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How do I Create a PR Strategy? How do I get Media Coverage? How do I Manage a Crisis? How do I Manage my Brand Reputation? How do I Market my Business? How do I Measure PR efforts? How do I use PR for my Business? How do I use Social Media? Julia Joy PR Strategist PrimeTimePRchat Public Relations The Business of PR What is your Best Advice for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs?

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How, when and where should you communicate bad news? • Follow this guidance from savvy industry pros to be more of an empathetic helper than a heartless henchman. • By Robby Brumberg • Nov. 21, 2019 • Communicating bad news You’ve suspected for months that trouble was brewing at the office. • Turns out you were right—and it’s bad. Now, guess who gets to do the honors? • Dear communicator, stop me if you’ve heard this before from bigwigs eager to pass the bad news buck: • “We’ve gotta cut costs, and layoffs are the only way. Send out an email.” “We’re cutting some benefits, and we need to tell the staff.” “We’re letting our remote workers go. Let them know, will ya?” “I don’t want the staff to panic. Let’s wait until the last possible moment to inform them.” “We’re hemorrhaging cash. How can we spin this?” “Please inform the staff that lunch breaks are now just 30 minutes.” PR strategist Julia Angelen Joy says she’s been on both ends of the bad news equation. She offers four ways to ease pain, anxiety and confusion for everyone involved: • 1. The best way to break bad news to employees is in person, allowing enough time for questions. 2. You should follow up in writing, sharing any support resources, where they can get questions answered and any details or additional thoughts. 3. You should follow up again simply to ask for feedback and to listen to their thoughts. 4. If the bad news applies to only part of the team—let’s say half the team is being laid off—bring the whole team in so the affected parties do not have to spend the next few hours and days explaining things to their peers. Read more at Ragan.com!

My article on @prnews: What’s Getting in the Way of Solid Digital Media Relations? My simple approach to improving press releases and pitches is the following: be SMART. S: Strategic Stories that are well planned and developed. M: Meaningful to the recipient (hint: this is not your boss). A: Accurate (in facts and newsworthiness), distributed to media lists that are... R: Relevant. T: Targeted. A final note: Email and social media have provided a zillion corners for us to cut. As a mental exercise, avoid leaning on your digital laurels for once and pretend that you are going to call someone—interrupting their day—and have 10 seconds to make your pitch. If you’re not comfortable doing that with your target journalists, then rework your list. This kind of thinking will help you get crystal clear on who you should pitch on any given day at any given time. While this seems like basic PR, these tenets are missed every single day. I learned media pitching in the old days when (gasp!) we had to get on the phone with journalists, and I am telling you, if you are ever dressed down by an angry reporter for wasting their time—knowing that his entire newsroom can hear him and probably all the people in your office too—you will never, ever make that mistake again.

Today is Veterans Day! Now’s your chance to show your thanks and challenge your friends to do the same. #honorthroughaction

Daily I’m asked how to use #PR for side hustles, gigs or solo projects. The answer is almost always along these lines: get some media coverage, up your social media game, create engaging content. Finally, I wrote it all down: #ThePRMethod {theprmethod.com} It's not free.

‪I do my own version of Super Soul Sunday where I drink coffee late into the morning, mostly in bed with my pj’s on, where I write & plan & dream. ‬ ‪✨Today I welcome what seems impossible! ✨‬

5 Must-Haves for B2B Social Media Marketing from my article on @thesocialshakeup B2B companies have a huge opportunity right now to deploy social media strategies that will move the needle – but with everyone doing it, how do you stand out in such a noisy marketplace? It all comes down to not being boring and telling a story that connects with your target audience. Easy enough right? But most B2B marketers are not storytellers, so the content too often comes across as a sales pitch, which makes it all too easy for your customers to tune you out. B2B social media marketing in 5 easy steps: 1. Understand your audience. What platforms, publications, and channels are most relevant to them? 2. Understand your team. What resources, stories, and digital tools can you use in-house to build your B2B social media marketing plan? What activities or competencies need to be outsourced? 3. Set a well-researched strategy and use an editorial calendar to keep your content and social media frequency and freshness moving forward. 4. Review the data and use it. Understand what posts, stories, white papers, toolkits, etc. resonate with potential customers and lead to sales. Once you know what is working, you can do more of it. 5. Refresh and follow-up, making sure that your content and stories are always connecting to the brand. And whatever you do, don’t be boring! #B2B #socialmediamarketing

5 Productivity Hacks for the Social Media Army of One from my article in @thesocialshakeup: As a social media army of one, I have managed social for small businesses, large corporations, PR agencies and entrepreneurs. The best advice I can offer for fellow solo social media “teams” is to make sure social media marketing is part of your daily routine. Engagement requires steady momentum; it follows that a daily social media routine will help you grow your brand’s following. Here are my tips for saving time as a small or solo social media department: • Use a content calendar to plan your posts in advance. • Reduce, re-use, repurpose. • Plug blog posts into your content calendar at a cadence that is realistic for your workload. • Predetermine a general topic for each post. • For each day’s theme or topic, write a post your audience will consider useful. • Gather photos relevant to the topic. • Shorten the blog post into a thought leadership piece for LinkedIn. • Trim the LinkedIn post further to craft a Facebook post with a few photos and a link back to the blog. • For Instagram, post the best-looking photo to your feed, with a provocative sentence from your post in the caption, directing followers to a “link in bio.” • Pull a 280-character (or less) quote from the blog post, and post it with an accompanying photo on Twitter, linking back to the original blog post. • Don’t like-and-run. Engage! • Focus your platform-specific efforts. #PR #socialmediamarketing

Lots of great social media tips in my latest media mention (see link in bio) for #Realtors, but really this advice applies to any professional or small business on social media: • Build social media into your daily routine to foster engagement • Growing an audience takes more than just posting when you have a listing. Building social media strategy into a daily practice will get you much closer to the large following that you want and need to support your business. It's also not enough to simply post and like. That's a hit-and-run approach that does not build trust, a community, or long-term benefits. Engagement means that you post comments to others' relevant posts, answer questions, respond to those who comment on your posts, and share others' creative content. #socialmedia #smallbusiness #solopreneur #socialmediamarketing

#PRWeek has shared 3 articles this week under the heading: Choosing clients in an age of activism. Additionally we’re seeing stories such as, Nike wins, Gillette loses, Cloudflare takes a stand & Edelman retreats. In #PR, when does stepping into the political space shift from being a #publicrelations social cause tactic to a #PRfail cautionary tale? Let’s discuss on Tuesday’s #PrimeTimePRchat! 12 pm EST / 10 MST

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