The Colab Brief: 012 - It’s Your Time To Shine Online

Welcome back to The Colab Brief, a weekly newsletter covering all things comms. This week, we’re joined by Whitney Popa.

Whitney is a communications consultant who worked for really sexy companies (Xbox, Nordstrom, Amazon) before heading out on her own in 2017. She does hyper-local PR and social media consulting, and currently, her biggest passion is showing her clients (and the students in her workshops) how to add ✨sparkle✨ to their written communications. Naturally, we invited her to sprinkle her proverbial glitter on this newsletter.

Take it away, Whit!

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Read Time: 3 minutes

How do you stand out when you are the brand, or the story you’re trying to sell is personal?

You add ✨sparkle✨, naturally.

This isn’t a fluffy concept I made up to be memorable. “Sparklers” are what we (⬅️ the young bucks at my first big PR agency job) collected from our clients whenever they had news to announce. These sparklers often took the form of a bulleted list of interesting nuggets within our pitches that we sent to our friendlies—and beyond—knowing that:

• Boring is a hard sell: We all know this intellectually, but many people think adding storytelling and small personal details is irrelevant. They want to stick to the facts. But in the days of online everything you stand out by being you. Let’s say your client is a wedding planner who launched a website that uses AI to plan her clients’ perfect big days and she’s also a certified scuba diver 🤿. Those things may seem unrelated, and yet, her commitment to the certification process underscores her work ethic. Her interest in this particular water sport illustrates her wanderlust 🏝 and flexibility. And so on. I know I could pitch about infinity profiles and stories with that sparkler at the center.

• There are several angles a story could take: Consider previous coverage and how your contact likes to write. Come up with a short list of sparklers about your client that could add depth and humanity to the story, even—nay, especially!—if you’re pitching something as dry as a cloud-based SMS software for dentists 🦷 (no hate to dentists—my grandfather is a recently retired periodontist. He’s 94!). I once gave a keynote to a group of wedding professionals and a sign manufacturer asked if people would care that their founder came up with the idea for the company at Burning Man. Yes, yes they would! ❤️‍🔥
  
  

• Coverage is a conversation: When you’re reaching out to the same outlets about the same clients over and over, you are in a relationship 💞. Make that relationship worth their while. Make it a fun read. Make it an email they want to open. This applies to your subject lines, too. How can you make them fun while keeping them short, informational, and snappy?
  
  

• They’re going to stalk your client (and you) online: We’re all in the people business, no matter how you spin it. Encourage your client (and yourself if you have any say in your company communication channels) to make their website—especially their bio and about pages—layered and interesting. Help them write a list of sparklers. Weave in a few you think will not only keep people poking around on their website longer but also make those people smile 😀. Smiles release happy hormones and happy hormones make people excited to write about your clients. It’s science. 
  
  

• Break the rules: If you’re like me, you had countless teachers and professors telling you where to put the headings on your papers. Left or right, there was a correct answer for each instructor. And hooooey if you deigned to get that header placement wrong 🫣. There are rules to writing and pitching, based on the style guide or guru you follow. What if you decided to write with a little less polish—as if you were enjoying a long lunch with a close friend, even if you’re talking to a person you’ve never met? You’re asking for something from this person and, sure, it’s probably mutually beneficial, but a date with their elbows on the table, leaning forward and engaged, is a lot easier to be around than someone sitting ramrod straight in their chair with their hands on their lap. Let’s all aim to be the former, “bad” manners and all.

We all want to be memorable, but sometimes we get stuck in the shoulds we absorbed in school, work, and life. Your communication extends far beyond the pitch. Make it enjoyable for the reader, and you’ll probably see both an increased response rate and interest in coverage. Plus, you’ll have a lot more fun in your outreach and follow-up. Who could say no to that?

Sparkle on,

Whitney

(And with love from)

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