Join Michelle Garrett and her guest Gini Dietrich as they discuss the newly updated version of the PESO Model (Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned Media). Bring YOUR questions and we’ll try to answer them live!
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant and writer, is joined by Gini Dietrich, founder of Arment Dietrich and Spin Sucks, to discuss the refreshed PESO model.
They explore the evolution of the model from its tactical roots to a focus on outcomes, and discuss the importance of owned media as the foundation of any PR strategy.
Gini shares her insights on the rising role of AI in PR, the ways to effectively measure PR outcomes, and the importance of community building.
Michelle and Gini also touch on managing client expectations, the significance of thoughtful comments in building relationships with journalists, and the need for an integrated approach to the PESO model over time.
00:00 Introduction and Special Guest Announcement
01:09 Gini Dietrich’s Professional Journey
05:17 The Peso Model Refresh
08:02 Importance of Owned Media
10:58 Client Selection and Challenges
15:22 Implementing the Peso Model
19:29 Engaging with Journalists through Comments
23:38 The Importance of Thoughtful Comments
24:04 AI in Comments and Journalism
26:53 The Role of Community in PR
29:36 Navigating Crises with Community Support
31:24 Expanding Beyond Traditional Media
33:34 The Challenge of Measuring PR Impact
34:36 Tools for Effective PR Measurement
40:04 Marketing Strategies and Community Building
43:45 Leveraging LinkedIn for Business Growth
46:21 Final Thoughts and Future Plans
Show notes:
spinsucks.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginidietrich
Full transcript:
PR Explored with guest Gini Dietrich
Michelle: Hello everyone. It’s Michelle here on PR Explored and I’ve got a very special, exciting guest today. Gini Dietrich is here. Yay.
You were one of the first people I wanted to have on, but I also wanted to get my feet under me a little bit because, I’m you’re special, so
Gini: it’s, I’m not gonna lie, I saw Frank on and I was like. I wanna be on What about me?
Michelle: No, I, you believe me. Nothing against
Gini: Frank.
He’s great. But I was like what about me?
Michelle: Yeah. No, I’m just, I’m really happy here and I know you are a busy person and I’m just happy to have you. And it was a really good timing because the refresh of the peso model and I think this is great to talk to people about that and.
You know what’s different? They may not have the time or take the time to really walk through. I’m gonna put the blog post up that talks about it as we are, discussing it today. But first I really wanted, I asked Jenny if [00:01:00] she would just tell us a little bit about herself, do her own introduction, if you will.
So I’m gonna let her do that and then we’ll we’ll get into it.
Gini: I I’m like should I talk personal and cycling or should I talk business? I guess I should do business. So I’m Jenny Dietrich. I founded an agency called Armand Dietrich. And the reason I did that is because I thought that I was going to build this huge global agency and compete with the big guys.
And all the big guys have two names, right? Owen Harris, Fleischman, Hillard Hill, and Nolton. So I was like I’m gonna use my Mion and my maiden names and put ’em together to create this agency. And as it turns out, I don’t really love the idea of. Managing hundreds of employees, not really my thing.
And through my journey, I also discovered that one of my passions writing I. Would allow me to do some things differently in the PR industry. So I, we started blogging on Spin Sucks, and then I wrote a book and then we did some online courses. [00:02:00] Then we did the Peso Model certification, and now I would call us more like a media slash training company for the industry.
So I have the both businesses right now, which I’m also considering thinking about how to run two businesses and if that’s the right thing to do.
Michelle: Yeah, that’s, isn’t everybody always continually reevaluating and Yeah. I think you have to,
Gini: right? Yeah. Yeah. But before we get started, I think that there’s something very important that we should talk about First Selves, you have a new book out, which is amazing.
Congratulations. Thank
Michelle: you. That’s very course, I talk about the model in the book,
Gini: a
Michelle: awesome. With credit, always with
Gini: credit. Let’s not go down that poor row though.
Michelle: But yes we, and you are very gracious about, about, we, I have a slide in my talks and I just think it’s a great [00:03:00] framework, right? For my own brain to wrap around and then also for me to explain it to clients, even if I don’t show them the picture. It’s, it just I think, a client will say we just wanna be, in the Wall Street Journal and we’re gonna be like there’s a little bit more about it, a little bit more too.
Anyway, that’s why I, I. Play off the peso model. I leverage it, I use it. Whatever you wanna say. But yes it’s really important for us to have, because I don’t, I feel like the terminology in what we do can be all over the place. And even now I’m seeing new terms. I saw journo flu or something a couple weeks ago, and then yesterday I saw something else.
I forget even what it was now. But it’s we get into all these Yeah. Labels, I think. Yeah.
Gini: Yeah, it’s funny you say that ’cause I just finished Kara Swisher’s new book, burn book and just this morning I finished it and she talks about, first of all, she does the journey of her journey from the early nineties through today.
And when she talks about where she is today and building conferences and the podcast and [00:04:00] all that kind of stuff she says, I’m a reporter, entrepreneur, a reporter. Rapport.
She’s trying to figure out how to combine those two. So it’s funny you say that ’cause I think we as humans try to combine journal flu, like really. Okay.
Michelle: This, the thing that I can’t get over is that journalists have always been influential. Even before become influencer ever out there When I was in an agency.
Yes. Yes. Years ago out in the Bay Area where I probably pitched Kara Swisher, by the way. I mean that probably I told her that long. We had a, what we called in an influence, like a top 20 influencer list. Sure. And some of them were journalists, some of them were analysts and other people in the industry for Adobe.
This was for Adobe at the time. And so even then I was like that’s that. So sometimes when I hear influencer marketing or journalists as influencers, I’m like, yes, of course. They’re very influential,
Gini: of course,
Michelle: they’re the og. Yeah.
Gini: Yeah.
Michelle: All [00:05:00] right. Anyway, we’ve probably, congratulations
Gini: on your book.
I think that’s really exciting.
Michelle: Oh, thank you. It’s been years in the making. And it’s, like I was just telling you before we went on, it’s, I finished writing at the end of May, so the fact that it’s actually out is just like Woo. Yeah. Almost a year. That’s crazy. I know. It’s, it really is a book, baby.
I am going to put up as we are discussing the refreshed peso model. I’m not gonna call it revise. It’s refreshed. That’s the first refreshed. Do you wanna walk us through a little bit? I read the blog post and I’ve looked at the image. But maybe we can walk through just a little bit of what’s changed or what the biggest changes that you.
How you view that? What do you think are the biggest changes?
Gini: Sure. So a couple of things. One is that when we first launched it, it was really tactical. And it and we listed tools and tactics. So we u like the first very first iteration was had Google Plus and Vine on there does no longer exist, right?
[00:06:00] So when we revised it in 2020 we looked at it and we said, okay, it’s stupid to list tools since those come and go. Let’s do it more focused on the types of things that you would do under each media type, and then fast forward to the. This year what we really wanted to do is focus on, focus in on outcomes versus the outputs.
And I think one of the biggest challenges that communicators have in general is measuring our work. And we tend to measure the outputs instead of the outcomes. So the big focus has been on, if you are using earned media, what’s the outcome of that? It’s to build credibility. If you’re using paid media, the outcome of that is to grow your reach.
So we focused that at a really high level. And then we also have the really detailed one for, new business meetings. When a prospect is we really just wanna get in TechCrunch. And you’re like okay, let me show you how this actually works. And you throw that up on the screen and they go oh.
[00:07:00] Oh, yeah. So we still have the really detailed one for that purpose and also, for brainstorming and, people will say to me where does employee comms live? And where does investor relations live? So we tried to encompass all of it. And we also would included some AI in there too.
Michelle: Yes. And we know that’s gonna be a thing. No matter how we feel about it, we know it’s gonna be a thing. That’s right. You’re exactly right. And we do have feelings about it, so Yes, we do.
So that, so it’s so the new model, is that the URL, is that the right URL that I put up there so people can reference it? I wanted to, maybe we can bring up the picture. Yeah, here it’s, oh, there it is. Yeah. Oh, I don’t know if I can do this right now anyway. That’s correct. You go to the URL and ah, meg, the picture.
And let’s talk a little bit about I know the answer to this question, but what is your favorite of the four types of media, [00:08:00] which one is your favorite
Gini: owned media? Of course.
Michelle: And I think it’s really important and I think it’s often overlooked. I think it’s the foundation. It gives you a lot to work with. And if you don’t have it. It’s really hard to prop up the rest of what you’re trying to do. However, I see a lot of companies potentially neglecting it and I have theories as to why.
Not easy to create great content. It’s expensive, sometimes expensive, it takes a long time. Yep. But let’s talk a little bit about, why is this so important in your view?
Gini: I. This is what I believe and I’m going to caveat this with, it depends on the organization’s goals.
Like there will be times, of course, that’s something else that you would start with something else. But for most organizations, you wanna start with owned media because you need to have a foundation. For which you can start to, to use the other media types. [00:09:00] If you don’t have content, you have nothing to distribute on.
Shared. You have nothing to prove to a journalist through earned that you have the expertise and experience that you claim to have, and you have nothing to boost on with paid so. You certainly can do each of those without content, but it becomes a lot more challenging. It becomes a lot more challenging from an earned media perspective because the world of media relations has changed so dramatically in the last four months that it’s becoming even harder and harder.
To get their attention. So if they can’t go to your website or go to your social media, sometimes in the middle of the night to see what. Source you would be. Then they’re not, they’re gonna go to your com competitor. So I, that’s one of the most important things that you can do. It builds your thought leadership, it builds your expertise, it builds your experience.
Those things build your search engine optimization, like it all starts to work together. So I, that’s why I believe that you start with [00:10:00] own, because then you have it as your hub. To use the other media types.
Michelle: And, but it’s so hard to get, I think sometimes to convince them that they need to do
Gini: that.
It’s, yeah, it is. And I think you, so normally what we do with a, especially with a new client that doesn’t have a content library, is we say, give us. It’s 90 days and we start to build our library and we do things that feel good to the executive so that we stroke their egos a little bit, but then also show results, right?
Because content’s pretty easy to measure. Whether or not somebody’s watching, listening, reading it, if it’s being shared, if people are engaging with it, and you know that pretty quickly. Now, is it measurable to. Results to sales? Not yet, but it get, it starts to get you there. So we always say, give us 90 days and let us show you how this works and how it all works together.
And typically most executives will give you that time to fig, to let you show them how it works.
Michelle: Since you said that [00:11:00] I didn’t I wasn’t gonna ask this next, but how important is it to pick the right clients? Because when they don’t think like that, it’s really hard to help them, right? It can be a struggle.
It’s a uphill battle all the way.
Gini: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve had this experience too, but over the years I’ve learned what my red flags are and if somebody comes to us and says, we’re looking for a PR firm, my very first question is, tell me what your, what you want the PR firm to do, because it’s usually media relations.
And then it’s easy for me to say before I have any emotion involved, easy for me to say, that’s not what we do. Usually. They’ll say what do you do? And I explain the peso model. And they either do one of two things. They say, oh wow, we’re not, that’s way too much for us. We’re not there yet.
Or, actually, this sounds really interesting. Can you tell us more? And so they weed themselves out. Which is nice. And then this is interesting. Can you tell us more? You can go down that path of. Educating them and helping them [00:12:00] understand, and usually you can tell by the questions they’re ans asking or the answers that you’re getting, that they’re going to be a good client or not.
Michelle: And I mean it’s just amazing when you start thinking about it that way. At least for me, I mean I, it just changed, it totally changed everything because it was more like and some, and to be fair, some companies aren’t ready for everything. Absolutely. Yes. We’re not ready.
For example, startups. I used to work a lot with startups ’cause I started out in Silicon Valley and there were a lot of startups. There’s some startups. In the Midwest, but they don’t have the same funding. So I stopped working as much with them for that reason, but then I really decided, even today it’s hard.
It’s just hard when they’re, they sometimes they don’t,
Gini: yeah.
Michelle: Have enough to work with, yeah. They don’t maybe have the experience leadership and they don’t have the customers and they don’t, there’s a lot of things that they need to have in place, I think for it to be really effective.
They’re not to say there’s nothing you could do, it’s. I’m pretty, if [00:13:00] somebody from a startup calls me, I will be pretty honest about that and we’ll just talk about it. Yeah,
Gini: I think that’s smart. I also think there’s a sophistication level that comes with it, right? Because if you have an executive team and a company that is.
Doing pretty well. I’d say 30 to $70 million in revenue, doing pretty well. But they haven’t ever done any true marketing or communications. Yeah, you, that’s a red flag, right? That means that they are focused solely on sales. And you can ask those types of questions. How are you getting leads now?
How are you converting clients in? How leads into clients like ask those kinds of questions to help you understand how sophisticated they are because. A fully integrated pay model program. Even if you’re slowly dripping it out. You’re starting with owned and then you go to shared and then you go to earn, and then you go to paid and it takes you two years.
It’s still pretty sophisticated, so you have to help. You have to understand. To your point, are they ready for this? Do they have the leadership who’s ready for this? If you’re [00:14:00] going to start creating thought leadership for the CEO and report, and it starts to attract reporters or other influencers, can they have those conversations?
Michelle: Yeah.
Gini: Maybe. Maybe not.
Michelle: And it’s the long haul. You mentioned years. That would scare some. That’s the other thing. I feel like sometimes they just expect you to, they’ve never done any real. Outreach or in media or file they expect results like overnight. And I’m like it’s, it works.
Yeah. No, they’ve never heard of you. You, you’ve been around for a while, but Yeah. Nobody’s heard of you, so you can’t expect them to immediately like, respond to an email or, a pitch or whatever if you, if they’ve never heard of you. So it’s really, I feel like it just empowers you.
On your side of the fence because it’s like they understand, because I used to think oh, it’s, I don’t, it’s me. It’s not them, it’s me. But no, it’s actually, it is, you do have to have that conversation because it’s not always. The PR [00:15:00] person’s fault. If something doesn’t go wrong, it might be their fault if they didn’t ask the right questions though.
So that’s why I think Or
Gini: communicate expectations. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
Michelle: Yeah. Let’s see. The four types of media? Do you need to focus on all of them? Why? Why or why not? Why is it important?
Gini: I. Eventually, yes, but I don’t think you have to start out that way. I think if you went in to an organization, either as an agency or a new employee, and you said, we’re going to implement the PACE model, and you tried to do all four at once, you would fail.
So like we were talking about, if they don’t have, if the organization doesn’t have a content library yet, that’s a great place to start. If they don’t have relationships with. Journalists aren’t influencers yet. That’s a great place to to start to get your feet wet. Okay. If they don’t have any social media or they started it and stopped.
Like I was looking at a prospect’s social media channels last night and the last time they did anything on any social media was 20, 20, 21. And [00:16:00] I’m like, what is going on here? And I think that’s pretty typical. Eventually you do want to implement it all because where the real magic comes is when it all four are working together.
But I don’t think that’s realistic. So depending on what the goals are and what’s missing is where you’ll start. So you’ll start to the, we have one client that we started with a year ago and we just started creating content. We launched a podcast for them. The CEO is the host. It was really terrible at first and every week I spent an at time with him saying, here’s what you should focus on next week, and I gave him one thing to focus on for the following week and a year later, he’s great at it.
It was not the case in the beginning, but he, because he’s so involved. He feels like we’re making progress and that and he sees his own progress, right? And we’re taking those podcasts and we’re creating blog posts, and we’re using, we’re developing longer form content and we’re developing relationships with the guests and then we’re [00:17:00] using social media and tagging them.
So we’re doing all those things. We introduced paid media like. Nine months in and we haven’t even started earn yet, and we’re 15 months in right now. So it just, it depends on what’s needed and how you have to build. And this particular organization was not sophisticated at all. They had never done any marketing or communications, so I knew we had to tiptoe in.
Michelle: I, the social media thing is crazy to me though. It’s first of all, don’t even get started on 10 different social media channels if you’re not gonna be able to be consistent. Start with one or two, like if you’re on YouTube. Yes. LinkedIn. Start with LinkedIn and that’s the most important one problem for you to be.
Yep. And then maybe, branch out, but don’t. Don’t go all try to go all in on all of them if you’re, if you really don’t think you can commit. ’cause you,
Gini: and the my favorite question is, should we get on TikTok? Probably not unless. [00:18:00] Especially from a B2B perspective.
Michelle: No. I know. I feel the same way about Instagram for B2B.
It can be. Yeah, it can be okay. But a lot of companies just don’t have a lot of visuals. They don’t have anybody in there taking pictures and video that they That’s right. Chair. So that’s exactly, if you don’t have anything really, that’s a fit. And then again, like if you can’t keep up with it, it just gets overwhelming and you don’t do anything.
Then when somebody goes out and searches for you, including a journalist by the way, and sees that you haven’t posted anything for six months, three years, yeah, somebody still around what’s going on?
Gini: Yeah.
Michelle: Creates
Gini: confusion. Side note, I’m, I laughed out loud.
I wanna laugh out loud at Michelle. Will you do an audio book for.
Michelle: It’s too soon for that. Like it’s too soon for that question.
Gini: It’s way too soon.
Michelle: Been outta week. It’s
Gini: overwhelming. There’s so much to do. I told Michelle before we started recording that writing the book is the easy part. It’s the [00:19:00] marketing and promoting it. That’s the hard part. And that’s where you are right now.
Michelle: And even for those of us who are in the biz, it’s I don’t know, but talking about, yourself and your book and your, it gets, I’m, I think it’s, I think it’s a little taxing at times. Like it’s okay. It’s, yeah, it’s, anyway, we’re not here to talk about that today.
Audio book is coming someday. Yeah. At some point, maybe we’ll see. Okay, so I, you wrote a post about comments that I just Oh, yeah. Thought was very insightful and I wanna talk about that a little bit because I feel like that’s a really easy, like a low, I. Bar to try to, jump in. And you can do that right away on LinkedIn, for example, you can go right in there and you don’t necessarily have to be following or connected or like you can comment now on anybody’s post.
Gini: Yeah. So commenting used to be a really big thing, right? Like people would comment [00:20:00] on blogs, people were engaging on Twitter, people were commenting on business Facebook pages, and that all went away. I would say. 2016 ish. And I think for a couple of reasons. I think number one, there was so much of it happening that I think bosses were like, are you doing your job or are you commenting on Right.
Because there was so much of it going on, and because it was public facing, there was a lot of. The cancel culture kind of things happening even at micro levels of like you said this and then you regret what you’ve said because it’s three years later and you’ve learned and you’ve evolved.
So I think those are the two reasons. So everybody went back to we’re still gonna comment and engage, but it’s gonna be in private social media. Slack became a big deal, WhatsApp. There are places now that you can do that. And now what we’re seeing is a nice balance of the two where, to your point, you can easily go into LinkedIn and if somebody’s produced some content that really [00:21:00] speaks to you, just leave a nice comment and, but.
But also we actually included commenting in the earned media portion of the PACE model this year because it allows you to build relationships with journalists, and influencers really easily. Because if you’re commenting on their content and you’re consistent about it, they start to go, who is this person?
They investigate, right? They go and they click on your name and they go to your LinkedIn profile. They look at what you’re doing. They look at your company, they look at who you’re connected with and they start to do their own research so that by the time you pitch them a story. They already know who you are and that ice has been broken.
So to your point earlier, without that kind of stuff, they don’t know who you are. They don’t know if you’re in business, they don’t know anything about your business. But if you’re relieving thoughtful comments on their content, it allows you to build that relationship pretty fast.
Michelle: Yeah, and you don’t make it all about you.
You, you’re talking about their work and you’re not gonna plug your stuff and your comments. That’s the thing [00:22:00] I see people do sometimes. That I think is not a good idea, but I really think this is a very smart idea. And I think it, again, it’s it’s not rocket science necessarily, but like it’s an easy, way to get started and start to, to get on their radar because I think.
I think you’ve also talked about, and I agree, that if you see somebody’s name in your inbox pop up and you recognize their name, you’re more likely to at least read what they sent you. Maybe you won’t. Yep, absolutely. Yeah. If it’s a pitch and may, maybe it doesn’t land, but at least they read it, maybe respond or keep it for later, or something like that.
So
Gini: yeah, absolutely.
Michelle: Because that’s a battle. Just getting them to, yes. I was posting on I’m not on Twitter as much as I used to be, but I was over there yesterday and somebody was, we were going back and forth about just, it’s not figuring out the right contact. It’s getting them to read the pitch.
And I said yes, but if you’re sending it to the wrong person there’s zero chance. But yes, that is also a, an issue now because I think. Either they’re just, it’s getting filtered out, or they just get so many [00:23:00] and they just, that’s, it’s a thing.
Gini: Think about your own inbox.
I can’t keep up and I’m not a journalist. I don’t know how they do it. I can’t, I cannot keep up.
Michelle: Yeah. It makes sense to me, and even, all the, thoughtfulness in the world in writing your pitch, if they don’t read it, yeah. Yeah.
Gini: Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle: So there’s a lot to it.
I just think there’s a, and it is getting, it’s getting more challenging. So I think there’s just, it’s really important to stop and think and figure out, an approach that will work because it’s not pulling a media list from a database and spamming out this, poorly written pitch that to people that never wrote about bath bombs or whatever it is.
I’m like,
Gini: yes, this
Michelle: isn’t gonna, this, I dunno that it ever worked and it really won’t work now.
Gini: You
Michelle: better stop and think, get some help or, I dunno. Yes. But
Gini: yeah, so I think you’re right there. There’s some things like commenting that will get you, that will gain you some respect and attention for pretty quickly.
Don’t say things [00:24:00] like, this article was great. That’s not gonna do it. You have to be thoughtful about it. And please don’t use AI to write your comment because. You can, as the author, you can tell. And there I have four people who comment on everything that I publish and I can tell that they are not writing the comments they have are having a robot do it.
Yeah. So I guess if you use AI to write your comment, okay. Please make it sound like it’s coming from a human. So revise it, edit it. It’s probably
Michelle: just easier to write it in the first place is my thinking. And like probably, I don’t know, but I see the a LinkedIn, have you seen this has a a suggestion like when you go in to write your post, use AI to write your, I’m like no.
LinkedIn. Do you know me? Like I’m never gonna use that. It’s never, although just to screw
Gini: with a girlfriend of mine, I always use it. So she publishes stuff and I’ll push the button. Like she published something the other day about Anne Hanley, help Anne Ley helping her with something. And the AI said, [00:25:00] one of the prompts was, who is Anne Hanley?
So I pushed that button, left the comment like, I know who Anne Hanley is. I was just being a smart ass.
Michelle: Yes. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. But yeah, no, too, and like I, I’ve had this discussion a lot lately too about for a long time, I think journalists have been emailing questions for clients to answer.
But now some clients are using AI to craft the answers and journalists know the difference. So that’s another, issue that I’ve been discussing and trying to figure out. We, I, my clients don’t do that because I won’t do that or will let them do that. And I know I can tell and I’m usually working with them on it, so I know, but.
I just feel like they may, journalists may insist on like a live phone call or Zoom or something instead of doing, an interview by email, which I kind of wanna argue is better anyway. But I would argue
Gini: that too. Yeah, we’re all suck for time, which I get, I don’t, I [00:26:00] personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with a first using AI for a first draft of your answers, if that’s what you want.
If that’s going to help you get because some people have really have trouble getting staring at a blank sheet of paper like. That’s real. I don’t think that’s any different than speaking an answer or answering a question into a voice memo and sending it to your PR person and letting your PR person massage it, right?
I don’t think it’s any different than that kind of stuff. But it’s not the end point. You can use it as a starting point, but you have then go in and make sure you agree with it. And it sounds like you, and it sounds like something you would say. It has to be edited, all of those kinds of things.
So it’s a starting point.
Michelle: Yeah, I just it’s another thing we’re gonna have to grapple with because, nobody thought through these things before they unleashed the ai. Okay. Anyway. Like we don’t have enough challenges but another point that I, you have in the [00:27:00] peso model that I think you.
Feel as important and you can tell me no. If not, it’s community. And I feel like that’s not, it’s not a new, not a new one, but it’s, I feel like that in, in this age of, robots and fake news and blah da. So I feel like the real human, the community aspect is just growing in importance.
Gini: Yeah. And I don’t think community works for every organization. There, there has to be something that. That people can rally around. That, that makes it effective. So do I think like an OEM manufacturer should have a community? Probably not. Should I have, do I think that Crest toothpaste should have a community?
Probably not. But if you have a rallying cry that will, that will engage people. Nonprofits probably can do a really good job with community. The PR industry has a couple of communities that are really. Run and engaged. So it, if you can, if there’s something so industry wide or [00:28:00] vertical wide, you can but when you have community that it’s important to let people be themselves and to engage in ways that’s comfortable for them.
So if if you’re trying to dictate you can do this and you can’t do that, and it doesn’t work. So it’s very much. Certainly you wanna make sure, there’s no hate speech and all those kinds of things happening, but you from a monitoring perspective, but you don’t wanna give put thumbs, thumb screws on people and say, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.
Like the spin sucks. Community is really engaged and they are, it’s really robust and part of it is, part of it’s because I know. Certain buttons to push, which I think helps. But also we let people do be themselves, right? And we’re encouraging and we’re thoughtful. And so those things help. If there’s a, like I said, if there’s a rallying cry, but if you’re an OEM manufacturer and there’s nothing to rally people around, it’s something I think you could skip.
Michelle: Yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah, I just, I feel like though, for every company, there are people out there who are your fans and followers. Absolutely. Loyalists and advocates. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And then those are the people that you really can, leverage in good times and bad. And again, I don’t think it’s a new element, but I do think, it’s, I feel like anybody can say anything these days and people sometimes believe it. And so it’s just really important to, first of all be credible, but then surround yourself with people that will support you and add to your credibility versus, people that will take away from it or organizations that may harm it in some way.
Gini: Yeah, and I think, it used to be that very few organizations would have a crisis. And very few, or you would, and you would have a crisis because of a natural disaster or a plant explosion or the death of an executive. There would be certain things that would happen and it wouldn’t happen to every organization.
But today we’re in a world where. Every organization will have at least one crisis. And so when you [00:30:00] have a group of people who are advocates and loyal to your business and you reward that and you engage with those people, when you’re in a crisis, they will protect you and they will do what they can to help you.
So it’s important from that perspective too, it didn’t need, it didn’t used to be that important, but every single organization will have at least one crisis. Yeah. In throughout its lifetime.
Michelle: I used to talk about that when I would be meeting with a prospective client and they would look at me like I was nuts, like crisis crisis plan.
Like we, we don’t need that. And now I’m like, yes. You, yeah. It could be anything. Like I, I’ve seen all kinds of things and you just, there are things that you wouldn’t necessarily maybe view as a crisis or anticipate would happen to your. Company, but man it’s just a crazy world and anything can happen.
So yeah.
Gini: Yeah. Somebody can manufacture a video that’s not even relevant just because they’re mad at you and it’s not even true and it can go and [00:31:00] create something for you that, that. Is going to make your life miserable.
Michelle: That’s when you need that army of, fans and credit that’s folks around that to kinda, that’s right.
Bolster you up a little bit. So they’re handy in all kinds of situations. So
Gini: Yeah. I had I’m a fan.
Michelle: Yeah. Anyway Uhhuh.
I know we, I, of course I loved earned, I love earned media. I love earned media and earned media, but earned media. So beyond, we know that the pool of media is shrinking, right? That the outlets are either laying people off or going away entirely. And so as that evolves, and of course it’s been happening for a long time, but we see it, really happening now. And there are all kinds of reasons. And we talk about that all day too. But outside of what you would call traditional journalists, what are some other places that people could pitch? Like newsletters, for example?
Gini: Newsletters is a great example. Substack and Medium have [00:32:00] a nice.
List of places that you could pitch. That’s a really good example. The TikTok news anchor, which whether or not you agree with is happening that the, their people are out there, just regular people that are reporting on the news, those are places to pitch. I think you can look at micro and, everybody know, knows the macro, the big, huge influencers, right?
I think you can look at ma micro influencers, people who are influential in your industry and every single industry has. A handful of people that are influential, I think you can look at those kinds of people. But anybody who is talking about the industry or a group of organizations that you might belong to, whether or not they have a hundred followers or 10,000, those people are influe flu influential in their own ways.
And so as we think about how we’re shifting our. Our thinking around traditional media relations and thinking about who are the people that are influencing the people that we want to [00:33:00] connect with and the people that will buy from us, and that’s where you should be spending your time.
Michelle: Yeah, so your list is not just confined to, again, something you’re gonna churn out from a meaty database and then just, not do any legwork or work or, research. Yeah. You
Gini: might have podcast hosts, newsletter writers. There’s all sorts of YouTube influencers, like there’s all sorts of places that you should be looking.
Michelle: Yeah. Yep. What else do you wanna touch on? What’s on your mind as far as the revamped model?
Gini: I think the biggest thing is the measurement piece. That’s our biggest challenge. And I will tell you that, in my own journey of being an agency owner and working with cl with clients and measuring the work, it has become increasing increasingly more clear that.
Executives appreciate what I will call the top of the funnel stuff. The content, the social media, even the media relations. But what they really wanna know is how [00:34:00] that work is affecting the growth of the business. And so much of what we do is brand building and reputation management and, doing all of the things that protect.
The organization and attract new audiences. But it’s really challenging to say we had 500 new people come to the website on April 25th, and 300 of them became customers. It’s really challenging for us to do that, but that’s what executives expect because marketing can do it and advertising can do it.
So when we look at the PACE model, we look at how do we measure the outcomes? One of my favorite tools right now is Coverage Impact. Okay. And it’s a free tool from coverage book. Oh, I was gonna say I love coverage book. Yep. Yeah. So what they did is they allowed, at first what they were doing was allowing you to export your coverage, book placements, everything that you had in your coverage book and import it into this software.
Now they’re letting anybody, whether or not you’re a coverage book customer, but as an example, [00:35:00] you can take your. Spreadsheet of media placements over the last month, over the last quarter, over the last year, however long you want, and upload it into coverage impact. And then you can go and say, okay, I wanna compare this to website traffic.
I wanna compare it to stock pricing or stock price. I wanna compare it to leads generated. I wanna compare it to sales revenue generated. I wanna compare it to number of volunteers. Donations, like there’s lots of options. So you say, let’s say you wanna compare it to website traffic. So you go into your Google Analytics, you export a, a a CSV file for the same time period, and you upload that in and then it overlays.
So you have, let’s say you have all of 2023 in there. And you have spikes of media placements in January, in April, in October and November. And you can see when you overlay the Google Analytics that you also had spikes in traffic [00:36:00] in January, April, October, and November. But so it lets you correlate that, right?
But then it also shows that. We had a spike in traffic in January. We had a spike in traffic in April around the media placements. But the traffic actually never went back to pre January numbers. It stayed pretty high in May through November, which says, okay, we can correlate our media relations efforts to this increased website traffic.
And, oh look, we had another increase in November and another increase in December, and then the numbers continued to rise. It allows you to look at measurement in a different way, in a way that I think executives expect, because now you’re not saying we had 5 billion media impressions and our advertising equivalency was $222 million.
Like those numbers don’t mean anything, but when you can correlate your activity with. Results. That’s where it starts to make some difference.
Michelle: Yeah. I [00:37:00] think sometimes the challenge is getting the data. Sure. The Google Analytics, because I don’t always have access to that. So I think I think that’s part of the discussion.
When you set the client up at the beginning of the That’s right. Engagement. We put it in
Gini: our contract, it’s Yeah.
Michelle: But you have to have access because otherwise how do you, how can you measure like it, I know I know, John Burke, and the thing that I, she talked about when I interviewed her once was about how PR ladders up.
You can’t just look at it in a vacuum. It’s it’s part of marketing and it’s part of everything else that you’re doing. So it is really hard to measure because yeah the question comes up all the time and I think we have struggled with it forever and I think we are still struggling.
So I’m excited that there is gonna be something maybe that will help us.
Gini: Yeah I’m really impressed with it and I keep playing with it. I’m like, can we include some of the other peso model types in there so that we can, and so actually Gary Preston, who’s the CEO is, has been working with me on it.
And so we’re looking at how we can, I. [00:38:00] Start to, to implement other media types as well. Yeah. I’m thinking about asking him to be
Michelle: here
Gini: and, oh, he’s great. You should absolutely. He’d be a great guest. Definitely do that. Gary,
Michelle: Paige and Gary
Gini: He’s awesome. Plus he has the nicest accents. He sounds good.
Michelle: Who doesn’t like that, yeah, no, I do think, I think it’s, I think people avoid talking about measurement, but if the clients, they want to they want it. And so then we, it’s our responsibility and it helps us too, if we can provide them that information and we can know what’s working and what isn’t working as well and Yep.
Yeah.
Gini: Yep.
Michelle: The fact that tool is free too. I have a coverage book subscription, but that tool is free. Yeah. Yeah. It’s totally free. And I’m not, I, like I say, I’m not the biggest on, buying the newest shiny object tool of the day, but I do think coverage book is worth worth it.
It’s every
Gini: penny. I love that.
Michelle: I don’t know how they, it may,
Gini: yeah. I don’t know either, but they like, when you hand that over to an executive, they’re very happy. They’re like, oh, that’s [00:39:00] really nice. Thank you.
Michelle: Yeah. We do have a couple questions. I don’t know,
Gini: other than will you do an audio book for your book?
Michelle: Yeah. No, he he’s asking if you’re on the marketing side or if you work as a publicist. I think, all of the above. You’re the head of your firm but you have your finger in so many things that, you know, and the peso model covers a lot of ground, so
Gini: Yeah.
Because of the peso model. Depending on the organization, some considerate communications and some considerate marketing. But I’m a PR professional through and through. That’s how I grew up. But I have, as I’ve done, started to do this work over the last decade, I probably touch more marketing than communications.
Michelle: Yeah. It’s really the best of all worlds because, it’s, if you hire Jenny, then you get all of it. You get all of it. You don’t need, having a separate, agency for PR and market, they, they cover it all. So really we don’t have other questions. What else do you wanna talk about?[00:40:00]
Is there anything else you wanna talk about before we wrap up?
Gini: What is your plan for marketing your book?
I’m, we’re asking you the question today. You asked me what I wanna talk about.
Michelle: Oh no, I I have spent years building a network of people and that’s why I feel like community and followers and just friends I would call them as much as anything. Yeah, so important.
And I, when I was doing it, I never really thought, oh, I’m gonna write a book someday. Like that wasn’t really the idea. Sure. Yeah. But I think it’s like about, thinking about the other person and just as you build any kind of a network or community, I think it’s being, thinking of them and what you can do for them or how you can help them.
And then and it’s again, not a self-serving. Type of approach, but in the end it does, it helps you as well. So I do think that is helping me a lot. And as far as plans, I’m probably gonna roll some [00:41:00] courses out is one thing. I’m good for you.
Gini: That’s great. So yeah, I,
Michelle: yes. Yeah. Do that.
Gini: Yes.
Michelle: I’m trying to figure out the best tool for that. ’cause again, oh boy, oh, ’cause I’m looking at Kajabi. That’s the one that I keep, that’s what I use. Yeah. A lot about.
Gini: Yeah, that’s what we use.
Michelle: It’s
Gini: so easy. It’s Is it plug and play? Yeah, it’s really easy.
Michelle: People say it’s more expensive.
And I’m like, yeah, but look what you get. I’m not one again, that’s hard to use. I probably won’t do that. Yeah.
Gini: Yeah. It’s super easy to use. It might be more expensive, but you’re gonna save a ton of time. That’s, and that’s money.
Michelle: Time is money. And yeah, none of us has. Hours and hours I get frustrated trying to figure out how to use tools and I see the same thing with clients.
I’m like, I’ll start talking to a prospective client, or I’ll start working with a new client and they have these expensive, subscriptions to databases and things, and I’m like, they don’t even know how to log in, let alone they’re, I’m like, you could take that money and you could use it on somebody, [00:42:00] like a consultant or a agency to help you.
That would probably be a better use of your money than to just be. Sinking it into expensive that
Gini: Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Michelle: That’s another thing that I talk about a lot because, and I know some people love their tools, but I’m like, and that’s great. And like I said, I have tools that I love too, but I just don’t, I think we have an over reliance on the tools versus the, the strategy or the thinking behind, like what do you wanna do and how are you gonna accomplish it?
And then, you gotta start there. Where’s your audience, spending time. So just things like that. Basics. And that’s, to me, that’s why. I love peso because it just lays out, in a very clear picture, which, we’re all visual people. It’s really helpful to put that up there.
And I have had heard people like almost go, just gasp or oh it’s like a, yeah. You
Gini: literally see them go, oh, it’s great.
Michelle: I get it now. [00:43:00] Yeah. Because otherwise you could talk all day and they’re just like, they’re just not seeing it, they’re just not, until you show them.
And that’s why I think it’s so important and I really am happy to see, the update. But it’s been it’s. It’s just, it’s a cornerstone I think, for a lot of us in pr. So we really appreciate everything that you do with that. And we appreciate that you’re so generous with your time.
And of course you have a community, the Spin Slacks community that is free for PR people to join. And. You have a newsletter, you have a blog. I always recommend following you on LinkedIn because you’re always sharing everything that you write about on there, and that’s always good stuff. And definitely on
Gini: LinkedIn, man, I tell you.
Michelle: I know.
Gini: Oh I was just talking to a girlfriend yesterday and she was like, okay, explain to me the LinkedIn newsletter. And so I told her. That we’re publishing there once a week, and she goes, but are you generating business from it? And I’m like, yes. And the [00:44:00] thing about it is, it’s people on LinkedIn that don’t subscribe to the blog or follow us on other social networks.
They’re prospects and they’re business leaders. But they’re not. They’re not. There’s not an overlap. And so for us it’s been huge because that’s where, the business leader prospect is coming from versus the PR communications leader, prospect. I.
Michelle: Yeah, and that’s, I had somebody call me and they had seen, like they were trying to find somebody to take over an account for them because they were gonna retire.
And they saw me post and then they went back another day and I posted again. And so then they got in touch with me. But if I wasn’t active on there, they might not have. Known about me or website. Absolutely. Website, yeah. I do other things like not everybody knows or pays attention to every single thing.
So you have to have all these different Yes. Ways to reach people. Yes. Yes. And I think for us, I’d say LinkedIn is a big one. Even though I know, one
Gini: of the things though, one of the things I think you do [00:45:00] really well on LinkedIn, I think actually I take that back. You do two things really well on LinkedIn.
You talk about what kind of work you do. So that people know how they can hire you, and you do it in a non smarmy, salesy way. It’s really, and you do it really well. And the other thing you do really well is you you show your, showcase your expertise by saying this is not an example you use, but I can’t think of one right now.
But something like, if you’re going to write a news release, these are 12 things that you should include and you’re just like boom. And so you do a nice job of condensing content into 500. Words or so, or even less. You do a really nice job with those two things. Every time I see you, every time I see you talk about how someone can hire you.
I’m like, dang, that’s good.
Michelle: It’s good. Oh, thank you. I I’ve been doing this a long time too, and always learning things and trying, you’re just trying things. You constantly are trying things and I encourage that for clients too. And sometimes I. Look at myself as a Guinea pig.
They’re [00:46:00] not all trying to do the same things, but on social and things, it’s like is this gonna work? And with video even I really was reluctant to do video for a long time, and so that’s a new way for me to get out there and reach a different audience.
’cause I, I had a YouTube channel, but there wasn’t anything on it. I was doing, I was not following my own advice there, to try some new things. Did
Gini: do. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle: How many episodes are you in here? I think, let’s see, I’m gonna count maybe six. Great. I’m trying to do about two a month, so that’s great. I’m not trying to go crazy. Another person I wanna have on that I just wrote down that popped into my head is Peter Shankman because he, oh, now he’s his new PA with Hero.
So I need to reach out to Peter and see if you come on and chat a little bit about that. But yeah, if you have ideas, I’m always open ’cause I’m only, I’m, I am only gonna have people on that I really like. Respect and okay, I are not gonna steer people wrong, right? Because there’s a lot of people that’s a, that’s that we can also talk about that all day.
But there’s all kinds of [00:47:00] scams and people trying to, sell themselves as experts and they’re not. So always do your research on that and, look into that for the audience. I know, but somebody must be buying into that stuff. But
Gini: someone must is right.
Michelle: I wanna thank you so much, Jenny and you’re, thanks everybody for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And we’ll see each other around and we will for sure. Yeah, I’ll be back with another episode of PR Explored soon, so thanks so much.
