Why your PR is failing to shine
Public relations (PR) has changed significantly in the past decade or two since I started my first job in the sector in the mid-2000s.
Media releases are less essential to pitching.
Journalists are more dispersed and freelance-based.
The press conference is all but dead unless you are a sports star.
So what does this mean for your PR, and how can you and your organisation be relevant and newsworthy for all the right reasons?
Strategy first. Execution follows.
Any successful PR campaign has defined its biggest clear goals, knows the rights audience, and chooses success measures that 100% align with those goals. By planning your campaign strategy and defining what a successful campaign looks like upfront, you’ll be in a much better position to achieve your desired results.
We believe that most PR campaigns not rooted in a strategy will fail. The wide berth of what success looks like has to be narrowed, and the right channels for the right audiences will be the best start. Anything else will be scattergun, meaning you don’t get the desired results.
The media landscape is contracting. Decades of media mergers compiled with media companies trying to monetise digital media platforms so we pay for news means the media landscape has become a business first.
At the heart of a media business are sponsors and advertisers – those who can pay for space, either physically in a print version or online in digital display and other kinds of advertising. Media companies must provide stats on readers, shares, likes, and reader demographics to prove worth to these digital advertisers.
The media landscape is getting better at this as metrics start to catch up with reader behaviour, but all this adds up to media needing to run like any other business. Getting more eyeballs on pages from readers and keeping them on their sites to monetise content is the model now. This is hard enough before you even factor in competing with the limits of social media sites like Meta/Facebook.
To lure and secure readers on sites, content has to be timely, interesting, topical, and relevant to them.
Many like to make a big thing about PR versus journalists. But having sat on both sides in my 25-year-long career, it doesn’t have to be this way. Agencies and journalists can work together to meet both sides’ aims. That is the magic. Some ideas are below.
It doesn’t matter how interesting people in your company think your news is; the real question is, will anyone else find it interesting? In other words, ‘who cares?’ It has to be newsworthy and interesting, meaning it has to contain some new and relevant information.
Most media releases fail because they don’t pass that critical ‘who cares?’ test. WHY should the media and readers care about what you have to say? How is it any different from what everyone else is saying?
Don’t send business reporter news to a lifestyle writer, as it’s irrelevant and wastes time. If your news is niche, send it to that niche only. Do not send it far and wide because it won’t work and irritates the journalists. If you haven’t read a publication and demonstrated in your pitch why this release is relevant to this publication, or TV or radio show, skip it. The media are busy and won’t take well to pitches that are not in their wheelhouse.
Define where you are sending pitches in emails or media releases. A focused idea or release to a small, targeted pool is far more effective than a wide spray. It shows you know a journo’s publication and their readership, and you will become an asset to a journalist.
If lucky, you have one sentence or two to catch a journalist’s attention.
Realistically, journalists see hundreds daily, and they are most certainly not reading all the way through these to ‘glean some interesting nugget’ of information at the end.
Say it in the first sentence. It doesn’t matter how much you think your company name is important, don’t put it in the first sentence unless you are a big multinational, billion-dollar corporation.
Your name can wait. What you do can wait.
Lead with your strongest aspect. Save the sales guff for the end. And speaking of the end – rarely is the second page of a media release ever read. One page, please.
Journalists have finely tuned BS radars. If your media release reads in any way to be a sales promotion, you will be kindly asked to take an ad because the idea is probably more marketing than news or features worthy. It is not their job to get you a free promotion for your product or service. It is their job to get and keep readers, so they can get, and keep, advertisers.
Do not send out a media release for the sake of it. Save it for only when you have something newsworthy to say. If you get a reputation for being a timewaster, your releases won’t be read by journalists, even the good ones.
The gatekeeper and the reporter’s interest is piqued if your pitch or media release has passed. Unless it’s trade media, they are highly unlikely to run the media release as is. They will likely want an interview to get extra information to put a unique spin on it for their readership. The last thing a journalist wants is to run something similar to a competitor.
Nothing is more annoying to a journalist than asking for an interview and being told none are available. And there is no quicker way to squash a story. A media release is not enough. Being available for an interview is as important as the media release itself.
Ideally, with some media training behind you, make the story stand out and ensure the media will call you back again.
If you want to refine your PR ideas, we’d love to help. Book a free PR 30-minute discovery.
Hosting a podcast on your own is great fun once you know how to manage it!
Sitting solo speaking into a microphone, and trying to perform to a listener you can’t see is hard work at first.
Here are my ways to master this solo podcasting gig.
Conversations flow when we are physically in a room with another human, and even after the pandemic got us used to Zoom meetings, there is nothing like speaking to someone in person. When presenting a show solo, you must be confident and own the sound waves from start to end. One trick is to imagine someone in your mind (the ideal listener), which is how many professional podcasters and radio presenters make their shows flow. Once you’ve had a lot of practice, this comes easily. But when you’re starting, you must actively use your powers of imagination and be prepared to try and try again.
If you’re having difficulty conjuring someone up in your mind, you can always help your brain by recording yourself on your phone or laptop. You’ll be surprised at what a difference it’ll make to the energy in your voice just seeing another person (even if that person is your face!).
When you’re talking to your podcast audience, each person listening must feel like you’re speaking directly to them. When someone chooses to listen to your content, they’re rarely listening with someone else, so if you talk to them like they’re part of a group, it’ll disconnect you from them. Using the word “you” when referring to your audience is the easiest way to do this. And think about talking to a single person rather than a faceless crowd. The key to podcasting connection is you make each listener feel like you are speaking to them. That is where we find audience magic.
Creating’ light and shade’ or variation in your voice keeps people engaged, but what feels energetic when you’re speaking can often feel much lower energy to someone listening. This is because some of that energy is downplayed on audio delivery.
You don’t want to sound overly enthusiastic or slow and methodical. The sweet spot is that middle range plus some. Trying to harness enough energy required to sound like you’re having a relaxed, natural conversation in a podcast requires much more energy than if you were having a relaxed, natural conversation in real life over a cup of tea.
The goal is to sound confident enough to meet your listeners where they are rather than them having to come to you, and sometimes that sweet spot takes time to find. It takes practice and patience to better host your show, but the podcast world will thank you.
Have you dived into your podcast? Want some help for us? Check out my free podcast guide downloadable here or join our on-demand course (that has, since January 2023, helped over 1,000 new podcasters shine).
Board meetings can sometimes become, well, boring meetings. There is usually a lot to read beforehand, and several speakers and big ideas to discuss, and they sometimes make fast-paced decisions from the information shared. To achieve cut-through communications success in an often packed board meeting agenda, it helps to be well prepared.
Presenting to a board can be daunting, and nerves will emerge if you are unprepared and rehearsed. To effectively present at your next board meeting, here are my golden rules before you enter the room:
Remember, each board is unique, so adapting your approach is essential. You can deliver a compelling and impactful board presentation by thoroughly preparing, understanding your audience, and effectively communicating your message.
If you want a dress rehearsal with us, or a chance to road-test your following board presentations in action, we welcome the opportunity to work with you. Booking a meeting via https://calendly.com/amberdaines-327/30min
How have you thought about your life in terms of your legacy? That is seemingly heavy stuff, I know – but before you think this blog is about fire and brimstone or making a bucket list, hear me out.
Last month I had my first-ever experience of a “legacy lunch” with Sarah Nelson, who holds the snazzy job title of Chief Legacy Officer. The process was easy and joyous. Spending 75 minutes unpacking my drivers, my team inside and outside of my career, and my formative life experiences over the decades over lunch at the serene Saddles restaurant was the deal.
There was some prework—a chart to clarify my self-described VIA character strengths. During the workshop, we started by writing down the teams around me, listing my core beliefs, values, and strengths, then exploring how I was coded and what I have somehow collected along the way. This idea creates a picture or a phrase of the legacy you’d like to make.
In just a few moments, I am suddenly the CEO of all the teams in my life.
This exercise reminded me that life is long and short, depending on where you are and how confident you are about your direction. This strikes me as far more than a narcissistic endeavour. One of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs’ most famous and enduringly inspiring quotes is, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?”. This is really what many of us are striving for.
Your dreams, goals, and accomplishments are never just about you. As business owners, team members, community leaders, a parent, a partner, a sibling, a child, and a colleague, we need to ensure everything we do (ok, not the laundry, perhaps, that is a life essential) comes with a purpose. It moves us forward to what we want to be remembered for most. It can be hard to craft boundaries, walk away from lucrative ideas, and disappoint others, but our legacy is all we have at the end of the day.
Where my legacy lunch landed was writing out what is my (initial) legacy statement – “living a life full of value to my team, me, and the planet.”
It may refine over time, but right now, I love it because it feels right. It also makes saying ‘no’ to things that don’t serve this statement suddenly very easy!
If you are curious about your legacy and what that means and missed my interview with Sarah, please tune into our podcast.
The short answer is… sometimes.
If, like most podcasters, you’re looking for ways to grow your podcast audience, having interviews with a range of high-profile guests can feel like an instant download fix you’ve been waiting for. Having a podcast with famous names is excellent for promoting your show; there’s no guarantee, though, that the people who love them will come and check out your podcast.
If a high-profile guest has a huge social following, it’s easy to assume one tweet will have all those people flooding into your show. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case.
How effective a guest is at growing your podcast audience will depend on many factors that are entirely not in your control. Many well-established people have a highly engaged audience that will follow them and watch and listen to everything they post and do. Others have followers interested in looking at their Instagram feed but won’t jump into a podcast. The impact each guest has on your downloads depends on the relationship they’ve built with their audience, and that’s something you can’t influence.
We can get to the positives now that we’ve reached the reality check. They introduce your show to a new audience. Discovery is a massive issue in podcasting, especially when starting from scratch. So, if a guest shares your show, it can help expose your content to new ears and eyes that might never have found it or you otherwise. This increased visibility is critical when you’re growing your audience.
If your guest has a community of followers who trust them, you’ll get some of that goodwill by association. If they’re saying, “I trust this podcast enough to be featured on it,” their audience will be more likely to trust it’s worth checking out too. That’s extremely powerful, but so is the credibility and authority you get from having successful people on your show.
When potential listeners find your podcast, whether via a guest’s recommendation or otherwise, seeing names they recognise in previous episodes will help build your show’s credibility. This, in turn, increases the chances people will check it out. The more interest in your podcast, the more potential to grow your audience.
Want my intel on my show and its downloads? So, the most downloaded episode of all The Politics of Everything is, in fact, someone excellent and well-versed in the angle chosen, but not world famous (quite yet) with Cathy Ngo’s show at 310,000 listeners to date. The second is former Socceroo and human rights campaigner Craig Foster’s episode (over 280,000 downloads).
If your guest has a high profile, promoting the fact they’re on your show can get people excited about the episode, even if they haven’t listened to your podcast before. Getting someone interested in hearing from someone they already know is much easier.
Having household-name guests can be a way to spark people’s interest in your show and its content, even if they don’t know who you are or what your podcast is about. You can do very few things to grow your podcast audience overnight, so you must remember you’re playing the long game and know that more than one strategy brings up the download numbers.
For my free podcast guide and to keep informed, go to www.amberdaines.com
Climate change is one of those terms, like any ESG message, that can get lost in translation – or worse still, just be ignored because it’s too dry or overly complicated by scientific jargon. It remains a core challenge for companies of all sizes to articulate their sustainability achievements, projects, targets, and partnerships without their communications losing momentum.
Communicating climate change in a way that is engaging and accessible to a broad audience is crucial for raising awareness and inspiring action. While science textbooks are essential for conveying detailed information, they can often be dry, illusive, and dense. To make climate change communication less textbook-like, consider the following ideas:
By employing these logical strategies, you can make climate change communication more engaging, relatable, and less like a science textbook. Remember to adapt your approach to your target audience and foster an open dialogue to encourage a deeper understanding of the issue.
If you want to discuss how to flip your green speak into a more tangible language your people understand, don’t hesitate to contact me at amber@amberdaines.com.
In the 15 years since I launched my first PR agency, I have seen many different client types come our way- not just varying wildly the size of companies, their budgets, or sectors they play in but actual personas. As a micro business, we offer high-end expertise across all communications. Still, we are positioned to curate our client base and turn away campaigns and organisations that don’t match our offering or conflict with our values.
The most challenging archetype of a client hard to make happy and create instant alignment with: please enter the world of the “jilted lover” client. This is the one who has had a disappointing or, even worse, disastrous engagement with another PR outfit and comes to us, Bespoke Co seeking redemption. Like any broken-hearted human, they are angry, feel cheated, and want to dump dirt on all PR agencies, seeing them as cowboys and not what they signed up for. It can be hard to keep good faith when you don’t get what was promised, and it costs money and wastes time and energy. I hear you jilted lovers – it sucks.
As you embark on your PR and communications path, I advise you to prove the PR agency’s value. How? In short, by demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of their efforts. Here are some ways they can do so:
By employing these tasks in your strategies from day one, hopefully, PR agencies can effectively demonstrate their value and the positive impact they bring to their client’s businesses. It’s our duty to. Remember that measuring PR is an ongoing process that requires consistent monitoring and evaluation. Setting clear objectives, establishing baseline metrics, and regularly assessing your progress toward achieving your PR goals are essential. Be willing to be open-minded; maybe as the wins come, you can become a tad more enamoured with the value of PR again.
Media training is an essential tool in public relations because it’s a highly effective way to prepare people for a successful media appearance, especially if they are new to media, facing a media storm (aka crisis), or are seasoned at the media interview game but have a new or evolved idea to share. It helps interviewees develop their confidence in live public speaking, nudges their general communication skills, and assists leaders in communicating their message to an audience in an impactful way.
However, the best media interviews address the question being asked with brevity, and clarity, give some specifics, have a clear point, and are more than a marketing tagline.
Here are my pointers to be the rock star type of media talent that gets called back repeatedly by journalists.
Remember, media training is ongoing, and refining your skills over time is essential. With the proper training, practice, and experience, you can become more confident in front of the media faster.
If getting 1:1 media training is one of your personal or professional goals, secure my EOFY offer before 30 June 2023. Save 50% off my usual 1:1 online training price – $1000 down to $500. Go to this link: 1:1 Online Training Package Exclusive Offer. Password: EOFY23
Podcasting is a great way to get your message out into the world, but it’s also a lot of hard work.
For every show that’s listened to by millions of people, there are hundreds with an audience consisting of the host and their mum.
My weekly show makes me money, and I have systemised it more over the past six years to ensure it can work super well without too much time taken from my client work!
However, maybe step back, and pop down that new mic and headset newbie podcasters, as it’s essential to ask yourself the following four questions to determine if podcasting is right for you.
An audience is essential for a successful podcast, and you’ll only find one if you’re creating content with them in mind. If you’re getting into podcasting because your competitors have a show or because you want to hear the sound of your voice, don’t be surprised if you find it hard to convince an audience to listen.
The most successful podcasts deliver value for an audience, whether entertainment, inspiration, or information. Make sure you plan your podcast – giving us all engaging content that audiences crave, and you’ll have a much better chance of making your show successful.
In 2023, it feels like every second person is starting a podcast, but that isn’t a solid reason for you to create one if you don’t have the right idea or it’s not your passion. Why? Because if you don’t nail a killer concept and create a show an audience wants to listen to, it won’t be a success. You’re much better off taking your time and waiting until you know you’ve got an idea people will want to listen to rather than jumping on the bandwagon because everyone else is.
The majority of podcasts fade out after less than three months. Why? Because building a successful podcast can be way more challenging than most people think. It also takes much longer to build an audience than most people have patience.
If you’re doing everything you can to make your show successful, you’re likely spending upwards of ten hours per week on each episode. Getting traction and growing an audience takes effort and consistency, so if you want your show to succeed, you must be willing and able to put in the time and effort to make that happen.
If you’re considering starting a podcast because you want to quit your day job, cool your jets because monetising a podcast is way more complex than people think.
Having a goal of generating revenue is fine, but you have to have an audience first, and you have no idea how long that will take to build. It’s always best to start from where you’re dying to put your content into the world, regardless of whether you’re getting paid to do it, and see where it goes. That way, any money you generate will be a bonus.
If the answer to “Why do you want to start a podcast?” is anything other than ‘Because I’ve got amazing content that will inspire or create debate or maybe entertain, and I long get it into people’s ears,” then think twice. Podcasting is a big commitment with absolutely no guarantee of success. The people I coach, those who have been successful, are those who consistently create valuable and engaging content that appeals directly to their ideal listener – and stick to it. If you’re passionate about every episode, you’ll be happy to keep going even when no one is listening early on. It can be so much fun, make you money and drive new audiences your way but be sure to do your homework and remain realistic about what it takes to reach your podcast dreams!
You got a podcast question you’d like answered? Happy to help – email me at amber@amberdaines.com, and we will reply within 48 hours.
Keen start your podcast but need a little help? Download my free podcast guide at www.amberdaines.com or sign up for my online podcasting course to get cracking faster.
Every podcaster has that moment when things go from super exciting (usually preparation for launch day) to this being more complicated than expected (I’d say episode 12 for many new podcasters, based on a casual chat recently among my course cohort). It can feel hard to know WHY you are even podcasting if your metrics are not what you dreamed of, right?
Here is a short explainer to break down the metrics that matter for your podcast to get sponsors, build a community, or secure future award gongs.
Have you heard people talking about their podcast downloads, unique listeners, streams, and plays and wondered what it all means?
Download numbers are an obsession for podcasters and advertisers. Unfortunately, how they’re measured isn’t perfect (something advertisers like to bring up when you run a network).
Despite this, they’re improving, and the best way to look at your statistics is by comparing your success over time.
I get it! It’s a motivational boost to know that your show is performing better than someone else’s, but download numbers are often a lot lower than most people think they are – and that’s OK!
Most podcasters are better off focusing on their trends and downloads over time and improving those. My show started with under 20 downloads per episode in 2017. Still, historically, some of my older episodes have enjoyed 350,000 plus downloads because we know audiences don’t always listen to the podcast the day it drops.
The data inside your podcast host is pulled from your RSS feed, so wherever your show is played or downloaded, it’s registered in the analytics section of your podcast host. Looking at your podcast stats can be helpful to see an overview of all the places your show is being listened to and the total number of listens.
Suppose you want more granular information about how people interact with your podcast, including consumption data. In that case, you can look inside the dashboards of individual directories like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.
It’s essential to note podcast hosts measure things slightly differently, although hosts who are “IAB version x compliant” or “IAB version x certified” are relatively comparable.
If ‘IAB’ means nothing to you, don’t worry. Just know it’s best to go with a host that’s IAB certified; otherwise, your numbers could be overreported.
You might be thinking, is that a typo? Some podcast apps download a podcast automatically, while others only download it when you press play (often referred to as ‘streaming,’ but it’s a ‘user-initiated download’). For now, most podcast hosts register these two things as the same thing (IAB-compliant hosts will only count the ‘play’ if 60 seconds of the file was played/downloaded). This means there are limitations to this measurement because most people don’t listen to every episode downloaded to their phone, but these still count as a listen whether the content has been consumed or not. Apple Podcasts also stops downloading podcasts if you stop listening to them. Still, many other apps download them forever, meaning download figures on those platforms will appear bigger than they are.
Podcasters are also reluctant to release their stats publicly (unless they’re good), so it’s hard to know what downloads other shows in your niche are getting. When using your analytics to measure success, the best thing to do is to look at your listening and audience trends over time.
As the podcast industry is becoming more standardised, you’ll eventually feel the consequences if you’re with a podcast host that isn’t accurately reporting. If you’ve told advertisers you’re pulling in a certain number of downloads, you shift to an IAB-certified podcast host, or your podcast host decides to adhere to the regulations, you might notice a drop in your downloads. That can be, at best, a real blow to the ego and, at worst, a difficult conversation with sponsors or advertisers as they realise they have paid money for downloads that didn’t exist.
This number will sometimes be referred to in the back end of your podcast host as ‘unique listeners’ or ‘total listeners.’ This number isn’t 100% accurate, but podcast hosts are getting better at triangulating the data based on IP addresses and user agents. Despite that, there are limitations to this number because if you start listening to a podcast on your home Wi-Fi, jump on the train, and then finish the ep when you get to the office, you’ll register as multiple users, which you’re not. Podcast hosts are trying their best to work out ways to prevent this kind of duplication, and they’re getting better, but it’s not a number that should be relied on.
Are people consuming the content you’re making? Note you can get more accurate data on this in directory dashboards like Google and Apple Podcasts rather than your host’s dashboard. If you’ve got a website with show notes, this can also give you valuable data about how people are interacting with the content around your show. Looking at all this data together and watching changes over time will help you make more informed decisions. Just ensure you start with a podcast host that takes measurement seriously because you want your data to be measured as accurately as possible from day one so there are no nasty surprises.
The way we measure “podcast success” is not yet 100% right, but as the industry grows and there’s greater demand for measurability, these tools will only get better. Hopefully, this has eased your worries. As we know, as a podcaster, we invest so much time, money, and energy in this podcasting game.
Final tip: Focus on the statistics you can rely on, and feel free to ignore ones you shouldn’t put as much weight on.
If you want to learn more about how I can help your podcast grow, connect with amber@ambrdaines.com or follow me on Instagram @bespokecoad for more tips and ideas.
