Harnessing the Power of PR to Elevate Your Business
Resort Trades’ publisher, Sharon Scott Wilson, recently interviewed Georgi Bohrod Gordon, CEO of a PR firm that is very well known in the timeshare resort industry, GBG & Associates, in the Resort Trades Learning Center. The two discussed tactics and the latest trends for using public relations (PR) tools for marketing a business.
Resort Trades readers and viewers are timeshare resort professionals focused on the latest news about people and events affecting their industry, they are also able to access numerous articles and videos advising them about best practices. Both women have rich histories in the field. Wilson operated SharonINK PR & Marketing until she took over management of The Trades. Gordon has continued to operate her shop for the past 30-plus years as a premier provider with proven track records of proficiency.
Following are excerpts from the conversation, which can be found at https://youtu.be/CpvptRuxm0E.
SHARON: Welcome to the Resort Trades Learning Center, where we share resort and hospitality news and information each month at YouTube.com/ResortTrades.
If you’re interested in how to include public relations (PR) into your marketing mix — particularly in the timeshare resort industry — then I think you’re going to learn something here from our conversation.
So, welcome to Georgi Bohrod Gordon RRP. I’m Sharon Scott Wilson, also RRP [or, Registered Resort Professional].
GEORGI: Thank you, Sharon. It’s great to be here and good to see you, as always.
SHARON: We first wanted to share a little bit about our background. You and I have known each other for probably more than 30 years. Tell us just a little bit about how you got involved in the industry and what you’re doing right now.
GEORGI: I’d be glad to. ‘Back in the day,’ PR looked a lot different. I was a Communications major at Northwestern. When I moved to California I was doing some work in PR in the dot-com world. At the time I was working for a small boutique agency. One day they came out and said, “By the way, we’re going to close up shop. Here’s two weeks’ pay. Good luck!”
A friend of mine said, you know there’s a timeshare being built in Carlsbad. It happened to be the Carlsbad Inn being built by Winner’s Circle and Jim Watkins (who’s still with us). He’s one of the great founders of timeshare. He’s the one that really made timeshare a family-oriented niche in the hospitality industry. They were looking for a marketing gal. “I’m a marketing gal!” I thought and I went to work for them.
From then on, I became very active in all the world of timesharing including in ARDA [the American Resort Development Association], which was actually ALDA [the American Land Development Association] at the time.
Originally people would come to me just for press releases. Since then we’ve morphed into providing digital communications website development,… anything that has what I call ‘the pretty pictures and words with a reason behind them.’ So that’s what I’ve been doing for 30 some years for numerous clients. Most of them now are business-to-business (B2B), even though I’ve had quite a bit of experience in the B2C world, too.
SHARON: I started in the timeshare industry as membership director for ARDA. Later, I accepted a position with [what was then Vacation Resorts International] VRI, moved to the West Coast, and married my previous husband, who is now deceased, sadly. That’s where you and I first became acquainted.
GEORGI: Actually, we met for lunch! I I came up from San Diego on the train and you came down from Orange County to San Clemente. We had lunch and formed the basis of our relationship there. I’ll never forget that ride.
SHARON: Right! It was a fun day.
Related: How PR fits into the marketing mix?
Formatting Your News Release
SHARON: Georgi, you really know your stuff. Would you describe how you format news releases, because often I will receive these terribly self-promotional news releases about what a great company they are!
GEORGI: First of all, the most important part of communicating stories is to have news…in other words, something that is newsworthy, something that is new. It’s fresh. What you were referring to is sort of just a description that you might find on a website.
What you want to be able to do is to give an editor or reporter new information – something that will benefit their readers and maybe, even, benefit them. This is very important. I actually have a list of about 20 newsworthy items that you can use to generate stories. If you want to reach out to Sharon or me, I can provide you with that list via email. I think it’s very helpful. It ranges from things like the promotion of a new officer, to the building of a new playground. All those things have newsworthy content.
You can find all sorts of examples online on the way to go about crafting a press release, but it’s very important to start with am attention-grabbing headline that says what your story is about. The headline has the real meat in it. For example, your headline might read, “Resort Trades has been sold to the New York Times for one gazillion dollars.”
SHARON: From your lips to God’s ears! “Hello New York Times! it’s me, Sharon!”
GEORGI: Are you listening, New York Times?
This is different if it’s something you’re going to have to pitch to an editor. For example, if I were sending a news release to Sharon, I might say, “Mobius Vendor Partners has a one-billion-dollar contract with all the hospitals in the United States to do surveys!”
One billion dollars would certainly get her attention! That’s important news and from there we can develop the story or the blog that can have more nuances in it.
So, you have your interesting lead and if you’re emailing an editor, have that lead up front so they’ll know what the basis of your story will be.
We can use a lot of other ways to reach out to editors and reporters. I usually use email even though they say they have a gazillion emails across their desk. I sometimes ‘tweet’ them. I haven’t sent an ‘X’ to them, yet!
A good practice in marketing is to make sure your message touches them three or four times. So I might just share in advance to prepare them for my important message. Later, you can also do a follow-up. I might write, “I was really glad to be able to send you this story. You don’t have to say have you published it, yet, but I just want to thank you for considering it.”
Related: 6 P’s of Marketing to Grow Your Business
Formulating the Right Messaging
GEORGI: There are services that are going to help you find out if you’re going to the right people. There are organizations like Meltwater or Cision. You can look up editors and reporters to see what they’ve written about to see if they would be interested in receiving your story. Also, it’s the same with media outlets. So do some homework before you even send out that press release.
SHARON: That’s great advice because sometimes I will get ads for a ‘special room discount. We’re having an August blowout!’ Well, that’s B2C! I’m B2B! Know your target publication and their audience and what their interests are because, otherwise, I will block you and won’t see any more for your emails.
GEORGI: Right, Sharon. However, if those folks would put a different twist on the story and after their room blowout they could send you a press release that says something like, “The blowout breaks all records at Marriott Vacation Clubs, generating X number of visitors over last year.”
That would be your B2B story. So you can take a B2C event and perhaps make it more of a case study.
SHARON: You need to know what are you trying to express; what do you want timeshare professionals, prospective job candidates, or Wall Street investors to know?
GEORGI: That’s right Sharon. You need to be very conscious of who your stakeholders are. They include the media, Wall Street, perhaps even some consumers who track their own Resort, and so forth.
SHARON: We spoke earlier about preparing content that’s engaging. I know you’ve described yourself as a nuts-and-bolts person, but you also have a keen understanding of how to engage reader interests through storytelling.
GEORGI: Yes! For example, one of my clients, Mobius Vendor Partners, has a new ‘sharing-and-caring’ initiative on their website. Philanthropic endeavors are in their DNA. So, I might say something along these lines: “Mobius Vendor Partners supports Lemonjuice’s efforts to raise money for Ukrainian Soldiers.” That’s true and that’s good, but look at the difference between saying something like that and what Jan Barrow, Lemonjuice’s VP of Business Development, wrote:
“For Lemonjuice Chief Executive Officer, Alex Krakovsky, Ukraine holds profound personal significance. Born within its borders, he embarked on a journey that led him to the shores of the United States more than four decades ago when his parents immigrated from Ukraine to America. The roots he planted in Ukraine were not forgotten when Lemonjuice Solutions took shape. Drawing on his previous business relationships, Alex established an office in Kyiv, a vital hub for operational, legal, and title research, and serving as the cornerstone of our groundbreaking Resorts Reimagined™ program. This Ukrainian outpost, home to a devoted team of thirty-five valued employees, who offer support to Lemonjuice’s 120 stateside employees. Several from the Lemonjuice Solutions’ Ukrainian team have seen their homes reduced to rubble, while all their lives have been upended, and their children displaced. They carry the great weight of unimaginable hardship of an unprovoked war upon their shoulders.
Lemonjuice Solutions stands with their Ukrainian colleagues and the people of Ukraine. Their strength and courage inspire us, forging an unbreakable bond that transcends our borders.”
This is storytelling to the key and then she goes on about how you can donate to this new website and how you can help folks in Ukraine.
If you’re having trouble with storytelling, perhaps you’ll benefit by having a professional who can help you get some good stories. You probably have the stories lurking in your heart, but just haven’t had them expanded upon.
Related: Data Visualization: Using Financial Data to Tell a Story
Pros and Cons of Using AI
SHARON: Speaking of how to get ideas for stories, at one point you and I had talked about using ChatGPT. We certainly don’t want to be overly dependent on this new application, but it’s a good idea stimulator.
GEORGI: First of all, GPT is an acronym meaning ‘generative pre-trained transformer.’ It can create new content and audio/video images, even code. There’s one for art creation and even voice replication.
There are lots of things that chat GPT does. I thought it’d be kind of fun to ask ChatGPT to list the pros and cons of using AI material and, wouldn’t you know it: He/she/it came back to me with these bullet points, in particular: It can be efficient in time saving and they are scalable and available so you can get more information or less information in a very quick amount of time.
I ran this test and all the information that I’m sharing with you came up within 30 seconds! This is something we, as communicators, used to do online extensively. Now, ChatGPT does it right away. But you have to make sure that you monitor it, of course. It’ll give you strong data-driven insights, which is very exciting.
AI can give you content ideation and creation. I’ve asked AI to do things and then you have to take it and re-edit it and re-edit it again. But the basic facts and formatting are already there, which is a great advantage if you’ve got a lot of things to do.
It also gives you some social insights into how people react to things. I want to say garbage in garbage out, but whatever you’re asking ChatGPT, make sure it’s specific enough so it can come back with some good answers. You have to really work with it to make it sound more human. Eventually it will probably learn how to do that.
In addition, you must be very careful about copyright because it just pulls information. It doesn’t really research it to any degree; it just says ‘this is gospel because it was on the worldwide web.’ So you have to make sure that you’re not infringing on any copyright.
SHARON: Interestingly I heard there’s an app that will measure the amount of AI content in a written document. So, Google, for instance, can instantly rate a post based on the percentage of original, versus AI-generated content.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: There are several such services. One of the most commonly used is Originality.ai. According to their website, “Originality.AI is not just an AI-written text detector but a complete content creation quality control tool. It provides an easy-to-use Plagiarism Checker and a Readability Score Checker that provides the ideal test and scores to help you rank in Google.”]
GEORGI: It’s much easier for kids to cheat today. They can lift stuff right off of the Ai and turn it in as their reports. They need to learn to not be overly reliant on AI. You still have to use your innate human skills. You have to consider ethics going back to learning to spell. It’s not too ethical if you’re just copying it out of an AI-generated piece. This is very important for all of us. There’s a learning curve in getting to know how to integrate Ai and chat into the work you’re doing and it does take practice, like any other kind of computer program.
A Few More Tips
SHARON: After being a PR professional for…dare I say…more than 30 years, can you share a few tips with us on creating content:
GEORGI: One thought that occurs to me right off the bat is, unless you write to the New York Times use shorter sentences. My first tip would be that you want to aim at a fifth or sixth grade level. When you read the New York Times, all you have to do is pick up the first article. I have to have a dictionary with me from the very beginning! They must pride themselves on using what my mother used to call fifty-cent words. (Now they’re probably five-dollar words. Right?) Most of us like to live at fifth or sixth grade-level.
Second, an average press release should be no longer than 500 words. But if it turns out to be 300 words, you’re not going to go to jail. Nobody’s going to want you to add on some fluff here to make your press release longer. The reason 500 words seemed to be the sweet spot comes from years ago. If you get an old-fashioned piece of paper…remember those pieces of paper? An eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch one of those with single-space type was 500 words. That’s how people came to that number for a press release.
Another thing is to keep jargon out of it. If you’re going to say VPG, tell people what VPG stands for. Not everyone knows that it means volume per guest.
Another thing that we want to do is to make sure that the right people are reading your content. If you’re trying to reach the business professional in the resort world use Resort Trades. If you’re starting out new in the industry, maybe you need to do a little research, like using Google Alerts.
Get to know some reporters. It’s really helpful. Because I know Sharon’s publication so well, I know the kinds of material that she’s looking for. I have some clients involved in other niches, so I work with other publications so that I can slant the material to fit their interests.
They’re kind of pricey, but you can use Meltwater or Cision to look up reporters who are specifically going to be interested in your topic. It’s a targeted way rather than a rifle approach of sending a press release to a thousand different reporters, most of whom may not even be interested in your topic.
SHARON: That’s right! It’s a very amateurish approach and quite annoying. I put those emails into spam and block them from further communication. I find these emails are usually from an intern or graduates fresh out of J-school.
GEORGI: Another thing I should mention is that once a press release has become live – let’s say Resort Trades has published it – then what I like to do is take that link and socialize it.
SHARON: Well, Georgi, you’ve shared a lot of great tips today. I’d really like to thank you. I’m sure our viewers will find plenty of useful nuggets, too. You had mentioned earlier that you’d be happy to share various items that you have available.
GEORGI: Again, I have a list of newsworthy ideas that are particularly oriented to timeshare or hospitality. So, give me a call and I’ll share 20 news-worthy ideas that might spark your imagination. Another item that might be of interest to you are the results of a ChatGPT’s query asking for the pros and cons of using AI.
Georgi can be reached at Georgi@GBGandassociates.com; or by calling 760-8034522.
