Ask any communications agency what it neglects most, and the answer invariably is, Our own PR. The story is as old as the one about the shoemaker’s son going barefoot.
That’s why I’m happy to share three interviews I recently did.
The second interview comes from my former intern at Susan Davis International (SDI). As SDI’s first intern devoted solely to social media, Hannah Redmond embraced the challenge and set the bar high for her successors. Indeed, she ended up pursuing social media as a career, and today works as a senior flack at Rutgers Business School. Here’s our correspondence.
The third and most recent interview comes from Gary Kaskowitz, who hosts the “Marketing 4.0” podcast. Like Hannah, Gary was a pleasure to speak with, which we did for 45 minutes. Here’s the podcast.
A version of this blog post appeared on Brazen Life on November 8, 2011.
Whether you’re seeking a job or looking to advance your career, using social media to raise your visibility is a must. Yet if you want to stand out—either in a stack of resumes or when your boss needs someone to head up a new project—don’t just do what everyone else is doing. Instead, go beyond the cliché of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and write a post for a popular blog.
Is this more time-consuming than sharing a link? Absolutely. Is it more difficult than banging out 140 characters? You bet. Does it seem strange to write for someone else’s blog rather than your own? Certainly.
Yet put the time and effort into crafting a thoughtful piece, and you’ll likely experience a rich range of rewards. At minimum, you’ll demonstrate thought leadership, make a name for yourself, and earn a byline in which you can link to your resume or website. Even better, you could land a promotion, secure a job offer, or generate new business.
For my part, guest-blogging has led to a variety of opportunities. Consider the fruits of my first commentary for Mashable, which was published in August:
Here’s another personal example. A few months before my Mashable debut, I spoke to the American Marketing Association—Washington, DC, about how to win friends and influence bloggers. Afterward, I published my presentation on SlideShare and milked it for threeblogposts. The former has been viewed almost 10,000 times, while the latter included my first piece for Tech Cocktail.
(Of course, it helps that I did my own PR, tweeting to people and companies mentioned in the post and presentation and blasting the links to everyone in my address book.)
Jen Moire, a PR pro in St. Louis, has pursued a similar path (though instead of opining, she reports). In the spring, she wrote her first article for All Facebook. Today, she’s a regular contributor, with all the benefits this brings: more Twitter followers, more traffic to her website, new contacts, and a rep as an insider that boosts her business.
The marketing firm, Eloqua, offers another case study. Over the past year, Eloqua has risen to prominence in the social media space on the strength of its community offerings. Recently, the firm detailed the success of an infographic it released called the Blog Tree:
1,000 tweets
hundreds of inbound links
49 sales-qualified opportunities
introductions to the bloggers featured in the infographic
Elaborating on this last bullet, Joe Chernov, who oversaw the project, tells me that these intros later blossomed into partnerships, whereby the bloggers contributed to Eloqua’s e-books (both its Grande Guides and its Social Media ProBook).
“Dana Canedy [an editor at the New York Times] was engaged to Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King. Their son, Jordan, was born in 2006—when King was in Iraq—and he started writing a journal addressed to Jordan, offering life advice in case he didn’t come back. In October, just a month before King was to return home, he was killed by an improvised explosive device. At the end of the year, the Times planned a series of short profiles of soldiers killed in Iraq, and Canedy volunteered to write about King. . . .
“The story, ‘From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By,’ appeared on page one of the Times on January 1, 2007. Canedy wrote about King’s lessons: how to behave on a date and how to treat people who are different. She movingly described how ‘as a black man he sometimes felt the sting of discrimination,’ yet ‘betrayed no bitterness.’ Readers flooded the paper with letters and e-mails. Organizations invited her to speak. Publishers vied to give her a book contract. Denzel Washington optioned the movie rights.
So whether you’re penning an op-ed or delivering a speech, reporting the news or developing an infographic, guest blogging can open up unexpected doors. Now it’s up to you to start knocking on them.
With a title like The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean, you’d think this book would be an infomercial, dreamed up by a biz-dev-happy marketer. Although I can’t confirm or deny this, not having actually read the book, the below excerpt makes a surprisingly reflective statement about the importance of your midsection.
“Take the person with a six-pack. He’s the icon of strength and good health. He’s lean; he’s strong; he looks good in clothes; he looks good without clothes. Defined abs, in many ways, have defined fitness. But they define something else: They’re the hallmark of a person who’s in control of his body and, as such, in control of his health. . . . When you have abs, you’re telling the world that you’re a disciplined, motivated, confident, and healthy person.”
By the same token, if you let your body sag, the message you’re broadcasting is one of apathy and laziness. If you can make time to read this post, make time to do a few crunches.
Addendum (6/13/2011): A fitting poscript: The day before I published this post, the New York Timesnailed the legacy of Jack LaLanna:
“What he left behind when he died last week, at the toned old age of 96, was not only a sweaty culture of relentless crunching and spinning but also the notion that fitness equals character, and that self-actualization begins with the self-discipline to get and stay in shape. In the post-LaLanne landscape, it’s not the eyes but the abdominals that are windows to the soul …
“Perspiration is a gateway to, and reflection of, higher virtues … A ‘new you’ usually means a trimmer, tauter version, not someone who has learned to speak Mandarin or picked up woodworking skills …
“Steadiness of exercise signals sturdiness of temperament, and physical leanness connotes mental toughness …
“Listen to the way doughy contestants are introduced (and how they talk about themselves) on TV weight-loss shows, which promise redemption through rigorous calisthenics. Saddlebag thighs and love handles are woven together with career frustrations and domestic strife—all of them the wages of sloppy living. Moving past these humiliations and rejoining polite society are contingent on serious gym time.
Addendum (6/19/2011): On the other hand, Julian Michael points out that fat “implies zero about your value as a person in this world.”
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The subject of tipping is a touchy one. No one wants to be called “cheap,” yet people can disagree reasonably about what that means. As someone who eats at or takes out from gratuity-based restaurants (as opposed to McDonalds) three to four times times a week, here’s my two sense.
20% is the new 15%. Assuming your bill is less than $100, the difference between 15% and 20% is less than $5. That’s the price of a desert, or a side dish—before tax—which I suspect most people wouldn’t think twice about ordering because of price
Yet when it comes to a tip, suddenly every dollar takes on great importance. We look at the final tab, which can be higher than we thought, and are reluctant to reach deeper into our pocket. Instead, we rationalize that $10 may only constitute a 15% gratuity, but it’s still a healthy gratuity.
Of course, to the waiter, 15% is 15%. So, why haggle over a few bucks when their effect on your wallet is so little and their effect on hers is so much? As one commentator on Andrew Sullivan’s blog noted, “If I can’t afford to tip and tip well, I can’t afford to eat out.”
Tip for tat. Assuming you frequent the given establishment, you want to be known as a good tipper. Good tippers get good service. Aren’t a few extra bucks worth the extra attention they engender—whether additional roles or chips and salsa, or never having an empty glass? While a waiter can’t turn a dry cut of meat into something zesty, she can make sure that your dining experience (temperature, noise, delays, etc.) is as enjoyable as possible.
Of the all the things to cut corners on, tipping shouldn’t be one of them—for the waiter’s sake and for yours.
As some of you know, I maintain another blog, Sprachgefuhl, which chronicles my pet peeves about the English language. Since I haven’t blogged at No Straw Men in such a long time, here are links to my most recent posts at Sprachgefuhl:
The other day, a friend who I haven’t talked to in a while asked if I am still active in politics. The answer—no—came easily, but the reason necessitated some introspection. Why, after spending four years in college and two years afterward immersed in the field—professionally and personally—have I soured on the subject?
Obviously, that I’ve changed professions accounts for a lot. Yet I think my disenchancement runs deeper. Here’s why.
Finally, on a prominent ListServ of conservative bloggers to which I belong, few seem to mind when the e-mailer calls a politician with whom he disagrees a “douchebag” or “scumbag.” Never mind that the issue is usually trivial, or that the pol is usually a Republican; the rancor toward one’s own party is palpable.
As one who prides himself on no straw men, I find such discourse repugnant.
2. Winning has become more important than doing what’s right. An excerpt from Taylor Branch’s new book, The Clinton Tapes, illustrates this point:
[President Clinton] treated posturing as a natural element. He remarked, for instance, that he had no idea what Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas thought about the merits of gays in the military. “He may genuinely be for it or against it,” said Clinton. “All our discussions have been about the politics.” He said Dole advised him quite candidly that he intended to keep the issue alive as long as he could to trap Clinton on weak ground, where he would “take a pretty good beating.” Similarly, the president said Dole consistently advised that budgets were the most partisan matters between Congress and the White House, and that Clinton could expect to get few if any Republican votes for his omnibus bill on taxes and spending. Clinton said Dole spoke of the opposition’s job not as making deals but rather making the president fail, so he could be replaced as quickly as possible.
Indeed, as a recent article in the New York Times suggests, the advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government, seems more interested in thwarting Obama than thwarting big government. The subtitle of the blog of the libertarian scholar, David Boaz, “Independent thinking in a red-blue town,” makes more sense to me every day I’m here.
In his book, Politics Lost, Joe Klein deplores “the insulting welter of sterilized speechifying, insipid photo ops, and idiotic advertising that passes for public discourse these days.” Wise words. What a shame they’re so true.
Addendum (10/6/2009): In a recent op-ed, Steven Hayward, of the American Enterprise Institute, elaborates on my point:
During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and ’70s to its success in Ronald Reagan’s era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.
Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We’ve traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.
A few months ago, I observed, “To watch me swim is to understand who I am.”
A high school valedictory I delivered provides the explanation, in words, of this declaration. Now, 10 years later, comes the videotape, filmed this past summer in Alexandria, Va:
Two months ago, Hank Buntin, the longtime head coach of the Summit Area YMCA Seals Swim Team, retired. Upon hearing the news, I e-mailed Hank the following letter, which I thought I’d share here.
Hank,
My mother told that your retirement party was richly deserved, well-attended, and fun. I wish I could have been there, so that I could have shared my respect for your steady, storied leadership of the Seals.
Swimming was the rock that, from age eight until 18, brought together therapy, exercise and camaraderie for a couple hours each night. Indeed, had you not chosen me to be part of the Seals after I showed up for try-outs in a baggy, decidedly un-Speedo-like swimsuit almost 20 years ago, my life might have taken a far different direction.
Swimming taught me myriad life lessons–the importance and fruits of hard work, of ethical behavior, of esprit de corps. And you, Hank, taught me that fun and purpose are not mutually exclusive but complementary.
I still wear my Seals t-shirts to the gym, still think of myself as a swimmer, and still experience great pride and fond memories whenever I enter the Summit Y.
Thanks for taking a chance on me, for staying with me, and for inspiring me.
In college, I began experiencing severe headaches. The symptoms were classic migraine: Lightness is blinding, one side of my head (the right) is throbbing, and relief arrives only after at least an hour lying in bed in a dark room.
A physician at the health center clarified the causes. I had been pulling a series of all-nighters, during which I didn’t eat and stole but an hour or two of sleep, after which I rushed to class without breakfast. To wit, sleep deprivation + lack of food = migraine. (To paraphrase George Orwell, Sometimes it takes a MD “to see what is in front of one’s nose.”)
Several months later, a consultation with a neurologist made me aware of Excedrin Migraine. If taken preemptively rather than reactively, this over-the-counter medicine proved to be a panacea for what turned out to be an occassional flare-up.
Of course, pills don’t address root causes, and for the past week and a half, I’ve found myself back in migraine misery. A chart I kept of the time of the episodes, what I ate in the preceding 12 hours, and how many hours I slept the night before, revealed my good old friend: Sleep deprivation + lack of food = migraine.
Now, common sense says the solution is to sleep better and eat better. Yet there’s a broader point about living better.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve pooh-poohed my health. While I’ve never smoked or drank coffee, or even much alcohol outside of social settings, I’ve lived off fast food and Coke. I stopped going to the gym after graduating, I nap regularly because of an erratic sleep schedule, and I seek out stressful situations. While these bad habits don’t cause headaches, they bring about an environment that facilitates them.
Accordingly, if there’s an upside to my recent bout of migraines, it’s that I’m convinced any road to recovery must be holistic. I can’t just start swimming again (as I’ve done); I need to establish a daily exercise routine. I can’t just stop napping after work; I need to become an early riser, on both weekdays and weekends. I can’t just stop eating at Wendy’s; I need to change my diet.
The road to a migraine-free life goes through a moderate lifestyle.
As such, I think the President would be open to the following question, which I submitted this morning for his upcoming online town hall meeting on health care:
What do you think—without caricature—is the strongest, most serious objection to your health care proposal, and how would you reply?
Checking off an item that’s been at the top of my to do list for a couple years now, yesterday I became the proud owner of a flat screen TV. There was nothing wrong per se with my 15-year-old 34” Sony; rather, I wanted something better, specifically, lighter and horizontal.
My first question—plasma or LCD—was answered by way of the paucity of the former and abundance of the latter. My second question—size—was answered by the viewing distance used by a friend who recently bought a 42 incher. Even though the distance in her living room equaled the distance in my bedroom, my poor eyesight suggested that I’d be better off with the next size up, 46”. My third and fourth questions—resolution and refresh rate—were answered by an article from a few months ago in the Los Angeles Times, which convinced me that I wanted 1080p and 120Hz, respectively.
Using these criteria, I began my research. I started with two sites I rely on routinely: BestBuy and Amazon. I used these sites—in addition to a little Googling, which generated this recent article from CNET, “Best HDTVs (43-49 inches)”—to familiarize myself with the range of 46” LCDs. At this point, I decided on a budget of $1,500.
Next, I headed over to ConsumerReports.org, which for my money offers the most reliable recommendations for shopping. In the 46-47” category, CR recommends five sets: the Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR8 (quality score: 77), Samsung UN46B7000 (76), Samsung UN46B6000 (74), Toshiba REGZA 46XV540U (71), and Sony Bravia KDL-46V5100 (71).
I excluded the cheapest and most expensive units—the Toshiba ($1,200) and the Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR8 ($4,000)—and so was left with three choices: the Samsung UN46B7000 ($2,700), Samsung UN46B6000 ($2,520), and Sony Bravia KDL-46V5100 ($1,800). Given my budget, the choice from here was easy: the Sony Bravia KDL-46V5100.
Similarly easy was where to make the purchase. Technically, the wholesaler, Butterfly Photo, offered the best deal ($1,394 total). Yet a little Googling revealed that Dell.com had recently reduced its price to $1,399. And while Dell charges tax and for shipping and handling, I was able to use a coupon for a final price that noticeably bested Butterfly’s.
Many people still prefer to walk into a store, chat with a salesperson, make a purchase and be home within the hour. I prefer research and comparison-shopping online, which, while more of a headache and time-consuming, yields a better price and more confidence in one’s purchase.
Addendum (6/21/2009): Check out this buyer’s guide that appeared a few days ago in the New York Times.
In the first week of my first job, my boss sent me the following e-mail:
“Jonathan: Please find out who voted for BCRA.”
My first instinct was to reply, “Hi Bill: So sorry about this, but I don’t know what BCRA is.” Fortunately, before clicking Send, I rethought my response and instead Googled “BCRA.” Ten seconds later, I found the answer: BCRA stood for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, otherwise known as McCain-Feingold.
These differing responses represent the two types of employees. The first response, which foists the burden back onto the questioner, comes from the slothful employee, who wants to go about his job without exertion and who does not seek success. The second response, which embraces the burden, comes from the achiever. He may not know the answer—and even be utterly ignorant of the subject—but he takes it upon himself to learn. He is averse to answering a question with a question, and considers it a failure if he cannot do what is asked, even with limited information. (A third response, research without success, is fine, as long as the research is undertaken in good faith.)
In short, the slothful employee presents his boss with problems, whereas the achiever presents him with solutions. One is a problem; the other is a problem-solver.
Think about which person you are the next time you receive a request—and not just from a superior—which asks for something about which you’re ignorant. Instead of reaching for the Reply button, scroll a little farther for the search bar. You may surprise yourself.
Recently, PR Newsnamed Susan Davis International a finalist for Small PR Firm of the Year. As part of this process, SDI was asked to submit a one-minute, day-in-the-life-of video. Our submission, called “Check,” was produced in high definition by Jon Miles ofLagnaippe. My cameo comes at the :31 mark.
A version of this blog post appeared on the Hamilton College Web site (August 30, 2004) and in the Utica Observer-Dispatch (September 1, 2004).
If you’re an undergraduate majoring in political science, attending the 2004 Republican National Convention is something to brag about to classmates. If you’re also an editorial intern at Time magazine, it’s a good reason to miss the first week of classes. If the Time building in which you work is less than 20 blocks away from the convention at Madison Square Garden—and you have a press convention pass—it’s better than college; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Then there are the parties: breakfast with CNN anchors, a forum at the Council on Foreign Relations, lunch with some U.S. senators, dinner at William F. Buckley’s home. Of course, now that I’ve dropped them, I can say that names no longer impress me. Indeed, my office (not a cubicle, by the way) is mere doors away from Joel Stein (columnist); Joe Klein (author of Primary Colors); Romesh Ratnesar (world editor); Nancy Gibbs (the go-to writer for cover stories); Jeffrey Kluger (coauthor of Apollo 13); and Lisa Beyer (nation editor). As a 21-year-old, I only hope my future can compete with my present.
But what a present it has been. For contributions to the Notebook section, which leads the magazine and includes the Performance of the Week, Verbatim, Milestones and X-Number of Years Ago in Time, my name appears each week in print. In the August 2nd issue I received my own byline for a “splash” on forthcoming books related to Donald Trump’s Apprentice show. Two weeks earlier, I transcribed an interview Time’s national political correspondent, Karen Tumulty, conducted with John Kerry and John Edwards. The uncut copy showed some sharp contrasts: Edwards, whose optimistic vocabulary reflected a boyish sunniness, strove to demonstrate deference, only to reveal diffidence, whereas Kerry alternated between undue gravitas, when others laughed, and anger, when Time noted he had said in December that if he were not running, he would vote for Dick Gephardt.
On the lighter side, last week at the famous Avalon nightclub, I attended the book launch for Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale (Regan). So impressed were Jenna’s handlers that Time would cover this event, I found myself interviewing the allegedly “most downloaded woman” and her entourage. In a more tasteful setting, Time’s managing editor once solicited the opinions of the interns on the cover for our Las Vegas story. Out of the five pictures of scantily clad women dancing on a table, which did we prefer and why? It was obvious that the cover would primarily appeal to a young demographic, so I chose the one that displayed an additional girl. (My preference prevailed.)
Two weeks later, we put swimming phenom Michael Phelps on the cover, garbed in an even skimpier Speedo. But whereas Phelps was an easy choice, discussion over a subsequent cover pitted Michael Moore and his blockbuster documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, against Saturn and the Cassini-Huygens probe then orbiting the planet. This made for a challenging and lively debate among the senior editors, and remained unconcluded until Sunday, when Time goes to press.
A version of this blog post appeared in the Hamilton College Spectator (January 30, 2004), in the Utica Observer-Dispatch (February 3, 2004), and on SOLOHQ.com (February 5, 2004), and was noted on the Hamilton College Web site (February 3, 2004).
With 11 other Hamilton students this past weekend, I volunteered for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in Keene, NH. Listening to the Democratic candidates in person and their supporters’ questions, mixed with many personal conversations, including phone and front-door solicitations, led me to some general reflections on American politics.
First, just because you like political science doesn’t mean you’ll like political activism. In the former, one debates whether Saddam was a threat or whether we could have contained him. In the latter, one lambastes either the absence of weapons of mass destruction or the people lambasting that absence.
Second, slogans trump substance. Howard Dean declares himself “pro-education.” John Kerry asks, “If George Bush wants to make foreign policy an issue in this campaign, I say, ‘Bring it on!’” Al Sharpton refers to “weapons of mass deception.” Yet while these sound bites generate applause, they say nothing. Who, after all, could be anti-education in the broadest sense? We may laugh, but we learn nothing about a candidate’s positions.
Third is the job known as “visibility.” It’s as simple as it sounds: you stand in a well-trafficked public place waving a big sign featuring your candidate’s name. Yet while such advertisements may quickly inform passersby of a candidate’s relative popularity, they appeal to a herd mentality: vote for Dean because everyone else is.
Fourth, asking volunteers why they support a candidate or why they abhor Bush or how Kerry differs from Dean reveals an uninformed populace. Typical answers cite not political positions but personalities.
Fifth, supporters criticize their opponents more than they promote their own candidate. On one particularly flagrant occasion, while I took a break to read a book for my history class titled Inside Hitler’s Germany, one man asked me, “Reading about Bush, huh?”
Sixth, presidential campaigning requires the skin of an oak tree, the excuses of a Hamilton student pleading for an extension on a final paper, and a lockjaw smile. Remember, though, that we all have skeletons in our closets, and they’d tumble out if scrutinized by every reporter across America.
In the end, I’m glad I went, because I experienced politics at its best—no place is busier politically than Iowa or New Hampshire during caucus and primary season—and politics at its worst: mud-slinging and anti-intellectualism. Of course, I can say these things only because I harbor no political aspirations.
Posted by Jonathan Rick in 
Before entering the digital space…
I flacked for the American Conservative Union and the Cato Institute, and reported for Time magazine and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.