Public Relations Tips: October 2007

Having trouble projecting a professional speaking image? It may be time to clean up your vowels. Dr. June Johnson, author of Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Action shares this:

Vowels are as important to speech as consonants. Mispronounced vowels and sloppy consonants are responsible for many misunderstandings. One of the challenges in the English language is the many different pronunciations of single vowels and vowel combinations.

When I was Professor of Voice at the Eastern Illinois University, one of my responsibilities was to teach vocal diction to voice majors. English was their native language, but they still had to learn to pronounce words correctly so they could be understood as they sang. Many had regional accents that turned sentences like "When can I get it?" into something that sounded like "Win kin ah git it?" They had to work to develop a consistent pronunciation of vowel sounds.

In the English language, there are only five written vowels, a, e, i, o, u, but there are ten vowel sounds.
ooh to
oh no
oo took
aw saw
ah fond
a apple
uh up
eh said
ih sit
ee me

Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Action provides many additional solutions and techniques that will help you achieve on-the-job success through improved professional speaking.
http://101publicrelations.com/voicepower.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=voice_power

Posted by Dan at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Effective on-the-job speaking starts with effective and sincere listening.

Active listening can be one of your most powerful communication tools. There is a definite correlation between the ability to listen and the ability to persuade. It is not possible to be persuasive if you have not listened carefully. This is particularly important in sales.

Fortunately, active listening is a skill you can master. Use body language to establish rapport with the speaker. Remain alert and maintain eye contact. Use facial expressions and simple gestures such as nodding, raising eyebrows and leaning forward to convey interest. Interject with occasional comments such as "I see" and "I understand." Ask questions to clarify a point or provide you with additional information.

Make it a point to:

Focus on the speaker, not on what you are saying.

Ignore Distractions.

Avoid interrupting.

Practice memory association to improve recall.

Mentally summarize and recap the main points.

Avoid interjecting your thoughts or anticipating the next words.

Use body language to encourage.

Allow time to process what you heard.

Think before you speak.

The key to successful communication in business and social situations lies in the fine art of active listening. Pay attention and you may be surprised what you will learn.

Learn more ways to improve your professional communications with Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Actionhttp://101publicrelations.com/voicepower.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=voice_power

Posted by Dan at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to deliver a powerful, effective presentation and get more publicity? Try these techniques successful public speaking:

The better you know your presentation, the more relaxed you will feel. All of your practice will pay off to secure your memory, reduce nerves and fear and promote a feeling of confidence.

Use a natural, conversational approach with an easy, direct, informal manner. Tell stories and use humor that's relevant to your subject, even though the topic may be serious. There is humor to be found in every situation and the audience will appreciate it. Self-deprecating humor helps the audience to identify with you and feel comfortable.

Always look professional with your stance and bearing. Be aware of your body language and use gestures and mannerisms to emphasize, not undermine, your words.

If you are using notes, put them in outline form on 5" x 8" cards and refer to them as little as possible.

When using a script, use large print, double-spaced for easy reading. Print the words on the top two-thirds of each page and slide the pages from left to right (or right to left) rather than flipping them.

Know your material so thoroughly that you only need to glance down occasionally. The audience needs to see your eyes, not the top of your head.

Keep in mind that every great speech motivates, educates and entertains and you'll be successful. Be prepared for anything that might happen because it probably will!
Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Action provides additional tools for successful public speaking and successful communications.
http://101publicrelations.com/voicepower.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=voice_power

Posted by Dan at 07:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who should you send your stories and information to? When you are sending this information to media contacts, try to aim for as low on the totem pole as possible. In other words, don't assume that the editor of every publication is the person that you're supposed to send this to, because the editor is busy doing 8,000 other things. They're dealing with the union, and they're doing performance reviews. So aim as low as possible. Try to send it a reporter who you know writes about your particular topic. Or you can send it to a feature editor at a publication. Or you can send it to a business reporter who happens to cover your particular industry. Just be sure you know the name of that person, so that when it comes time to follow up with them, you can call them on the telephone. You don't want to just send it to a features department, or business department. Because it may not go to anybody specific. It may just go right into the wastebasket.

Take the time to track down who the best person is at a publication to receive the information. And if you're not sure who that person is, call the publication and ask them, and they'll tell you who to send it to. Just tell them what you have and just ask who the best contact person would be, and then plug that person into your media database.
For more tips on how to get great, free publicity, read Briefs, Fillers and Quizzes: How To Write Them and Why Editors LOVE Them

Posted by Dan at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How can you turn your newsletter into a blog? Basically what I do is I take a whole issue of a newsletter, I put it on a full-text newsletter archive page. Then from that I take each individual articles and blog them separately. The separately-blogged articles get higher search engine rankings and more traffic than the full-text newsletter archive page. In fact, right now, at the time of this recording, there is some very interesting behavior taking place. If you go out and look in a search engine oftentimes you will find that blog posts about someone's site are doing better than the site itself is doing in search engine ranking.
There are two specific advantages. The first one is unless you have an active content management system out there you can usually do it faster by posting it to your blog. The second one is that for some reason, and I'm not quite sure why, blogs are doing huge things right now with search engines. In most cases you will find the blogged version of an article in the search engines much more easily than you will find the same article as part of a standard newsletter archive that contains the entire text of the newsletter. For more great ideas and information on how blogging can work for your business, read "Business Blogging Results."
http://101publicrelations.com/bloggingresults.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=business_blogging_results

Posted by Dan at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A picture is worth 1000 words, especially when it comes to newspaper and TV publicity. This step-by-step guide to getting pictures about your business or organization in the newspapers and on TV is designed to help you improve your odds by learning what journalists want and expect.

Some publications use publicity photos more often than others. Large dailies, general interest magazines, and business and trade publications that can afford their own photography staffs generally prefer to cover an event themselves, but many smaller publications and Web sites do accept publicity photos. You have to find out the policies of the publications you'll be working with.

PC Magazine, for example, "... almost invariably takes its own photographs, with the exception of three of our 200 editorial pages each issue. We want to have a consistent look," explains editor Bill Howard, "especially since we primarily do comparative [product] reviews. It would be almost impossible to get 12 publicity photos that would look the same."

To learn more about publicity photos, and how you can get your publicity photos published read David R. Yale's "How To Get Publicity Photos In Newspapers, Magazines, And On TV"

Posted by Dan at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the event of a company crisis, make sure media lists are at your fingertips.

In a crisis it is important to have your updated media list in multiple formats because, depending on the emergency, you may not have access to your computer or regular files. It is often a good idea to keep a copy of this document at home if that is an option for you. Or, if you have a network you can access from a remote computer or via the web, keep your media lists in a folder on a shared drive. You could also keep a copy on your PC at home. Ultimately, in a major crisis situation, the news will often get out immediately through local TV stations, but you will still want to have your list of the people you have worked with in the past, who may be willing to listen carefully to your side of the story.

Find additional techniques for crisis communication planning in Crisis Communication Planning: Organizing and Completing a Plan That Works
http://101publicrelations.com/crisis-communication.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=crisis_communications

Posted by Dan at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You can improve your professional speaking by perfecting your vocal energy.

Energy is the vitality and enthusiasm you bring to your voice and is not to be confused with volume.

Volume is the decibel level at which you speak.

Energy is the intensity in the voice.

It is the difference between speaking at people (volume) and to people (energy).

Whether you're speaking with your full voice or softly, energy is a vital element. Supporting the voice from the diaphragm enables you to use a stronger, more energetic voice without pushing or forcing.

In her book Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Action Dr. June Johnson suggests exercises to improve your energy level, and many more exercises and tips that will assist you in improving your professional voice.
http://101publicrelations.com/voicepower.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=voice_power

Posted by Dan at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have a media kit, how do you get it to the media? You want to put it on your site under a button on your home page that says "Press." It should not be just a press release. It should be a press section. And we prefer to have all of it on one page so that the reporter can just scroll down. To get them there, you do an email blast with a one-paragraph hook that ends with "More information is available." and they can click on the hotlink.

When you call reporters to pitch the story, they will say whether or not they are interested. Then, if they're interested, you can guide them to that kit right while they're on the phone with you. When you book radio talk shows, you then send a confirmation to the host and you say, "All of your show prep material is at this address." And by the way, although it's called a media kit, when I deal with radio talks show bookers, I always call it a "show prep kit" because that's their terminology.

For more great tips on how to use media kits, read "Electronic Media Kits: How to Create Them, Deliver Them, and See Instant Results."

Posted by Dan at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did you know by slowing down you can become a more powerful speaker? Vocal coach Dr. June Johnson suggests checking your rate of speech.

Do you speak faster than people can listen? Is it because your inner motor is running too fast? Or, is it because you are nervous? In either case, take a deep breath and slow down.
Information delivered at too fast a pace is difficult to absorb. It is possible to speak 250 or more words a minute, but the average person can easily comprehend only about 150 to 180 words a minute.
When you speak too fast there is no time for inflection, phrasing or word stress - all necessary for interpretation.
If you have been told you speak too fast, take heed and slow down.

Learn more ways to speak professionally in Dr. Johnson's manual Building the Power of Your Voice: How to Improve Your Voice to Command Attention & Move People to Action.
http://101publicrelations.com/voicepower.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=voice_power

Posted by Dan at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How can you make sure you have an effective media kit? Ask if there's a specific reporter who's going to be covering your event and if that reporter has already been assigned. A lot of times, that reporter might not be assigned until a couple of days before you're going to have your event. Just work with the editor and be sure they know who you are, how to contact you, and you have a good rapport going back and forth, so that by the time the event comes, they know who you are. At this meeting, take a media kit with you. The media kit should include news releases about your event. It should include some interesting photos, a map of how to get to your event, a schedule breaking down what people are going to see once they get there, a good one-page summary of the event that they can just pull out in an instant and get a really good bird's-eye view of what it's all about.

Also make sure that this information is posted at your website. The media are relying more and more on electronic media kits. When you meet with these media people, ask them about deadlines. You want to know when every deadline is that you're going to have to meet, particularly for calendar listings. You want to get onto every single calendar that you can possibly think of. In the major publications, you want to get onto the calendars. At local cable television stations, you want to get onto calendar listings and onto calendars in all those tiny, little niche publications. Then ask them what else they need from you, and they will tell you. That's how you get those full-page spreads. For more great information and tips on how to create media buzz for your event, read "How to Create Media Buzz When Promoting Your Special Event."

Posted by Dan at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What kinds of things should you remember when doing interviews and contacting the media? One other thing I did want to mention are time frames here. I made a little note to myself to talk about time frames. What kind of time frames do these media have? With radio, their time frame is minutes. You can fax a press release out right now and literally be on the air in five minutes.

With TV, you can also be on the air in five minutes. They won't see you, but they'll do an audio. They'll just have your voice on there. With TV, their time frame can be hours and you're actually "live" on TV. For newspapers, their time frame can be one day. For magazines, their time frame is usually measured in months. They do want the local angle, and they want your opinion on it, and especially if you're an expert in an area. And if you are watching TV, or listening to the radio, by all means, if you hear something that you can respond to, you can follow the formula, whip out a press release literally in ten minutes and say, "This is a response from someone in Denver on this national story. Why don't we do a story on the Denver slant here?" They will love you. For more fantastic tips on how to write great press releases, read How to Write a Killer Press Release That Stops Reporters in Their Tracks
http://101publicrelations.com/killer.html?utm_source=prideas&utm_content=killer_press_releases

Posted by Dan at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)