Lexie Smith
Hey guys, I’m Lexie Smith, a mom, multi-hyphenate entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of THEPRBAR inc. coaching platform and agency. In my career, I’ve had the privilege of guiding countless brands, ingenious publicists, eager students, and ambitious entrepreneurs on their PR journeys. I’ve danced with the Giants and nurtured startups, directed in-house PR departments, lent my expertise to boards, and spread knowledge across universities nationwide. Throughout all of this, I’ve seen our industry change and evolve while simultaneously proving that some timeless fundamentals remain unshaken. This show takes you behind the scenes of the world of media, marketing, and PR, aiming to teach you all the new tips, tricks and how the best and brightest are achieving success overseas. Now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the show.
Lexie Smith
Linda Zebian is senior director, communications and community at Muck Rack, where she sets communication strategy for Muck Rack enterprise both internally and externally including messaging, issues management, media relations, social media, and employee communications, as well as partnerships and events. Linda joined Muck Rack from The New York Times, where she spent 10 years in various communications positions. Most recently she served as freelance communications advisor and before that as executive director corporate communications. Before joining The Times, she was communications associate at a nonprofit organization Consumers Union, where she managed media relations of Consumer Reports magazine consumerreports.org, and ShopSmart magazine. She began her career as a reporter for Folio, where she covered the magazine media industry and later managed conference programming for Folio’s publisher, Red 7 Media, a division of Access Intelligence. And Linda is actually not a new guest to the show. She is back round to this season to drop even more knowledge. Linda, welcome to the show, rather than going into career cliff notes, which we usually do. I'm gonna refer listeners back to your first episode, which is episode 74. However, I do want to briefly recap and remind everyone on what is Muck Rack? Let's start there. Yeah,
Linda Zebian
no, it's a great, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Lexie. Muck Rack is a organization that helps PR pros and communicators pitch the media, measure their work and prove their value on business outcomes. We do that through our public relations management platform, and through all sorts of other resources that we provide for free. So yeah, that's my crack.
Lexie Smith
No, I don't expect you to know exactly what was happening at the point of time when we first recorded. But in the last year, have there been any significant updates or rollouts or new initiatives to the platform that maybe we didn't talk about on our first round?
Linda Zebian
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I think I spoke a few months after we start, I started at Muck Rack. Yeah. So the biggest news would be that muck rack got this gigantic investment, our first outside of investment, the biggest in PR tech history, so $180 million. And am I not for ya, see what happened. That happened on September 2022. So about eight months after I started at my crack, yeah, it was, like, pretty amazing. Which I think, you know, really shows kind of the momentum of the organization. And now we really have changed the game when it comes to PR tech. So that's a big one. And then also we are our product. And our platform has really, really been enhanced in two specific areas. I would say the first being monitoring, so we added like 600,000 outlets about a year ago to our monitoring. You know, we're known for database but but we're getting really into the monitoring and reporting space, we have a lot of reporting updates happening and more news to come on that front. And then the second would be AI. So we introduced a pitch and press release creator, which you know, I think is pretty much like table stakes for AI, VR tech right now. We've also introduced really cool AI features, which and we can talk about more about what those are. But basically, one tool is called recommended journalists. So it tells you who to add to your list based on what lists you already have in my class, which I think is really interesting, because it seems a lot we're using it, myPR team is using it. It saves a ton of time on list building. And it gets smarter as you create more lists. So AI is just you know, it's awesome. It's awesome, right? It's it's like really saving folks a lot of time and also um coverage, Spike alerts and coverage reports. So for crisis, which everyone's you know, really focused on crisis right now. It will alert you in your inbox if you, a brand or anybody you really even put into a safe search. So even a competitive brand they're receiving or you're receiving an influx in mentions, to say hey, this needs your attention, either for good reason or bad reason, hey, this is going viral, take advantage of it or This is going viral for a bad reason your might have a crisis on your hand pay attention to it. So that's all powered by AI, that AI, which is fascinating and really cool. So there's a lot happening.
Lexie Smith
Okay, And that's going to be really, I mean, AI is this has been a topic I've had on the show. But if we were to talk about it last month, I feel like what we talked about is different than this month, which could be different the next the next month. So I'm really trying to stay up to date and keep our listeners up to date on what is happening, because, boy, boy, it is impacting our industry. And one of the things that I've always loved about Muck Rack is you guys produce really phenomenal content and reports. And you guys specifically released actually in January, which is the month no wait it's February, which was last month, The State of AI in PR Report 2024. And I want to start start with really any kind of high level themes or takeaways that you think are of significance from this report?
Linda Zebian
Yeah, so we first did our state, our first state of AI report in March of 2020. Race, and then it became fall and we were like, you know, I bet you anything, these numbers are gonna are gonna be so different than they were six, eight months ago, right. So we decided to survey again. And we were right. So between March and basically November, a number of PR pros leveraging AI surged 40%. So adoption doubled between those between March and November. And then those who reported using it 74% said, reported an increase in the quality of their work. And then almost 90 89% said they completed projects more quickly, more quick, quickly, or quickly or sorry. Yeah. More quickly, more quickly.
Lexie Smith
More quickly, ChatGPT is quicker or more quicklier
Okay, there we go. More quicker, more quickly.
Linda Zebian
More quicker. I think they're all acceptable, right? We're PR people, we know how to use the English language.
Lexie Smith
We're thought leaders,we're making new words.
Linda Zebian
So and then we have some other really interesting findings. So anyway, so those before I get into that most who you are using it or using it towards social copy about two thirds 64% research, 58% writing press releases, and crafting pitches 58, 54%. So the a lot of folks are using it for generative, generative reason, like, you know, just writing first drafts of copy and things like that. I think a lot of folks don't realize too when they're using certain PR tech, that they're using AI, right, like we've had AI and AR in Muck Rack for years in our monitoring, but we never it was never like, you know, it was pre chat GPT. So it wasn't an if not generative. So people realize that AI is learning off of there is taking like large swaths of data and learning off of it. So I think a lot of folks are using AI without realizing that the technology is actually AI powered. Another interesting thing that we we found was a noticeable discrepancy between brands and agencies and how they disclose AI use. So 21% of agency, PR pros admit never disclosing AI utilization to clients. And then 6% on the inverse of that, of brand PR folks support that strategy. So there's a discrepancy there. And, you know, there's lots of opinions flying around about what's appropriate for disclosure, right and what's not. And, you know, our project Muck Rack is, there's all ethical questions around disclosure, and especially when you have an agency working with a really high profile, or sensitive brand, financial information, things like that. So we actually published our own standards that are easy to follow, if you in our thinking is if you follow these AI standards that we created. And also it's just like common sense, and like general business, appropriate ethics and business ethics and things like that. You. You shouldn't have to necessarily disclose it. If you're following appropriate standards, you shouldn't have to disclose it, meaning you're not putting sensitive information into a chat GPT, for example, who's collecting that data and sending it back and learning from it. Right? You are, you know, you're using it ethically and responsibly. You're vetting every single thing that's created from you know, you're, you're reading every single piece of content that's generated by an AI platform, right? If you're using AI, so AI He's just like this big wide thing, right? So it's like, okay, if I'm using recommended journalists and Muck Rack to help me find a reporter to pitch, do I have to disclose that to my clients? No, do I tell them that I'm that I use Muck Rack to send the alerts when we get a mention? No. So why, why, if you're using it appropriately, it shouldn't be an issue. The problem comes if you aren't using it appropriately and ethically. So it's a lot of responsibility. And it's on the individual practitioner to take that responsibility. And it's likely on a management team, if you're like at an agency, or you're running, if you're running an in house shop, to train and provide resources to your team on AI and have your own internal standards and ethical guidelines to lead your team so that they say, you know, in there and in the appropriately
Lexie Smith
This is bringing me back to one of the more controversial college courses I took on ethics in journalism. And I can imagine right now, I mean, in any good school, this is probably a hot topic that is probably being assigned to students to, to look at and the ethics of it all is something that I don't know, I feel so torn on. This is a personal statement. I feel very torn on AI, I use it in some capacity. In other capacities. I feel like it's hurting an industry that I love. I don't know what what is coming. You know, I just read a lot of really big or heightened opinions on the topic. I'm curious about your opinion on how you think AI is going to continue. And let's let's say in the next year, because I know like five years from now in AI, that's really hard to even wrap our head around. But in the next year, how you think AI will impact newsrooms and journalists?
Linda Zebian
Yeah, I think that AI has a lot of potential to do good, and help lean newsrooms, particularly at the local level. So if you're working with a handful of journalists who are trying to hold power to account at the local level, we know local news has has really gotten the brunt of layoffs and cuts and things like that. Right. AI is designed to save time and boost efficiency, if it's used appropriately, again, in our in our standards actually apply to both journalists and PR people. They are one standards guide. And it's it's useful across both. If it's used appropriately, it should help. The other thing is that I think that there's there are lawsuits going on right now between AI companies, tech companies and publishers. Because of that, because related to who owns the news online? And should the publishers be compensated for, say Chat GPTs use of their data to create outputs. So I think I personally think that those lawsuits are valid. And I think that there's potential for finally, the tech companies to start paying news organizations and compensating journalists appropriately. That's what I would like to see. And I do think that there is a case here, what remains to be seen, I don't know what will happen, but I think, you know, it makes sense. They you know, the Microsoft's of the world necessarily don't necessarily own that content. Yeah, somebody was paid to be have boots on the ground and investigate that story. But then you go you How do you like, what's the fair? Like, what's the use policy, you could just take it and put it into chat GPT database or whatever, and power power your tool with somebody else's work. without compensating, I don't know that that's kosher. And we're like, you know, entering a time of unprecedented, you know, unprecedented events. So I think the laws might change, I think there's gonna be all sorts of stuff that happens. I really do. I don't think it will replace journalists, I think we've seen a couple of instances where we know, AI is not in a position to do that. I don't think it will replace PR people in the same way. I think, listen, there's a lot of bad actors out there that has the potential to be negative, but I think generally, if the laws can catch up with the tech and accountability can be you know, there's a lot of checks and balances out there to like, you can't get away with you can't unfortunate, like Sports Illustrated was a good example. You can get away with creating content in AI and someone will call you out on it. So
Lexie Smith
Yeah,
Linda Zebian
At least there's that.
Lexie Smith
I mean, what you're proving right now is how can I think multi layered and complex this whole topic is and like how it goes beyond just us like a small business owner using it or a publicist using it. It goes into policy and it goes into politics and it goes into ethics. And it goes, there's just so many layers. And that's where I feel all sorts of personal personal conflict, because I do see the positives of it. But then I get a little terrified of, you know, wondering what it means for the state of media. And just as layoffs continue, so no one has a crystal ball. But
Linda Zebian
And I think deep fakes are another issue. I think we are not we're talking about journalism, or I'm talking about photo journalism and, and graphics and images and things like that. So that's a whole nother animal. And that's and that's, that's, to me, is scarier than, you know, AI written journalism, which I think, at least for now is, is clear that it's, you know, not created by humans at this point.
Lexie Smith
Oh, man, we're just scratching the surface here, obviously. And I'm, while I'm tempted to take this entire episode and dive even deeper, I actually want us to pivot a little bit, because because there's so much unknowns in the AI topic, I wanted to take the latter half of this episode, and go back to something that isn't so up and coming, but rather more foundational and applicable, five years ago, and I think five years from now. So, quick context for everyone listening, Linda gave me this phenomenal arsenal of things she could talk about, because she's brilliant. And if you don't like what we're about to talk about, it's my fault, because this is what I picked, because I thought it would be great to review and not as a simple approach to media training. Because whether you're a founder or a publicist, trying to prepare a founder or a client, this can become something we all need to address. And you seem to have a formula. And there's also going to be guys just like a quick heads up, something we include in the show notes because Linda put together and Muck Rack put together a phenomenal checklist cheat, cheat, cheat, this is the the language this the words on this show today cheat sheet cheat sheet for this, but let's start with this. Can you break down? If you're going to think about media training in a simple way? Where do we start? What is the first step?
Linda Zebian
So I think the first step is to know who you're, who you should be media training, right? So it's identifying which executive, usually it's an executive or expert internally, or at your clients, in your clients business. Who isn't that is more naturally inclined to do media. And that's a really tricky thing to do, I think it's actually the hardest part of all of it, is to identify who the person should be. And then it becomes to find that you come to find that it's not your highest ranking official, like highest ranking executive, it can be really hard, and you may A. just need to deal with it and train your CEO as best you can. But not every CEO should really be in front of the camera. And I think that there are a million examples of people who are over the camera, who shouldn't be, et cetera, et cetera, no matter how much media training they get, they are not the ideal person. But sometimes we have to deal with it, we have to do our best with what we have. If you have a CEO, or C suite, that is open minded and flexible as to who should be representing your brand and the media, that's amazing. Use your best person. And you’ll know, right, they have a little bit of charisma, they're quick on their feet, they are warm, they are the weather, right. But you don't always have an option. So once you identify who you're working with, you can you can create a speaker's bureau which is all the people who are you know, are available to do externally facing media exposure moments, so then you can do immediate training for all of them. You can do immediate training one on one. Um But that's your first step is to create a speaker's bureau and then then your speakers where you can identify who they are, you know, what kind of media they can do. So, are they better on you know, email interview, or are they okay, on camera? Can they do radio or podcasts? Were their comfort level? And what topics can they speak to? And that way, you know, and that way, if you hire somebody or you bring in an agency there, they have all the information they need when you get an inbound or there's an external opportunity, an opportunity, you can say, Oh, I have somebody for this or why don't you know that so that's just like a like a basic starting point. So from there, and this is all in a checklist available for free on Muck Rack, Muck Rack’s blog. So we go and kind of into the Prepare phase. So like, you want to put together a prep doc with interview details, the date, the time, the media outlet, the background on the interviewer and the host, right. Pro tip always include a phonetic spelling of their name. So the host name. And then also, if you have a tricky, tricky name for your spokesperson, you want to make sure you tell the person like this is how you say their name, especially if you're talking about live or like a big event or, you know, when you're being introduced, and you can’t re record or take it back. So then always ask if the interviews on camera. So even for podcasts like this podcast, right, in some video component, yeah. So learn that learn the hard way. I feel like every communicator has the hard right? Oh, you didn't tell me it was gonna be on camera.
Lexie Smith
You come to it like this and you're like?
Linda Zebian
Oh I didn't know you know or what it was work from home. Now, we may not always have and may not always be ready for something like that. Yeah, if you're talking about a broadcast interview, or a speaking engagement, always ask if there's a teleprompter available for something called a competence monitor, which is one of those like small monitors at the bottom of the stage. That's because then I can look at rather than constantly, like glancing up at their huge slides on the big screen, right. So that's called a competence monitor. So ask about that. And then get your messaging in order. So you want no more than three messages as your core key messages for that specific interview, three is easy for your spokesperson. And three is easy, frankly, for the anchor or whoever is doing the interview. And then four and three is easy for the audience. So that's what you want to start. And of course, every single one of those key messages should be supported with anecdotes and data points and examples. Because people love the story, they don't really want to feel like they're being talked at. So three key messages with anecdotes and support color, right? We call it color when we're storytellers, right. So make sure you've got some colorful points to support what your messages are.
Lexie Smith
Let me pause this right there for a second. Yeah, let's give them let's give the listeners like an example. Let me set the scene, let's say we're dealing with our client or us again, we have listeners of both is going to be I'll do a recent client segment of mine, they were going to be on ABC, talking about their nonprofit. Okay, so they were going to be interviewed by an anchor, it was not live, which was great. Is going so three points. My whole business, how do I narrow it down? How do I select those three points? is the first question and what if the anchor doesn't ask me questions that let me speak to those three points.
Linda Zebian
Right? So I think the three points are, first, your key message, your brand message, who you are as a company, your mission, whatever it is, like what's your key brand message? What's the one thing you want people to know about your brand. And then the other two can be, you know, they're more flexible, I would say the second or the third should be something about you're really focused on now. Right? So whatever's going on at the moment right now that you want to get across. And then the third can always be like, a strong data point to support your whatever you're trying to say like, if your business is a nonprofit, and you're delivering meals, say to the elderly, right? The third point could be you know, last year we delivered XYZ number of meals and helped XYZ number of people. Right? So always have like a specific story or specific number to to prove what you're saying. You don't want to just say things like, we're the best nonprofit in Oakland. Okay, who said? Like How do you how do you prove that? How do you show that? So, so you definitely need to be you need to have those like, those support points to sell your story. And then your second and then your second question was
Lexie Smith
To the point? I know and I'm doing like, non hosting 101 never stack questions. Hey, guys, if you're hosting don't stack questions, I do this all the time on the show, even though I know not to I get ahead of myself. My second question was, what if in the conversation, okay, your person is prepared, but the anchor or the reporter isn't asking questions that intuitively enable them to speak to these three points. So while you said brand message, what's happening now and a data point, let's say the anchor starts by going okay, so let's use the elderly feeding the elderly advice. Well, Shannon, you know, there's a elderly crisis happening in San Francisco right now. What's your guys's take on that? Yeah, like if it's not teeing you up, essentially?
Linda Zebian
Sure, yeah. And they do that right, they’re reporters, they're there. That's their job. So I think that the way to a way to work, you should always troubleshoot tricky questions and anticipate questions that you think they might ask based on the news of the day, or what's going on in the world. And prepare in advance for tricky, either tricky questions are going to get you in hot water, or just questions that you're just not familiar with. And then if you do get a question that you haven't prepared for, there's all sorts of ways to get out of it. Right? You can bridge, you can pivot, you can. So you and so what does that mean? That means like, that means you could answer the question to the best of your ability. You could say, I got Yeah, I saw, I saw this news report that, you know, the elderly crisis is, you know, really, but the shelters are maxed out or something, and then you bridge, so you say, and that's why we're doing XYZ. So you bring you flip it a little bit, and you always bring it back to your your three key points, if possible. Also, I think spokespeople can be don't need to be afraid to say, you know, that's not my area of expertise. But what I can say is, right, or, you know, let me get back to you on that. Um, if it's not, if it's not live, if it's like, you know, a print interview or something, you know, like, I don't have the numbers in front of me, let me get back to you on that. So there's ways to get around it. You don't have to answer every question. And frankly, if the if the reporter. Another tip is not to repeat negative language. So like, if a reporter says, you know, while you're doing what you say you're doing all the stuff, but the, you know, the elderly are suffering. You can't you don't say, yes, the elderly are suffering, you say you flip it on its head, and you're saying, Well, this is what we are doing, you know, so don't repeat negative language is just like, you know, basic 101 if possible. And it's okay to say I don't know, it's okay to say I have to get back to you. Right, it's better to do that than to speak out of turn, or to give wrong information. You can even say, I don't want to give you I want to make sure what I'm giving you is accurate, the most accurate possible. Let me get back to you on that. Or that's not my area of expertise. I'm focused on this.
Lexie Smith
Guys this is gold, these are such good, tangible examples. One more kind of something that had I've seen happen. And honestly, this happened to me once when I was doing an interview and I was so embarrassed strikes I'm in PR and I'm supposed to know not to do this, is when people don't have a great understanding of time and cadence, and oversharing. Now I know to some extent, it's part of the reporter or the anchor, or the journalists job is to rein in the guests, right? They're supposed to be able to respectfully interject. But wouldn't it be great if you could have that not happen to our clients? So what advice or tips do we have in them understanding how much to speak on and I think a really great example of this is when someone's asked to share their story. How much do you share? Do you talk for five minutes? You go on for 30 seconds? How do we guide clients or prepare ourselves in that scenario?
Linda Zebian
Yeah, I think the best and you probably heard this before is just to speak in sound bites, and have your clients watch interviews. Have them participate in mock interviews, either with either with you or with a colleague. Right. So if you if, you've got to think of it I have a colleague of mine used to say you got to think of it as a game ofLike table tennis.
Lexie Smith
You're totally fine.
Linda Zebian
I'm gonna get rid of my dog.
Lexie Smith
Don't worry about it. Do not worry about it. You are You are so fine. That is 100% the era we're living in right. Working from home,
Linda Zebian
My husband, going in the camera in the background and my dog barking okay.
Lexie Smith
This is why we don't live to tape, although I thought that was would it be very entertaining for everyone but, Kaylee, this is a note to my producer. Please clean that out.
Linda Zebian
Thank you, Kaylee. So we're gonna start that question again. sound bites? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So the best thing to do is just to speak in sound bites. So you So a colleague of mine used to say think of in media interviews as a game of Table Tennis. So you're hitting it, you're, you know, the reporter hits a question to you, you hit back and they and the conversation just goes back and forth. And I think the other the another great piece of advice, and I have no idea who told me this, do not fill awkward silences. It is not your job, to keep the conversation going. It is the reporter's job, the anchors, job, the moderator, if you're on a panels job, to keep the conversation moving, when you are done speaking, 99% of the time, you should stop. It's when you get that extra thought in your head, you repeat what you already said. gets you into trouble. So just stop talking in a natural break. And what do they what do they call it don't cross the bridge, after you've gone over it once to go back and start it again. Like you know, it's not an essay, you don't have to open a statement out, give your points and then come to a conclusion and repeat your your introduction again. Just open it up. Give your points stop talking.
Lexie Smith
Such good advice. You know, it's funny in this is more socially, I definitely have filler filler in the gaps. And my husband is very comfortable in silence and I I will always give him crap. I'm like, it's so awkward when you just stop talking. He's like, why it's not awkward unless you make it awkward. Like, it's so true. But it's really, really great advice with silence isn't the enemy. And when you're the one being interviewed, it's not your job to your point to to make it flow, you're you're answering the question. So I think that's really, really great advice. And I know, I mean, we're speaking to barely scratching the surface, we've barely, barely even scratched the surface. And, you know, due to the time constraints of this show, what I'm going to do now is direct the listeners to where they can get the checklist, right, so they can read the very the whole list of you know, we didn't even get into appearance or you know, physicality. They have all that information, you guys on this resource from Muck Rack. So we'll include it in the show notes, but in case someone's dry, is it like on the blog, or where can they find it?
Linda Zebian
Yeah, it's, it's on the Muck Rack blog, you should be able to, you know, search Muck Rack media training checklist and it will pop up and you just can download it for free. And it's a handy dandy PDF. So
Lexie Smith
Beautiful. So do that. And then also I have to ask because I don't know maybe it's changed. It's 2024 What are you sipping these days, linda? t
Linda Zebian
Oh, I forgot that question you got Bobby. Right. Right. I think um, I think I think lemonade because it was summer the last time
Lexie Smith
I think I remember. I should have looked that up.
Linda Zebian
Um, I'm gonna go with I really only drink coffee and water. So I'm gonna go with coffee. Nice Americano. Actually, no, I have a good tip. Okay, coffee from Cometeer which is Cometeer they are these frozen coffee pods that you boil water, like in the kettle or whatever. And you dump it on top. And they are it's the best coffee ever. I mean, I work from home. So we need to have coffee resources. I have an espresso machine that I really like. But this is even better. I'm telling you. They're frozen. They're expensive, but no more no less expensive than going out for a cup every day. Get them put them in your freezer, you'll You won't regret it.
Lexie Smith
Okay, again, never ceases to amaze me how so many beverages later I'm still learning learning new ones on this show. And also I think my my veins are probably like 70% Coffee 20% wine, and like 10% water and probably that's the wrong portion but I get you on the coffee and water.
Linda Zebian
Yeah, that's it at this point.
Lexie Smith
Now I have to give a shout out to Linda as well. I really encourage you guys to follow her on LinkedIn I do. She is such a You are such a great thought leader on the platform. Independent from Muck rack is a amazing resource but I really really feel that you have some some great insights and points of view so I'm going to point people to follow you on LinkedIn but where would you want to point people to to connect with you further?
Linda Zebian
No, yeah, LinkedIn absolutely is my is my network of choice and I appreciate those kind words I part of the reason why I joined Muck Rack was to help people just like me, so I'm so thrilled that I have the opportunity to to share you know, my experiences with with my network and our industry and to help.
Lexie Smith
Content Creation is a never ending grind. And sometimes we can feel like we're shouting into void and so you are not shouting into the void, me and many, many people are consuming and loving and appreciating the insights both you and Muck Rack are sharing. So thank you for coming on the show now twice a very rare thing. I think only one other person has ever been on here twice. So you're a very small percentage and um This was such a great chat guys. When you add her on LinkedIn, let her know you listen to the show. And I will say Cheers and thanks for coming and Pitchin’ and Sippin’ with us.
Linda Zebian
Thanks for having me, Lexie, it was so fun.