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.)

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

1. Most PR people don't write well. This includes old flacks who've been around since Adam announced his new fig leaf attire. You will leapfrog ahead of your peers if you can explain complicated situations or argue positions in writing. Really. Make writing your priority.

2. You don't have exclusive access to this profession. PR people come from everywhere: journalism, law, marketing, psychology, finance, catering, politics or on the advice of their parole officers. Your degree is worth only what you make out of it with your intuitiveness and applied skills. Be aware that public relations is more and more a collection of specialized fields.

3. PR is not the end result of itself. The world is full of publicists and social media tacticians who think the whole point is to pump out materials, get publicity or Tweet Tweets. It isn't. If what you're doing isn't making a difference — selling product, improving opinion, increasing share price, building support, winning the vote, etc. — then you're just adding to the clutter. Your career will have no more meaning than a sticky note. Strive to be relevant.

4. There's too much sleaze in this business. Decide right now that you're not going to be one of those flacks who rationalizes bad behavior, lies to the press, creates fake grassroots organizations or attacks the integrity of people with legitimate issues against your employer or client. It doesn't matter whether you're in corporate, government or marketing. You don't have to sell your soul to be an effective at communications and influence.

5. Detailed grunt work gets you promoted. It's great that PR students study the Tylenol crisis. But most of you will have less dramatic introductions to the profession. You'll spend your day compiling research, stuffing envelopes, proof-reading someone else's material and taking notes. The sooner you prove that you don't make mistakes or let things fall through the cracks, the sooner you'll get thrown into the more interesting deep end. Invest your time in becoming indispensible. Most of your peers won't.
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Also:  Read this before you send that resume cover letter

 

A chance to work with people like me and enjoy free Sweet‘N Low, too.

Denver-based GBSM is looking for a bright vim-and-vigor type to join one of the world's truly fine little management consulting and strategic services firms. You'll need three to five years experience in the corporate communications, issues management and public affairs arenas. Smarts about the energy and cleantech would help. You must write well, period.

See all the details at Andrew Hudson's Jobs List. If interested, please send your resume and charming cover letter to Raleigh Decker at raleigh@mycareerinsight.com.
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Sweet 'N Low is a registered trademark of Sweet'N Low® Zero Calorie Sweetener, which is provided proudly at no cost to associates and visitors of GBSM, Inc. Please enjoy responsibly.

Metro Denver’s newspaper crisis is a matter of will

The Denver Post intends to cut its newsroom by another eight percent. 

One reporter told a client of mine that it's "hard to figure how we'll still put out a semi-credible product." 

Business and civic leaders around the region are frustrated. "We got used to not having Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News reporters at city council meetings a long time ago," one mayor told me. "But now they're barely covering the city election or anything else, either.  What's infuriating is that people tell me all the time that they want a good newspaper, that they'd pay more for local coverage."

What you hear from a lot of media people around Denver, though, is that the newspaper is a lost cause. They insist that there's no "business model" to sustain revenue.

Repeat that: There's no business model for a daily newspaper with an established brand, talented reporters and a virtually exclusive relationship to a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people.

You have to say this over and over before you believe it. Because it's bull.

There's a big difference between not having a business model and there not being one.

Consider all the media choices that capture today's eyeballs and eardrums. Now look at the Denver Post and DenverPost.com. Are they the best products they could be? Do they strive to be compelling and relevant, day in and day out?

Or are they tired vestiges of Eisenhower-era, mass-market display advertising and classifieds thinking?

I hate to sound like a motivational poster. But what's keeping the Denver Post from succeeding in the information age is the Denver Post.

"The tradition-bound and risk-averse nature of the newspaper culture is the single greatest reason publishers are losing readers and revenues while competing digital products run circles around them," wrote Alan D. Mutter, a former Silicon Valley CEO who teaches media economics at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. "Newspapers need some fresh DNA that will make them think and act more like techies and less like, well, newspaper people."

You want to turn things around, Denver Post? 

Then change.

And do it now.

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Follow me on Twitter at StevenSilversPR

My prediction that Twitter will eventually wither and die does not mean that I’m not eager to exploit it for all it’s
worth.  I’m still a professional public relations professional.

Follow me on Twitter at StevenSilversPR.
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You realize that Twitter is to PR what men’s room graffiti is to advertising, right?

Like most Americans, I get hit with some 5,000 marketing messages daily.  Most I don’t notice. There’s no way I could.  You'd need more than four hours a day even if you spent on average only three seconds considering every ad, logoed item and pitch.  (And they said PR bloggers can’t do math.)

Yet the other day I spent a few seconds reading an email alerting me that I’m being followed by a guy who says, “I Help Individuals to Improve Their Immune System, Wellbeing & Fitness And To Build Wealth Online From Home.”

As I hit the delete button it occurred to me that this Twitter thing is pretty amazing.

With all the competition for eyeballs and eardrums, Twitter manages to push ads and publicity right into people’s face. I gave a valuable sliver of my limited attention to a promo just because he clicked on my follow button.

Does this hyper-intrusiveness mean Twitter will be around forever? Hardly.

It happened with AOL and other Internet phenoms.  Twitter will eventually ripen, rot and fall off the tree from the weight of its own success. Teens already don’t use it, and the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters were using Vibe, a more private short-message service.

Today only eight percent of Americans use Twitter. This isn't many. It’s less than the number of Americans who think the Earth revolves around the sun. (Ten percent, but I’ve known the truth for weeks.)

Overlay the Twitter-ers with the Earth-firsters, minus the number of Tweets that are useless or incoherent -- and you have a phenomenal but narrowly-used Internet novelty destined for the history books.

You can’t argue with PR blogger math.
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Five ways to establish social media credibility

Guest post by Hoa Cong

Most corporations are looking to social media as a vibrant platform to increase sales and profits. However, you can't just open a Facebook account or blog and expect people to come flocking in. You have to actually connect with your customer base and create relationships.

Here are five critical elements that can make or break your social media campaign:

1. Choose your platforms wisely. Social media extends far beyond Facebook. Find out where your customers are on the internet and go there. If you sell to creative types, set up a blog where users can contribute content. For sports types, try an interactive game. The possibilities are endless, and a company that fails to do its homework is destined for failure.
    
2. Speak your customers' language. Every group has its own language and acronyms. To market to them, you must also speak this language, especially in social media environments. The best way to learn to do this is to read the blogs, Facebook pages and other sites that are created by your clients and customers. When you use -- note: not overuse -- the correct language, you gain instant credibility.
    
3. Keep a cohesive message. The fastest way to lose people is to have too many messages across online platforms. Remember that your customers use multiple social media venues themselves, as well as traditional media. Integrate your message across all so your customers see you as the focused company you are.
    
4. Be active in your chosen forums. Your blog, Facebook page or other platforms are not simply advertisements to lure in customers. Social media is interactive by nature, and you'll lose credibility if you're not active in posting, giveaways and two-way communication. People can sniff out fakes, and it will cost you.
    
5. Let your customers give input. People who engage in social media expect to be able to interact with you, but also to be heard. Campaigns where customers can submit ideas for new products, advertising, or slogans can bring considerable traffic and give your customers a sense of participation in your product. When they feel like part of your group, they are much more likely to recommend and use your products.

For the today's companies, the only thing worse than not engaging in social media is to do it poorly. As the guidelines suggest, a cohesive message delivered in a truly interactive environment will bring out the most value of your online campaign.

Hoa is a representative for Capterra, an extensive online catalog of more than 300 business software directories.
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Simply put: The difference between brand and reputation

I get this question often: What's the difference between a company's brand and its reputation?  Aren't they just different words that public relations and ad people use to say the same thing?

Nope. Closely related, but very different.

A brand is a company's promise to the people and institutions most important to its success in the marketplace of products, services and ideas. It is the (usually) carefully constructed embodiment of what the company wants its stakeholders and their influencers to believe to be true.

A company's reputation, on the other hand, belongs to those stakeholders and influencers. It is their collective perception based on what they in fact believe to be true about the company: its integrity and credibility, its alignment with their own values, its historic and future ability to deliver on the brand promise. 

Whether a company's reputation is justified or not, the stakeholders own it. Smart companies own up to it when it's damaged by screw-ups and controversy, real or perceived.

Properly managed as a bona fide strategic asset, a strong corporate reputation multiplies every dollar spent.  It strengthens the brand like steroids on steroids. It creates goodwill that helps the company navigate through bad market conditions, complex issues and crises.

It helps consumers answer the "why buy" question by answering the "why trust" question. 

Reputation is why most of today's good companies have a market cap of 30 to 70 percent more than their book value. 

Brand is how the company talks to the world. Reputation is how the world hears the company.  

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How Afghanistan must get its message across to U.S.

I was invited to attend a small gathering of Afghanistan officials in the U.S. to explore the working relationship between our government and news media.   We were struck by what one senior member of the delegation said was his group's biggest surprise:

"We thought that the United States had in-depth information, that there was great knowledge among the American population about Afghanistan.  But we find the opposite is true, that people of the U.S. seem to have no information about Afghanistan and its people."

He's right.  Research shows that Americans – including many political leaders – know very little about foreign affairs.  Despite fighting there for ten years, Afghanistan for most Americans is an abstractly convoluted mess of wars and radicals, confusing policies and political posturing. 

The Afghan official's observation underscores an important question.  What's the bigger dilemma: That Americans are largely oblivious about a country in which they spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives?  Or that many leaders in that country think Americans know far more about their people and problems than they actually do?

Obviously neither situation is acceptable.  In the short term, however, it seems critical for Afghanistan's official communicators – the people who must make their government a credible source of truth – to get the idea across that America's citizenry does not operate from a position of universal, much less accurate, understanding. 

It is up to America to understand Afghanistan's strategic relevance to the nation's future.  Our ignorance is costing lives.  We know that.

But it is up to Afghanistan to earn that relevance.  This is the message that its leadership and pro-democracy media must communicate.  They must convey to their people that only the credibility of action will rise above the deafening clutter of American mass media, to deliver the message that Afghanistan is committed to become a nation of rights, and that it has the resources to pay its own way if given the ability.

Show, don't tell.  This is how you get the attention of ignorant Americans.
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(Photo: Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture behind barbed wire.)

 

Note to self: Just post the dang thing.

Dorothy Crenshaw offers some good advice on not procrastinating in a post that I'm going to read tomorrow.
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