Friday, February 23, 2007
The Heal Blog
“Courage consists of the power of self-recovery” Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have personally never battled with something as monumentous as cancer. Those who manage to battle with cancer and still live their lives gives me something to believe in. Survivors that grow from the experience, those who can still have hope, they are the people that define the term heroism. For me, those who I loved that battled cancer, they are my heroes, they taught me what courage is all about.
The effects of cancer are life altering, not just for the patient, but their families and their friends. This disease isn’t something that people can just recover from, the healing process is with them from the day they go into remission. My class was given the assignment to research websites and blogs regarding survivorship of cancer so we can create a blog for our client, Cure Magazine.
I embarked on this assignment rather hesitantly, cancer has been a significant part in my life through the illnesses of family and loved ones, but actually dealing with the aftermath of the disease never really occurred. I internalized all my feelings and emotions, all the pain and anxiety I just harbored within myself. I guess looking back I felt that since it wasn’t my sickness I just had to cope with my pain, it was something to deal with later, all my attentions had to go to those I loved. So the idea of Heal Magazine, a magazine geared to survivors of cancer and to helping them with the healing after chemo, was a rather foreign concept.
How do cancer survivors begin the healing process? Is there a place for family and loved ones within that process, how do they fit in? As I began my research I found less pain, and so much hope. Hope for a cure, hope for the future, and hope that their stories might help others. To begin listing blogs or communities that dialogue regarding cancer and survivorship would take pages, but there were a few I found that really caught my attention. The Cancer Blog (www.thecancerblog.com), Breast Cancer Treatement (www.breatcancer-treatment.us) which is one woman’s blog regarding her story with breast cancer and how she is surviving, and Cancer Story (www.cancerstory.com) an amazing website that is very extensive, are all geared toward helping people perservered through cancer.
Breast Cancer Support (bcsupport.org) is another great site for breast cancer sufferers and survivors to go and listen to other stories. Steps For Living (stepsforliving.com) is a great site geared toward younger patients or survivors of cancer, for those who think “I’m too young for this” Gilda’s Club (gildasclub.com), Race For the Cure(cms.komen.org) and LiveStrong (livestrong.org) are sites that serve to educate and motivate people regarding cancer.. I believe these sites should be referenced or linked in the blog for Cure Magazine because they really seem to honestly reflect the feelings and fears regarding cancer, and I believe that they could really help someone in their own struggle with the healing process.
A few ideas for a sidebar for the Heal blog would be places for families to have an opportunity to share their stories and how they coped. Another relevant sidebar blog topic is Cancer Fundraisers. People should be fully aware of all of the strides being made to find a cure and ways that they can get involved; example would be dates for Race for the Cure in local neighborhoods. A third sidebar topic, a perhaps the most important one, would be testimonials, a place where survivors can go and share their stories with others and give and receive feedback.
In regards to the focus of Heal’s blog, I believe that it should really be focused primarily on survivorship. How people start living their lives after the battle with cancer is fought. I think it should be an uplifting site and one that continues to instill hope, and not be constantly reminding them of their treatment, but focus their goals on maintaining health.
After all this research I am really excited to start this project with my class, so please check back and see how it develops!
Friday, February 9, 2007
Tips for Getting Ink
The relationship between journalists and public relations specialists is a love-hate type of relationship. Each view their roles as superior to the other, yet are dependent upon each other for stories and coverage. Successful PR professionals are the ones who are continually advancing in their means of communicating with the media and maintaining strong relationships with them. In our constantly news-worthy world how does a PR professional go about getting ink for their client, not once, but routinely? Even with the rise in popularity of the internet, PR blogs and company websites are not sufficient enough, how do they reach out to the print and broadcast media?
Jeff Crilley, an Emmy winning journalist, wrote a book about strategies to bridge the gap between media and PR. His book is entitled Free Publicity and he gives tips from a journalist’s standpoint about what will get ink. He begins with “Timing is Everything”. This would seem self-explanatory and something most PR pros would already know, yet he drives the point in with so much force. He recommends pitching a story on a slow news day, that way you are more likely to get the hit. On slow news days reporters are in greater need for a story than days when the news is at a peak.
Another tip from Crilley was pitching a story that has impact, it answers the “who cares?” question. If a story doesn’t meet this standard then it isn’t worth publishing. “Don’t be Ordinary” is his third strategy. The piece you want published should be something memorable, “we cover the extraordinary, the man bites dog story gets the lead”. He also recommends sending visual images with the PR release. Even if it is for a radio station having a visual image will help the reporter to describe more colorfully.
http://www.jeffcrilley.com/
While continuing my search on proper protocol for PR and media relations I came across an article written by Kim T. Gordon. Gordon is an author and a leading expert in entrepreneurial success. She wrote for Entrepreneur magazine on ways to get media relations without having to hire a large PR firm. She also has some great advice on ways to communicate with the media and sets them in six basic rules. These are: to set clear goals “who do you want to reach, and what do you want them to remember about you”, to create a plan “will help you to stay on track and outline your goals”, lay the right foundation-help the press and make it easy for them to be in contact with you and know your company’s executives and products. Fourth is to shape your story “content that fits the needs of the media outlet”, make it easy to cover you is her fifth tip, “going above the basic press release” making the journalist interested but not consuming too much time. And finally to build relationships, you have to have “one-on-one interaction” with journalists and always follow-up.
Please check out her article, it is a worth-while read:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2005/february/75616.html
Both Crilley and Gordon give great advice on building media relations and how to score a hit. Knowing the basics, such as timing and knowing what is news-worthy, are skills that will help any PR hopeful, such as myself, gain the necessary strategies to begin pitching stories and really starting off our careers on the right foot. From my research and life experience (as little as that may be) the best piece of advice that I can give is the same advice my mother always gives me (lets face it, moms always do know what’s best) when meeting with people: “honey attracts more flies than vinegar.” Be friendly, be polite, and smile. That is the type of person others want to work with, make the experience a pleasant one and the journalist won’t want to burn the bridge after working with you, and you now have a permanent entry in your little black book of media contacts.
I hope this was as helpful to you as it was for me. Until next time!
Jeff Crilley, an Emmy winning journalist, wrote a book about strategies to bridge the gap between media and PR. His book is entitled Free Publicity and he gives tips from a journalist’s standpoint about what will get ink. He begins with “Timing is Everything”. This would seem self-explanatory and something most PR pros would already know, yet he drives the point in with so much force. He recommends pitching a story on a slow news day, that way you are more likely to get the hit. On slow news days reporters are in greater need for a story than days when the news is at a peak.
Another tip from Crilley was pitching a story that has impact, it answers the “who cares?” question. If a story doesn’t meet this standard then it isn’t worth publishing. “Don’t be Ordinary” is his third strategy. The piece you want published should be something memorable, “we cover the extraordinary, the man bites dog story gets the lead”. He also recommends sending visual images with the PR release. Even if it is for a radio station having a visual image will help the reporter to describe more colorfully.
http://www.jeffcrilley.com/
While continuing my search on proper protocol for PR and media relations I came across an article written by Kim T. Gordon. Gordon is an author and a leading expert in entrepreneurial success. She wrote for Entrepreneur magazine on ways to get media relations without having to hire a large PR firm. She also has some great advice on ways to communicate with the media and sets them in six basic rules. These are: to set clear goals “who do you want to reach, and what do you want them to remember about you”, to create a plan “will help you to stay on track and outline your goals”, lay the right foundation-help the press and make it easy for them to be in contact with you and know your company’s executives and products. Fourth is to shape your story “content that fits the needs of the media outlet”, make it easy to cover you is her fifth tip, “going above the basic press release” making the journalist interested but not consuming too much time. And finally to build relationships, you have to have “one-on-one interaction” with journalists and always follow-up.
Please check out her article, it is a worth-while read:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2005/february/75616.html
Both Crilley and Gordon give great advice on building media relations and how to score a hit. Knowing the basics, such as timing and knowing what is news-worthy, are skills that will help any PR hopeful, such as myself, gain the necessary strategies to begin pitching stories and really starting off our careers on the right foot. From my research and life experience (as little as that may be) the best piece of advice that I can give is the same advice my mother always gives me (lets face it, moms always do know what’s best) when meeting with people: “honey attracts more flies than vinegar.” Be friendly, be polite, and smile. That is the type of person others want to work with, make the experience a pleasant one and the journalist won’t want to burn the bridge after working with you, and you now have a permanent entry in your little black book of media contacts.
I hope this was as helpful to you as it was for me. Until next time!
Friday, February 2, 2007
Blogging as a Tool
We are living in a technological revolution. My generation is embarking upon a whole new form of mass media, and as the internet continues to advance, people are finding more and more ways of utilizing the World Wide Web as a means of voicing their thoughts and opinions. The internet facilitates free speech in ways that America hasn’t seen since the golden days of journalism. Inhibitions go out the door as people use the internet as an outlet for opinions.
As I delved into my research into the realm of blogs I became more and more aware of the diversity of thoughts that people posted. There are individual blogs, such as MySpace, or corporate blogs like Sun Microsystems. There are blogs for entertainment and there are blogs for news. Whatever your taste may be there is a blog out there for you, though finding it may be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
So where does blogging as a tool for PR fit in here? Well, pretty much anywhere you would like, and by that I mean blogging for PR has adopted the same traits of a social media as any other blog on the net. From PR firms employing prominent bloggers to endorse a specific company (please reference my previous post on Wal-Mart) to sports PR (http://www.sportsmediachallenge.com/press_room/121106blogindex.asp), to entertainment PR (http://www.mtv.com/news/). Possibilities in this field seem virtually endless.
A successful blog exhibits all the qualities of social media. Presenting a place where people go to share their ideas, interests, passions, and opinions. Yet, as a new blogger and one who is new to the field of PR myself it is at times hard to distinguish the quality sites from the ones who just wish to vent some steam. Blogging as a tool for PR can open doors for companies to bypass the other forms of mass media and really cut out the middle man.
It is an amazing opportunity to promote a company and the possibilities seem endless for potential and growth. The future lies here, blogs will be a tour de force in the field of online public relations and I am excited to see where this new channel will lead companies and their constituencies.
As I delved into my research into the realm of blogs I became more and more aware of the diversity of thoughts that people posted. There are individual blogs, such as MySpace, or corporate blogs like Sun Microsystems. There are blogs for entertainment and there are blogs for news. Whatever your taste may be there is a blog out there for you, though finding it may be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
So where does blogging as a tool for PR fit in here? Well, pretty much anywhere you would like, and by that I mean blogging for PR has adopted the same traits of a social media as any other blog on the net. From PR firms employing prominent bloggers to endorse a specific company (please reference my previous post on Wal-Mart) to sports PR (http://www.sportsmediachallenge.com/press_room/121106blogindex.asp), to entertainment PR (http://www.mtv.com/news/). Possibilities in this field seem virtually endless.
A successful blog exhibits all the qualities of social media. Presenting a place where people go to share their ideas, interests, passions, and opinions. Yet, as a new blogger and one who is new to the field of PR myself it is at times hard to distinguish the quality sites from the ones who just wish to vent some steam. Blogging as a tool for PR can open doors for companies to bypass the other forms of mass media and really cut out the middle man.
It is an amazing opportunity to promote a company and the possibilities seem endless for potential and growth. The future lies here, blogs will be a tour de force in the field of online public relations and I am excited to see where this new channel will lead companies and their constituencies.
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