Krysten Copeland, Founder @ KC & Co Communications
Sales & Marketing Stage
Ascent Conference 2020
Krysten Copeland [00:00:04] Hey, Darren, we’re good?
Darren Carter [00:00:07] OK, we’re good to go.
Krysten Copeland [00:00:09] All right, all right, well, give some people time to to filter. Thank you all so much for being here today and spending this time to learn a bit more about PR and marketing. How many people do we have in the chat room? Perfect, so we’ll just get right on the money. This was initially intended to be more of a fireside chat because I really want to learn a bit more about you all and the things that you’re doing, but as hope it would have it, we’re not able to actually do that. So to introduce myself, my name is Krysten Copeland.
[00:00:57] I am the founder and chief strategist and co communications were a small but mighty agency operating out of Brooklyn, New York and Washington, D.C..
[00:01:08] We have done political work in the near future or the past rather, but we have done a lot of tech startup work. Personally, I was born and bred in the tech startup world and so that’s what I’m passionate about. So today, as opposed to just speaking to you all with a couple of different slides and tell me what you need to do again, I wish there was more of an interactive component here, but the team has been absolutely amazing. So let’s just dove into a bit about the last couple of months. Covid-19 has absolutely changed every single thing we are doing when it comes to air travel and especially travelers here, when it comes to people pitching with the media, when it comes to businesses hiring, firing, layoffs, whatever, it’s been a lot of chaotic energy.
[00:02:05] And I like to say as a PR person, I really lean back to my wife.
[00:02:14] So my wife is basically a translator. And if you’re joining this as a communications person, you understand that we have to translate a lot of our different messages for a lot different audiences and a lot of different things. And so as it relates to the intersectionality between public relations and digital marketing, the lines come a little blurred. You know, we have on the political side of things a president, regardless of where you can lead, who’s tweeting out public policy and information every single day. We have startups that are rising, falling every single day. So as communications people or startup owners, how do we actually cut through the muck and get the work done? So, again, this is posing more fireside chats. So apologies that there aren’t going to be any slides. But I will definitely put my email if anybody has any questions about what to get into. So one of the things I found that is really, really impactful is clear and nimble messaging.
[00:03:16] I’ll give you a for example, on March 1st, I’m based here in Brooklyn, New York. On March 1st, we had a campaign event for a congressman and congressman who is running was running for reelection here in New York night. We have the launch party. Everything’s great. We had a communications plan on March 15. As we all know, everything changed overnight simultaneously. And so what we really had to do in that moment as a campaign team and what I would urge for you all to do is have a plan, but make it more nimble and more importantly, make sure that it’s sympathetic.
[00:03:57] I have seen a lot of brands and I’m not going to call me names that have really not dug too deeply into the empathetic nature of their messaging. And because of that, it’s come off completely inauthentic right now. There was a moment for your brand to cut through the noise and be a champion for the people by ensuring that the words are true. Using when you’re putting out tweets are the same as the words you’re using when your representatives go on television. I would say that I have seen a lot of brands that haven’t really done that well and the backlash has been really crazy. And so because of that, we’re thinking about public relations and we’re also thinking about social media. It’s you can’t do one well without the other. Basically, we are. Now, more than ever, we have to rely on social media to do social listening.
[00:04:52] I recommend tools like HootSuite or Sprout’s social or even if you don’t have the budget for that going on and setting up basic alerts with the paper journals, you know, digital marketing and public relations should not have a vacuum between the two. I’ll say it one more time. Digital marketing and public relations. There should not be a vacuum between the two. I will say that in doing so, you’re not only enabling your customers or your clients or the people who are giving you business to actually learn more and get more invested in a friend. But then you’re also really pushing up those brand messages that are leading to your authenticity, that are leading to the fact that you all are empathetic and so on and so forth.
[00:05:44] And so now let’s say your B2B, I do think the same applies because you’re not really dealing with the brand. You’re dealing with people.
[00:05:57] There is no at this point in in where we are as a society, brand our people and so really entering that conversation with empathy and making sure that you’re actually able to give the people what they want to hear as opposed to just saying, I hope you’re well, using phrasing that really goes down to your underlying messages is super, super important. I won’t say no to is when we’re talking about the intersection of digital marketing and public relations. And just to give you guys a primer, when I talk about public relations, I’m talking about media relations, influencer outreach, surrogate outreach and so on, you can use the news to make the news. So there’s a thing I like to use, and it’s called news jacking. And so basically, whenever there is something going on in the news cycle that we wouldn’t necessarily be a part of, what I really do enjoy doing is actually reaching out to journalists. We’re talking about in the same vein of my client. And a really good way to do that is not only to listen to customer feedback, but more importantly, to use social media to really dove through the messaging and figure out who’s talking about what and how you can best positioned yourself. And so with that, you’re able to take a lot of the hard work off of your shoulders and really use the media to do what you need to do. There are a couple of resources that I like to really use for news tracking purposes. I would say the first is help a reporter out, also known as Horo H, a r o and basically with them they will send you journalists pitches three times a day and you can decide which ones you want to jump in on. So if you use your social and then you also use Porro or other outlets like that, if you don’t really have a lot of media connections. Thus far, it’s very, very easy to contribute with the news tracking component. So I definitely recommend that. And I think that, you know, before you do anything when it comes to the media or do anything or so to engage with any journalists, you need to make sure you have your talking points straight. And so, again, if you’re leading with authenticity, leading with empathy, especially in a time like this, it’s going to go a lot better than if you just go off of the regular script that you might have been using in the past.
[00:08:29] And then the third thing is tracking results.
[00:08:33] One of the things I like to tell clients and I constantly telling my team is that CPI’s. Our metrics on metrics aren’t KPIs or other, and so key performance indicators when we’re tracking how much our messaging is, it’s going where it’s going to or how many people are doing the website or how many press hits we’ve got in all of those things aren’t going to actually matter to your bottom line. So it’s really important before you start figuring out how to reach your two teens or if you’re a solo practitioner who’s looking to do a better job at kind of bridging that gap, you have to understand your KPI are so again, metrics, all metrics are not KPIs. I wish we were in the room together because I would want you all to repeat it after me. So you have to figure out what’s going to be the most instrumental to your bottom line in order for you to track and see what is working, what is not actually working. And so I would say as terms in terms of digital marketing and public relations, it is really important to really pay attention to those three things. And more importantly, it’s important to check in with your team to make sure that everybody’s on the same page about what the actual messaging is. And campaigning. We have a saying that is our messaging book is our Bible. So whenever we have our messaging, that’s just what we’re going to do, period. And so for your companies, I do recommend having a couple of key top line bullet points. It’s like, here’s what we do. Here’s why we do it. Here’s how we do it. Here’s what makes us different. And while it sounds rudimentary, if you do have people on your marketing team, your comms team, your executive team who don’t abide by that, you’re not going to really be able to cut through the noise in the way you typically would. And so, generally speaking, as it relates to developing a messaging book, what you would like to do is have your key stakeholders in the room sit down at a table and have a really frank and honest conversation about your brand.
[00:10:46] Why do people come to you? Why do people care? Why do you, as a business owner or C Street executive, care about any of this?
[00:10:55] And so figuring out that why it’s going to be a really key component to ensuring that you’re actually able to have takeaways that you can give to other people who might join your organization a bit later after that. What I really would recommend is that you revisit that maybe once a quarter, maybe twice a year, depending on what stage of the business end, and have a conversation about what has potentially changed. Because what I call it the Bible, I think there can also be amendments. You can really go back and see, like we’ve heard from customers or social media that isn’t really working in the way we thought it was going to. And because of that, we’re going to switch up our approach a bit differently as it relates to communicating this with the world. Or we find that on social media, we don’t get as many positive, as much positive feedback, rather, on a post about our new products that we do about new people that are joining our organization. So maybe we should switch it up there. So understanding your KPIs, your metrics and what’s actually going to drive your business is incredibly important, Daryn.
[00:12:06] I don’t know if there’s a way to I believe you said there wasn’t so kind of open it up for questions or if somebody can if people can type on the main screen.
[00:12:22] I don’t I don’t believe there and I think they may be able to type into the chat, but I wouldn’t I don’t believe in you here.
[00:12:36] So with all of that being said, again, I was hoping for this to be a bit more interactive and wanted to answer your specific questions, because I know we only have about 20 minutes to spend together. This is a really hard topic to cover in that short amount of time. But here’s what if you don’t have a pen, I’ll give you a second.
[00:12:55] I would like for you. OK, Darren says, I don’t think it’ll work. They can try in the chat, but it may not work.
[00:13:03] So maybe you all can try. But what I’ll do is this. My email address is Cristen. That’s K.R. y.
[00:13:14] S t e n. At K, c, c, o, p, r, dot com.
[00:13:24] Again, that’s Kristian Caroli s t e n at case c, c o p r dot com. And I would love to do more of a deep dove with anybody who’s actually interested. I would love to pass along party sources like HubSpot or Social, as we mentioned before, to make sure that you all are actually ready to make sure that your teams are integrated well.
[00:13:54] So I don’t know if anybody wants to try the shot, but if not, I.
[00:14:00] I do think that we can sign off for now. I’ll give it a couple of seconds. And please bear with me, guys, I’m a millennial, but this is all very new for me to.
[00:14:22] OK.
[00:14:23] All right. I don’t see anything coming up.
[00:14:27] Sorry to cut this a bit short, I will be at the networking event that’s going to be taking place today at around 4:00 o’clock, if I’m not mistaken. And so find me at a table and I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much.