Credibility

Match Making (Pitches, PR, And Relationship Principles)

Garth Beyer

Connection

I wish I could say I failed to research people before I met them and I lost out on an opportunity because of it, but it’s not true. I may have missed pieces of information about a person that, hindsight 20/20, I could have used in conversation with them (like telling Seth Godin I’ve seen a photo of his action figure riding a pink angry unicorn), but typically I’m able to bring up two points in every conversation.

1) Something they’ve done that I admire

2) Something of theirs that we can both connect on

These two points are essential to match making with journalists, PR teams and clients, as well as someone you’re going to have coffee with.

When you’re applying to an agency or any job, you do your research on the company: their history, their clients, their goals… anything and everything you can find online or in their brochures (are brochures still a thing?).

Why would you treat a journalist you’re pitching to, a client you want to do business with, a friend of a friend you’re meeting for the first time with any differently?

You don’t.

A journalist will be more likely to cover your story if you start by acknowledging a piece they have written (check box #1) and how you two both love the book she referenced in that story (check box #2).

Not only do you establish a connection with the person, you add credibility to yourself, you show you care because you wouldn’t take the time to research and prepare if you didn’t, and you build trust with that (now) special someone.

The twist is the two check box process works to your advantage in another unique way. It shows you whether or not you want to work and connect with this reporter, that agency, or this guy’s friend.

If they’ve created nothing remarkable and you can’t find a node to connect on, are they a person you want to be investing in?

 

Stay Positive & 7 Billion People In This World, You’ve Got The Right To Be Picky

Photo credit
Let Your Work Speak For You

Let Your Work Speak For You

Garth Beyer

Boats in a row at sunset.

I’ve made the mistake a few times of talking about being confident. It’s never taken very well.

The solution was and is simple. I shut my mouth and let my work speak instead. The solution solves a lot of other issues as well. Instead of saying a task done one way is better than another. Just do it. Show it. Prove it.

Instead of delegating difficult work or simply assigning something you can do better to someone else, switch it up. Take on the work that matters and hand over  the work that doesn’t speak much for you.

Do it your way when work is assigned to you. If you’re concerned that your way will be too off what is expected, make both creations and see which sells better. The best way to let your work speak for itself, after all, is to put it side-by-side with a second option.

It’s just a fact people will listen to your work more than they will listen to you talk about it.

 

Stay Positive & Accept It And Leverage The Knowledge

Photo credit to friend, Kirby Wright, whose work speaks for him

Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part Two

Garth Beyer

Yesterday you learned a four-step process to overcoming communication palisades. Now I am happy to present the Public Relations checklist for overcoming communication barriers, also known as the 7 C’s of Effective Communication.

7 C’s of Effective Communication: Clarity, Conciseness, Consideration, Completeness, Coherency, Courtesy, and Correctness.

1. Clarity: The more you focus on something, the more clear it becomes. Make sure you maintain your focus by only communicating a specific message by using concrete wording and adding emphasis only to the message itself, not tangents of the message.

2. Conciseness: Many reporters will take pages of notes on an event and go back to high light only the important facts. Being concise is creating a message out of only those highlighted features. Conciseness involves minimizing word usage; it is the combination of “brief” and “point”.

3. Consideration: Quite plainly, know your audience. Stick your feet in their shoes and wear them out. Consideration is about tweaking the words that you have used to focus on what you want to deliver, so that they also adhere to the wants and needs of the audience who will receive the message. This is your opportunity to empathize.

4. Completeness: Completeness is about representation, about credibility, about conveying all the facts accordingly. In conveying all the facts, it answers any questions that may be sparked by the presented information. When you work on making something complete, it is the only time that it is expected to add more information to the focus so that it answers those questions.

5. Coherency: While a message may have all its facts, do they flow? Making a communication coherent insinuates adding transitional phrases, checking and re checking the wording, and breaking the message into segments while maintaining the connections.

6. Courtesy: Remember the end of Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part One?    Be human and stay positive.

7. Correctness: Being straightforward, get an editor. In fact, get five editors, a few friends, and a couple of co-workers or other people in the PR field to review your message. Just do it, you may never realize how much it matters, but if you don’t do it, you will. That’s the unsatisfying result of correctness.

As everything in PR and communication, there are always more ways to look at definitions, tables, concepts, etc,. Other C’s that get thrown into the fray: credibility, content, context, continuity, capability, channels, and concreteness. All of which involve some part or another of the concepts I have presented.

A PR’s Drug: Gossip

Garth Beyer

You’re a Public Relations Specialist, not a conniving magazine journalist trying to keep ahead of the Kardashians.

You may think this is common sense to leave out any gossip and untrustworthy information in your communication with the public. For most, it is.

While gossip sinks into the white papers and press releases of the low-minded, ill-fitting amateurs, a real PR professional eliminates any possibility of it entering their work and their life.

See, the real gossip problem is not “in” the work, but “around” it.

As a PR Specialist, you are working with a gargantuan amount of information, on clients and their businesses or organizations. Just as well, you are being constantly overloaded with conversations, emotions, behaviors and memos from them and the public. There’s a reason Public Relations is rated one of the top 10 most stressful jobs.

Like nearly any other drug, gossip is a quick reliever of the stress. It allows you to vent, to be subjective, to rant, to release all the stressful emotions you acquire. But at the same time, it defeats your credibility, your clients trust in you, and creates a conflict of interest, rendering business with you unnecessary.

In PR and life, it is your reputation that gossip damages, not anyone else’s.

This Week’s To-Do List

Garth Beyer
  • Never stop improving
  • Learn the power of participative leadership
  • Share better choices
  • Have a position and support it
  • Anticipate counterarguments
  • Play the game differently
  • Motivate yourself with competition
  • Command the lectern
  • Collect feedback on your current project
  • If you don’t have a project, start one
  • Shine under scrutiny
  • Practice civility
  • Isolate your problems
  • Formulate workable solutions
  • Speak to the heart, with logic, with authority
  • Connect the audience with each other
  • Create prior credibility
  • Forget the “next big thing”
  • Adapt your story to the listener
  • Make buying less risky
  • Create momentum
  • Prepare dynamic meetings
  • Speak to outside groups
  • Value you
  • Keep your edge
  • Express your inner entrepreneur early
  • Embrace problems creatively
  • Pursue passion
  • Face the fear
  • Conquer hopelessness
  • Make a small difference
  • Determine your best time of day
  • List a handful of goals
  • Commit to a peak performance partner
  • Journal
  • Take a time out and get grounded
  • Narrow your focus
  • Take personal responsibility for everything
  • Remember your “why”
  • Outsource
  • Ask questions
  • Ask more questions
  • Autograph your excellence
  • Manifest several new ideas to keep the big idea going
  • Perform twenty mental push ups
  • Free your imagination
  • Find enthusiastic support
  • Don’t expect anything in return
  • Remember all the basics apply
  • Laugh a bit louder
  • Be human
  • Workout/Exercise
  • Practice prepared cleverness and unprepared cleverness
  • Keep being yourself
  • Punctuate and pause
  • Remain humble and teachable
  • Delegate
  • Create room at the top for other potential leaders
  • Accept, overcome, and adapt
  • Track time or find a way to make sleepless nights worth staying awake for
  • Do a vice check
  • Pump up the visuals
  • Focus on what you have, not on what you’ve lost
  • Keep moving – it’s harder to hit a moving target
  • Take breaks to do some cost cutting
  • Get ready to be wrong
  • Try

 

Stay Positive & Now You Have A To-Do List For Life

(It’s long, I know. But so is life)

Garth E. Beyer