Archive for the ‘Media Relations’ Category

Bayview’s Kyle Parks offers tips on working with the media

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 by Jenna

Kyle is a contributing writer for the “Outside the Box” guest column in Brilliant Results magazine, a trade publication that provides executives of Fortune 1000 companies information on the latest news, resources, and tools relating to marketing and communications. His guest column in the July issue (pages 18-19) gave readers an insider’s perspective on how to work with the news media.

Bottom line: Even in today’s digital age, it’s still beneficial to work with traditional news media as long as you’re taking some key steps to help ensure that your message is reported accurately. In the article, Kyle puts forward his top three tips for working with the news media:

  • Keep your answers short and to the point.
  • Don’t answer a question unless you are certain of the response and are the right person to be providing the information.
  • Be extremely careful about going “off the record.”

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Growing a diverse mix of clients

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 by Leah

Journalists are often thrown stories on topics they know little about, and many thrive on the unpredictability and opportunity to learn something new (and do it quickly). 

Succeeding in public relations often requires a similar mentality. Many times we need to rapidly soak up information and understand a business quickly, so that we can help a client craft a message that’s both compelling and easy to understand.

This has been a key in our growth at Bayview PR as we build a diverse mix of clients. As two examples, that mix now includes Connelly, Carlisle, Fields & Nichols (CCF&N), one of Florida’s top insurance agencies, and Sterling Payment Technologies, one of the fastest-growing card processors in the electronic payments industry.

For CCF&N, we have secured placements in the St. Petersburg Times (a Q&A with John Connelly), and Tampa Bay Business Journal (commentary by Charles Chunn on the outlook for insurance rates heading into hurricane season). We are also working to make CCF&N top-of-mind with industry trade publications and websites.

For Sterling, we are forming relationships with trade media as well. In business-to-business PR work, trade media can offer a good way to reach a highly targeted audience of decision-makers. A key is putting out information that people in the industry will find useful. Showing our clients as experts is our goal – and that will get them more attention, credibility, and in turn, more business.

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Quick results for Colliers International

Friday, March 18th, 2011 by Leah

Bayview is proud to announce its newest client: Colliers International, an international commercial real estate firm with offices in Tampa Bay, Central Florida and Southwest Florida.

Colliers International began with Bayview last week and brought much excitement with it for the Bayview team. The Tampa Bay office was recently retained to list Baywalk, the 74,500-square-foot shopping complex in the center of downtown St. Petersburg, for $8 million.

Click to see news segment

 Bayview controlled the media outreach for the announcement and was able to garner interviews for Michael Milano of Colliers, who is handling the sale, with Channel 8, Fox 13, 10 News and Bay News 9. Although Baywalk has had its share of problems, people interviewed in the news segments saw the possibility of a sale as a good first step towards a hoped-for turnaround.

Colliers’ announcement was also featured in GlobeSt.com, The Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Bay Business Journal, and Florida Trend.

Bayview is very excited to be working with Colliers, and is looking forward to the future of Baywalk. Considering the Bayview office is a block from Baywalk, we have a few ideas on new stores and restaurants we’d like to see fill up the place. What are your suggestions for new stores in Baywalk?

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What do you get with 40 TVs, a DJ booth, wine cellar and an $8 million home sale?

Monday, January 10th, 2011 by Leah

WFLA- Channel 8's 6.p.m news coverage of Matt Geiger selling his mansion

You get news coverage.

Sometimes PR involves finding a trend or niche for a client to tap into. And sometimes the client news is so interesting on its own, that it creates its own path and as Kyle likes to call it, gives it “legs” – meaning the story walks around on its own (with our help, of course).

Bayview PR was recently given the job of doing media outreach for Engel & Volkers’ sale of retired NBA player Matt Geiger’s 28,000-square-foot north Pinellas County mansion. And we quickly realized how many “legs” the news would have.

Since this was mainly a local story, we created a targeted list of local reporters and outlets to contact and thought, “Let’s see how much the media cares.” As we were finalizing our plans for outreach, the St. Petersburg Times’ Mark Puente broke the story of the sale on a tip. Then, after getting the news release out and doing follow-up with other outlets such as the Tampa Bay Business Journal, The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Channel  8, our story walked all over the place.

Turns out the sale of a 6-bedroom, 8-bathroom house with a shark tank in the bathroom, 12 buffalo, and a 330,000-gallon pool with a fire pit in the middle is newsworthy, and even conversational. We started thinking it was a theme park with a 5,000-square-foot guest house attached.

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Bayview real estate clients get attention for expertise

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 by Leah

Two Bayview PR clients were in the news last week, reflecting their status as leaders in the real estate industry.

John Rymer of Rymer Strategies, a national-level residential real estate expert, was quoted in a St. Petersburg Times story on how higher-end home sales are improving in the Tampa Bay area, while the Tampa Bay Business Journal featured Franklin Street, a fast-growing commercial real estate services company, in a Strategies section story.

We keep close track of the real estate market, tied to our involvement with the Urban Land Institute’s Tampa Bay District Council, where Kyle is the marketing/PR chair. Our work focuses on media relations, industry involvement, speaking engagements, and for our residential real estate client, The Strand, a condo under construction in Clearwater, aggressive Realtor outreach. An example of this was a mention in Charles Rutenberg Realty’s novel “News and Notes” video update, which told the brokerage’s 2,000-plus Realtors about The Strand last week.

In residential real estate, developers and builders who were smart or fortunate enough to keep cash through the crash are well-positioned, and there are signs that 2011 may show improvement in sales beyond foreclosures and short sales.

And in commercial real estate, though the market continues to suffer, there are plenty of opportunities, particularly in multifamily housing, where prices have fallen to an attractive level for buyers who can come in and quickly improve profitability by upgrading apartment management.

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New Bayview client raises awareness of identity theft

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 by Kyle

In raising visibility for our new client, ALIANT Bank, our strategy is to find ways to talk about how the Alabama bank helps its customers, tied to its leaders’ ability to speak as experts on financial matters.

For example, ALIANT Bank recently held informational events on avoiding identity theft for residents in the Montgomery and Alexander City areas. We worked with our PR partners at The Lollar Group in Birmingham to gain news media coverage by the ABC affiliate WNCF-TV (see below for news clip) and the Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, along with a news story in the Alexander City Outlook.

ALIANT serves the Birmingham, Montgomery, and Alexander City markets, and is back on a growth track, fueled both by its retail operations and its success in making business loans. 

News coverage on ALIANT's identity theft seminar

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ULI housing forum draws attention

Thursday, July 1st, 2010 by Kyle

The outlook for the Tampa Bay area’s housing industry continues to be tough, but there are a few bright spots for the developers and builders who still have cash and are smart enough to find opportunities.

That was the message at last week’s Urban Land Institute housing forum at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Tampa. Among the panel members: Andrew Wright, managing partner of Bayview client Franklin Street Financial Partners, a fast-growing Tampa-based commercial real estate company.

Andrew used a Warren Buffett line to describe how tough times can show who’s smart and who isn’t. “When the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming naked,” he said.

The event was covered by both the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times, each included other thoughts by Andrew on the state of the market in their coverage.

St. Petersburg Times column by Robert Trigaux

Tampa Tribune story by Shannon Behnken

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Success for Southwind Hospitality

Monday, June 28th, 2010 by Jesse

Florida Real Estate Journal recently featured Bayview client Southwind Hospitality, a full-service hotel management company, in “Tips for Lenders Choosing Hotel Management.” Southwind Hospitality has also seen results from recent coverage in the St. Petersburg Times and the Gulf Coast Business Review.

Southwind Hospitality has properties from the Bay area to Jacksonville (and its executives have hotel experience from around the country). They handle all management responsibilities for a property owner or for a lender – and they move quickly, providing a sales and marketing plan and budget within 30 days of takeover of a property. The company is presently focused on distressed and underperforming properties, such as those in receivership or foreclosure.

Gilles Arditi guest column

Southwind Hospitality, small but growing quickly, offers high-level personal attention, with the experience to handle accounting, e-commerce, front desk operations, yield management, sales and marketing, food and beverage services, and general hotel operations. As just one example of their success, earlier this year Southwind led changes at a Jacksonville Howard Johnson that resulted in a 65% year-over-year increase in occupancy.

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Success for GarageSaleTracker.com

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 by Jesse

Bayview client GarageSaleTracker.com is featured at Lifehacker.com, and has been mentioned on ‘The Today Show,’ in Woman’s Day, and on local TV affiliates across the country.

GarageSaleTracker.com, with the ability to narrow searches by location or item with a best-in-class user interface, is positioned to replace Craigslist as the go-to site for garage sale hosts and buyers.

In this economy, interest in garage sales has grown – visitors to GarageSaleTracker.com (founded in 2008) are finding thousands of listings (and counting) in all 50 states (listings spike on weekends).

GarageSaleTracker.com has also just launched an iPhone application that allows consumers to get details about sales as they travel from one sale to the next, with mapping and directions searchable via ‘my location.’ You can also find GarageSaleTracker on Facebook.

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“Journalists are liars” and other notes from the front lines

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 by Missy

During a recent message and media coaching session with more than 130 leaders of an international nonprofit, one sentiment was prevalent: the media is an adversary.

Instead of looking at a media interview as an opportunity to share the organization’s mission and positive impact in the community, many of these leaders thought that the media was out to misconstrue the facts and give the nonprofit a black eye.

Some of the attendees had negative experiences in the past, which shaped their beliefs that one must always be on defense with the media. In many cases, a media interview is like a business transaction.

The reporter has a job – creating a factually accurate, interesting story – and needs the interviewee’s help to achieve that goal. The interviewee has a responsibility to provide the journalist with worthwhile information, background, trends, illustrations and interesting examples.

If it’s like a business transaction, treat it like one.

  • Do your homework. What does the journalist know about the topic? How has it been covered in the past? Become familiar with the reporter and the news outlet.
  • Look at it from their perspective. Why should their readers care? Why is it interesting? What does it mean? Why does it matter?
  • Always return phone calls and emails promptly. If you were offered an opportunity from a potential business partner, you’d very likely answer right away. If you’re not the right person to talk to, tell them who is.
  • Prepare for possible questions, especially the tough ones. If you’re asked about a problem, talk about the solution.
  • Answer their questions honestly. If you don’t know the answer, say so. The truth always comes out. Just ask Tiger or Toyota.

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