The “keyword trifecta” and other great web writing tips

Tips from today’s PR University web writing audio conference:

• Your press releases should contain a “keyword trifecta”: Your keyword search term should be in your headline and your first paragraph, and the keyword in your first paragraph should link to your web site. HT: Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire
• Be generous with your links — people often don’t want to include outside links because users may leave their site when they click on the link. But being generous makes you part of the conversation and is a win-win for everyone. HT: Debbie Weil
• Cowboy up! “Own your space and your authority” — meaning, be the communications expert and stand firm on what’s right and wrong in communications. HT: Skerik

And here’s the real bonus — a twit stream of tips and observations from the session — free!

Obama is Blowing the Health Care PR Battle

I’m stunned by the amateur approach of Obama and his White House team to the PR aspects of health care insurance reform. While the opponents of the plan have done a masterful job of ginning up opposition to change, the White House has been caught napping and clueless.

I kept waiting to see if the Obama team was just waiting for the right time to roll out its effort, but now that the news is that the White House is “firing back” at critics, it’s obvious that they went to Plan B because they didn’t have a Plan A.

Where, for example, is the Mile High Stadium version of a health care reform rally?

Where are the heart-rending stories from ordinary citizens who will be helped by the plan?

Where is the demonization of the huge interests who are opposed to reform?

Where is the one-pager that describes to the average citizen what the benefits of the plan are?

Why is it that even I, an informed and highly educated citizen, can’t tell you a thing about what’s in it for me and my family?

This last point is the reason why these wingnut shouters at Congressional town hall meetings are having so much success — because the absence of a common understand of “what’s in it for me” has created a vacuum and an opportunity to create a fear of “what I have to lose.”

It’s too late now to fundamentally change the game. The best the Obama people and supporters of reform can hope for is that the screamers will hit the limit of their effectiveness and that the Democratic majorities in Congress will deliver an acceptable reform bill.

Really helpful guide to the mindset of 18-year-olds

I’m 50. So as hard as I might try, I have no clue what people under 40 think about the world. I remember when Johnson was president. I watched the moon landing. I lived through Vietnam and Watergate.

A heck of a lot of people didn’t do any of those things, because they weren’t alive yet. Just like I have no clue about living through WW II or the Eisenhower years. Wasn’t born yet.

To get a kick in the head about how people entering adulthood see the world, check out the Beloit College Mindset list. It’s a compilation by some brainiacs at Beloit College about the sensibilities of the incoming freshman class. The list for the Class of 2012 is their most current (last year’s class). When they release this year’s list, I’ll post an update.

Here are some of their observations about people in the U.S. who are now 19 years old and if they are in college, starting their sophomore years:

• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
• Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Their lists go back to the class of 2002 — people who would be in their late 20s now.

Why should you care? Because people you may be pitching or working with may very well be in this cohort, and if you want to work with them successfully, it helps to have a cultural frame of reference.

Does Obama Need a Hail-Mary PR Pass on Health Care Reform?

Back from Vegas, where the famously in-touch Vegas taxi drivers were 100% against Obama’s health care plan. Why? Who the hell knows. Probably because the right wingnuts on talk radio are tearing it down.

But there’s a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama’s PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone’s a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven’t done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer — the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling language how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I’m not clear on the politics of the situation — maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn’t need public opinion to be on his side. But I can’t see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

Teens Don’t Twitter, Do They?

Twitter is all the rage now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be the CB radio of the Internet era. CB radio was all the rage in the early 70s and for a year or two, it seemed like it would be with us forever. Besides truckers, how many people do you know who use CB radio now?

Here’s an early warning sign that the Twitter rage may be short-lived: a 15-year old Morgan Stanley summer intern wrote an eye-opening research report for the firm about what he and his peers are looking for in information-entertainment.

“Teenagers don’t Twitter,” said the intern, Matthew Robson.

Other insights from a young man who already probably has a job for life:

• Teens don’t listen the radio
• Teens do listen to music online but are “very reluctant” to pay for it
• Newspapers and other print media are “irrelevant”
• Teens go to movies not for the content but for the companionship of friends

Rachel Maddow Deftly Injects Anti-Racism Into the National Mainstream

Racism has been one of the greatest stains on the American experiment and remains an insidious and destructive force in today’s society. The election of Barack Obama has done two things: 1) it has shown that a majority of the electorate is now ready and willing to trust a non-white as the nation’s President and 2) energized a vocal minority of Americans who still seek a white-dominated American society.

In the mainstream, there’s probably no more “prominent” spokesman for white supremacy than Pat Buchanan. I put prominent in quotes because the man is self-appointed, having never won election to anything.

In a recent appearance on the Rachel Maddow show, where he is a regular contributor, Buchanan once again spouted his white supremacy, non-white inferiority line of “reasoning” during a discussion of Sonya Sotomayor, and as usual, played fast and loose with the facts. While Maddow let him get away with it during the original segment, she took him to task in a follow-up segment, and in the process, gave the most eloquent and forceful endorsement of anti-racism I’ve ever heard on national TV.

This is a big subject, but let me summarize, because this is important to me:

• White supremacy means a world dominated by people who pass as white, and seeing the world through the lens of white peoples’ experiences and standards
• There’s a world of non-white people out there, and they have been systematically discriminated against by white people (don’t believe me — read some of these links)
• People like Pat Buchanan are completely bought into defending white supremacy and white privilege
• There is very little in the mainstream media as yet about combating racism and white supremacy, but I’m happy to say that in my personal/religious life, I’m deep at work on it.

I can’t do Maddow’s takedown justice by quoting her. You just have to watch it for yourself.

BTW, the relevance to PR: This country will be majority non-white in my children’s lifetime. If your comms aren’t changing to reflect this reality, you’re falling behind.