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Author: Sam Ryan

Afternoon at Miriam’s Kitchen

April 29, 2013

Last week, our company spent an afternoon preparing and serving food at Miriam's Kitchen, a charity dedicated to ending chronic homelessness in Washington, DC. It was an eye-opening experience -- and allowed our company to get out of the office and join together in a...

PR Tips | Avoid Beercan Prose

January 15, 2013

Avoid beercan prose, especially if you're writing content intended for publication in the news. Do you know what beercan prose is? Of course not. That's because the word "beercan" tells you nothing. It's an ambiguous description that doesn't convey any real meaning. So an easy way...

Review | Online Surveys — Create Your Own In Seconds

September 12, 2012

There are companies out there that will charge you $50,000 to conduct a survey.

Or you could conduct your own for free.

With easy-to-use online tools like SurveyMonkey and PopSurvey, it takes just minutes to create surveys that can be embedded into websites or emailed to large sample lists. You can even buy inexpensive lists directly from these companies.

Will you get more accurate results from a qualified polling firm?

Absolutely.

But you can save a ton of time and money by conducting your own poll -- and you can discover any number of fascinating things while you're at it.

For example, we wanted to confirm our suspicion that we're the best PR company in the world. So we put together this one-question poll using SurveyMonkey's free version. It took us less than 5 minutes to create -- seriously.

Does Your Organization Have a Professional Voice?

September 11, 2012
In this age of do-it-yourself podcasts and videos, it seems like everyone is producing their own audio. But the true professionals stand apart. We received this demo from a "commercial voice" today and our ears perked up. This is exactly the type of voice-and-production talent we look for in our audio. If you want your organization to have a professional voice, then hire a pro. It's surprisingly inexpensive. And the quality speaks volumes about your organization. Check out this clip to hear for yourself.

Profiles in PR | Tulchin Research

August 27, 2012

Your Name: Ben Tulchin Your Position: President and Founder Your Business: Tulchin Research Twitter: @TulchinResearch Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TulchinResearch Services You Offer Tulchin Research is a leading polling and strategic consulting firm. The company conducts public opinion research for a wide range of clients. Your Niche Area of Expertise We specialize in providing research and...

PR Tips — Branding Audio & Video With a Donut

August 15, 2012
Want to know an easy way to put a fine polish on virtually any video or audio produced by your organization? Brand it with a donut. A "donut" is simply two short, but professionally produced, files that brand your organization and can be tacked onto the beginning and end of all your video and audio. Here's a donut intro we just produced for our upcoming video blog. Even something as simple as a recorded-on-your-laptop podcast can be dramatically transformed into a high-quality piece by a well-made branding donut. As noted above, our company is about to unveil a regular video blog called "Keybridge Live." We'll film it using low-cost equipment in our conference room. These videos will be posted on our website and certainly aren't meant for primetime. Nevertheless, we want them to reflect the fact that our company delivers high-quality services and doesn't compromise on quality. Also, if one of our posts goes viral, we want people to know who produced it. So we cooked up a donut. Our weekly video posts will be sandwiched between the intro shot above, and the outro shot below. The same concept can be applied just as easily to audio. Branding donuts give you a lot of bang for your buck. They're short, which makes them relatively inexpensive to produce, and they can be used repeatedly. The intro/outro shots seen here were produced in just a few hours, yet this donut will give a professional polish to all our future video blog posts.

August 9, 2012

In late June, Keybridge Senior Writer Rob Montz took a vacation. Unlike most employees, however, he didn't go to the beach. Instead, Rob flew to North Korea to eat clams doused in gasoline, drink soju, and work on his upcoming documentary, "Juche Strong." When he's not toiling away at Keybridge, Rob is an up-and-coming filmmaker and a fellow at the Moving Picture Institute. This week, Rob was featured in the Huffington Post. Here is a preview of his documentary, which will debut in theaters this Winter.

Review: What’s the Best News Monitoring Service?

August 8, 2012

Over the years, we've tested virtually all the major media monitoring services, including BurrellesLuce, PR Newswire, Vocus, Meltwater, and Cision. We've literally compared their results for individual press outreach campaigns. In our experience, BurrellesLuce is the most effective and comprehensive. Unfortunately, Burrelles is also one...

PR Tips — How to Run Your Own PR Campaign

July 31, 2012
One of the dirty little secrets about public relations is that you don’t need to hire an outside firm to do it effectively. If you have the time and desire, you can easily run an effective PR campaign yourself – and save a lot of money. In fact, when companies hire us to run an earned media campaign, these are some of the most critical steps we take.
    1. Establish a spokesperson. Someone at your organization needs to be able to field calls and answer questions from the media. Choose someone who is a clear writer, knowledgeable about your organization, and comfortable speaking to reporters on the phone.
    2. Refine your message. If a reporter from the Wall Street Journal calls you, what will you say? Your talking points should be clearly defined on paper, so you don’t fumble when the big moment comes.
    3. Build a list of journalists (and this should include influential bloggers). Chances are, there are only a limited number of journalists who really care about your industry and would be likely to write about your organization. In fact, there are probably fewer than 200 of these reporters. So make a list of them and keep it up-to-date.
    4. Embrace Twitter. Follow your list of journalists on Twitter – and, if you have a good Twitter feed, invite them to follow you.
    5. Establish yourself as a source. When appropriate, let those journalists know about your areas of expertise. When interesting stories break, offer yourself as a source of information for their articles.