Notes from the Ombudsman: How to Get Noticed at the Editorial Desk

Hats off to the Washington Post Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, for his gem of an article from Sunday's paper which provides tips on how to potentially get published in the editorial section of the outlet, particularly the Letters to the Editor page.

Alexander notes that, "...newspapers inform, but they also incite. And nothing embodies the First Amendment like a riotous exchange of views on the opinion pages." Isn't that the truth! Admittance into the always hot opinion section of national papers is always high the list for many organizations and individuals that have a stake in our communities and want their voices heard.

If you or your organization has a hot topic to address and think it should be in the Washington Post (or other high visibility media outlets) consider this: You have less than a 4 percent chance that it will get published.

For perspective, the Post receives an average of 300 letters to the editor a day, or more than 109,000 a year. Only about 3,900 are selected for publication; roughly 75 a week. Fear not! Alexander has some tips to share that might get your entry noticed...

According to Alexander, the way into the hearts of the Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, is to do the following:

• If something in The Post stirs you, sound off with a letter to the editor;
• do it fast;
• be concise and;
• if it makes sense, send it Friday afternoon.

This is good solid advice that pretty much holds true for most media outlets with national reach. It's one of the most honest list of tips I've seen on this topic in a while and recommend trying them out next time you have an issue to raise with the Washington Post or others.

When Bad Things Happen to a Good Company

Crisis communicators are pitching themselves as commentators today due to the big news from Japan. Toyota, one the world’s largest brands, is suffering its first big PR crisis all due to mangled communications. By issuing a recall on two-thirds of their inventory on the road without clearly informing their employees of talking points and the resolution process, Toyota has badly bruised their reputation.

The issue began last fall after an accident involving a sticky gas pedal killed a carload of passengers. Why didn’t they act sooner to solve the problem and then use transparent communications with employees and customers? It’s anyone’s guess.

The current crisis for this company will cost them in the hundreds of millions of dollars and that’s not to mention the loss in reputation. This has left sales teams scratching their heads, angry customers and embarrassed Toyota executives. There is one place that we know consumers are looking for information – the Toyota website. According to Alexa.com, traffic to the Toyota.com site has increased 20% in one day. Just three month ago it was down 3%.

The lesson in this?
• Solve problems as they happen
• Be transparent
• Coordinate both internal and external communications
• Pay close attention to your website information – it’s the front door to the company
• It may cost money to recall product, but reviving a brand is just as costly

Unbreakable? Perhaps Not....

A friend of mine on Facebook posted this video and I couldn’t help but comment on the lesson that it provides for every organization promoting a product or service. In the video, a BBC reporter has stopped by a booth at CES 2010 to test a phone that is termed “unbreakable” by the CEO he’s interviewing. Gulp. Needless to say, the reporter does break the phone much to the chagrin of an embarrassed executive. Back to the drawing board for marketing wordsmiths at Company X! It’s a good lesson for all of us who are responsible for crafting messages. If I had to create a highway sign out of this it would read: Alert! Superlatives and adjectives can kill the best of plans. Use judiciously and at your own risk.

Guest Blogger: Shane McLaughlin - Would Columbus Recognize This New World?

This new world we call digital media is a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because we can get information on anything nearly as fast as it happens. Best Buy accidentally prices TVs at $9.99 and BAM everyone and their Facebook friends are crashing the company's e-commerce engines.

But it's also a curse because we are overwhelmed with that same information. Making sense of it, verifying it, even just keeping up with it, constantly gets harder. "Drinking from a fire hose" was yesterday's allegory…it's more like "swallowing a tsunami."

I have been responsible for communications to mass audiences at several FORTUNE 500 companies, including currently as the world's largest maker of cell phones. Getting your message out effectively is no small feat. But there are some simple things you can do that will help your communication -- whether it's a press release, company-wide email, executive speech or Website overhaul -- get through.

I call them "Shane's top five ways to grab attention." Here they are.

1. Be brief. Get in and get out. Make your point in as few words as possible. In fact, I've already wasted far too many words telling you that.

2. Be unique. If people wear ties around your office, your voice will probably not sound like a Silicon-Valley startup where they break for squirt gun fights. Think about what you write and how it reflects your culture, your industry, your mission, your customers…the right voice will come naturally and it will become uniquely…you.

3. Be topical. Connect with breaking news. Use the real-world story about Bernie Madoff to underscore the importance of the ethics policy. Use a big sports win to rally the sales team during crunch time. If people are talking about it, work it into your message to make your point.

4. Be funny. Humor is not always appropriate in the workplace. But it goes a long way when it's well done and can be a great stress reliever. I once wrote a phony story on April Fool's day about how the CEO had jumped ship to become a full time roadie for the company rock band. We got flooded with LOLs from all over the company.

5. Be action-oriented. This may be last on my list, but it's most important. Because it's not only about making people read your message, it's about motivating them to take action -- whether they are a customer buying your product or a reporter giving you the cover story. Make whatever action you want people to take an obvious, glaring point in your communication…if you are compelling enough, people will respond.

Shane McLaughlin is a communications manager and executive speechwriter at Nokia's North American headquarters in White Plains, New York. He has written for the Boston Globe, PR News, Best Practices in Corporate Communications, Inc. Magazine and a variety of Web-based publications. Previously, he was a speechwriter and internal communications manager at Nextel, working on M&A communications during its merger with Sprint. He is based in New York.

Guest Blogger: Jeanne Jennings - Maximizing Deliverability for Email Marketing

In celebration of the new month, I'm pleased to bring you a guest blogger submission by friend, colleague and email marketing guru, Jeanne Jennings (www.jeannejennings.com). For anyone who is charged with managing communictions efforts using email, the topic below sheds new light on how to minimize bounces and maximize reach using email.

Maximizing Deliverability for Email Marketing

Sending a press release via email is great – but knowing that it was delivered to the inbox of your intended recipients is even better.

If you’re sending email from your own servers or using an email service provider (ESP), there are some free tools you can use to gauge your “deliverability,” which is a fancy word for the likelihood that your messages are making it to the inbox. Knowledge is power; if you aren’t checking your deliverability on a regular basis, you might have a problem and not even know it.

To check your deliverability, you’ll need the IP address of the server sending your email (best) or the domain name that appears in your sender address. The latter only works if you’re using your own domain (“gaia.com,” “jeannejennings.com”), not if you’re using a generic domain (“aol.com,” “verizon.net,” “gmail.com”). Even if you have your own domain, it’s still good to check both that and your IP address.

If you’re sending from your own server, ask your IT team for the IP address. If not, you can still get it with just a little investigative work.

Your IP address appears in the email message header of every email you send. To find it, include yourself on the send list and wait for the email to reach your inbox.
If you’re using Outlook, you can then right click on the message in your inbox (not when it’s open full screen) and choose “Options” from the drop down menu. In the “Internet Headers” section of the Message Options box (at the bottom), scroll until you see “Received: from…” then scan for a ten digit number in brackets that looks something like this “[72.167.180.17]” – that’s the IP address of the server your email was sent from. If you’re using a different email client to read email, click on “help” to find out how to view your Internet headers and find your IP address.

If it looks like you might have a problem, contact your ESP or your in-house IT team and ask them to look into it. They can contact the owners of the blacklists that are blocking your mail and find out what about your email messages (or the email messages of others sending from your server) is causing the server to be tagged as one sending spam.

If it’s something that’s easily fixed or if they can show that it’s a “false positive” (meaning that your mail is mistakenly being identified as spam), you can clear your good name and get your messages back on track to the inbox.

To learn more about two free email deliverability tools you can check out today, read my recent column on ClickZ.

More on Jeanne Jennings
Jeanne Jennings is a leading authority and independent consultant with over 15 years of experience in the e-mail and online realm. She specializes in all aspects of e-mail marketing and publishing, from strategy through design and metrics analysis. Jeanne works with medium- to enterprise-sized organizations and is expert at helping her clients become more effective and more profitable online. She is the author of "The Email Marketing Kit: The Ultimate Email Marketer’s Bible" (SitePoint, 2007) and publisher of "The Jennings Report," a free e-mail newsletter for online marketing professionals. Visit her online at JeanneJennings.com.

“I Solve Problems”

Anyone who has watched the megahit Tarantino movie “Pulp Fiction” will remember the character Harvey Keitel plays in the movie - the enigmatic Winston Wolf. Winston is called in to clean up bad “situations”, has likely seen just about everything there is and can get things done efficiently and quickly. This character has been on my mind over the past few weeks based on discussions with colleagues who have stories about how agencies didn’t work out or unqualified consultants took a client for a long ride only to drop them off in on a deserted plain never to be seen again. Perhaps both client and service provider can learn from these stories, and more importantly learn to identify common issues as they arise and proactively solve for them.

So how can consultants and clients break the cycle and move towards a positive outcome? Answer: Understand the rules of engagement and best practices for professional engagement. What should clients know about their agency or practitioner before starting a professional relationship? How can we, together, produce a positive outcome? Based on my experience, here are my three areas of advice…

- Ask about agency/consultants strengths and you will also gain insight into weaknesses. It’s what they don’t say that will tell you what you need to know. More importantly, can you accept what they have to offer and what they lack? Acceptance is the key.
- Get an understanding of background for the principal’s that will work with your business. Have they walked a mile in your shoes as a client? Finding someone who understands both agency and client-side perspectives can be invaluable (disclaimer: I’m biased).
- Does your organization have the bandwidth to manage the relationship with a PR pro? We can’t go on autopilot and need to be involved in internal conversations (read: learn your business) to the extent that we can help develop a public voice and footprint for you. This means we can’t report to the CEO’s admin on a daily basis – we need to be aligned with an internal champion and professional who can speak our language. By determining how much time you can allocate, it will become clear as to whether or not an agency or a consultant makes sense.

Perhaps these guidelines can get us to a place where Mr. Wolf turns to into Mr. Clean?

The Technology Revolution (literally)

As many of us in the PR profession have come to find out over the past few years, social media is now a key element of any communications program. A good example of social media's reach can be witnessed in the current Tehran + Twitter news story. This story has brought to light what many of us already know - social media and the networks they create can be powerful tools for communicating with and influencing a mass audience. Even the Pentagon is considering how to incorporate social media into it's sphere of influence.

While Tweeting is not for everyone, I recommend at least dipping a toe in the increasingly large pool of social networking options. C'mon in, the water is warm...