Tips for Fighting PR Complacency

During my job search I have talked to a lot of internal marketing folks about a wide range of topics. I was amazed at how many of the issues were similar -- need for more leads, expanding markets and dissatisfaction with their PR agencies. Having worked at four agencies throughout my career (one of them twice), I know that clients always find something to be upset about (warranted or not). What really surprised me was that almost every person told me their agency had become complacent.

Really? Complacent? [kuh m-pley-suh nt] pleased, esp. with oneself or one's merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied: The voters are too complacent to change the government.

I found this definition interesting because of the phrase, “often without awareness of some potential danger or defect.” It’s almost worse than being just plain lazy. How does anyone become complacent in this economic environment?

Because it seems to be a widespread problem, I decided to provide a little free advice to all those complacent agencies out there. The following ideas should sound familiar -- you just forget about them when you’re busy resting on your laurels.

1. Pay attention to what’s happening in the industry. Read articles, blogs, research, etc. What trends are emerging that your client can address? What’s not being covered?

2. Check out your client’s competitors. What piece of the story do they not have that your client does? Who is covering the competition that should be covering your client?

3. Read your client’s content. Blogs, white papers and customer stories are all good sources of new pitches.

4. Listen. What issues come up on every client call that you haven’t addressed? What’s on the wish list that you could tackle?

5. Dust off your annual plan or the pitch you used to win the business. What did you promise that hasn’t happened?

And one more for good measure….
Remember there is someone out there who is desperate for a new client and is willing to do what you do for less money, and willing go out of their way to prove it.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

With school starting next week for most kids, I've been giving a lot of thought to the question, "How did you spend your summer vacation?" When I was laid off in April, I thought it would take a couple months for me to get back to work (I'm so much better connected than I was 8 years ago when it took almost a year). If it took more time than that, I figured it wouldn't be so bad to have the summer off. After all, I've been working almost every summer in some capacity since 1983 (yes, really), and with Wilson starting school in the fall it might be fun to play all summer.

Although I took on the role of stay-at-home mom, I tried to maintain the other part of my dual-identity and spend some time each day looking for work (which is also a full-time job). I think I've been able to balance both -- I've had at least one job-related interaction every week and still played almost every day. Now that the balance will be shifting back to my role as job seeker, I will need to answer the related question, "How have you been spending your time off?"

Well, during my summer off I ...

1. Started a blog. I think that's more accurate to say than, "became a blogger." It's been a good exercise for me to blog and something I plan to continue; I have a growing list of things to blog about. Once I get on a regular schedule again, I'll be able to carve out more time to blog more consistently. And really think about how to promote it.

2. Networked. I believe all the reports that networking is the best way to get a job. Every job I've had in my professional life came through my network. Since I've been home, I've had a lot good of coffees/lunches and calls with mentors, former colleagues, recruiters and new friends. My LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook networks have expanded. Although I don't have a new job yet, these conversations gave me good ideas about where to search, how to sell myself, and what I really want to do next. I'm closer to "springtime in Paris."

3. Freelanced. One thing that really kept me connected to the PR world during my time off was working with the folks at 3Point Communications. I have enjoyed the conversations with the network that is helping the agency get off the ground. I was also able to contribute my expertise to two RFIs for potential clients. Unfortunately, the companies looking to bring on external resources are in the same holding pattern as those hiring staff.

4. Visited family. I had the luxury this summer to make several trips to see my immediate family. Since no one lives near us, we usually find time to make one (maybe two) visits to Western and Northern NY each summer. This year I was able to help my sister pack a little before her move to VA, celebrate my niece's 5th birthday in person, make 3 trips to the Adirondacks, and spend time with my cousins in Vermont. The one summertime trip we missed this year was the annual pilgrimage to the Erie County Fair.

5. Enjoyed the summer. We had a hot and sunny summer in New England this year and I took advantage of it. I was so glad to have a pool! For the first time in years I have a fantastic tan, without using baby oil (does anyone do that today?!?). I did lots of fun things this summer, like spending several days at the beach, watching my son become a swimmer, weeding, picnicking in the front yard, and camping with friends.

I am really grateful for my summer off with Wilson, but ready for what's next.

Are Gen Xers too Busy for Facebook?

About a month ago, I read several articles about Facebook and the generation gap. One blog post asked whether Gen X was afraid of using Facebook for networking, and others talked about their low usage of social media tools compared with Gen Y and even Boomers. The following week, a report by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research found that 39 percent of Gen Y women proclaim themselves as Facebook addicts. Stats about Facebook accounts came out this week on Social Media Today -- more than 40% of the US population has an account.

It got me thinking about my own experience. Every morning I open email, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to check in on my contacts and look for potential job leads. Then I looked at my own circle of friends and family... maybe half of them are on Facebook or LinkedIn. I decided to do an informal survey of my fellow Gen Xers to find out what tools they use, why they are not active in social networks and how they communicate with friends/family. I received a handful of responses to an email and spoke to several more people at BBQs over the last month.

It turns out the majority of my friends who are not active in social networks are either teachers or stay-at-home moms. In their roles they are not required to spend a lot of time online, and don't have much use for LinkedIn or Plaxo. The main reason they gave for not using Facebook was lack of time. I understand. It has taken me a while to write this blog because I underestimated the amount of distraction spending all day with a 5 year-old would cause. Anyway, phone is the primary method of communication for my respondents, followed by email. I know they don't email much since I get an email maybe once a month with updates, and some people did not respond to my request for help. When they do send emails, they use it to share pictures rather than a through a photo sharing site, like Shutterfly or Snapfish.

My friends/family who do work also responded that they don't have time for Facebook. They use email more often than those at home, but spent most of their time online doing job-related activities or paying bills. Even my husband who uses LinkedIn for work complained about the time it takes to log in to a separate site when he gets the email alerts. He also claimed that it can be a major time suck because once you're on the site, there are a lot of things to do. An entrepreneur friend is on Facebook (barely), but not on LinkedIn. Although we've discussed the value of LinkedIn for job hunting and business development for my world, he doesn't see the need for it in his business. One of my cousins said he would use any of the social networking tools when his writing career took off and he saw a clear business ROI in developing/maintaining those networks. I think the new tools in Facebook and LinkedIn make it easier to group friends/companies to quickly scan for relevant information.

Privacy came in a close second as a Facebook deterrent. As some of the articles mentioned, my Gen X friends are surprised by Gen Y's need to share everything. My friends would rather send an email to a select group than risk their personal information getting into the wrong hands. Facebook, for my friends, seems to be an all or nothing activity. Perhaps if we grew up with tools that enabled us to share more, we would. Maybe Tammy Erickson, Harvard Business Review contributor and author of What's Next, Gen X? is right. She notes that as a group, Gen Xers are intensely private, mistrustful and strongly committed to a small circle of friends. I was dragged into Facebook when I was promoting Groundswell, and now I'm addicted. It's not the first thing I check every morning, but close.

Any other ideas on what's causing the generation gap? Are we more resistant to change than those a generation ahead? Maybe when our kids are in college, we'll join to check up on them.

I like it behind the scenes

Although this post took a while to write after my vacation, I had elements of it swimming in my head long before I decided to blog. It goes back to a conversation I had with a former colleague, Joe Chernov, when I was still at B&O. Acting as a good agency VP, I asked him if he would be looking for an agency in his new role. He mentioned that if he was going to hire an agency, he would call Shift because his friend, Todd Defren, works there. Then he added, "but Todd would be too busy Tweeting to work on my account." I started thinking about B&O's lack of visibility in the world of social media. No one there was as visible as Todd, not even close. How "social" does an agency/PR professional need to be to demonstrate that they get it? Are case studies enough or do they need to have direct experience for themselves? B&O does fantastic social media work for Oracle.

As you may have noticed in my previous posts, I'm not a big fan of the spotlight. I generally don't like to be the center of attention. I sang solos and had parts in the high school plays, but it made me a little nervous. I was student director of the musical senior year and was devastated not to have a "real part." I figured I had earned it by that point. To my surprise, that experience taught me that I prefer to help the star shine than to be the star, and I’m really good at it. My sister is an actress and I am happy to let her have the stage. I had a similar experience in college. I anchored the campus TV news, but got really nervous before each newscast. It took a while but I learned that I loved producing the news; making sure all the elements came together; watching as each segment hit its time mark.

My PR career has allowed me to do the same thing. I get to help people and businesses tell their stories and make them look good. I consider myself a broker, linking the right stories with the right outlets, knowing what elements are needed to succeed. My Corp Comm job at Forrester continued the trend. I developed a Speakers Bureau to make better connections with event management companies to develop compelling outlets for Forrester analysts, and deliver a solid product to the audience. It's always been about building relationships and making the connections. I credit Navi Radjou for my understanding of what it means to be a Broker. I helped promote his concept of Innovation Networks, in which the Broker plays a key role in transforming inventions into innovations.

I knew in high school and college that some of the applause was for me; the star/anchor received the accolades in part because of what I did. Years later, the fantastic media hit/speaking engagement could not have happened if someone like me didn't put the pieces together. So, does someone who is comfortable standing in the shadows allowing other people shine, need to come out into the light? I've had a lot of conversations over the last few months with people across the industry about this topic. The answer seems to be yes. But I don't need to be the spokesperson, I want to make them look good. Is that OK?

Path to Transparency

The world was pretty different when I was looking for a job eight years ago following the dot-com boom. It was before the dawn of social networking, LinkedIn was a couple years from launching, and WIND breakfasts were the place to be. No one was talking about transparency. In fact, most of the advice from job sites was quite the opposite. I remember reading in more than one place that women of childbearing age should not wear their wedding rings to interviews. The thought was that age and marital status would indicate to potential employers that they could be paying for maternity leave or losing you to motherhood. It was one more strike against you in a very competitive job market.

Nearly ten years later I'm still getting job search advice about hiding elements of my identity. This time the advice is to not let people know I'm in the protected group of people over 40. At a time when people are working well into their 60's, who would think that 40 is protected from age discrimination? I have a good 20 years left in my career! Anyway, the advice is not to put dates next to your college degrees so potential employers can't do the math and figure out your age. Since HR people are prevented from asking direct questions about age, marital status and whether you have children, why volunteer answers that could jeopardise your chances of landing the job?

So if I don't want HR people to have preconceived ideas about my potential motherhood or retirement date, why is everyone asking me to be transparent? We're calling for transparency from our government, the companies we do business with and from our colleagues. And we have more and more ways to share all this "protected" information. Even the business network, LinkedIn, offers you the opportunity to share your birth date. How much sharing do we need? Does posting pictures of my son's missing teeth on Facebook hurt my chances of landing a full-time job in the city of Boston because a potential employer will assume that I will want a flexible work schedule without a commute? Or does it make me more real? Or authentic? I think authenticity is more important than transparency. Do you need to be fully transparent to be authentic?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm not sure about being transparent. I have tried really hard to keep my personal and professional lives separate; even using different names to "protect the innocent." People who know me well know that I'm an open book; sometimes too transparent. I'm working my way down the path of transparency in my professional life. For now I'm becoming translucent -- permitting light (ideas) to pass through but diffusing it so that persons, objects, etc., on the opposite side are not completely visible. It reminds me of Forrester CEO George Colony's Facebook photo. It's a shot of him obscured by rain on a window. You sort of know who it is, but you can't make out all of the details. I want to share my ideas, but not let people know absolutely everything.

This blog is one way for me to explore how/when to open myself up to the rest of the world. Who knows, I might be renaming it before too long.

Dual Identity

In addition to this blog and LinkedIn, I tweet occasionally and am active on Facebook. My network on each is fairly different. My LinkedIn network reflects my professional connections -- people I have worked with, vendors I know, etc. Facebook is for my actual friends (which is why some people are connections on both). I generally don’t say the same things on Twitter or LinkedIn that I would on Facebook, and don't have them feed each other. Do my high school friends and family care what I think about cloud computing? Does my professional network need to know that I’m having trouble managing my son’s transition into kindergarten?

One of the ways I have tried to keep my personal and professional identities separate is by using different names. When I got married I had been working for long enough that I felt it was important not to change my name. At the same time, I felt it was important for my future family to have the same last name. Since some of my bosses and many of the reporters I worked with had dual identities, it made sense to me to follow their lead. Believe it or not, many people don't pronounce or spell "Kristen" correctly, so I certainly wasn’t going to add "Syrek" to that challenge.

This strategy has worked pretty well. Most of my former colleagues know that Wilson is my maiden name and I use it for work. They aren't surprised to get emails from my home account with my full name or receive a holiday card from the Syreks. They also know how to find me at a hotel when I travel for work (not that anyone calls the front desk anymore). Although it was a little bit confusing when we decided to name our son “Wilson,” most people quickly understood that we didn’t name him Wilson Wilson.

With the growth of social networking and personal branding, this strategy has become a bit of a challenge. Since Facebook is for friends, and I have friends from all parts of my life, my name is listed as “Kristen Wilson Syrek.” LinkedIn was just “Kristen Wilson” until it made sense to connect with my husband’s business colleagues and some of my son’s friends’ parents. Now you’ll see (Syrek) at the end of my name. Does this make it difficult for prospective employers to find me? Does it hurt my personal brand to have a dual identity? What if one of those names is common and the other is unique?

Is there a benefit to combining my names and networks and sharing everything with everyone? Things that happen in my personal life help to shape my professional one. For now I think I will follow my own PR advice -- know thine audience. Publish the right content to the right audience with the right identity. What do you think?

Who Needs A Personal Brand?

As I mentioned in my first post, one of the reasons I decided to blog was because of the concept of "personal brand." The concept and the actual phrase is all over the place. Career guides recommend having one, especially if you're in PR or marketing. And after spending 15+ years in PR, I tend to agree. I've spent a lot of time elevating and maintaining the brands of several companies. I have also witnessed the connection between brand and reputation. In some cases brand identity can help a company protect its reputation during the time of a crisis. In BP's case, its brand may be destroyed

I’m struggling with my personal brand and the need for it. I get that people will check online sources for my fingerprints when they need to determine whether I would make a good addition to their team. I've been in the management classes where the HR team addresses the need to search on Facebook/MySpace/Twitter etc. before hiring someone. In this example, HR/hiring managers are looking to protect the reputation of the company with a candidate who hasn't done anything stupid online. We've all read the case studies/blog posts on what not to do online. What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook. Digital fingerprints are hard to wipe clean.

Well, the new discussion involves doing things online to get you noticed. Become more searchable. It brings up a lot of questions for me. According to LinkedIn I have a “complete” profile. I filled out all my career history, got recommendations and joined groups. I even posted a picture. The job search advice says that I should be actively commenting on the group discussions. What if they don’t have anything interesting to say? I don’t have strong opinions about many of the posts and don’t want to comment just for the sake of it. One person in a group I belong to posts some items that I find shocking. They are overtly political (it’s a PR Group) and often include F-bombs. What does that say about the poster? Should I comment and tell him it’s hurting his brand?

What about Twitter? Do I need to retweet something to be active? Or is it better to have something compelling to say? I try to do both. Do you get a sense of my personal brand if I just “like” everything on Facebook? What does that tell you about me? That I don’t have opinions of my own. That I’m a follower. Does anyone really like a "yes" man? Personal branding guru, Dan Schawbel, even tweeted about why not to be that person when looking for a job (JOB SEARCH: Be The Non-Pleasing Job Seeker http://dld.bz/fJrX.)

I've asked a lot of questions in this post. I am hoping that this blog and Twitter will help me find answers. I'll let you know what I find out. I would also love to know what you think.

Why Blog?

Hi, my name is Kristen. Welcome to my blog. I never thought I would write one. I’m really more of a Tweeter than a blogger, and I don’t even do that well. I can, however, write a mean press release. 

When I was a kid I wanted to write children’s books. I became discouraged because I didn’t know what to write about. How would I find my voice? (I’m still struggling with that question) Then I realized that I liked telling stories about the day’s events. So I went into the news business -- and into TV news because I don’t love to write. I’ve learned that I have a pretty direct style of communicating. I say what needs to be said in fewest words possible. Why write a 10 page paper when you can say it all in eight? Or why write for a newspaper when you can write something to be spoken and understood?

Well, TV news in the early ‘90s was a hard business (not that it’s any easier today, just different). The recession at that time eliminated many of the entry-level jobs in TV news. So after a few years of news-related programming and another couple years of school, I found myself at a PR agency. It made sense to me to help people tell their stories from that side of the fence. It’s been a good career. Like I said, I write a mean press release, and have done so for about 15 years.

I was recently laid off, which is one of the reasons I decided to blog now. I’ve read most of the advice on job hunting in the current economy. Some of it is written for the new graduates looking for their first jobs, and some for the blue collar workers who have no idea how to network or were to find LinkedIn. Although much of it does not apply to me, I pay attention to the articles about how to elevate your online presence and why you should create a personal brand. I am starting this blog in part to question some of that advice, and to work on my writing. 

What else do you need to know? I am the oldest of 3 girls, grew up outside of Buffalo, live outside of Boston, am a tech geek, love information, and hope to continue my career soon.

If all goes as planned, those posts will come soon and this blog will become a little more robust with links to other blogs, etc.

Your feedback is always welcome.