Web Ink Now

Top ten PR tips for small businesses

Last week I participated on a call with John Jantsch who asked me to share my top ten PR tips for small businesses with his audience. John is the author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide and he writes the very popular Duct Tape Marketing blog.

I had to take the call from my room in the Beverly Hilton because I was speaking at The Milken Institute Global Conference. OK, I'll admit that I didn't prepare for the call (sorry John) and just banged out ten tips a few minutes before we spoke.

After the call, I realized that sometimes there is value to top-of-mind ideas. Nuggets of value may be lost when you obsess over getting every detail perfect. So I thought I'd share the list with you. No, it is not comprehensive - given time I would choose different things for the list and re-order what's here:

1. The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products. The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.

2. Don't talk about what your products and services do. Instead talk about how you solve problems for your customers.

3. Be enthusiastic and have fun. People want to do business with people they like.

4. Don't rely on spamming the media with your press releases and PR pitches.

5. Use press releases to reach buyers directly.

6. Comment on blogs, forums and chat rooms (but don't talk about your products and services).

7. Read the popular books in your market and write a review on Amazon. Use your real name and affiliation.

8. Shoot a short video and put it up onto YouTube

9. Know what search terms people are using to find products and services like yours and create content that search engines will reward with high search engine rankings.

10. Don't be egotistical. Nobody cares about you and your products. Your buyers care about themselves and solving their problems.

Show, Don't Tell: the SAP Marketing Community Meeting

Imagine that you are a senior executive at a large enterprise, one with over 2,000 people who work in global marketing. What would you do if you wanted to provide them with ideas about online marketing, social media, viral marketing, and other so-called "Web 2.0 marketing" concepts?

Well, you could bring everyone from far-flung corners of the globe to some hotel ballroom somewhere and talk to them.

That's not what SAP is doing.

On April 8, 9 & 10, SAP is bringing all 2,000 marketers in the company together for a virtual event - SAP Marketing Community Meeting. How cool is it that SAP is using the tools of social media to educate people about social media. "Show, don't tell" in action!

SAP invited external bloggers and speakers (virtual, of course) to help drive knowledge transfer to the SAP Marketing Community.

I am pleased to be a guest blogger at the SAP Marketing Community Meeting together with:

Seth Godin

Ze Frank

Dennis Howlett

Zoli Erdos

Ross Mayfield

David Armano

Laura "Pistachio" Fitton

At this stage, the community is open to SAP marketers only. However, some of the discussions may be shared in the future.

As SAP knows, the best way to understand social media and the new rules of marketing & PR is to jump in. Don't just talk about it. Do it.

Al Gore: PR agent for planet earth

Al Gore was on 60 Minutes last night and I was struck with how successful he is in the role of Public Relations.

(Please note: This is not a political blog. I am not commenting on presidential politics or on the politics of global warming. This is commentary on Gore as a communicator.)

PR and marketing professionals should look to Gore as an important case study on how to do things right. Here are my top-of-mind thoughts:

1. Al Gore has successful communicated a powerful idea, that "Global Warming is the greatest challenge facing our time." He doesn't talk about his products -- books and movie -- instead he communicates powerful ideas. He knows exactly what he wants his buyer personas to believe.

2. Gore pays attention to buyer personas and he tailors his presentations accordingly. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

3. Gore is persistent, building his ideas over time. When he first started talking about Global Warming years ago, very few people were interested. He kept at it, speaking to hundreds of groups and building the buzz.

4. Gore understands how to use the media to help deliver his information. In practically every interview I've seen with him, Gore talks about climate change. To use an old PR term, he is "on message." Even when reporters draw him into other discussions, like who he supports for President, he brings the conversation back to what is important to him.

5. Gore understands how to use the Web. He has an attractive, content rich Web site and he is a blogger.

6. He is the undisputed thought leader when it comes to climate change and he delivers his ideas through various media including online, print (his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it), and video (the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.)

7. He knows how to deliver compelling live presentations.

8. Gore understands global communications. An Inconvenient Truth been translated into 27 languages, and he delivers speeches all over the planet.

9. Like many successful PR pros, Gore knows that sometimes advertising is important in an overall communications campaign. He is using the profits from his books and documentary as well has his Nobel prize award to kick off a $300 million advertising campaign to raise awareness about climate change. (You should start seeing TV ads soon.)

10. Awards programs, another PR tool, are part of his work. You can't do much better than an Oscar and a Nobel. (An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2006, and Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." And when he wins an award. Gore talks again about his powerful idea because he know the world's media is paying attention.

Al Gore, PR Agent for Planet Earth.

PR and Marketing pros can learn from his work. I certainly have.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles blog and open-source Chinese restaurants

Because I am on airplanes nearly every week traveling to my speaking gigs, I read a lot of books -- novels, thrillers, and nonfiction. I look for things that I can enjoy. It's all about entertainment and amusement to make the downtime on the plane ride fun.

I just finished The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. I read it in two sittings: through page 201 on a San Francisco to Boston flight on Friday and the rest yesterday. (I did get up to use the toilet a few times, so I don't know if that is really two sittings or not). What's so great about the book is that it is an entertaining and well written romp into a world we are all familiar with, but until now really didn't knew that well.

Jennifer 8. Lee (her middle name "8" connotes prosperity in Chinese) tracked down so much cool information about Chinese food, like who writes the fortunes that go in the cookies, who is General Tso and did he really like Chicken, and much more. I lived in Hong Kong for a few years and lived in Asia for nearly a decade. I now live in the Boston area and eat Chinese a few times a month. I thought I knew about Chinese food. Ha! I didn't know squat (until now).

Readers of this blog know that I very rarely do book reviews. I'm writing about Jennifer's book because I discovered that she has one of the best book blogs I have ever seen. Everything, from her writing, to the design, to the choice of topics to blog about is spot on. And she mixes stuff about the book with things that are interesting to people who have already read it.

To the many wannabe author-bloggers out there, do check this blog out.

One more thing about this terrific book. Jennifer tells her readers that there are twice as many Chinese restaurants in the U.S. as McDonalds and then used an analogy to open-source software that is just wonderful. McDonalds is centralized standardization of fast food by a large corporation. Everywhere you go it is the same. That's the Windows of the fast-food world. However, Chinese restaurants are nearly as predictable fast food but each independently run restaurant draws on an open-source network of suppliers (packs of soy sauce, wooden chopsticks, takeout boxes, and the like). Through word-of-mouth good ideas are copied and improved upon, by thousands of restaurant owners. Chinese restaurants are the Linux operating system of the restaurant world. In her book, Jennifer included an email exchange she had with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia about the analogy which I found fascinating.

The new rules at universities – authors connecting with students

I went to Kenyon College, graduating in 1983 with a BA in Economics. I took only one English class and got a "gentleman’s C" so it's an odd thing that I should end up writing books. Go figure.

While at Kenyon, the professors' ideas were clearly important to the education process. Reading and independent study outside of the classroom environment was also a valuable aspect of learning (although in my case, I was more interested in the finer points of partying and debating the merits of punk, ska, reggae and new wave bands, so I didn’t do all that much studying). Considering Kenyon is a small liberal arts college that uses the seminar approach for advanced classes, fellow students were also an a significant part of the learning experience.

However in four years, I don't ever recall giving the authors of the books we were reading for class any thought whatsoever. I vaguely recall Milton somebody wrote my Economics 101 text, but don't recall any other names. I never met any authors and they were not a part of my learning experience whatsoever.

There is a new model for learning today, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Forward thinking schools are involving authors of the books used in class by including them in a virtual social media classroom. Web-based collaboration tools and social networking allows an author to be an input into the learning process (from the comfort of their own offices) and smart professors understand this.

I've been asked a number of times by professors who use my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR for class to participate in virtual classroom discussions and I enjoy volunteering a bit of my time. I hear from students that they find the experience helpful too.

Robert French, who teaches public relations at Auburn University offered me my first exposure to virtual guest lectures. I spoke to his class via Skype and as a result of "meeting" students, have taken a look at some their blogs (students are given the assignment of creating a blog for class). Nothing like having the professor and the author of the text used in class looking over your virtual shoulder to get you thinking about that blog assignment!

I've also done virtual presentations to students at Diane Thieke's PR class at Rider University and Karen Russell's class at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

One of the most interesting experiences is with Steve Quigley's New Media and PR class at Boston University. Each term, the class has a (closed) Facebook group and in the past two terms, the students invited me to be a member. Last term the Facebook group was called "New Media Rocks my PR World" (love the name) and this term the Facebook group is called "Media Socialites" (love this name even more).

Here is the Media Socialites Facebook group description: Professor Quigley's new batch of student social media sponges, eager to soak up as much information about New Media and PR in a semester as is humanly possible ... and, in proper social networking fashion, making important connections along the way.

In the group they share ideas and have pulled me into a few virtual discussions. I enjoyed the interaction so much that I joined the class in person last week for a conversation with students.

A new crop of really smart and social media savvy people are graduating this May. Companies should consider hiring people like Christine and Pamela and their many classmates.

University classrooms are being transformed by social media. How about your business? Is it transforming too?

Understanding an audience and creating great content

At every speech I give, I suggest one of the best ways to create great Web content is for companies to hire a journalist, either full or part time, to create it. Journalists (print or broadcast) are great at understanding an audience and developing information that buyers want to consume.

At a recent speaking gig in North Carolina, I met Kathy Boyd who works in corporate communications at Neighborhood America, a company that creates enterprise social networks for organizations to reach consumers.

Kathy is exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. She studied Mass Media Communications and Broadcast Journalism at Florida State. Upon graduation, she spent a few years as a TV reporter for WFTX-TV, the Fox affiliate in Ft Myers, Florida.

After Kathy honed her journalism skills as a TV reporter, she joined Neighborhood America and now works on the company's corporate newsletter, produces some stellar videos, and develops customer case examples.

Here are two videos Kathy created that you must check out.

The first one is a video case study of Adidas, a Neighborhood America client Adidas Goes Mobile At NBA All-Star Week 2007. Note how different this approach to a case example is compared to most written case examples that are either a) dreadfully boring or b) prattle on about the product or c) both.

This next video Mission Impossible: So, What Does Your Company Do? is Kathy’s video riff on my Gobbledygook Manifesto. After hearing me talk about gobbledygook, Kathy thought it would be fun to cleverly capture interesting information about Neighborhood America in a fun and approachable way. It works, don't you think?

Well done, Kathy. And kudos to Neighborhood America for taking a chance on hiring a journalist to do marketing instead of the "safe" route of hiring someone with a traditional marketing background.

How about your company? When will you hire a journalist?

Video mashups: Easy to create and informative for visitors

Alert readers of this blog know that I am a believer in the power of YouTube videos for any organization to show the world what they are doing. Video, done well, is great marketing.

Many people (particularly those from large companies) push back and say things like: "We can't do a video like Blendtec's Will it Blend – that seems too difficult. Besides, we’re a _______ company." (Fill in the blank with conservative, B2B, nonprofit, famous, startup, or some other excuse for not doing videos).

Well, there's an option. Why not do a video interview program that's essentially a mashup of the audio from a telephone interview with someone of interest to your market, with some in-house video.

WebProNews does a great job with this format. Kara Ratliff interviewed me on the phone for about a half hour and then condensed the conversation into just under four minutes in the studio.

Watch WebProNews Publicizing Your Blog

I've had many people tell me they’ve seen the video and there are 16 comments as of this writing. Clearly people are interested in this format.

Here's another example, WebProNews Reporter Kara Ratliff takes a look into how you can make money from blogging through syndication. She talked with President of Newstex, Larry Schwartz about benefits and disadvantages, along with other various topics of syndication.

Kara uses audio from Larry plus some video footage of him from the BlogWorldExpo conference and a bunch of screen shots. I syndicate my blog through Newstex (and, disclosure here, I am on the board of advisors of Newstex). Despite being affiliated with Newstex for several years, this is probably the best explanation of blog syndication I've ever seen and the video mashup format is what makes it work.

So if your company is considering some YouTube videos but you think that the funny viral stuff may not be for you, consider a video mashup like these from WebProNews. You can interview people in your industry, perhaps some customer, partners, and analysts, add in your own analysis, and pop the videos up onto YouTube.

New Rules of Viral Marketing update and free virtual book tour teleseminar

It's been twenty days since I released my new ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

I'm amazed at the stats. In just 20 days:
> 42,810 downloads (based on my Web analytics)
> Close to 100 blog posts about the ebook (depends on which blog search engine is used)
> Well over 1,000 hits on the exact phrase "new rules of viral marketing" (on the day I put out the ebook there were zero hits on the phrase.)

How did I achieve these results?

I didn't do a thing. I didn't beg the media to write about it. I didn't pay for expensive advertising to promote it. I didn't interrupt people by sending it out via email.

All I did was post it on my blog. That's it. You did the rest. Thank you for downloading the ebook and for talking about it.

(Well, I guess I can safely say that my viral marketing ebook has gone viral.)

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UPDATE - Due to a scheduling problem with the technology provider, the live event needs to be postponed to Tuesday March 4, 2008 at 6:00PM eastern time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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I'll be on a live teleseminar Tuesday February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 PM EST to discuss viral marketing in depth. For about 70 minutes, I'll answer questions that you submit to me and discuss the issues people face with going viral. It's free to participate. I hope you can make it.

Mike Sigers, of Simplenomics kindly offered to host the live Q&A with me. Mike will do the Q part and I'll do the A part. Mike is a sales and marketing consultant who simply tries to help people find easier, simpler ways to sell more and market their products and services for less cost with bigger results.

To submit a question for Mike to ask me, please go to the New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site. You'll have an opportunity to post the question and then get the dial in information.

Your questions are really important to me. As I learn more about viral marketing and more about what you want to know about viral marketing, I will be creating more information about how to spread your ideas for free. The questions help me to speak, write, and produce the most valuable information.

If you don't want to ask a question, but would like to listen in, that's cool too. Please go here.

If you can't participate live, ask your question anyway. The New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site will have the replay as an MP3 the morning after the live event.

Thank you for spreading my ideas.

What are the search terms your buyers use to find products and services like yours? Where does your company rank on Google for those terms?

Three months ago, Mike Volpe at HubSpot blogged about his experience speaking with a friend at EMC, a huge company (roughly ten billion US $ revenue). Mike and the EMC person discussed the most important search terms for EMC and came up with two critical ones "data storage" and "information infrastructure."

They then Googled those terms. Remarkably, EMC was nowhere near the top of the search heap for the phrases. Mike came to the obvious conclusion: "EMC is a Laggard Playing by the Old Rules of Marketing."

I thought that was an amazing thing. Here is a company that spends well over one billion US dollars on sales and marketing and they are nowhere near the front page on Google for two of the most important phrases in their industry.

As Mike at HubSpot said: "This is like opening the Yellow Pages in 1990 and looking under 'car rental' and not seeing an ad for Hertz!"

Last week I Googled those phrases again, wondering if they EMC had implemented any Web marketing programs to boost their results in the past three months:

Google search for "data storage"
Google search for "information infrastructure"

At the time I checked, EMC was ranked number 115 in the Google search results for "data storage" and number 76 for "information infrastructure."

Not so great for a company whose tagline is "where information lives."

EMC is not doing a good job at helping buyers find them via search engines.

How about your company? You should be able to answer these questions:
Do you know the most important search terms that people are using to find products and services like the ones you sell?
Where do you appear in the results?
If you aren’t satisfied with your results, what great content can you create (a blog or an ebook or some news releases) to help boost your ranking?

Disclosure: I am a member of the HubSpot board of advisors.

Say No To Dirt

Imagine you're a marketing manager for a company that makes toilets. Your company just came up with a spiffy new self-cleaning model. What do you do?

Most marketing managers would talk about their "flexible, scalable solutions for toilet cleaning processes using cutting edge technology" or some such gobbledygook.

Not CWS.

Instead of yakking about their product, YouTube shows how it works. A million people have seen this video via word-of-mouse.

Instead of selling, can you find a way to tell your story?