Deirdre Breakenridge, Owner of Pure Performance Communications
By Cheval John
November 8th, 2017
Today’s episode of What’s The Word? features Deirdre Breakenridge, founder of Pure Performance Communications.
Deirdre has written many books on public relations and social media.
Her recent book “Answers for Modern Communicators: A Guide to Effective Business Communication” deals with how professionals and college students can be successful communicators in a business environment.
She is also the host of #prstudchat, a twitter chat which speaks about how college students can learn more about the public relations field and how they can prepare themselves once they graduate from college.
In this episode, you will hear:
-Deirdre’s process in writing her first book
-The importance of live streaming
-On why she started the podcast, “Women Worldwide”
-On hosting “The PR Influencer Show” on Nasdaq
This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network before airing on BlogTalkRadio.
Snippet on Vallano Media TV
Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio
Website: www.deirdrebreakenridge.com
Twitter: @dbreakenridge
Quotes from Deirdre on:
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Public relations has changed so much because of social media and the way businesses have to be more flexible.
People would go online at any time and if they wanted something, we had to be there.
If you are going to support a business, you have to be ten steps ahead and to understand and listen and know where the pain points are in the market and with the customers to be able to help that business.
NEW MEDIA
I knew we had to embrace new media.
It was a different way of communication and how we approached, not just traditional journalists, but different types of media and where people wanted to receive their news.
In 2003, I had a huge wake-up call.
My team went in to pitch a CEO and his team on a tech product and we were probably a little over-confident.
We thought we knew exactly where we could get the message out through what channels.
After we pitched on how we were going to launch this load balancer product, he kind of looked at me and said, “Okay, that was good, but where’s all the new stuff that’s really going to excite our end users? Where are they going to embrace things?”
What he was saying was why aren’t you talking about blogs.
I had written about that in my second book, which is really ironic that I was writing about blogs, but not pitching that.
I went back to my agency that day and said, “No matter how ahead we think we are, we are not.”
“We are now going to start opening up technology for our public relations professionals. They need to be hands-on in the back end of websites and content management systems.”
“I want public relations people to upload news releases and photos. I want them hands-on with technology.”
They thought I was crazy.
That was the start of “We have to be flexible, we have to move, there’s new things out there.”
Public relations people have to embrace and move forward.
BRANDS BEING MEDIA COMPANIES
They are content machines and they are not just sharing content for the sake of getting their messages across.
They are educating and becoming thought leaders.
They are having other people come in, be correspondents and share news and information and do interviews.
It is a whole new dynamic.
I was sitting with a financial services company recently.
They now have an in-house studio for video production because they are thought leaders in their space and they are going to be doing interviews.
We see this a lot more.
That is the kind of storytelling and brand journalism you want to bring to the table to be a media company.
LIVE STREAMING
I think it is a great opportunity.
It is almost the no bull crap way of getting out some really good transparent information.
You are talking to a person who grew up in the agency world where we would not put out anything.
This is a new way of being able to tell stories and to share who you are and what you do.
To give a piece of yourself as an entrepreneur and to show your passion through a live stream is really important.
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