Taking a Deep Dive into PR Best Practices with Barbara Nonas

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, peter Wolfolk.

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to all listeners all across America and around the world. Now here's the question for you How can you have your PR team produce its best content and services? Well, my guest today will provide an answer for that. After 20 years of working with in-house PR teams or at PR agencies, she has learned what is needed to get the maximum from your team. So joining me today, from New York City, is Strategic Communications and Public Relations Consultant, barbara Nones. Barbara, welcome to the podcast again.

Thank you, i'm so glad to be here, Peter.

So let's begin with your giving an overall overview of your communications background and accomplishments, and then what led you to develop this list of must-haves to have a solid PR team.

Sure, well, as you said, i have about 20 years of experience in public relations and communications. I've worked at PR agencies both small boutique agencies and larger agencies on everything from lifestyle clients to Fortune 500 companies to doing corporate social responsibility for Fortune 500 companies, and I was head of in-house communications at an ad agency a large ad agency for 10 years, and now I'm a freelance PR consultant.

So you've actually been in the trenches and so you understand what's needed.

Oh, absolutely Absolutely, And I've had great experiences and I've had some frustrating ones, so that is what prompted me to put this list together.

Well, speaking of that list, why don't we start? Let's take what is your very first recommendation toward having a great team.

Well, first of all, two words trust and transparency. There has to be open and honest communication between the client and the PR team. The PR team whether it's an in-house team or you've hired an agency the team needs to be part of the company's inner circle. They need to be treated as partners and collaborators. If you are using an outside agency, they need to be an extension of your team, because the more the PR team knows, the more they can help you. You know whether it's an opportunity or stopping a crisis before it blows up. Trust and transparency are really the overall most important element, but, starting from the beginning, you need to agree on what you want to achieve. What does the company want to achieve? Is it media coverage, brand awareness, positioning the leaders as experts? Do you want to increase your social media engagement and or your website traffic? Do you want to attract new employees and make sure you're keeping the ones that you have? Those are just some of the things that success can look like, and the company and the PR team need to agree from the get-go what the company is looking for. It could be all of the things I listed, or it could be just one or two or a few. And then it's also important to agree well, how are we going to measure success? What is success like? Is it how much media coverage you get? Is it how many more LinkedIn followers you get? How much more LinkedIn engagement you get on your LinkedIn page? So all those things are important.

Okay.

Another one again to do at the beginning is to set expectations with the PR team. Let them know what your timelines are and be very clear about the deliverables that you're expecting. What do you want to know and when do you want to know it? Keep the team informed, and what does that look like? That could mean being in regular communication with the CEO and key leaders. You know, in weekly meetings. it could be even a daily touch face. Whatever it is that will really keep the PR team informed on what's happening with the company, good and or bad.

Now, that one I certainly agree with, because I've had experiences where, if you well, why don't you tell me this in advance? You know those sort of situations that can upset a schedule or cause other sort of complications if that kind of communications is not agreed upon and or done as expected so that everybody knows what everybody else is doing or, as I say, that we're all on the same page.

Yeah, absolutely. When I was working in-house as the head of communications for an ad agency, one of the most frustrating things for my team and I that we would hear is hearing from a creator for example, we have an amazing campaign launching tomorrow. Well, that's too late. Reporters want to know about news before it breaks, not afterwards. and reporters have time to write their stories to get the best outcome. You want to give the reporter a lot of time to repair. You want to give them as much information as possible. Are there images you can provide? Are there statistics and facts that will back up what you're trying to say? A reporter if a campaign breaks, for example, and it's already on TV or on websites, a reporter doesn't want to cover it when it's out already. They want news.

You know and I forget, there's a term for that embargo that on occasion, sometimes you can embargo something and most great reporters are going to honor that, because you know they're getting just what you said. They're getting the story in advance and they can publish it the day of as scheduled.

Yes, definitely, that's definitely a good way to go. It has to be, as you said, with a reporter that you trust and that you know isn't going to not pay attention to the embargo but will honor the embargo. And usually I would give that embargoed information to just one reporter so that they could break the story And then, once that story is out, give the information to other reporters.

And you know that's another way of building up relationships too is that you trust them enough to do, you know, to honor the embargo, and from time to time you can spread it around from one source or place this time and someone else gets it the next time, so that everybody or nobody feels left out, so to speak, as long as it's the appropriate reporter for the appropriate topic.

Yes, absolutely. And that leads to another element that I think is so important, which is to trust the judgment of the PR team. I've had clients. sometimes they'll be really excited about something they're doing and they want to get press coverage, but often that's just exciting to the people within the company. It might. if it's not, as I said, newsworthy, if it's not a first, a best or an only, others aren't going to be interested. And you also don't want your team wasting their time pitching a story that isn't going to get any press coverage. And, like you said, you also want to preserve the relationship that PR folks have with reporters. If I sent a story kind of you know, that's not good, that's not newsworthy, that's not a first best, or only to one of my contacts at you know, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, that's going to diminish my relationship with them And they might think to themselves why is she sending me this?

This is not relevant.

This is not interesting, and so it's really important to trust the judgment of the PR team. Hopefully you've done your due diligence and you've hired a great PR team, whether it's in-house or an agency, and so you should trust them. And another thing that a company might think and this has happened to me as well they might think that something they're doing is not interesting and they're just setting it kind of aside. But I have seen like, wait a minute, that's a great story. We should just visual work the way that are definitely go forward with that. So, again, trusting the judgment, and if you can't get press coverage, there are always other ways to go. You can put it on your social media pages. You can put it on your media pages, you can send it to clients. There are other ways besides press coverage to get the news out.

Let me just add to something you said about in terms of trusting reporters. When I was in Congress, i worked a press secretary in Congress and one of the, i guess, most educating experiences that I had in terms of working with reporters was New York reporters, because they're about business. They're not there to find out if your member of Congress was playing softball with somebody else. That's not what they're there for. They wanted to make sure that this is a solid, meaningful story And once you learn that and what they're looking for and how to get it to them and when to get it to them, that goes a long way in terms of your future, your knowledge and your credibility that you can present something that, as you said, that's newsworthy, because that's what at least my experience with those people in New York and others too I've done with the Washington Post and Dallas and some of the majors That's exactly what they're looking for. So if you're a novice PR person, don't go to the pros with something lightweight and it really has no major relevance.

Yes, that's definitely true, and it's important to follow and read the stories of the reporters that you're going to be sending information to, because you want to make sure that you're sending them something that they would be interested in. If they cover, for example, travel and you send them something about fashion, that's not their beat And they're not going to be interested, so it's important to know what kind of stories the reporter likes to cover.

And help them when you can, Because, as I said, once you develop relationships, they can help you over a hump a lot of times as well, Because they know they can depend on you and what you're going to give them is solid. So those kind of relationships, as you said, trust their judgment And they trust yours. That you've developed that relationship. That's something that any and all P&R people need to if they haven't done so already need to fully understand and appreciate.

Oh, absolutely. That's what I always set out to do, which is to become a trusted source for reporters, and, having been a reporter in broadcast journalism early in my career, i know it taught me what makes a story and also what a reporter needs, and that that's what you should be giving them as a PR professional.

What is the next on your list of things that PR teams or folks should know about having a good PR team?

That it's important for the client. So when I say client, i'm thinking of a company that either has a in-house PR team or has hired a PR team, and what the company needs to keep in mind is that reporters have deadlines And if it takes your team too long to respond, you can lose the opportunity. And this found a lot with large corporations that sometimes they want to go back and forth with legal and get all the dot, all the i's, which I understand, but then the company also needs to understand that if it takes too long to get back to the reporter, you might lose the opportunity. That's why, ideally, the PR team should get all the information as much as information as they can up front, so that they be ready to answer the reporter.

So you know, and I think those kinds of conversations need to be had in advance, once you're coming on board with a new client, to understand here's how we operate and here's why it's important, and if it's not done this way, it may not happen at all, so that they're not looking at you because you didn't get the story placed without understanding that well, we couldn't place it because you didn't give it to us in a timely fashion, as we had advised you you need to. So I think those conversations definitely need to take place early and often.

Yes, well, that's true for all of the tips that we've discussed, you know. First, between the client and the PR team, there needs to be trust and transparency. The team needs to, the client needs to understand that your PR team needs to be informed about everything, because what we, as PR professionals, don't know, we can't promote and we can't stop a crisis from blowing up. And there needs to be an agreement on what you want to achieve, on what the expectations are and being responsive, understanding that reporters have deadlines and trusting the judge of the PR team.

Well, there's no question about it. I mean, this is solid information. Have we covered all of those areas that you think that need to be incorporated in having a good, solid PR team?

Yes, yes, i think we have. And again, just to reiterate, this is how a company can get the best use out of their PR team.

Well, let me say thank you so very, very much, barbara. I just thought that you provided this sort of valuable information that I think even some senior PR people, as well as a beginner, should certainly need to know. And do you have any, let's say, closing advice for all listeners?

Oh, that's a good question. I think I will go back to what I said in the beginning, that it's a two-way street with trust and transparency. There has to be honest communication between the client and the PR team, and that goes both ways. The client needs to set their expectations and make sure the PR team is informed, and the PR team needs to feel comfortable enough to say this is not a story or you need to get me this information sooner.

Well, let's again introduce my guest, Barbara Nones, a strategic communications and public relations consultant, for providing us this very, very needed information And, Barbara, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention and I'm glad we were able to have you on And to my listeners. Thank you for listening And please, if you have some ideas for a show, give us a call and let us know. And please, once again, share this with your friends and listen again to the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, tennessee. Thank you for joining us. Seems like Estonia is all right. Hello, thanks, don't worry.