Cynthia Owens is something of a legend in Asia Pacific. She was a famous Wall Street journalist in Bangkok through some heady years and also worked for ABC News, CNBC Asia - also in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. One Bangkok veteran told me "if you wanted to know what was really going on in Bangkok, you had a drink with Cynthia."
I've heard her speak before. She has guru status in my book. She now helps major business leaders communicate more effectively.
Her sound but pithy advice captivated the delegates at day two of the Media Relations in the Digital Age conference in Singapore, with delegates from as far afield as Indonesia, Vietnam and Kuwait.
Cynthia's masterclass on how to pitch stories (especially to bloggers) is simple - "skip the spin".
In one year, the Wall Street Journal counted 8,600 press releases that hailed a "breakthrough". As Cynthia said: "I guarantee there were not 8,600 real breakthroughs that year." In other words it was hype. And very unsuccessful hype.
Cynthia's second big message was that early tweets count the most. If you're doing a press briefing today, don't mess around at the start. Get your main story out. That will be what people tweet about and retweet. If you spend a lot of the time at the start on secondary issues, that will be what is tweeted.
Simple, but I've never heard it before.
All the speakers at the conference have now decamped to Hong Kong. (It's a bit like Billy Smart's Circus, although none of us are caged - yet). You can follow the debate at the conference on Twitter by following #smrdigital
(Posted from Wanchai, Hong Kong)
I've heard her speak before. She has guru status in my book. She now helps major business leaders communicate more effectively.
Her sound but pithy advice captivated the delegates at day two of the Media Relations in the Digital Age conference in Singapore, with delegates from as far afield as Indonesia, Vietnam and Kuwait.
Cynthia's masterclass on how to pitch stories (especially to bloggers) is simple - "skip the spin".
In one year, the Wall Street Journal counted 8,600 press releases that hailed a "breakthrough". As Cynthia said: "I guarantee there were not 8,600 real breakthroughs that year." In other words it was hype. And very unsuccessful hype.
Cynthia's second big message was that early tweets count the most. If you're doing a press briefing today, don't mess around at the start. Get your main story out. That will be what people tweet about and retweet. If you spend a lot of the time at the start on secondary issues, that will be what is tweeted.
Simple, but I've never heard it before.
All the speakers at the conference have now decamped to Hong Kong. (It's a bit like Billy Smart's Circus, although none of us are caged - yet). You can follow the debate at the conference on Twitter by following #smrdigital
Some of the
conference delegates in Singapore working on a crisis communications exercise yesterday
(Posted from Wanchai, Hong Kong)
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