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5 Rookie Mistakes to Avoid in Social Media

Posted on | by Ketner Group

We recently came across a blog post on 5 Rookie Mistakes in Press Releases, and turns out, the author was not exaggerating about the “rookie” part. Use a headline that makes sense. Include an “about” section and contact info. Still, it’s always helpful even for seasoned PR pros to get a reminder that sometimes the most basic things are the things we screw up, because we take for granted that we won’t screw them up. The post also inspired us to write our list of tips to help businesses avoid making rookie mistakes in social media. Without further ado…

1) Don’t dive in without a game plan. You know what makes me cringe? When companies get excited by the sparkly social media trend and tell their staff to go gangbusters on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a company blog, etc. – all without having a strategy in place. What is your goal? Who are you trying to engage with? Do you need to engage with different audiences on different platforms, and perhaps share one type of information with your Twitter followers and a different type with your Facebook followers? What’s your policy on employees blogging or guest blogging for your company? Your plan for dealing with negative Yelp or App Store reviews? I know it’s tempting to want to just dive in – but trust me, you’ll be glad later that you had a strategy in place first.

2) That said, be wary of social media ninjas/experts/superstars. It can be incredibly valuable having people on your side with specific experience developing and executing social media initiatives. However, be careful about who you trust with your social media strategy; 90% of the self-professed social media ninjas/gurus/superstars/experts out there are full of it. Just because someone has 1,000+ Twitter followers and calls himself a guru doesn’t make it true – and typically, the people who are the gurus don’t need to use such audacious self-promotion to prove it. Since the beginning of time (or at least the beginning of capitalism?) people have looked for the next get-rich-quick scheme to make a buck off the latest hot new thing, and right now in marketing, that thing is social media. Don’t get suckered. Still, there are people out there who genuinely have great experience and a track record of success in working with businesses to help them do social media right. And if you’re already working with a PR or marketing agency, they may very well have the know-how to work with you on those initiatives, and it helps that the relationships and knowledge about your company are already established. Continue reading →

Born to be in PR? 9-year-old me takes us back to the basics

Posted on | by Ketner Group | 1 Comment on Born to be in PR? 9-year-old me takes us back to the basics

This past weekend, I trekked back to my old stomping grounds in College Station, Texas to co-host an old friend’s baby shower. (I am at that point in life where the appropriate response to a friend’s baby news is now “Congratulations!” rather than “Wow, how do you feel about it?” – it’s all still new to me.) Thankfully, my Mom and stepdad still live in the area, so I got some time away from baby talk to catch up and lounge around in their new-old 1930’s-built house.

On Saturday night, my Mom handed me a bag containing a few notebooks and papers that her Mom had passed off to her the weekend before. My Grandmom has been sloooowly cleaning out the old “clubhouse” over the years, a tiny-yet-huge closet in her house that my cousin and I had taken over for our childhood exploits. I think it makes her just as sad as it makes me thinking of the clubhouse being totally empty, since we lost my cousin 7 years ago, way too young. But about the notebooks. Our “T.V. Club” (for Taylor + Valerie, also known as the “Totally Fun Club,” of course) required a lot of planning. Based on the notebooks, you’d think all we did was plan – which was mostly the case, aside from the occasional spy mission or theatrical/choral performance.

When I was reading through one of my old club notebooks, circa age 9, I laughed to the point of tears at the ridiculousness of it. I’ve included an old page here (click through to read it bigger) that really got me thinking. As rudimentary and silly as these ideas were, they say something about who I was, and who I am. Aside from being a huge nerd, when I read it, I thought to myself, “huh, I didn’t even know it until I was three years into college, but I was kind of destined for this career.”

As with any career, there are certain must-have traits for those who want to be successful in marketing and PR. While diversity among the types of people and ideas is a must, these seem to be universally necessary traits/tendencies for professionals in this business. Sure, they might seem rather “duh” (#5 on my IDEAS list anyone?) but my mantra for 2011 has been “back to the basics,” and I think there are messages here that we all need reminders of if we want to try to strengthen the reputation of our own industry:

  1. Be proactive – I mean, really: One of our clients recently hired a new director of marketing, and in our first meeting, she was very concerned about trade show media appointments. She mentioned that at her previous company, the PR agency didn’t prep the executives with briefing books or confirm the media appointments before the show. Come on! And in a recent new business meeting, a company’s CEO told us that his PR firm didn’t proactively pitch or set media appointments at shows, and only seemed to handle reactive inquiries. The only excuse for that would be a bare bones budget, and even then, there’s a major communication gap going on. Speaking of which… Continue reading →

Cowgirls Don’t Cry

Posted on | by Catherine Seeds

Cowgirls (and PR Professionals) Don’t Cry: A True Story about a Weekend in Bandera, Texas That I Will Never Forget

As we speak, my rear end and thighs are still smarting from my weekend trip to a local Cowboy Ranch located right in the heart of the beautiful and vast Texas Hill Country. My husband, Darrell, and I had been long overdue for a weekend getaway to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. Darrell was determined to plan the entire trip but being the thoughtful person he is, asked for my opinion on what I’d like to do. Thinking outside of the box, I said that it would be fun to go somewhere “where we could ride horses.” Famous last words!

Catherine on horse

This brings us to Friday night and our arrival at the ranch. After check-in, we made our way up to our cabin which, gasp, didn’t have a TV! I also quickly realized that we had zero cell phone reception. No biggie, I can handle being away from civilization (aka my work email) for a day or two. Heck, I’m a born and raised Texas girl, being adaptable is in my blood. Let’s do this.

We woke up Saturday morning, ate a fantastic country breakfast of biscuits and eggs at the ranch’s dining hall, and met our fellow ranch-goers – Jersey, Maverick and the Minnesota Twins*. We were ready to start our day at the ranch! While sipping the last of our coffee, in walks our ranch hand, Dish*. Dish was stuck somewhere between Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and reality. He was dressed in all the necessary cowboy gear (hat, spurs, scarf around the neck) and completed his ranch hand look with a classic handlebar/horseshoe-styled mustache. We soon learned that Dish was not very good at telling jokes, and by that I mean made several inappropriate comments to me, Jersey and one of the Minnesota Twins. For example, and I take the liberty of EXTREME paraphrasing, “Ma’am, the saddle horn is not your husband’s……so don’t grab on to it like it is.” You get the idea. But, again, I’m a Texas girl and can deal with this so-called cowboy.

Fast forward to roping lessons, where Cowboy Curly*, the owner of the ranch, taught us the proper way to rope a pretend cow and a barrel – yours truly was having a hard time with the concept and I ended up only roping myself. Cowboy Curly clearly knows the concept of the weakest link, aka me, and proceeded to single me out and constantly yelled at me for doing it incorrectly. But, I’m a true-blue Texas girl and kept saying, “No sir, those aren’t tears welling up in my eyes. Those are my allergies.” That was my story, anyway. I eventually learned how to flip my wrists correctly and even got a chance to rope the pretend cow on my horse. Yee haw! Continue reading →

My Experience Being a Part (and Learning the Ropes) of a Small Business: A Journey Full of Surprises, Nerf Guns, and Plenty of Chocolate

Posted on | by Ketner Group

When I first joined Ketner Group in 2007, I knew very little about running a business, and just enough about PR to convince them I was the best candidate for the entry-level position. I was given a gigantic desk in a room all to myself (one of the “perks” of small business I am glad we grew out of – it was so lonely!) and thrown into client work 8-5, 5 days a week, while all my friends were still off procrastinating away senior year. (I was the dork that graduated early.)

The past three and a half years have taught me more than I could have imagined, and one of the best parts of it has been learning bit by bit about how a small business is run and the secret ingredients to doing it right. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no financial expert, and my favorite parts of the job will always be client work and scheming with my co-workers, but an incredibly valuable part of working for Ketner Group has been learning much more than just PR: I’ve watched a small business grow, gain and lose clients (AKA revenue), and adapt to survive in a time when our entire industry was changing beneath our feet.

In order to avoid writing a novel, I thought I’d pick just a few things that make me proud to be part of this team:

Creating the kind of atmosphere you want to work in

I will be the first to admit our office didn’t always have the greatest atmosphere. Sure, it was a positive environment, but – being a small business – we just didn’t splurge on things like new furniture or décor. With clients that were mostly out of town at the time, we didn’t have many unexpected visitors, either, so the “image” of our physical office wasn’t terribly important. Then, 2 things happened. We got more local clients, and we hired more women. Continue reading →

The Family Business

Posted on | by Ketner Group

By Andrew Ketner, Intern

When I was growing up, I had no idea what my Dad did for a living. I knew that he went to work every morning with a briefcase and came home every evening in time for dinner. I distinctly remember an episode from my sixth grade Spanish class in which our teacher asked each student to state the occupation of his or her Dad. When it was my turn to speak, I frantically flipped through the pages of my mind’s Spanish-English dictionary and stumbled upon what I thought at the time was a suitable if somewhat incorrect answer: “A businessman.”

Fast-forward ten years, and I am now a proud employee of my Dad’s formerly unknown business. I never thought I would work for my Dad, much less for a PR firm, but I guess you could say that I didn’t have a choice. I was about to embark on a 7-week study abroad program last summer and was trying to find a job under the broad heading of “prelaw” that I could hold down for the remaining five weeks until the start of the fall semester. Turns out that no one wanted to hire me just for five weeks (surprise). So, whether it was because he didn’t want a jobless son or because he simply wanted to increase the male quotient at the office (see this former blog post), Dad hired me.

Fortunately for the both of us, I ended up really liking the short-lived gig and have been working at the Ketner Group since I graduated from The University of Texas this past May. I still plan on going to law school next fall, but decided very quickly after college Continue reading →

Where did all the men go?

Posted on | by Ketner Group

Some questions have no easy answer. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?

Add another question to that list: What happened to all of the men in PR?

It wasn’t all that long ago that a bunch of men established the public relations industry as we know it today. Innovative businessmen like P.T. Barnum first pushed the limits of publicity, and were followed by enterprising young men like Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee, who met a need that executives all over the world didn’t know they had yet.

The world’s largest and most successful PR agencies were, not surprisingly, founded by men. Still today, the executive leadership of global media conglomerates and smaller, privately held PR firms alike is largely male. But one look around the office, and it’s obvious things have changed in the last fifty years. Our own Ketner Group office is a microcosm of this gender imbalance, with our lone male, our agency principal, outnumbered five to one. Continue reading →

Psychology of the User Experience

Posted on | by Ketner Group | 2 Comments on Psychology of the User Experience

Right after SXSW Interactive, I promised a comprehensive recap, and I have a confession to make – this  Word document has been sitting here in blog post purgatory for over a week (literally!) now, because I’ve realized that: A) I’m not an authority on this event, since it was my first time going, B) there are tons of great posts out there recapping the event as a whole (check out see Omar Gallaga, Jay Baer, and Chris Brogan’s helpful and thoughtful posts), and C) while SXSW was incredibly valuable to me overall for reasons I mentioned in the previous short post, there are only a few things that I took away as total “a ha!” moments in terms of bringing new ideas and practices to Ketner Group and our clients. One of those was definitely Brian Solis’ session on How Your Brand Can Succeed in the New Web, but I’d much rather speak about that after I’ve read his new book, Engage! – and how handy that I asked a question during the Q&A portion of the talk and scored a crisp hardback copy! Be on the lookout for my review on that book soon.

For now, I’d like to dedicate this post to the other session I felt most interesting and pertinent to the work we do here at KG, Stephen Anderson’s talk on the Art & Science of Seductive Interactions – basically, how we can apply the principles of human psychology to creating a better User Experience (which can apply to developing products, websites, etc.)  I love the study of psychology, and in fact I also recently discovered a great lecture series on the Mind & Brain from the University of Arizona available for free download from iTunes U – I highly recommend checking that out. Anyway, Stephen Anderson’s main point in his SXSW panel was that, when we are creating something for other people, we need to get back to the basics. What makes successful experiments, products, and campaigns work? Generally, at the root of it is human psychology. Are you building your product or website or campaign by starting with a basic assessment of what you want people to do and how you can incent them to do so?

Continue reading →

Public Relations, the wild child: Commonly misunderstood and wrongfully stereotyped

Posted on | by Ketner Group

Public relations may be one of the most widely misunderstood professions. SXSW® Interactive is taking place here in Austin this week and I’ve been hearing chatter about “those PR types” that are annoying to who exactly, I’m not sure. During inevitable polite small talk babble, when I get asked the “What do you do” question, I typically respond, “I do PR for high tech companies.” More often than not, my inquisitor will look at me in one of two ways:

  1. As if I just told them I worked in quantum mechanics (they have no idea what PR is), or
  2. As if I just told them I’m an evil advertiser who sucks up all of your money, sends you mail you hate to receive and interrupts your Sunday evening showing of Desperate Housewives once every 15-20 minutes with those darn commercials.

I must say that I am neither one of those. I am also not at all like Samantha Jones from Sex and the City, I do not throw parties and plan events all day long, and – much to the dismay of a BCBG sales associate a few weeks ago – I could never get away with wearing a slinky, tight skirt suit that distracts from my awesome personality while I’m representing a client.

Because that’s what we do. We represent – we ARE – our clients. Everything we say and do reflects upon our clients. Perhaps the reason why PR is so widely misunderstood is because we work hard to remain invisible to those on the outside. We are essentially our clients’ eyes, ears and mouths. “What are people saying about X?” “What do we see X’s competitors doing?” and “What does X need to say to effectively and positively communicate with their audience?” Continue reading →

A word from our newest!

Posted on | by Ketner Group | 1 Comment on A word from our newest!

Brittany graduateI’m Ketner Group’s resident rookie. I graduated with my bachelor’s of public relations way, way back in May 2009, and promptly joined the Ketner Group family.

I’ve known from the beginning that I liked my job. We have awesome clients. I have a super cute desk (let’s be honest, what PR girl does not like cute office furniture from IKEA?) and post-it notes that bear my initials (again, PR ladies, do not act like you aren’t jealous). I even have my own extension and business cards (I know you are impressed!). Our team really is like a family, which I proudly admit even though I fall squarely in the “cliché” camp with that admission.

I knew I liked my job, but when friends, family and really anyone else asked me how I liked it, I would quickly give a thoughtless answer, something like, “It’s OK,” and change the subject.
Really? It’s just OK?

I blame my wishy-washy feelings on the transition from full-time student to full-time employee. Let’s examine.

Maybe it was my deep-seated fear that I chose the wrong major. I mean, there was that existential meltdown of 2007 when I applied for and was accepted to become an advertising major, only to jump right back into the PR camp after deciding my professors were biased and made advertising appear overly sexy and glamorous. For shame, professors! But I never did feel confident in my decision again.

Maybe it was how I didn’t know how I truly felt about the cold, hard fact that I will never again have a summer vacation or a whole month off for winter break. Truthfully, it was a little difficult to pick and choose which family holiday obligations I was actually obliged to attend, and then to carefully ration my vacation days so as to make the most people happy while saving enough days for the rest of the year. Continue reading →