Here in the NYC area, we’ve just come through Hurricane Irene. I hope you and your loved ones are okay and rebounding from her wrath.
Depending on where you live, you may have experienced flooding, power loss or other damage to your home. You may have been one of thousands that were evacuated or forced into an emergency shelter. Hopefully you and no one you know was bodily injured.
Irene’s impact on me personally was near minimal. Yet driving just five minutes from my house, there are folks (even days later) without power, trees fallen into houses, businesses shut down, and traffic lights out.
It’s made me step back to take stock of something we can often lose sight of: that although we may seem very closely connected to others by geography, social circles, experiences, family and economic circumstances or personal interests, our individual realities are often dramatically different. Times like these just highlight the fact.
Translate that to our daily (non-hurricane) lives, and we see how important it is to walk in another’s shoes on a regular basis, especially when trying to connect and build bridges with others. (Springsteen once recounted his tale of ‘the gypsy’ giving him advice in launching his band: “You can’t do it by yourself; you’re gonna need help!”)
This is extraordinarily true for us PR and marketing folk, who are supposed specialists in connecting via messaging with others. And it’s good practice for anyone doing any kind of business, whether you’re selling widgets, fundraising or running for President of the United States.
Here are some things I always keep in mind when embarking on a new campaign:
- Know your goal and your audience: You can’t expect people to respond to your message if it’s off kilter with what they are living every day. Tailor your message accordingly.
- Connect and inform first, sell later: No one likes the come on, especially when it invades our space. It’s why telemarketers have such lousy reputations. When you share your world with others you invite them into your space rather than inviting yourself into theirs.
- Use social media to engage, not preach: We’re interested in people in social media based not only on what they say, but how they say it. So if every tweet is followed by three exclamation points (!!!) or every facebook message sends you to a “buy this” page, you will tire quickly and move on.
- Solicit feedback and create evangelists: People take advice and make decisions from people they trust. The success of mega-suggestion site Yelp is proof. What better way to get people into your tent than by enlisting the volunteer efforts of their friends?
- Amend your plans to react to changing conditions: When things don’t go your way, try to figure out why and switch direction without too much time and energy wasted in between. And always have a backup plan.
Irene was a nasty hurricane for some; an over-hyped rain event for others. Remember her when you’re putting together your next outreach. She just might teach us something more than how to hunker down in a storm.
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Jody Fisher is a New York City-based PR executive, representing a varied array of Gotham’s best known entities, institutions and destinations. A former radio reporter, he has provided PR counsel to Fortune 500 companies, colleges and universities, real estate developers, global media empires and private individuals, crafting messages, executing strategies and delivering results to clients for more than a decade. He is a dedicated husband & dad, social media hound, musician, Xbox gamer, lover of NYC, Long Island, Maine and Key West. And he likes a good gin martini.
