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?

Portuguese digital marketing company Excentric produced the clever and touching video above, following Mary and Joseph in their journey to Nazareth (no hotels available). Farm animals are purchased, the Three Kings connect, then check in at The Stable (to #worshipthebaby) and complete the most viral story ever.

Share on Facebook

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.

The article also discusses the flexibility of a PR career and PRSA 2010 chair and CEO Gary McCormick gives advice for building a PR career and the impact of social media on assisting the growth of the profession.

Much like the Money/Payscale.com report that placed PR director at number 84 of the top 100 jobs in America, U.S. News says the downside is the stress.

Other jobs on the list  of current top 50 careers are accountant, dental hygienist, multimedia artist, and meteorologist.

Quite an eclectic group!

Share on Facebook

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.

In my regular PR and marketing job I have on staff a social media specialist who does an outstanding job of juggling those responsibilities with other daily work assignments.

As a fire PIO I am an office of one. A big problem for me is the ongoing desire to maintain and update Twitter, Facebook and YouTube but the reality is that extra time is not my friend.

I share the handout with you in hopes it can give you some insight into how to time manage social media to be able to make it an integral part of your departments PR efforts.

Here are the pearls of wisdom derived from the handout -

1. Don’t just jump into the social networking world. Many organizations feel that they need to set up a page on Twitter, a Facebook Fan page or launch a blog, but then are unsure of what do next. Determine which sites work best for you.

2. Develop a social networking strategy. Similar to creating a traditional public relations plan, you need to build a social networking strategy for your organization. Determine why your organization needs a strategy, the overall goals of it and what type of content you can/will provide. It’s a good idea to review your organization’s overall communications goals and develop content recommendations and tactics for each profile.

3. Set up a schedule and utilize some of the tools that are available to help you manage your time. By setting up a schedule, you are able to better organize your day, i.e.,  tweet 2-4 times a day, update Facebook status once a day about an organization activity, add a new video to YouTube once a month, blog twice a month, etc. Also, consider using tools like Hootsuite to schedule updates in advance so you don’t find yourself worried if you forgot to tweet one day.

4. Evaluate. Evaluate. Evaluate. Similar to any public relations plan, always benchmark your social networking activities against your goals. Determine what’s working and what’s not.

Social networking is an integral part of our work today, but it is not the only activity and should not consume your entire day–so keep that in mind when you are developing and maintaining your organization’s social networking outreach.

What are your thoughts? How are you managing your social networking activities without making it a time suck?

Share on Facebook

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.

 Protocols established by numerous government agencies, as well as dictionaries and style guides such as the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style and good old Wikipedia offer guidance for preparing letters. If you are too busy to hit the Google research circuit here it is in a nutshell -

High-ranking American officials:

 The salutation of letters addressed to most high-ranking American officials, including presidential cabinet members, can be either in the form of their title (“Dear Mr. Secretary”) or a courtesy title (such as “Dear Mr. Bressler”). The same courtesy applies to deputy and assistant secretaries, as well as to top administrators of federal agencies. Numerous etiquette guides specify that the president and vice president of the United States should be addressed only as “Mr. President” and “Mr. Vice President” in salutations and in person; neither should be addressed by name.
    

The term “honorable” is generally applicable for U.S. federal and state elected officials, city mayors, presidential appointees, court justices, judges and attorneys general. Correspondence to a congressional representative may be addressed “Honorable Jeff Bressler,” and the letter salutation would be either “Dear Representative Bressler” or “Dear Mr. Bressler.” Appropriate introduction at a speaking event would be: “Please welcome the Honorable Mayor Jeff Bressler.”
    

Although “honorable” also is applicable to the governors and lieutenant governors of most states, three states—New Hampshire, Massachusetts and South Carolina—abide by a different convention, instead using “his excellency” or “her excellency.” This instance happened with the recent event in question and had to be looked up in a few different sources to make sure this was a legit form of address!

In a letter to a governor, “Sir,” “Madam” or “Dear Governor Bressler” are all appropriate forms of salutation; the same convention is true for lieutenant governors.
    

 Address state-level legislators, including state senators, assembly members, and state representatives, using “the honorable.” You can apply that courtesy as well to city and county elected officials and top-level administrators, such as city managers.
    

 The spouse of a public official should be addressed by a courtesy title (Mr., Mrs. or Ms.) and his or her surname (“Dear Mrs. Bressler”).

The judiciary:
The complimentary title “Esquire” (which may be abbreviated “Esq.”) is appropriate when addressing an envelope to a lawyer or a court clerk. Salutations for jurists may be in either of two forms: “Dear Justice Bressler” or “Dear Judge Bressler.”

Academic personnel:
Titles of academic officials—including those of chancellors, deans and provosts—should be retained in formal forms of address. Yes, if you’re sending a letter to a college dean whose name happens to be Joseph Dean, your salutation would be “Dear Dean Dean.”

Retired high-ranking officials:
Titles may be retained when addressing former high-ranking officials who have left office. An envelope to the nation’s 39th president for example would be addressed to “The Honorable James Earl Carter,” but salutation styles vary among etiquette guides.

While some say the salutation in the enclosed letter should be “Dear President Carter,” other guides discourage retention of titles for former officials, advocating “Dear Mr. Carter” as the proper salutation. In balance, addressing a retired official by his or her former title constitutes an acknowledgment of the individual’s public service record and conveys fitting respect. The choice of whether to use or disregard the title of a retired official is at your discretion.
    

Military personnel:
 Here’s one I frequently mess up. Address military officers and enlisted personnel by their full rank, full name, abbreviation of their military branch, and add the abbreviation “ret.” for retirees (as in “Lieutenant Commander Jeff Bressler, USN, Ret.”). The salutation should address a military officer’s primary rank, so a letter to Master Sergeant Jeff Bressler would begin, “Dear Sergeant Bressler” (although writing “Dear Master Sergeant Bressler” also would be acceptable). Similarly, use “Dear Lieutenant” for all grades of lieutenant.

Diplomats:
Although “honorable” is applicable for American ambassadors, the terminology for foreign diplomats differs. A foreign ambassador to the United States should be addressed by “his excellency” or “her excellency.” The proper way to address a British ambassador is “His Excellency, the Right Honorable Jeff Bressler.”

Hope this helps those few times you forget how to address those of title. It was cool using my own name with some of the titles. I enjoyed being an ambassador and mayor!

Share on Facebook

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.

While this type of unfounded consumer threat used to make me laugh, today that same threat needs to be taken seriously when anyone with a computer can post their grievances on Facebook, Twitter or even set up their own blog to pound on who they conceive to be the perpetrator of the injustice.

We as PIO’s and PAO’s have to grit our teeth and bear it in how we answer members of the community and their perceived grievances. I know it can become tedious and time consuming but our jobs now dictates we cross every T and dot every I or else suffer the consequences of being smeared in the cyber world.

 A case in point was how Alaska Airlines recently handled a flyers complaint and how the world including I found out about every sordid detail. The example does involve though a consumer with what I think was a legitimate complaint.

Alaska Airlines stepped into a PR mess that could’ve been avoided with a “dotting” patience I mentioned.

A few weeks ago, Colleen Roberge, Dan Blais, and their son had to make a last-minute restroom pit stop before boarding their flight. Blais spoke with the airline agent about the situation, but in the time that it took to change a diaper, the airline had given away two of the family’s tickets. And, according to Blais, when he said he wouldn’t board without his family, the agent said she’d give away his ticket too.

Mom and baby were crying, the family’s bags left with the plane, and it cost more than $1,000 to rebook the next day. Now Blais has started a blog called “Alaska Airlines Hates Families.” If that isn’t bad enough, there’s the response from the airline.

The airline’s social media manager Elliott Pesut replied via blog, Business Insider reports: “Reservations are subject to cancellation if customers aren’t ready at the gate within those times because many tasks must be completed before departure…We can’t push the plane back from the gate till everyone is sitting down. And so on.”

The best part is the “And so on.” Way to go Alaska Airlines.

Update: Way to go Alaska Airlines. The family behind “Alaska Airlines Hates Families” now says “Alaska Airlines Doesn’t Hate Families.” Apparently, the family has been reimbursed and the issue resolved.

Share on Facebook

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.

The Fox segment not about dangers, but about the taste of deep frying, triggered a memory that I recently received an email about a public information campaign about fire and burn danger in this form of cooking.

I opened the email and State Farm insurance has done a great job in producing a bare bones video of the dangers of deep frying. It’s easy to understand, does not use a narrator, fancy graphics or high end production techniques, but certainly hammers the point home in a minute and ten seconds.

This is the one I’m going to use this year on our department website.

Share on Facebook

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?

I try to address both of these questions to the homeowner or a close neighbor anytime we have a working fire.

On the fire ground, once I establish who the homeowner is, I introduce myself and tell them that I will keep them updated on our progress and what is transpiring during the operation.

During the worst day in someone’s life, I think it is our responsibility, as PIO’s, to let them know, in the least technical terms, what we are doing and why.

When a homeowner is watching their house burn they are also wondering among other things why –

We are cutting massive holes in their roof.

Knocking all the glass out of their windows.

Have firefighters on a line by their front door seemingly just hanging out.

Have firefighters with a stokes basket, pike poles and rescue equipment apparently standing idle near the front of the home.

I think it is important for us to let the homeowner know during the operation what ventilation is, what a primary and secondary line are, what a RIT team does etc.

If the homeowner does not have that fire department point of contact to talk to they suffer from additional angst. They need to know that at the end of the operation a Chief will talk to them to answer their questions. They need to know that I will provide them with my business card and a booklet to tell them what to do post fire.

By letting the homeowner know how our operation is unfolding we present ourselves as professional and doing all we can do to salvage what we can from their property.

Share on Facebook

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.

Social media is changing the skill sets needed to succeed. That said I think writing is more important than ever. From long form to short form, from using text speak to fitting something into 140 characters — the better you can communicate and write for a specific style, the more successful you will be.

With that said though, if you are a traditionalist and yearn for your days in grade school when you started with a blank piece of loose leaf paper and were expected to use your imagination and literary skills to create – a new fangled program might be right up your alley.

One Page Per Day is a great easy to use program that challenges you to do something the old fashioned way. It eliminates excuses not to write by being an easy to access spot for creative writing. Add the fact that all the pages stay where you create them and its utility makes One Page Per Day a great daily writing habit to form to assist you with honing your traditional literary skills.

 Try it, or you might actually find it too boring in an over stimulated world or writing styles.

Share on Facebook

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.

Is this ethical? Let’s just say I’ve known reporters that I have met over the years who feel bad about doing it, but still do it never the less.

So, as you prepare your Chief for that next big interview with the news media, what are the warning signs that a reporter plans to flip the script on you? Here are eight of them I have accumulated over the years from first hand experience:

1. The journalist is vague about the story angle.

Reporters don’t call you unless they have a pretty good idea what they’re going to write about. For example, they might want to profile your department’s commitment to fire prevention visits to schools, or they might want your take on a specific trend or controversy, like your department’s budget in an atmosphere of belt tightening. If you ask them their angle and they mumble something that doesn’t sound like a focused story idea, it might be because their real angle is that they think your department is cheating the taxpayer by spending money frivolously.

2. The journalist has a history of hard-hitting reporting or pointed commentary.

After being contacted by a reporter you don’t know, the first thing you should do is Google them to see what kind of stuff they write. If you go through a half-dozen past stories and find one positive and five public trashings, those probably approximate your odds.

3. The media outlet typically does not have nice things to say about people like you.

Be mindful of the slant of the publication. For example, alternative weeklies traditionally take an anti-mainstream tact. Unless you’re a community activist or organization who is doing something disruptive to the status quo, this kind of outlet may not be for you if a reporter beckons.

4. A competing media outlet has just said something nice about you.

Reporters hate getting beat on a story. They also hate doing the same story someone else just did. So if you’ve been the subject of some laudatory coverage, you’re eventually going to meet up with a reporter who wants to knock you off your high horse. Be prepared.

5. The journalist is reluctant to tell you who else has been interviewed for the story.

You can learn a lot by asking a reporter who else he or she has interviewed for the story. For example, if the reporter has prepared for the upcoming meeting with your Chief by talking to a community activist who finds no good in the way your department appropriates funds, you might be in for a bumpy ride. If a reporter hems and haws when you ask the question, that might be all the answer you need.

6. The journalist is uncomfortable when asked his or her point of view.

It’s often useful to ask the reporter his or her point of view on a controversial issue. Many reporters share their perspectives freely when their opinions are neutral or in alignment with yours. When they think you’re full of it, on the other hand, they tend to ramble on about objectivity and how the “story is about your department, not me.” If they start talking like that, you’re probably burnt toast.

7. The journalist gives nonverbal clues that suggest deception.

The general clues people use to determine if someone is being deceptive are helpful in a face-to-face interview. When reporters are distant, make little eye contact, and seem overly protective of what they’ve written in their notebook, you might be in trouble.

8. The journalist makes it apparent that he or she has already done ALL of the reporting for the story — except for talking to your Chief.

You’re dead meat now. The reporter has lined up everything and just wants to fire away at you — “I’ve discovered you have overspent on your new Engine and did not do the proper bidding process, so what’s your response?  Duck and cover. A PIO nightmare I hope none of us every find ourselves mixed up in.

Even if you strongly suspect a journalist is planning to flip the script on you, that doesn’t mean you should respond with a “no comment.” In fact, you still need to provide the reporter with information and, in many cases, you should go ahead with the interview.

But you’d better go into it ready — focused for battle, talking points down cold, with both guns blazing. And recording the conversation with the reporter’s knowledge is not a bad idea.

Share on Facebook

A few years back I had the opportunity to visit and tour the Microsoft House of the Future on their campus in Seattle. The house, which looks like the interior of a real house, thrusts you 20 years into the future to show you how Microsoft products in R&D will help enhance our lives. One of the recurring themes during the visit was how “smart phones” would become the virtual nerve center of our daily life. The phones would open our front door, scan merchandise in stores, act as the remote to our electronics and do all the functions of our PC’s. Sort of like the famous Honeymooners episode where Ralph is the Chef of the Future selling one kitchen gadget that does the work of many.

Strangely, I make this visit to Microsoft just post of the smart phone era, but what they said is certainly becoming reality. Using a smartphone as a cell phone is now just one of numerous choices, all equally important.

Smartphone technology has always interested me in relation to our duties as PIO’s. Since we operate in the field and on the fireground a good amount of the time, these technological wonders will become our virtual field command centers.

I just came across an interesting article on SellingPower.com that says smartphones are now becoming more popular than PCs. This is not the first time that I have heard this prediction– I recently listened to a Ziff Davis webinar on security solutions that said smart phones will become the primary Internet access point by 2015.

Here are some interesting facts from the article to consider. The article obviously was written regarding applications for business, but still interesting reading:

• Worldwide sales of desktop PCs are expected to top 138 million in 2010, a yearly growth rate of 8%. Portable PCs are expected to top 217 million this year, a yearly growth rate of 29%. Smartphone’s are supposed to top 249 million with a growth rate of 57%.
• The corporate adoption of smartphones is largely being driven by the needs of field organizations, including outside sales teams.
• Today’s smartphones now provide additional functions, such as GPS. A smartphone can also access information including corporate CRM data that was previously only available on a network-connected personal computer.
• Applications are often easier to use and more informative than traditional websites.

Share on Facebook