Nata PR School (EN)

Amal Amgaad is my guest for this episode, where we’ll be talking about our 12-week training course at the NATA PR SCHOOL, which she completed while also moving into her new job at YON-KA PARIS in the United States.

Amal has a degree in international marketing from the ESC Clermont Business School in France. She began her career working for major luxury brands like Hermès, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton. From a junior associate, she worked her way up to Head of Communications and Marketing for a major beauty manufacturer, which brought her all the way to her current position at Yon-Ka Paris in the U.S.

- Welcome, Amal! Thanks for agreeing to join us.

1- If I recall, you enrolled in our course because, in your new position, Yon-Ka was asking you to take on public relations while also juggling marketing and working with influencers. Also, I think Yon-Ka had just ended its contract with a public relations agency during the pandemic, and you had to handle that as well.

2- What were your expectations when the training began?

3- How did you manage both the course and your work? Was it difficult?

4- What were the main benefits of the training?

5- Do you continue to apply some of the PR/Social Media tactics you learned?

6- The pandemic has proven how important digital is. What is Yon-Ka's position on that? And have you learned tactics that help you in your work with influencers? How do you work with them?

7- Can you give us an outline of Yon-Ka's communications plan for the next few months? Do you have to adapt to COVID?

8- What do you think of TikTok? Is Yon-Ka on it?

9- How do you see the future of social media in the next three years? (Everything changes so fast on the internet, especially since the pandemic.)

10- What advice would you give to heads of marketing and communications who have to deal with very demanding employers?

Bonjour ! Hello Everyone

Welcome to the NATA PR SCHOOL podcast

Episode Number 29.

We all need both social media and PR

I like social media, especially since our clients started using it. Today, any reputable brand has a Facebook page, an Instagram account, and is closely watching what’s happening on TikTok. These tools have become essential communication channels for companies.

I like that our clients are active on these digital platforms. By using them, they have discovered the importance of the following six points:

a.  Investing time in developing these platforms.

b.  Creating original content (images, text and videos).

c.  Developing an original signature.

d.  Writing a unique story.

e.  Adapting copy to your target audience so they buy into your content and become fans of the brand.

f. Driving desire among fans and clients so that they want to learn more about products and new initiatives.

This observation goes for public relations too. PR and social media have much in common, and so we suggest to our clients an approach that combines the two in order to:

a. create original press releases;

b. showcase the company’s values and brand image;

c. tell a brand’s story;

d. grab the attention of journalists and influencers by investing time.

The main difference is in our target audiences: we forge links with journalists and influencers. We influence them. We make them want to tell a brand’s story and talk about its products.

A few years ago, many of our clients abandoned public relations in order to focus on social media. What was the outcome for many of them?

- Journalists and influencers thought that the brand had disappeared.

- Their SEO did not improve much.

- Their competitors were mentioned online and in traditional media.

The moral of this story is that if journalists and influencers aren’t aware of your brand’s presence, you will soon be replaced by your competitors.

I understand that people want to place more importance on new social media, mistakenly thinking that it will be a quick fix for all their issues. For more than a decade, now that these platforms have become increasingly widespread, it’s been recommended that brands combine social media and public relations to maintain their presence and relevance with their clients.

Success leaves its mark.

It’s your move. We’re here to answer your questions if you want to find out more about the powerful tools that PR and social media can be.

Contact us at www.natapr.com

One of our strategic partners specializing in brand imaging invited us to a career networking event during which professionals introduced themselves and talked about what they were looking for: new contacts or services they need to develop and increase their sales.

After the superb presentation by our strategic partner, imagine my surprise when I heard one executive ask: “What answer would you give someone who claims that it costs a lot to publicize and develop their brand image?”

My answer was the same as our partner’s: well, how much does it cost not to develop your brand image or publicize your products and services? How many contracts do you lose every day because you don’t publicize, which means more room for your competition?

During the presentation, our partner compared certain brands, like Tesla and Ford. Why is Tesla’s market capitalization higher than Ford’s? While Ford has sold millions of vehicles, Tesla has yet to hit one million.

I really like that example, because Tesla – just like Apple vs. Microsoft – has chosen to invest in its brand and create exciting electric cars. While the auto industry giants were fighting to up their sales numbers and their market shares, Tesla invested in its brand image and designed highly desirable electric vehicles.

While the major car makers’ sales were collapsing in 2020, Tesla’s sales were up 36%.

Now why is that? Tesla has always invested in its brand and promoting its brand.

Here are four questions to ask yourself:

1- Are your users ready to pay more for your services or products?

2- What’s your brand awareness? Are you known?

3- Do your customers see the quality of your products or services?

4- Is it easy for your customers to identify with your brand?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you still have a long way to go toward making yourself known.

Success leaves its mark.

It’s your move. We’re here to answer your questions if you want to find out more about the powerful tools that PR and social media can be.

Contact us at www.natapr.com.

We’re developing a service offer for a brand of chocolate that’s been in business for many years, with a traditional sales network that’s still its mainstay to this day.

However, for the past several months, even a few years now, the company has been losing market share. They know they need more consumers to get to know them, now, or buyers will start to choose a brand that’s better known for their chocolates come Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day.

Today it’s rare to have any monopoly over a market without raising your brand awareness to attract consumers.

Are you one of those entrepreneurs who invests the bulk of their resources in sales and very little in marketing? I’m sorry to tell you that this extremely risky marketing cycle has been very harmful during the pandemic because your customers are spending more time at their computers.

This is all the more tragic for a brand whose products, which are high-quality and have sold exceptionally well for it, are now sitting on the shelves because consumers haven’t heard of them.

Don’t wait until you’re in that situation. Make your products quickly available on your website or a transactional site, and get people talking about you.

- Send your products to a highly targeted list of influencers and media.

- Focus on a platform like podcasting, which is a very powerful online tool that’s still being overlooked.

Buyers will be even more interested in you, and they’ll take the risk of adding you to their shelves. But if your products don’t sell once they’re in their store, you can be sure that that second or third order will be very hard to get.

Yes, you have to invest in your sales, and that investment involves a budget as well as resources allocated to the company’s promotion, PR, and social media.

To start making yourself known, nothing beats combining PR with social media.

In our 20 years of coaching brands and services in getting out there, raising their profiles, and reaching their clients, we’ve managed to crack the codes.

And now we’re ready to share our pro tips with you in this podcast and our free webinars. In addition, our paid training sessions, led by a seasoned professional, will add to your success.

Take the leap! Sign up for our lists:

FREE NATA PR MODEL

What is a trend?

Simply put, a trend is a human action that’s on the rise – or, if you prefer, in demand. It could be an action or activity that few people do at the outset, but that becomes more popular with an increasing number of people over time.

A trend may very well be a desire that becomes increasingly popular, for instance, leaving the city to go live in the countryside during COVID.

It may be a demand for a newer or older product that an increasing number of people are looking for over time, like the return of '60s music or bell-bottoms.

In terms of religion or new associations, trends emerge because many people share the same beliefs: more and more Westerners are interested in Buddhism and happiness.

In finance, we often hear about market trends.

For us at the agency, trends are often built into our tactics for presenting new products.

It’s important to know that influencers and journalists are looking for trends and want to let their fans or readers know what’s new and what's trending.

At the beginning of each year, every profession chimes in with its predicted trends, ranging from colour to design to food and any other new product or idea.

Let me give you an example. My partner shared a trend with me that appeared in Monocle magazine – “GENTLENESS”.

Is this a trend that brands and companies will be including in their marketing plans this year?

We chose to include this trend in several of our service offerings and let our clients know about it. We feel certain that with everything we’re living through and seeing in social media now, gentleness is a trend that has a bright future. No doubt it will become a basic need. It’s a bit like the buy-local trend, a long-term trend that’s become one of consumers’ chief concerns. Some are adopting it as one of their values, and even as their mission.

Gentleness means taking the time to take care of yourself, your skin, your hair, and what you eat. For a natural hair care brand, the term ‘gentleness’ is entirely relevant.

What are you doing to be gentler with yourself and those around you?

What will gentleness mean in the coming months? It’s a trend to watch…

Download or free NATA PR MODEL and you will be added to our list!

Lyne Ste-Marie is my guest for this episode, where we’ll be talking about this new profession of social media influencer.

I’ve known Lyne for many years and I’m a great admirer. She’s a woman of warmth and intelligence, who has reinvented herself several times over the course of her career. She’s been a model and worked a lot in Asia. She became one of television’s most popular “weather girls”. And over time, she’s kept in touch with her fans and increased her influence by always “keeping it real”. As a mother of two, she is, for us at the agency, an influencer with a real and very active community, and we love working with Lyne.

- Welcome, Lyne! Thanks for agreeing to join us.

Before I start with any specific questions, could you tell us about your experience on the internet? When did you create your Facebook page, and why?

1- What does influence mean to you?

2- Do you see yourself more as a blogger or an influencer? What’s the difference for you, if any?

3- We also hear about “content creators”. Is that one of your services?

4- As someone who’s in direct contact with your fans every day, what is it that brands and companies don’t understand (or underestimate) about this relationship that’s also become a real career for you?

5- Our American neighbours like to stick labels on things, and according to my research, there are four million “mommy bloggers” in North America. Do you see yourself as a “mommy blogger”?

6- Without naming any brands, can you tell us about a collaboration that’s been a real success on your platforms, and tell us why?

7- What do you think of TikTok? Are you on it?

8- What’s the future of social media after COVID, over the next three years for example? (Everything changes so fast on the internet.)

To get on our list: www.natapr.com

To contact Lyne Ste-Marie: www.lynestemarie.com

I often say that working in PR is like working out at a GYM.

You can read and study all you want about PR, communications, and marketing too... but you won’t be able to work those PR/Social Media (PRSM) muscles very hard for very long until you’ve written to an influencer or journalist with a request.

The good news is that this approach can be learned – and you can do it. That’s right, my business-minded friends, you absolutely have it within you to develop those muscles to introduce yourself, raise your profile, win more clients, and boost your sales.

So, where do you start?

First, ask yourself what your clients are reading and viewing online and in the traditional media.

Create a TOP 10 of the most-viewed platforms and media.

And just like a gym workout:

1-Create a routine for reading and viewing

a. Read newspapers every day

b. View a few Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok pages every day

c. Read magazines once a month

d. Go straight for the sections about your competitors or your field

Stick to this reading routine for at least a month.

2-Take note of the trends and the topics addressed by our influencer and reporter friends, so you can anticipate certain shifts.

As the year begins, every sector issues their predictions and trends:

a. 12 colour trends for the coming year

b. Trends in design, furniture, decorating, cooking, dining, and more

After a few weeks, you won’t read a paper or a blog in the same way.

In fact, I see this PRSM Gym effect every year in our young recruits, who had never developed these viewing or analyzing habits before.

You could even take it further and introduce this practice into your everyday life, like a gym workout.

I also like to compare it to my musical training. As a pianist with a degree in music, I cannot listen to a piece of music without hearing the structure and harmonic sequences.

The same is surely true for movies and radio. With enough analysis, attendance, and practice, discipline inevitably grows strong – as I like to say, like a muscle.

Those muscles are so helpful in achieving and realizing our dreams.

Now it’s time to work your PR/Social Media muscles! Tell me what you’re reading online or on paper.

Get on our mailing lists to find out our next training session dates: www.natapr.com

À la semaine prochaine!

Just like Lewis Hamilton and Kim Kardashian, all of us have a brain, and 24 hours in a day at our disposal. How we use those two resources, when we’re free and healthy, is up to us.

Like many of you who spend part of the day sitting and working in front of your computer screen, I, too, without thinking too much about it, use my brain – an exceptional tool that we use to operate in society and earn our living.

Are you taking care of your brain? Strange concept, right? Yet people are talking about mental health like never before. What do you do to cool it down at the end of the day? Or what do you do to get even more out of it?

Personally, I’ve added a time for reflection into my morning routine, while everyone in the house is sleeping. It’s often during this quiet period that ideas come to me. They’re the ideas I’ll use to serve my clients better and, ultimately, run the agency, so that all my employees can also benefit.

For some people, these periods when you stop to think are “SUPER THINKING” moments. For me, they’re the moments when I hear myself think, where I let everything come to the surface, including fears, joy and frustrations. I’m letting out the feelings that dwell in me and the thoughts that trigger them. Joy is one of my favourite emotions lately. I can draw on it to work incredibly efficiently, writing up service proposals that contain excellent ideas to make our clients shine.

It’s also during these moments when I’m “hearing myself think” that I hit upon our clients’ unique features – the ones that will be of interest to influencers and journalists.

I have to admit, I also have guilty pleasures for cooling down this wonderful personal computer in my head:

NETFLIX is often my solution for “getting my mind off things”. I know, it’s not a very exotic method, and it doesn’t keep my mind from spinning. Still, for me, watching movies, TV shows, or documentaries lets me disconnect from my everyday flood of thoughts. It’s really a mini brainwash.

How many thoughts do you have in a day? Research data online ranges from 6,000 to 60,000*. It doesn’t much matter where the real number lies. We all know our thoughts are plentiful, and that many of them swirl around until we’re exhausted.

Yes, meditation helps still the hamster wheel that’s constantly spinning inside our head. But there’s nothing like practice (repetitive exercises) to see what’s going on in our head and pinpoint what we’re thinking.

A few years ago, I also discovered professional coaching techniques to help me see things clearly. I carefully studied a super-simple technique with incomparable power, and it’s one I use in all our training courses.

There’s nothing like thinking as a pair to see more clearly and move forward more quickly.

And that’s precisely the approach I offer you in every course. Putting two – or many – heads together gets me a lot further, a lot faster.

Find out about our next training here : www.natapr.com

*SCIENCE & VIE https://www.science-et-vie.com/cerveau-et-intelligence/nous-aurions-6200-pensees-par-jour-en-moyenne-57905

At NATA PR, we’re so committed to being a service business that our number one value is serving at the highest level.

Our three core values are always laid out when I first meet with my employees, and every month when I meet up with them, we talk about this number one value.

We always ask each other these three questions:

- How can we serve our customers better?

- Are we still doing the best we can to serve influencers and journalists?

- How can management (me) serve employees better and help them accomplish what’s asked of them?

At the agency, we have three kinds of clients:

1- Brands and companies

2-Influencers and journalists

3-Students in our training courses

There are five steps to serving these three client groups at the highest level:

1- Listening

2- Asking the right questions

3- Putting it into practice

4- Analyzing and correcting

5- Relaunching or continuing the campaign

We’re guides. We’re advisors. We use such a wide range of complementary services that some of them aren’t even included in our contracts or performance indicators.

We’ve guided and trained countless fresh young marketing directors!

Agencies like ours (more than ten years old) have huge contact lists that they put to good use for their clients’ benefit. We also test all the new tools the Internet has to offer, so that we can give our clients the best advice and, ultimately, serve them at the highest level.

If you want to know more and learn how to maximize PR / Social Media actions, which are always useful and effective in a marketing plan, get on our list!

Find out about our next training here : www.natapr.com

Before we get started, I want all the marketing pros out there to know that we have nothing but respect for you!

I sincerely believe it’s impossible to understand the scope and power of PR if you’ve never done it yourself.

Here’s what the marketing pros don’t know:

1-  They confuse influencers/journalists with consumers.

2-  They think they know how we should talk to influencers/journalists.

3-  They associate press releases with advertising.

4-  They imagine that we’re in control of publication dates and article formats.

5-  They have some difficulty understanding the concept of “time” in PR.

6-  They associate one product with one mention.

7-  They think we can share our list of influencer/media contacts with them.

8-  They often choose influencers based on the number of fans and forget to find out where those fans live.

9-  They often misunderstand what “organic” implies.

10- They confuse our power to influence with the power dictated by advertising budgets.

I’ll say it again: Don’t be hard on yourselves, marketing friends. What you don’t know about our profession is totally understandable.

This is why I created the Nata PR SCHOOL, and I invite you to register for our training program if you want to know more and learn how to maximize PR actions, which are always helpful and effective in a marketing plan.

Find out about our next training here : www.natapr.com