Month: September 2012

Journalism’s Inverted Pyramid Changes When Applied To PR

Garth Beyer

The inverted pyramid is the heart and soul of a journalist. It’s their foundation. It’s the first thing they learn, memorize, and try to fill accordingly with every news story.

It entails putting the most important information first and the mundane details last. After all, the majority of people won’t read the whole article no matter which way you write it, so it’s best to get the important and interesting information to them first.

But then you have PR Specialists writing stories and these stories just can’t incorporate the inverted pyramid style of writing. These stories use the inverted time glass style.

Best explained by Bruce Desilva in Telling True Stories, “The very best endings often do something else: They offer a twist that readers don’t see coming but that nevertheless strikes them as exactly right.”

A journalist can write a news story perfectly well, but when you let a PR professional take up the task, they can write it in such a way that combines both the narrative style and the news story style.

As a result, you have a reader craving more than a journalist could make them crave. Of course, they will hate you for putting such a twist, but deep down, love it so much they will read your next release.

My Friend Makes The 80/20 Rule Look Weak

Garth Beyer

Hard work, and a lot of it, is what it takes to reach any worthy goal.

Smart work is when you put the hard work into the 20 percent of actions that produce 80 percent of results.

The best work is when you can balance everything.

 

I have a friend that nearly invalidates all of these concepts. For the sake of explanation and relativity, I’m going to use weight lifting as an example, but you can exchange it with any line of work.

I’ve been lifting weights for over a year: building muscle, toning it, shaping my body the way I want it. I put in the hard work by lifting until I’m sore, I put in the smart work by following a program, and I put in the best work by making sure that my body is balanced. I was once skinny and scrawny and now I am more filled in and toned. Yet, I have a long way to go until I reach the muscle ratio I want. (Don’t worry, I’m not looking to become freakishly beefy, just extremely fit. To put it in perspective, I plan to do the Iron Man in a few years.)

Now, I have a friend. This friend was in the same situation as me, skinny and scrawny, if not even more skinny and scrawny than I started out being. About three weeks ago he began working out and is catching up to me – fast. No, he won’t be caught up to me in a week or even two, but I can guarantee it won’t take him over a year to get as far as I am now. (Remember, I’ve been going at it for over a year to get where I am!).

My friend, Brett, defies the 80/20 rule, he seems to – before taking any action – figure out how to do 5% of the work that creates 95% of the results. My friend makes the 80/20 rule look weak. He does the hardest work, the genius work, and doesn’t care about balance, he cares about progress. There’s nothing wrong with that right?

Brett has always been this way, not just with lifting weights but with everything else that sparks his interest. What he has taught me – and hopefully, through this post, can teach you – is that there are always ways that you can shorten your invested time and simultaneously strengthen the results. The 80/20 rule is a great place to start, but not the place to stay.

 

Stay Positive & Try The 5/95 Rule, Also Known As Hohler’s Law (as opposed to Pareto’s law of 80/20)

Garth E. Beyer

Beginners In PR Trailblaze Their Way To Becoming True Specialists

Garth Beyer

You may be the Public Relations Specialist but, someone is almost always monitoring the direction you are going.

When you set out on a mission, when you formulate your tactics; where you will send your platoons of effort, you have a commander-in-chief approving it all.

Lucky for you, when you are just starting to become the professional PR Specialist you have dreamed about, you have a lot more freedom than you will once you become that professional. Unless of course, you take advantage of this initial freedom.

When you are starting up your PR career, you will be involved in mediums that may not matter too much to the world. Take for instance nearly any internship. You will typically be part of a group that gets told, “here are some ideas we have for you to work on, if you have any you would like to pitch, let’s hear it.”

The majority go off the ideas that are presented, a few build off them, and a rare couple actually pitch their own ideas.

(As a side note suggestion, pitch your idea on the spot, don’t wait. You will likely have a second idea once you acknowledge your freedom, so save that email asking to work on an idea you came up with for your second idea. Pitching your idea on the spot offers instant feedback, further awareness, additional respect, and special attention which is necessary for progression in the industry. Pitch on the spot, you won’t regret it.)

Those who pitch their own ideas and run with them – well, to put it blatantly – it doesn’t matter whether they turn out good or not. The point is that you are taking advantage of your freedom now in hopes that you will build your repertoire, your voice, your personal technique which will be so strong that when you enter PR professionally, you will be able to continue your work.

When starting up, you don’t get just one shot to enter PR professionally, you get one shot to trailblaze your way into it.

Progress While You Wait

Progress While You Wait

Garth Beyer

As much as we Public Relations Specialists pride ourselves with always being busy, there is a fair amount of waiting involved in every project.

It may be waiting for your source to tell you to come into her office, it may be waiting for the elevator to open for you (or the ride on the elevator), it may be a phone call that you absolutely can not miss, so you wait right next to it. The moments of waiting come in all sorts of variations of time, place, circumstance, and so on.

These moments of waiting are vital to your firm, agency, company, or organization you are representing. It’s in these moments of waiting that you are stripped of your title, any recognition people may have of you, and authority. To everyone passing by you, riding in that elevator, or wondering why you are hovering over your phone, you are just another normal blob in their world. You’re just another human being with nothing special to offer them. Or are you?

I just got home from the coffee shop. Waiting at the door of the apartment complex was a delivery person from a restaurant called Burrito (how original, but that’s not the point). We exchanged only a few sentences, but in those sentences, I could tell he made the most of his job, that he remained positive, that he was grateful for me even noticing him. He was sociable and wished me a great night.

You may be reading this and think that it’s normal. Is it though? When was the last time you actually talked to someone else’s delivery boy and left with a smile? It’s not normal, but it’s memorable.

Let’s jump back. What was the delivery boy doing again? Waiting. And no, I’m not going to order from the restaurant, simply because of the fact that I’m not fond of burritos, but what I will do (am doing) is talk about this experience.

Ask anyone in business which profits them more, one person buying a burrito, or one person writing and speaking to a thousand people about someone who works at the restaurant, basically promoting it? You obviously already know the answer, word of mouth is what makes businesses the most successful.

The delivery persons success could possibly be the same as anyone’s in PR. We all have to wait, but in that waiting, we can make a hundred little ruckus’, we can get people to talk about who we represent, we can very simply, provide an experience for them to remember – and of course the name of the company we are representing.

Next time when you tell someone you are waiting, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel that you’re not making any progress because you’re not working. Clearly, sometimes profits come more from waiting than they do working. It’s all a matter of you making it so.

Ad-Lib Press Release (Make an easy $25)

Garth Beyer

I went to the kick-off meeting for the Public Relations Student Society of America at UW-Madison today. The way they began was genius and I truly wish I could share that genius with you, but instead, I’m going to give you the opportunity to make some cash.

The meeting began with the president asking for words or phrases, such as an adjective, a holiday, a female celebrity, and so on. After we were all well curious what the point was, they put on the television screen an Ad-Lib Press Release using the words and phrases we provided.

(In case you were wondering, the press release ended up being about the Geek Squad releasing a new type of toilet paper for my birthday. ### Fingers crossed!)

I found a few mad-lib press releases that people have made, but I’m looking for something more unique.

This is where your talent comes in.

I will be taking submissions at thegarthbox@gmail.com until October 5th for ad-lib press releases. The person who sends in the best ad-lib press release will be credited and given $25! (Must have paypal account)

Runner-up will receive $5 and be the one that tests out the winning ad-lib which I will post.

Let’s see what you got! Feel free to ask any questions, there are purposely few rules to accommodate your creative abilities.

You Really Don’t Want To Do What You Love

Garth Beyer

I’m getting a couple of articles published on Under30CEO. Meanwhile I am beginning to write for the Clarion (school newspaper). Also, I attended the PRSSA kick off event tonight and will be going to the Madison chapter of Society of Professional Journalists next week. This is the life of a person going into PR. I want to schedule the meetings with those who lead these organizations and others, I want to be a critical part to the clubs and organizations progress, and I want to connect with everyone I can so that I can learn everything they know.

Secretly though, I don’t want to. I was nervous about submitting the articles to Under30CEO, it took me over a week to convince myself to email the chief-in-editor for the Clarion about a position, I thought I missed the PRSSA event and simply shrugged with a tad of self-dissapointment, and I’m still telling myself that I’m going to the SPJ meeting to connect with people; I don’t need to be connected with someone before I go. To be straightforward, part of me didn’t want to do any of the things that I love doing!

We all want to do what we love, our passion, what makes us most happy to be doing. Yet, even those things make us put on our brakes, question our reasoning, evaluate the risk, let nervousness prevent us from action, and remain passive while the lizard brain takes control. Doing what you love is hard work and though you may want to do it, you will always also not want to do it.

My motto is that you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t do at least one thing a day that you don’t want to do.

Remember, you may not love what you do – and that’s okay, it’s not the point – the point is to love having done what you did more than anything in the world. Eventually, you’ll grow to love doing the things you both do and don’t want to do. It’s about creating habit. Keep doing what you don’t want to do and you’ll end up loving every minute of it.

 

Stay Positive & Commit To Never Skip A Day

Garth E. Beyer

Personally, at the end of the day I will be happy no matter what as long as I did something I didn’t want to do because I know I’ll have made progress whether it appears right away or not.

Plugging Into Your Audience

Garth Beyer

One of the quickest ways to reach your audience is through social media. (Duh!)

But while social media may consist of a hundred sub-categories, that does not mean that you need to invest into each one to reach your audience. A quick assessment of yourself/your business and your audience will make you aware of what social media tools you can leverage and which tools you will need to learn.

This can be done by drawing a mind map of Media and You, as well as one for your audience (Media and Them). I have drawn a simple version of mine. Unlike mine, you would want to be more elaborate and branch off further with each group until you have a full map.

After drawing your own media mind map, then draw one for your audience; what media do they use? what parts of that media do they use most? If you’re really in to it – which you better be – you can create a sidebar of all the parts of media that your audience avoids or rarely uses.

When comparing your map with your audience’s, the areas you share something in common are the areas where you can begin to leverage and those which you do not have in common with your audience are the areas you must create, build, and continuously work on until they become part of your own map.

@Businesses, when you go to hire a Social Media Professional or a Public Relations Specialist, don’t hire the one that has toyed with every single part of social media. Hire the one that relates best to the media mind map of your audience.

After all, it doesn’t take an expert to figure out what social media your audience uses. A phone call or email will do.