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Balance invoice for Public Relations

I talk about vision statements mission statements brand pillars and how all those offer Direction and the way you should structure your message and the type of content you create you know so I think that that's a big thing really getting them to kind of understand the why behind the content that they're going to make and to just put some thought into how data can help them make the strongest message possible [Music] hey welcome to the higher ed storytelling University podcast here on the B podcast Network this podcast dedicated to helping higher ed marketers tell better stories create better content and enroll more students my name is John azoni I'm the founder at unveiled and we're a video production company working specifically with college marketing teams on automating their student success stories through a subscription approach and you can learn more at unveiled.tv that's u-n-v-e-i-l-d and if you want to chat directly with me you can find me on LinkedIn or email me at John unveiled.tv that's j-o-h-n my guest today is Bill Zimmerman bill is a lecturer at Penn State University's Donald P Bellisario College of communications he teaches digital PR social media strategies and PR media and methods courses and we've never had a lecture on this podcast and we haven't had much about PR influence either so I thought bill would be a great voice a great voice for for all that stuff in and so in this episode we talk about a variety of topics including social media strategy testing your messaging before launching your campaign how Penn State manages the crossover between PR marketing and Communications and a bunch more stuff so here is my conversation with Bill Zimmerman Bill thanks for being here yeah thanks John excited to talk so tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do yeah I teach in I'm in a I was just just promoted recently so I'm excited to say my new title I'm an assistant teaching professor in the Donald P Bellisario College of communications at Penn State I teach in the ad PR department and I'm on the public relations side so tell us a little bit about the landscape at Penn State what's going on there um yeah I mean AD PR is the the biggest major in in our College it's it's very popular at the moment we also have a minor called digital media trends and analytics that's that's very popular uh I'm excited to be in a in a department that I feel is is very um very focused on on practical application of what we're we the students are learning there we uh The Faculty make a lot of efforts to to stay tapped into what's happening in Industry that includes connecting regularly with alumni to kind of see what they're dealing with to bring them in as guest speakers you know the college maintains a an Advisory Board of professionals who the faculty are regularly able to to connect with so I would say you know in for from a communication standpoint Penn State is doing a lot to to make sure that we are delivering uh up-to-date you know current best practices for the students and there's a lot of opportunities for them to to immediately apply some of the things they learn whether that's in through organizations like the the public relations student Society of America I oversee the social media team on a group called com agency which is a student-run creative agency our College created several years ago and we now have like 50 plus students doing video production work photography live streaming social media and graphic design getting paid to do real work for clients on campus and then we also have you know production facilities for for broadcast journalism students to produce regular you know news programs so there's just a lot a lot of exciting things happening at the college that are giving students the chance to to leave with with current best practices connections to people in the industry and lots of stuff to show off in their portfolio so where are you guys getting so you said they're they're working with real clients yeah most of them are on are on campus so it we've worked with research centers we've worked for different student affairs units we've worked with with different academic colleges right now we're working with an anthropology Museum on campus we've worked with our all sports museum so we've done a pretty good job of making lots of different connections with with campus clients who just need a little extra help in their Communications these may be units that don't have a dedicated Communications professional or they have somebody who's tasked with doing a lot of different things from from blogging to managing social media to doing media relations and they often really welcome the chance to have some additional assistance in in a particular area yeah I find that there's a lot of those there's there's a lot of you know in my world in the video world there's I talk to internal video teams and they're like the one guy being pulled in a million different directions and you know it's hard to like do to to do everything I like that that notion of just like letting them work on actual real projects that's that's like so much more beneficial I think the in conjunction with you know what they learn in the classroom it's so helpful to get them to like fail you know I feel like you just learned by failing and trying again and learning what you did wrong and stuff like that so that's awesome yeah for sure you know every client's a little different there are some are better at communicating their their ideas to the students than others some are difficult to connect with some the students may feel give them you know contradictory uh directions on what to do so they're learning a lot about the the client um uh agency dynamic as well so that's that's really major and something else I really like about it is you know we've we've been able to give chances to International students and maybe students who couldn't afford to go do an unpaid internship in the city during the summer and now thanks to com agency they have a chance to to not only they don't have to leave Penn State to get these opportunities but they're also getting paid to build their portfolio so I'm excited that that it's created more opportunities for students to have you know concrete work experience to show off yeah that's awesome so um I always feel like everybody has a soapbox kind of that they stand on within their field of uh you know expertise what's what's like the main message that you try to drill into your students about effective like you know PR and effective Communications I would say one of the really big things is is strategy is is the planning involved in this and then also the the experimentation the the measurement side of things and in PR we use um RPI is the acronym that I use in my classes research planning implementation and evaluation and that's that's been the main four-step PR process that is that is promoted by the public relations Society of America which is you know like one of the the biggest professional organizations for for PR so I I stress that a lot and something that's really helpful is the public relations Society of America provides case studies uh for their their annual silver Anvil Awards and so I'm able to print those out show the students like here is a as a campaign you know start to finish and I encourage them to think about like that this this format or these four steps are like beautifully simple now the things you do for each step is where it gets more complicated but that you can always come back to these these four steps the research planning implementation and evaluation and you're going to do a pretty pretty solid campaign so I really try to encourage them to just always remember that that that that that structure is there to to help them in the future so tell me about some of these case studies like is there one that's one or two that's noteworthy yeah well I would say one one do we we find one that that hits very close to home uh Penn State's office of strategic Communications where I where I used to work before I started teaching full-time I wasn't there during this campaign but during the the pandemic Penn State launched a university-wide campaign called mask up or pack up that was later recognized by the public relations Society of America with the silver anfield award so I was able to show them an award-winning industry recognized case study right from their campus and it's really solid because that that campaign was really strong on the research side they did a lot of surveys in advance to see um during it was based it was surveys of students before the fall semester where we were going to come back under under social social distancing and masking up in in class and they're basically taking the temperature of how willing students were to wear masks and to keep their distance from each other and some of what they found was pretty discouraging but by the end of this campaign they were able to see those those numbers improve drastically when you know a semester or two later they asked you know questions about about compliance with these sorts of things this something else I really like about this case study is they tested various messages than with the students after they got this initial information they used focus groups to basically determine the the best approach and they were seeing you know would students uh what would have the best impact would it be something that's a little um that's focused on the I guess the the disincentive you know for this you know that you could be you could be sent home if you have multiple violations of our uh the the practices that we are encouraging to keep students safe you know and so mask upper pack up was one and then there was also messaging that was focused on community uh Penn State we have we are is our our big chant that has been in existence for decades so we we use that to kind of appeal that like hey at Penn State we we are you are part of something bigger and embrace that sense of community and do the right thing to keep everyone safe and they found enough to support both of those messages but mask up a pack up one one out so they this campaign started with very solid data to support that they uh to help them understand the challenge that they faced and they had data to support the right message and then they did various things you know both both digitally and and in print even using you know digital signage that you would typically see in a construction zone was was on some of the main main streets in uh along campus encouraging people to mask up or pack up and those numbers later on showed just a drastic improvement as far as people's students receptiveness to wearing a mask and socially distancing from their classmates so that that's a case study I really like to show off and a lot of the students you know well some of them have graduated but the majority of my students in the past few semesters lived through that campaign they they remember being on campus during the pandemic they remember seeing those those materials and they may have had their very strong opinions about that that campaign and the universities uh tactics but I really like giving them the chance to to see a really excellent campaign unfold yeah with testing the messaging I worked on a pro-vaccine campaign here in Michigan during the um height of the pandemic and and you know seeing behind the scenes we worked with the pr agency in Lansing called Martin waymire and um they they had a research firm that came in and tested some different messages and for me it was like great learning experience because like I would have thought that the sort of hard-hitting like come on get get vaccinated like that kind of that kind of message would would uh would do it uh but that was actually like the least popular message like people didn't like to be told what to do um so it was more like the it was more like the sort of positive kind I forget what was the what the winning uh approach was but it was it was more like feel good kind of It kind of um you know we're all let's all do this kind of thing um so yeah super important uh you know to test messaging because you can head off in the in the wrong direction and that's very expensive yeah in the University you know they had enough support for that more communal message uh and use that as kind of like a secondary tagline which I thought was was was it was very clever and yeah and the reason I like something like this for the students is I think you know you could you could maybe assume that it's only one creative genius on the team who says mask up or pack up that's it you know and everybody's like cool I like that you know and you go around the table and like it yeah thumbs up um and and I think it's kind of uh it's it's Illuminating for the students to realize that yeah lots of ideas are being floated around by those creative folks but it would be a little careless to just go full bore Full Speed Ahead with that message without testing how people respond to it sure absolutely so when it comes to higher education institutions uh having a online presence with social media like tell me about like how how important is that to have a strong positive online presence what what strategies can um institutions employ to kind of manage their reputation and that kind of thing sure yeah I think about it from uh the standpoint of prospective students you know who some who may I've talked to students who sign up for Penn State didn't even take a campus tour you know and they're getting enough information now often a lot of times that's a family member you know that maybe has um who's encouraged them but but so and I think a lot of that is just because they are able to get so many good uh little details about what life is like there on campus and that includes from the University but also something that's a plays a major role from that I've heard from talking to students is what's being made by independent creators uh students at Penn State who are on putting you know get ready with me videos on Tick Tock and doing daily Vlogs on YouTube students are also looking at those kind of unofficial University representatives to see what what life is like so I think that's that's one of the probably biggest things is just that a prospective student can by checking out on social media in the website get a sense of what it would be like for them to be there to be to be walking that campus to to be walking among the students to be looking at the trees to uh you know sitting by themselves on a bench reading you know being able to think about all those things so I think you know social media can really do a good give a good look at at Campus Life uh you know I think there's there's the very exhausting side of this the thing that I found I worked in Penn State strategic office a strategic Communications office for a little bit as a social media manager becoming before becoming a faculty member and that that interaction interactive portion of this can be very exhausting but also very important so I think that's another you know big thing you know people are giving universities and colleges uh just you know real-time feedback on how they feel about what's happening and decisions made and that sort of thing and not saying that always means that the university needs to change course but you know they you need social media people there on both sides of the coin making really cool content and then also just in the trenches uh responding to questions and comments and criticism and I think those um it's what you talked about there you know the the reputational management part of this so yeah all that super important it makes you know having that that digital presence critical yeah tell me tell me like the um connection for for people listening that might not understand the connection between you know thinking about at a higher institution the connection between PR Communications and um marketing what how how would those uh those functions work together yeah at Penn State you know we had the the larger office of strategic Communications which housed the the pr team public information advertising and and marketing and only in recent years did have they pulled all those people into the uh the actually same physical location on on campus um so I think you know that was that was something that the department recognized was needed for a long time but just it's you know Logistics aren't easy on a campus of this site it's this size and finding the right spot for everybody and is it okay to have them in town rather than in the center of campus and you know all those things so I think this uh I think proximity really really helps so everybody can kind of get on the same page make sure that they're they're all following the right branding guidelines and messaging guidelines and also that they're you know aware of all the the assets that are created I think that's sometimes the biggest challenge is you know on making sure that everyone on that that communication staff is aware of all the the photo the stock photos of Campus that's available the b-roll that's out there the little interview clips that may be available with with professors you know I think that a unit that understands all that's out there can be like really responsive and make content really quickly when they know what's all all available for them yeah that's so hard um you know as as you grow as you grow like an asset Library like that somehow keeping it not only organized but accessible to everyone that needs to access it and then with people creating more like ground level like phone iPhone stuff you know that might there might be so much good stuff sitting on you know 30 people's phones you know uh you know that just never makes it into the into the general pool yeah what an undertaking huh and then even once you upload things making sure that the proper tags and everything to make sure that it's easily discoverable you know for when I was working in that unit for a long time uh Flickr was one of the best things we could do is just kind of having all of our um you know image still images you know available for us to use in the future and other communication staff to access and from media to access um so that was yeah it's always a challenge and only going to get more challenging huh yeah well hopefully you know hopefully just the AI robots will solve it yeah quick break here to tell you about how you can scale up your student and alumni success stories without taking on a bunch of extra work to manage with our video storytelling subscriptions look making even one video it takes a lot of legwork lots of steps to go through hire a video event hurt all the cats do all the scheduling and then you get one video out of that but what if you get a whole Year's worth of Storytelling content that you can use to highlight your various programs and all you had to do was find the stories and hand them off well uh you can hand them off to us unveiled our aim is to take the friction out of telling great stories so whether you're a big School uh like Penn State or a smaller liberal arts college you can tell really compelling stories all year round and fill your content calendar with video content we get this done for you anywhere in the US we're gonna batch shoot a Year's worth of content and then every month trip out to you one new student or alumni story along with a whole package of additional video content so you're going to get the full-length story which is usually two to three minutes you get a 30 second cut down a 15 second cut down of that story to use in various ways and then eight topical videos to help you promote other things like scholarships Career Development internships all that stuff and not only can you take what we deliver and obviously crop it to how you need it format it however you need to for social media do whatever you want but you're also going to get all the b-roll and interview footage all the raw stuff that we shoot and there's a wealth of additional content opportunities within that that you can run with use it however you want you don't have to go film anything else so head over to pricing.unveld.tv to download our pricing guide which has everything in it that you need to know and if you'd like to chat further you can book a call with me on our website find me on LinkedIn or email me at John unveiled.tv and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have alright back to my conversation with Bill Zimmerman cool so in your in your so you know your your professor in in your classrooms how do you um help students you know how do you talk about navigating the balance between promoting you know an organization an organization's achievements um and balancing that with the negative publicity that that you have to deal with in PR yeah that's that's a tough one you know and it's I think it comes down to sometimes like kind of knowing knowing when to to shut up a little bit and that's you know and a good PR team is always has their an idea of the kind of the the temperature you know to be able to understand you know what what is a public sentiment towards us at this moment and you know we can can make adjustments here that maybe this um this post should be be delayed for it for a day or two so I think it's just I just really kind of enforce that idea that just PR people really it's it's a I call it it's the challenge and the it's the the the the the good and the bad side of the job is that things are always changing it's always interesting but also requires then you to just be incredibly intentional about kind of tracking it all and seeing what's happening so that's a big one to just you know we I get the students certified in using uh HootSuite social media management tool that I think is really strong at you know um uh tracking keywords and hashtags and could be a good tool for to kind of get an idea of what what people are saying out there so I think that's that's a big part of it and I also talk to students about with the content that you create doing a good job of balancing stuff that is a little bit more on the promotional side or maybe has a call to action of some sort and then just giving a lot of value stuff that offers entertainment value or education value or something that just makes the person seeing that feel a part of that Community to fill a part of something bigger so that's a big thing you know we talk in class about the you know an 80 20 role for social media that that 80 of that stuff is is focused on on value talking about the Wii putting the reader the viewer at at the Forefront and that 20 of that time can be you know very very promotional or you know uh have a strong call to action yeah I like that the 80 20 rule is good and I see it on both sides I see I see organizations not just in higher ed but but you know people that show up in my my different social feeds uh some some having like it's just constant call to action yeah and it's like it's like who who is this for here who is this serving it seems like it's more of serving you um yeah no one to turn it off huh yeah and then some that are just like uh like all value and and know like what am I supposed to do you know yeah yeah and and I I like to also talk about you know the best I can do it kind of explaining the differences between PR and marketing and and advertising sometimes which isn't easy and the lines are blurring but I I keep continuously trying to tell the students about you know that the pr is really about trying to sell an idea or a way of thinking and instead of a product so I do even though this is a I teach a 300 level PR course I do try to talk a lot about what what PR is specifically uh you know and talk about you know trying to reach the right people with the right message at the right time and and those those sorts of elements so that's also a big part of it is just explaining what what is PR what makes a little different than trying to trying to sell somebody on a product and it's not not not easy to express and it's and again yeah the the different the the divisions between the different roles uh continue to be blurred yeah and honestly it's it's always confused me too yeah you know in in the video world I've worked with marketing teams and I've worked with PR teams and a lot of and a lot of times it seems like we're doing very similar things and uh it's it's very it's very uh similar in the video world I mean you have entire websites dedicated to the teaching people what's the difference between like a line producer and an executive producer and like what's the the different roles between director and the cinematographer and how you know and that there's so much like there's so much crossover that can get that can get real confusing yeah and it's difficult for our students too to sometimes kind of make sense of of the job opportunities that are out there and I always tell them you know make sure you look beyond the the job title because you know you may have taken nothing but PR classes but you could very well be qualified for this marketing position and and vice versa so it becomes you know because it yeah the the different titles that could be used in this space are all over the place that's very important to read read the details of a job opening yeah sure um cool so how can higher education marketers effectively collaborate with PR professionals to align marketing and PR strategies um achieve common goals things like that yeah I think it goes back to really recognizing what what PR is about and that's that's building relationships and trying to create mutually beneficial relationships between between the the organization and its publics and I think that's that's where you know the pr marketing you know folks as they get together need to to recognize that that's where PR people can kind of be be the biggest help you know where um to to help the marketers in you know explaining to the Public's what what the benefit is of these products and then making sure that the people who already purchased this product these products are engaged with uh digitally in ways that you know are hopefully leading to them you know being being ambassadors um I like to introduce the students even though they're PR students I interviewed introduce them to a you know a sales funnel uh you know seeing how you know awareness and engagement and um conversion and and advocacy and then and getting them to think about how PR people can can assist at at each level so I think that's really you know just both sides kind of recognizing the the strengths of the other and then making a making like a concerted effort about how they could work on those levels of the funnel yeah the sales funnel is so good to know like so foundational yeah I feel like it it really defines um almost every piece of communication that you put out there when you have to think like where is where is this person in the funnel you know and what do they need to hear at this time um and it can be confusing when you have one message but probably to different people in different parts of the funnel and and stuff like that tell me more about just like how you advise [Music] um you know your students around like you know creating content or creating Communications for the right people in the spots in the funnel yeah we'll talk a lot about about the the importance of data and how there's so much out there available to to in and I try to get them um acclimated to to where to look for this sort of stuff you know look for pre-research Center look for what a lot of the the tech tools themselves are reporting on how you know content performs on you know HootSuite or buffer Sprout social so I started I try to really get the students that appreciate that there's really no excuse to not not consider uh some audience insights before you create that content before you um shape that message so like that's the big one um really emphasizing straight the importance of strategy I talk about vision statements mission statements brand pillars and how all those offer Direction and the way you should structure your message and the type of content you create I talk about that a lot as well if you're if you're creating something that runs counter or doesn't do anything to to promote that vision of the larger organization uh maybe not bother with it you know so I think that that's a big thing really getting them to kind of understand the why behind the content that they're going to make and to just put some thought into how data can help them make the strongest message possible and then we talk a lot too about uh you know writing and being conversational and sounding human in your writing I'm always pulling examples that I see out there that I just like just really like um just just recently you know I got my my update on the Amazon Echo and it was about you know to to track the um track your most recent order and the prompt was just to to ask where's my stuff all right and I just thought that's great that they you know so I'm bringing I just made a note of that to bring it into my class that like you know that's so much more conversational and like people actually talk and there's a very Savvy move on on Amazon's part to make that you know the prompt so I I try to introduce a lot of uh um wording that that makes makes makes that messaging better makes those calls to action more effective because they don't sound robotic yeah and I imagine for for higher ed marketers like most of our listeners that might their institutions might struggle with that because they're this is Academia and you know we don't we don't say where's my stuff or some some form of that but uh some of the people who impress me most the university and Communications are research writers who who can take something really complex and are tasked with writing about that in a way that's accessible to a general audience I think that's that's a real skill and an art right there to be able to do that awesome so are there um any what's coming in your in your opinion in in the pr field in terms of you know new trends Technologies um that that are going to impact the field yeah I mean I'll give the very lame obvious answer of uh of AI you know playing or playing a role uh you know I think there's already been interesting ways like machine learning has helped with PR you know I think from from a social media standpoint where almost every social media management tool now can offer you insights on the best time to make a post you know they're it's actively tracking that data of how your post performed in the past and I can tell you this is the best day this is the best time so I think stuff like that's exciting you know the the chance to use AI to maybe make a first draft of a of a media pitch or a news release I I don't think I think it'd be dangerous to make that the end-all be-all but it can certainly be a a good start and then you can start to really you know hone that message the the social media management tool we use for the com agency team is called planable just launched an AI feature on there as well uh with just the click of a button you know there you can activate a prompt like make this more conversational or shorten this or something like that so I think that's I I'm excited that that can help the students on my team kind of understand how to make this uh work for them and and then probably along the way they're starting to learn better practices that maybe they don't have to ask the the AI tool again and they just know how to shorten something and make it more more conversational but and I think the thing that's really uh maybe the the trend that I think is going to be a major challenge for people in PR is just that uh the the proliferation of misinformation conspiracy theories deep s it's going to be really tough to do work where you're trying to build public trust when the public is deeply mistrustful of of Institutions and you know and I I don't know how the the solution there to these challenges you know we you talked about working on the vaccination campaign you know we we saw very recently how difficult it was for from a public health and safety standpoint to combat some of the the fears and misinformation out there so I I think it's going to be just really tough times for for PR people to do what they do as as the the sentiment is just things are just very choppy Waters out there and and trying to connect with people and and influence them so and I think from for the public health standpoint is where it be made kind of the most fearful Public Health safety of how you how you get the right messaging to people a close cousin of mine works in Safety Science he's a safety professional on construction sites on Roofing projects and he stopped in recent years about how tough it is to get people to be safe and to deliver a message and it's just you know it and it's that same kind of mistrust is rampant there that we're seeing in public Communications is rampant on these construction sites you know where people are just very resistant to to take the proper safety measures to keep themselves and others safe I mean and so I think there's just a climate out there that's going to make it tougher and tougher to to communicate with the public yeah I love the um like on Tick Tock there's like funny like OSHA violation videos yeah my cousin he he showed me power points and he's created and he's made him it's infinitely more interesting by you know just raiding the internet for stuff like that yeah that's awesome well cool this has been a great conversation anything that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you oh John this was this was a lot of fun I think you know um I I'm excited for the chance to to talk about these sorts of things and I think you know there are times some you know Penn State's been around since 1855. and while I was doing the work sometimes I would wonder does a place like this even need to do digital Communications this just seems like such a machine that that has so much Goodwill out there and families who have sent generations of students to this University um so I think it would be interesting sometimes if you saw any major social media or any major higher ed powerhouses just to like press pause on all this stuff but I think with time I've definitely seen that this just this is just very critical um in the way colleges and universities operate it's if and so many different audiences to serve keep prospective students uh in the loop to make alumni still feel part of the place and continue to uh to play on their good feelings about their universities and give them some you know nostalgic glimpses of the place and one of the things I think Penn State does really well is they are so tapped into the traditions in the history of this place they know they they have mined the library for uh you know old photographs uh and figured and have figured out neat ways to to package them uh they just put out a tick tock for graduation that was a mix of you know graduation picks throughout the years and it was just beautifully done you know so I think uh you know the best universities are figuring out how to how to maintain those traditions on on digital Communications mine their uh their histories for all sorts of content that can now be digitized and reshared with a new generation and they're figuring out how to include all uh people from a lot of different uh backgrounds you know whether or life experiences whether that's alumni current students prospective students parents uh it's it's complex work uh but also you know higher ed communicators can benefit from just all the people that have already come through there and all the Traditions that have been been created and all the good good vibes and good feelings about the place awesome well this has been great I appreciate you coming on the show all right John this has been a pleasure thanks a lot thank you for listening three things I want to give you before you go number one reminder to go to pricing.unveld.tv to download our free pricing guide learn all about how our video storytelling subscriptions can make your marketing teams lives so much easier uh number two if you're already doing storytelling or you want to do more of it you want to do it better or differently I have a three-part uh storytelling framework that you can download at unveiled.tv student testimonials and that will take you through the framework that we put to use in the videos that we create and it doesn't even have to be for video can be for written written text based content as well number three leave a review for this podcast I'd really appreciate it helps us out a ton thank you so much for listening my name is John azoni go connect with me on LinkedIn email me at John unveiled dot TV that's j-o-h-n and in the meantime we'll catch you in the next episode of the higher ed storytelling University podcast thanks [Music]