INK PUBLIC RELATIONS

In my previous blog, I wrote that one of the prevalent themes discussed at this year’s SXSW Interactive was how our increasingly digital and socially networked lives have set us all up for information overload. I promised to write about technologies I learned about at the event that would help overcome this problem. Sooo…ironically, I got a little information overload with all panels at SXSW and attended those that were (while excellent) off this topic. HOWEVER, there is one tool I’ve been trying for a while that addresses the problem of TMI by wrangling, into one place, all the areas your professional contacts exist digitally.

Gist aggregates contacts from your email, address books and social media websites to create rich profiles. These profiles include fingertip access to the latest news, blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, etc., associated with each contact. There are numerous ways professionals can use this. Being a PR pro, I use Gist to keep a close eye on my top tier journalists and industry influencers. For example, when I click on the profile of digital media blogger, Dave Zatz, I can see at a glance and in one place what he has recently blogged about, published in various online outlets, tweeted or posted on Facebook. Hopefully, I see something that is relevant and I reach out to Dave and/or share a useful industry insight with my team. I try to grab a few minutes first thing in the morning to look through key contacts within Gist and without fail, something useful always turns up. Furthermore, I expect it to become a standard part of my due diligence before pitching a reporter on a client’s next big announcement.

It wasn’t SXSW where I learned about Gist but the Austin Women in Technology’s Women’s Business Conference back in February from the social media savvy, communications specialist, Deb Robison. So, thanks Deb! Hope others out there find this as useful as I have.

Our prolific INK intern, Rachael Genson, has written another great blog post. Read below and if you are interested in donating to Rachael’s triathlon, click here.

Currently I am training for a triathlon.  I have always considered myself to be an athletic person, but this is an entirely different animal.  Triathlon training, like many other long-distance events, demands a certain determination to succeed, unmatched by other sports.  While I am committed to my triathlon training, I still have a hard time seeing the big picture when all I can think about is how exhausted my training makes me.  So during my distance runs or endless laps in the pool, I try to think about anything and everything unrelated to exercise.  In my attempt to clear my mind of thoughts of exhaustion, I had an epiphany: training for a triathlon, or any event, is a lot like public relations.  While that sounds slightly outlandish, the more you think about it, the more connections you can draw between the two. For example:

1.  Much like a triathlon, a PR campaign is comprised of different parts.

While they are unique on their own, each part combines together to create the whole.  A triathlon wouldn’t be what it is without the running, biking, or swimming, just as a public relations campaign wouldn’t be the same without its multiple different components.  For example, you can create outstanding social media profiles, but your clients won’t get the full value out of them if you don’t back those profiles up through customer engagement.  Similarly, maintaining an engaging website means nothing if you are unable to secure media coverage to drive traffic to the site.

2.  In both cases, the details are often times tedious and time consuming, but they have a big payoff in the end.

Let’s use swimming as an example.  It’s quite a pain to relearn the proper way to kick your legs and how to make sure that your body rotates just the right amount with each stroke.  But come race day, these little details will increase your efficiency in the water, helping to shave seconds (or minutes, in my case) off your time.  Similarly in a campaign, the creation of media lists consistently proves to be one of the most repetitive (and potentially boring) tasks a PR professional can find themselves working on.  However, those countless hours spent determining the proper media contacts all seem worthwhile when your product or company lands coverage in an important publication.

3.  There will always be bumps along the way.

Like a flat bike tire, there are always going to be challenges and unexpected obstacles in even the best laid PR campaign.  But with the right tools and preparation, any problem can be overcome.  A bike clinic and a portable toolkit will provide me with the know-how and the tools to get me back in the race, much as an up-to-date crisis communication plan provides the necessary information to put out even the biggest PR fire.  If you prepare for all the potential bumps, come race day, even the worst case scenario won’t keep you from crossing that finish line.

4.  It takes a team to make it through.

If I have learned anything through my time training, it is that you need a team to survive.  While running, biking, and swimming are all individual sports, there is nothing more important than having a support system to help you along the way.  Different people have different strengths and without a team to train (or work) with, you will never be able to maximize the potential of each area.  Even more, being part of a team provides a much-needed support system.  You have someone to revel in your highs and help you forget about your lows.  I would be nowhere without my triathlon team, and I imagine many PR professionals can say the same.

While this was all just a simple thought in my head while I was swimming, it’s a comparison that I intend to take with me in my future public relations endeavors.

Training for the triathlon

Last night, sitting in the DFW airport on the last leg of an eight hour travel ordeal, I received the link to a blog post about offense taken to the tip cards we created for and distributed at SXSWi. To say I was surprised by the response of those who were offended by the cards is an understatement. Being offensive is not in our company culture, nor in my personal nature. But, no one goes through life pleasing everyone and if you’re willing to put yourself out there, as we are, there’s a high probability that at some point in time someone is not going to agree with your approach. Such is life.

Throughout this experience, a few things we counsel our clients to do have been reinforced (nothing like personal experience to solidify client counsel!), and I personally have learned a few lessons as well:

Know your audience. At the office prior to printing the cards, we talked about what we wanted on them and we went for pithy, visual language that had a sense of humor to it. None of us were offended by the tip, nor did we imagine others would be, but we are not the target audience of SXSWi. This happens to our clients all the time too – messaging can’t be created in a vacuum. Get out, figure out your audience, come up with messages that will resonate with them, not just with you.
Humor is hard – very hard – to pull off. We usually counsel our clients to not even try it, unless they are comfortable with their audience. We fell flat here to the extent that not only were we not funny to some, but were offensive. Ouch. Not our intention.
Respond quickly. When Violet Blue reached out to me on Saturday, I thought a response on Monday was appropriate (I have two babies and busy weekends – I am “always on” but felt certain that a response on Monday would be fine). Apparently I was wrong, as the two days I took to respond created even more fervor over the situation. I find this unfortunate. I can say I will try to be quicker in the future, but there is value to being offline as well. I try to find that balance.
Respond via multiple channels. I’m still working on this one, but there is a lesson here somewhere: When Violet reached out to me via email (to the info@ink-pr.com email), I wrote a blog post (with the intention that this would be helpful to her as she could have my complete line of thinking and share as she felt necessary) and sent her the link via email in response. She took offense to this. I’m still putting my finger on why – perhaps it felt like I was brushing her off or not being direct? But I also believe I did a disservice to myself by not opening a two-way dialogue. In the future, I will do both.
Get a social media monitoring tool. There were conversations being had on Twitter and Flickr and blogs that we missed, plain and simple. I believe in responding, believe in opening the lines of communication, but if you don’t see it you can’t address it. I’m going back now and responding to folks, but it’s been several days and that’s just added fuel to the fire. We’ll do a better job on this for INK from here on out.

Those are the lessons learned for now. Perhaps more will pop up in the coming days. If you have one, feel free to share. Now back to regularly scheduled programming (aka work).

SXSWi has now left town – whew, what a ride. We were excited about our participation in the show, through our conference attendance and sponsorship of the speaker room. Using the theme “thINK” we commissioned an interactive art exhibit that represented the creative and original thought of the speakers and attendees of SXSWi. We hoped to create a space where speakers could relax, take a moment to prepare and thINK about what they wanted to say to the masses that flocked to each and every panel discussion and keynote. As part of that preparation, we provided speaker tip cards – just a brief list of tips to get speakers in the groove and remind them of some elemental ways to make their points come across loud and clear.

The last tip on the card was a quote, attributed to everyone (including Winston Churchill) and no one over many years, and considered a sound piece of advice to toastmasters and speech makers alike. A quick Google search brings up Lord Balfour as having uttered these words in the opening of a speech at the turn of the 19th century: “A good speech, like a woman’s skirt, should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”

We thought Lord Balfour made a good point, via analogy which we often counsel our clients is an effective means of getting an idea to stick. And, while including an essential piece of guidance (e.g. brevity is key), it also exudes a bit of humor. Concise communication with a dash of personality – those are two things we get behind at INK.

I’ve heard some of the speakers took offense at our “sexist” tip cards. To those speakers, this all-female high tech/clean tech PR firm says no offense intended and offers up this one additional piece of advice – not taking ourselves so seriously can be a good thing in life. Try it.

(P.S. Full Disclosure: I have edited the title of this post from Here’s a Tip: Lighten Up, as that was an unfortunate turn of words on my part that has continued to fan the flame. Again, I was attempting humor – because I continue to believe there is way too much being read into this entire topic – but apparently I am not as funny as I once believed.)

Attended the Christopher “moot” Poole keynote yesterday at SXSWi. Though he has 12 million visitors to the site he created almost 8 years ago at the ripe ol’ age of 15, I have to say I had not heard of Poole and his 4chan image board. Nevertheless, I thought what the now-22-yr-old had to say about identity was rather interesting. In essence, he’s the anti-Zuckerberg. While Facebook is all about knowing people’s identity, 4chan is all about not knowing – remaining anonymous in order to say what you really feel. While it can be debated whether this level of anonymity is a healthy thing or a cloak to hide behind in order to say hurtful and negative things that should never see the light of day, I did like this point by Poole: it has become harder and harder to reinvent ourselves.

When I started high school, my family had just moved to the area. I had no history with these people, just a clean slate to say “Hi, I’m Starr” and define myself from there. Sometimes, it’s refreshing to have that opportunity to just start over. These days though it is a very rare thing that I don’t already know about a person’s work history (LinkedIn) or kids and pets (Facebook) prior to shaking their hand. What does this mean for our ability to change and grow? How do we become our best selves when others perceive us to be a real-life version of our online avatars?

Perhaps we get offline. Or we’re more careful in what we share online. Or we evolve our online personas as much as our offline personalities. Either way, let’s just not stop growing – and agree that there is always more than what meets the eye.

The first day of SXSW Interactive, I circled the Austin Convention Center with frustration rising…too much traffic. Found a parking space, took off at my usual sprint walk with frustration rising more…too many people in my way. Get to conference center and spent about fifteen minutes trying to identify which of the many panel rooms was where I needed to be and then, where exactly was it? Once settled and ready to really streamline my thoughts, it was not the thing to do to open up the SXSW Interactive schedule and choose which of the hundreds of sessions was the most relevant session for me. This experience of “too much” and of that “too much” – “what matters to me”, is a big theme of the conference this year and one that the industry’s thought leaders are striving to address to improve the social media and digital technology experience.

Throughout day one, I saw this theme emerge in technologies receiving attention and in the sessions I attended. This article by CNN’s John D. Sutter identifies localized group texting, social network groups that focus on specific topics and/or that consist of smaller/tighter networks and taming the internet as predicted SXSW Interactive trends. All aim to streamline and make our digital experience more relevant and manageable. And earlier this month, Mahendra Palsule guest blogged on TechCrunch about companies developing technologies for delivering personalized, relevant content from their online sources.

At the SXSW Interactive session, “Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper: Saying it Short”, Helen Rodriguez and I learned how brevity and creativity can help us be more successful communicators in our “age of attention deficit and time deprivation”. At the “Folkways These Days: Crafty Knowledge in the Digital Networks” session, I heard how artists (creating material and not virtual work) have been impacted by technology. Certainly while the internet has provided benefits like introducing them to new audiences and ideas, it has created challenges such as distracting them from their craft to maintain their online presence.

It’s clear to me that in professional and daily life, we are ALL struggling with how to get our arms around the social media and digital tech monster. As Mahendra Palsule said in his article, “relevance is the only solution…”. It will help us cut through the noise to find what matters to us and enable us to reach our key audiences. No doubt the innovators here at SXSW Interactive will be rolling out some of the best solutions to the issue and I’ll be sharing more about those on our INK blog.

INK PR yarn bombs SXSWi with the help of Knitta, Please

Welcome to Austin and SXSWi everyone! We just finished set up a few hours ago and with a few final touches tomorrow morning, “thINK” will be ready to roll.

INK is hosting the green room in the Austin Convention Center throughout SXSWi and commissioned a truly awesome art installation for the space.  Yes, those are four-foot tall letters and 20+ balls covered in knitting, and we agree, they are bad ass.

The goal was to create something unexpected that would grab the speakers’ attention and make them smile. We also wanted to embrace the creative, irreverent, innovative spirit of SXSWi, which we also believe is a reflection of our approach to communications.  I thINK Austin-based artists Magda Sayeg and Catherine Smith of Knitta, Please took this to another level (check out their blog for other awesome projects like the one they just completed for the Blanton Museum and for the opening of the new Austin City Limits).

When Magda first started “yarn bombing” in 2005 with her then-anonymous knitting grafitti, it was her response to the dehumanizing qualities of an urban environment. By inserting handmade art in a landscape of concrete and steel, or in this case, carpet and stark conference room walls, she adds a human quality that otherwise would not exist. To us, the thINK installation represents INK and everyone here at SXSW Interactive who are adding the unexpected and the human quality to business and communications through fresh, innovative thINKing.

Come check this out on the second floor of the convention center (room 4-ABC). We thINK it’s pretty awesome.  We thINK you’re pretty awesome.  Have a great SXSW y’all.

Holy balls, this is cool

***Many, many thanks to the lovely and talented Allison Glass for her tireless efforts on this project as well as my very patient and resourceful husband Dave for handling all the practical elements of thINK.  I can’t wait until you’re speaking to me again .

The launch of the Apple iPod 2.0 last week was a bonanza and Gartner is predicting that increased growth of tablets will come at the expense of PCs.

As consumers look more and more to mobile devices as their source for media consumption, interaction with their social networks and more; I am reflecting on how this will impact the way I conduct my job.

Here is a great article written on this topic by The Horn Group’s, Ben Billingsley. Here are some points he addressed that I found particularly interesting:

“People crave media in all forms and the rise of tablet computers will make it easier for consumers to purchase and consume media where and when they want to – eMagazines, news, radio, videos, music and interesting combonations of all the above.”

I will seize the opportunity this presents. If people crave media in all forms, develop the multimedia assets and expertise to pitch and provide necessary resources for stories consumed on tablet computers and mobile devices.

“In addition, tablet computers will extend media consumption in ways that some have alluded to, but not many people have focused on – spreading technology to demographics currently underserved by digital media. Numerous YouTube videos of very young toddlers excitedly operating iPads have been uploaded. Despite attempts at simple operating systems, the iPad has delivered on that promise – a device that anyone can operate regardless of age or previous computer experience.”

As the rise of the tablet computer expands media consumption to larger demographics, then that means more angles I can use to pitch clients. I am looking at the 50+ crowd, in particular. Seriously, when my sister-in-law showed off her iPad at the last family gathering, it was the sr. citizen crowd that was off in the corner playing with it all day.

“And, ironically, forms of journalism that many feared dead – long-form journalism included – will return. Increasingly, people are comfortable reading full-length books on their tablet computers; and, Amazon recently introduced Amazon Singles – the equivalent of novellas or long magazine articles.”

I can leverage this for clients that have the “tomorrow’s technology” story to tell. I believe it’s been a challenge for media to package these stories up in short little blog posts. They require more explanation and context. Longer form journalism will grease these wheels for clients with more technically granular tales.

Lots to think about and great timing as I’m off to SXSW Interactive this week. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for ways to up INK’s know how about the ever changing digital media distribution environment.