by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 30, 2014 | Public Relations
Rosemarie Ascherl, PR Foreman at Sonnhalter
Earlier this month I had the privilege of attending the 2014 PRSA International Conference in Washington D.C. For three days I was exposed to an incredible amount of expertise, knowledge and thought-provoking ideas, that left me motivated and energized when I returned to my office.
While the takeaways were numerous, a couple really stood out.
Every company should have a media crisis strategy. Crises do happen. Having a plan in place can make all the difference in managing the outcome correctly. Of course, you never know exactly what your company’s crisis will be, but establishing a crisis management team, identifying key audiences, creating a media statement template and conducting media spokesperson training are all elements that encourage better preparedness. Contrary to the goals of most public relations professionals, who are seeking media coverage, in a crisis management scenario, success is NO story.
Visuals continue to rule. We live in a visual world, and compelling images that resonate with your audience are imperative to communicating your message. Bigger images are better. Smart phones are getting larger to accommodate larger images, and in response, clothes manufacturers are designing clothing with large pockets. Consumption habits are changing as well—in 2013, the average view went down to 8 seconds from the average view in 2000 of 12 seconds. Images are also becoming very short-lived as evidenced by Snapchat and Slingshot apps. Visual data is driving the industry, and sooner rather than later, as communicators, we will need to optimize for wearable technology such as Google glass.
The media is facing their own set of challenges. As communicators, we need to do everything we can to help the media do their jobs. Deadlines are faster, resources are shriveling and the expectations are to do more with less, and faster. Often media contacts don’t have time to take phone calls; instead, develop a relationship with them on Twitter. Be sincere and learn what their interests are and the types of stories and angles they cover. Provide content that is readily usable, packaged with research and sources, saving time and helping the media contact meet their deadline.
by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 6, 2014 | Marketing Tips, Public Relations
By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Engineer, Sonnhalter
I spend about 90% of my time in the office writing something – news releases, feature articles, testimonial stories, ad copy, social media updates, blog posts, emails, etc.
When you’re writing anything from a formal proposal to a memo or a social media posting, the best advice to keep in mind is: Choose Your Words.
When choosing your words, make sure that your message is clear and concise. Why would you write 50 words when you could write 5?
Keep it short and clear. Make your point and let your busy audience move on.
by tradespeopleinsights | Jan 28, 2014 | Public Relations
By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Engineer, Sonnhalter
Today is Fun At Work Day! Is your work fun? Do you have fun on the job?
Too often, we hear that work isn’t supposed to be fun, but a valuable part of internal communication is to help your staff enjoy their jobs and working environments.
One way to infuse a little fun into work is with internal events. Whether you do something semi-annually, quarterly or monthly, I recommend looking beyond a yearly holiday party.
Here are some ideas of employee events:
- Have a picnic or barbeque during lunch. Who wouldn’t want to have their bosses grill them a burger or serve them baked beans?
Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect, grilling up goodies
- Host internal competitions. Whether it’s a health initiative that includes counting steps or a simple tree decorating or pumpkin carving competition that lets your crew get creative. Every year, Sonnhalter has a summer photo contest and we submit photos from our summers that are judged by our Idea Builder for their composition and adherence to the theme. (You can see some of the winning photos in our Facebook album.)
- Celebrate strange holidays. At Sonnhalter, we celebrate National Tradesmen Day, World Toilet Day, Fire Prevention Day and many other trade holidays. Other companies celebrate the more obscure holidays like National Pi Day or Squirrel Appreciation Day.
- Go to sporting events. Build your team by cheering on a baseball, football, soccer, hockey, basketball or other sports team.
- Make something together. We like to get our hands dirty at Sonnhalter, so most of our events follow that theme including making our own pasta, painting pottery and glass blowing.
- Serve your community together. 2014 is the 5th year that Sonnhalter will hold an August Tool Drive to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Our team comes together for a good cause and we have a lot of fun doing it too. Even if a month-long event isn’t a good fit for your company, you can serve your community in other ways including having a volunteer day or having a charity walk team.
In ’13, Sonnhalter filled two trucks with community donations
Whether you do something as an entire company or by department, adding a little fun to work can actually make your people more productive.
How do you infuse some fun into your work environment?
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 21, 2013 | Public Relations
Today we have a guest blog post from Rosemarie Ascherl, PR Foreman at Sonnhalter, who recently attended the International PRSA Conference in Philadelphia to learn the latest trends in public relations.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend a motivational week of education and networking at the 2013 PRSA International Conference. The entire three days of the conference I was bombarded with incredible amounts of expertise and thought-provoking ideas, but several of the impressions stood out.
We are in an era of change. It is time to think differently and recognize that to be successful we must discover new ways of reaching our audiences. We need to be open to change and figure out how to tell our stories, our experiences, to influence and change behavior. We need to evolve.
Measurement is important. While there are many schools of thought on PR measurement, one point is clear: measurement is important. If you aren’t measuring anything, you need to start. Measuring can get very complex, but if you start simple, and add additional metrics as you move forward, the value of your PR efforts can be better understood.
Traditional metrics of assigning advertising value equivalency (AVE), now better termed advertising cost equivalent (ACE), can be a good place to start, but there are many additional metrics that can be examined such as sentiment, social media engagement and search rank. Employing metrics to directly tie the results to business performance or sales is ideal and helps to build the case for PR delivering great efficiency.
The press release is not dead. Press releases are very much alive. They just need to adapt to the changing media models to generate results. One of the ways we can do that is to make the press release more compelling for today’s incredibly visual audiences using graphics, from high quality photos, videos and interesting infographics. With traditional media on the decline, we have to find other ways to get our information to our audiences and consider alternate uses for the press release—such as social media, websites and blogs. Our messages need to be effective for today’s environment.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 14, 2013 | Public Relations, Social Marketing
Today we have a guest post from Rachel Kerstetter, our PR Engineer, about the evolution of social media and SEO.
In our B2T niche, as well as in the general B2B market, we use the word “relevant” frequently.
When it comes to B2T social media, quantity does not equal quality. Quality social media engagement can’t be measured in simple number of followers or likes. The relevance of those follows and likes is where we find the quality.
It can be hard to keep up with current SEO tactics that will land you on the first page of Google search results since the algorithms change every day, but as social media continues to grow, SEO is getting easier because it’s no longer optimizing for search engines that will land you on page one of Google.
Social engagement is becoming the new SEO. One of the many benefits of being involved in social media that I explain when we create social strategies is improving search visibility.
I was reading, “6 Reasons Social Media is Critical to Your SEO” on Social Media Today and Stephanie Frasco explained the concept so well when she wrote about the old SEO strategy of link building,
“Think about it – why did Google ever allow links to determine which websites ranked above all the others? The answer is simple: links were like “votes” for your website. The more votes you get, the better off you are. So SEO companies started building links (aka “votes”) manually[…]The idea behind links as a ranking factor is a very good idea, but since it’s become so easy to manipulate, Google has been forced to turn to social media channels which do the same thing but are much harder to manipulate. Link building was always about social proofing.”
The shift toward social search is an excellent opportunity to market more efficiently. Connecting with people (even in business-to-business social media, the decision-makers are still people) won’t have constantly changing algorithms because people have been communicating in similar ways basically forever. Social media is simply taking the natural, conversational form of communication that history shows taking place in the gathering places (think the Greek agora or the city coffee shop) and put it online, where it’s easier to be involved with the conversations that are relevant to you.
You can read the rest of Stephanie’s article here.
