StevenSilvers.com

Read this before you send that resume cover letter

Dear people wanting an entry-level PR job:

Thanks for your interest.  We’re thrilled that so many of you visited our firm's web site. Those of you who didn’t should consider a different career. Or go work for one of our competitors.

You all have nice resumes.  That’s expected.  But we read your cover letter first.  This was your chance to tell us why we should be interested in you versus the 90 other people who also want this job.

Unfortunately, many of your cover letters were poorly thought out and badly written.  Several were stunning in their awfulness.

Next time you submit your resume somewhere, make sure your cover letter doesn’t get you rejected because of mistakes like these:

No-brainer personality traits.  You love working with people?  Excellent. This puts you above all the PR job candidates who love working with farm animals.

Hyphenation hate.  If your letter reads that “I’m a first class writer with an all out attitude ready to work for a top notch company,” you’re not and you won’t.

Redundant hyperbole over and over.  If you use the word passion more than five times, you’re mostly passionate about not using a thesaurus.

A firm and wordy grasp of the obvious.  We don’t know if you’re sucking up or if you honestly think we’re impressed by you telling us that “It requires a lot of hard work and an exceptional team of employees for a business to become and remain successful.”  Leave the bromidic insights to us pros.

Missing something important.  One letter we received was 400 words long and didn’t mention our company once.

A wrong view of how the working world works.   We know you want things out of life.  We also know we don't want self-absorbed newbies who says things like: “After significant research into your company, I have decided that this position offers me an excellent opportunity to gain valuable experience in a career area in that I am interested in.”

One more thing.  You're not writing a novel.  If we have to go to the bathroom in the middle of reading your letter, it’s too long.

Good luck out there.

Steve
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Also: Five things all PR students should know about their choice of career

(Originally posted in 2010.)

If it were you it'd be a whole different crisis

In the weirdness that comes from sticking to approved talking points, Colorado congresswoman Diana DeGette said about fellow Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner, "I agree with President Obama – if it were me, I'd resign."

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Tech media: Same as it ever was

For all that the Internet has changed the world, the big dogs in technology media are still very much the same as they were years before that Y2K bug thing.

A new poll from PRSourceCode finds that PR people of today mostly aim their tech-related flackery at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Information Week, Network World, CIO, Wired, EE Times, CNET, IDG, PC Magazine and Info World.

Extra credit if you can remember which one said that DOS would never die.
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Five ways to improve your news media interview

Most CEOs and top executives are very good communicators. They're articulate, focused and command the room with their presence.

But get them in front of a reporter and many of these same high-achievers try too hard to be a perfectly packaged persona. When they see video of themselves being interviewed, they're shocked at how artificial they look and sound.

I often reiterate five media interview methods to help them project their real selves:

Speak, don't pronounce. | With reporters, keep the tone and tenor to that of having a conversation. Many executives have a wonderfully gracious, polished style, but they'll overdo it in media settings and come across like they're running for vice president. Experienced reporters are hyper-sensitive to business people who speechify or drip with techniques they obviously got from media training. It can have quite a negative influence on the interview.

Don't try to make every swing a home run. | The best way to sound like you were water-boarded by your PR department is to force every talking point into every answer. Instead, integrate what you want to get across in context to the conversation, just like you do in real life. And make sure you're PR people help you prioritize you're the three key messages for each interview out of the gazillion that might be in your communications strategy.

Slow down.  |  Everyone tends to speed on in interviews and presentations, either because their nervous or animated in their intensity. Whatever the reason, try to remember to take a literal breath between passages. It will feel weird at first but it will help.

Tell stories.  |  Many executives have a natural gift for telling stories, but in an interview they'll often make passing reference to an anecdote or not finish a story.  Part of this is a matter of just going too fast, and part is not having all those great stories embedded into your personal style of narrative.  This is something you and your PR people should work on constantly.

Keep to a problem-solution orientation. |  Try to spell out specific problems or issues that your organization is solving. Reporters who have not worked outside the newsroom often don't grasp the full dynamic of a corporation or organization. Talking in terms of problems and solutions will help them understand the value you create for the people who matter most to your bottom line.
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Does your brand need a big-city PR agency?

If you’re a mid-sized national company based in a second-tier market, that might be your reaction to hearing how Denver’s Frontier Airlines has hired New York-based MWW Group, one of the world’s largest independent PR agencies.

It’s a fair question.

Frontier, the Colorado Tourism Office and other Denver-based brands “go national” figuring they’ll get more value exploiting the critical mass in media relationships and other resources of a large agency versus being the biggest client for a local PR firm. Brands in smaller cities all over the country make the same decision all the time.

Sometimes this is the best approach.  But not always.  There’s a reason that the best marketing PR agencies in smaller cities like Denver do so well.  They’re typically less expensive, especially in the junior to mid-level account executive range where the work is more commodity communications than capitalizing on personal connections.  Many of their senior people have big-company, big-city experience.  They’re smart.  They get results. And they’re close enough to be called on your carpet if they don’t.

One thing is for sure. When local companies like Frontier Airlines hire a big-city PR agency, it puts the professional services community and all of their major clients on notice. 

That’s good for everyone’s business.

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What it means that so many journalists think PR people are idiots.

I heard from an editor who tells me that in a single day:

… A PR rep pitched a local college’s new MBA program but said it was against school policy to reveal how many students were enrolled.

… A PR agency sent a press release announcing that its client won a huge new contract without naming the customer.  They instead argued that there were still many other "interesting angles to cover."

“What the hell is wrong with these people?” he asked.

It’s a question I’ve heard more in the last five years than in my whole career.  Journalists tell me about all sorts of amazing PR stories:

… Press releases that arrive as Word documents, then shows the client’s notes and revisions when the reporter clicks “track changes.”

… A drug company sued by shareholders because its PR agency issued a "media advisory" promising historic news at a press conference, which turns out to be nothing.  The PR agency argues that the release it sent over BusinessWire wasn't meant to be seen by the general public.

… A reporter tells an account executive that the press releases they keep sending him are useless.  “We don’t cover product announcements,” he says. “That’s obvious by just reading our magazine, isn’t it?”  The PR pro pauses and says, “No. But can you send me one?”

… Media outlets get a newsworthy press release regarding a large local company, then get calls 30 minutes later from the PR agency demanding they not cover the story because they "didn't mean to send it out."

People get paid for this.

There are many smart and talented PR people.  But in the last decade there has evolved a subculture of publicists who seem to revel in their obliviousness about how news media works.  This is the crowd that journalists, editors and producers can’t stand to deal with. Most good PR people can't stand them either.

It's the oblivious flacks who keep alive the silly, sophmoric notion that PR and media are opponents in some great battle for truth.

No, we just got some clueless people in our ranks.

It’s not hard to understand how most of them got here.  These are people who grew up not reading newspapers, who didn't watch CNN, who didn’t open Time or Newsweek unless they had to for a school paper.  They learned about current events from snippets on their Yahoo home page, by watching Comedy Central and reality TV, by picking up references to news injected in the celebrity gossip banter of their favorite drive-time radio stations.  They know everything about pop culture but can’t name the last five presidents or explain the difference between a CEO and a COO. 

Maybe they majored in public relations or communications, but they’ve never worked in a newsroom, much less published anything.  And now they’re called media relations specialists.

The good news is that companies and clients that employ the facile flacks are getting the idea. There are now more ex-journalists in public relations – albeit with mixed results, as some reporters make terrible spokespeople.  In other areas, you’re seeing more investment in training and in hiring real pros – young and old – who have a lifelong relationship with news content.  And many bad media relations people have moved on to social media, where they happily don’t have to write long paragraphs or use the telephone.

Still, stupid press flackery gets plenty of attention on the Internet, from insiders like Bad Pitch Blog, Denver PR Blog and PR Daily, to mainstream media like The Huffington Post to the New York Times. 

Sure.  Some of it is terribly overstated. 

But anything that chases PR people who don’t read newspapers to full-time gigs as Twitter Tweeters is good for business.

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Also:  PR and the business of enthusiastic incompetence.

Ten billion Tweets means what, exactly?

Most of my clients and colleagues acknowledge the expanding value of social media.  But they still don’t know what to make of Twitter.

Blogs, online communities and forums are relatively easy for them to comprehend as strategic communications tools.  But the incessantly babbling Twitter, with its Gnostic lingo of hashtags and retweeting and @replies, is not. 

So what are we to make of the fact that Twitter has reached 10 billion tweets?  Maybe a lot.  But maybe a lot of nothing.

Consider this unscientific illustration of Twitter’s contribution to productivity.  If each Tweet took on average only ten seconds to be posted and read, then Twitter would already account for almost 28 million manhours.  That’s an average year’s work for 15,414 Americans. 

What value has come of all this effort is debatable, especially when you consider that 40 percent of Twitter posts are what one study called “pointless babble.”  Probably just as many posts are babble that makes a point. 

Twitter also suffers from a growing spam and phishing infestation. A study by online security firm Barracuda Networks estimates that only 21 percent of Twitter users are genuine.

Nobody denies Twitter’s ability to spread the word.  But for many otherwise Internet-savvy communications executives, it’s still far from clear how to most effectively anticipate, respond to and leverage a free online messaging service that by design is a magnet for the world’s clutter.

Also see:

CEOs won't say Twitter and other contradictions about the hottest social media thing since the one before it

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(Above) Social media consultant Muhammad Saleem created this excellent graphic illustrating Twitter’s path to 10 billion tweets and what’s been shown true along the way.

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Toyota and Tiger: Brands never really get fixed

Pundits and news media are debating whether Toyota or Tiger Woods will bounce back more quickly from their respective scandals.

But it’s wrong to think a celebrity brand returns to where it was before the stuff hit the fan. There’s no repairing a brand image that has been demolished by bad behavior. There’s only repositioning a brand to succeed in spite of it.

Toyota and Tiger will never be the personas they were before.  That’s not to say they won’t again dominate their markets.  They might.  But they’ll do so on different terms, from a new starting line.  Consumers and the institutions that influence them will align their affinity in context to what went down and how it impacted them.  They may feel totally jaded or think the whole thing is overblown.  But they’ll definitely consider it. 

The 24-7 news cycle and the Internet’s indefinite shelf life means that scandal will be part of the Toyota and Tiger consciousness for a very long time.   Even if there were no more nasty headlines to come – don’t bet on it -- it could be a generation before the smoke clears.

For high-profile brands embroiled in controversies of their own making, it’s an important distinction:  Even the best-spun apologies and damage control aren’t the end of the matter. They’re the beginning.
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Reporters becoming PR people: Why it works. Why it doesn't.

More than a year ago I suggested that unemployed journalists will take many of the jobs that would have gone to communicators without newsroom experience.

That was an understatement.

In less than ten years, the nation’s news business has lost more than 14,000 jobs, some 25 percent of the entire industry.  Things have yet to hit bottom, especially for newspapers and magazines.

The result, as the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg calls it, is the The Great Journalism Exodus.  Every PR agency, communications department and public affairs office in the country is hearing from reporters who are either unemployed or desperate to get out.  

Goldberg wonders if all these hacks make good flacks, but the volume of job candidates makes this a non-issue.  Many reporters don’t transition from the newsroom because they can't let go of their often sanctimonious cynicism about the business world.  But just as many are damn good at it.  They write better, learn faster and have better connections.  That’s why they’re getting so many of the good jobs.

What's important is how this hacks-to-flacks migration represents a tectonic shift in the relationship between sponsored message and third-party credibility.  For every public affairs officer and publicist with newsroom experience, there are many times that number of news beats and media outlets that simply no longer exist. 

The changing landscape means the best communications people will be those with skills far deeper than writing press releases and pitching stories.  They’ll need to know research, integrated marketing, community engagement, public affairs, issues management and yes, blogging and social media.

It’s worth keeping in mind whether you’re hiring a flack or a hack.  Or one in the same.
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Health care reform: Blaming bad communications doesn't fix bad attitudes

In the spin following the GOP’s game-changing Senate win in Massachusetts, the White House defended its beleaguered health care legislation with an old standard: What we have here is a failure to communicate.

"We lost some of that sense,” President Obama told ABC News, “…of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

That talking point has been played down since then.  Good thing, too.  Because it’s terrible PR.

Think of health care reform as a high-profile but controversial consumer product being introduced into a marketplace of extreme fans and critics (like New Coke or Windows Vista).  Blaming a flat-out rejection on poor communications might seem a safe strategy. You hold yourself accountable but without faulting your intentions.

It’s not that your product’s bad. It’s the stupid packaging.

Except a lot of people will instead think you’re saying, “It’s the packaging, stupid.”

Your competitors will do everything they can to promote that interpretation.  As MSNBC points out, administration opponents are literally institutionalizing the word “arrogance” in reference to what Massachusetts voters were complaining about and how the White House has responded to it.

At the core of almost every public’s fear and loathing are legitimate issues.  You may think your smarts in creating a value-added product trumps all that.  They don’t. 

You can’t win people who think you’re dismissing them.  Even if you suspect they don’t have a clue what you’re really selling.
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