In a World of Viral Videos, Employers Need a Plan for Hiring and Firing

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We live in a TikTok world with countless Americans (me included) drawn to dramatic online videos of real-life joy and sorrow. How many of us have turned to our phones to watch one brief-but-compelling video, only to find 10 minutes or more have passed as we watch video after video? And those videos filled with relatable, emotional moments, are often the most compelling.

In 2018, Melanie Sanchez was recorded at her college graduation taking a cell phone call from an employer offering her a job. The video went viral, and we all shared in Melanie’s joy. One of my favorites was from about 10 years ago. Marina Shifrin posted an interpretive dance resignation video for her employer. It was fun, with a bit of dark humor, and showcased her creativity in the process. The video went viral. Marina hit the talk-show circuit and even landed a book deal.

Of course, there are also heartbreaking videos. Brittany Pietsch made headlines a few months ago when she recorded her Cloudflare layoff-via-video, showing us the dark underbelly of not only remote work but also how poorly some employers plan these challenging discussions. There are too many examples like Brittany’s, and not enough of those like Melanie.

For employers, however, there are lessons to be learned as we continue to break new ground in a world of hybrid and remote workers. The biggest lesson from a communications perspective is to be human and humane in these discussions of hiring and firing.

When Hiring

  1. Check the Tech: Before you dive into the conversation, make sure the technology platform you’re using works for all parties. Shaky or delayed connections create misunderstandings and frustration. Don’t proceed if the tech fails or is of such poor quality that the messaging you wish to convey is at risk. This step applies to both the hiring and the firing process.
  2. Be in the Moment: Video meetings are part of the new normal of workplace cultures. Treat them like in-person meetings. Greet the candidate and be warm and conversational. Work to maintain a high level of eye-contact by looking at the camera when speaking and listening.
  3. Set Expectations and Don’t Let Suspense Linger: Be transparent about your process upfront. Outline the steps in that process and your approximate timeline clearly. And if you are calling to offer the position to the candidate, be upfront rather than leaving them waiting to know if they have been selected. No one needs to be on pins and needles across an entire conversation waiting for the big reveal at the end.
  4. Record with Consent: If you plan to record the interview to share with colleagues or even for your own internal review, ask for the candidate’s consent first. Show respect for their privacy. And remember, in some states and jurisdictions, it is illegal to record someone without their consent. Parties who break these laws can face serious legal consequences.

When Firing

  1. Privacy First: In addition to checking the tech as noted above, privacy is critical. This is a devastating moment for the employee being released from your employ. Both you and the employee should be in a private setting.
  2. Be Empathetic: Job loss ranks alongside death and divorce as a major life stressor. Demonstrate kindness and empathy as best possible. Acknowledge the hurt and distress of the moment.
  3. Be Direct: Clearly communicate the decision to end the person’s employment without mincing words. However, be kind in the process. Avoid jargon or corporate speak; simply act like a human and treat the person with respect.
  4. Provide Resources: Your human resource representative should join the employee’s manager or supervisor on the call. The manager or supervisor – someone who knows the employee and his or her work product – is there to discuss the decision and provide feedback, while the HR rep should explain any severance package, unemployment benefits, health insurance options (if applicable) and any other services the organization plans to offer following separation. At all times, the employer should be respectful and be sure to truly hear the employee while still keeping the call focused and brief.

As employers continue to hire digital natives, the likelihood of a business matter like hiring or firing becoming click-bait for the rest of us rises exponentially. Millennials and GenZ are the first truly digital generations whose lives online are rarely separate from their offline experiences. So, employers would serve themselves well to consider those hiring phone or Zoom calls or the difficult layoff discussions via Teams or speakerphone might take on lives of their own online. These discussions could put your organization’s reputation on the line and even threaten your bottom line.

Remember, these discussions have the potential to become tomorrow’s headlines. Plan accordingly.

Luck or Skill? The Art of Landing a Quality Media Placement

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As we revel in the “Luck of the Irish” this St. Patrick’s Day, we thought we would look at how to get lucky with public relations.

Contrary to some thinking, luck has little to do with landing a good media placement. In fact, a reporter’s connections with journalists is barely a factor. While relationships can be part of getting the right journalist connected with that pot-of-gold placement, its only one of the many components that go into a successful PR campaign. 

Unlike that pesky little leprechaun of General Mill’s fame, we’re willing to share the lucky charms we employ to land a good PR placement.

A Recipe for Success

The first step toward a public relations win is twofold: Identifying your key messages and understanding your target audience.

If your key messages double as marketing or sales copy, your luck has run out right from the start. In this world of smaller newsrooms and overworked journalists, language that even hints at self-promoting messaging will be ignored almost immediately. Today’s media climate requires brands to build authentic messaging that informs, educates or solves a significant problem of the outlet’s audiences.

Every company has a product or service to sell. Every nonprofit or charitable organization has a mission to promote. The question is, what does the target audience need? In most cases, it isn’t a sales pitch or information about a product or service that will save them time, money or convenience. Rather, messaging needs to work backward from the audience’s need, educating them on the situation and options, and positioning the brand or nonprofit as a reliable resource. Once you understand your target audiences, you can refine your message to attract the interests of journalists courting those audiences.

Another important component where most brands and organizations come up short is credibility. Public relations is not marketing if only because it is not — and should not be — about sales of products or services. Confusing the two is about as unlucky a step as one can take in business.

We hear from companies all the time that want to issue press releases about a fundraiser or new product or service. If these companies have done the work of building credibility, there are opportunities to be had. That hard work includes making executives available for commentary on industry trends and issues. It includes demonstrating industry knowledge and insight on matters that have nothing to do with the brand or organization’s products or services.

Credibility is built on being responsive and helpful to journalists who reach out seeking quotes, background and general information. This means fostering and maintaining a relationship with the outlets that matter most. Absent these things, a press release from an organization that is not engaged with the outlets and journalists covering that sector of the economy are of little interest to those media professionals. This is the number one reason why one-offs or project work often proves to be difficult.

You can’t buy your way into the Wall Street Journal’s news coverage. However, you can pay for a comprehensive public relations campaign that positions you as a thought leader in your space by showcasing your insights, commentary on industry trends, sharing of best practices and reacting to news of the day. This requires a steady stream of diverse content — owned and earned — across multiple channels to establish credibility and raise your profile as a go-to source for media covering your space. Consistent messaging and a consistent industry presence demonstrate credibility and brand commitment.

Additional Tactics for Good Luck

  • Thought leadership, the sharing of innovative ideas, insights and opinions — in the form of contributed content, owned content or in-depth media interviews — not only build relationships with media, but they demonstrate that vital credibility media needs to validate you as a source. Contributing to the discourse of your industry or field in this way often results in third-party endorsement by media (because they publish you as a reliable source) that provides reputational fuel, and a bit of luck, for your brand.
  • Newsjacking provides time-sensitive opportunities to help journalists understand or contextualize breaking news or emerging trends, often in the wake of actions taken by others. This type of media engagement helps determine the next phase of the story and, when done correctly, positions your organization as a trusted source.
  • Social Media has ebbed and flowed in terms of influence, and some channels are better suited than others to reach certain audiences or carry certain types of messaging. For business professionals and B2B industries, we continue to find value in LinkedIn. Between LinkedIn’s newsletters, live events, self-published articles and regular engagement by and with executives, LinkedIn consistently proves to be a powerful tool to reach key target audiences as well as media professionals searching for and vetting industry sources. Social media continues to be the investment some organizations are reluctant to make but would be lucky to have supporting their mission.

A Lucky Match

Finally, finding the right public relations agency for your business is less about luck than it is judgement. In fact, here’s a little secret: most PR agencies do most of the same things, with the same tools and connect with the same journalists. While many will point to a raft of key differentiators, from our perspective it comes down to one big one: matching personalities.

Public relations is, after all, a relationship-building business. While many of us trained the same way, have similar experiences and employ a range of not-too-dissimilar tactics to achieve our own lucky placements, it comes down to asking with whom you would prefer to work. Do personalities align or clash? Do you truly achieve a meeting of minds in that first meeting or is the pitch for the work simply pandering to your ego? Do you want to be surrounded by those who simply agree with you to please you, or do you want the expertise and insight you will pay for to be offered constructively, candidly and all to serve your best reputational interests? If things go wrong, is the PR pro or team you are considering the same individual or team you want standing by your side to fix it? Has the PR team pitching you on their abilities earned your respect and proven their value?

We advise prospective clients to understand all PR agencies offer similar approaches and resources. Some have deep industry specialties while others are generalists. What should matter in a lucky public relations partnership is the professionals doing the work, their knowledge and understanding of your industry, their track record, their ability to write well, their creativity, trustworthiness and their respect for your organization and its reputation.

Maybe there is a little luck in finding the right PR partnership, but the work itself has nothing to do with luck. It’s about tenacity, credibility, creativity and knowledge. If you find that in your public relations strategy as well as your PR partner, well, that truly is a lucky combination.

Remote Work and Travel: How the Online Workplace Supports Working on the Road

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Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work from India where much of my family currently resides. This made for a refreshing shift in day-to-day work, as on any given call, I could be speaking with someone just starting their day while managing a snowstorm outside for example, while in India, the sun would just be setting on another warm day.

While there were challenges, such as navigating the 10.5-hour time difference, the experience allowed me to continue delivering my work to clients while being able to spend quality time with family and friends whom I do not get to see often. This was all possible because of remote work.

Despite the continued return to office push from many businesses, remote work does not appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. Data from Buffer found 98% of workers want to work remotely at least some of the time. According to Upwork, by 2025 approximately 22% of the workforce will be working remotely.

This rethinking of where work happens has become a core component of the future of business because of the flexibility and convenience it offers. While there are some aspects of the in-person experience we may miss, such as the classic water cooler conversations or conference room meetings, that incredible flexibility and convenience found only in the remote work experience tends to make up the difference. In fact, the same study from Buffer determined that remote workers have found it easier to accomplish more focused work, manage stress and avoid common workplace distractions.

At Kimball Hughes Public Relations, we were already set up to work remotely as needed before the pandemic. In our business, you have to be able to work from anywhere, be it the back of a hotel ballroom or your kitchen table. So, when businesses shut down in early 2020, we were prepared. Staying a fully remote company has given our team several opportunities to further develop our professional careers while also pursuing personal endeavors. For me, the best part of a fully remote workplace has been the ability to travel and work concurrently.

Working on the Road

Since our agency transitioned to a virtual environment, I have had the opportunity to work while traveling through different states, countries, time zones and even continents. My laptop joined me while visiting destinations near and far from my homebase in Philadelphia to North Carolina, Massachusetts, Illinois, Florida, California, Mexico, France and India. The flexibility of the remote workplace allowed me to bring my job on the road, working with journalists and leading client Zoom meetings all while experiencing new geographies and cultures and visiting family and friends.

The ability to combine work and travel makes for a more interesting, diverse work-life balance and has served to elevate my engagement with my work. That said, working from the road does require some adjustments. Below are some best practices I recommend considering before attempting to combine business and leisure travel:

  • Plan Ahead: Several weeks before any travel, compile a list of upcoming and ongoing work projects. Share this list with team members and continue updating the list until the date of departure. Similarly, make sure to keep other team members copied on all client communications. Team members should also be looped in on any client meetings so they can assist in case of any issues. This way, in the event of any technical difficulties, coworkers can jump in and cover as needed.
  • Consider Time Zones: Time differences can be difficult to manage. Whether it’s a three-hour time difference working from California or 10.5 hours from the family living room in India compared to the location of work colleagues or clients, proper time planning is key to ensuring you don’t miss meetings, deadlines or experience burnout from working different hours. Work with your supervisor ahead of time to develop a schedule that will enable you to enjoy your travels while contributing to your team and completing your work.
  • Manage Your Time: Managing a longer time difference can be difficult, as your work hours may bleed into the evening, complicating sleep and the time you may like to spend with family, friends or exploring. Proactively building out a schedule can be very helpful. Ahead of my trip to India, I planned out times where I would step away from the computer to go out to dinner, spend time with family, or even just go for a long walk, and communicated these plans with my team. On days where I was particularly exhausted, I also reached out to team members to see if they could cover me on certain projects while I took a quick rest. Open communication and proactive planning can make it much easier to enjoy travel while working.
  • Have the Right Technology: Traveling internationally can create additional challenges to consider. Ensure you have the right technology and adaptors on hand to continue work. This could include purchasing international data or a local SIM card or reaching out to your contacts at your destinations to confirm they have adequate internet for regular video calls, and more.

The flexibility remote work provides can be invaluable. We can travel, extend trips, and no longer have to choose between asking for time off for a beach trip with friends or a visit to see family. With proper planning, remote work can introduce travel opportunities that can lead not only to an improved work-life balance, but renewed interest in the work you do.

Read the Room: Preparing for your next speaking engagement

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Sweaty palms and a microphone in hand, you are called to the stage for your presentation in front of hundreds of your colleagues. You wrote your speech word for word and studied it diligently but as your nervousness grows, those words you meticulously studied begin to vanish. Panic. Anxiety. Is there more you could have done? As in all things, preparation is key.

Power in preparation

A successful speaking engagement is rooted in the right kind of preparation. While writing a speech is an important part of the process, simply putting words on paper could leave a public speaker high and dry on stage. The reality is a memorized speech is full of recollection and verbal landmines, stumbling and missed content. When preparing for your next speaking engagement, consider the following:

  • Focus on key messages: Rather than memorizing a speech, consider the key messages or the main points the speech conveys. Talking points serve as a speaker’s safety net and help pull them back to their main points when stumbling occurs or they veer off on a tangent. Key messages should include the main idea of the speech, how it relates to the speaker and their organization, as well as the audience and high-level content points.
  • Follow a formula: Be sure to make your point, provide reasoning or statistics that support your point and consider offering an example to help the audience visualize what you are saying. Telling a story is often easier for a speaker to recall compared to memorizing theories, data or intellectual arguments. Finally, be sure to drive the point home again at the conclusion of your remarks.
  • Practice makes perfect: Reading your speech ahead of time can be helpful, but nothing compares to giving the speech on camera or in front of colleagues, friends or family. Avoid speaking in front of the mirror as it only serves to distract. Speaking before a friendly audience helps with both familiarity with the topic as well as speed of delivery, your body language, your intonation, articulation and more. Play the recording back afterward to self-evaluate and ask for honest feedback and direction from those who are invested in you making a great impression up on the big stage.
  • Engage with your audience: Audience engagementis crucial to a speaker’s success, but it rarely ever just happens. Speakers must prepare for what some call crowd work; engaging the audience as part of their presentation and considering potential outcomes. In addition to the fact that audiences do not want to sit through a lecture, engaging with the audience can help them remember your key points. Storytelling, adding a little humor, polling the audience or low-pressure activities can be great ways to garner audience attention and prime them to listen attentively.
  • Have a backup plan: When all else fails, speakers should be prepared with a backup plan. Comedian Jo Koy saw firsthand what happens when you do not have a plan at the 2024 Golden Globes when his monologue fell flat. His jokes about Barbie and Taylor Swift left him in hot water and his only fallback was to blame the writers. While the Golden Globes is a much larger stage than your average business conference, all speakers should be prepared to pivot. Consider how an audience could respond to all aspects of your speech and have a plan to pivot to a safer topic should you lose the audience.

Public speaking is among the most common societal phobias, but it can be overcome in many cases, with effective practice and preparation. Comprehensive preparation can instill the confidence a speaker needs to be successful on stage. Speakers are selected for the insights they offer. Come prepared for the stage with key messages and a solid plan of action to make sure your messages are conveyed in way that engages the audience and leaves them wanting to learn more.

I Hate to Tell You This: The Dos and Don’ts of Breaking Bad News

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In business, we can’t escape bad news. Whether the topic is layoffs, poor earnings, a deal that fell through or any number of business or workplace challenges, communicating a negative outcome is sometimes as difficult as living with the outcome itself. There is no silver bullet to best communicate bad news, but it is the responsibility of business owners and spokespeople to manage the impact of that bad news on stakeholders and the business.

Communicating internally

When communicating bad news to your team, it is important to remember that for some, the news can be upsetting. Keep the following in mind when communicating bad news within your business.

Do: Be clear

A bad news announcement is stressful under the best of circumstances. A confusing announcement only makes the problem worse. When communicating, take extra steps to avoid generalities and include whatever specifics can be shared to ensure the news cannot be misinterpreted. For example, rather than saying “layoffs are expected,” consider “Due to economic conditions, we are planning to reduce the number of staff in our New York office by 15% by year end. The specific roles impacted by this decision are still being considered, and we expect to know and share more details by the end of the quarter.”

Do: Provide resources

After bad news breaks, team members will have questions. Consider putting together a FAQ or other fact sheet that managers and team members can turn to for more information. Also, consider giving your team members access to leaders who may be able to best answer common questions.

Don’t: Sugarcoat the news

Don’t belittle the intelligence and maturity of your team members by utilizing flowery language. The first instinct to soften the blow of bad news can be useful, and compassion has a part to play in delivering bad news. However, being overly sweet can come off as disingenuous.

Working with partners

Bad news will usually impact more than just your business. It often impacts the businesses and clients with which you work. For example, downsizing can reduce your capabilities, leading to partner concerns about being underserviced. When planning for bad news, consider the following as it relates to your partners.

Do: Be proactive

The people and businesses that work with your company expect they will be kept in the loop about news that impacts them. If a staff reduction is planned, they should hear it from your business first — not from news headlines or via the gossip mill.

Do: Plan

Communicating with partners involves more than just messaging. It involves timing. When preparing partner-related messaging, ensure all materials are developed before an announcement. Depending on the nature of the news, it may be beneficial to communicate with partners before sharing with the public. However, the time between the two announcements should not exceed 24 hours. Any longer risks a leak and losing control of the message.

Don’t: Overshare

While being proactive is important, it does not mean a business should share every detail of a bad news announcement. Businesses need to tailor partner messaging to only include information that pertains to the partner. If a partner has questions, schedule a time to speak with them one-on-one after the news breaks.

Talking to the public

Sharing bad news with the world can create opportunities for error, misinterpretation and even crisis if not handled correctly, especially in today’s world of instant digital communication. That said, when sharing bad news businesses should work through a medium like the news media or their website. When working with these mediums, keep the following in mind.

Do: Be Transparent

Generalities and vague comments create doubt. At worst such vagary provides opportunities for bad actors to take bad news and make it sound far worse than the reality. While being open about bad news can be painful, it is far better to keep control of the facts and remain transparent.

Do: Be Responsive

Public response to a bad news announcement could include anything from a reporter on a deadline or a social media post. Regardless of the source, responsiveness is critical for managing a negative announcement. Just like transparency can help reduce the chance of misinformation about a negative announcement, responsiveness can ensure facts and truth remain at the center of the conversation.

Don’t: Lie

You will be caught. It may not be immediately, but it will happen. Misstating facts and hiding critical information are sure ways to not only lose the trust of the public but create new problems as well. This goes for guessing or speculation, too. When announcing bad news, stick to the facts.

While these tips will help to better manage the impact of bad news on a business, they are all focused on mitigating the potential damage to the business and its reputation. There is no way to fully negate the impact of bad news. However, by following the above tips businesses can better survive delivering bad news, and work to grow in the long term.

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

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Giving your public relations team a seat at the table early in a situation can mean the difference between successfully navigating a potential reputational crisis and falling victim to embarrassing, costly and ruinous public backlash against your brand via social media and the press. One just needs to look at the now nearly infamous Kyte Baby incident, where CEO Ying Liu delivered a cringe-worthy and awkward TikTok apology in January, to see how harmful it truly can be to fail to consider strategic counsel from a seasoned PR advisor. This was in response to the company’s termination of an employee’s request to work remotely while her adopted newborn was in a neonatal intensive care unit.

While the underlying issue at Kyte Baby seemed connected to parental leave policies, the decision was viewed by consumers as antithetical to the company’s mission and values. Under the title of Kyte Cares, the company’s website reads in part: “At Kyte Baby, we have dedicated our company to helping babies and families find comfort for more than a decade … we understand the importance of family and recognize parents’ vital role in nurturing and supporting their families.”

The controversary swirled as enthusiastic fans of Kyte Baby’s products learned of the employee’s termination and complained to the company and online. Ironically, it was Liu’s awkward and stilted apology that brought the company out of the shadows of social media and made headlines around the world.

A Failure of Consideration

It would be a mistake to discount Liu or her decision as ill-considered. She is a working mother and entrepreneur who also happens to hold a doctorate in economics. Also, the tone of her original video apology, where she asked the employee in question to forgive “how her parental leave policy was communicated and handled,” would imply she was advised on how to respond.

What happened was a failure of consideration. A failure to consider what the decision to terminate would say about the company, and a failure to consider how Liu’s response to public backlash would be presented and received by that public.

If there was a PR professional advising her to act as she did, that person should be fired. If there was no PR professional advising Liu alongside of the company’s attorneys, then the fault lies squarely with Liu and the company’s fundamental inability to live its mission in a way its loyal customers might expect.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is this matter was seen as a legal issue and addressed accordingly. What it lacked was someone in the room, steeped in the brand’s mission and reputation, who would have played devil’s advocate both on the decision to dismiss the employee as well as gaming out any potential blowback from the apology. Had a skilled PR professional been in the room from the start, Liu would have been advised on the optics of dismissing a new mom with a sick child from a company founded to help moms navigating health issues (skin conditions related to fabrics) among their young children. Further, had a skilled PR pro spoken to Liu when her original apology was scripted and planned for wide distribution on TikTok, Liu would have been strongly advised to take a different approach.

Instead, Liu made a decision that matched the company’s (then) policy on parental leave. Liu made a legally appropriate CEO decision to follow company policy but failed to be the empathetic mom who founded the company 10 years earlier to help other moms.

Why PR Needs a Seat at the Executive Table

Liu is only the latest example of organizational leaders – C-suite and others – who failed to look beyond policy or legalese. In the same month Kyte Baby made headlines, a former account executive for Cloudflare, an IT company, recorded and posted to social media a video of her termination over Zoom by two human resource professionals she had never met and who didn’t know her. That company’s CEO also went on a social media apology tour, calling the video “painful” to watch and noting the way the matter was handled was inappropriate.

Organizations large and small make mistakes. Having trusted counsel – both legal and others – consider and review decisions that can impact the brand is vital. Moreover, the rules governing the workplace have changed and continue to evolve. Not only are people making space for their work in their homes and having to integrate that work into their lives beyond 9-to-5, but we are also in an era where the aggrieved can turn to social media and expose former employers who act in bad faith – real or perceived – to a firestorm of negative publicity. And, frankly, a lot of organizational leaders are getting it wrong.

Having a communications professional as part of the decision matrix can help. Whether in-house or an outside consultant or agency, these are trained professionals whose jobs are to consider every decision, message, social media post and internal memo through the lens of the organization’s reputation. It’s an invaluable service when you consider the alternative: Kyte Baby is navigating an ongoing boycott while trying to share positive news about their new parental leave policies. Cloudflare blew up on social media for the wrong reasons and may struggle with recruitment of vital talent as a result.

Lawyers are excellent advisors. They protect their clients in the court of law. Public relations professionals focus on reputational threats and protect clients in the court of public opinion, which is where consumers tend to decide where and how to spend their money. Both must be in the room where decisions are made.

X For Businesses: The Unanswered Question

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Elon Musk dominated headlines throughout 2023 after purchasing Twitter in the year prior. Musk purchased the social media platform with bold promises to advocate for free speech, to prevent bots and misinformation and to create the “everything app.”

Since taking over, Musk has made good on his promises to make changes, but those changes did not all yield positive returns. Since taking over, Musk has overseen widespread layoffs, as well as controversial decisions to outsource content moderators, rebrand Twitter to X and introduce a monthly subscription model. Under his direction during the first year, the company’s ad revenue dropped a minimum of 55% year-over-year each month and lost about 13% of its daily active users.

Not surprisingly, X’s viability for brands as a valuable social media tool is being questioned by organizational leaders, as well as their marketing and communications teams.

Is X worth a place in your social media strategy? Let’s look at a few considerations for business leaders reevaluating their brands’ activity on X. 

  • Time spent vs. ROI: Twitter since the beginning has been dependent on real-time interaction. In the last year, the platform has undergone significant security and algorithmic changes, which have resulted in fewer impressions and engagement on posts. This has been particularly true for those who chose to opt out of the paid subscription model. Regardless of the type of account, X as we know it today requires a significant time investment of diligent posting and interaction for even a chance at climbing user feeds.
  • Public trust concerns: Musk’s public intention when he bought Twitter was to encourage free speech and prevent misinformation. However, Musk has struggled to uphold these promises and has taken heavy criticism in the media related to the spread of misinformation on the platform. Taylor Swift, for example, was recently a victim or misinformation on the platform when AI-generated explicit photos began circulating the platform as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The potential implications of a violation of public trust for X users, coupled with controversial statements made by Musk, have prompted businesses and corporations to reconsider their connection with X.
  • Changing features: In Musk’s endeavor to make X the everything app, the company has made considerable changes to platform features. For example, when displaying links, X now removes headlines and makes clickable links less visible to limit linking outside the platform. For most businesses, social media is used to direct customers to a different place, whether that be the company website or a blog post. Limiting access to such links could diminish any return for businesses utilizing X.

The attention around X should serve as a reminder to business owners, that a social media strategy should always be evolving and that they should regularly evaluate engagement across all channels. Some platforms, or a company’s current strategy for a certain platform, may no longer be serving them well, and new resources and features are always popping up.

LinkedIn, for example, now offers articles and newsletters for users to post longer form content. Showcasing a business’s expertise and their leaders’ insights in an article could hold more value than posting small snippets on X.

Social media is an investment of time in understanding and establishing business goals that are supported by a platform’s capabilities. To get the most from social media, business leaders and their social media managers must understand how social media platforms could work to their advantage or diminish their investment as they evolve.

The Press Release: “In” or “Out” in 2024?

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As a journalism major in college, I studied the inverted pyramid. It states that the most important details permeate the widest part of the pyramid, supporting details follow in the middle and supplemental information completes the tip of the upside-down pyramid. As a public relations professional, I know a well-written press release should follow a similar format — but I also know no press release, no matter how well written, should stand on its own.

So, what’s the scoop on press releases for 2024? Those that follow the inverted pyramid format as part of a strategic public relations campaign are still very much “in,” but, if released in a vacuum or poorly written, the press release is most definitely “out.”

This should not come as a surprise in 2024. The demise of the press release has been predicted, incorrectly, for years. Once a powerful, singular tool in the world of PR, the press release has become simply one of countless tools available to the profession. Deployed strategically and creatively, a well-written press release can still help to raise brand awareness.

The Press Release Myth

For many, the idea of public relations often begins and ends with a press release. It’s not that simple anymore. Most reporters receive hundreds of press releases daily and could easily overlook yours even if you pay big bucks to have the best-known PR agency around draft and distribute it.

The truth is you need a continuous effort with the media to build credibility and a reputation as a valued resource among reporters and your audience at large. Journalists are in the business of reporting on news and taking deep dives into important trends; not promoting your company. To select you or your organization as a credible source, first journalists need to know your name. Secondly, they need to know you aren’t merely going to try to promote your product or service. The way journalists come to know these things is through continuous, relevant and topical outreach on subjects they cover and care about. This is the primary reason most PR professionals advise clients not to treat PR like a spigot, turning it off and on at will.

To accomplish all of this, you may use a press release here and there. But it should never be your default tactic, and it should only be used if you have genuine news or insight to announce. Instead, consider the press release as one useful tool in a communication strategy.

Maximizing the Press Release

So, how can a business owner get the most from a press release?

Press releases can offer value when announcing a business launch, new product, merger or acquisition, personnel change, etc. It should be relevant to the audiences you hope to reach and tell the reader the facts of what is happening with your business and leave the promotional language for the marketing and advertising folks. If the goal is establishing credibility among your audience, any hint of self-promotion will steer journalists — and increasingly more savvy news consumers — in the other direction.

Ultimately, business owners should not expect a press release alone to garner media attention. You need a broader campaign where reporters and other key audiences are receiving a steady stream of content on your brand whether through pitches to the media related to industry trends or current events, through content on company blogs, the company website or social media posts. Only with consistency will you build credibility and confidence in your leaders and your brand. Consider consulting with a PR agency to understand what approach might be best for your brand.

Best Practices

When a press release is determined to be a useful component of a broader communications strategy, it must be well-written to demonstrate that credibility. By taking care in your messaging and presentation, you are conveying that you take care in your product or service.

Consider these tips in drafting a good press release:

  • Think like a journalist — keep the inverted pyramid in mind, stick to the facts, and avoid promotion.
  • Announce your “news” up top.
  • Try to find a news hook or element of timeliness.
  • Keep the copy clean and tight.
  • Craft a compelling headline that sums up your news.
  • Consider partnering with a PR agency with former journalists on staff.

Issuing a press release as part of a comprehensive PR strategy can have several benefits including:

  • Boosting company search engine optimization, particularly if the release is picked up by multiple media outlets.
  • Serving as good introductory or reference material for reporters.
  • Providing useful fodder for marketing and other owned content sources.
  • Helping to build credibility and name recognition with a steady drumbeat of newsworthy and relevant releases, combined with other PR initiatives.

While the media landscape continues to change, the press release remains “in” and will continue to be a useful tool — for now. However, business owners should understand a press release, on its own, does not guarantee media coverage. When written well and thoughtfully distributed, it can be an effective component of a comprehensive PR strategy that can build brand trust and elevate your company in the eyes of reporters and customers.

Reflections on a Day of Service: The Value in Communicating the Good You Do

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We have all heard charitable giving and volunteerism are good for the community and good for business. Although our central purpose in giving back is hopefully to produce better outcomes for others, wildlife, the environment or countless worthy causes, that business benefit should not be overlooked.

After taking part in this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, we thought we would explore the benefits – beyond the self-satisfaction found in helping others – available to companies that give back through kindness.

These are benefits that can inspire and encourage others to get involved and feel a part of something, while also enhancing the company’s reputation and, potentially, its bottom line.

More specifically, spreading the word, in the right way, of a company’s philanthropic initiatives can:

  • Enhance company culture. Today’s employees want to know they are working for companies that care and take action toward social responsibility. They want to see the company’s principles and support for employees, the community and the environment communicated. It can engender them a sense of pride toward their employer. Further, providing employees with time to volunteer with their team can promote comradery and build a corporate culture where employees feel more fulfilled, challenged and want to stay and grow.
  • Assist in recruiting top talent. Millennials and Gen Z want to give back in meaningful ways and they are increasingly looking to employers to not only support, but enable, these social good contributions. They are looking to join companies that provide opportunities to volunteer, to take part in fundraising initiatives and to support the causes that matter to them.
  • Raise awareness of your company among your target audience. It is not only employees who are interested in socially minded employers; customers want to patronize companies that support causes important to them.

By sharing news and updates of charitable donations and volunteering efforts via articles, photos and videos shared via eblasts, social media channels and newsletters, leadership can ensure prospective and existing customers, job candidates, and current employees see their commitment to giving back and realize this is an organization worthy of their time, attention and money. To help ensure this, consider these best practices for communicating charitable endeavors on social media:

  • Craft your post with care for clarity, tone and importantly, brevity, as well as spelling and grammar.
  • Include photos and short video clips where possible.
  • Tag the nonprofits you supported. They may repost to their networks.
  • Call out employees where appropriate for their volunteer efforts and tag them on posts.
  • Encourage employees to like and share on their social media channels as well.

Finally, a good public relations partner can define a clear strategy communicating the social good works of the company and its employees. Having a strategy is important, not only for promotional purposes, but also to ensure you and your employees communicate thoughtfully, consistently and respectfully while focusing on the best channels and language to best support the efforts of the company and its employees. Not every fundraising initiative is worthy of a press release. Again, a PR professional can help you determine the best communications channel for sharing messaging.

For our part, team members at Kimball Hughes PR had an amazing time volunteering in their local communities on MLK Day. They organized dog and cat food at the Connecticut Humane Society, made cards for veterans with the Lexington Day of Service and packaged emergency relief and disaster kits with Jersey Cares for victims of recent storms and natural disasters. At Kimball Hughes PR, we encourage a culture of giving back by providing paid time off to volunteer for MLK Day as well as during the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation’s Week of Giving. We seek team input on all company charitable initiatives, whether through our pro bono client work or our annual charitable gift made to a nonprofit cause important to our team on behalf of our clients.

From paid-time-off to volunteer to matching employee charitable donations, organizational leaders should not only be sure to create opportunities to give back, but also to communicate their efforts and those of their employees. While not every charitable effort is newsworthy, a photo on social media of an employee helping to clean a beach or assist in a food kitchen can go a long way in advancing your reputation as a company that cares and one that is worth the investment and support of employees, customers and others.

What’s In (and Out) in Public Relations for 2024

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Many of us appreciate starting the new calendar year with a clean slate and some helpful insights to make us more successful. Knowing what has changed and how to better navigate the world in our personal and professional lives certainly helps. And as is the trend at the start of each year in fashion, business and elsewhere, I wanted to share my perspective on what is in, and what is out, in terms of approaches to communication strategies in 2024:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

IN: Greater scrutiny of artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI.

If 2022 showed us what was possible with the birth of ChatGPT, 2023 showed us what was practical as litigation surrounding AI flourished, as noted in a Dec. 14, 2023 blog post by the law firm of Perkins Coie. Going forward, AI in strategic communications will be a resource, not a revolution, leading those who fail to recognize this shift into a world of trouble.

OUT: The idea of replacing communications professionals with AI — at least for now. Experimentation has shown us AI has yet to mature to the point where anything but mundane copy automation is possible. Even there, the risks of error, inaccuracy and legal jeopardy abound with AI in a lead content role.

Social Media

IN: LinkedIn as a force multiplier for your communications strategy.

For both for- and nonprofit organizations, LinkedIn has demonstrated that tailored, personal and insightful content is exactly what professionals are seeking. We are all looking to grow professionally, and LinkedIn has become the gold standard in social media for real-world advice, tips and lessons learned. The platform has also rolled out many tools with low entry barriers for organizations to use to support their communications goals.

OUT: X, formerly known as Twitter, for anything of practical use by businesses or nonprofits.

The platform has been on a downward slide in terms of relevance for years. With a fast-shrinking number of quality controls, advertisers and actual users, it will continue a steady slide into irrelevance barring a major turnaround which seems unlikely at the dawn of 2024.

Media Relations

IN: Continued consolidation and evolution in the media space.

The very definition of media outlet remains in flux as news publishers explore new platforms and models, while journalists themselves go entrepreneurial with newsletters, podcasts and streaming services.

OUT: Asking the question, “Who do you know at [media outlet name]?”

While media relations was once a field that relied on relationships to get a foot in the door, today’s journalists are driven by what stories grab eyeballs, regardless of who is pitching it. It is no longer (and, frankly, it has not been for a long while) who you know, but rather the quality of the story to be told and the PR professionals who best understand how to share that story with key journalists and/or outlets.

Messaging

IN: The continued march of pithy messaging to best engage and inform B2B and B2C consumers.

With millennials and Gen Z now in the majority of consumers and increasingly moving into management and entrepreneurial roles, organizations will need to appeal to these audiences by conveying brand personalities that showcase authenticity. Taking an infotainment approach — the combination of information and entertainment, even humor — has proved popular and impactful with these cohorts. However, great care must be taken to avoid unforced errors like the failed 2023 Snoop Dogg/Solo Stove marketing campaign.

OUT: Messaging that even hints at self-promotion.

From the journalists themselves to the feedback of their readers, the jury has come in and stakeholders are tired of being forced to endure a brand’s value proposition or product/service pitches disguised as news. Brands will need to find something relevant to say about the issues, trends and news impacting their audiences that does not center on what they can do or sell. This approach will be critical if they want to continue to maintain relevance with those audiences and the journalists who help them reach those audiences.

Content

IN: Succinct video messaging.

Consumers, as well as the media, are time starved. While video has helped drive increased engagement, the trend continues to move toward ever more brief videos whether it is explaining a concept, pitching a reporter or persuading audiences. Brands should be creating their own video library of short-form content on key topics and issues of greatest importance to their target audiences.

OUT: Long form owned content.

The 60-second video is dead; long live the 30-second video. Smart brands will continue to move away from long-form content on their owned channels (i.e., websites, social media, newsletters, etc.) and take advantage of low- and no-cost video and editing tools, as well as developing strategies to create and provide aggressively brief content that speaks to important trends and topics.

The pace of technology and information continues to gain speed. Smart brand and organizational leaders will recognize the importance of adapting to the preferences and needs of their target audiences while creating plans that leverage new ways of engaging audiences to ensure they maintain awareness and relevance among those who matter most to them.