KR: How does your news desk manage story selection? How do you decide what to cover and who makes the cut?

My story selection is often determined by a combination of the news flow, main areas of the financial world that I find most compelling and what is most likely to interest our readers. Whether or not their names end up appearing in a story and the timing of the story’s publication can sometimes be up to the editor, not the reporter.

How do you decide who to source in an article? How do you find your sources?

I find sources for my articles through a variety of methods, including through colleagues, pitches by PR reps and by seeing their names in print and on TV elsewhere.

What are you looking for in a pitch from a company?

The most helpful pitches for sources are emails that feature individuals who are directly related to topics I have recently covered. Phone pitches may interrupt reporters on deadline and put them on the spot.

How is your Editor involved in the story and source discussion?

After pitching a story, I often receive guidance from my editor for specific areas to focus on, types of sources to reach out to and ways to make the story more understandable.

What are you looking for in a source, during an interview?

The best interviewees have an in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand, answer questions candidly, don’t veer off topic and are able to succinctly sum up their thoughts in quotable nuggets.

What can frustrate you during an interview with a source?

In general, reporters are often frustrated when sources refuse to answer questions directly and only talk about what they want to talk about. That often won’t help the story and just wastes the time of both reporter and source.

It can also be frustrating when sources, in an effort to avoid being quoted saying something controversial, speak in carefully-worded and vague generalities

What are best practices for interviews with you? How do you wish sources would prepare?

The best sources don’t need to prepare much for an interview besides staying up-to-date on the latest news. It may be helpful to see what, if anything, the reporter and media outlet have covered on the topic in the past.

Want more tips? Make sure to check out my past Media Relations 101 posts here.

Hosted two Social Media Week events
Pitched our mobile & security clients for on-site briefings at both Mobile World Congress and RSA
Attended the hugely successful user group of our client, Kony Solutions
Helped our client INTTRA launch and secure press for their e-invoicing campaign
Secured briefings and coverage around a client’s major new acquisition
Managed Digital Signage Expo for one of our clients, including everything from booth design to securing on-site briefings
Kicked off with some fabulous new clients!
Survived speaking and awards season!
Prepped for the launch of our contest, The New York Job Project!

A huge thanks to all of our team members, vendors and clients that we worked with to make the above possible. And now onwards to March!

It’s a journalist on deadline. She’s heard from a competitor that your company suffered a major data breach – and she’s writing about it within the next hour.

What do you do next?

Well, if you work at Affect, the next steps are simple. That’s because last week our entire team ran what is an often missed but critical component of any crisis communications plan – a crisis simulation.

Using an example the technology industry has seen many times this year, we split the agency into three new account teams servicing a fake client, “NoDataBreach.com.” Then, we let the crisis play out.

First, our President, Sandra, posed as a technology journalist inquiring about a major data breach. Teams were asked to brief their new “client”, who in turn requested a number of documents we traditionally prepare for clients in times of crisis – including key messages, a media statement, internal and external recommendations, social media strategy and an FAQ.

Teams had to consider a number of factors, including:

• Is this a real crisis?
• Should we do an interview on our side of the story?
• What’s the reputation damage to our client? How can we reinforce their position and protect their brand?
• What materials should we prepare for external use, as well as for employee and customer use?
• What’s our social media strategy?

Finally, each account team presented their overall strategy (and there were prizes!)

If your organization has already done the legwork of preparing a crisis communications plan (from pre-packaged statements to a company workflow) but hasn’t yet done a simulation, here are a few tips to get you started:

• Identify the top potential crises your organization may face in the next year. Try to simulate one per quarter.
• Kick off the crisis by starting with the first way your organization may hear about it. Would it come through a journalist? What about through a customer on social media? Or a competitor?
• Challenge your team to respond quickly to the crisis. Recently I sat in on a presentation by JetBlue, who said their internal policy is to get materials out in no less than 30 minutes during a potential crisis.
• Try to make your scenario as realistic as possible, involving everyone on the team (even at the C-level) who may play a role during a crisis.
• End the session with a “lessons learned”, and assign a team member to integrate these into your existing crisis communications plan.

Also, crises always hit at the most inconvenient time. While we scheduled our training exercise so that our whole team could participate, make sure your simulation also takes into account weekend, overnight and holiday situations. Any other tips? Let us know in the comments below!

I wrote about the art of ‘story hijacking’ earlier this year, and I assure you, the practice is alive and well here at Affect. In fact, it’s a signature component of all of our PR programs – because we believe that it’s just as essential to be a part of breaking news as it is to break news. Never heard of story hijacking? In its essence, ‘story hijacking’ is a media-relations methodology used to ‘take over’ breaking news stories by offering immediate responses and analysis. While the term may sound like black magic, reporters often respond positively – because it gives them the opportunity to provide thoughtful commentary on a story already being covered.

Here’s a few ways our team has been practicing what we preach in recent months:

• Wall Street Journal: “A Blue Christmas: The View from the Shipping Lanes”
  Think there’s nothing to story hijack on an earnings announcement? Think again. Working with our client INTTRA, the PR team noticed that FedEx’s earnings were unusually low – and at peak shipping season no less. As INTTRA manages 18% of ocean shipments, they were uniquely positioned to comment on the global shipping slowdown and provide critical data to a top-tier publication on what we can expect to see market wide.

• CIO: “Facebook Gifts Could Encourage Users to Expose More Private Information”
  What could be so bad about adding a ‘send birthday gift’ option to Facebook? When it comes to identity theft, a lot. As birth dates are a key component to identity theft, IDT911, was able to jump on the Facebook Gifts story to provide information critical to protecting consumers. Their comments also raised reporter eyebrows in Computerworld and The Christian Science Monitor.

• CNNMoney: “Major Banks Hit with Biggest Cyberattacks in History”
  As Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) is constantly working with customers and blogging about the latest network security attack trends and threats, they were also one of the first to the table to put out a media alert analyzing the recent cyberattacks on many major U.S. banks. The PR team was able to jump on the story, providing the company’s deep technical expertise to reporters trying to piece together a behind-the-scenes look at the attacks.

• The Fix: “Meet ‘Smiles’, The Next Designer Drug”
  Passionate about making sure the public is aware of the dangers of new designer drugs, Caron Treatment Centers jumped at the chance to dissect the serious side effects of a new synthetic hallucinogen, Smiles. Working with the PR team, Caron’s vice president was able to clearly describe the effects to reporters already covering the introduction of the drug. The piece was so impactful that it even began to trend as “Most Popular” on the site.

Have any questions about how story hijacking works, or how you can put it into practice? Feel free to drop us as line or comment below.

Your spokesperson matrix? It’s empty.

A reporter calls looking for a subject matter expert? Everyone’s too busy to make time for the interview.

You want to hold a media training…. But have no idea who to invite.

You’re not alone! Here are five steps to growing a thriving spokesperson program, making sure that your hard-won media opportunity doesn’t go to waste….

1. Plant the Seed: A great spokesperson is hard to find… and you have to seek them out! Look for natural communicators who are able to think on their feet. Often, you may even incorporate skills testing for these qualities during your hiring process. A good spokesperson is worth their weight in gold – and your HR manager may be able to point you to someone who demonstrated these qualities right off the bat.
2. Provide a Solid Foundation: You may find that potential spokespeople are unwilling to participate because they simply don’t understand the expectations. Are they going to get requests in the middle of the night? Have to give up weekends to do training? Make sure to outline time commitment, types of potential opportunities (and benefits!) up front.
3. Water the Roots: It’s often the fear of the unknown that scares away potential spokespeople. Make sure to provide year-round coaching and media training workshops that cover through the gamut of potential opportunities for approved spokespeople. This should include everything from responding to an email interview, to the full on-camera experience! You may even choose to make these training sessions open to every member of the company – helping to cultivate spokespeople early in their careers.
4. Nurture a Budding Spokesperson: While any media training should involve ‘mock interviews’, help spokespeople shake off early jitters by queuing them up for curveball-free opportunities. It may be a technical overview that’s right in their wheelhouse, or a background briefing. Participate as a silent listener, assuring them that you’re on the line and ready to step in should they get stuck on an answer.
5. Show Off a ‘Green Thumb’: The biggest mistake you can make is to keep a spokesperson out of the loop once the interview has been completed. Even if it’s a long-lead opportunity, make sure you follow up to provide the final masterpiece. Involve the C-suite so they’re aware of the spokesperson’s ongoing good work. Provide circulation numbers, target audience and highlights so that they can see the impact of their participation (bonus points if you’re able to show sales driven, website traffic, or frame clips at the company HQ.)

What are some other tips you have to lining up company spokespeople? Share below.

“Before I get to your questions, let me describe something of what seems to be the ‘big picture’,” he wrote. “Overall, just as reporting and publishing has to re-think what these terms mean in light of the internet, I think PR firms and their clients also need to re-think what a pitch is, including how they use the press release. In my experience, most press releases have become a waste of my time. And now that reporting works under a global round the clock news deadline, time is critical.”

“Today, I am VERY often involved in long e-mail exchanges with PR reps to find out the details I need to know to decide basic questions like: is this pitch something my publication would cover? If so, is it something I would cover? Instead, in keeping with PR convention, I get press releases that are simply and largely marking jargon.”

Are you, your company or your clients feeling guilty of the above? Read on for the rest of my Q&A with this reporter below:

KR: What details are you looking for in a pitch?

Anonymous Reporter: These details are basic. What is the product? What does it do? How does it work? What’s the price? When is it available? Is this a genuinely brand new product, or an improved/revised product? If it’s improved, what are the specific new things that have been added?”

What drives you crazy about today’s typical tech product release?

When I ask specific questions for details, the replies are restatements of marketing jargon, sometimes word for word or what reads like copy/cut/paste excerpts from marketing collateral or worse – a link to the vendor’s main website. The latter is especially galling given how time crunched reporters are. I simply do not have the time to sift through an entire website hoping to find answers to the questions which should have been anticipated and answered in the original pitch.

 What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to tech PR pitches?

Basically, they usually don’t know what my publication or I cover. Second, they don’t pitch with fact-based, specific, definite details that show how the news or story idea is related to my publication, our audience or my beat.

What’s the BEST thing a PR person can do before pitching you?

Correct the pet peeves above; in many cases, that means they won’t pitch ME, and they’ll go bother someone else.

What are the top 2 things you LIKE in a pitch? What do the best pitches you get have in common?

The Gordon Gecko character in the movie “Wall Street” telling the ambitious little weasel of a stock trader, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Increasingly, this means information or issues or problems coming from the vendor’s engagement with its own customers: Apple’s “Antenna-gate” story, for example; or the NetIQ controversy last year; or the recent Apple Mac malware. By contrast, for months now, it seems like every PR person has been pitching something about ‘bring your own device to work’ or BYOD. They seem to think if they have BYOD in the subject line that will be enough. Often, the story amounts to some generalized, vague observations and recommendations.

Is there a “best time of day” to email you a pitch? How about to call you?

Every time is bad. See above “global 24-hour news cycle.” But I will say that the longer the day goes on, the worse the time becomes.

Does the subject line matter?

Yes. Over and over again, PR people opt for “clever” or acronyms or jargon or maddeningly un-specific language. Keep it simple and clear and INCLUDE THE VENDOR’S NAME. For one thing is makes it much easier to find or search on in my inbox.

Here’s my personal list of best practices for when it comes to running a survey, as well as how to promote the final results:

1. Define clearly the goals and objectives of the survey. Starting with a theme in mind or a story you’re looking to tell is a key first step. Make sure every question is designed to help tell that overall story (regardless of the results come back in your favor or not.) This will also help you evaluate whether to use a third-party database (wide pool of opinions, titles, backgrounds) or your own customer database.
2. Creatively pose every question. The biggest mistake my teams have found when designing surveys is that the question is phrased all wrong – leading to either bias (in terms of industry, profession, region, age) in answers or frustrating conclusions. For example, asking people to choose their “Top 3” won’t yield as interesting data as if you asked them to rank their Top 3. Ranked answers help you prove what respondents truly care about. One of my colleagues suggested calling the sales rep at the survey company you’re using – often they have additional insight into question phrasing.
3. Test, test and test again. To be clear, looking over the survey for typos won’t be enough (I’ve made that mistake myself.) Instead, running a “beta test” with internal employees can often weed out design flaws. You’ll see quickly if there was any confusion with the terms or questions, as well as poke holes in questions that don’t yield good data if answered a certain way (for example if everyone answers ‘all of the above’, you could be in trouble.)
4. Take SurveyMonkey to its extreme. The raw results of your survey make look a little bland. Never fear, many free or low-cost survey sites offer additional analysis tools (SurveyMonkey has a handy ‘cross tabs’ tool that lets you compare one question, for example gender or location, against another – often yielding a whole other perspective.) Don’t simply take the data at face value – there’s always a creative way to compare it against other factors or trends.
5. Once the survey is over, the work (and fun!) really begins!  Don’t think for a second that once you’ve gathered your data you’re done! Instead, if done right, your survey should open up many other opportunities for your company, from proactively pitching the results, to creating a white paper or survey report, to generating an infographic.

Anyone else have additional best practices? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

As a PR professional, it’s not uncommon for me to hear any (or all!) of those statements from both current and prospective clients – regardless of how big or small the company may be. Enter a little something called “Story Hijacking.”

Story hijacking may seem like a simple enough concept (you may have heard it called Rapid Response or Proactive Pitching), but I’m always surprised at how often companies ask me about it. Basically, it’s the art of monitoring for breaking news that may not be directly related to your client, and “hijacking” it by taking over the conversation and offering an immediate response (or a counter opinion) that adds richness or depth to a reporter’s story. It takes a popular story and adds the “this is what it means” for a target audience.

Here are a few quick examples of “story hijacking” in action:

• Caron Treatment Centers, a provider of drug and alcohol rehabilitation services was able to jump on a recent CDC report on binge drinking, garnering this coverage in Newsday
• When Yahoo scrapped 10 of their mobile apps, Kony Solutions, a mobile platform provider, was ready to provide their opinion to Mobile Marketer
• When rumors began to swirl regarding the release of Apple’s iCloud, Absolute Software responded with how it would affect their enterprise customers, getting ink in top Apple blog Computerorld’s Apple Holic

Story hijacking should be a fundamental element of any PR program. Here’s a few tips on how to get it up and running at your business:

• Set Up Google Alerts – for any and every topic related to your company, under the “as-it-happens” code
• Be Ready to Have An Opinion – float trend ideas or news stories by stakeholders to get their pulse on key issues (and keep their thoughts on file for when the moment is right)
• Have A Rapid Response Plan in Place – know who your spokespeople are, have access to their calendars, and be ready to get them on the phone when a story breaks
• Cultivate Relationships – build credibility with writers through an ongoing PR program, so that they’ll trust your opinion during a breaking news situation

Would love to hear other stories of story hijacking success in the comments!

Page One, which premiered in 2011, takes us behind the scenes with reporters from the Times’ Media Desk (home to reporters like David Carr and Brian Stelter), revealing the following truths:

1. Reporters are expected to do more, with less. Still.
   In the movie you see writers conducting interviews, typing up notes, negotiating quotes and tweeting away frantically. With budget cuts a central theme of the movie, it’s clear that reporters are tasked to do as much as they can – and that includes social media. The more you can provide a reporter to assemble a full package for a story (spokesperson, customer, artwork etc.), the more helpful you’ll be.
2. Just because a reporter likes the story, doesn’t mean their Editor will. Or their Editor’s editor.
   Editors play a major role in the documentary, and as a viewer we’re even invited in to one of the two A1 meetings that happen everyday at the paper. In these meetings, all of the section reporters pitch their pieces directly to the Executive Editor. It’s no surprise that some of the stories just don’t make the cut. So it’s important to realize that there’s an entire chain of command happening behind the scenes every time you pitch a piece to a reporter.
3. Reporters are tired of hearing you say what everyone else is already saying.
   At one point in the movie David Carr is conducting an interview over the phone, and he says “Okay, but everyone says that.” I think this is along the lines of saying, “We’re so thrilled to partner with…” or “We’re the leading company in the space…” To me, this is another lesson in why it’s so important for companies to truly differentiate their interviews with fresh content and real opinions – even if they’re controversial.

I highly recommend the movie, which also goes into detail on the plight of the media industry (filmed in 2009, the movie chronicles the industry during a time or major cutbacks and layoffs.) Check it out and let me know what you think!

While tradeshows aren’t anything new, in the past few years I’ve seen companies who more closely evaluate which tradeshows they go to – making sure they get the most ROI for any event.

I’ve been privileged to have the opportunity to help out on the ground or from the office for a wide variety of shows in the past few years (from the nation’s biggest broadcasting convention, NAB to the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show) and with 2012 tradeshow season coming up, I wanted to list a few tips I share with my clients:

• Plan early and often: Starting a tradeshow planning meeting 3-4 months prior to a show is ideal, allowing a team the necessary time and resources to execute the show vision and helping to avoid last minute set up, building or order costs.
• Leverage a theme: My client, Microdesk, recently attended Autodesk University – a big show with a lot of competition. However, they had a really fun theme (asking attendees to “Get Kinect’d” using the popular Kinect program) that had a cohesive feel and helped them stand out during the pitching process.
• Agree on key messages: In a sea of exhibitors, making sure your company has a clear message is critical. These messages should be agreed upon by the entire team and reflected in the on-site strategy. Your PR team can also help put together announcements and media alerts that help get these messages out to the media attending the show.
• Work it on site: A lot of prep work can be done prior to a show (for example we regularly book media appointments for clients before a show) but networking hours or tweet-ups at the various shows are another great way to rub shoulders with prospects or media personnel. Our clients regularly see the most return from their media relations efforts by bringing us on-site to help get in front of press at the show.
• Debrief right away: Got sore feet and achey bones? (or worse, the famed tradeshow cold.) Don’t let them get in the way of a proper team debrief to address what worked and what needs improvement for the future.

Need more tips? Feel free to get in touch with us or to comment below. And, if you’re heading to CES don’t forget to stop by the Absolute Software booth, on the 3^rd floor of the Venetian (Toscana #3801.)