Jim James outlines the Speak PR Methodology, a five-stage framework that uses AI to turn your customers and team members into heroes and amplify their stories at scale. The approach emphasizes that people, not brands, are the real protagonists, and uses automation tools to distribute content across multiple formats and channels. It's designed to help small companies create compelling narratives without the time and cost of traditional PR.
Chapters
Hello, welcome to this episode of Speak PR. This is the podcast for you if you've got information to share and you're just trying to find some cost-effective and some efficient ways of doing that. And my experience is that it's technology, technology-assisted marketing tools that can help every company no matter how big or small. In fact, there's never been a better time to run a small company when it comes to marketing because the tools are amazing. Now, I started a program called the Speak PR Methodology, and I just completed the 6-week course with the first intake. And I want to just take a couple of minutes to share for anybody that might be interested in having a structured approach to building a PR program using technology might find within this Speak PR Methodology. So first of all, let's just have a look at the PR process. Now, on the course, we've seen that it's possible to save a lot of time and energy and money by using advanced technologies, including AI. Many of them are also completely free to use. It's really never been an easier time for a small company to use these tools to build a brand. Now, at the beginning of the program in week 1, We spent time on the power of story, and I reference Park Howell a good deal in there, but the need for what I call storification. Now, we define that contrary to popular opinion, the hero of a business story is not the founder nor the company, but the people who make up the team, the partners, and of course, the customers. Now, this is essential because from a marketing point of view, The narrator actually is the company. Now, I just apologize. That noise in the background is none other than Binky, who's having a big yawn in the back of the studio here. So now, as I was saying, the person in charge of communications, be it the marketing manager, you yourself, if you're owning the company, you can have a lot more fun because the subject of your marketing and your public relations is about the positive results that the company produces for these different heroes. So the first point in the Speak PR program is that the heroes of the story are those people that are benefiting from what your company or organization delivers to them. That's a fundamental part of this new paradigm. We're not too bad ourselves. We're talking about other people socially. That makes a lot more sense. But professionally, people get into talk about me, my products, and so on. But actually, people want to hear about them. They want to hear about other people like them that have gone through the same experience and have had great results. Now the company then is a mentor. It's a coach. It's a facilitator. So in personalization, we talk about the people as the heroes in the story, but we also then need to personalize them. So we visualize them in their roles as members of teams, partners, and customers. Now we introduce the term avatar, and we talk about the need to look at the schedules as well of avatars. In other words, what they do with their days and their weeks and their months and their years, because this will impact when and how we should share content. So in our next module, which is Engage, we talk about the familiar phrase content is king. And what we then talk about is the creative as queen, and it's made into a royal flush by adding context as prince. Context adds relevance. That's why context is important. And we looked at a matrix which specifies that content should be new, simple, and context-sensitive in order to be engaging and to be shared. In our next module, which is amplification, we discovered the platforms which can be used to automate the distribution of engaging content across all formats. So we delve into the creation of text, but also of video, of infographics, and of audio. Now, we discover the platforms in amplification which can be used to automate the distribution of engaging content in any format. Amplification also refers to the social sharing of content by others when it's sufficiently new, simple, and context-sensitive. Now, the goal, of course, is to have brand evangelists for your organization. And these could be members of staff, they could be your partners, or they could be your customers. Now, as these people share your content across their networks, this social amplification leads to posts going viral, or what is termed cascades. And we talk all about the theory of networks and cascades in in our modules under amplification. Now, in the final module, Know, we reviewed the various engagement metrics, which are all important, but we also introduced a concept of the Active Communications Index, the ACI. Now, the ACI, which we've developed, provides a simple equation which makes it possible to know how much content has been received across all channels over a period of time. Now, we believe this is important because the ACI can be controlled by you, but the vanity metrics of engagement are really a function of platform algorithms and really are beyond yours or my control. Now, the next important point about the ACI is that we must aim to keep this consistent, because it's the consistency of presence on your channels which create trust in the brand. So we really have to think about keeping a consistency of ACI because that will mean there's a constant flow of content into the marketplace. Now finally, having learned the 5 stages of Speak PR and how to get noticed using technology, it's important to be clear that this is a continuous cycle of content creation. You're writing the stories of your avatars as they reach their goals by being a part of your organization. Other people in similar situations will see these stories, which are new and simple and context-sensitive, and they will resonate with these people. And they then in turn will come to your organization and share their success as a result of being part of your organization. So when you think of public relations like this, as storytelling, It's really a great opportunity to have fun, to reach out and talk to people, and to narrate the success of others. If you narrate their success, they in turn will show their gratitude by sharing your story. Now that is what we call getting noticed. Public relations uses tools that are now AI-augmented, and in our Speak PR methodology, we introduce tools like TryLately, like AI Writer, like videos that help to auto-generate content at the touch of a button. So even for smaller companies, it's not about putting more time into creating content, it's about reaching out to people that are affected and impacted by your organization, finding out where they are in their journey, which you're helping them to move forward on, making them into heroes, and sharing that across the different formats. And let the amplification channels and platforms do the time-sensitive work by automating it. So I've just had the, the first exit survey and conversation and discussion with my first group. So on the next podcast, I'm going to share some of the insights that they shared with me today and how the Speak PR program has impacted the way that they approach public relations and given them some reassurance. Because one of the things we talk about in the Knowing module is the optimum amount of content that they should be sharing. And this is then relieving them of the anxiety of perpetual content creation and helping them to focus on creating compelling content and then distributing that through automation. So I'm looking forward to sharing with you the results of the last 6 weeks of the weekly workshops that we've been having on Speak PR. So in the meantime, I wanted to share this Speak PR program with you. I had originally created this using the Talkia AI platform where I type in the text and AI generates a voice for me, in this case Brian, and I change the pitch and the speed and he does the narration kindly. Somebody reached out to me saying that as much as they like the AI-generated voice, they prefer mine. So there we are. That's nice, isn't it? There's still a role for us humans. So I've re-recorded this, sharing it today so that you can hear my voice and hear what I think is important in creating compelling stories. If you like this, then please listen to the next podcast. It'll tell you about the outcomes of the Speak PR program. You can also find out more about the program at speakpr.co. And if you'd like more information and more of these ideas and tips and tools, then do come to eastwestpr.com and subscribe to our newsletter where every Friday we send out a selection of 6 articles, all there to help you to get noticed. So until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that you enjoy storytelling, because public relations is really the process of sharing good news, good information with other people so that they can take better decisions and achieve their own goals and be heroes in their own eyes and in the communities around them. And right now, as we head into Christmas after a fairly torrid year, I think we could all do with a little bit of good news. Thank you so much for listening.
