Classic PR Strategies with New Digital Platforms

Join us as we delve into the evolving world of public relations and discover how integrating traditional strategies with modern digital tools can lead to powerful PR outcomes. In our latest episode, Mike Falkow, the CEO of Meritus Media, shares his expertise with host Peter Woolfolk on how to find this balance in the fast-paced digital landscape. 

This conversation highlights the enduring relevance of old-school PR while embracing the vast possibilities presented by technology. We explore the importance of branding and how organizations can build trust with audiences in a crowded market. Mike emphasizes the need to understand audience sentiment using analytics tools to tailor messaging effectively. 

As we navigate through shifting landscapes, we also dive into the modern PR playbook that includes creating thought leadership content and utilizing platforms like LinkedIn and WordPress to maximize reach. Listen in for practical examples of how organizations can leverage digital platforms to establish their identity while maintaining genuine relationships with their audience. 

Furthermore, we discuss the critical role of crisis management and the necessity of having built relationships with media professionals to ensure accurate representation during tough times. This episode will equip you with the insights you need to modernize your PR approach effectively, combining the best of both worlds.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Show
• 1:40 The Power of Old School PR in the Digital Era
• 13:00 Navigating the PR Landscape: Branding vs. Advertising
• 28:15 Tools and Platforms for Effective Online PR
• 45:30 Understanding Audience Sentiment through Analytics
• 58:45 Building Relationships in Crisis Communications

Transcript

Announcer: 0:35

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk.

Peter Woolfolk: 0:55

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. Now, Apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide and recently Feedspot listed this podcast as number 13 on its top 70 best public relations podcasts in the United States. So thank you to all of our guests and listeners for your continued support and if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review. Now question for the audience Can old school public relations strategies achieve successful outcomes by adopting modern digital approaches? Well, my guest today says absolutely, yes. His journey from South Africa to Los Angeles was fueled by his passion for creative storytelling. He is a former creative executive at Amazing Workplace. Now currently he is the CEO and creative director of Meritus Media, with offices both in Los Angeles, California, and Tampa, Florida. Meritus Media provides a range of services that include search engine optimization, digital marketing, web design and much more. So joining me today from Los Angeles, California, is Mike Falkow, CEO of Meritus Media. So, Mike, welcome to the program.

Mike Falkow: 2:13

Thank you, peter, thanks for having me with media.

Peter Woolfolk: 2:16

So, Mike, welcome to the program. Thank you, peter. Thanks for having me. So we have been talking earlier that we wanted to talk about. What are some of these old school strategies that need to be, you know, updated if you will, and bring in digital platforms. So let's begin. I think you decided that branding, perhaps is one of the more important things that we need to do. How are we going to go about doing that? Tell us the next steps there.

Mike Falkow: 2:37

Yeah, well, one of the things that often gets conflated, and so I think it's important to define these terms up front where marketing, advertising and public relations has become conflated and it has become confused, certainly in more recent times, but if you just think of it in terms of very simple statements, where public relations is essentially your relationship with your public or your audience, as in managing your reputation within that group of people, and then marketing could be seen as a way to attract your customers, and then advertising, being that you are sort of promoting in a paid sense through ads and so on uh, so, like the billboard in the town square would be advertising, a person handing out flyers and talking to you would be marketing and, uh, you know, you sitting down and chatting with someone one-on-one would be more a public relations type activity.

Mike Falkow: 3:37

And then you mentioned branding, where that's essentially creating your business identity and how you're recognized and known, and it matters because it gives your audience something that sticks in their mind as who you are and how you're represented, and from there it builds trust and loyalty and helps you stand out. And the combining of the old school techniques. The reason why I feel that's important is because, really, where the definitions of these terms have become confused, the activities as a result have been confused and sort of mushed together, and, I think, by understanding that old school approaches of public relations were essentially always aimed at making your good works well known to the public. And so, if you keep that in mind, while using more modern tools and the digital tools that you have at your disposal nowadays, the approach is everything, and so that can really sort of govern and monitor how you create strategy.

Peter Woolfolk: 4:46

So let's define, then, how that approach, as you say, how should that approach be initiated? What should be included in that approach, particularly if we're going to be using digital platforms?

Mike Falkow: 4:59

Well, I'll give you a silly example, right? So if you take a, you have a brand and they're interested in doing some online reputation or online public relations, and then you have someone who doesn't have this mindset. They go, okay, well, let's do some facebook ads. Well, you're doing the wrong thing, you're now in the realm of advertising. And or, let's do some google ads or something that that again, those are, those are advertising it. But if you were to create a thought leadership article series you know, let's say it's a skincare brand on the technology that goes into the creation of these products and the certain skin conditions and why they're important to a person and what medical ramifications that might have for a person, and do like this series of thought leadership articles that are helpful and useful to the reader as a positioning, then that becomes that creates goodwill in the reader and they then associate you as a brand with that helpful and useful information in developing, let's say just those thought leader.

Peter Woolfolk: 6:07

Let's talk about some of the platforms that are used to help or accomplish these things. So, if we're going to talk again about branding, what's, what are some of the platforms that can we can begin to use, or basically, I should say that are actually already being used to accomplish these achievements?

Mike Falkow: 6:25

in terms of branding or online PR well, let's look at both all right. Well, take PR, for example. I mean mean there's so many tools nowadays that you can create your online real estate very easily, where you know. Even 10, 15 years ago, building a website, even just a small informational website, would have been quite costly, depending on who you go to. But nowadays you know you can create a blog through wordpress or or wix or or shopify or any number of these platforms that have made it very easy for someone to go on and and create an online platform for themselves.

Mike Falkow: 7:09

There's other places, like medium, where you can create a profile and start publishing articles. Linkedin is another great one where you can start going on there and sharing information and publishing articles and newsletters and so on and so forth, where you can build this sort of thought leadership around your brand and the information that you're providing to your audience. Branding, on the other hand, from what I can tell, the technology hasn't quite caught up, although AI is getting there, but AI is still, in my mind, a useful tool for efficiency rather than a creative tool. It can have some creative uses, but it still requires a human, creative mind to give you the prompts to interpret the prompts, to interpret the results that the language models spit out at you, and so a designer and a creative director and a branding expert are still indisposable in terms of creating a brand and building a brand book and creating an architecture of your messaging and all of those things that go along with the building of a brand.

Peter Woolfolk: 8:31

You know, as I listen to that, and you talk about building up a brand. There are so many digital platforms. One of the things that I see that I like that, as a matter of fact, I even use to help promote this podcast are some of the videos that use avatars. I like to. Just before it's launched, I will put up one of these video avatars on places like LinkedIn, public relations and communications and PRSA and so forth, to let people know that it is coming, and there's an avatar saying in a few words here's what's coming, here's what it's going to be about, and you can get it on March the 10th or whenever that happens to be, and I think that certainly helps to boost people's attention to at least listening to this particular episode.

Mike Falkow: 9:24

Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of useful tools, like you say, that can help to boost your visibility, to help to attract customers.

Mike Falkow: 9:34

But again, that sort of falls under the headline of marketing right so when it, when it comes to branding itself, you have to understand who you are and how you want to present yourself to your public and what message you want to communicate through your channels of marketing and through your channels of public relations and advertising. But ultimately, you're the creative mind behind it, you, you're the sort of the man in the chair, so to speak. Well, any other guidelines you have in terms of, let's say, the branding, how, groups and surveys and like man on the street type things, were required to really get a sense of the mindset of the people that you wish to speak to. Whereas nowadays, information is readily available, all you need is the tools to be able to capture that information and then analyze it. So, analytics tools, so analytics tools. Rand Fishkin is a PR professional and he's got a company called SparkToro and Metricool, and these online tools and analytics tools are exceptionally useful and can sort of scrape the internet for sentiment, so that you can understand your audience, so that you can then better communicate to that audience and audience listening tools like that are exceptionally valuable, especially in the realm of PR, especially in the realm of marketing and advertising as well, branding as well. If you're doing your research before constructing your brand look and everything else. Helping to understand what it is that will resonate with your audience is something that we've just never in history had as a tool, and so you can have all of this data and all of this analytics that you can look at.

Mike Falkow: 11:41

I'll give you a silly example.

Mike Falkow: 11:43

There was a client that we had that their primary product was creating accessories for, like hunting rifle, and, and they built scopes and and things like that.

Mike Falkow: 11:55

So we did a an audience listening campaign, and something that we discovered in the course of doing that was that there was an entire segment of their market that they had no idea about, and that was bird watches, and there was this sort of subculture of bird watches who gravitated towards this one particular scope that they made, and because it gave good quality of vision and range of vision and it was handy you could put it in your pocket and you could just pull it up to one eye and so there were all of these uses for this rifle scope that that the bird watchers had found, but the company itself had no idea it was this invisible group of of customers that they knew nothing of right, and so, after this audience listening uh campaign.

Mike Falkow: 12:45

We presented this information to them and we're like well, there's thousands of potential sales in this area that you haven't been taking advantage of, and so it can really write the course of your marketing and advertising and it can sort of guide you in a way that you wouldn't have known about previously. And these tools give you that information, to give you that guidance.

Peter Woolfolk: 13:14

Well, you mentioned sentiment. You're absolutely right. I do, because I don't think I've had a chance to use those yet, but it does let you know how people feel about or think about your services and or products, which is something you need to know so that you can make the necessary adjustments to keep it in. So there'll still be a favorite thing that people would like to use, and also there are messaging tools.

Mike Falkow: 13:37

You're exactly right, and the other really useful area of these kinds of tools is reputation management and crisis management right.

Mike Falkow: 13:46

So previously you know an event would happen, there would be some articles in a newspaper or something, and then you know a PR agency would go into crisis management mode and a lot of the research and a lot of the digging and listening would have to be done manually, whereas now you can take advantage of these tools and go well, who's saying what? How do they feel about the subject we're investigating, and where are they saying it? That's the other thing. It gives you areas. So if YouTube is one particular area where people are posting a lot of videos about a certain thing, or perhaps they're sticking only to Reddit or Substack or Discord or any one of these other forum-type platforms, these tools will give you not only the sentiment but also the location.

Peter Woolfolk: 14:38

And then from there, that's when your group has to get together, put their heads together and decide on some sort of a program or effort to correct those mistakes or address those issues that are getting some negative responses from the client.

Mike Falkow: 14:53

Right, exactly, and that's where old school sort of traditional PR technology comes into play, where you apply the rules of is what they're saying true? Are they missing information? Do we need to fill the vacuum with true information, and so on and so forth. You can just go down the list. I mean it's an old playbook, but if you're not familiar with that playbook you can sort of be grasping at straws and being more reactive rather than proactive.

Peter Woolfolk: 15:22

You know one of the other areas that you had mentioned, such as media relations. You know, one time you just sent out press releases and hoped that they got open, so forth and so on. Well, now there are programs that send it out to let you know that they've been opened and who looks at them, maybe how long they've got them. I think Cision and several others are some that actually do that for you.

Mike Falkow: 15:45

Right, exactly.

Mike Falkow: 15:46

And again, there's an old sort of PR approach which is it's in the name, it's media relations.

Mike Falkow: 15:53

In other words, you should have a relationship with these journalists and help them do their job better. So if you have a client who is launching a new company, for example, and there's a business guy at the New York Times who you have a long-standing relationship with, then that's an easy pitch, whereas if you're just sort of looking online and scraping for media opportunities and then cold emailing these guys going here's my client and sending out a press release or something, your your response rate is is going to be exponentially lower than if you've actually taken the time to develop these relationships and become colleagues with these people. Essentially because they're just like anyone. They're trying to do their job as best they can, and if you can assist them in doing a better job, they're going to look better to their superiors, they're going to deliver better work for their readers, and so on and so forth. So it's a win all around to really take the time and play the long game. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint, right.

Peter Woolfolk: 16:57

Well, you know, on that particular case, it's interesting that I have PR people. Obviously, I get, at least maybe once a week minimum, an email that says some folks would like to be on the show. Two things happen. One, some of those emails that I get, I look like they're shotgun blasts. They just say hello, they don't mention you or your show's name. Hello, how would you like to talk about ABC and D?

Peter Woolfolk: 17:24

The second part of it, some of it had nothing to do with public relations. I just got, I think, one the other day about some guy selling a book that had something to do with veterans and I couldn't quite, so I don't even bother to respond to those you know as PR people. Yes, you need to take some time because you know how do you ingratiate yourself sometimes, you know, because maybe you're on a new beat or this is a new product for you. So you've got to find out who covers these products, and I think that they've got those platforms out there that can tell you who covers what organization, and those are some of the things that you need to increase your chances of landing some placements.

Mike Falkow: 18:04

Right, exactly. And again the same applies applies, like with what I was talking about before, with your relationship with a media outlet, right? The same applies to a situation like this or, for that matter, any person who you're trying to talk to in a professional sense, the rules of communication apply. Whether you're sending an email for the first time or whether you're reaching out for some kind of business benefit or anything else, you're still communicating, you're in the realm of communication and therefore the rules of communication apply.

Mike Falkow: 18:39

If you were to walk up to someone on the street and go, hey, do this thing, your response is likely to not be good. But if you walk up to the person, say hi, how are you? My name is Mike, what was your name? Very nice to meet. You tell me a little bit about yourself and establish some rapport. It gets another person, have some sense of understanding and let them know that you see them and you hear them, and and they, they are duplicated in some way, shape or form by you, so that they then feel understood and and then all all other manner of things apply, and just just in the same sense as if you're making a new friend, right, so? And we can sometimes lose sight of that because of these tools, that they're so immediate and they're so, uh, easy to use, blast out 500 emails to 500 people without doing the work. But the work still has to be done. The communication is still a communication and if we lose sight of that, we're not going to get as good a result.

Peter Woolfolk: 19:37

While we're thinking about it, could you identify a few more of those platforms that people can actually use? Because I know for sentiment there's a certain platform. If you're going to send out mass emails, there are certain ones that can tell you send them to the right reporter at the right magazine for the right topics. I forget a lot of them there, but if you can give us the names of some of those platforms and what they're used for, I think will help the listeners a lot to sort of know what direction they need to go in to get the job done.

Mike Falkow: 20:12

Right? Well, there's a number of approaches that you could use. I mean specifically for reporters. There is some manual work that might need to be done, but there are other tools that you could use. I mean, almost as a silly example, you could put in a prompt to chat GPT and say I'm looking for the top 20 publications that cover the automobile industry, and so you know, scrape the internet, find me their websites. If they have a personal blog, please include that. And if there's an email address, please include that. And if there's an email address, please include that and give me a short description of what it is that they write about. So you can utilize AI tools like ChatGPT or Cloud or any number of other options that are available to do that work for you.

Mike Falkow: 21:06

As far as whether or not the emails have been opened, that's another story. That's something that you know. If you have a, if you're using a platform like Apollo or Constant Contact that kind of thing, that'll give you those kinds of analytics from an email standpoint. But there's one tool that I've been using I'm not sure if there's an email version of it, for reporters necessarily but there are tools that are available that will source podcasts, for example. That's how I found you. Podcasts, for example. That's how I found you, was it? It kicks out a bunch of uh, very specifically targeted subjects that you put in. You go well, I'd like to know more about these people and you know these specific subjects, and it'll kick out. You know four or five hundred podcasts with a description of of what they are about, and there's a link to the podcast so you can listen to it for yourself, and so on and so forth right now.

Peter Woolfolk: 22:13

What's the name of that platform? Do you recall the name of that one?

Mike Falkow: 22:19

oh, that's called pod pitch pod pitch.

Peter Woolfolk: 22:21

Okay, well, I think that's a good idea. You know, a lot of people look for those things. You know, even though, as I said, I do get those shotgun sort of things that say, hello, how are you today? Without mentioning your name or your podcast, just throw it at you.

Mike Falkow: 22:33

So those are, I think if someone's going to say-, right, but even with a tool like that, even with a tool like that, you still need to do the work yourself. Because when you and I first connected on the phone, I was like I found you through this platform. But then, when I got a response from you, I realized, well, if we're going to have an actual conversation person to person, it would be very poor form for me to pick up the phone and not know who you are, not having listened to at least one episode of your podcast and know a little bit about you. Because you know, if you're walking into a business meeting, you should know a little bit about the person who you're going to be speaking to. It's just common sense, right?

Mike Falkow: 23:14

So again, this goes back to my point about communication is communication, no matter what the form, and so the rules of communication then apply. If you hypothetically take our situation, if we'd gotten on the phone, I'm like well, tell me about yourself, peter. I think your response would have been less friendly than if we picked up the phone. I was like I listened to an episode of your podcast, I really enjoyed it, we have a lot of commonality on these subjects and so on and and so. But it gives you, uh, an opportunity to develop a relationship where one didn't exist before. But you also need to put in the work.

Peter Woolfolk: 23:55

Well, you know, I certainly agree with that. And just let me comment again, because they're awesome PR people. The last one I got was from a PR agency it must have been an intern that had just a shotgun approach Hello, how are you today? I think you'd love to interview my boss so and so and so and so about A, b, c and D. So I looked at it and one of the things I think you need to be careful about is that they can talk about subjects such as this, this and this.

Peter Woolfolk: 24:25

Well, one of them I take a very sharp look at is when people talk about crisis communications. That is a huge topic. You know, it's one thing. If you have a fire drill in your building, you can tell everybody what to do. But if you know, I used to work on Capitol Hill in Washington DC and when a reporter calls you at 5 o'clock on a Friday afternoon and says that your congressman is on a list of people who floated checks, you've got a problem because they're all gone. It's Friday afternoon, nothing you can do, that's right.

Peter Woolfolk: 24:58

So what do you do?

Peter Woolfolk: 25:00

The first thing that worked for me is that I did have a relationship with the reporter and I did tell him. I said I can't answer you that question right now, but when we get back Monday morning I will not only talk to the congressman but the people who handle these things for him, and once we get all that worked out, we're going to invite you over and show you the paperwork that says he should not have been on that, and so that worked out real well, I mean, and he appreciated that. And because he should not have been on that, I also called the people from Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post and had them come as well, and they all agreed that it should not have happened. It was a mistake that happened somewhere in the Capitol Hill the bank on Capitol Hill, you know for senators and congressmen and they did put a retraction in the paper. But the problem for me was that when they announced it on Saturday morning it was on the front page. The retraction was buried in the back there somewhere.

Mike Falkow: 26:01

Right, it usually is.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:03

Right, so at least they, you know.

Mike Falkow: 26:08

A retraction doesn't get quite the readership as a sensational headline that's exactly right.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:15

But you learn. But at least we were able to manage the thing so that we never had that happen before. And I've seen other people who, in particular crisis communications, have never really had any serious training about that and they can probably cause more problems than they can solve because they have not had it. It is not something that you know and I tell people. You just can't go into maybe a seminar and sit for a few hours and think now you're prepared for crisis communications. It is not that easy because something is going to come down the pike that you still can't handle. So you know, sometimes you just have to, you know, be in the firing line on these things and take some punches on the first few to learn how to really handle that sort of thing.

Mike Falkow: 26:58

Right, right and again I mean your relationship with those journalists. It counts for something.

Peter Woolfolk: 27:05

It does.

Mike Falkow: 27:06

Because you know, even if the person who's employing you has gotten themselves into some hot water, they have a pre-existing relationship with you and so therefore there's trust and and so on and so forth, that if something goes on, you can still have a cordial conversation with them and go listen, here's what's happening. You know, uh, can you cover this? This is the information we'd like to provide to you, and then you can also have a future, uh, longevity of relationship with that same journalist and go look. Okay, so there was this explosion here and here's how it was handled, and I appreciate the retraction. Thank you very much. Here's a story you might be interested in and then you.

Mike Falkow: 27:50

Then you can have a good relationship moving forward from there as well.

Peter Woolfolk: 27:56

Well, you know, I think that's always important, and particularly also when some reporters move on to maybe larger, more prestigious publications. At least you can call them up and maybe congratulate them on their job and hey look, if I've got something that you might be interested in, I'd like to be able to give you a call about it, and they would appreciate that too.

Mike Falkow: 28:16

Yeah, absolutely. There's an old sort of idea in Hollywood of like if you get represented by an agent, make sure you make friends with the assistant.

Peter Woolfolk: 28:29

Oh, absolutely.

Mike Falkow: 28:31

Because in 10 years from now they're going to be the agents, right, but that's almost like a personal PR approach of like. I value my relationships, I value the colleagues that I work with, and so if I'm going to make a contact with someone, whether we can benefit one another now or not is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, we have a new relationship that, for one or both of us, is going to become useful either today, tomorrow or down the road.

Peter Woolfolk: 29:03

Well, michael, let me ask you now if you have any sort of closing remarks you'd like to make about engaging the modern digital approaches to. You know old school ways of doing things.

Mike Falkow: 29:15

Well, I think it's a holistic approach. I think if you're young and you're an expert at you know digital technology, that's great, but take the time to learn the subject that you're in. Know the subject and learn the old school, traditional ways of doing things and understand communication as a subject. And then if you're an old school, traditional person who barely uses email, you might want to touch up on some of the new tools that are around because they are going to be helpful. Touch up on some of the new tools that are around because they are going to be helpful.

Mike Falkow: 29:57

I had a chat with a guy named Shel Holtz we're both senior fellows over at the conference board and I interviewed him on our podcast and he said something really interesting. He said there's a lot of talk about AI and people being afraid that AI is going to take your job. The truth of the matter is AI is not going to take your job, but the kid who knows how to use AI will take your job. So it's you know, for those of us in the sort of over 40 range and above, it's really important for us to keep up, because it is a digital world. We do need to understand these tools and if we can bring those two disciplines together, I think that's a winning combination.

Peter Woolfolk: 30:38

Well, I can certainly agree with you on that. I have gone to artificial intelligence built around this podcast. You know built around this podcast and I use it. You know like once the podcast is done it will produce a transcript for me. You know it'll identify like speaker one and two. I just go in and fill in the names. It also comes up with. You know pieces for Facebook and the others that I can. You know I can look at them and you know a few amount of words and just send them right off if I want to make changes. Produces, blogs for me. All of that sort of stuff is done probably within an hour. Now I just don't take and run with it. I always read it and make changes if I want to, and so forth. But it's such a time-saving tool to have to be able to use these new tools.

Mike Falkow: 31:34

Yeah, that's exactly right and that's how I view it as well. I view it through the lens of an efficiency tool. If you look at the Industrial Revolution, right and compare it to that, and you go, okay, well, people were tilling fields by hand and it took X amount of hours to get a wheat field done and all of a sudden there was a new machine that came along that could do that for you in the space of 30 minutes. That's an efficiency tool. And so, in a similar vein, you look at AI technology and you go well, it can do all this grunt work for me. That would have taken me an entire day to put together and you know my fingers would have been tired from typing and all the rest. But it becomes this assistant for all of the heavy lifting, all of the grunt work, and then it frees you up to do the more strategic, more creative, more sort of high level type activities that you wouldn't have had the time to do otherwise.

Peter Woolfolk: 32:33

Well, mike, let me say thank you so very much for being on the Public Relations Review Podcast. We certainly have appreciated you sharing your wisdom with us, and I can certainly sign on to it, because I have used a lot of the new stuff and look forward to even more of it coming down the pike. So I'd like to say thank you for bringing this to our attention and sharing this information with our listeners.

Mike Falkow: 32:55

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me on. I really did enjoy chatting with you.

Peter Woolfolk: 33:00

Well, thank you and for our listeners, if you've enjoyed the show, we certainly would appreciate getting a review from you and also sharing this information with your colleagues and also don't forget to listen to the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

Announcer: 33:21

This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for joining us.