Alex Blyth

As I’ve noted already on this blog, the ability to pitch story ideas to editors and journalists is absolutely crucial to success in almost every avenue of PR. For that reason many PRs I speak to seem to think it’s an innate skill – it’s one of those things you’ve either got or you haven’t.

I entirely disagree. Innate skill can help, but everyone can learn to do it. In fact that this is the same with almost any human activity – some people are more likely to succeed because of talent they’re born with, but anyone can – with enough hard work and the right training – learn to do it well.

On my Pitching to Editors course I’ve seen clear evidence of this. PRs have turned up, having been sent by their employers, and I can tell that they’re sceptical. Either they think they already know all they need to about pitching, or they don’t think that a training course is going to make any difference. As we discuss what we want to achieve in the training session they tell me that they’re fine getting stories in the lower level trades, but that it’s not possible for them to get coverage in the nationals or the top tier weeklies – the product/company/service isn’t interesting enough, the journalists just aren’t interested, or pitching simply isn’t something they do all that well.

I love it when people start with this attitude. I know that in four hours they’ll be thinking differently. They’ll have discovered exactly what journalists want in pitches from PRs, they’ll have learnt a step by step methodology for producing pitches that get results, and they’ll have put it into practice, producing a pitch that they can send out as soon as they get into the office the next day.

I also know that in four weeks, after they’ve worked with me for a few minutes every day building and sending a pitch a week, they’ll have got coverage in those nationals and top tier titles they thought were impossible.

Ask any trainer and they’ll tell you that’s what they love: transforming attitudes and helping people achieve what they thought was impossible.

They’ll also tell you that what frustrates them most about their work is that so few people realise how possible all this is. It’s a cliche that the ones who are most likely to ask for help are those least likely to need it,  but it’s so true. Most of those who come along to my training sessions are already well on the way to becoming outstanding PR professionals – they’re open to self-development and are reaping the benefits.

It’s the ones who don’t come along, who believe that they don’t need training or that training isn’t going to make any difference – you’ve either got the ability or you haven’t – that frustrate me. I know that they’re probably infuriating my fellow journalists and editors by continuing to send out really bad pitches. And they’re probably disappointing their clients or employers by not getting coverage in the top titles. But what’s worst of all is that this stubborn refusal to accept that training can make a difference is such a waste of their potential.

But if they never open their minds to the possibility of self-development they’ll never discover what a difference it can make. They’ll continue to see training as an expense, not an investment. Although they’d never openly admit this they probably see training as a bit of a con – one of those things that only fools waste their money on.

This is the trainer’s quandry – the people who are most in need of training are those least likely to accept it.

But what can I do about it?

What can any training provider do about it?

Answers on a postcard please…..

Last Sunday I did the London to Brighton Bike Ride – a long way but a lot of fun, for anyone who’s interested  – and mid-last week the fine event organisers at the British Heart Foundation sent me an e-mail:

“Dear Alex

Best of luck for this sunday…

We are looking forward to welcoming you all to the London to Brighton Bike Ride 2009 on Sunday. Have a safe and enjoyable day and thank you from all the team UK.

To get you in the mood for the weekend, have a look at some photo’s and videos from last years Bike Ride

See you on sunday.”

Now I have a confession to make. I have to admit that my first reaction on receiving this charming and thoughtful e-mail was not to think “How kind of them to send that – they must be so busy in the run-up to the event”. It wasn’t even “What an excellent and innovative of digital communications – I must take a look at those photos and videos”.

No. I have to admit that my first thought was “What on earth possessed them to stick an apostrophe in ‘photo’s’?!! Why one there but not in ‘videos’?” I sat at my laptop for a few minutes fuming in disbelief, ranting inwardly about creeping illiteracy.

And then I thought more about it. I calmed myself down, and decided it was time to take a good long look at myself.

I mean what’s actually wrong with it? Why should the busy, good people at the BHF have bothered to worry about their apostrophes? I understood what they meant. Why should I get so angry about it? I was having a perfectly pleasant afternoon until I started getting unreasonably worked up over the placing of a small punctuation mark.

I thought back to a recent drive down to Somerset. As we’d meandered towards a fun-filled weekend with friends, driving along country lanes, past beautiful sunlit hedgerows, I’d spotted a roadsign:

“No through road for HGV’s”

Again, I’d fumed at this senseless addition of an apostrophe. But, again, it was harmless enough. It was like the apostrophes in “BBQ’s” on banners hanging outside B&Q, or all the apostrophes in “PR’s” that I see in e-mails almost every day. I realised that each one was just another little pin-prick the bubble of my fun – and it was my fault for letting it bother me.

In a moment of revelation I realised that I was pushing my bike up the hill of accuracy when I could instead be freewheeling down the slope of fun.

After all, I reasoned, maybe these apostrophes do have a place there. Some of them even look quite pretty, hanging there, breaking up words that look a bit too long, or a bit weird without an apostrophe in there.

So, I made a resolution there and then: no longer was I going to see the apostrophe as a tedious old punctuation mark. I was going to liberate it from this prison of punctuation. I was instead going to see it as an artistic expression.

No more would I urge people to  follow those dry, old, dusty rules about where it should and shouldn’t go. The new rule (not really a rule because rules are for squares) is that if it looks right, then stick it in!

Its been great. I feel s’o free! Less like some boring old fool slavishly following someone elses’ rule’s and more like a free s’p'i’r'it joyously living life to the full.

And I urge you to join me. Cas’t off the shackles of punctuation! Join my artisti’c revolution!Free your inner apos’trophe. I tell you, it’s just the beginning – today the apostroph’e; tomorrow the full sto.p After that who know’s what. We can liberate  ourselve’s entirely from the tirannie of all punctuashun? grmmer and speling.

Keep on freewheelin, friend’s!

Business and trade publications always get hit disproportionately in recessions. Whether it was the bursting of the dotcom bubble back in 2001, the early nineties housing-led recession, or the unemployment and industrial strife of the early eighties, businesses have reacted in the same way every time: slashing their advertising in trade and business publications.  Consumer titles also suffer, as do all media outlets, but trade and business titles tend to bear the brunt of it.

And this recession is no different. As we discover towards the back end of the noughties just how naughty we were with our unsecured loans, unrealistic mortgages and bloated credit card debts, as the global economy continues to contract, so trade and business titles have struggled. Advertisers have melted away, pagination has dropped, and a few have closed – CFO Europe and Training & Coaching Today to name just two.

As a freelance writer for these titles I’ve noticed it. In the summer of 2008 I was struggling keep up with all the commissions sent my way, but now I have to work hard to get the attention of editors and convince them to run with my ideas for articles. I’m lucky that Ive got the best part of a decade’s worth of work and contacts to fall back on, and that I know how to pitch to editors. Not every freelance writer does, and for many of us – as well as for our colleagues in the world of B2B PR – it’s really tough at the moment.

Our only comfort in these dark days of 2009 is the thought that economies always recover and the B2B media always bounces back.

However, I’m beginning to wonder if that really will happen. I really think that this might be the end of the road for much of our traditional B2B media.

For one thing this recession has come as the sting at the tail-end of a long period of sustained decline for these publications. We were already dealing with advertising budgets that were falling by between gfive and ten per cent a year. However, the real difference between this recession and those that went before it is that this time round we have the Internet. In 2001 the web was still in its infancy – only 8 years ago, but we’d never heard of Facebook, a large proportion of us were still on dial-up connections, and the concept of cost per click advertising was still alien to all but the most cutting-edge publishers. Now, advertisers are comfortable with online advertising. In fact they’re much more than comfortable – they recognise that online advertising can engage more people in a measurable and trackable way than print advertising ever could. And they’re moving their budgets online.

From my perspective I’ve seen clear evidence of this shift. As my income from offline publications has fallen, so I have been doing more and more work for online titles, most notably in my role as the editor of The Sales Professional. I fully expect this trend to continue, with an increasing number of my commissions coming from online titles. Many of them will be from publications like B2B Marketing, Personnel Today and Call Centre Focus, which have spotted this trend and spent the last few years moving more and more of their editorial and advertising online.

But I expect just as many commissions to come from online publications that have been set up to fill the gap left by the B2B titles that failed to spot or react to this trend. Many of them are suffering from this decline in advertising and are simply waiting for it all to pick up again. The danger is that it might not. The game might move on and leave them behind.

This isn’t necessarily bad news for me, as,  whether it’s online of offline, publishers still need well-researched and sharply-written copy. It’s not necessarily bad news for PR professionals, as there will still be widely-read and influential publications where they can promote their clients – they’ll just be online.  It might be bad news for magazine printers, but for the rest of us we simply need to recognise this change and adapt ourselves accordingly.

Having worked in journalism for many years I have had the genuine pleasure of dealing with PRs who know their clients, understand the broader business landscape, think about what journalists need from them, and know exactly how to deliver that in an intelligent and useful way.

Sadly, I have also dealt with many PRs who have been a right pain in the proverbials.

And I am not alone in this. Ask any journalist what he or she thinks of PRs and the reaction will vary from a slight groan or a rolling of the eyes at best, to a tightening of the jaw and a low growl at worst.

This is a problem. Journalists need good PRs as much as PRs need journalists to write good things about their clients.  The two industries rely on each other, are in many ways just one industry. And yet between the two there remains a simmering enmity, an ingrained lack  of trust, and a profoundly damaging lack of understanding.

So, here is my contribution to this ongoing debate – a list (to be  revealed over the coming weeks) of the top ten things that PRs do to really annoy journalists. I look forward to your feedback!

NUMBER ONE: Expect us to operate as a free media monitoring service

When I first started out as a freelance journalist I did my best to respond to all these queries. When a PR called up or e-mailed and asked if the article including his or her client’s comments had been published yet, I faithfully went through my clippings, dug it out and e-mailed it over.

Then, as I got more and more work, I found I was doing more and more of this.  Eventually I got to the point where I spent an entire day doing nothing other than this. At the end of the day I sat down and reflected on the fact that I had been working as an unpaid media monitoring service for all these PRs.

I was not happy.

So, now I try to get hold of articles and post them on my site as PDFs or links. I even e-mail them out to PRs in a newsletter that you can sign up to here: www.alex-blyth.co.uk. And when PRs call or e-mail me asking if the article including his or her client’s comments has been published yet I ignore them.

I’m sorry to have to be this, because I do understand that PRs need to show cuttings to their clients to justify their fees, and I am genuinely grateful to all those PRs who provide me with helpful interviews, quotes and information for my articles. But, at the end of the day I’m not a cuttings service. If any PR needs a reference to one I’ll happily provide it, but they shouldn’t expect me to do it for them.

In defence of the industry I will add that most people from reputable PR agencies, when I grumble about this, look surprised that anyone in their field would do this. They advise me to have no truck with it, as the PRs who are doing it should be paying media monitoring agencies to do this.

But it still happens too often. It annoys journalists and it damages the relationship between PRs and journalists.

“Training? Are you crazy – Haven’t you heard there’s a recession on?!”

This is something I’m hearing more and more frequently. Ok, so people are generally a little more polite than that, but the general thrust of these conversations is that in a recession the last thing a PR agency should be doing is spending money on training its staff.

You won’t be too surprised to learn that, as a provider of training to PR agencies, I strongly disagree. If previous recessions have taught business leaders one thing it is to remember that when recession end – as they always do – you need staff who are skilled, informed and motivated.

It’s encouraging to see that many business leaders aren’t making the mistake so many did in the last great correction of the early 90s and firing whole swathes of talented, capable employees – when the good times returned most of those companies were soon overwhelmed by their competitors with more enlightened people policies.

However, keeping your staff is not enough. You also need to keep developing them, so that they are able to help you survive the bad times and then really push the business forward in the forthcoming boom. And that means training.

This doesn’t mean, though, that you should carry on as before. Without doubt, this is the right time to review your training strategy. In fact the smart businesses are taking the following five steps to ensure they get the most out of every penny they spend on training:

1) Share existing knowledge

Rather than paying people like me to come in and train your staff, why not get your staff to train each other on their specialisations? If someone is an expert on social media encourage them to hold a lunchtime training session on the topic. If someone else knows Excel inside out then make sure everyone goes to him or her for advice on that. There will still be areas where you need to bring in external expertise, but don’t miss out on this sort of free training.

2) Focus on what matters

Identify your business priorities and ensure that all training is geared towards that. So, if you need to get in front of new business prospects, train your team on how to set new business meetings (see here for details of a new course I’m running on this subject: http://www.alex-blyth.co.uk/training_details.php?id=16)

3) Pick the right providers

In a recession everyone wants to be sure they are getting the best possible return on thier investment. It’s a perfectly reasonable response, but it does mean that supplier loyalty goes out the window.  You might be finding that your clients are reviewing their contracts with you – so shouldn’t you be doing the same with your training providers?

4) Get maximum value for money

Every supplier knows that times are tough, and so they should be willing to offer you a good price. If they don’t then look elsewhere (for example, I charge £285 per delegate for my open training courses, but if you mention this blog post when booking you can come for £250)

5) Reinforce with coaching

Classroom training is only ever a starting point for someone’s learning and development. It is too easy for all the knowledge and the good intentions to evaporate as soon as the session is over. Training needs to be reinforced with ongoing coaching. You can provide this yourself, or ideally you should find a training provider who incorporates an element of ongoing coaching into their training courses.

Those are five reasonable steps that are straightforward to implement. The smart PR agencies are doing exactly that now – look out for them in the coming months and years. They’ll be the ones hiring the pick of the staff, getting front page coverage for their clients,  and winning all the big contracts.

Crazy to be spending on training now? I really don’t think so.