WeetPR » pr

Leave press releases to the professionals

John Weet — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:28:19 +0000

I was reading a local business magazine last night and was amazed at the quality (or should I say lack of quality) of the editorial. One article that particularly caught my eye was a one paragraph story in a sidebar announcing that a particular company was doing very well. I read the story through twice and still did not understand what sort of services the company was offering.

I am making a big assumption here that the person who wrote the press release was not a professional PR person. If they were then shame on them. If a writer fails to get across, in words that a layman can understand, what the message is then they should not be writing press releases.

I suspect that what happened in this case was that the person who wrote it is internal to the company and is used to the way they talk about themselves. To them I am sure it made perfect sense. What they failed to do was to put themselves in their audiences place and ask whether they would understand it. A very common error and one that should not happen if they were to employ a professional writer.

Why did I enter the PR profession

John Weet — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:06:36 +0000

I have been asked many times why I entered the PR profession after having spent so many years in Engineering. I was asked again this week when I was lecturing at Bournemouth University to a group of MA students. My rather Flippant answer was “mid life crisis, bought a motorbike and changed career”.

Me at aged 16

I thought about this later and started thinking about my career to date. At 16, after taking my exams, I was all set to go on to sixth form college and then on to Uni. Despite getting good exams results I decided that I wanted to leave full time education and earn money. I opted for an engineering apprenticeship and eventually progressed to being a “fitter turner”. A 5 year, part-time college course also gave me the mechanical Engineering theory to support my practical experience.

It was at the age of 21 that I moved into an office based Engineering role. The next ten years saw me change roles every two years, gaining experience and responsibility as I went. I moved through product engineering, quality engineering, service centre management, project management and then into sales. After some time in sales I moved into a customer support role, acting as a consultant to some of the major processing plants in the south of the UK. These included Exxon, BP, Dow, Elf, Mobil, National Power to name but a few. I also gained an MBA along the way.

This takes me up to my mid-life-crisis. I knew that I wanted to do something different but wasn’t sure what. My sales role had moved me away from the main hub’s of the business, moving wasn’t an option so continuing my career with my existing employer was out of the question. I managed to negotiate a leaving package without having anything else lined up to go to. It was at this point that I was approached by the marketing communications agency I work for now. Following a couple of interviews I found myself working in PR without really understanding what it was all about.

The transition was easy because our agencies main client is my ex employer. It was easy to write about products and technologies that I knew intimately. A CIPR diploma in Public Relations added to my knowledge and enabled me to understand more about the public relations role other than just writing press releases.

Now I get to the point of this long ramble. I did stumble in to PR – the same as I stumbled into every position I held. I didn’t have a career plan in mind when I left school, however if somebody had written out a plan for me all those years ago that followed the route I had taken it would have all made sense. I can see that each role I have had has built on the one I held previously and made me the person I am today.

I believe I am fairly unique in our industry, I can go talk to the engineers and understand what they are talking about, I can go talk to management and understand what their goals are, how they link to the overall business goals and what affect they have on the bottom line. I can then take that information and structure a press release or an article that is relevant to the readership. I can put together a campaign plan that truly addresses the needs of the business. I am comfortable and confident in what I do with our technology clients.

Other PR professionals may choose a different route to get to the end destination. Coming back to the PR students I was talking to this week, they are choosing to start their career in public relations, and who would blame them I think it is an excellent career choice. What they will have to remember though is that in order to be comfortable and confident with their clients they will need to invest considerable amounts of time and energy in understanding their clients businesses. After all, I spent 30 years understanding mine.

Something different

John Weet — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:56:32 +0000

My brother Chris has stammered for all of his life. There is no doubt that it affected his education and also his social life. There were times that his stammering was so bad that, as a brother, it was painful to watch.

He hasn’t “got over it”, that is something most stammerers never do, what he has done is to learn to control it.

He has been attending group therapy sessions for a while and he suggested that they stage a public speaking event. this would have the double benefit of giving members of the group the opportunity to face some of their fears by speaking in public. It would also give them the opportunity to explain to others what it is like to live with a stammer and how they should deal with people that stammer when talking to them. Chris was given the task of arranging the event.

I was asked to help out by writing and issuing a press release, which I was of course happy to do. I wrote two releases in the end. One aimed at people who may wish to speak at the event and another to attract attendees.

My normal subject matter is engineering and technology products and applications so it was great to get my teeth into something different.

I issued the release to about 20 relevant outlets. The day after sending it Chris received a call asking for an interview, which he duly gave. This interview resulted in almost a full page of coverage. I believe there was more print coverage too and also radio mentions. Had I had more lead time prior to the event I would also have reached out to a couple of bloggers and a UK stammering group on Face-book.

Cutting courtesy of KM Media

The event itself was well attended and seemed to go very well (unfortunately due to other commitments i was unable to attend). Chris sent me a letter telling me about the event. Some of the experiences that stammerers have to contend with are dreadful. One guy was on the bus trying to ask for a ticket when the driver laughed at him. He was so embarrassed he had to get off. Another was once punched in the face just because he stammered.

My brother worked hard to stage this event and will be putting on more. I was just pleased that I could contribute in some small way to it’s success and also pleased to be able to extend myself by tackling an unfamliar subject.

Official government apologies

John Weet — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:20:23 +0000

I’ve just been watching Kevin Rudd the australian PM on the television, apologising for the uk kids that were shipped out there years ago with the promise of a better life.

I do wonder what these official apologies for crimes of previous governments are all about. They are after all totally meaningless, or am I in the minority for thinking that.

Does anybody ever take comfort from them, or are they just a PR stunt? If they are a PR stunt what are they trying to achieve, what message are they trying to give out.? The only message I take away from it is that the government will bow to pressure from any minority group.

They would do far better just standing up and saying they will not apologise for crimes they did not commit. It would certainly raise them in my estimation.

No related posts.

Managing a clients reputation

John Weet — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:00:11 +0000

No blog posts for several weeks then two at once. I was visiting a client in Aberdeen last week as part of my day job. As you would expect with them being in Aberdeen, they are involved in the oil and gas industry.

This company are specialists in Oil and Gas measurement. Now I would not have expected there to be a similarity between the service that they offer their clients and the service that our agency offers but there is. One thing that I was told over and over is that they manage their clients reputation, just as we in the PR industry do.

The reputation of an oil and gas company can be damaged if the amount of oil or gas they report as being delivered to the pipeline differs (within a defined tolerance) from the amount the pipeline operator receives. A consistently different reading can mean that the pipeline operator bans them access to the pipe unless they sort it out. This, in effect, shuts them down. My client ensures this does not happen, protecting their reputation.

Not all their customers see it like that because it depends on the level of that person in the organisation, however this is one of the messages we have been tasked with getting across.

It did occur to me that as this is about reputation maybe one of our target audiences should be the PR departments of their potential customers. How do you think this would work, one PR person talking to another? Is this a non-starter or a good idea? Is the link with reputation too tenuous for an in-house PR person to take notice?

Playing catch up on social media

John Weet — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:24:00 +0000

I am playing catch up on social media. Having come into PR later in life than many (after a succesful career in engineering) I have spent the last seven years trying to get to grips with traditional PR tools and techniques let alone trying to get up to speed on social media.

I did begin to see the writing on the wall though several years ago and realised that if I am to survive in this industry I need to get engaged. I created an entry on Face book, much to the dismay of my kids. I signed up for a FlickR account and dabbled with a blog, although this was really just a means for me to rant and get things off my chest. I joined LinkedIn and also signed up for Plaxo. But that was it. I couldn’t find the time to make sense of them and to understand what they could do for me and what they could do for my clients.

I have found the time now and I understand them better, I am becoming an evangelist and spout about social media to anyone who will listen, but I do recognise that I am not an early adopter, I know I am behind the curve. As Heather Yaxley points out in her Greenbanana blog some PR people have been around this arena for years. I haven’t, I am a new boy and am certainly a long way from being an expert, but then again, who could be an expert in this field when it is constantly changing and when there is so much more out there to learn.

As an example, I came across YouAre the other day, I haven’t found the time to review it fully yet but it looks like another Micro Blogging site like Twitter, and more besides. From what I can see this started up last year and has yet to hit the mainstream (I stand to be corrected on this). As a PR professional I do owe it to myself to keep on top of sites like this, and all the others that get lumped together under the social media umbrella. If I don’t keep current then in these changing times I will get left behind.

Even though I am playing catch up I will still act as an evangelist. I am enthusiastic about the subject and I hope that my enthusiasm will rub off on my peers because what I do recognise is that, even though I am behind the curve there are many more PR professionals behind me. I will encourage them at every opportunity to get engaged and if in the process I can share what I am learning, and learn from them also, then this will in the end benefit us all.