Brad Marley

Some of us who work in PR are lucky.

Our clients are large corporations with entire divisions devoted to helping us tell our story, whether it’s a fully equipped broadcast studio that we can use to record podcasts, or an editorial division that acts almost like a news department, siphoning the best stories to fill slots that will draw the most eyeballs.

If you have this machine at your disposal, it can make your job much easier.

But not everybody has this luxury. In fact, with no stats to back this up, I’d wager that most of us have to do most of the leg work ourselves. Even out-duel the major players.

Thankfully, technology makes it easier to tell our story. And if there’s one piece of tech that has the best chance to disrupt our industry in 2012, I’d put my money on Instagram.

As of January 1, 2012, there are 15 million Instagram accounts that have shared more than 400 million photos. And organizations like the Boston Celtics and General Electric have started accounts to use photos to help augment their ability to reach their audiences, so there’s something to this service.

But how can Instagram change the way we do PR in the new year?

Well, in all PR situations, you’re trying to make news. It can be as straightforward as en email pitch to a tech reporter, or conducting a major event that is geared toward a large group of automotive media.

In both cases, you’re using words to draw their interest to interview an executive or attend an event.

But what if we added a visual element?

Even with a pool of photographers at your disposal, it can take hours (sometime a day) to get the high-res pictures you want to display.

But if you have an iPhone with the Instagram app, you can snap pictures and immediately post them wherever you want, and you can even add some artistic flair with the filters. And the iPhone takes a damn good picture, so you’re not losing much in the way of resolution. You might not be the next Ansel Adams, but even the most green PR person can create something worthwhile.

[Note: Instagram is only available on the iPhone, but an app for Android is coming soon, and I can't imagine that Windows Phone would be far behind.]

And with the ability to use hashtags on Instagram to categorize your images, it isn’t difficult to reserve a hashtag for providing sneak peeks for upcoming projects, or hashtags that correspond with a specific event so that media who can’t attend can still watch the images in real time.

In no way should this replace the high-res images that a professional photographer will provide, but it can help us to “tell the story” while we’re waiting, and anything that helps us become better storytellers has to be considered.

2012 feels like the year where PR professionals who experimented with new tools in 2011 will take the next step and implement those tools in their standard PR toolkit.

If you don’t have Instagram in your regular arsenal, consider this your invitation.

Finally, the random question: I love to read, and I love to hear what others are reading. So, what is the last book you read that you couldn’t put down?

OMG! The Hunger Games series. I seriously had to tell myself to go to work and, as my reward for working the entire day, I would get to go home and read. I read all three in a week. So. Freaking. Good.

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Again – big thanks go out to Gini for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions.

You can find all entries in The Five and One series here.

Whether you loved him or hated him, you can’t deny Steve Jobs was the master of his domain.

In my opinion, his greatest accomplishment was creating products we didn’t even know we needed, and turning them into must-have items. His death, as The Onion so aptly puts it, leaves us with one less human who “knew what the f–k he was doing.”

But one of the things that intrigued me following the news of his passing was the outpouring of sentimentality from the media.

One of the more popular pieces making the rounds was The Wall Street Journal and All Things D reporter Walt Mossberg’s poignant piece about the Steve Jobs that only he knew.

It was a touching tribute to a man that didn’t let just anyone into his world. But it kind of blew me away that a reporter took the time to write something that was, for a tech reporter, so heartfelt, because it flew in the face of everything we’ve been taught about journalists.

Most of the time, the reporters on your media list are just voices on the other end of the line. You call them up, hear your story idea shot down, and you move to the next reporter. At least, that’s what we’re taught when we begin our PR careers.

But the very idea that Mossberg had a relationship with Jobs that spurred him to devote column inches after his death solidifies this crazy new idea that PR is less about results, and more about relationships. (Okay, results are still nice.)

Not every conversation between a reporter and your executive has to result in coverage.

Not every phone call to a reporter has to have a purpose. Sometimes, it can just be to talk, like when your mom called you while you were away at college. You know, to see how you were doing.

If you’re always calling with ulterior motives, and not getting away from your desk to meet a reporter for lunch or grab a coffee, you’re doing it wrong.

Bottom line: reporters don’t bite. (Plus, without them, we wouldn’t have jobs.) Get out and meet them.

If somebody like Steve Jobs valued his relationships with certain members of the media, that’s as good a reason as any, I suppose, to follow his lead.

Photo courtesy of Joi.

Did you know there is an editor at WIRED Magazine who is responsible for making sure reporters do not use Wikipedia as a source?

It’s true. I read it on Gizmodo.com.

It seems to me this is something WIRED (and other publications that have this policy in place) should tout. I’m not saying it should place itself in the masthead — WIRED Magazine: Wiki-what? — but, at the very least, maybe a letter from that editor?

As the public’s trust in the media plummets, what with the recent phone hacking scandal and a tendency to post incorrect scoops to stay in lockstep with the news cycle, media should strive to reassure the public that they are professionals, not the equivalent of a college student using Wikipedia to round out their list of sources for a paper on Scotland Yard.

Letting us know that they don’t use a free encyclopedia on the Web that anyone can edit is a good start.

Raise your hand if you’re paranoid.

If you work in PR, your hand probably shot up without asking your brain for permission.

While some would provide a rebuttal to the opening salvo of this post in the form of a “It’s PR, not ER”, they probably haven’t lied awake the night before a major announcement, running a mental marathon through every single bit of information being released to the press in the morning, fretting that something will go out that wasn’t approved. Frazzled and exhausted, you load up on coffee to make it through the 16-hour day of event staffing, pitching and monitoring that awaits you.

Forget the emergency room. This makes us yearn for a nice, padded cell.

The thought that one measly missing number in the client’s monthly sales, for instance, can cause their stock to plummet is enough to make us loony.

It’s this type of thought process that goes on inside the heads of PR people inside the cubes of America’s corporations. And it’s no fun, so I wanted to share a few tips that, I think, are worth considering if you’re the paranoid PR type.

Understand Your Limits – You have to understand, early on, that there is only so much you know. We are often at the mercy of an internal expert giving us information that we couldn’t possibly get ourselves, so we take what they tell us and put it in the press release. If they’re the only person who could possibly know the information is wrong, well, what can you do?

What’s Done is Done – After the documents have been signed off on by the proper people, and legal has checked them off, there is not much else you can do. Most PR people will re-check incessantly for errors [Editor's note: This is not a bad thing] but that will only get you so far. At some point, you have to put down the red pen.

Do Something Else - Like any kind of mental instability, the more you think about something, the worse it gets. If you stew over a piece of mis-information that you think you remember seeing in the press release that goes to the wire at 6 a.m. the following morning — you know, the one you’ve re-checked 50 times — you’re just going to drive yourself crazy. Go for a bike ride.

Trust Yourself – This likely isn’t your first rodeo. If your client trusts you with handling a big announcement, chances are they have faith in you for a reason. Continue to be diligent. Continue to do what you’re paid to do. If you do, everything will turn out fine. You’ve done this before. Go do it again.

Pour a Stiff Drink – If all else fails, do this.

Public relations is a competitive field, and there is always somebody gunning for your job. I think this plays a small role in this type of paranoia. But there’s also something to be said about hard and diligent work.

If you do the work you’re supposed to do, and do it to the best of your ability, chances are good, nay, excellent that everything will turn out fine.

So the next time paranoia starts to creep in, think of the made-up word “Aanoia.” It’s paranoia without the PR. Just the way we want it.

Image courtesy of Roberto Bouza’s Flickr page.