I have to chuckle about how many people today talk about making millions on the Internet as if money just falls off the screen. If that were the case, of course, smart companies like the New York Times and other publishers would have figured out a way to monetize the Web. And the people talking about making the fortunes would be lolling on the proverbial beach.
What anyone can do today is use the Internet to get free publicity. I’ve written before about the firm that went from Anonymity to Fame in Just One Tweet.
The fact is that the Internet has leveled the playing field so you no longer need to be a behemoth to have a worldwide megaphone. Here are five ways to get noticed in a Web 2.0 World:
Have a great story to tell. No one will care about your latest new hire unless of course it’s Steve Jobs. Instead play up the new, the distinctive, the relevant. Tie it to news or the latest business trend if possible.
Be an expert. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, just know more than the next person. Think today how many people call themselves social media experts. Are they? Probably not. They just know a little bit more than the next person.
Become a social media maven. Don’t look for business-building but relationship-building through social media. Keywords and postings are also searchable in Google, AOL, etc.
Issue a press release, which contrary to rumors of its demise still works. A well-written press release still opens media door, and, equally important, drives traffic to your website. Here is a rull of thumb: For bloggers, tight is right. For general consumption, keep it simple.
The blogosphere recently has been having a collective laugh riot over a Microsoft video about holding a launch party for Windows 7.
In case you haven’t seen it, the video features a group of politically correct people talking about having a launch party for Windows 7 in a way that’s totally unbelievable and horribly acted. Apparently, it’s not a parody, but meant to be for real.
Microsoft would do well to remember the key factor behind any successful launch. It has nothing to do with using the latest cool technology or gimmick and everything to do with properly positioning your product or service.
It never fails to amaze me how many companies spend hours developing their product or service insuring that it has all the latest bells and whistles but spend so little time on the messaging and positioning. I think it’s because there is an underlying, though misguided assumption, that the product speaks for itself. It’s great, therefore, people will automatically understand it.
Along those lines, there’s an interesting article in The New York Times about how the first automobiles were complete duds. People were confused about what to make of these new contraptions that looked like three-wheeled machines or bicycles. That all changed, however, once innovators made the machines look a little more familiar (more like carriages) and coined a term that hit home: “horseless carriage.”
Mary Tripsas, the article’s author, makes a key observation. We make sense of the world by classifying things into categories. For that very reason, when we introduce a new product or service, we need to make it easy for potential consumers or clients to classify it.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re launching a wireless product that enables companies to better track merchandise by automatically identifying the location of the merchandise. Yes, it may have the latest technology, have more features than a competitor. But what description will best capture its benefits? Sure you can call it a wireless tracking device but what does that truly mean? Why not call it a MerchandiseTracker or MerchandiseTrackingDevice.?
People had no idea to make of it until innovators hit on a description that made sense then: “horseless carriage.” Without being able to make a comparison or classify a product or service into a category, it’s tough to hook potential customers, according to Tripsas.
So next time you are launching a new product or service, here’s a checklist to ask yourself:
What do I most want my customers or clients to remember about my new product or service?
What will get them most excited and most likely to want to know more?
How can I describe it so that the description makes it easily understood and put into the right context?
I’ll be talking about this and other issues in two upcoming free webinars. Click here to learn more and to register.
So many companies give lip service to customer service not realizing that it is as important to their branding and bottom line as advertising. Today I want to give a shout out to a company that doesn’t just talk the talk but embodies it. I’m talking Carnival Cruise Lines.
My husband, George, and I were to take a Carnival Cruise right before Labor Day. Unfortunately, we had to have an emergency disembarkation after being on the boat only one hour when my husband suffered a medical problem. Carnival’s doctor examined George and deemed that he needed to get to a hospital. We were quickly met by a launch boat, which took us to shore where an ambulance met us.
Although everything was a blur as it often is in a crisis, and we somehow soldiered through this, Carnival’s support team called us multiple times over the next few days to be sure everything was properly taken care of. In a virtual sea of discomfort, it was reassuring to have someone there checking in on us.
I have no idea what a Carnival Cruise is like since we disembarked after just one hour being on the board, but the company certainly earned our vote with they way they handled our situation. And, no questions asked, we were told we would receive a complete refund.
Carnival made what was a horrific experience a little bit better and in the process earned our good will. The company actually acted like a human being rather than a corporation. It obviously has in place a system for dealing with crises (we received a packet with support numbers) and of course our emergency disembarkation was not a first for the company. However, all companies as part of their branding should have a policy, or at least a consumer or customer bill of rights, that dictates how it handles customer problems. Jet Blue, as you recall, famously issued one last year after it's dastardly delay problem. It’s easy to be a good corporate citizen when things go right. It’s how a company handles problems that separates the worthy company from the lackluster. It's a tremendous way to get free PR and incalcuable word of mouth.
What can you do to make your business – or the company you work for – go the extra mile for its customers? I’d love to hear from you.
How can a self-proclaimed geeky company with no knowledge of public relations go from virtual anonymity to media darling with just one tweet?
This is the story of how social media is changing how companies make news and how the new world of public relations is practiced
It all began around 10 am CT on August 12, 2009, when Ryan Kelly, founder and CEO, of market insights and analysis firm Pear Analytics of San Antonio, posted the following onTwitter:
"The Twitter Study we mentioned at #bmprsa is now available: http://bit.ly/17htXE interesting results..." BMPRSA is a San Antonio PR and social media group where Kelly had spoken a few weeks before and mentioned the pending study.
No sooner did he post the tweet that a friend from sales and marekting company Sales by 5 DM'd or direct messaged him on Twitter: "Please let me know when you release it, and I'll send it to Mashable."
By 5 pm the very same day, Pear's study was featured on the front page of Mashable, one of the largest blogs discussing social media and technology. By 6 pm, the study was the Number One and Two trending topic on Twitter. Later that evening, Kelly was interviewed by Robert Scoble, formerly of Fast Company and now an evangelist for Rackspace. And from there it went viral.
Google Pear Analytics today and you'll see some 500 articles from everyone from the BBC to CNET to NBC.com to outlets worldwide writing about its study. It's the sort of publicity a company would pay a big chunk of change to get.
Besides pointing out the phenomenal "make or break" quality of social media, there's a delicious irony to Pear's story. Its study's big news was that 40% of Twitter messages are what it cleverly called "pointless babble" with just 8.7% of Tweets to be deemed of value with worthwhile news content.
Of course, without Twitter, Pear's study might have seen the fate of so many studies that end up unread and unreported. Nothing like soaring to prominence on a media you're deflating.
What's also fascinating about Pear's story is that the company followed none of the traditional PR practices. No press release. No outreach to media. No loud announcement.
So what's the secret to Pear's PR success?
"I can attribute its success to a few things," says Kelly, who was as surprised as anyone that the study took off and says "I know nothing about PR. One, by analyzing the Twitter stream and categorizing the content we did something no one else had done. Where, however, we really struck a chord was by labeling the most popular category "pointless babble." I think if we would have named this something else, it may not have gone as far. Most of the news outlets used that phrase in their headlines.
"And lastly, I have to say we had a little luck that day in that no other major news happened that week--like Michael Jackson--that would have buried our news easily."
And we'll add that he had the smarts to post this very not "pointless babble" on Twitter.
I'd love to hear what you think about the "Tweet" heard 'round the world and what it says about the practice of public relations?
Don’t call in the pallbearers yet. In a year characterized by the death of publications and publishers struggling to monetize assets, it’s not all death and gloom.
Indeed, one side of the news business is thriving. And, we’re not talking porn, sensationalism or dumbed-down content (caught you, heh?) We’re talking about the new world of online advertising.
Welcome to remnant media (which sounds like a shop for used ads), a thriving sector of online advertising that is helping both publishers and advertisers monetize the web. Consider that research and investment firm Think Equity calls non-premium display (Think Equity’s gussied-up description for remnant) the highest-growth segment of online media over the next five years, with the greatest potential to create significant opportunities and market dislocations. And if that’s not going to grab you, how about Think Equity’s estimate that non-premium display will reach nearly $11.5 billion by 2013 and represent more than one-third of all display advertising?
So what the heck is remnant or non-premium display advertising and why should we care? We’re talking about online ad space (or in web lingo inventory) publishers don’t sell themselves but give to third parties like AdMeld or Pubmatic to sell through ad exchanges or ad networks. These online marketplaces let advertisers bid to place ads online.
Consider for a moment that a site like The Huffington Post doesn’t have any problems selling ads on its home page – or what’s known as premium display advertising. But dig deeper into that site and there may be less prominent areas that either aren’t selling or aren’t getting a high enough price. It’s sort of like a housing development where the prime locations sell quickly but the less desirable ones may languish or go for less than they’re worth.
Enter companies like AdMeld, which help publishers maximize their revenues. AdMeld manages the entire process for high-end publishers like the Huffington Post and Thomson Reuters using its technology platform to obtain the most suitable ads at the best prices for publishers. Publishers, according to AdMeld typically see a 30-300% lift in revenues from their remnant inventory.
So what’s in it for us?
To find out, I posed that question to online advertising maven Ben Barokas, co-founder and chief revenue officer of AdMeld.
“You can create the best marketing campaign in the world, but if it doesn’t reach the right audience, it’s a waste of your resources. AdMeld helps world-class, premium web sites deliver ad campaigns more effectively through networks and exchanges,” said Barokas
“For the average Joe, we help his favorite web sites make more money from advertisers so they can keep providing him with all that fantastic content for free," said Barokas. We also help make the ads he sees on those sites more relevant by empowering the networks and exchanges to make more intelligent decisions.”
AdMeld has created an online juggernaut; it just closed on $8 million of new financing and in less than two year’s time has gone from zilch to many thousands of a percent growth.
So what can we learn from a company like AdMeld in terms of building our business and/or brand?
Glom onto a high-growth niche area. Note that AdMeld didn’t aim to become the online optimization solution for all publishers, just large publishers.
Avoid conflict of interests. AdMeld doesn’t work on the advertiser side, just with publishers.
Solve a problem that you know firsthand. Before founding AdMeld, Barokas spent years on the publisher side struggling with the challenges of optimizing remnant inventory manually.
Research your market thoroughly before jumping in. “The best piece of advice I have before starting a company is listen to your constituency,” said Barokas. “Though I had my own knowledge of the space, I spent a lot of time with my peers in digital advertising operations and technology understanding best practices and the limits of current technology before launching AdMeld.
Find partners with complementary skills. “My co-founder, Brian Adams, is a brilliant engineer, and my CEO, Michael Barrett has spent decades driving revenue for some of the world’s largest publishers,” said Barokas. “We make a really effective team because we complement each other’s skills. I can’t emphasize enough how important that is.”
People love to set up dichotomies and the latest one circulating around the web is that age old duel: Advertising vs. PR. It sort of reminds me of the war between the sexes. Sure there are certain things men can do better than women and vice versa but in the end there are a lot of similarities along with the obvious differences. And, over the years, as women have gained more equality and taken on roles traditionally handled by men, the differences have become more muted.
The she same erosion of differences between PR and Advertising has been subtly occurring as PR assumes more advertising roles with the advent of the Internet. Like the proverbial woman behind the man’s success, however, PR’s role is not always obvious, and it’s still often seen in its pre-Internet days as simply a media-feeder.
There is no reason, however, that that has to be the case. With the web enabling anyone with an Internet connection to become a publisher, public relations doesn’t have to depend on the media to tell a client’s story. Instead, it can act as both publisher and promoter. A perfect example is PR man extraordinaire David Meerman Scott, who by authoring books and skillfully promoting them, has turned himself into a brand name and high-priced speaker and consultant. Similarly, individuals with the worldwide megaphone of the Internet and shrewd personal branding can at any age turn themselves into successful brands and businesses. I’ve written before about the successes of some millennial Internet whizzes like Dan Schwabeland Shama Hyder.
Companies today like Jet Blue and Zappos can amass over a half million Twitter followers while brands like Adidas and Nike can have millions of Facebook fans and engage directly with customers and prospects. Viral marketing campaigns like the Blendtec’s “will it blend” campaign have amassed far more attention at lower cost than paid advertisements. This is not to say that advertising is going away. It’s just that both professions are evolving as more and more advertising and media move online.
As ChrisFiorentz commented on my last blog post, “If anything public relations continues to evolve and integrate with other disciplines such as marketing, to the point where PR and marcom are almost used interchangeably.”
The New York Times recently wrote about the evolution of traditional advertising into what it calls “free advertising,” with the growth of the Internet. This is especially interesting since its definition of “free advertising” is everything public relations does.
Here is how the Times defined “free advertising.”
“It can take many forms: Getting a journalist or blogger to review a new mobile phone, placing a video on YouTube, spreading the word via bloggers, and starting aFacebook group dedicated to a brand or product.”
In my book all of that “free advertising” can easily be subsumed under PR. In fact, it’s what we do everyday for our clients.
Consider too what Jennifer McClure, executive director of the Society for New Communications Research, has noted, “Over the last 20 years, PR has been primarily about media relations. As an industry, we’ve forgotten that PR doesn’t stand for ‘press release.’ It means public relations. That means assessing, establishing and counseling companies on how to have good relationships with constituencies.”
- Learn to use new communications tools (social media) effectively
- Expand the number of communicators in your organizations and empower colleagues across all disciplines to have a voice by teaching them how to use these communications tools
- Give up stringent control of the message and sole control of your relationships with media and instead allow for relationships to develop organically and dynamically and robustly with all our audiences and across all levels of the organization
- Fundamentally change the image of PR and re-educate your organizations, clients and our own industry about what the true role of PR is and always has been - that of relationship-building.
The talk was precipitated by one of these pseudo scientific piecesthat throws around statistics, i.e., “70% of today's PR firms with their traditional public relations and communications business structures will not survive the fast-approaching social media avalanche."
Of course, there is nothing like outrageousness to get someone’s attention. The trouble is it’s grossly inaccurate.
As a longstanding PR professional, from my perspective, PR is thriving as never before. Sure, the newspapers we have been wedded too are imploding, but the Internet has provided an entirely new life for PR.That’s because PR is not tied to any one media but serves a company’s public.
In fact, this interactive age plays to PR’s strength, its ability to build relationships, create enticing content and get others excited about a company, individual, product or service.
PR is also a necessity in this age of personal branding where messaging and content carry the day. Public relations practitioners like no other profession know how to hone and shape a message so it tells your story in a way that resonates with others.
True, we may not be the most techno-savvy folks, but equally important, we know how to use technology to service our clients.Any company worth its salt today should be consulting with PR people on its blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook profile, Linkedin profile and other social media. As Guy Kawasakinoted, when talking about his Twitter account to the New York Times,“It’s a marketing tool.”
So before we assign PR to the ash heap of history, consider that public relations has only been around for a wee thousands of years.Julius Cesar, for example, in 50 BC wrote his campaign biography for PR reasons -- to convince the Roman people he would make the best head of state.
I started thinking about all of this over the weekend when I attended a great conference run by PR Boutiques International.Full Disclosure: I am a member of this fantastic group of small PR shops based around the world. Eric Schwartzman,who spoke at the conference, reminded us that “New media doesn’t kill old media. Old media just adopts.”
Similarly, public relations isn’t dying.It’s evolving – and getting better.
I've written before about the Young Turks of Personal Branding these amazing Millenials who seem to emerge from the cocoon fully formed and ready to rule the world.
I recently connected with another Millennial master of the universe, Shama Hyder, aptly named since she serves as an online marketing shaman, working her magic so flat-footed Internet newbies soar online. At just 23, Shama has created a six-figure company with five employees. Her company, Click to Client, specializes in social media marketing, helping companies market their businesses online. (Full disclosure: I am working with Shama on some online marketing initiatives.)
Shama, a born entrepreneur, who started her first business at age nine, ran a coaching business that she subsequently sold, and started her current business while in graduate school. Extremely disciplined and focused, Shama works a mere 18 hours a day. Yes, you read that right.
Early on, Shama recognized that she had a talent for marketing." Marketing is typically hard for people, but it's so natural for me," says Shama, who even in high school was writing personal development style newsletters for her peers.
Credit Shama's success as well to her ability to listen to her customers. When she started her business in 2007, she called it After the Launch and focused on generic business consulting. Her clients, however, didn't quite see it that way.
"I originally didn't want to get boxed in and thought I would be better off positioning myself as a general business consultant," says Shama. "But we weren't really doing that. Clients hired us to handle their online marketing. In fact, our clients referred to us as their online marketing experts. So I did what any smart marketer would do. I stole our elevator pitch from our clients," Shama says with a chuckle.
All well and good, but how has Shama managed to differentiate herself from the zillions of other folks calling themselves online marketing firms?
"We specialize in online marketing for reputable service-oriented companies," she says. "They don't need the long red sales pages with' buy now and we will throw in the knives' type marketing. They are a sophisticated company reaching a sophisticated audience. In terms of our services, we actually take over online marketing for companies. We serve as their online marketing department if you will."
Shama has also practiced what she preaches, marketing her own business and creating a personal brand strictly through social media. Not only is she active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, (she has close to 10,000 Twitter followers, for example), but she also has a newsletter and a web TV show, ShamaTV.com, starring Shama and, her Internet-savvy pooch, Snoopy. She is also in demand as a social media marketing speaker and generally speaks at roughly four events a month.
Interestingly, Shama at first was hesitant about letting clients know how young she is.
"I thought it would hurt my brand as a CEO of an online marketing firm. But, one day, a client let me know that they hired us because of me! That I was young enough to have grown up with this 'internet stuff' so it came naturally. I was shocked to hear this! A few other clients said the same thing. At that point, I realized that my age wasn't a hindrance, but an asset.
Shama may have hit the nail on the head when she talks about her generation:
"Social media comes naturally to our generation since our baby boomer parents were much more interested in sharing their life lessons than previous generations," says Shama. Our parents would say, 'Here is my book, my life story, learn from it, sweetie. Do what I say, not as I did myself.' They were all about openness and communication."
Here is some advice from Shama on creating your brand online, what she calls establishing your online BOD:
Brand: Can your brand be summed up in one word or phrase? Is it that easy to sum up? Because it needs to be online.
Outcome: What can you do for others? Not your process, not your personality. What is the final result?
Differentiator: What makes you different online? What makes you stand out from the rest?
Move over Simon Cowell. Make way for Nalts and P0YKPAC
Say what?
Welcome to the new world of online advertising where companies no longer need to pay mega millions to plop a Coke can in front of a TV celebrity like Cowell. Instead, there is a new breed of celebrity out there – Web stars who go by handles like Nalts and POYKPAC.
These new-found celebs, some of whom were holding down day jobs at Kinko’s and Blockbusters, while they were posting entertaining videos online at night, have shot their way to stardom and a decent living. It’s not uncommon for these Web stars to have hundreds of thousands of fans and supporters.
I got an inkling of the power of this new world recently when I spent a little time with the folks at Hitviews, which marries Web celebrities with brands. Hitviews is the brainchild of Walter Sabo, an old-time, bigwig radio guy and self-described “analog person,” who knows how to monetize celebrities. Sabo had the vision early on to recognize that the Internet is spawning its own celebrities. “I love a great show,” is how he puts it. Two years ago, he stumbled across the funny, engaging videos of a then 18-year-old web celebrity named Caitlin Hillor as her fans know her, TheHill88.Call it the Web 2.0 version of the Hollywood-discovers-star-story. Hill, who has 69,595 fans, and on a bad day gets 50,000 views of her videos, was unemployed at the time, when Sabo recruited her to enlist talent for his new company, Hitviews.
Today, Hill, as Hitviews’ Creative Director, presides over a stable of 50 Web stars, which includes everyone from a successful pharmaceutical executive to a former Kinko’s cashier. Sabo and Caitlin had the genius to recognize that these web stars in their own quirky way could be turned into 21st century Web pitchman.For example, a recent video Nalts created for Hitviews’ client Reader’s Digest generated 700,000 views in less than a week.And despite the economy, Hitviews is chugging along quite nicely as a high-growth startup since its November 2008 launch.Today the company’s stars have cumulatively attracted over 779 Million views and 2,217,554 subscribers.
Make no mistake. This is not Madison Avenue transported to the Web. Hitviews stars are not creating slick, high-toned ads but telling engaging stories that because of their fun and spontaneity encourage a viewer to click onto a sponsor’s site.
The force propelling companies like Hitviews is the power of video. Consider that from just November 2007 to November 2008 there has been a 70% increase in viewership of online video; by 2012 Cisco forecasts that 90% of all web traffic will be for videoIt’s not unlikely for a video posted by a popular Web personality to be viewed 500,000 times a day. Yikes. Other Web portals such as Newsweek.com, USAToday.com, and FOXNews.com are at a little more than half that traffic.
None of this means, that you and I are going to shoot a video and ride our way to stardom. Unlike your average Joe with a video camera, these web stars like Caitlin Hill are extremely talented. They also understand that the Internet is decidedly not TV. Their videos excite interaction and get you to click.
Barton Goldenberg, president of Bethesda, Md-based ISM, a social media consultancy, in a recent USA Today article explained the new paradigm:
“The old model of an Ed McMahon-type guy pitching you something is long dead, because today people won’t listen to TV ads, but they will listen to each other on these (social media) sites.It’s all being reversed now. Ads won’t drive brand loyalty, people will.”
That bears repeating. “Ads don’t drive brand loyalty, people will.”
In a sense the Internet has done what the old hippie movement promised but never delivered on. It has returned the power to the people. Which is that it has allowed you and I to have an amplified voice. While we may not be enormous Web stars, in our own niches, our stars can shine a little brighter, and with the enormous power and reach of the Internet, anything is possible. And, for brands, companies like Hitviews have allowed them to hitch a ride on Web stars and directly reach out, touch and engage millions the old fashioned way – through celebrity, entertainment and interaction.
If you’re in PR, as I am, there’s always a bit of soul-searching along with ire when your profession takes a hit. The latest case in point is a blog the other day by marketing expert and PR extraordinaire Seth Godin.
In his blog, Godin faulted most PR firms for doing publicity, not PR.
“Publicity is the act of getting ink," Godin states. While “PR is the strategic crafting of the story.”
Godin, of course is a PR extraordinaire himself. Think of marketing whizzes and gadflies and more than likely the first name that come up is his. In fact, like a celebrity, you can just say “Seth” and any market-savvy person will know whom you mean.
And, his latest PR firm salvo is PR genius itself, a readymade self-generating PR machine. In fact, my own post is proof of that.
And, yet, I find myself taking issue with his point.
Public Relations, as anyone worth his PR stripes will tell you, is not simply the issuing of press releases, which sprinkled like seeds, can occasionally germinate, but won’t create a bountiful harvest.
Instead, PR practioners excel at creating messages and themes that together create a story. It all begins with strategy, not tactics. It’s the concept of personal branding writ large. Before you can promote yourself, you need your elevator pitch, your personal story about why anyone should give a you know what about you and what makes you unique and special. The same goes for a company. Think Ritz Carlton and you think extraordinary service. Think Amazon and you think the easiest-to-use bookstore-and more in the world.
My firm, and I know many other PR firms (and we invite you to see how we work, Seth), first spends time with our clients getting inside their skin so we understand their business and how to talk about it in a way that resonates for clients and prospects. From that, we craft messages, and yes, stories about executives and the brand.
Seth's distinction between publicity and PR is too pat. Yes, I confess, as a PR person we are interested in getting ink for clients. But it's not coverage for coverage sake but part of a coherent strategy that helps build a client's brand. And, while, I'm sure there are PR people who fling out meaningless press releases like they are tossing pancakes, that's not what any serious practioner does.
What in fact is the biggest challenge in PR today is that the media world as we know it is deconstructing as traditional media tries to find its place in this wired world where anyone can be a publisher and the price of content is often free.
That means that practitioners of PR have a zillion more platforms besides old media to tell a story and get people talking be it in self-published articles, blogs, forums, video, Twitter, Facebook…you name it. But none of this bounty frankly means a damn unless it is crafted with strategy and at the end of the day tells a coherent story. The challenge frankly is understanding how to use all these new tools and meld them together in a coherent, compelling way that encourages interaction.
So, Seth, I couldn’t agree with your story-thesis more. It’s just that's what any good PR person (and there are a lot of us out there) does.
