What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Telecom/5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Mastering B2B PR: Strategic Integration with Marketing, Industry-Specific Needs, and the Future of Public Relations
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Unlock the secrets to effective B2B public relations with our latest guest, PR expert Michelle, who shares her extensive experience and insights on the subject. Discover how to integrate PR seamlessly into your marketing strategy and the importance of collaboration between PR, marketing, and social media teams. We'll break down the critical elements needed to build a strong brand reputation in today’s fast-paced information age, and explore why consistent effort, rather than quick fixes, is the key to lasting success.
In the episode, we also delve into the specific needs of industries like manufacturing, where a robust online presence can make or break a company. Michelle dispels common misconceptions about PR and offers a strategic approach to maintaining visibility even when there are no new product launches. We also look ahead to the future of the PR industry, including the impact of AI and the irreplaceable value of human expertise. Tune in to hear about upcoming trends, the future of PR jobs, and exciting projects on Michelle’s horizon, like her speaking engagements at Content Marketing World.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, Fascinating chat today, diving into the world of public relations for B2B companies with Michelle. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great, Evan. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for being here. Public relations always is a bit of a mystery to me, having not worked in the field, but great to have you on the show and really excited about diving into your expertise. Maybe introduce yourself your personal journey and your recent book, b2b PR that Gets Results.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much. I have been doing this work for quite a while now. I kind of started out as a writer. I have been doing this work for quite a while now. I kind of started out as a writer. I have a journalism degree. I've never worked as a reporter per se, but that was where my love really was initially and I thought PR would give me a chance to use that as well as work with a variety of clients in different industries.
Speaker 2:And I've really landed on B2B clients over the years. I think they have so many great stories to tell and often they don't even recognize the stories they have to tell. So I went out on my own as a consultant it's probably been about 20 years, honestly and I started out in Silicon Valley working with, you know, big tech companies HP, adobe, those kinds of companies and then I moved back to the Midwest, which is where I'm at now. That's kind of my roots are here and I continue to work with B2B clients, primarily on PR initiatives, which do involve writing as well. That's kind of a foundational skill for, I think, for PR pros.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, Absolutely, and you know. Talk about your book. What was the inspiration behind writing it? What new can we expect to learn? I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.
Speaker 2:No, thank you. It debuted in the top of its category in public relations on Amazon, so that was, I'm told, that's a big accomplishment, so I was really happy about that. It's it's been in the making for years, of course. I mean I've been, I've been blogging and contributing articles to PR publications and things for years, and so it was really just a culmination of all of that knowledge and experience and I felt like it was the right next step for me, and I don't see a lot of focus on B2B PR specifically, and the book is really geared toward clients that I would probably work with, meaning smaller companies, and when I say smaller, I mean like 500 employees, a thousand employees. Maybe they don't have a big team, they might not have any PR person, so often they want to work with a consultant to help them with media relations and help them with their reputation. Of course, now we know your reputation is more important than ever, and so that's really what the focus of the book is.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And for those who really aren't deep in the topic, I mean, what are the top two or three things that businesses need to understand today about PR in the current, you know, crazy landscape we find ourselves?
Speaker 2:I mean I think it's more important than ever. We see, I don't know, c-suite executives make missteps pretty much on the every day. I mean, you know, you could probably find a story at least a few stories a week, I would say about somebody who was out there, maybe wasn't thinking about what they were saying or didn't prepare remarks and just kind of shot from the hip and maybe got themselves into some kind of trouble. So I think if you have a PR expert at the table with you, they can help prepare you for speaking in a live setting or speaking with prepared remarks. They can also kind of weigh in on some of your positions.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times maybe CEOs aren't aware of what they're saying, how it even sounds. So that's our job in PR is to help them understand and be prepared and be ready for that. I also think with AI anyone can say anything and you know, we don't know if it's true or not. So I really feel like your reputation protecting building, maintaining it is just more important than it's ever been, and that's what we do in PR.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you do it well, and speaking of that, I mean you mentioned obviously reputation and visibility. But what are some of the best practices for integrating PR into overall marketing strategies? Sometimes it's sort of left out as a kind of redheaded stepchild.
Speaker 2:I think people view it as a nice to have sometimes rather than a must have, and I think that companies that are paying attention right now will understand again. It's more important than ever because it takes you a long time to build a solid reputation, but it can be taken down very quickly and, yes, things do move on quickly as well to the next story, the next crisis in the news, but I still think that it can do a lot of damage, and you can look at brands in the news. I'm going to just mention Boar's Head, for example. That's one example in the news right now that has a crisis on its hands and that's probably going to impact its reputation for a while. So I think that being prepared for that, by having you know doing everything you can to build a reputation as a trustworthy entity in the event that something happens, maybe you'll be able to recover a little bit more quickly from something like that more quickly from something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I, you know, do a lot of work in social media, to say the least, and what I find is, you know, pr is often not really collaborating necessarily with marketing or the social teams. Why is that and why is it important for PR and marketing, social to all work sort of hand in glove?
Speaker 2:I often see content, social and PR siloed off and not collaborating, and I think that, again, you can just get so much more out of everything that you're doing if those teams are working together, and I know it's not always easy, but I think it's worth the effort to try because, for example, you know, say, your content team creates a video and you publish that on your website.
Speaker 2:You publish it on YouTube. Great People watch it. That's all good and well. However, your PR team can get involved, and I'm going to pull an example from work that I actually did with a client pull the video, get the transcript, create an article and then use it as a contributed piece of content to industry trade journals, for example, and that means more people are going to see that piece of content. Then your social team can take those earned media hits and put those post those on your social media channels like LinkedIn, which is where you know, of course, all of our B2B friends are spending time these days more than ever. So that's just an example of how you might all work together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm one of many possibilities. Yeah, I'm one of many possibilities, and what I find is, you know, many times the PR people I'm speaking with, when I connect or look them up, really don't have much of a presence personally. Is that what's the phenomenon there? Is that just the cobbler's shoes kind of thing? It's often overlooked, or you're a magnificent exception. You have a huge audience on social media. You obviously spend time there, you know. Again, maybe reiterate why that's important.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's important because you connect with reporters and you have your own following, and so then when you work with a client, of course you can share any news that you generate with your followers, for example, reporters. Of course, a lot of reporters follow me too and I have relationships with them, so they're going to see there's momentum there, there's things happening. I think that's why it's important, and I also use myself as a guinea pig a little bit, because I once I try something for me and I see how it works, then I can also implement that for a client if it made sense. So I see that I see it as vital to what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I would agree, and certainly it adds to your own credibility as well to have a presence and a point of view and thought leadership out there. You must come across a lot of misconceptions about PR, especially in B2B Right, like social, and B2B is completely different than B2C. Yes, what are some of those misconceptions that you see?
Speaker 2:than B2C. What are some of those misconceptions that you see? I think the I mean the thing that I focus on is that when you're working with B2B clients, they are not selling to a consumer who's spending their own money to buy the thing, the solution, the machine, whatever it is. So you know there are bigger budgets involved and they're also, you know, spending a lot of money, but it's not their own money. But then to make the decision, we see more and more I'm kind of thinking about manufacturers right now.
Speaker 2:I think in the you know, previous times, of course, it was more like well, we know each other. It's a handshake kind of deal. Now the buyers are younger, they're looking online before they ever contact the company. There are stats out there I can't quote you one off the top of my head, but I've written about it that they do a lot of their research before they ever get to the vendor themselves. So I think it's really important for them to have content, social, earned media, which is through PR, out there, so that when buyers are searching, they come across those things and that helps inform their decision and they educate themselves. And then they get in touch with the sales department, for example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great way forward, you know. The other thing I find is that, you know, typically I'll see a flurry of emails and invitations right before an event, and that will be PR. Do you see? You know, pr being seen as a sort of quick fix. I mean, what is the reality when it comes to achieving results with PR?
Speaker 2:I think that's a great question because I think a lot of times and I mean this happens to me too some a company will have a launch, for example, and they have an event coming up or something. They're launching a product. So they get in touch and they have like maybe two to four weeks, you know, to get this product launched. So it's really. They have like maybe two to four weeks, you know, to get this product launched. So it's really again, it's an afterthought and they don't have any presence. They've not built any following or presence in the media with reporters or publications in their space. So you're really, I think that's a big challenge. You know, it's really not something you can expect overnight results. I'd say, if somebody pressed me for a timeframe three to six months, if you've never done any PR before to really see some results and build momentum, and that might sound like a long time. I know everybody wants everything like overnight and I just you can't promise, you know. And PR we can't promise anyway, because it's not paid media, it's earned media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point and it really depends on the content at the end of the day, and how it's being created. That leads to my next question what are the key elements that make PR successful, make an engagement successful? If you're already in the PR business, how can you up your game and think about doing things better, differently?
Speaker 2:I really think that sometimes we get stuck in certain ways of doing things and we're not thinking about like, okay, we have a product launch in six months, so we don't have anything else to do from a PR perspective. But that's not really the case, because you have thought leaders at your company, hopefully, and a lot of you know my clients have been in business for 50 years, 75 years, so of course they have stories to tell, they have thought leaders. So we can be taking that, turning it into content from a contributed article perspective. We can also turn it into thought leadership from the executives themselves, and those kinds of things help us stay on the map during the lulls because, honestly, not every company is going to be launching, you know, 10 products a year. So they have to really think about what else they have to stay out there, cause I think it is important to stay out there consistently and not just do PR again when you have a product or solution announcement. That's not necessarily going to get you where you want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. Let's talk about the business of PR. You know you have mega firms, giants out there. Do solo practitioners like yourself, everything in between? How is the industry changing for good, bad, indifferent? And what will all the AI tools mean for the business? As a? You know we're all using chat, gpt for copy and editing and press releases. What does the future look like? Near term, long term?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the landscape really is. I think big agencies are great for big companies, but again, we have a lot of smaller companies who are on smaller budgets and can't maybe afford a lot of tools or a lot of you know big agency assistance. So I think we need to be looking at other solutions. And again, if I were running, you know, the marketing team at a smaller company, I probably wouldn't necessarily be spending more money on tools per se. I'd be looking for some assistance from a human talent standpoint, either in-house or consultant, something like that and I would be, you know, I would be pretty careful about choosing who I worked with. I think a lot of times I, you know, I worked at an agency before I went out on my own, and I'm not saying every agency is like this, but a lot of times they will bring in, you know, the big names or the people, the most experienced people, to pitch the business, and then the person that's more junior will probably be working on your day-to-day business. So I think that's just something to ask like who's going to be working? You know, who am I going to be working with? Who's my main contact? Who's going to be doing the work every day, so I think that's important. You asked about AI and I've been having some conversations about AI.
Speaker 2:I'm not huge on using AI to write. I do use it sometimes to generate headlines or some you know like maybe something like that, get some input on that. I think you have to be careful when you use it to write. You have to check it, make sure you know you check your facts and be very careful, especially in press releases and things, cause those are official documents that are maybe going out on the wire. They're coming from the company themselves, so they should be very trustworthy and credible and that's important.
Speaker 2:But I will say, with AI driven search, you want to show up in as many places as possible from a PR perspective. So that doesn't mean only the Wall Street Journal. Of course, everybody wants to be in the Wall Street Journal. We know this in PR. But the trade journals those are great for AI-based search. I was talking to I don't know, you probably know Christopher Penn. We were having a little back and forth about AI and he was saying you know, people that are really companies that are really smart are going to want to up their PR game because AI-based search is going to be a big deal and you want to be showing up everywhere that you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, chris Penn's amazing and forward thinking and speaking of that, I mean we're really in the first inning of AI. We're going. We're really in the first inning of AI. We're going to look back in five years and look back like we were in kindergarten when it comes to AI. But you know, people are already looking at agents intelligent agents that will go out and engage on your behalf and do outreach and reply and send emails. Are you worried about the future of jobs in our industry long term? What do you think that'll look like?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think some people worry, or maybe should be worried. I think that for a lot of companies, again, the human talent is going to help them stand out, because, honestly, there's nothing like a human being that you know you can connect with and talk to. And I know that you know robots can do a lot of things, but I still believe that there are a lot of opportunities for talented human experts, workers, whatever we want to call them. But I think that there's still that future is safe as far as I can see so far. But maybe if you're newer to the industry, I think you, you know, you just need to make sure you get good experience and build your network. And you know, just, really, it might be a little if I had to work a little bit harder at it.
Speaker 1:Well, I for one, I'm looking forward to a robot replacing me. This is really hard work. I need a break. So, on that high note or low notes we'll thank you for for chairing just a few minutes on on the show. What are you looking forward to the rest of the year? You must have a busy schedule. It's the season, as we say. It's running up to the year end. Lots going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm already talking with clients about year end content. Of course, we have a lot of things coming up that are going to be distractions, I think, for a couple of months. So we're trying to get all that kind of lined up and ready to go. A lot of times I ghostwrite for executives. I'll talk with the executive, ghostwrite the piece, we'll put it on their site and then we'll also pitch it as our media. So that's kind of the process that I go through with clients on that and then, from a speaking perspective, I'll be at Content Marketing World in October. So I'm really excited about that. And, yeah, I mean it's going to be the just a pell-mell rush to the end of the year. I mean, I think at this point, awesome.
Speaker 1:Well good luck with all that and thanks for joining, sharing your insights and, yeah, everyone, thanks for watching. Check out B2B PR that gets results on Amazon. I will be ordering it today. Thank you All right. Thanks so much, everyone.