Archive for the ‘PR & marketing tips’ Category

Managing your presence on the Internet is like playing in the NFL:  You have to have a good offense AND a good defense.  Reputation.com offers 10 dos and don’ts for managing your reputation online.  Their guidelines are consistent with this April 27 item here on my site.

On this site and elsewhere I have recommended a blog/enewsletter combination as a good marketing tool for businesses that sell expertise; sell products that are enhanced by knowledge, or have prospects who aren’t necessarily going to make an immediate purchase.

All these businesses benefit when they share information; that is, share enough information to demonstrate their knowledge and provide some real value to the reader but, of course, not enough to give away the store.

To succeed, though, someone has to want to write, to share information, to engage in a dialog with the readers.  The question I ask my clients is this: Are you curious?  Do you read your industry’s publications?  Do you read a daily newspaper or a general business magazine?

Better yet, this article offers 20 questions you should answer before you initiate a blog.  Here are three good ones:

•  What are your objectives?
• How will you link it to social media?
• How will you know it’s working?

The American Express Open Forum frequently offers concise, useful articles on marketing and public relations issues.  They recently described the seven mistakes that can make a bad crisis situation worse.

• Distancing yourself from the problem
• Lacking quick, tangible action to remedy the situation
• Looking insincere in front of the media
• Writing a boring news release and letting things be
• Keeping the CEO out of view
• Having vague communications

Read the entire article here.

One of my longtime readers recently mentioned how much she enjoys the epigrams that appear at the bottom of each of my enewsletters, so I figured I’d share them all again, all in one place:

1. “The less people know, the more the suspect” – Josh Billings.
2. Better is the enemy of good enough.
3. Everyone is always right.
4. Nobody likes me.  They like themselves when they’re with me.
5. Sometimes it’s easier to get forgiven than it is to get permission.
6. The world is run by those who show up.
7. Fundraising rule #1:  You have to ask.  Rule #2: Ask for enough.
8. Crowded is good.
9. Lumpy is good.
10. There should always be a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator.
11. Don’t let people who make less than you decide your salary.
12. Share the credit; take sole possession of the blame.
13. “Who cares?”  isn’t a flip question.  It’s the launching pad for every successful marketing campaign.
14. Email will never replace print media as long as people still read in the bathroom
15. Big won’t beat small.  Fast will beat slow.
16. “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait ‘til you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair
17. “It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” Samuel Johnson
18. · “Learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Martin Vanbee
19. When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the fire department usually uses water.
20. “The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings and, in the end, the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.”  Edward R. Murrow
21. Market where your competitors aren’t.  “The short road to ruin is to emulate the methods of your adversary.”  Winston Churchill
22. Never screw up on a slow news day.
23. “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.” The Scarecrow
24. “Advertising is the price we pay for being unremarkable.” Robert Stephens, Founder of the Geek Squad
25. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required. Luke 12:48

Apropos of the preceding item, I’ll remind you that an effective slogan or tagline starts with a well-thought-out positioning statement.  Here’s a good tutorial, which reinforces something I often tell my clients:  Keep your eyes on the competition.  “Identify aspects of your product or service that your competitors cannot imitate. Put a star beside anything that cannot be easily duplicated, reproduced, or copied.”

If you’re deep enough into the Internet to be reading this, then your business probably has a website.  If you don’t, you must, for defensive reasons.  If unhappy customers start posting bad stuff about you, whether it’s on a website, in blogs or on Facebook, THOSE entries will be at the top of the Google results when somebody searches for your name.  Having an active website, suitably optimized for search engines, will put you at the top of the queue and push their comments down the page.

Constant Contact recently named me as one of their All Stars.  Oooooo!  I wondered for a moment if this was like those pay-to-play “Who’s Who” directories but didn’t detect any financial strings attached to this great honor.  They say I qualified because I

• • • Communicate with customers and members for all four quarters of the year
    • Update mailing lists often and obtain permission from my subscribers to contact them
    • Have high open and click-through rates and low bounce rates
    • Use mailing list sign-up tools like “Join My Mailing List” on my website or Facebook page
    • Use reports to gain insights about my contact list and online marketing activities

Golly.  Here I thought all that stuff was standard procedure for professional communications and they seem to think it’s something special.

You’ve heard me say, “Never screw up on a slow news day.”  The flip side of that coin is, “Seize the slow news day.”  During the 11 p.m. news on a Saturday, WDIV TV aired a story about funeral home owners who had misused  money they’d received as pre-payment for funerals.  I immediately dashed off a email to the Channel 4 news desk, offering my client, William Sullivan & Son Funeral Directors, to comment on the story.  The station called me at 8 a.m. Sunday:  Could they interview someone that morning?   You bet!

Sullivan VP Michael Lope met the camera person at 9:45 a.m. then emailed the producer several points of advice for people thinking about pre-paying for their funeral.  The 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts aired Mike’s comments and the bullet-point list, right underneath the company’s name.

A single breaking news story – traffic pile up, apartment fire, party store shooting – would have derailed us. We took a chance and it paid off.

Here are conclusions from a study done between August 2007 to October 2010, evaluating 1.64 million status updates with 7.56 million comments.

• • The most activity occurs at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. with the biggest activity occurring around 3 p.m.
  • The most popular day and time of the week is Wednesday at 3 p.m.
  • Sundays are slowest

The study said that posts that are published in the morning will receive more comments than posts published in the afternoon. The morning posts are 40% more effective. The most popular time of the hour is 00:00 to 00:15.

So update your status between 11 and 11:15 a.m., especially on Wednesdays.

Thanks to HKO Media for the analysis.

I’ve written in the past about crowdsourcing graphic design.  I did just that when I needed a logo for Cabaret Detroit, my new music performance endeavor.

I started with Logo Tournament and was disappointed with the results.  I only received 15 entries.  Happily, they will refund your money if you get fewer than 40 entries.

I had much better luck with logomyway.com.  I bid $200 and received 199 entries from all over the world.  You can view them here.  Once the contest was over, I was able to fine tune the winning design before paying.  The winner sent me the final entry in several formats, including Adobe Photoshop, so I could pull out the layers I wanted for different uses.