The Luminaria Media Blog

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks talking with colleagues of mine about some possible projects on which we may be collaborating. For small firms and independent PR practitioners, I believe that forging alliances and collaborating with one another is not only good for the client, but good for everyone on the team. As a PR jack-of-all-trades, I can most of the things that clients are looking for. But we’re in a day and age where more and more of us are specializing and owning certain areas within the PR spectrum, and in some cases, it’s better for the project to have those people on board, giving the knowledge that comes from giving more focus and attention to a particular area.

More importantly, good ideas and innovations are born out of conversations. Even if I don’t end up collaborating with colleagues on certain projects, the discussions allow me to think and engage in new ways. I not only get insights and energy germane to the project in question; I sometimes also get insights and energy that helps fuel projects I’m currently working on.

I also learn from my colleagues — which is important given the quickly-shifting ground we’re finding ourselves on these days. One of the reasons I do PR in the first place comes from a desire to learn and pass on knowledge. And I’m not alone in that — I’m lucky to have colleagues that are willing to share their knowledge as well as pass along the knowledge you’re willing to share. The more we continue learning, the more we can continue to help our clients. And in collaborations, those discussions and that learning becomes absolutely vital to the campaign.

If you follow PR through blogs, you might have run across these three posts in the last few days — What PR people should know about journalists, and this companion piece, and this response. I concur with Thomas Lee, who makes the point in the response post that good PR practitioners know how journalists operate and act accordingly. I also like that Lee points out how it’s a two-way street between journalists and PR people — we depend on each other to a large degree, especially in the current economic climate.

My latest round of befriending some of my favorite media contacts on Facebook reminds me how much I genuinely like the people I’m contacting. I’m certainly not the only PR person to have come through journalism school to get to PR. I’m watching the Seattle P-I’s struggles, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s recently-declared bankruptcy, and the #journchat tweets on Twitter with genuine concern. While I think it’s useful for PR practitioners to be mindful of the climate under which journalists and producers operate, and while I think online dialogues about them can be instructional for new PR practitioners, I find most of my contacts with journalists to be respectful exchanges between colleagues and even, in some instances, friends — all invested in a common goal of telling stories and providing information and insight.

One of my friends and trusted PR confidantes, Cyndi Hughes, is currently director for the Writer’s League of Texas. Last month, I did a Book PR class there, talking to authors with book projects in various stages of completion, looking toward how they’d get word of their books out there. We’re talking about another class geared specifically toward what authors can do for themselves.

It’s a great topic. I encourage my clients to jump into social media to connect with new people and to strengthen ties with people who already know them. One of the tools I point them toward is Technorati — it’s a powerful resource for finding blogs around certain topics. Just yesterday, I was looking for Texas Travel blogs for a project I’m doing for the City of New Braunfels, and tracked down two excellent travel blogs now interested in letting their readers about Christmas in New Braunfels (which includes Schlitterbahn’s complete Winter Wonderlandification courtesy of more than one million lights, an ice skating rink, and a snow machine).

Blogs aren’t the mysterious entities they once were, but it’s still helpful to have a resource like Technorati available to figure out who’s covering what. And it’s a very easy, intuitive, and powerful tool to show clients who want to improve their social media (and overall PR) IQ.

One of my friends recently pointed me to a hilarious site called Cakewrecks, full of examples of “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.” It’s a really funny site. Then again, I find that store-bought cakes are kind of chuckle-worthy even when they turn out exactly as they’re supposed to.

My friend and colleague Jennifer Hill Robenalt, who has a great blog on PR and professional communication, once ordered a cake for a viewing party for the Survivor Season One Finale — you know, the season that brought rat-eating into casual conversation. Her conversation with the grocery store bakery went something like this: “Yes, I want a rat on it.” (Pause.) “Yes, I said a rat.” (Pause) “You know, like in Survivor?” The bakery worker was, of course, horrified that she was going to have to draw a big frosting rat on a cake, and had no idea why anyone would want that.

What’s funniest to me about the Cakewrecks site is the game of telephone quality to some of the cakes. There’s a miscommunication between the person ordering the cake and the person at the bakery, and the end result of that communication is committed to chocolate and sugar. This is my favorite one. As a bonus, “I want sprinkles” is a great catch-phrase — perfect for when you think you’ve been dealt an unfair hand and want to laugh it off.

As funny as it is, Cakewrecks offers a useful lesson for PR people about the media — you’re reliant on other people to transmit your message, and the responsibility falls to you to communicate that to the reporter or producer or host you’re working with. It’s good to remind yourself of that whenever you’re putting together a media advisory, or making a pitch, or as you’re coordinating with a client to make sure the website has pertinent information. Strive to make things as easy as possible for the media to transmit your information. Streamline. Read what you send out from a reporter’s point of view. And keep an eye out for social media press release templates — Shift Communications has a good one on PDF that you can easily track via Google. Though mainstream media is still used to seeing old-school press releases, with lead paragraphs containing the five Ws and spokesperson quotes embedded in paragraphs, I think there are some elements to a social media press release that are more user-friendly for the media than a standard release. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some changes in the press release as we know it.