Elizabeth Christian & Associates Public Relations Blog

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

The year 2009 will be remembered for many things—a major national recession, the year the first African-American president was sworn in, and perhaps a little less significantly, the year that the over-40 set embraced social media in a major way for the first time.

I love the AT&T commercial that shows the family with two teenagers on the front porch with Mom on Facebook and Dad on Twitter. The teens are NOT amused. Likewise, my two teenagers are not thrilled when their Dad and I make references to our Facebook pages or “tweeting.” They, of course, were way ahead of us in the social media department and they particularly hate it if we mention one of their friend’s status updates. (Hey, they friended ME!)

A major reason that I began experimenting with social media was to determine how useful these tools would be as (free) avenues to help spread the word about our clients and their news announcements. There are many ways to use Facebook in the public relations realm (fan pages, event invitations, viral marketing, etc.). Though still in the very early stages for most of our clients, I am sold on the usefulness of Facebook for some (not all) clients.

After several months of tweeting, the professional benefits of Twitter are not as clear to me. For one, who has time to keep looking at Twitter all day? I do check it a couple of times a day and there are usually some posts that are amusing and/or interesting. Yes, it’s sort of fun to know what @lancearmstrong is up to today. No, I don’t believe that @algore tweets his own messages. And, I have found Twitter to be useful when news is breaking.

But unless an organization has someone on staff who can tweet on a regular basis with truly interesting and compelling information (not just endless links to who knows what), I’d say the jury is still out as to whether Twitter will help drive sales or even significantly raise awareness for most businesses.

There are exceptions, of course. Since I lived in California for many years, I naturally follow In-N-Out Burger on Twitter. By using a third-party vendor with a pretty good sense of humor, the tweets and retweets about this popular hamburger chain are worth following. (Check it out @IN_N_OUT_Burger.)

So as the year of the social media craze winds down, I will continue to tweet from time to time and mull about the effectiveness of Twitter as a PR tool. Interested? Follow me @megmeo. We’ll see if we can figure this out together.

-Meg Meo

Getting Ready for Your On-Camera Close-Up

You’ve carefully crafted your message, meticulously choosing your words. Now, it’s time to deliver that message to the public via a television news camera.

While the little red light on the camera (signaling that the camera is “rolling”) can be intimidating, interviewing on-camera doesn’t have to be.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to act natural and be yourself. Your interview should come across to television viewers as a simple conversation between you and the reporter. That means you must answer the question that has been asked, while weaving your talking points into your answers. Also, keep your answers fairly short and succinct and direct them to the reporter or anchor who is interviewing you—and not the camera. Hand gestures are okay as long as they’re not distracting or excessive.

Here’s a little trick of the trade. When dealing with interviewees who are nervous or anxious about an interview, television photographers are often instructed to just start recording while the reporter and interviewee are chatting before the “official” interview begins. This way the interviewee is able to speak comfortably and naturally, not realizing that the camera is actually “rolling.” At the end of the interview, the reporter announces, “I think we’ve got all we need,” to which the interviewee often replies, “Oh, you were recording that whole time? That wasn’t so difficult.”

Which brings me to my next point. Everything you say—from the time the reporter walks into the room to the time he or she leaves—should be considered on the record and could end up on television.

Keep in mind your interview will be broken up into one (or maybe two) 12-second, usable sound bites. So even though you may interview for 10 or 15 minutes, you will probably only be on TV for 12 to 25 seconds tops—so make it count!

On the other hand, if your interview is live (as opposed to being taped to air during a later newscast), every single thing you say will air as is—which can be good and bad. It’s good because you don’t have to worry about your words being edited or cut, which can alter the meaning; however, it can be bad if you stumble on your words.
 
Then there are some superficial things to consider if you know in advance that you will be interviewed, such as wearing solid colors (rather than shirts with small prints), taking off name tags or badges you may be wearing and using face powder to avoid a shiny face. (This applies to men and women.)

After considering all of these things—sit back, relax and let the camera roll!

-Erin Ochoa