Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Back to Basics: Writing Tips 101

Oct
31

Written by: Guest Blogger

At Jackson Spalding, we know writing is a process. It takes time, dedication, practice and more practice. But sometimes it’s important to go back to Writing 101 and review the basics. Last week, we posted more than 50 tips on Twitter from JSers, famous authors, and other smart people. In case you didn’t catch them, here are the top 11 tips from our very own JSers:

  1. Vary the length of your sentences. –Brian Brodrick
  2. Shorter is better. –Eric O’Brien
  3. Before you are a good writer, you must be a good reader. –Bo Spalding
  4. Never use “unique” because chances are what you are writing is not one of a kind. –Hannah Keating
  5. Try not to use the same word twice in one paragraph – unless it’s a filler word like “the.” –Halle Smith
  6. Avoid week words like “various” and “several.” –Bryan Long
  7. If you are writing a news release, excitement is implied. Don’t write it if it’s boring, and don’t start quotes with “We are excited to…” –Hannah Keating
  8. Own the AP Stylebook and make it your best friend. –Pat Hill
  9. Make readers feel like they’ll miss something if they stop reading.
  10. Omit adjectives and adverbs as much as possible: use strong nouns and snappy verbs, not extra modifiers. –Jenny Morgan
  11. Write without fear. –Cait Haygood

To see all the Tweets from this week, visit @jacksonspalding or find #JSLearn.

We hope you found these tips helpful and that you continue to practice your own writing.  Do you have a writing tip you live by?

 

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10 Trends Changing PR Worldwide

Sep
28

Written by: Caroline Duffy

GlobeI flew 9959 miles in 24 hours to Singapore, a journey that, despite the distance, reinforced just how small our world has become. At least when it comes to the PR world. I was at the international meeting of Public Relations Organisation International (PROI), the largest partnership of independent market-leading agencies in the world. We meet with these friends at least twice a year, partner with them on business and sometimes exchange staff for idea-building. Even though our dialects differ, I’m always surprised at how much we have in common.

Our global team, with vice presidents representing Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, identified 10 trends affecting our business everywhere:

  1. The walls have blurred between public affairs, corporate communications and marketing. We saw this at JS several years ago, which is why our JS Creative and JS Cultivation services have mushroomed.
  2. Professional service firms are the new competition. Law firms and management consulting groups are vying for communications work, especially in times of crisis. PR folks must stay ahead by being strategically focused. Our partners from Australia to Japan and Belgium are hiring former business consultants, and some have lawyers on staff.
  3. There is an increasing role for PR in the C-suite. This is good news, and something we have witnessed firsthand with our leadership, speaker coaching and JS Excavations®.
  4. Specialization is sweet for the bottom line. While it is important to specialize in niche industries, it is also important for PR firms to invest in niche services, such as market research. At JS, we’ve opted to forge strategic partnerships for research and trademark assistance. And we have niche expertise in branding, design, digital and multimedia.
  5. We are evolving from generalists to multi-specialists. Emerging markets provide opportunities for PR firms if they are able to identify what they should be focusing on. For example, we capitalized on one client’s growth in Latin America to begin offering media training services in Spanish.
  6. Transparency is driving the need for culture-building. The ubiquitous social media has led to more work from HR departments who want help building a workforce that will be loyal online as well as offline. It’s also driving social media consulting work.
  7. The public expects to have a dialogue. PR around the world is benefitting from this new era of customer relationship management. We understand dialogues better than ad agencies that specialize in one-way communications.
  8. Corporate is demanding better measurement. It’s not just our mothers who can’t explain what we do. Corporate procurement officers are putting on the pressure for better publicity measurement. We’re all working on it.
  9. De-consolidation is driving opportunities for independent firms. Smaller firms should not be daunted by competition from the large PR holding companies. More and more large corporations are eschewing global accounts and opting to work with independent agencies with multiple offices.
  10. Talent churn. Top PR practitioners across the globe are getting calls from headhunters and corporations. This is a good news/bad news scenario. Good because it may indicate improving economies; bad because it means PR firms must work harder to retain their best talent. That’s one reason we survey our team regularly and have been recognized as the #2 Agency to Work For in the U.S. We’re striving to be #1 because a happy team makes for happy clients.

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Chick-fil-A spices up menu and marketing efforts

Jul
8

Written by: Kim Hardcastle

In today’s cluttered marketplace, how do you cut through the noise when you’re third or fourth to market with a “new” product? Engage your fans to make noise for you! That’s what Chick-fil-A did when launching their new Spicy Chicken Sandwich in June.

Timed perfectly to spice things up at the outset of summer, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich was the first new sandwich for the national quick service chain in 20 years. It was just what customers were asking for, and they weren’t afraid to shout it from the rooftops. In a matter of mere weeks, the sandwich chatter generated from seeded posts on Facebook, Twitter, traditional PR and blogger outreach rose from a dull roar to a blaring shout. Sure, there were a few TV ads, but with a special, web-based invitation only Premiere Week as the hook, the news about Spicy spread like wildfire among friends and acquaintances in the blogosphere. In fact, more than 1.2 million people redeemed their reservation for a free sandwich within a six day span.

Just three weeks in, more than four million sandwiches have been sold. The secret to this success story? Keeping it local. By allowing local store operators to extend invitations to their best customers (and brand champions) to try the sandwich first, Chick-fil-A used the best tool in the marketing playbook – keep your current customers happy and they will tell everyone else about you.

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Pardon Me, What Year Is It Again?

Jul
6

Written by: Ashlee Stubits

This time of year I lose all track of time. Literally, there are days when I don’t know what year it is.

Before you completely think I’ve lost my mind, if you’ve drafted an annual marketing plan, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re executing your current plan, and at the same time, planning for next year. It can be confusing and exhausting – to say the least! That said, this time of year is a great time to think about an annual plan if you don’t already have one.

There are several advantages:

  • You will have set objectives and tactics to measure against. Your board and/or key stakeholders will like this accountability.
  • You will be able to better stay on budget. If you can plan for your budgets in advance, there will be fewer surprises. Fewer surprises mean fewer unanticipated budget overages!
  • You might get a better budget ask for next year. There are two parts to this. First, if you have been tracking your budgets for this year (and I know all of you are!), and realize things are costing more than you had anticipated, you can better prepare for that in the coming year. In addition, by having the accountability in place with your measurable goals, you may be able to justify a more expanded program for the future year.
  • You’ll get your team excited and re-energized for next year. Don’t plan in a vacuum – have your entire team a part of the process. You’ll get better ideas this way, too. Planning is also a great way to better integrate with other departments in your company and with agencies.
  • If your departments are spread thin, you may be able to ask for more support internally if you have a good plan and budget in place for the following year.

If you already have an existing plan, take some time this month and look back at what you said you’d do this year. What ideas might you leverage for next year? What might you do differently? What are some big, new ideas that you haven’t already done?

If you don’t have a plan currently, start the process early. Remember, it takes an investment of time and team to come up with the best plan possible. Annual planning’s hard work, but it’s well worth it in the long run.

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4 steps to find quality blogs to pitch

Jul
1

Written by: Bryan Long

While leading a recent training session with the marketing team at Chick-fil-A, a client raised his hand and asked what seemed to be a very simple question: How do you find the best blogs?

It seemed simple until I tried to answer it. Well, uh, you search for them. Right?

While it’s not complicated, searching for blogs that are relevant to your business, hobbies, customers or trends requires more thought than that. Any business should think through the process like any other marketing tactic, especially with the intention of building relationships with specific bloggers.

Feeling that I shortchanged my answer in person, and hoping that others may benefit from a more thoughtful answer, I present The Best Way To Find The Best BlogsTM.

There are four simple steps.

Use a blog search engine.

Using a basic Google search can help you find a blog, but it will also generate about 3 million other results that may or may not be relevant. A search for blogs requires a special tool. While there are dozens of websites that claim to search for blogs, there are just three that I recommend:

I’ve seen consistently good results from all three search engines. Many sites that claim to be search engines for blogs are merely RSS scrapers that bring back anything that can be found on feeds, including lots of junk and articles that aren’t safe for work.

Each of the search engines recommended above use a unique algorithm to return relevant and ranked results.

Search like your customers.

Think about your core audience and imagine what terms they may search for today.

Sure, go ahead and search for your products and services, but don’t stop there. What else motivates your customers? What are they searching for when they aren’t eating a Spicy Chicken Sandwich?

You should search for your competitors by name and by product. You may want to search for terms that merely compete for time or mindspace with your customers. If you know that a portion of your fans also likes a non-competing product or service, search for those terms, too.

After repeating multiple searches, you’re likely to find some repetition or a few headlines that stand out from the rest of the pack.

These will guide you as you explore further.

Read the blog, read the About page.

At this point you may be overwhelmed with blogs. It’s time to pan for gold.

Despite the large number of results you’ve seen so far, you’re only looking for one or two blogs now. And quality counts.

Click through the search results to evaluate each site. Does the site make a good first impression? How is the writing? Does the blogger write about topics that interest your customers? Do readers respond in comments? Is there an active Facebook Page or Twitter Feed?

If you don’t like the site as a marketing professional, chances are your customers aren’t spending much time there.

You should beware of automated sites and keyword monsters. Some web publishers create sites to trick search engines for traffic. They will pull RSS feeds from other sites or write articles that read like gibberish. A string of related keywords may fool a robot but it won’t fool human readers.

If first impressions are good, go to the About page and read what the blogger has to say about themselves and their website.

Your goal is to find at least one site that you feel comfortable contacting.

Visit the Blogroll.

Once you’ve discovered that one shining example of a quality blog that may interest your readers, the rest is easy. Find the blogroll on the homepage or visit a page labeled Links. These are the sites that the blogger you’ve  found cares enough about to share with his or her readers. There’s a good chance that you’ll find them useful, too.

After that, treat the blogger as you would any journalist. Give them a call and say how much you like their work. You can honestly say that you’ve been looking for a blog just like theirs.

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Postcards for the hedge: Neighbor sends thanks for sidewalk flowers

Jun
22

Written by: Caroline Duffy

Garden Postcard

As the sidewalk garden grows, so do the expressions of appreciation for it.  You may remember the garden I wrote about in April. This week  I received a postcard from a neighbor who took the time to thank me in writing even though she doesn’t (yet!) know my name.

It’s still nice to hear people shout, “Thank you for growing your garden,” as they drive by in a hurry. But it’s even better to see the thanks in writing.

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Delving into the modern science of Spamthropology

Jun
2

Written by: Caroline Duffy

At least twice a week I receive long emails from perfect strangers wielding arcane or illegitimate words like “append” and “optin.” They are uninvited messages encouraging me to purchase lists of other strangers who I might want my company to assault with our own brand of uninvited email.

Some of these epistles start with cheer, as in “Hope you’re doing great.” Some are downright ominous, as in “Do I have your attention?” All of them are completely off-target and irrelevant, considering Jackson Spalding’s passion for in-person relationship building.

I checked with our Web gurus and they tell me that this scatter-shot sales approach violates one of the cardinal rules of electronic communications:  ask for permission before cyber-selling, lest you be sent to the sp(l)ammer. The sad news is that a recent Microsoft security report estimates that spam represents about 97 percent of all email now sent over the internet.

This growing trend of unwanted email got me thinking about spam and what it says about contemporary global society.  So, I’m keeping an informal log on the emails that are snared in our hard-working spam filter every day. And, another log of all the unsolicited email that creeps past our firewall.

As I sift through my research, it occurs to me that I’m on the frontier of a new dimension of cultural anthropology. Future archeologists will examine our collective computer chips and conclude a troubling legacy for us. Based on my daily traffic, they will paint a picture of a narcissistic, materialistic, sex-obsessed culture that has trouble staying sober, slim, punctual and out of debt.

We, the people, are apparently always on the hunt for Viagra, Vicotin and vacation deals.  And watches.  I don’t know about you, but I already own three very nice watches and I don’t foresee needing another one any time soon. So why this universal craze for cheap timepieces? Is the whole entire world now on billable time?  I hope not.

I can always count on a daily message urging me to enhance a body part that I don’t have. Or, to connect with members of my own sex who apparently have enhanced body parts that God already supplied to me. Sort of creepy, this spam.

And speaking of creepy, isn’t it really weird that Olympian spammers come from places like the Ukraine, Brazil, Nigeria and Poland? Developing countries appear to have an advanced hacker workforce. I’m told that some of these hackers have been successful in cracking into online banking accounts from the comfort of their faraway perches. So, Internet security is becoming more and more important for not only corporations, but also for individuals.

I liked the world better when Spam came in a can and you had the option to purchase or not to purchase at your local grocer.

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Conversation magnets: sidewalks, poppies, puppies

Apr
7

Written by: Caroline Duffy

I live on a very busy street where traffic can resemble the Autobahn or a pre-Christmas line at the post office, depending on the time of day. About a year ago, our county decided to install sidewalks, which had many of us wondering how our property values might be affected. At the end of what seemed like never-ending construction, the contractor slapped down a strip of sod in a space between the curb and the sidewalk. My olive-drab patch seemed unlikely to survive, so I decided to replace it with a wildflower garden.

I spent days digging up the rocks and concrete in the shallow space, replacing them with potting soil. It would have been a relaxing activity, except that I had to keep one eye peeled for speeding commuters and the other fixed on the task at hand. Finally, I was relieved to sow my bags of seeds from a standing position, which gave me a fighting chance of survival if an errant vehicle careened in my direction.

Within a few weeks, the flowers began to sprout and I would look forward to getting home each day to inspect nature’s progress. Before too long, neighbors started stopping by, too. I call them neighbors, but they were really just strangers who happened to share my same zip-code. As the poppies and miniature sunflowers began to fill in and nod their heads in the breeze, I began to get comments from drivers who slowed or honked in approval.

“Thank you for growing your garden,” they shout. “It puts me in a good mood everyday.” Lord knows, we need more Atlanta drivers who are in a good frame of mind.

Spring turned to summer and more and more walkers and runners began to populate the sidewalks, often with their dogs in tow. My little roadside garden provided conversation alchemy. Anonymous faces have become casual friends. There is the power-walker in the floppy bonnet who strides by with news about the vacant lot down the way. The nurses who walk and talk over their lunch break, stopping to admire the flowers. The MARTA commuter, relieved for a safer trek to the station. And, our next-door neighbors, who have re-emerged after years behind their fence to offer homegrown tomatoes.

The sidewalk has been good for me, too. It makes me venture out with my frisky Jack Russell, who is a conversation starter himself. He has introduced me to a retired couple several blocks away who have shared offshoots from their purple hydrangas and a Greek seamstress who has offered me a cutting from her fig tree. As I see it, the sidewalk we worried about has actually improved our property values and our quality of life. It’s been the catalyst for conversation and community.

It’s seed sowing time again, so I’ve been back at the sidewalk turning the soil and pulling up weeds. The traffic this year seems kinder and gentler. They de-accelerate as they approach my patch. They smile as they jog and tell me they are looking forward to the flowers. This year, I might add some suggestive signage for the diehards, encouraging them to stop and smell the roses.

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