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 Driving while on a cell phone is clearly a distraction that can lead to horrendous disasters. Some people are so distracted texting on a cell phone that they lose track of where they are walking. One woman fell down a manhole in New York city. But there is another kind of hole we can fall down with a cell phone or, even worse, a smart phone.
Sometimes, when we are connected to our virtual world we are actually in a disconnect. The marketing photo in this post shows a well-dressed business woman enjoying herself at the beach while loving doing her work. She is connected to her office, her world, her network. She has power and flexibility.
At least that is the image. She is actually tethered to a reality far away that has more influence on her than the environment she is actually in. Ten years ago she would have been at the beach to get away from the office so she could re-create, step back from the buzz and do some real thinking. If all you do is work, there is no time to look ahead.
Instead of being distracted from your environment, be in it. Be in every place you are, with all your attention. Live where you are and get it all, whether at work or at play. That way you won’t miss the beach behind the woman in the photo.
A marketing rule spouted by some pundits is to build a fence around your customers; keep them in the corral. I hate that metaphor. It makes your customers sound like a bunch of mooing cows to hog tie and brand. That’s the way the cable TV and wireless phone companies do business. Their offers are designed to get you into their system, and then you sign a contract to get the deal, and then they jack the price on you two years later, but not so much if you sign up again. It’s like doing business with gangsters.
A good business does not hog tie it’s customers, it rewards them for being good clients. Rather than getting them into a corral, you get them into your camp, and you keep them their by making the experience so good they wouldn’t think of camping anywhere else (Kumbaya).
If you stay with a company for two years, it should lower your rate, and offer to lower it even more if you sign a contract. The only way this will happen is if consumers refuse to buy into the current business model.
Me, I’d rather pay more than be in the corral.
“Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above. Don’t fence me in….”
There are many ways to define leadership. But it may really be a long line of cows.
We were driving to Portland, Oregon a few weeks ago and ran across a huge dairy just south of Salem. Crossing a field at least half a mile long was a line of cows, all single file. At the head of the line a cow was chugging along, breathing hard, with a worried look on his face that seemed to say, “Where the heck am I going?”
And all the cows followed him.
 Is Leadership just a long line of cows? And it struck me, he is the leader, and he does not know where he is going. I don’t think he was even sure he was the leader. It’s more like he just started walking and others started following until all of them fell into a long, straight line to nowhere in particular. Maybe he started out walking toward food, maybe he was looking for a sunnier spot in the field, maybe he just wanted to see the other end of the pasture. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about anything at all.
But there he was, with the herd blindly following. At some point I imagined him looking over his shoulder and seeing the great responsibility behind him. So he broke into a trot to get away. They all picked up their pace. Soon they were all puffing along in a fast trot, mooing and bleating for him to keep going.
But the end of the pasture was looming. What would they do when he got to the fence? Crash over him into a pile?
Maybe that’s what leadership is like. Someone gets a notion in his head and starts off, without a plan. But others like where he is going and start to follow. Soon everyone is on the march, following the leader, who has no particular goal in mind, and when they get where they are going they will say, “You led us to nowhere! We trusted you and you have betrayed us!”
And maybe that’s leadership.
Good quotes in a press release are hard to come by. Why? Because the quote often winds up being w2hat the person being quoted wants, not what the reader wants.
What does the reader want? A strong comment that takes a position and refers to things they can imagine.
For example, here is a quote written for the health department person explainning why people should get a flu vaccine.
“It is important for everyone in the community to be vaccinated for seasonal influenza. The Centers for Disease Control research shows that the more people who are vaccinated, the less likelihood there is of an epidemic. The incidence of adverse reactions from flu shots are extremely low and the CDC assures us they are safe. That is why we advise everyone to get a vaccination in order to protect our most vulnerable populations, the elderly and children.”
That is nice for the health department person as he or she will see that as a professional, intelligent, accurate quote. But the public will not latch onto that.
This is better.
“When you get a flu shot you don’t just protect yourself, you protect everyone. It’s called herd immunity. Flu shots area safe. Don’t believe the myths that you can get the flu or any other disease from a flu shot. There are rare times when someone does have a bad reaction, but you are more likely to die from the flu than from a reaction to a flu shot. The more people are vaccinated, the less likely we are to be burying people all winter long.”
Well, that might be a bit over the top, but you get the idea.
How to get a good quote? Talk to your person you are quoting with a recording device. Catch some of the more casual, usually more memorable quotes. Then revise them so they aren’t too casual, but keep the vitality of the quote! And don’t let that person change it. Be adamant about the need for a good sound byte for the public.
“Flu shots are safe, they save lives, and they keep you healthy all winter. Get a shot.”
Creativity and good writing don’t pop out of your head. It may feel like it, but they don’t. They are the results of thousands and thousands of hours of writing and scribbling ideas. You also have to immerse yourself in the information river. Learn all you can, experience all you can. Then, when you sit at the computer, all that fertilizer will feed into your roots and pop out of your computer like so many strong, vibrant flowers.
Never take the material or the facts you have and try to mold them to a preconceived subject, topic, or outcome. Instead, look at the facts and the material you have and let the truth of them come forward naturally. Discover what you are writing.
Don’t worry, the you that is you will wind itself around your material, and married together, they will grow into finished work. You will be the material, and it will be you.
This is true whether you are writing War and Peace or copy for a catalog.
So go out get some fertilizer.
Writers love to write clever headlines and openers to catch the eyes and interest of the reader. That’s fine for the analogue search, but not the digital search– I mean search engines. Write your opening paragraph for the search engine, not your reader.
When we read a newspaper our mind searches for turns of phrase or descriptions that are intriguing. Search engines look for words that are related to the search words.
So if my lovely opener for a story about a woman who bravely battled cancer begins, “When Sally first confronted the beast within her, the silent, but growing thing that would eventually consume her lungs, she never blinked, and told her doctor, “I want every option, every experimental drug, I want to kill of die trying,” it may get a reader interested, but it will be passed by every search engine looking for a great story about a cancer patient.
There is time for all that human stuff later. And your reader will love it. But serve the search engine first. Find the key words that fit your topic, and get all of them in the first paragraph (and headline too) of your article.
If I go to www.keywordfinder.org or use Google’s keyword tool, I can easily find out what search words are most commonly used to find my topic.
So my first paragraph might instead be:
Sally, a cancer patient, knew cancer researchers would have experimental drugs that had not been through clinical trials, but her tumors for her lung cancer were growing fast. This is her amazing cancer story.
Boring! Yes. Search engine digital search friendly, Yes! The rest of the story can appeal to the human brain, heart and soul. But to get to that human, that analogue creature, you have to get through the gatekeeper: Google.
For a great article about search engines and getting to your readers, read “This Ugly Headline Brought to You by Google.”
Happy writing!
Social Media has quickly become the public square where ideas are exchanged and debated. Unfortunately, many of the voices who should be in this digital public square are absent. This puts the truth at risk; for example, the debate over the link between Autism and vaccines.
Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson (who has a great blog by the way: http://seattlemamadoc.seattlechildrens.org/) talked about this at a conference in Seattle, “The Role of Social Media,” in April. Sponsored by Ragan Communications, the conference brought together physicians, public relations and marketing people, and hospital and health administrators. Unlike many social media conferences that focus on how to reach customers and sell them products, this conference focused on how we can use social media to communicate with patients and the public and help them make more informed health choices.
Dr. Swanson said a small but vigorous group has driven the debate over the link between Autism and vaccines. They have websites, blogs, and find their way into the media regularly. But, as Dr. Swanson put it, they have experience, and there is a difference between experience and expertise.
The very vocal mothers who believe their children developed Autism after a vaccine have experience. They lived through an event and have their own particular interpretation of what happened. When questioned about the research that shows there is no link, the routinely answer something like, “The research is flawed. We all know much research is flawed. The research has to catch up with us mothers who already know there is a link.”
That is experience, and it is very powerful because it tells a story. People are moved by stories, not so much by facts and expert opinion. So how do we responsibly join a debate like the one over Autism and vaccines?
Doctors need to tell their story and, in doing so, provide their expertise. This is already happening, and if you do a Google search for Autism and vaccines, you will now find the Centers for Disease Control at the top of the organic results. As one doctor put it, if every physician in the American College of Pediatricians were to post one article a year about why vaccines are not only safe, but essential to public health, the small, vocal opposition would not be on the first page of search results.
This is true for any topic. Experts in every field owe it to the digital public square to join in the conversation and provide their own stories, and more importantly expertise, to make sure the truth wins the day.
Proofreading errors can sink an entire block of copy. You know the drill. You proofed it yourself, an editor proofed it, everyone in your department took a look at it, and even your boss found the time to give it a quick read. Everything looked fine. Then you get the printed, published copy back and the name of the company in the headline is misspelled.
I once turned in an article titled, “Reaching an Audience.” It was about how to reach a changing world with old-fashioned printed words. The copy editor turned it over to a layout person who for some unknown reason changed every reference to “audience” in the article to “audiance.” When I proofed the layout, I never noticed because it was my article and I subconsciously assumed that audience was still spelled correctly.
After the article published I got a message from an old professor. “It is best when writing to know how to spell your topic,” he wrote.
So how do you get it wright? Er, right?
Primary rule: don’t proof your own copy. Revise and edit carefully, but you cannot be the final word…ever. So have a very good proofreader/editor brutalize it.
Read backwards, one word at a time. This works well. I got the idea from a woman I met who proofed legislative bills in Salem, Illinois. She would read an entire bill, thousands of pages, backwards, one word at a time. By removing the flow, the sense of it, she caught almost every single typo.
Triple check the most error-prone areas; these are names, phone numbers (actually call them), addresses (physical and website, e-mail, etc.), and data.
Read it out loud, very slowly.
Remember the style manual you are using and comb through for all the uses of symbols, etc. It’s painful how often percent and % get juggled.
Those are just a few helpful strategies. The last, and maybe most important, is time. Don’t finish at the eleventh hour. Give your copy at least a week from draft to publish. If you work for a website or newspaper. Then try at least one hour from “finished,” to published.
There is a conversation war being waged in America and what is at stake is the truth. Those who control this conversation will control the outcome.
I recently attended an educational session on advance directives. If you make your wishes for medical care clear, in writing, in advance, then your family will not be stuck deciding if you should be put on life support even if you are brain dead. One topic discussed was organ donation. A person mentioned that the Pope is an organ donor. This is where a reasonable conversation became the Conversation War.
A lady raised her hand and asked the presenter where she got her information that the Pope was an organ donor. She demanded the presenter give the exact document and page and line number. I chimed in and pointed out that almost every major news agency had reported it, and even the Vatican Newspaper itself had reported it.
Her answer to that? “You can’t believe what the Vatican paper prints, it’s all lies.”
I pointed out that the Pope has not denied the reports. Surely, if he were not an organ donor and did not believe it was ethically permissible, he would say something about it. After all, before he was the Pope he was the Defender of the Faith.
Her answer? “The Pope would never say or do such a thing. You don’t actually believe what the news reports? it’s all lies.” I was reminded of the old Firesign Theater line, “Everything you know is wrong.”
She went on to say that her sources were reliable, though she would not reveal the sources. She also said that because organ donation was against God, the Pope could not possibly agree with it.
This kind of conversation is not unusual these days. People feel empowered to challenge the preponderance of truth and dismiss it as nothing but lies perpetrated by the media– the Information Lords.They get lots of reinforcement from social media, Internet bulletin boards, and talk radio (right or left). The power of the Internet for lighting-speed networking makes it possible to spread and saturate an audience with truths (which is good) and untruths (which is devastating).
It’s in this virtual social world that the Conversation War is the hottest. Whether it’s Global Warming, evolution, vaccines, super-berries to battle cancer, Obama’s birthplace, or the Pope himself, the viral nature of modern communication makes it possible for people to ignore the truth and believe what they want to believe. And those who would profit from their beliefs, are only too happy to reinforce it.
I believe that as public relations practitioners we have a sacred duty to fight for and tell the truth about who we represent. Public relations has a bad reputation as spin doctors who perpetrate untruths. We must take the high ground and be the keepers of truth and knights in the Conversation War. We must work with the leaders of the companies and organizations we represent to be open and honest with the public. We must convince them that by telling the truth, we build lasting, genuine, and powerful relationships with our publics.
I am privileged to work in the health care industry because it is a noble and truly beneficial profession. Being in public relations and writing gives me the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing and dedicated people anywhere. They save lives every day.
But the question burning the country right now is, “Who Pays for Health Care?” Here is a little analogy that might help put it in layman’s terms:
There are four friends who like to stop at the bar and drink a few beers together. Steve has bar insurance through his employer, Bob is self-pay, Jeff has no insurance and cannot pay, and the final one, Russ, is on Baraid.
Steve orders a pricey, imported dark ale. It is $8. He makes a 50 cent copay. Bob orders the same, but since he is self pay and isn’t part of the discounted pricing from group insurance, he pays $12.50. Jeff orders a draft beer for $3, drinks it, and then informs the bartender he cannot pay. The bar absorbs the debt, and charges more for Steve and Bob’s next beers. In turn, Steve’s employer gets a rate increase for its employee Bar insurance. Steve also gets an explanation of benefits informing him that neither the bartender or the bar were in network, so it will only pay 50 percent and he will have to pay the remaining $3.50 from his Flexible Spending Account. Finally, Russ, who is on Baraid, orders a bottle of Budweiser for $5 and pays nothing for it. Baraid reimburses the Bar only $3.50. As for Bob, Steve and Jeff, the bar charges more for their next beer and they all get a tax increase to pay for Russ’ Baraid.
Based on this scenario, this is what they paid for the first round of beer ($28.50):
Steve- $4
Bob- $12.50
The Bar- $4.50
Steve’s Employer- $4
Jeff- 0
Russ- 0
Taxpayers– 3.50
But that was just the bar. Three months later, all four friends get bills in the mail from the bartender, the beer truck company, and the brewery. Bob calls the bar and asks about the charges. The bartender explains that they only paid for the beer from the bar, not the charges for pouring from the bartender, the transport from the trucker, or the bottling from the brewery. “But don’t worry,” he adds, “I will resubmit to your Bar insurance company and they will probably pay some of it.”
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