THINKing

How To Be A Great Radio Guest

Radio - despite changes in media habits - still is a great way to get in front of a lot of people. As a radio talk show guest on a national program, millions could hear your message. Talk radio listeners tune in about 20 percent more than the average radio listener.

Being a great guest takes some work on your part. Let’s review what you must do in order to attain great guest status.

Be Available. Journalists of all stripes complain about not being able to reach sources when they need them. With radio, it is not just a 9 - 5 job. The great radio guest will show up whenever he or she is needed.

Be Conversational. This goes beyond your ability to carry on a good conversation. You must speak clearly, concisely and in terms the average listener understands. Start throwing around business-speak like “that’s not in my wheelhouse” and get booted off the show before it starts. In fact, don’t talk like that when you are not on radio!

Be Ubiquitous. It was true when I was in radio and it is still true today, radio people follow their print brethren. If you have been quoted by a news magazine or newspaper, radio producers are more likely to have you on. And, help producers locate you. Make sure you have an online presence and that you have your media clips accessible so producers can determine if you are the right source for them.

Be In The Moment. If you are out pitching yourself, take advantage of the news cycle. If there is nothing happening currently that ties your expertise into the topic of the day, then wait. Your day will come.

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Front Page Coverage - That’s What I Want!

Does everyone in business seem to think all you have to do is call the local daily paper and they come out to do a page one profile of your business? With all the downsizing, it’s hard enough just to get the media to open your emails or take your calls. Getting a front page story just because you want it: priceless.

I was talking with a prospect once who tossed this off as if it was no big deal, “of course we’d like to have the paper come down, meet our principals and do a profile of our business.” Another one wants to become a “rock star-type celebrity” in his industry.

Well, I’d like to win the lottery, but at least I know I have to buy a ticket first in order to be in the running.

Got any thoughts on this subject?

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Time For The Spin Cycle

It’s always interesting to see how the media and the politicians try to spin a story. Let’s take a look today at the Massachusetts victory of Republican Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in the bluest of blue states. Here’s what they are saying about it:

Boston Globe

Boston Herald

USA Today

New York Times

Fox News

Washington Times

What do you think about the coverage of this race’s aftermath?

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News Media: Your Slip Is Showing

You’ve probably read about it by now - the hoax pulled on the media by a group posing to be from the US Chamber. The CopyWrite, Ink blog has a good overview.

And it was a hoax on the media, not on the US Chamber of Commerce, as Bloomberg characterized it. Says Bloomberg,

The Yes Men, a New York group that pulls pranks on corporations, issued a fake press release and the text of a purported speech by Chamber President Thomas Donohue under the chamber’s letterhead yesterday, said Jacques Servin, a Yes Men member. The imposters also held a news conference at the National Press Club with ersatz chamber officials.

No, this was a hoax on the media. Plain and simple. Today’s media follow their template and biases, try to get the “news” out too fast, with little to no fact-checking.

Reuters called it more correctly after the fact. Initially, they too ran with the false story that the US Chamber of Commerce was changing its position on cap and trade. That’s what the liberal media wanted to hear and that’s why they didn’t question it. That’s what I mean by the template.

Today’s media members are overwhelmingly liberal.  A 2005 UCLA study confirms this. Former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg has written a book on the subject - Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How The Media Distort The News that was spawned by an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Goldberg says that it’s not a purposeful left-wing conspiracy. According to an article in Newsmax,

Goldberg, who spent his last years at CBS in the doghouse for his 1996 Wall Street Journal piece, says that if these correspondents were to take a lie detector test as to whether they slanted the news leftward, they would deny it and pass with flying colors. Many of them don’t consider that they’re leaning in any political direction. They really think they are simply mainstream. There is no other side of the argument except what you hear from a few right-wing nut cases. In their world, mainstream conservatism doesn’t exist.

Don’t be surprised by more of these hoaxes.They are just too easy to perpetrate.

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Top Content

In case you missed some of our posts, here are the top five read of all time:

Twittering Journalists

Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

Newspapers: Dig The Grave 

When Billboards Go Bad

It’s The Relationship, Stupid

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Reading List

What are you reading today? Here are a few items we are checking out.

Newspaper Online Traffic Heads Up

Google Fast Flip Speeds Online News Reading

iPhone App Helps You Find Guinness

Measuring The Business Effects Of Web 2.0

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Links - 7/10/2009

Here are a few things we’re reading today:

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format -  The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.

Bing’s Growth Accelerates - Microsoft is gaining ground with its search engine Bing, but Google still dominates the market. Microsoft’s Bing grabbed 5.25% of the U.S. Internet search market in the four weeks ending June 27, while Google captured 74% of the market, according to data released by Hitwise.

Evian’s Babies Take Internet By Storm -  Evian’s break-dancing babies have become an instant viral success — which is just how the bottled water company likes it, since there’s no TV media buy planned for the U.S. to support the new ad campaign, themed “Live young.”

Everything You Need To Know About Twitter You Learned From Your Grandmother -  Sure, it can help to utilize the growing number of Twitter tools available as well, but if your Twitter grade isn’t as high as you’d like it to be, you may want to take some tips from grandma.

I’m On Someone’s Media List -  THINKing has written about this before. Now, Rodger Johnson takes on the topic of PR people sending totally off-base pitches and news releases to bloggers and newspeople.

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Has The News Media Disappeared?

The free press of my early career was a thing of beauty. It was truly a watchdog over big everything, including government. It provided non-biased coverage of issues and kept its editorials on the op-ed pages.

Today, it panders to the lowest common denominator and doesn’t provide us with the balanced information we need to make informed decisions. It merely regurgitates the government position. And the media wonders why it is withering and dying.

Let’s take this example, and it is not an isolated one. USA Today covered the death of Michael Jackson like it was D-Day.  But didn’t even mention what may be one of the biggest goverment tax increases ever through the cap and trade bill.

According to the Business & Media Institute,

Jackson, who passed away June 25, dominated USA Today. Nine articles were devoted to Jackson on June 26 and 29. The June 26 front page blared: “MICHAEL King of Pop dies” over a photo of Jackson that took up much of the remainder of the page. The top of USA Today advertised: “Faces of Jackson: Keepsake posters, 8-9D.” Jackson also was the headline on June 29: “Inside Michael’s Last Show.”

Many newspapers reported on cap and trade but relegated their stories to pages so deep most people didn’t see them. I saw some highly opinionated articles that should have appeared as editorials, instead of masquerading as unbiased reportage.

If you have been reading THINKing for a while, you know that I believe the media has a decided liberal bias. Compared to the media of my youth, it now looks almost like the state-run media of fascist Germany. Do you think the media has disappeared? Agree or disagree with me, why don’t you?

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Links - 6/16/2009

Here are a few items My Creative Team is reading.

Email Ranks High In North America - According to Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study, conducted by ROI Research, the survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries finds that Email remains a mainstay communication, showing that 87% of North American(and 74% of European respondents are more likely than their peers in APAC to use email as their primary online communications tool.

Search Site Spezify.com Provides Eye-Popping Results - The visual search site Spezify.com launched Monday with the ability to retrieve tweets from Twitter.

Grand Jury Subpoenas Commenters’ Personal Info From Newspaper -Comments on a newspaper website about an upcoming tax evasion trial has prompted federal prosecutors to subpoena a newspaper for those commenters’ personal information. Very troubling.

Social Networking Sites Embrace Clinical Trials - Online social networking sites are assembling groups around particular disease types as a way of simulating interest in clinical trials and the data they’re collecting on members.

Social Media Is Increasingly Important Tool in Keeping Employees Engaged - Employers faced with reduced communication budgets and resources are turning to social media to keep their workforces engaged, according to a new survey.

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Links - 5/22/2009

Here are a few item we are reading today that you may also find of interest:

Consumers Like Newspapers Less Than They Do Airlines

In the first quarter of ‘09, newspaper customers’ satisfaction rating was 63. To put this in some perspective, those surveyed expressed a greater deal of satisfaction with airlines (airlines!) which scored 64. And cell phone providers (cell phone providers?) which score a 69.

Yahoo Helps Newspapers Book Local Ads

About 150 or so papers have started using a new platform meant to simplify ad targeting and selling that Yahoo delivered last fall. Another 350 or so are up next. The new platform was largely responsible for a 30% increase in online-only ad sales across Scripps newspapers in the first quarter, according to Scripps.

E! Harvesting Celebrity Tweets

E! is planning to harvest the power of Twitter for “Celebri-Tweets.” The network will run tweets from a number of celebrities in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen during its programming. In addition, E! will feature a “Celebri-Tweet” widget on its homepage keeping users up to date on what the celebrity Twitterati are saying in 140 characters or less.

Email Continues To Perform For Retailers

Compared with last year, 56.4% of retailers report their typical sales conversion rate for an e-mail marketing campaign remains about the same. More than one quarter of survey respondents, though, report conversion is up: 22.8% say up slightly and 3.7% up significantly. Only 17% report conversion is down: 13.7% say down slightly and 3.3% down significantly.

FaceBook Fights Phishing Scam

Facebook was hit with another round of phishing attacks Thursday, cluttering members’ inboxes with messages attempting to send them to sites to steal their login information. 

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