Category: Public Relations

3 PR Lessons from Katelyn Ohashi’s Perfect 10

Clairemont InternBlog, Professional Development, Public Relations, , , ,

If you haven’t already seen the viral gymnastics routine that has taken social media by storm, it is definitely worth a watch! You can check out UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi’s perfect 10 routine here, as she leaves the judges and audiences in awe.

So how does a flawless floor routine translate into the world of public relations? In more ways than one!

Photo by Richard Quinton/UCLA

1. Katelyn Ohashi teaches us the importance of adding your own personal style and creativity into every floor routine (and PR campaign) you approach. She wins over the crowd with her beaming smile and signature dance moves throughout her routine. As you get ready to build your brand, think about how you can add some extra special flare that is outside the box. What makes your brand or idea stand out? While Ohashi has some jaw-dropping combinations of tumbling in her routine, it is her extra touch of personality that really wins the audience over. Just like with a brand or a PR strategy, it is truly in the details!

2. Katelyn Ohashi is a talented gymnast, but she has also experienced something that everyone has as some point: burnout. She was once an Olympic-track gymnast with dreams of representing Team USA. She ended up leaving that trajectory to pursue a more suitable lifestyle and a gymnastics career at UCLA. While she might have left her Olympic dreams behind, she is anything but ordinary. Ohashi shows us that even if your first plan or strategy does not work out, that does not mean you have to settle for less. Always be on the lookout for a fresh and creative approach, whether it is for your own brand, one of your clients or a campaign you are trying to create. Just because you choose a different way, doesn’t mean it is the wrong way.

3. Just like gymnastics, public relations is a field where presentation is everything. You can have a great idea, but if you can’t present it in a way that hooks your audience, it is going to fall short. From the moment she steps onto the floor, Ohashi has everyone’s attention. Her radiant smile and strategic presentation strengthen her routine that much more. Gymnasts train for years to perfect their landings and the positioning of their legs on the floor and uneven bars, just like public relations professionals search for hours for the perfect word choice and slogan to lead their campaign.

Katelyn Ohashi might have won over the hearts of America with her flawless floor routine, but she won me over with the PR skills she doesn’t even know she has!

Want a dose of more inspiration? Check out the Top 3 Marketing Campaigns of 2018!

Written by Alex Davis-Isaac, senior at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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How to Avoid Being a Photo Faux Pas

Clairemont InternBlog, Professional Development, Public Relations, , , ,

Do you ever stress about the “photography skills” line of your resume? In a world of ever-improving iPhone cameras and easy access to photo editors, this seems like a must-have skill. Public relations students are increasingly expected to take courses in photography or videography, and PR professionals are often in charge of providing visual representation of their clients.

At a past Raleigh Public Relations Society’s Lunch and Learn, a panel of professional photographers answered questions about their jobs, discussed ideal client relationships and extended photography advice to the room of PR professionals.

Working with Professionals — Dos & Don’ts

Even if your client is lucky enough to have the budget for a professional photographer, there are still a few ways to help.

  1. DO figure out which photographer’s style best fits your client’s vision for the project. Kimberly Rhoades, a portrait photographer with her own business, Nine 19 Photography, said the most important aspect of the ideal client relationship is building a relationship of trust from the get-go — sounds familiar, right?
  2. DO provide useful information ahead of time to the photographer. You want your money best spent taking photos, not figuring out where to stick the backdrop.
  3. DON’T forget to give the photographer credit on social media.

Working without Professionals — Quick Tips

If your client needs you to be the impromptu photographer for the day, the panelists provided some tips:

  1. For more casual social media posts, using your iPhone to snap a few pictures will do, but an in-depth photo shoot probably warrants a better camera.
  2. If it’s a bad picture, don’t post it just to post something, especially when trying to show off your product or food. As Felicia Trujillo from Food-Seen pointed out, a chef trying to showcase his or her food won’t be successful with a bad photo.
  3. Make do with the camera you have, and learn how to use it well. Amanda English from Amanda English Photography advised not to use the auto setting on the camera; instead, watch YouTube videos, read books or ask an experienced user how to shoot the camera manually.

Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Photography Skills

  1. If you’re looking for a good lens, English recommends a 35 or 50 mm lens, which is better than zoom lenses. Sometimes you can even rent lenses if you find yourself scared of commitment.
  2. Improve composition by moving around the client you’re photographing, not vice versa.
  3. Don’t have people face the sun! Closed eyes in pictures are probably not your client’s most ideal look.
  4. There isn’t a hard and fast rule for how many shots it takes to get the perfect one, but definitely don’t settle for the first one you take. Make sure every photo looks different, even when they’re the same type of shot.
  5. When shooting an event, be knowledgeable of what the client wants before you arrive. Create a shot list. As Kim Kirchstein from Leopold Designs pointed out, it is impossible for one person to capture every moment of the event, but communication with the client is key to making sure you get the best shots!

With these quick and easy tips, you’ll improve your photography skills in the blink of an eye or hopefully, the snap of a camera! For tips translating visuals into social media, give this post a gander.

Written by Haley McDougal, previous Clairemont intern from UNC-Chapel Hill.

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AI and PR: The Magic Mix

Clairemont InternBlog, Public Relations, , ,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) sounds intimidating, I’ll admit. Whether it’s the fear of the unknown or overall lack of understanding, people often have varying opinions of AI that are best summarized in one way: awesome but scary.

Exactly how  scary is it?

Many of us use AI on a daily basis without even realizing it. Take Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s Bixby as examples. These voice-enabled bots have made it into our homes, phones and lives. Just by talking, we can ask these bots to play music, make telephone calls and even order our groceries for us.

With all things in life, there are advantages and drawbacks of AI. While there is speculation that Alexa, Siri and Bixby are always listening to us even when we don’t want them to be, they do make our lives much easier.

AI has already made its way into our personal lives, and it’s beginning to infiltrate numerous professional industries worldwide as well. AI has secured its spot within the retail and e-commerce industries, including Amazon and China’s Alibaba and JD.com, and it’s beginning to appear in banking and in healthcare.

What about AI in the PR industry?

It’s coming, and it’ll be here sooner than you think.

AI may seem daunting to the average PR professional, but don’t fret. AI will not take away jobs in the PR and communications industries; it will only make them easier. AI machines will complete monotonous tasks, such as filtering through data and providing us with any needed results.

Perhaps in the future, we can leave it to AI devices to research a list of potential media outlets for pitches in order to generate press coverage, or AI bots can compile coverage reports based on the media coverage. Instead of manually posting to event calendars, we can rely on a machine to do it. AI may also be able to inform us of the best social media strategies to utilize on an individual client basis based on aggregating data regarding levels of engagement.

The PR industry should welcome AI with arms wide open. It will save time, but these robotic devices may take awhile to perfect. The algorithms will likely not be error-free from the start and may make mistakes. PR professionals will always need to double check the work done by AI machines.

So, what is the perfect mix?

AI will be helpful, and it will streamline several processes within the industry. It is possible that in a few short years PR professionals will be working in collaboration with AI, especially in large companies. It may take a few more years for AI bots to become implemented into small scale agencies, however.

At the end of the day, we are people convincing people to explore our creative solutions with us. AI can’t do it all; human intuition and creativity are still essential components in the work in which that we specialize. PR requires hefty creativity, strategy and ingenuity as well as intuition to assess and create the delicate strategies to address pertinent issues. AI will never have the “gut feeling” through its numbers and algorithms that a seasoned PR professional provides.

Written by Clairemont Intern Anna Ostrowski, a senior at UNC.

Cover image from Unsplash.com

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A Social Media Super Bowl

Clairemont InternBlog, Public Relations, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , ,

There are 32 teams in the NFL across 21 states. Super Bowl XLIX, New England Patriots versus Seattle Seahawks, was the most-watched Super Bowl and most-watched television program of all time with a staggering 114.4 million American viewers. This past season, 103.4 million American viewers tuned in for Super Bowl LI, Patriots versus Atlanta Falcons. You could say professional football is a pretty big deal.

The various football teams have a lot of work to do on the field, and their communication teams have a lot to do off of it. Each team has to connect with thousands of fans, and one great tool to do this is social media. Any given team will be using social to post game results, questions to fans, information on players, news about the team, the game schedule, merchandise and more. That being said, we’ve ranked the top five NFL teams who we think have done a stellar job with their social media.

1. Dallas Cowboys

The Numbers:

The Cowboys have 3.75 million followers on Twitter, 2.6 million followers on Instagram and 8.6 million likes on Facebook.

Why We Love Them:

We love that, like most teams, the Cowboys share player interviews and highlights, but the team stands out in the way it uses social media to focus on the team as a whole and the friendship between players. We also love the shoutouts the Cowboys give the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, who have 393,000 Instagram followers of their own.

The Cowboys do a great job of utilizing Instagram stories, including highlights of wallpapers, captains, events and the season schedule. Most importantly, this team makes its social media shine by never missing a birthday shoutout to the players and well wishes to fans on holidays. 

2. Carolina Panthers

The Numbers:

The Carolina Panthers have 3.01 million followers on Twitter, 1.5 million followers on Instagram and 2.3 million likes on Facebook.

Why We Love Them:

The Panthers might have the most clever and humorous social media in the NFL. Expect to see a gif blowing off a big loss or the Panthers hitting another team with lighthearted jabs on Twitter. The Panthers are also in tune with younger fans and pop culture, recently turning Ariana Grande’s hit song “Thank u, next” into a hilarious meme and sharing the Panthers players you can play in the popular video game, Fortnite.

The Panthers can also be serious. We appreciated the team’s post in solidarity with Pittsburgh after the recent shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue.

In addition to staying on top of current events, the Panthers love showing off their players off the field, their fans and their city, Charlotte, North Carolina.

We’ve also got to hand it to Sir Purr, the official mascot of the Carolina Panthers, who boasts 17,900 followers on Instagram.

3. Minnesota Vikings

The Numbers:

The Minnesota Vikings have 1.26 million followers on Twitter, 769,000 followers on Instagram and 2.1 million likes on Facebook. The Vikings have a Facebook show, The Rundown, but with a pretty small following of just 1,700 followers.

Why We Love Them:

So! Much! Purple! The team colors of purple and gold jump out at you on the Vikings’ social media but especially on Instagram where uniforms, crowds of fans and tinted cartoons make a wave of purple. This team gets fans pumped for upcoming games by putting the Vikings’ cleats up against their opposition’s footwear.

We also love the way the Vikings get their fans involved with #purplepups.

4. New York Giants

The Numbers:

The Giants have 1.8 million followers on Twitter, 1.7 million followers on Instagram and almost 4 million likes on Facebook. The Giants also have a show on Facebook, called Giants Life, that has 4,000 followers.

Why We Love Them:

The Giants do so much community service and giving that there’s an account dedicated just to community relations! We love that the main Giants’ Twitter does a great job of retweeting highlights and sharing those moments with a larger Giants’ audience.

Like the Vikings, the Giants get fans involved with #NYGiantsPup, which has been used on almost 900 posts this season. Where the Giants stand out are their fun and flavorful posts sharing healthy tailgate recipes, which are done in partnership with Weight Watchers.

5. Buffalo Bills

The Numbers:

The Buffalo Bills have 965,000 followers on Twitter, 472,000 followers on Instagram and more than 890,000 likes on Facebook. The Bills also have a Facebook show with 17,000 followers.

Why We Love Them:

The Buffalo Bills prove that the number of followers you have doesn’t always equate to the originality of your posts. We love the Fun Fact Friday posts the Bills have been doing to highlight players and make them relatable to fans.

We also love how the personal lives of the players are shared on the team page, including interviews with the wives and kids of players.

Loyal football fans get excited about the uniform their team wears. This team shows its social media finesse by sharing what combination of pants, jerseys, gloves and socks the Bills will be wearing at their next away game.

Overall, the Bills are great about connecting with fans and are giving them a look behind the scenes.

Interested in other ways social media can shine? Check out our blog about getting the most out of your hashtags.

Written by Kaitlyn Karcher, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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The Five Love Languages: PR Edition

Kelli FletcherBlog, Hiring a PR Firm, Public Relations, , , ,

In 1995 Gary Chapman wrote a book that promised to enlighten you on “how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate.” It was dubbed the “secret” to making a relationship last and promised a path to truer, deeper love. The book was titled, The Five Love Languages. Twenty years later a revised edition of the book was released and since then, pop culture has seen a resurgence of the concept: that there are five ways to express and experience love, and that each person has one primary and one secondary love language.

Well, call us silly, but we do fancy ourselves in the business of love and commitment. As in, we LOVE what we do and who we do it for, and we are COMMITTED to making our clients happy, day in and day out. In fact, to take it a step further, our team strives to not just make these relationships with our clients but also to maintain them for years to come.

And because each client’s needs are different and each views success in a variety of ways, we’ll argue that we’ve become somewhat of a group of experts at this whole theory and each of its languages. Bottom line: Every day we strive to present our clients with all the languages of love!

Here’s a little snippet of ways we at Clairemont “speak” the five languages of love:

Receiving Gifts: Some people love flowers, but we think nothing says “I love you” more than a big fat clipbook of media hits in our client’s target outlets.

Quality Time: We not only connect with our clients weekly but we also try to do it in person whenever we can. We love hosting kick-off meetings and “calls” at the Clairemont House. This way our clients (and potential clients) can see where all the magic happens.

Words of Affirmation: Whether it’s feedback on a recent camera interview or acknowledging a fantastic idea, we want to let our clients know they’re doing a great job. We think we work with some of the best clients in the biz, and, well, we’re going to tell you about it.

Acts of Service: For us, this is our most fluent. We’re not just going to talk the talk; we’re going to walk the walk! Maybe it’s connecting our clients to the community or to each other. Or perhaps we are tasked with executing a flawless event. Whatever it is our clients need, we’re going to make sure it gets done.

Physical Touch: Often times we’ll kick off a client relationship with a strong handshake and celebrate successes with a high five. But there’s no hiding that we’re a group of huggers at heart, which means we often hug it out with our clients when we say hello and good-bye.

Maybe one of these languages speaks more loudly to you, or heck, maybe you and your business need them all. Either way, our team is up (and excited!) for the chance to show you we care! Want to learn more? Drop us a line!

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