skips a beat when I hear of rumors of magazines that are about to disappear and I end up attempting to save them all by renewing my subscriptions and we have lost some great publications in the past few years. The web is fine and it serves its purpose, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be because the negativity that it generates from the “Digital Mean Boys & Girls” is atrocious and quite literally a complete turn-off.”—Vonni of U.S.A.

 It’s clear that there’s still a place for print in journalism.  However, magazines and newspapers are going to have to find new ways to connect with readers if they want to stay in their good graces and in their hands.  Print media is going to have to embrace the internet and use it to its advantage.  If you read any of the top newspapers or check out their websites, you’ll see that they’ve already been incorporating more interactive elements into their reporting. 

 After all, the internet is not the enemy of print journalism—complacency is. 

Image by elle.yamada via Flickr

Crisis plans have changed.  The new threats are online.  And companies need to be able to deal with them.  Quickly.

Last year at this time, YouTube showed a Domino’s employee putting cheese up his nose, then putting it on a sandwich while another employee narrated.  “We got blindsided by two idiots with a camera and an awful idea,” said a Domino’s spokesperson. 

The advent of social media has put other companies on the ropes with ridiculous claims.  Hewlett-Packard had to defuse allegations of racism when two more idiots posted a video.  An HP computer with video-conferencing technology had a camera that would track the white person talking but not the black person.   The black man in the video said, “I’m going on record and saying it.  Hewlett-Packard computers are racist.”

After the Haiti earthquake, Twitter was buzzing with messages that American Airlines and JetBlue would fly doctors and nurses to Haiti free.  It was a hoax.  “We don’t know who is responsible, but it’s a very low thing to do,” responded an American Airlines spokesperson. 

Having been a journalist for eight years and PR professional for 20, my idea of a crisis plan is to prepare a company to deal with chemical spills, explosions, an employee rampage – the types of things real news reporters cover.

Recently, a very reputable company came to us because of a threat that an unsubstantiated video could be put on YouTube.  Nothing ever happened, but the wheels were put in motion to prepare a response. 

We did all the things that go with preparing a traditional crisis plan:  assemble a crisis-response team, designate a primary spokesperson, prepare fact sheets, anticipate Q&As, etc.  The new item in our plan:  have a video ready to post on YouTube that would refute and respond to social media threats. 

Traditional news media have typically been a filter for unsubstantiated claims.  But now disgruntled employees, dissatisfied customers and just plain wackos have access to so many Internet tools that any allegation can spread like online wild fire.

A quick response is of paramount importance.  It took Domino’s a few days to respond.  By then, the nose-cheese video had been seen by more than a million viewers.  Customer loyalty had been hurt.  And Domino’s management was criticized for not acting quicker.

How quick is quick enough?  Every company should be prepared to post responses using social media sites within 24 hours.  The only way to do that is to anticipate scenarios before they happen and be as prepared as possible to respond. 

Doesn’t responding just draw more attention to the issue?  It may.  And sometimes, the best course of action is to remain silent.  That’s a topic my colleague Dan Burgess will tackle in a follow-up blog.  Until then, be prepared.

img courtesy svilen001 on sxc

The MOA stipulates that the HPP adapt context sensitive solutions to mitigate the altered viewshed and that jurisdictional wetland delineation be included in the BA.

I’m sorry – what??  That was my initial reaction as I stepped gingerly through the verbal minefield that is transportation communications. Working in public involvement on infrastructure projects, it seems there’s a techno-jargon phrase ready to detonate at every turn.

In my first transportation project meeting, I wasn’t taking notes so much as writing down techno-terms so I could look them up later. What were they talking about? I mean, come on, “jurisdictional wetland delineation?” Are you kidding me? I knew I was really in trouble when they handed me a five-page, single-spaced, alphabetized list of acronyms!  OMG!

I’d wondered how 25 years of journalism experience was going to translate into the PR world. As it turns out, it translates into translating.

A local newspaper editor, who covers one of my projects, put it like this: “Mitigation sounds like a big word to most people. To me, it represents government-speak for “ease your pain” and would immediately be edited out of normal newspaper copy by changing it to something that more resembles plain English.”

See? No one gets it. Unless you happen to fancy yourself a sesquipedalianistic megalomaniac (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

After a few years of techno-translation, the real trick is not to get so used to the language that you start using it yourself. Yeah, honey, it was a rough day, the aesthetic elements in our CSS didn’t fly with the 106, but it’s looking good for our FONSI. So I try to hear techno-jargon each time with “fresh ears,” and then translate it into information the media can actually use.

Context sensitive solutions = A project design that fits in with a particular neighborhood
Jurisdictional wetland delineation = Marking the boundaries of a wetland
Uneconomic remnant = Land leftover from a property purchase that has little value

On the other hand, you have to feel for the poor engineers I work with, don’t you? My questions must amuse/annoy them as much as their use of language confounds me.  But when you get right down to it, what they do sounds complicated because it is complicated. So engineers, keep up the techno-talk and I’ll be nearby to translate. Because, in the end, the people who “get” all the complexities of engineering and the language that comes with it – those are the guys I want building my bridges.