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Lindsay Ciulla: Build the PR Team That Works for You

[Please welcome back SWMS contributing editor Lindsay Ciulla, a senior VP with (SWMS subscriber) Weber Shandwick Worldwide. –Ed.] Well friends, in what feels like the blink of an eye we’re somehow halfway through the first quarter of 2020 — in a decade that (at least when I was growing up) promised flying cars and travel via teleportation.

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Alex Shapiro: In-House PR FOMO Reality Check

[We asked PR vet Alex Shapiro to contrast the worlds of agency and in-house PR. He knows both. Enjoy the read. -Ed.] For agency PR pros, the grass may seem particularly greener right now on the in-house side and there’s no shortage of hot companies hiring. We’re all told the job market’s hot, and that can often feel true for the revolving doors of PR.

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Matthew Lynley: What Makes for a Great Communications Pro

[We asked Matthew Lynley, a former journalist with VentureBeat, TechCrunch and the WSJ, what makes for a great comms professional. Here’s what he had to say. — Ed.] Companies with massive budgets can hire a PR team the size of a small army. But hiring more people doesn’t make the company better at PR.

 
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Mitch Wagner: ‘Get to the Point — Fast’

[We asked veteran tech reporter Mitch Wagner to deconstruct two of his recent news stories, explaining why he wrote them the way he did. Mitch has done so — you will enjoy his contribution. –Ed.]

A tech journalist today needs to get to the point right away. As a tech journalist, I have an ideal reader in mind every time I write an article. As I write, I’m always asking myself how I can best serve that reader with the news they need to know, fast.

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Anton Molodetskiy: Don’t Fear the Phone

[Enjoy this true story from SWMS contributor and PR pro Anton Molodetskiy -Ed.] You may think that journalists would rather talk to a telemarketer than answer your phone call, but the phone is still a key tool for both reporters and PR. I learned this hard way a few years ago while managing outreach for a B2B startup coming out of stealth.

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SWMS Playbook: Challenges and Solutions

We recently conducted a video meeting with a subscriber who sought SWMS POV on the following media relations questions. With the subscriber’s permission, here are the questions and our responses. Hope you find them useful.

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From the Archives: The Best and Worst of CES Pitches

The best-written pitch is the one that works. Your style is “good” when it leads to a hit. That said, there are all too many ways to go wrong. Our subscribers continually say that the crickets are chirping like never before. Is your pitch as good as it can be?

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Lindsay Ciulla: Read and Succeed

Picture this. It’s Sunday morning. You have no plans. You roll out of bed and grab a cup of coffee. Now… what’s in your other hand? For most of us these days, the answer is “my phone.” But are you scrolling Instagram with that time? Or –- alternatively -– are you reading a magazine?

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Tech PR Advice from TechCrunch

TechCrunch Extra Crunch this week posted a pair of articles containing admonishment and advice for tech PR pros. The top portion of the posts does appear for free in regular TechCrunch. The full text is available only to TC EC subscribers. We hereby excerpt (in fair-use fashion) what our readers most need to know.

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FRIDGE NOTES

How Frustrating, Right? All That Work…

Fortune editorial fellow Rachyl Jones wrote this 1,300-word feature that mentioned Neutrogena 29 times. An exec from Neutrogena’s parent company was quoted four times. Fortune ran Neutrogena’s art. Yet Neutrogena was not mentioned either in the headline or the lede. The headline: “Face-scanning AI apps are giving cosmetics companies deeper connections, and selling points, with customers.” There was no reporting done on any other app.

Says GPT-4: “The primary focus of the article is on Neutrogena’s utilization of AI technology.” Says Google Gemini: “This story is about Neutrogena’s AI skin analysis service called Skin360.” Says Claude 3: “This story is about Neutrogena’s AI-powered skin analysis service called Skin360.”

Can you imagine the frustration in Neutrogena comms? Fortune’s design — in sections and on author pages — permits only the headline to show. That’s all the reader has in order to decide whether to stop and read. All that time invested with no mention of your company where you need it most.

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