I am a firm believer in reading and absorbing research and surveys done nationally for how old and new media interact. There are lessons to be learned from this national research on how we should interact in our own communities.
Archives for
See all posts in the network tagged with
In the first responder world there are two types of press releases, those that must be published and those that need a compelling reason to get print.
In our business if we operate at a significant fire or MVA we stand a 99.9% chance that our information will be picked up by the press. We are talking about hard news .
If we are pitching fire prevention day, our installation dinner or other similar story the chances of getting placement are greatly diminished.
I have discussed on the pages of this blog many times the use of social media, specifically Twitter, to keep residents informed of emergencies. It appears more and more municipalities are turning to Twitter to keep citizens informed.
Once again proving its utility for just about any situation, Twitter came to the rescue of Northeasterners plowed under by snow last week.
I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
What would the holiday be without a good old PIO, PR, social media take on what if the first Christmas happened in the era of Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Wikipedia, Farmville and Google?
To many of us integrating social media into our PIO or PAO pr and marketing plan seems to be a daunting task. Some look at it as all encompassing and begin to ignore the traditional and still strong forms of news dissemination such as newspapers and TV. Others see social media as such a big challenge that they push it off and say “I’ll start tomorrow.” But in essence, social media is no more or less an additional tool for the old pr toolbox.
It seems as PIO’s that we are beginning to look at the dawning of an era where one persons negative observation of our departments can be magnified a thousand fold through the use of social media. The power of the pen has become the power of the keyboard and we have to be prepared.
Even after the masses spoke out against Washington’s way of doing business during the last election, politicians and their minions continue to try to spin their talking points to the American people like we just fell off the turnip truck.
It doesn’t make a difference whether it is a democrats or republican, these empty suits continue to use the same old political talking points they used before the election and expect us to fall in line like sheep.
Last night I crossed the Thin Blue Line by speaking before 150 police officers at a meeting of The New York State Shields. What fascinated me about the evening were the stories behind a number of Hero Awards that were presented and how the fire service achieved a mention in each of them. Not necessarily a thank you, but at least a mention.
Its strange how there always seems to be this underlying rivalry and sometimes downright hostility when PD and FD are on site at the same scene. Yet by listening to these stories it becomes quickly apparent that during our worst times of crisis as well as theirs one cannot succeed without the other.
I was perusing U.S. News and World Report and found an interesting list that bodes well for us and our profession as public relations and communications specialists.
The magazine has placed PR specialist among the top 50 careers of 2011. The publication says the industry is expected to add 66,000 jobs, or grow by a whopping 24 percent, between 2008 and 2018. Median annual earnings are reported at $51, 960, with the top 10 percent making about $96,000 although in my estimation, on the overall lines I have seen of PIO and PAO salaries the figure skews a little low on the median.
A few days ago I was the guest speaker at the local Rotary. I was giving the Rotarians a general overview of my department and how we provide service to the community. In preparing an outline for my remarks I recalled that a member in the club always throws out a historic trivia challenge during the meetings. His facts are great and always met with amazement and a rumbling across the room of “I didn’t know that!”
Not to be one upped I needed a great wow factor fact about the fire service to win over the hearts and minds.
As you may recall this past September 1st, a man armed with guns and explosives entered Discovery’s HQ building in Maryland and took three individuals hostage for several hours. Thankfully no employees were hurt or killed; the gunman was shot by police during their operation to rescue the hostages.
Often I am asked by PR execs from for profit corporations what protocols I feel they should put in place in the event of a crisis, whether it is fire or law enforcement that might occur on their premises.
Over the holiday weekend I have had the opportunity to do some reading and investigation to attempt to put together the facts from a PR perspective of how things could go so terribly wrong in terms of the “they against us” attitude most folks now have towards the TSA. A number of PR gaffs has lead to this perception.
First off the lame TSA Administrator John Pistole used a worn out administration card saying the TSA knows what right for our citizens but unfortunately they haven’t done a good enough job educating people. Again, we’re so stupid that the wonderful changes they put in place and the stellar way in which they presented it to the public is above our scope of appreciation.
I lucked out a few weeks ago. I was in a hotel in DC setting up for an evening event when I heard a session starting in the adjoining room from a daylong conference. The topic was managing your time to perform social media duties. I heard the whole session through the wall and was actually able to glom the handout from the session afterwards when a kind participant gave me an extra copy.
Today I look at the power of viral video and how it can make a big problem into a humungous problem.
We are certainly all aware of the new TSA mandates regarding personal search in airports if you wave off the new full body scanning machines. I find this to be intrusive and in many instances counterproductive. Since every recent terrorist criminal has gotten through screening before attempting to do damage, the current screening hardware is always one generation older then the minds of the Islamic terrorist. They operate by seeking out ways to bypass current means of screening. That is why we never see any of these losers caught at a security checkpoint. The Israeli system of psychological questioning and profiling has been pretty much full proof and should teach us a lesson into the direction we should take in the future.
I just returned from Washington, DC where I worked on a reception that was held for members of congress. In attendance were members, past members, military folks, academics etc.
Back at the office a few months ago while sending out invitations to the event I had a déjà vu all over again moment. As many times as I or many of my fellow PIO’s send out correspondence to public officials and the like we seem to always end up yelling from our offices “How do I address a Judge in a letter?” I personally have sent these type of correspondence out for over twenty years but seem to have a memory loss each time I’m on the address and salutation lines.
So here are some lessons I learned about salutations that I hope will prevent me from looking like the office idiot.
Although I am conservative in thought, I remain neutral when it comes to looking at the public relations and marketing aura’s set off by politicians. I paid close attention to the recently completed midterm elections and see a direct correlation in the way politicians behave, the cardinal rules they must obey and that of the image of the Chiefs and officers in our own fire departments.
I now offer some advice to those elected officials, and our own department leaders, who may need, depending on your perspective, a tweaking of their image or a complete makeover.
As a PR and marketing guy I have over the year been confronted, when a consumer or customer thinks that an injustice has been done to them, spew the old line “I’m going to the papers with this.”
I used to love to hear this sentence spoken when I knew someone with no case, truth or validation to their complaint assumed the “papers” would hold the presses so the masses could hear that we were out of blue logo tees or a donation receipt was not mailed to a donor within moments of the envelope being opened. The chance a journalist or reporter had in receiving a Pulitzer Prize for the irate information usually tended to have them pass on the story.
Over the last year or so I have been closely watching how various corporations, emergency service arms and organizations utilize social media to report on a serious incident or crisis. I am not totally convienced that reporting details rapidly on Twitter or Facebook is the most advantageous way to let the public know about an emergency. With things moving so quickly and so much at stake in giving details, social media can trap you into churning out information before we can actually put the unfolding events into perspective. A case in point took place in Singapore last week.
Yesterday evening I was watching the Mike Huckabee Show on Fox. I like Huckabee. He’s sort of like a left over relic from the Leave it to Beaver era when the country was a kinder, gentler place.
Huck had a cooking piece on about deep frying a turkey. It got me to thinking that many of us as PIO’s are getting ready to let our community know, through releases, speaking engagements or on our websites the numerous dangers presented around Thanksgiving by this form of cooking.
I am a quotation mark junkie. I am an offender for the overuse of the marks. If you read through my posts you will see me put quotation marks around quotations marks!
To try to break the habit on both this blog and in my daily PR and marketing writing I scanned Google to find out what the parameters are for using quotation marks.
Only in this day and age would someone have so little time on their hands that they have devoted an entire blog to – well “quotation marks.”
The Backstep Firefighter made a post yesterday titled PR DILEMA:BUFFALO. The post, with video, is about a house fire in Buffalo, the department’s perception of how it was fighting the fire and a neighbor’s perception of lack of effort to get water on the job.
Backstep Firefighter concluded the post with these questions -
Do our public relations go far enough in explaining what we do?
Are our usual messages too technical?
When we sit down as PIO’s to write at work we are confronted by a million distractions. Cell phones ringing and sending out a variety of tones to indicate emails, text messages etc., computers whistling out their own tones when Twitter posts are received, someone is IMing us or email has arrived. A lot to absorb simultaneously. No wonder many old starchy grammar police types bemoan the disappearance of sound standard writing styles and a good grasp of the gramatic. With all these distractions we can no longer pay as close attention to the importance of the standard rules of English and writing. Or should we throw away style books and concentrate on the present? With all the complaints that no one can “write” anymore, we might actually be living in an age of need for the greatest writing skills of all time.
My long road trip continues. While waiting for a flight in Baltimore I did a little business people watching and made an observation about something that has gradually transpired over the last year or so.
Airport seating areas used to be filled with business types fighting for the nearest electric outlet to plug in their laptops and do a little work while waiting for a flight. In a crowded waiting area where I would have a while back seen a sea of laptops, I only observed two. The vast majority were thumbing around on their smartphones.
I am currently on the road trip from hell. Close to two weeks being away from home and my safe haven the firehouse. I’m attending to some business currently in Las Vegas and had the opportunity to have dinner with a well know Texas business analyst who is often quoted in the papers and appears occasionally on TV. He asked me as a PR person and fire blogger my take on the difference between a reporter and a blogger. While he is always ready to speak to traditional media to get his expertise on a business issue, financial bloggers worry him because their perceived bias could misinterpret what he is saying.
I have posted in the past about ambush type journalism and my own scales of justice for dealing with media that does not play nicely. (See Banned for Life) Over the years in both my regular PR jobs and in the fire department, I have encountered journalists who have for a better phrase “flipped the script,” in essence pitching one thing with one side of their face, while actually doing the opposite. Kind of a two faced approach.
By “flip the script,” I mean they sometimes will give you the distinct impression they are writing something that will flatter your department or otherwise serve your interests — when all along they’re planning to sucker punch you using the spiral binding on their reporter’s notebook to hit you from behind.
