ChatGPT wants my job. It can’t (and it won’t) have it.

Time to read: 4 minutes

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread for Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd. In this post, he looks at ChatGPT, AI’s risks and benefits, and what’s in store for us as the technology advances.

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread. Especially as mine is one of the professions the technology – especially the likes of ChatGPT – is gunning for. Admittedly, binging on every documentary and podcast the topic has to offer, all with contributions from long-time experts in the field has done little to assuage my fears.

The speed with which AI is developing is raising questions that those in power seem unable to answer. This is a problem. Once artificial general intelligence (AGI) is rolled out, the technology’s passage into maturity will be complete, and humanity’s relationship with robotic intelligence will become one where we are the dependents.

It will mark the most significant point in human history since the first homo sapiens discovered how to create fire. AGI, however, will be a blaze over which we could all too easily lose control forever. Hence the recent dread.

The dread gets real

When ChatGPT trampled onto the scene like a heavily caffeinated Wildebeest in a pensioners’ yoga class, I admit not thinking too much of it. “Another AI service that I can spend my free time interrogating on whether 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is the more effective football formation. Big wow.”

But then I used it, and beads of sweat began forming on my expansive brow. I typed in a made-up, generic title and sat back in horror as the chatbot generated a grammatically sound and, on the face of it, relevant 1,000-word blog.

If it were dread I had experienced before, I wouldn’t even know the word to describe what I experienced at that moment. It was a feeling that lasted for weeks. The gig is up. Time to start thinking about re-training.

The importance of knowing your enemy

Having sought reassurance from family members, friends, and colleagues, I began to excavate my resolve and free it from the claws of the relentless Large Language Models. I love my job, and I’m not losing it to a set of precocious algorithms.

It was time for me to step into the ring with ChatGPT, and we were going bare knuckle.

Instead of using some generic blog title, I re-engaged ChatGPT and typed in the title of an actual blog a real client had asked me to write. The blog outline was separated into different sections and looked depressingly appropriate. Next, I gave the chatbot permission to write the blog in full, and within seconds, it cascaded down my screen.

However, upon reading the blog, an almost transcendental sense of elation washed over me. It was crap. Littered with repetition, from sentence openers to entire sentences, it had zero personality and was laughably light on credible facts and figures. It was crap.

Friend, not foe

With round one going emphatically to the human, I began to recalibrate my whole attitude toward ChatGPT. Although it has undeniably improved since 2022, its ability to produce quality content remains limited, to put it politely. But it does offer other functions that have since proved to be handy.

It is superb for beating writer’s block and has become essential for brainstorming ideas. I’ve also long since learnt that the ability to construct excellent prompts is the most important skill you can acquire when using any form of generative AI.

True though this may be, even with the most professional prompts, the resultant copy is not what any self-respecting copywriter or organisation would ever think to publish. But it can give a decent starting point, a handy blueprint for a competent human to improve upon radically.

In other words, generative AI can be considered a promising work-experience student, approaching their employer and saying, “Hi, I’ve done this for you to try and save you a bit of time.” And I, the employer in this dubious analogy, reply with, “Thank you. I can probably use some of this. Now, you run along and finish transcribing that video for me.”

Even if ChatGPT does become a little too self-assured in the future, it faces another problem even more formidable than me.

The search engines won’t stand for it

When the likes of Google cottoned on that people were stuffing their websites with keywords to dope their SEO, the backlash was ruthless. Many websites were penalised so heavily with SERP (Search Engine Results Page) relegations they never properly recovered.

Expect the same for AI content. Indeed, a raft of AI content detector tools are already sweeping the marketplace, and it seems to be a matter of time before they’re integrated into search engine result generators. The last thing any search engine provider wants is for its users to be pummelled with a load of robot content during their cyber surfing sessions.

Apart from the inevitability of this development is the delicious irony – AI saving the livelihoods of copywriters from AI. *chef’s kiss*.

ChatGPT knows its place. For now.

I don’t know what the future holds for ChatGPT. That’s the one thing that’s still quite scary – no one really does.

However, I do know that in its present form, it can’t respond to detailed briefs as competently as a human copywriter. It can’t understand the unspoken reactions of clients during calls. It can’t offer original insight on any topic, question a client’s approaches or ideas, or inject personality (unless it’s pretending to be a well-known human).

Mercifully, it also seems to understand all of this. With ChatGPT draped against the ropes, sweating and bloodied, I asked it directly if it was coming for my job.

Its response?

“As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to predict the future. However, it’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other AI language model will completely replace copywriters. While AI can be helpful in generating content and assisting with certain tasks, copywriting involves creativity, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of language and communication. These are skills that are difficult for AI to replicate, and human copywriters are likely to remain an important part of the industry.”

Maintain that attitude, ChatGPT, and you and I will get along just fine.

Let’s talk shop

Internal Communications: 3 tips to boost your start-up’s culture

Time to read: 2 minutes

Emma Tucker, our internal communications consultant, provides her top three tips for creating a company culture that is right for you.

All companies have a culture regardless of how old or new they are or the condition of their internal communications. Your culture captures the essence of who you are and how you do things. It can attract people to join you and keep them working effectively and loyally.

For start-ups, culture and vision can be used to convince prospective hires and intentionally defining and promoting both will keep you honest as you grow.

Here are three ways to get intentional with your culture.

1. Define it.

Get your people in a room and discuss what makes the company special. Write it down. Get specific on the words you choose, and don’t be afraid to disagree; it’s in the debate that you’ll uncover areas of tension and uniqueness. Think about the stories you tell about your company – what do they say about you?

Define the values and behaviours you want to live by. For example, you might choose “Impact” as a value and explain the accompanying behaviours as “You accomplish important work that positively impacts our clients”, “You consider the impact of your work on the people around you”, and “You leave a good impression because you take action and deliver on your promises.”

Involve employees in the process by letting them discuss the values and prioritise relevant and helpful behaviours for their work. Then, test it with your clients and external stakeholders. Honest feedback will be your friend.

Keep refining the descriptions until they feel right and truly reflect your thoughts. Aim to define four or five company values. Teams can then decide on the relevant behaviours (aim for three behaviours per value).

2. Embed it.

Weave your culture into every interaction with your employees and clients. It should:

• Be part of hiring, developing, and assessing your people.
• Become integral to how you innovate and grow your business offering.
• Be part and parcel of how you approach client meetings and deliver results.
• Be reflected in your communications, tone, and methods.
• Be instantly recognisable in everything from financial updates to processes and procedures.
• Be projected in team meetings and one-to-one conversations.

Ultimately, your culture should dictate how you measure your performance and success.

3. Evolve it.

Your culture is organic and will evolve whether you intentionally maintain it or not. Revisit the definitions. A set of values and behaviours appropriate for year one might need another look by year five. Check that you haven’t missed an important touchpoint as you’ve grown.

Smart leaders keep their finger on the pulse. Return to your employees and clients, listen to their stories, observe their behaviours, and act on their feedback. This is true internal communications in action. The speed and scale of your growth will dictate the frequency of these checkpoints, but every six months is a sensible guide.

This process is worth the effort because getting intentional about your culture will drive better business outcomes. McKinsey’s Organisational Health Index shows that organisations with top-quartile cultures post a 60% higher shareholder return than median companies and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile.

People who want to add to your culture will perform better, more easily adapt to change, and help you attract more talent. They will be your champions.

Putting in the effort to define, embed, and evolve your culture during the early years of your start-up will save you a lot of time, money, and energy in the long run.

Let’s talk shop

Corporate culture: If you’re going to improve it, talk about it

Time to read: 4 minutes

Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd, looks at why companies need to talk about their corporate culture and values. And why it should be part of every communications plan.

Businesses must regularly monitor and assess seated KPIs to perform optimally. Typically, these KPIs surround functions such as sales, technology infrastructure, PR and marketing, and client relationships.

Critical though these metrics are, they are the supporting walls of the corporate edifice. Without a solid foundation, they are liable to collapse.

That foundation is the corporate culture. Many businesses neglect corporate culture in favour of shorter-term pursuits, yet developing a strong, inclusive, and supportive culture is the key to unlocking maximum potential.

However, simply embedding a strong culture is not enough if you want to reap its rewards; you have to talk about it.

In this blog, we look at the benefits of a great corporate culture. How a selection of Comms Crowd clients developed theirs, and how we’ve helped spread news of their successes to the masses.

The ‘Great Resignation’ has brought corporate culture to the fore

Developing a robust corporate culture was always important, but the Covid-19 pandemic made it critical in the years that followed.

In what became known as the ‘Great Resignation’, employees voluntarily quit their jobs in unprecedented numbers. Between July and September 2021 alone, over 400,000 UK workers left their jobs.

Employees frequently cited a hostile working environment as a reason for leaving. Indeed, such was the prevalence of the phenomenon that ‘toxic workplaces’ became a trending topic nationwide.

The disruption of the Covid years prompted fresh expectations among the workforce regarding what behaviours they are prepared to tolerate. A poor or neglected corporate culture may have been grudgingly endured before the virus escaped ground zero. Times have changed since.

Quorsus, a strategic financial services consultancy and former Comms Crowd client, led discussions on the dangers of toxic company cultures and how to avoid them. Indeed, the company itself was established on a vow that its corporate culture would be positively imbued and reinforced by core values.

Consultancies must prioritise embedding a robust culture and strong values because their people are their product. Quorsus will tell you that it has gone some way to explaining the extraordinary success.

We amplified Quorsus’ approach and message, ensuring its impact was felt across its sector and beyond.

A robust corporate culture breeds productivity

Ask any education professional, and they’ll confirm that praise is essential for a child’s development. The chemical reaction experienced from being told they’ve done a great job immediately boosts a child’s sense of self-worth. It encourages them to continue working hard so they might experience it again.

In other words, it has the power to supercharge their productivity.

Yet, something changes when we reach adulthood and enter the world of work. It’s as though we forget these reward centres exist and how powerful they are. Consequently, praise is often replaced by criticism and our inner child – still so easily motivated by encouraging words – is swallowed by a vortex of ruthless expectation.

Ignoring this reality is short-sighted, to say the least. A national Workplace Culture Survey of US employees found that 63% of respondents claim that workplace culture directly impacts their organisation’s success.

Abundant opportunities drive productivity. When former client and friend of The Crowd dxw, a leading employee-owned digital agency, launched its Returners’ Programme, it broke new ground.

dxw partnered with The Comms Crowd to share and disseminate its story with potential stakeholders. The coverage was such that dxw has become recognised as an expert provider of digital public services and opportunities to those who may feel they have passed them by.

Together, we ensured the world knew of dxw’s leadership position in creating a positive, inclusive culture. In fact, it became one of the first companies to introduce gender pronouns into email signatures.

dxw’s small size notwithstanding, the firm won an array of company culture awards, helping to attract exceptional like-minded talent. Essential for any fast-growing technology enterprise.

Positive cultures promote development

‘The Great Resignation’ jolted many organisations into action. Not wanting to lose their top talent, these firms put a renewed focus on facilitating professional development. They recognised that avoiding high employee turnover requires more than just an amenable working environment.

Before any recruitment drive, senior leaders review factors such as pay scales, perks, and benefits. However attractive they can make each perk if the organisation is renowned as a place where careers stagnate, the drive is doomed to fail.

As such, building a positive culture requires embedding opportunities and routes to success at all levels of the business. The best cultures underpin this by committing to personal development as much as professional development. Achievements are properly rewarded, and a healthy work/life balance is respected.

Another former client, JDX Consulting, since acquired by Delta Capita, attributed its sustained global success to a carefully developed culture. It promoted inclusivity, coaching, and empowerment, allowing the firm to attract diverse, high-quality talent from all walks of life.

By entrusting The Comms Crowd with articulating and sharing its methodologies, JDX became the corporate culture benchmark within its sector before being acquired by Delta Capita.

We then worked with JDX to promote its Festival of Learning, a professional development programme set up by the firm’s HR division. The initiative gives employees the space and tools to grow professionally at their own pace and take control of their career progress.

Showcase your corporate culture with The Comms Crowd

Our clients love us because we’re adept at getting their messages and successes into the public domain and the publications their stakeholders engage with.

It deserves to be celebrated if you have invested time and money into developing a corporate culture that breeds energy, achievement, opportunity, and happiness.

Moreover, potential talent, partners, investors, and clients want to know what you’ve done and are doing. Speak to The Comms Crowd today; our internal comms consultant, PRs, and writers can ensure they will.

Let’s talk shop

The Importance of Building Trust in the World of Regtech

Time to read: 2 minutes

Lauren Bowden, Fintech content lead at The Comms Crowd looks at the opportunities and challenges facing Regtech firms, and the role trust plays in ensuring future success.

When the term Regtech burst onto the scene circa 2015, it was met with mixed reactions. Some were cynical. They dismissed it as spin for existing regulatory technology vendors to benefit from Fintech’s halo effect. Others saw it as a way for new start-ups to shake things up, offering more cost-effective and agile SaaS-based solutions to post-GFC problems.

Regtech is here to stay

Seven years later, with the market projected to reach around USD 33.1 Billion by 2026, countless players are thriving in all areas, from tax to cannabis. Established vendors embrace the portmanteau with open arms and invest in more flexible, forward-looking business models. Few would now dispute that Regtech is here to stay.

That said – there are still a few hurdles these firms must jump before they can realise their full potential. According to the FCA, one of the most active regulators supporting this burgeoning market, it all comes down to trust:

“The trust element is ingrained in the complex ‘business case for RegTech’ – RegTech firms need to convince firms to allow them to work with their most sensitive data assets and systems to solve their problems.”

For regtech firms, trust is everything

Policies, procedures, and – most importantly – legal documentation go a long way to ensure sensitive data assets and systems remain safe. But before anything gets signed, Regtech firms must find ways to demonstrate their trustworthiness. Of course, trust needs to be embedded internally through a solid culture. That culture must cascade from the top down and be cultivated by HR. However, it must also be demonstrable externally, especially in a crowded market. This can be achieved with transparent marketing communications.

• External communications should be planned carefully for start-ups with many moving parts. Investing in building relationships with trade journalists marks the beginning of the journey and is always time well spent. These independent and credible sources are essential conduits for getting news out when the time is right.
• For more established vendors looking to move into the Regtech space, a solid analyst relations programme should be at the heart of the product roadmap. Honest, open, and regular dialogue with the gatekeepers of those ever-important magic quadrants, waves, or rankings should be prioritised.
• Solid content marketing and a strategic social media plan should be shared directly with prospects and customers, including blogs, e-books, infographics, and whitepapers and posted to social media platforms like LinkedIn. Content must speak authentically to the right audience, be relevant, add value, and avoid the overly promotional. With the amount of change in the regulatory landscape, the opportunities for subject matter experts to demonstrate thought leadership and guidance are plentiful.

Your voice deserves to be heard

Regtech firms can employ an arsenal of comms tools at various stages of their evolution. The art is knowing when, what, how, and to whom.

Working with communications professionals who understand the nuances of this complex, jargon-filled environment and how to get messages to hit home will ensure your voice is heard.

Social Media Channels: Do I need to invest in more than one?

Time to read: 3 minutes

A persistent question for B2B companies is whether social media channels have real value. And, if so, which channels are worth the investment. Our social media expert, Simona Cotta Ramusino, shares her views on the best approach.

The outages that have impacted WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram in recent years provided an important lesson for social media managers: make sure you are on multiple platforms. However, another reason B2B firms should nurture multiple social media channels is that they fulfil different purposes.

The way I see it, LinkedIn is about describing who you are, Twitter is about doing what you are, and Facebook is about showing who you are.

Let’s hear it for LinkedIn

LinkedIn remains one of the preferred social media channels for our B2B clients.

According to some recent stats, the platform drives 46% of social traffic to B2B sites and is considered the most credible content source. Other numbers supporting the business case for having a LinkedIn presence include:

• 4 out of 5 people on the platform “drive business decisions”
• there are 61 million “senior-level influencers”
• 33% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn to research purchases

As a fully integrated communications agency, we see LinkedIn management as a key piece of the comms plan.

4 reasons we love LinkedIn

1. You can build your company’s profile within your sector. As your competitors will also likely be on LinkedIn, it is important to be seen and promote your latest company news, updates, and wins.
2. You can promote thought leadership and highlight your company’s experts. This helps put focus on the individuals driving the business as well as your products and services.
3. You can directly engage with peers, clients, and prospects. As with many social media platforms, LinkedIn supports two-way communication, allowing followers to comment on and share your updates. You can also gather their views through polls and posts.
4. You can have a positive impact on employees and attract new hires. Understanding a company’s culture is key when deciding whether it will be the right fit for you. It is no longer a leap of faith or a ‘grass is always greener’ scenario: LinkedIn (and Facebook) can help you understand what it is or would be like working for a certain company.

LinkedIn has also added some interesting new features over the last year to improve user experience and make engagement with followers more interesting:

• LinkedIn Polls
• LinkedIn Live
• Carousels for posts

Also, not quite as new (but still worth noting) is the option to set an event under your company profile, share it with connections, and invite connections to follow your company page.

Is there life beyond LinkedIn for B2B firms?

Yes! Twitter/X is great if you attend virtual or live events and want to share snippets from presentations or keynotes. It also allows you to follow and engage with key influencers in your space, with many analysts and journalists tweeting regularly. However, whether Twitter/X is still an environment in which you want to place your brand is a different question altogether. As content moderation has been all but removed, many brands are leaving the platform.

Facebook is probably the best platform to showcase your culture, the people that make the company a great place to be, and any CSR projects you may be engaged in. It also helps to create a strong feeling of community among employees and is a powerful means of attracting new, like-minded people.

If you are a business that relies more on visual marketing, then Instagram is the place to be. The platform is optimised for videos and images so products and services can be brought to a target audience more engagingly, building trust and increasing traffic to your website. Although Instagram is often disregarded by B2B marketers and viewed mainly as a B2C channel, there are stats and business reasons that support the value of having a presence on the platform:

“B2B companies experience their largest engagement ratios on Instagram—meaning that of the major social sites, Instagram fosters the highest number of interactions per number of followers. Not only does Instagram promote engagement through commenting, but it hosts text, photos, and videos directly on the platform so your followers don’t have to click elsewhere to see the content.”

So, if you are upping your social media game or hiring someone to do it for you, establish what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Equipped with this knowledge, selecting the right platform or platforms becomes much easier.

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We ran a virtual analyst event, and we liked it.

Time to read: 2 minutes

Reflecting on a couple of our recent virtual analyst events, Eria Odhuba, Head of AR, provides some best practice dos and don’ts.

Oh, the joys of jumping onto a plane and flying off to host an analyst event in another city or country. If you speak to some industry colleagues, their eyes go all misty as they remember the best bits (or try to ignore the worst bits) after a year of Zoom calls. Physical meetings, handshakes, drinks at the bar, meals, 1:1 meetings – all seem a distant rose-tinted memory. And nobody is 100% sure they want to start again in 2021.

So tech companies have been attempting the ‘virtual analyst event’, with analyst Twitter feeds telling us who got it right and who didn’t.

One of our clients, Finantix, hosted a couple of virtual analyst events last year, and hit gold because The Comms Crowd’s AR team had the exact analysts that focus on their specific technology joining the events.

What did we learn?

• With only 2 hours for each event, our content had to be spot on. We didn’t have a full day to build up narratives, and each presentation had to deliver compelling content instantly. I don’t see why this should change when we go back to in-person events.
• Customers are your best friend, and getting them to talk to analysts is even better. Just think, analysts have been on virtual events for 12 months listening to vendors wax lyrical about how great they are. The customer just tells them what has actually worked and where they are going. If there is a moment when analysts will not multi-task, it is surely when the customer speaks.
• Good broadband is what keeps us all sane at the moment. Not everybody has great broadband, so glitches are inevitable. But presentations and demos need to run smoothly, so making sure you have the right technology, broadband and back-up as a presenter is crucial.
• Mix it up – videos, demos, panels, presentations. When someone switches their Zoom video off, assume you have lost them. It might not be the case, but if you have rocking content, nobody will feel the need to multi-task and start clearing their inbox (or turn off their video).
• OK, you are not organising flights, hotel rooms or dinners, but making sure analysts have all the right information in the lead-up to the event is crucial. Let them know the agenda, who is speaking and when/if there will be breaks well before the event, and confirm just before it.
• Not least, we learned that however important you are, your dog doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that you are delivering a presentation – there is a damn squirrel in the garden.

Feedback

“Thanks again for helping to pull together an impressive crowd of analysts who cover our space for the briefing yesterday… . First time we have done this in our own right, so it was no mean feat to get so many folks on the call for what was a pretty reasonable discussion.” CMO at Finantix

“Thanks for inviting me. I was able to listen in for the first half. I enjoyed the content, especially the happy client testimonial.” Forrester

“Thanks very much for your kind follow-up! Amazing presentation.” Aite Group

“Great briefing today and clearly a lot going on. There were many other topics that were of interest to us. We would be happy to get in touch at the appropriate time.” Aite Group

What might we do better next time?

• Use the technology we have for more personalised engagements with execs, partners and customers (e.g. meeting rooms, personalised landing pages, etc.)
• Arrange more direct discussions between customers/partners and analysts.
• Once lock-down lifts, find a top notch venue and meet in person!

So we are going to run more analyst events this year, having learnt what worked well. We’ll use them as markers to engage with analysts, but maniacally focus on engagements with analysts between times to keep them abreast of client developments and, just as importantly, listen to what they are seeing in the market. Analyst relations is always a two-way conversation, however you have it.

Content Writing: A personal story of love and indignation

Time to read: 3 minutes

Comms Crowd content creator Anthony McNamara takes a stand on content writing for your audience – not the algorithms.

Different professions attract people for different reasons. Law, for example, will attract those enticed by the potential earnings as much as it will attract those simply wanting to see justice done. Providing both parties do their jobs well, the motivation isn’t particularly important. Content writing, however, is a different beast.

For the love of words

For most content writers (and I make this claim with no supporting empirical data), the primary motivator is a desire to make a living doing what we love – writing.

The thrill of concocting a clever metaphor or constructing a killer closing paragraph is palpable when I achieve either. More so when I receive an emphatic “good job” from the client.

And yet, as my years penning words for cash pass, I am increasingly motivated by a sense of indignation. I still see so much content that isn’t written for the reader’s enjoyment or enlightenment, and it grinds my gears.

I should pause here to stress that I am not taking a potshot at my content-writing brethren. Most of what I see that infuriates me has not been written by a professional content writer. Or, it has, but clearly under the duress of stringent SEO objectives and anxious marketing managers keen for something – anything – to be published.

SEO at the price of coherency

Much content is still produced with only Google algorithms in mind and not the actual human beings who have to read ‘cheap, reliable laptop’ 17 times in a 400-word blog.

It’s not just SEO, though. Many businesses are shrewd enough to know that regular content output is good. But even when they have nothing much to say, they force their writers to say it anyway.

For example, I once read a blog about resolving office conflicts. One shard of wisdom contained was to “walk away and count to 10” in the event of an argument. Basically, lesson one from ‘Anger Management for Toddlers’ but for grown, professional adults with mortgages, lower back pain, and NutriBullets. If I’d been so enraged by this banality, how many others had been, too? How many of those were potential customers?

It’s true that writing with the algorithms as your target audience will get you high up on the results pages. It’s equally true that regularly updated website content will make you appear committed and active. But if the final destination is a hastily cobbled, anti-climactic piece, it will reflect poorly on your brand.

Of course, this should not be the sole motivation for wanting to produce great content. Motivation should also come from knowing that word will soon get around if you become a reliable repository of well-crafted insight. With the right strategy backing it up, regular quality content can elevate your brand to the position of influencer, aka Content Marketing Shangri-La.

Finding your content is one thing; enjoying it is quite another

The point I’m trying to make (and it’s a fair criticism that I’ve gone around the houses making it) is that your written content should always be an illuminating, engaging read. Even if your content has been written with SEO in mind, or because it’s been a fortnight since your last blog, always assume that someone, somewhere, will take the time to read it.

Speak to that person. Respect their intelligence and try to involve them in the conversation. If you have no new knowledge at that moment to share, revisit something old and put a fresh, entertaining spin on it. And if, for whatever reason, you’re unable to do this, pass it over to someone who can.

I’ll end this semi-rant with some advice: remember the following: When a potential customer is reading your content, you are in dialogue with them at that moment in time. You are giving them reasons why your services (and yours alone) are the ones they need.

The question is, how useful are those reasons, and how well are you getting them across?

Mental health – some things you can’t put a spin on

Time to read: 1 minute

After the year we’ve all endured and as a parent and small business owner, Sam Howard adds her voice in support of mental health awareness.

Running the agency and being a lone parent are usually quite enough to be going on with. But aiming for all the plates spinning all of the time is normally OK. It’s the life I’ve chosen and I make a point of rewarding the tough times with the good: Normally we enjoy lots of family travel; yummy dinners with friends; hikes out into the countryside with the hounds etc. So I can usually ride out the storms.

But when thinly-stretched is your base point and then you swap out your reward system  for grief, fear, restrictions and isolation – I guess it’s no surprise that I have sometimes felt completely overwhelmed. Add to that a very ‘tentative’ year for business and ‘bleak’ would just about sum me up for much of 2021.

Also having to bear witness to the carnage this era has wreaked in our children’s lives is extraordinarily painful. An observant parent once noted, “You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.” Effectively keeping me tethered somewhere between despondent and extremely anxious.

I have no magic cure, no top five tips, no slick way of linking this back to our services.

I’m lucky to be old enough to have had my first jab which was huge. And for me, things started to get better when after a winter of all work and no play, I  swapped the laptop for a shovel and headed off into the garden for a couple of weeks to give my brain a bit of a break and to get some perspective.

Looking forward to looking forward

In the short term, I hope that as we all come out of this and are able to reclaim our personal reward system, we can look forward to better times and our mental resilience and stability will be returned to us.

But in the longer term I hope we have learned some collective empathy. Having weathered the menopause, I am no stranger to anxiety and panic attacks. Even though it was only a few years ago, the general consensus at the time was that all I need do was, ‘just get a grip’. With so many of us now more personally acquainted with the debilitations of poor mental health, I hope there will now be a much deeper well of consideration for those in our care. Whether they be colleagues, family or friends who are suffering, let us hope this collective experience, enables us to give them the comfort, patience and support they deserve.

Six ways to annoy a journalist – without really trying

Time to read: 3 minutes

We are very lucky that our head of tech content Sandra Vogel is also a working journalist. It helps keep all of us PRs on our toes. Here she shares some journalist pet hates – forewarned is forearmed.

PRs try their hardest to achieve success with every pitch. Journalists spend big chunks of their day reading pitches and working out what is useful to pursue.

For both parties, it can be a bit of a battlefield. Journalists never have enough time to triage an inbox. For the PR, there are never enough successful placements of a pitch.

There are ways PRs can up their pitching game – and perhaps the first place to look for clues on strategy is identifying things that annoy journalists so that these can be avoided.

Here are six things that can annoy a journalist – and obviously enough, they are six things a PR might want to avoid.

1) Bombarding

One email is enough. If you’re going to send a follow-up, wait a while. Wait a couple of days. Sending a follow-up within hours is not going to win you brownie points. If several PRs are working on an account, ensure only one sends an email to a particular journalist. Journalists don’t want or need to receive multiple copies of the same email from different people.

As for follow-up calls, tread carefully. “Did you get our email about….” is not a good way to go. If you sent it, the journalist got it. If you are going to follow up, do so with more information and a new snippet of interest. Don’t give the task to a junior who may know neither the journalist nor the subject matter. Follow-up calls are part of your journalist relationship building. Use them rarely, use them wisely.

2) Inappropriate addressing

I don’t want to receive emails that start “Hi, Vogel”, “Hi [name]”, “Hi, Andrew”, or anything else that’s not “Hi, Sandra”. But I do receive them. Even though I know this isn’t personal, it annoys me. For some journalists, it will result in immediate hitting of the Delete key before the main point of the email has been reached.

3) Media database errors

If you’re taking the personal approach and setting aside time to check a journalist out and reference their work, ensure you get it right. I’ve had emails that start something like, “I really enjoy your work at [website], and I wanted to run an idea by you”. OK. But if I’ve never worked at [website], alarm bells ring.

This can cause a journalist to decide in a split second that whatever comes next is irrelevant to them and spark another quick reach for the Delete key before any further words are read.

4) Spelling mistooks and word-related offences

Journalists are writers. I know, talk about stating the obvious. But the point is that they are, therefore, highly attuned to spelling, grammar, and other word-related matters. Emails and pitches that have not been through a spell checker, or those with poor grammar and syntax, won’t get much traction. Not everyone is a super-wordsmith. However, a person unable to write a proper sentence or pay attention to a spellchecker should not be let loose on journalist emails.

5) Errors in accompanying documents

Accompanying documents include things like press releases and report summaries. In late February, I received a 2021 press release dated 2020. Seven weeks into the new year. Oh, how the PR and I laughed. I’ve also had press releases and report summaries with tracked changes left in them. These can be amusing and informative, but sometimes the tracked changes can be a bit near the knuckle and embarrassing for the PR and their client. The PRs don’t laugh quite as much then. I am afraid an email request to “please delete without reading” is sent more in hope than expectation.

6) Jargon and weasel words

Any pitch that claims what’s on offer is “unique”, “groundbreaking”, or “game-changing” gives itself a lot to live up to. Usually, it can’t meet the highfalutin claims, and a journalist will not need long to confirm that. Tread carefully about what you claim in a pitch. The watchword here is to sho,w not tell.

Related to this point is the overuse of a range of words that just set journalists’ teeth on edge. Here are a few: showcase, synergy, disruptive, next-generation, revolutionary, innovative, DNA, passionate.

It might be hard to avoid using words like these, but many journalists find them lazy ways of expressing ideas. Avoid.

It’s not too difficult to find out what irks journalists. Just ask a few of those your own agency values and respects the most, and you’ll get a good, strong list of annoyances. That’s step one. Step two is doing something with what you’ve learned. Onwards!

Should PRs be doing more to promote the benefits of earned media?

Time to read: 3 minutes

Tech PR lead Debbie Smith looks to balance the more subtle benefits of earned media against the instant gratification of the click through…

So you’ve just achieved two great pieces of coverage for your client. You send them the links and pat yourself on the back. Then you get a reply from their SEO expert: “But one piece doesn’t link to the website at all, and the other only has a link at the bottom.”

They go on to explain that for SEO purposes, it’s good to get links. But ideally these links would be towards the top of articles to increase click-throughs.

Resisting the temptation to throw your coffee at your screen in exasperation, you take a deep breath and explain PR 101: the difference between earned, owned and paid media.

This is not the only time I’ve had to explain earned media in recent weeks. So, I’ve been thinking about why the question is being asked. Although it may seem glaringly obvious to those of us who’ve spent our careers in B2B PR, perhaps the convergence of different channels has muddied the waters for some marketeers?

It’s not that PRs don’t understand the value of SEO and obtaining links back to the client’s site. It’s simply that earned media is, first and foremost, the tool to build credibility, increase brand trust and manage reputation.

First, let’s clarify what we’re talking about.

• Paid media: you pay for visibility or reach through advertising, advertorial, PPC or affiliate marketing. You have complete control, but it’s the least credible. Ultimately, you are paying to get your audience’s attention.
• Owned media: includes your website, your blogs, your newsletters and your social media channels, where you control both channel and content. This is ideal for education and demonstrating thought leadership. No money is changing hands, but it’s still you explaining to the world why you are so great.
• Earned media: third-party objective endorsement, i.e. someone else is talking about you as an expert, and no money has changed hands. This includes media coverage obtained through PR, where a journalist has covered the story because it’s newsworthy, not because you’ve paid for the coverage. To get this, you need strong content. Whether it’s a genuinely innovative product, an opinion which provides new and informed views, or a piece of thought leadership.

The great benefit of earned media is the credibility it brings which the other two routes can’t provide.

However, the downside is that you don’t get to dictate to the journalists where to put a link back to your client’s site. Or indeed if one is there at all, depending on their editorial policy. You certainly don’t go back to a publication and ask for a link to be added. You’ll be promptly referred – with a few choice words – to their advertising department, and they’ll unlikely feel inclined to write about your clients again.

It gets blurry when earned media becomes ‘online word of mouth’, including shares and reposts, content picked up by third-party sites, and media developed through partners and influencers.

Say you post about your new blog (owned) or the latest press coverage (earned) on your company’s LinkedIn page. When these are shared, they are both ‘online conversations’, even though the content has originated in different ways. Are posts from partners truly earned or based on a mutually beneficial relationship, i.e. owned? And while tech and fintech analysts (i.e. influencers) review products and provide editorial independence, the ASA has taken many so-called consumer influencers to task for not making clear when content has been paid for.

There’s a tendency to class all click-throughs as equal. Perhaps that’s true for buying trainers. It also makes reporting more straightforward! However, in B2B, the clicks driven by third-party objective endorsements are the most likely to generate genuine interest and preference.

The journalists we work with pride themselves on their editorial integrity. This week, a discussion on a journalist and PR social media group made that abundantly clear. So they’ll only cover material that, in their view, has earned its place on their websites.

We’ll continue to focus on obtaining that earned media and other third-party objective endorsement, as well as on generating the strong owned content that drives it. We’ll celebrate when journalists write about our clients because we know there is more to building credibility, increasing brand trust and managing reputation than including a backlink.

Where we sit in the digital marketing mix