Kurt Adams

Great insights for anyone in the PR and media relations industry.

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"Best Practices For Pitching In 2024, a cold outreach email probably isn’t going to suffice. With journalists receiving hundreds of email pitches daily, we must get creative to ensure our messages stand out." Read more at the Forbes article here: https://lnkd.in/e7PQGP53 #pr #mediarelations #pitches

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Let's keep learning! So many lessons came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the importance of clear communication about what we know and what we DON'T know about emerging infections. I'm happy to be part of the Council for Quality Health Communication: a group working to improve the quality of health information and increase trust among the public. New article by founding members Ken Rabin and Scott C. Ratzan on H5N1 in MedPage Today.

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There's so much talk about using AI to generate content, especially now that tools like ChatGPT make it look so easy. But is that coming at a cost to the reader experience? I'm a huge fan of (properly using) AI. It's been great at summarizing meetings. I use it sometimes to generate headline ideas or to generate a first draft of social media copy. I'm legitimately amazed at how fast this technology is developing. But as someone who has been "generating content" for newspapers, websites, blogs and social media since MySpace was the dominant social platform, I see far too many companies rushing to adopt AI for content generation without question. It seems so easy — because it is. Upload some reputable, trustworthy data sources (at least, please tell me you're doing this), click a couple buttons and you've got a story ready to go! Unfortunately, going this route ignores a lot of success factors. - Is it going to rank on Google? (No — the algorithm wants human experience and expertise that AI can't magically generate.) - Is it something that will add value for your customers? (People don't really want to read awkward AI copy, and will just bounce.) - Is it going to read well? (Unless you're also a robot ... no.) Instead, use AI to *assist* human writers. It's great at summarizing interviews, gathering key data points and helping you brainstorm. It can generate a first draft that gives you a structure to work with, if you're stuck. AI is a wonderful tool as an assistant, but it's not a long-term content strategy. While the technology changes over time, one thing doesn't — people want to trust that the article they're reading will help them out. Seeing how often people add "Reddit" on the end of their Google searches just confirms this. If you really want to stand out among your competitors and get long-lasting results, don't use AI as a content generator. Use it to help your human writers and editors do their job better.

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👋🏼 Did you catch one of the biggest tech news stories last week? I break down the news and implications for communicators. And we continue our Google Grants resources with more on crafting your ad copy and headlines. for social change communicators 📚 📣 this week's topic: Welcome Back! 👋🏼 Did you catch one of the biggest tech news stories last week? I break down the news and implications for communicators. And we continue our Google Grants resources with more on crafting your ad copy and headlines. Read on for more... Share & Watch Google Search Tired of signing up for newsletters and not finding them helpful for your everyday work? This newsletter is built differently. It’s created for you: 🌱 for cultivating social change in a chaotic digital world 🔮 for folks who want to do it differently ❤️‍🔥 for busy communicators with limited time 🧱 for folks reshaping digital communications 🤓 Read & Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/grir2eDF

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Valuable insights from Nicole Schuman for any #communications professional seeking to "measure the value of their work and tell that story to their stakeholders." #CommsForGood

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This is important for #communications pros and our subject matter experts to remember. An interview is a conversation not a rote question asked, prepared answer given. Using talking points rather than scripted answers is more effective for a SME and makes for a better interview. Unfortunately that path isn’t taken as often as it should be.

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The evolution of influence - how is public relations changing? The new Notified/PRWeek report examines this very question. We surveyed 155 leading PR pros to learn how to build stronger trust with stakeholders, the best ways to combat misinformation and how corporate storytellers feel about AI in 2024.   Get the findings now: https://lnkd.in/gayFpq9J #PublicRelations #PR #AI

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"Why aren't we getting more press?!?!?!" Once someone asks the question, executives, in-house teams, and PR agencies are all quick to point the finger. The reality is, they're all to blame. The media landscape is rapidly evolving, and most companies have failed to keep pace. PR isn't dead (there is always value in telling a differentiated story) but with PR pros outpacing reporters 9:1, companies must rethink their approach all together. This candid interview with John Hallock, Christina Farr, and Jared S. Taylor is an absolute must watch for any company or PR pro interested in building a strategy that leads to media attention. Slice of Healthcare Full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gUCAwc99

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Health privacy is breached every day online. Most Americans don’t realize their Amazon info is being aggregated with Google searches, news browsing, FB/Instagram/TikTok posts & more. So our entire online experience, including health, is being sifted for marketing. Two LDI fellows, Ari Friedman and Matt McCoy, showed how hospitals and abortion clinics are just as likely as others to track users and pass on the info to aggregators. Check out this LDI piece that lays it out. #https://lnkd.in/eetqaPi3

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One for the climate tech marketers: Some of you really can do it all — from big-picture strategy to technical writing. But that doesn't mean you SHOULD. (This goes doubly so for in-house marketers.) This week's Climate Tech Marketer speaks to the tasks that Amelia and I commonly see climate tech teams struggle to keep spinning. → And what they should do instead 🧚‍♀️ P.S. Climate Tech Marketer is in experimentation mode. We're trying out somewhat of a new tone this week. Sign up and share your thoughts? https://lnkd.in/ejDVmeyP

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A lesson for all communicators: relying on your audience to come to you (on your social pages, on your website, at your front desk, etc) won’t get the job done. You have to take your message to your audience! Where are the people you want to target? That’s where you need to be, too. You can’t reach Gen Z on Facebook.

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Looking to make the case for a new DAM? Download our free guide to learn how to make the most compelling case to your leadership team! #DAM #Digitalassetmanagement

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As many of the folks in my network gear up for #ClimateWeekNYC, I wrote about the importance of storytelling for the weekly 17 Communications impact newsletter. DM me if you'd like to be added to the distribution list! See below for an excerpt and read the full newsletter at https://lnkd.in/eGPCPckD I’ve attended Climate Week NYC for each of the past two years and have always come away feeling excited, inspired and curious. There are so many people doing such interesting things to address climate change, even if the news cycle most days seems apocalyptic. News stories about heat waves, droughts or natural disasters don’t seem to have quite the same effect as they used to – perhaps because we’ve all become numb to the tragedy. But there are still some mediums that are capable of breaking through the numbness and motivating changes in people’s behavior. Books. On my train ride to last year’s Climate Week NYC I read “The Ministry for the Future,” a climate sci-fi book that explored what it might look like if the world got its act together in time. The author, Kim Stanley Robinson, recently gave an interview to the FT in which he said that people are attracted to the book because it can replace “feelings of futility or despair” with “relatively justifiable hope.” As for his motivation? “You tell the story in an attempt to forestall it by informing people in advance.” My take is that the book found a way to balance blind optimism and cynical pessimism in a way that felt refreshingly human. Most news coverage these days tends towards the dark and stormy, but long-form writers like Robinson are able to take a step back and offer a more balanced perspective that feels more real and accessible for a general audience. TV. Like many of my colleagues who work in finance, I’ve become enamored by the steady stream of excellent TV series that bring viewers into the wacky world of finance. Billions is the most obvious example, but even hit shows like Silicon Valley and Succession explore complex financial themes that are integral to the narrative. The new show that should be on everyone’s watchlist is Industry, which explores the inner workings and general tomfoolery of an investment bank in London. While their episodes focused on the ESG craze have been cringeworthy, I appreciate that a major company like HBO would green-light a project that offers a somewhat realistic view into how the finance world works, and why it sometimes doesn’t work. The 3rd episode, which is primarily set at a major climate conference, shows how the worlds of finance and sustainability interact, with profit rather than purpose motivating most decision-making. The link between these examples is storytelling... Stories are what power human ingenuity and creativity, and are how we are able to connect across racial, cultural and economic divides. 

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This week's newsletter for social change communicators is out! This week we're talking: Discussing Google Search's AI Upheaval & Confusion After breaking news, I had to start this week with Google's massive internal database breach that exposed some interesting and societal-impacting bugs. Then we get to the main event around how social change communicators should be thinking about Google Search right now. I offer SEO and paid search strategy considerations as AI makes the search landscape more uncertain. Tired of signing up for newsletters and not finding them helpful for your everyday work? This newsletter is built differently. It’s created for you: 🌱 for cultivating social change in a chaotic digital world 🔮 for folks who want to do it differently ❤️‍🔥 for busy communicators with limited time 🧱 for folks reshaping digital communications 🤓 Read & Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/gjPRNJsr

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Tech companies keep missing the mark on what human beings want tech to enable them to do -- and what we want to keep human. That raises troubling questions not just for their AI, but for their overall view of both their technology and humanity as a whole.

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I’m gonna mix a little bit of info with a lil sharing. If you know me this is pretty standard behavior. I was chatting with someone about programmatic direct mail and incrementality. When I think of incrementality I think of stickiness vs reach. Showing your ad to a new person is dope, but the data shows that channel diversification is more about breaking through the noise then unlocking a new audience. If you’re spending in the millions there’s a pretty good chance you’re hitting a lot of your target demo on digital channels. Tell me the last 10 meta ads you saw? 5? Tell me one meta ad you saw today? (This brings up another convo of frequency in this evolved digital age but Idk best practices) it takes a lot for something to stick so if you’re going to a new channel for incrementaltiy choose channels that are going to stick. Hence programmatic DM. When you start testing I’d think of it as a lift channel. Part of your lifecycle nurture flow. Test with unconverted audiences and see if it lifts. Then use the lifted to lal for prospecting. Ok the other thing. I was chatting with a brilliant marketer who complemented my posts and it gave me the biggest imposter syndrome ever. I thought about it a bit and I think it’s because all of these posts are the results of failures, experiments, and learning from other great marketers. Plan A has worked so rarely I could count it on my hands. The speedy pivot to plan B, C, & D is the real gold. I’m learning new stuff constantly because I care about marketing (I’m learning about social media right now). I’ll probably suck at it for a bit and then I’ll get good and write something about it if I think it can be helpful. Idk just thought I’d share.

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