Thursday, May 24, 2018

Unless You're Monitoring the Media, You're Missing Out


In college, I had a journalism professor ask our class how many of us had signed up for Google Alerts as a media monitoring tool to support our coverage areas. Aging myself a bit, Google Alerts was a relatively new idea then. All the same, when no one in the class raised their hand, we all got scolded. It’s a painful memory.

Luckily, I never forgot the core tenets of that lesson. Media monitoring is crucial for anyone with a media life, including healthcare tech companies. If you don’t know what is being said about your area of expertise, it’s hard to keep up with the conversation. And, more importantly, unless you’re actively keeping an eye on what the web is saying about you, you can miss out on valuable media coverage, not to mention all the insights hidden within the coverage you didn’t get.
 
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Wednesday, January 24, 2018

What Star Wars and Loot Boxes Can Teach Us About Avoiding a PR Crisis




If you follow the world of video games like I do, you’re familiar with Electronic Arts (EA), a wildly successful, publically traded, developer/publisher whose industry prominence has earned them exclusive licenses to some of the world’s biggest brands, including the NFL, UFC, and Star Wars. EA is no stranger to controversy, be it a conflict over pricing or their purchase of smaller development talent. However, in late 2017, the company’s stock took a $3 billion hit after their latest controversy became a full-blown PR crisis, prompting legislative action that equated EA’s business practices to gambling, in addition to a major drop in consumer sales.

While the situation now stands as a shining example of a communication failure, the truth is, things should never have spiraled out of control. Hidden within this PR nightmare are lessons to be learned for communication professionals in every industry on how to better manage a crisis.
  

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Customer Spokespersons: The Path to PR Success


For companies looking to breathe new life into a PR or marketing campaign, product launches are exciting, as is news on awards or other recognition. But, nothing is more powerful than an advocate who can praise your company without sounding like an insider – yes, I’m talking about customers. Customer spokespersons are the special sauce of any PR campaign.