PRepster Lauren Novo on Key Messages

Lauren Novo is a a senior at Florida State University with a double major in Media/Communication Studies and Creative Writing. Additionally, she serves as the staff writer for Trusteria Services, a regional company in Tallahassee, and as a public relations staff assistant for RB Oppenheim Associates, a local PR agency. Connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn and read her blog, Gen-Y PRogress: Lauren Novo’s PR Journey.

By Lauren Novo

Many of us are just two months away from the real world. College life is actually coming to an end. Perhaps you’re graduating with top grades and impressive resumes or maybe you’re just barely making it out alive. Regardless, we’re all in the same boat. Those of us who have decided against grad school need to start thinking about securing jobs. Like now.

So while seemingly every PR pro, extended family member and teacher asks what your plans are after graduation and your stomach starts to churn because you have no flippin’ idea, just remember this: you’re not alone and it’s going to be OK.

What’s the key to staying calm when you enter an interview (or even “non-interview”) situation and you’ve got competition? Key messages.

Think about it – right now, whether you’re learning PR tactics in school or through your internships, you’ve probably noticed how important key messages are to campaigns and initiatives. We are taught that in order to influence thinking and ultimately behavior, our messaging needs to be clear and relatable. We need to be sincere and make people genuinely care. So why not bring these lessons into our own personal, “hire me, please” endeavors?

1. Sit down and figure out who you are, what you want, why you want it and how you are going to accomplish it. If you can’t clearly define your capabilities to a prospective employer, why would you be hired?
2. Go into the interview with your key messages prepared. And no, your messages should not be the same for every interview. After all, messages aren’t going to be the same in every campaign you complete once you’re hired.
3. Consider: What does this agency/corporation stand for? Who does it serve? What does it need from its PR team? Don’t lie about yourself to get the job. Just understand and explain how and why you are a good fit.

It sounds silly, making a list of key messages. But that might just set you apart from the others. Not only will it help you understand your own value, but it will help you develop analytical skills for when you receive that first big project at work.

5 Tips for Planning Your First Press Conference

By: Samantha McCain

For the last five months, I have been interning with a local community foundation. It has been, by far, the most rewarding and challenging public relations work I have done to date.

Recently, our Executive Director tasked me with planning a press conference for one of our funds. I have worked in many different realms of PR, but media relations have not been one of them. Even as confident as I am in other areas of PR, I was a little (A LOT) hesitant; but I like a good challenge, so plan I did.

Online resources were a tad low in the “HELP ME I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING” department, so I followed my gut and went for it.  For your planning pleasure, here are a few nuggets of wisdom to help anyone as they embark on planning a press conference.

1. Make a list! I am a listing fanatic. I create to-do lists daily, and then I merge at the end of the day for the next day.

Make a list of everything that needs to be done and a time line for yourself. If you don’t give yourself a deadline, tasks will begin to overlap and become overwhelming. Be sure to write down questions you need to ask, and it also helps to list important people that need to be involved.  Find your story and figure out what will help the media make an appearance… because after all – it’s not much of a press conference without them.

2. Know who you need to talk to. Our foundation works with A LOT of different organizations and projects in the community.  Knowing the president of the organization we represented was key to planning this event. It was important for me to figure out what he wanted represented at the press conference and how he saw the day unfolding. From my initial meeting with him, I also realized that there were about 5 other people that I needed to talk to as well.

3. Be sure all parties involved are on the same page. For our particular event, we needed to coordinate with the local police department AND the mayor.  It was pivotal to book these two departments to tell our story.  Communicating with the public information coordinators for these two offices helped keep our event on the fast track of success. It was important to have all three of us on the same page with the who, what, when, where, and how.

4. Befriend the media and PICK UP THE PHONE. We should always be fostering relationships with our media entities. However, if this is your first time working in media relations (Hey, that was me!) – know your outlets, and those that report on specific topics and beats.  This only takes a little background research.  Check out their respective web sites and look at past stories they’ve written.  THEN, pick up the phone. I will say it again, PICK UP THE PHONE.  It’s so easy to send an e-mail, but you will garner a more effective response from an initial phone call.

A week and a half before the event, I called our four major news outlets and spoke with specific reporters.  I asked them if they were familiar with our organization and the fund we represented.  Lucky for us, the organization had already been in the news and their interests were peaked.  THEY asked me to e-mail them follow up information.  When I e-mailed the media advisory, I told them that I would follow up in a week by phone.  All four e-mailed me back with a commitment to be there. It only took three tiny steps.

5. Media Kits are essential. They may seem a bit old-fashioned in the world of everything social media, but we felt it was important to hand the media everything they needed to know about our organization and then let them retell our story in the manner they saw fit.  We trust our media and wanted to help them where we could.  They have deadlines, and if it saves them 10 minutes of Internet searching, then we’ve served our purpose.

For our event, we included a brochure about our foundation, a brochure about the organization featured in our press conference, a fact sheet about both, a news release AND the agenda for the press conference.

Connect with Samantha: @samemac | http://samanthamccain.wordpress.com/

The End of Social Media

Don’t let the title of this post deceive you: in no way is social media ending, it’s just getting started! But social media is simply the means to a very important end: face-to-face communication.

Social media is a great way to facilitate conversation online, but it needs to go beyond that if you want to fully establish your personal brand. 140 character is just not enough to make meaningful connections with people.

Last week, I attended The Interactive Association of West Michigan (#aimwest) event, “Egg Nog Networking” and Grand Rapids Social Diary Retro Christmas Party (@GRSocialDiary), both in Grand Rapids, Mich. Aimwest was my first mass-tweetup where I met almost 10 people that I regularly talk to on twitter. It was exciting having people come up to me and saying “Are you Mikinzie? I recognize you from your avatar photo!” I stayed an hour or two longer than I had planned, even though I knew I had an hour drive ahead of me. I made real-life connections with @SuperDu and @Stellafly – both big on the Grand Rapids PR and social scene and both great people with amazingly big hearts – among several others.

Two days later, I drove the hour drive to back to Grand Rapids for the Grand Rapids Social Diary Retro Christmas party, where I reconnected with several people I had met a few days prior and chatted the night away with a few new people, such as Grand Valley State University PR Senior @PattyBaragar and Marketing and Sales Manager at Amway Hotel @SmileRy (see below, first and second from the left). And I had a few free professional photos taken of me to boot! Needless to say, it was a fun and light-hearted networking event.

After countless new advancements in technology, face-to-face communication still proves to be the most effective method of communicating with people and creating meaningful relationships. Sometimes it may be impossible to personally meet some of the people you communicate with through social media, such as when you are time zones away. However, my advice is to take advantage of EVERY opportunity you have to meet the people with which you tweet.

I didn’t feel like making the hour drive to Grand Rapids and back at night in the snow (if anyone has talked to me at length or read my tweets, they know my phobia of driving). And after a few stressful weeks of finishing papers, projects and exams for school, the last thing I felt like doing was getting dressed up and engaging in small talk when I finally had a chance to relax. Quite frankly, I felt like sitting on the couch in my sweatpants and watching movies all night. But I dragged my bum off the couch and made the trip. At the end of the night, I was so glad that I had.

There are several ways to meet-up with people near your geographical location:

1. Conferences or Group Events

Any group that you belong to or are interested in probably has some sort of event; go to it! Some events will require payment, but you can usually find a few “freebies” or free networking events held at restaurants, pubs, bookstores, etc throughout the year. A few Michigan events that I plan on making the drive for this year are West Michigan Public Relations Society of America, Aimwest and Grand Rapids Social Diary. In Chicago, I’m hoping to be able to make it to (or afford) at least one Ragan Communications Conference within the year.

2. Organize a Tweetup

Nothing going on around your location? Create your own event! Talk to a few people you regularly chat with on twitter and collectively organize your own tweetup or do it yourself. Invite anywhere from five people to a hundred! Make sure the location is easily accessible, affordable and not too distracting, ie a restaurant or a laid-back bar.

3. “Lunch” Dates

Schedule one-on-one coffee or lunch dates with people you know from twitter. Make sure that you have chatted with this person and know they are who they say they are by connecting with them on several different forms of social media and researching their online presence (Google is a good place to start). You want to make sure that he or she can be fully trusted before you meet them. Make sure it is a public place and let others know where you are going and what time you’re expected to be back. Safety first!