What's the peg? Keeping it interesting

By Laura Haight

On the wall in my office there's a map showing newspapers and periodicals in a portion of the country based on data from the 1880 Census. It is actually one of the first infographics with red triangles showing dailies, blue dots showing weeklies, squares showing periodicals and different colors denoting the number of each in the area. There is hardly a town not covered with dots, triangles and circles.

Today, there are many fewer formal publications and yet probably even more communication channels when one considers blogs, websites, tweeters and more. Nonetheless, when a group, business or non-profit wants to get information out they turn to the established media: newspapers, television stations, magazines and, perhaps, established mainstream blogs.

Often, they find they don't get the response they expected. So here are five tips to get your press release or information noticed.

1. Have a news peg. Whether it is good or bad for the future of journalism, it is still a fact that news outlets need reasons to be interested in things. What is the news peg for your release? Is it a meeting that you are having, an event that's coming up, an anniversary, a fund-raiser? Make sure you make it clear that there is a timeliness to your request for coverage. Be clear in explaining why other people should be interested in your event, not just why you find it interesting.

2. Tell a story. When I was a newspaper editor, I told reporters all the time to think like readers. Try to remember that they don't know what you are talking about and tell them a story that will interest them, inform them, and involve them. Too often organizations write releases that assume some level of knowledge about the group and its mission. Assume you have just met someone who has just moved to your town and they know absolutely nothing about your group. Now tell them a story. Make it interesting to hold their attention and compelling to capture their imagination. But also make it thorough. Not sure if your press release meets this test? Give it to someone not involved in your group to read and gauge their reaction.

3. Think like a reporter. I say this with all the love and respect I have from 35 years in newspapers: reporters are lazy. If you want to get something published, you will want it to be as complete as humanly possible. If you try to send the news outlet to other places (check our website for more information), there's a good chance that will backfire and you will end up in the "circular file." No matter what embellishments you make, all good news writing still covers the five basics - who, what, when, where and why. Answer those questions with clarity and brevity and you will have a far better chance at attracting a news outlet's interest.

4. Know what you want. In a previous lifetime, newspapers received press releases and an editor would look them over to see if there was anything newsworthy enough for coverage. A second tier that was not deemed worth a reporter's time but still might be a decent "blurb" or calendar item would be given to a clerk to write up. A third tier would be relegated to the previously mentioned circular file. Today, automated self-service systems fill the role of clerks - and even sometimes editors. Most news outlets have an online system for submitting information. Normally, this is run "as is" in various calendars or specialty listings depending on the selections you make when you enter them. If you send a press release hoping for coverage, but you'd be happy to have a listing, then you need to submit the information yourself. Yes, you are doing twice the work. If the outlet decides not to cover your event, it is highly unlikely your information will be passed on to anyone else for inclusion in a calendar or listing.

Another critical piece is to think like today's journalists will be thinking. If your event or story has not only a compelling subject, but also great visuals, mention that in your press release. Print news outlets are thinking video, audio and multimedia, so you have a better chance of getting coverage if you can provide some suggestions for compelling visuals as well as a good story.

5. Personal follow up. Even though it seems like newspapers and magazines are smaller than ever before, they are receiving a great deal more information than they ever did. Much of it goes online where the costs of publishing a story are significantly lower than the cost of ink on paper. But with all the information coming over the transom, yours can easily be misplaced, go unread, get ignored. Don't underestimate the value of a personal follow up. If you know someone at the news outlet, all the better. If you don't, go to the website and find an editor's name. If you call them, there's a very good chance you will not get through, but you will have the opportunity to leave a message about the "xyz press event" which may jog someone's memory.

Although there are more media outlets and blogs than ever before, you still can't minimize the value of publicity in a major news outlet. A brief item in a general interest newspaper is worth a lengthy piece on dozens of blogs combined. And since all news outlets also operate online sites, blogs and special interest microsites, you have a good chance of hitting a fairly wide audience.

It all starts with how well your press release does its job.

Get more out of your inbox

If you use a computer, you probably have dozens of software programs you don't even remember installing. But for most of us, our computing life is defined by three to four programs. I don't know what your third and fourth programs are, but I know the first two: email and your browser.

Regardless of age, station, profession or computing facility, email is the application almost all of us are familiar with and yet it is one of the most misused.

Email is a call to action. In business, email is used to make assignments, share and collaborate on documents, schedule meetings and garner consensus. And yet most of us treat it more like a giant junk drawer that we rummage through when trying to find that eyeglass screwdriver we threw in there last Thanksgiving.

Even though there are many better applications for many of these functions, most people are comfortable with email. So here are some tips on how to be a better email user and get more out of your inbox.

1. Make sure your email messages contain actionable subject lines. Cultivate this among the people you most often exchange email with. For example, if an email requires a response use a prefix in the subject line of RESPONSE REQUIRED followed by a specific subject. If email is only informational put an INFORMATION ONLY prefix on your subject. Whatever language you choose, make sure you are consistent and honest. If you overstate the urgency of email, your recipients will come not to trust your tagging. And truly urgent mail may be ignored.

2. Get the clutter out of your life. I confess that I have probably 3-5 services that I signed up at one point or another that send me emails every day. And every day I delete them without reading. Rather than clutter your inbox with emails you will never read - get to know rules. Rules are relatively easy to write and most email applications from Outlook to Apple Mail support them to some degree. Outlook gives you the most flexibility in customizing your rules.

3. Most mail apps also let you set up organizational attributes - like categories and color coding. Organize your categories/colors to suit your particular business or preferred way to work: set up categories for specific clients so you can easily find email that relates to a critical account; set different categories for different levels of urgency or response; or different categories for different business areas.

4. Use follow up flags on your email. These are great tools and, in Outlook, let you set up a custom reminder on an email that will pop up a message to remind you to do something related with that email. If you receive an email spelling out something you have to do by a deadline that is three weeks away, chances are you either assigned it to someone or you jotted down some note and then immediately forgot it. Set a flag to pop up four days before the task is due to remind you and pull up the email from the depths of your inbox where it has fallen.

5. Delete things once you've acted on them. Our inboxes are full of completed items, read email, things we looked at and no longer need. Delete them immediately to keep your inbox clear of those items that no longer require anything from you.

6. Email is really not intended to be a storage platform and many businesses establish quotas on mail to prevent that from occurring. Nonetheless, some email should be saved and others should be deleted. Have the wisdom to know the difference. Set up folders based on a file structure you understand - by client, by task, by sender, by subject - and whether you do it automatically with rules or do it manually, file the mail you need to keep. If you are a sales person, you may want to save emails from clients authorizing specific purchases. But you may not need the actual sales order if that has already been created in your main business system.

7. Turn mail into the action items they really are. In Outlook, by clicking on an email message you can drop it on top of tasks or the calendar icon to turn it into an assignment or a meeting. If you're a Mac user and you're using Apple Mail, if a message contains information that is identified as an appointment, you can click alongside of it and a drop down menu will appear that lets you add it to your iCal. If you use a GTD (getting things done) program - like Things or Evernote - you may be able to drag the email

message over top of the icon to create a new to-do item.

8. Don't spend your life in your email - it is far to easy to get distracted. Schedule times when each day when you'll devote yourself to working through email - assigning tasks, scheduling meetings, making assignments and filing important information.

9. When you shut it down for the day, your inbox should have 10-20 items at most.

10. I can hear you telling me that's impossible. So I ask you: Have you ever lost all your email? Mistakenly deleted things, your IT department did an upgrade and you lost your inbox, your mail file was corrupted? Initially, you panicked, but it didn't take long to just move on. The world did not come to an end.

It is possible to clear the clutter out of your work life and make your mail work for you - not the other way around.

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Want to learn more about how to save time for you and your employees with the tools you already have? Contact Portfolio to discuss custom training options.

What's the best way to talk to your customers?

Ah, the good old days. You called the newspaper, placed an ad, sent them a check for a couple of thousand dollars and waited for the calls/customers to flow in.

But things have certainly changed and now you are just as likely to use an array of personal communication methods and social networking tools to reach out to clients.

There is definitely a trend toward email newsletters and Portfolio, in fact, will be launching one next month. Newsletters should offer more than sales pitches, however. Good content that helps people solve problems, learn something new, be more productive or efficient are key elements that will ultimately lead them to see you as an expert who helps that. That customer relationship is what eventually will turn into sales.

Writing, however, seems to be a daunting process for many people. Knowing your subject completely does not always translate into being able to write something compelling about it - in fact, the opposite is often true. This may turn some companies away from the idea of doing a newsletter.

Don't let it. There are a number of talented freelance services out there - of course, Portfolio is one of them -- that can help you articulate your message and put together an attractive and compelling newsletter.

Maybe a newsletter isn't your thing, though. There are a lot of methods out there. We'd love to know how you do it. What works best and why. Take two seconds and answer this one-question poll. Comments to this post about how you best communicate are welcome.

Working the iPad: Note-taking apps

When meetings rule your life a good note taking application is critical. One of Microsoft's best efforts was OneNote - a terrific note taking app that can turn your meeting notes easily into tasks, assignments, contact information, webpage bookmarks, and searchable time stamped content.

Armed with my iPad, I'm trying to answer the question of whether or not the device can be a business tool. Step one is a great note taking app.

There are many for the iPad, I tested four: Notepad Pro, Notebooks, smartNote and SoundPaper.

In several cases, the developers seem to have focused more on the form than the function. And while there is no application that pulls it all together, each has particular strengths - and weaknesses. All of them allow you to transfer notes and audio - either by email as a pdf or text file or, in some cases, via Wi-Fi sharing. Another important aspect is price. The iPhone app world got us used to 99 cent applications. But the iPad apps are considerably pricier, so you're less likely to buy something just to see if you like it.

Here's how they stack up:

Notepad Pro ($1.99) is the least impressive. It is a straightforward note program ands only slightly expands on the toolset of the default note program that comes with the OS. The program lets you change the paper design and will accept drawing and audio recording. While you can change the color and line weight of the drawing tool you are stuck with a huge - maybe 24 pt - text size and no way to change it,

You can email the file as a pdf and audio if you need to get it out of the iPad and into your desktop.

The most frustrating thing about the app, however, was that the page did not scroll up. So with the keyboard displayed you could not see what you were typing once you got about halfway down the page.

Notebooks ($8.99) is an expensive offering but it also offers some unique features. What it does not offer is audio - the only one of the reviewed apps that doesn't. Although, future versions may include audio support. There is also no capability for adding drawings. What Notebooks does offer is by far the best organizational function.

With Notebooks you can create books and pages within those books. You can also nest books inside books, creating a familiar hierarchal system. You can change the font and type size you are working in, and the application makes it easy to move files to other folders.

You can easily create files from the clipboard or from the contents of emails or attachments. One of the coolest features is the ability to turn your page into a task list and add in due dates. A nice enhancement would be a task calendar view.

Notebooks is a very useful app for the notetaker who primarily wants typed in notes kept very well organized.

smartNote ($2.99) has just about everything you could look for in a note taking app. You can create separate notebooks with customized skins. There are paper temp

lates that run the gamut from lined white paper to a half court basketball diagram. Widgets let you add elements like push pins, bullets, sticky notes and more. There's even a widget that adds a web page to your notebook that can either remain dynamic or can be converted to an image.

Pens and text size can be customized both in size and color. And there are some nest little extras, like a wrist rest zone that the user can define that makes that a dead zone so you don't accidentally delete or change information in your note.

There is support for audio recording, bookmarking and full text search.

For $2.99, this is a full featured program that provides good value.

SoundPaper ($4.99) is the application I wrote this article on. It is a fairly basic app but has one feature that students, journalists and others will find hard to resist. Notes and audio are tightly integrated so if you click on a word or phrase in your notes, the audio recording will automatically move to that area in the timecode.

No more hunting around on recordings trying to find that great quote, I used this feature during a recent interview for a magazine piece and it was a huge help.

SoundPaper also supports drawing and full text search.

So what is the best app? The answer really depends on what kind of note taker you are and what you want to do with your notes after the fact. There is still room for improvement. Some of the things I'd like to see would be automatic recognition of hyperlinks, phone numbers and email addresses and the ability to automatically add those to your default contact application. Integration with some of the most popular to-do programs would be a nice addition, since so much of what happens in business meetings is the creation and assignment of tasks.

For me, I'll have to keep two - SoundPaper for the recording capabilities and smartNotes for everything else.