- Image via Wikipedia
Every once in awhile I’m amazed by how many PR people, who’ve actually never had the experience of being a journalist, write “how-to” articles focused around what you should and should not do in interviews with journalists!
I am a card carrying member of the Internet Press Guild and the Online News Association. Having been a journalist/reporter online since 1996, I can tell you that journalists are people too. They’re just like us. They’re trying to do their job well, get paid and stay alive in what has become an increasingly competitive and low pay market.
The majority of journalists write because they love to write. They want to create good stories – they’re not out to get trap you in an interview or take things out of context. I’m speaking primarily in terms of major offline and online publications, not tabloids.
Journalists are not out to get you, they are out to get the story. The story includes your personality so the best thing you can do is be yourself. Don’t be a robot, be a real person. Stop listening to PR flaks who tell you that you have to ONLY talk about your brand or in polished soundbites.
Good content comes from good conversations, real conversations where you present the full picture of your life. Good reporters create amazing stories by making authentic connections with their interviewees.
When I was a full-time dot com journalist you would be amazed at how many CXO level interviews I did where it was heartening to find out the CEO or business leader had a life outside of just their job and their title. In fact, I always tried to share a little bit about my life (stay-at-home Mom wearing journalist cape by day and night between storytime, naps and Cheerios on the floor), and what that did is help my interviewees feel comfortable to share their real lives as well.
Putting the heart first in connecting with journalists who interview you will keep you in their hearts, and more importantly their contact Rolodex, much longer than if you simply choose to not interact with them on a real human level.
Oftentimes the most interesting part of a story comes from you and the journalist realizing you have more in common than just the story. What some PR flaks consider small talk is actually gem talk. These little beautiful gems that come through connecting on a real level with one another.
As a bonus, if you become a source of bigger insight than just your brand, it will help the journalist depend on you for other stories long-term.
Reporters are generous, smart, hard-working writers and their goal is to create valuable content, help them do that by being a valuable human first, and brand spokesperson second.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f5999b8f-0af8-4cda-b0f7-4020070ee3ee)
Use the below list to determine if you just might be a social media junkie. Answer Yes or No. Score 1 for Yes. 0 for No’s (Hint: If you answer Yes to one question you might be a junkie and that is not exactly a good thing.:>)
For someone (me) who is always trying to balance the online with the offline, I feel your social media junkie pain.
You Just Might Be A Social Media Junkie if…
1. You keep dropping a note in your collection plate at church instead of a donation. The note says, “Dear Reverend Hill – why have you not yet started a Facebook fan page for Jesus?”
2. Your wife wants you to be in therapy with her, but you’ve told her you will only do it if you can find a therapist who can dispel his/her wisdom in 140 characters or less. (length of a Twitter)
3. You’ve told your immediate and extended family that the best place for them to find out what you’re up to is on Tweetdeck.
4. Instead of an emergency phone number on your children’s school information – you’ve posted your TwitterID account and told them that is the best way for them to reach you. (The school secretary in particular does not seem hip to the tweeting.)
5. You volunteered for the Parent Teacher Organization group but only on a virtual level and have promised you will send tweets during the school carnival when the principal is dunked.
6. Your Mom closed her Facebook account, because she was getting too many Fan messages from you asking her to join your Fan page.
7. Your husband has a Google alert set up on your name and occasionally searches Google images so he can see what you looked like before you became part of your office chair.
8. Your neighborhood bunko group has unfriended you on Facebook because they don’t much cotten to you sending status updates like, “I just kicked everyone’s butt in bunko. I’m the bunko queen and these women can’t roll a triple six if it killed them.”
9. You tell people you and Barack Obama are very close virtually because you joined his Facebook Fan page.
10. You found your Honors English teacher (Mrs. Whitley) on Facebook and you’re sending her blog posts to redline for you (because after all once a teacher, always a teacher.)
11. Your husband has banned twittering, facebooking, linkedin-ing from the bedroom.
12. Your pug starts a very high pitched noise when he sees you reach for your iPhone.
First day’s recap of Erma Bombeck Conference, and what a day it was! Tomorrow I’ll be presenting my “Overwebbed: Help I’m Having A Social Media Breakdown and I Can’t Tweet Up” and I’m very humbled to be here.
Wonderfully funny and incredibly talented people abound and the dinner this evening could not have been more hilarious. If you’ve not read anything by Laretta LaRoche, please change that and get her books.
She was the keynote speaker this evening and really delivered! Also Tim Bete (past director of Erma Conference) spoke and he was truly funny as well.
The room tonight was packed full and what a great honor to be among so many talented people.
I’m nervous about presenting tomorrow but I’m wearing my tweet-proof vest so all should be well, plus I’ve got to say the spirit here feels incredibly kind and generous. I’m going to try very hard to have the audience at my first “Hello, Ya’ll.”
I also got to hang out with Sam Horn, who I really count as one of my mentors and just think it is incredible gift to know. You should also check out Sam’s books!
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ll be leaving tomorrow to speak at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference which is a great thrill for me. My client Bill Scheft will be speaking there too, as well as one of my heroes Gail Collins.
Erma is another hero of mine and I started reading her books when I was very young and my Mom would pass them to me to inspire me and give me the gift of humor. I’m taking my Mom, a 72 year old English teacher, who still teaches in an 95% economically disadvantaged school district near Dallas. My mom gets the kids in 9th grade who everyone else has “passed along” but those same kids can’t read and often have no one to believe in them. My mom changes all that for them. Several of her students are now in college and many have gone on to work in other careers as well. She inspires them to do more with their lives.
Erma’s writing always inspires me. It is timeless because it is good common sense and elevates the power of humor and love in our lives. Being a humorist is the hardest writing job one can have, yet Erma did it effortlessly. So before I leave for the trip in the morning, I wanted to share my favorite Erma quotes.
1. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.
2. Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
3. Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.
4. If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.
5. Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
6. There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
7. When humor goes, there goes civilization.
8. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”.
9. When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.
10. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” I’ll be presenting “Overwebbed: Help I’ve Had a Social Media Breakdown and I Can’t Tweet Up”. I’ll also be tweeting from the event so look for hashtag #ebww . I think everyone will be using that one for tweets.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=97d29df0-f718-4499-94cb-f8c9544d3115)
So grateful to be included in the “Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy” book.
This book is an incredible tome of leading marketers, writers, PR folks and others on the Web. Hope you’ll take time to check it out. And below are all the fantastic folks who contributed to the book itself.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c4e1bc64-65e4-4a43-acdb-ab6da97ae4f7)
Recent Comments