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.

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.

When reaching out to bloggers, don't ask for them to write about you!

Lately I've been getting dozens of pitches a week from PR people who want me to write about their stuff on this blog. Most of the pitches are just spam, with the PR types using the exact same techniques that they have used with journalists for years.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. That's what PR people do to bloggers now. And then at the end of their email they basically say: "please write about me."

Here are portions of actual emails I've received recently. (I've paraphrased or modified to remove the identity of the people who contacted me).

"Would [this news] be something you are interested in covering? If so, when would be the first time you could publish something on it?"

"Are you going to be able to post something about...? I can send you suggested copy."

"Can I send you [the new book] so you can review it on your blog?"

(It's not just me. Other bloggers I've spoken with have the same problem with PR people.)

Here's the thing. Bloggers are not the same as journalists. We don't have editors telling us what to do. We write about what interests us and we are always on the lookout for things to share. But it is not our job to write about you and your stuff.

Here is an important point missed by virtually everyone - bloggers have other identities and can help you in other ways:

> Would you be happy if I talked about your stuff in front of the 20,000 people I speak to at conferences and events per year?

> Would you like to see your stuff profiled in my next ebook? (The last one has been downloaded 100,000 times in three months).

> Want to be in my next dead tree book?

> How about if I wrote about it in one of the magazines I write for?

> What if I mention your company the next time I am on the phone with The Wall Street Journal?

> Or perhaps I could write something in one of the other blogs I contribute to such as The Tuned In blog?

> What about a tweet on something you did?

It's OK to share things with a blogger that you feel they might be interested in. Just don't spam them with broadcast pitches and whatever you do, don't ask for coverage. We all know why you contacted us -- don't belittle the information you send and embarrass yourself by begging.

Want the good news? I'm always looking for things that are of interest to me! I'm happy to have you send stuff my way. (Other bloggers are too). But don't ask me to write about it on this blog. And don't send me the same pitch that you sent to dozens of others.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's bonus information for alert readers like you. I am currently looking for interesting examples of online viral marketing for possible use in an upcoming hardcover book I am writing that will come out in 2009. If you have a great example of reaching people online, go ahead and send it to me via email. Hey, maybe I'll even write about it on this blog too.

ANALYSIS: Value of quote in the Wall Street Journal with a link to your blog and product

Many business people consider a "hit" in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best ways to get noticed. VC funded startups happily pay tens of thousands of dollars a month to public relations agencies to pitch them to reporters at the Journal and other important business publications like BusinessWeek and Fast Company. firms justify their fees when they secure a hit and show the press clips as proof of their skills when pitching new business.

For years I've been convinced that such exposure is overrated in terms of quantifiable measurements of success.

Now before I jump into an interesting analysis, I do want to say that there are many intangible benefits to being quoted in a major business publication or having your product talked about in them. You can put the information on your site and tell all your potential customers. It may convince an investor to jump in, an analyst firm to initiate coverage, or a potential employee to join the company. I am certainly not knocking the many benefits nor would I ever stop speaking with reporters when they call me. Coverage is important.

But what about the tangible results?

On Monday March 17, I was quoted in an article in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article was titled "Attention, Bloggers: For small businesses that can't afford a lot of marketing, the blogosphere offers a cheaper alternative" and appeared on page R5 (the small business section of the paper). My full name (searching on it brings up only me) and my blog URL were both listed in the paper. The article was in my area of expertise and the things I write about in my books and this blog.

The article also appeared in the online Journal at WSJ.com (my blog URL was a hyperlink) together with a companion article called "Recommended Reading Small Business: Marketing With Social Media." In this piece, the WSJ asked Scott Monty for recommend a list of blogs and books for owners and managers at small companies looking to learn more about tapping social media to engage customers online. Scott mentioned my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and said it is: "A must-read. Mr. Scott delves into strategies of how to reach consumers directly and how to get into the social-networking space." (Thank you Scott).

So what would you expect? Ten thousand extra links that day? More? A thousand books sold on Amazon that day? More? That's the sort of result that many people expect and why they spend so much on PR firms.

The reality is much more sobering.

Let's make a value of 100 as the baseline of the amount of blog traffic I got in an average day this month. On the day of the WSJ hit, I got a 95. That's right, on the day of my WSJ hit with my blog URL listed, I got fewer visitors to my blog than an average day in the month of March. My best day this month was March 5, the day after a post I wrote called "The new rules at universities – authors connecting with students." Lots of people shared that article and some wrote about it on their blogs. On March 5, I scored a 186 (almost twice my average traffic).

The best traffic driver to my blog this year was a result of the hundred or so bloggers who wrote about the publication of my latest ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing. For several weeks after I published the ebook, my traffic was double the norm.

What about books sales? I'll use my Amazon ranking as a proxy for book sales. The Amazon rank, which updates every hour based on actual book sales, indicates what number your book is among all the millions of books that Amazon sells. Since its release in June 2007, The New Rules of Marketing & PR has consistently hovered in the 250 to 850 range. Early in the morning of the WSJ hit, the rank was about 600. It finished the day at about the same place (meaning that the relative sales rate for that day did not change as a result of the WSJ mention). As I write this on Thursday morning, the Amazon rank is 328, meaning that substantially more books are selling today than Monday when the article appeared. But during no day this week did my rank go above the typical range that it has been for the past nine months or so.

What can we learn from this?
> A hit in the WSJ and other big business publications is great—but not as great as you might think. If you get one, think about tangential benefits (like bragging rights), not actual sales. Think how you can leverage the notoriety, not just what will happen without your help to push it along. Use it to influence other media and analysts, don't just sit back and wait.
> There really isn't a holy grail of marketing & PR. The closest I've found is to create something yourself and publish it online to drive traffic. That blog post I put out had more success than the WSJ. The best thing I've ever done to drive traffic is write an ebook. The case examples I write about prove this theory.
> Lots of little hits are much better than one mega PR hit. Passionate bloggers drive traffic to my blog and help drive sales (thank you all!).
> Mega PR hits may drive some interest with what you do, but you should really think through if it will actually drive sales.
> Maybe, just maybe, WSJ readers buy books in physical bookstores instead of Amazon. Perhaps I'll see a sales bump at Barnes & Noble and other stores in March… But I doubt it.

Why most CMOs get fired

A few weeks ago I get a call from Gary Stern, a columnist for Investors Business Daily.

Gary says, "I'm doing a story on the average tenure of Chief Marketing Officers, which is only 26 months. This is much shorter than 44 months, which is how long CEOs last. Can you comment?"

"Oh, boy can I," I say. "How much time do you have?"

(I could talk about this all day.)

We ended up talking for about a half hour. Basically I ranted. A lot.

I didn't give my opinions in quite this way, but here's a few ideas to let you know what I think:

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend money on a PR agency to spam the media than be thought leaders that the media seeks out.

> CMOs get fired because they measure themselves on leads and press clips instead of what the marketplace thinks about their company and its products and services.

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend millions on TV commercials than figure out how to get a free YouTube video that goes viral.

> CMOs get fired because they ________ (fill in the blank – there are many more reasons).

(And once they are fired and are looking for a new job, ex-CMOs obsess about resumes and networking and spamming people via LinkedIn instead of blogging, speaking, and writing about what they are passionate about.)

Gary did a terrific job with the article. It is slated for the print edition of IBD on Monday February 4. But here is a sneak peek via CNN online:

How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

Gary's article begins:
"Warning: If you're seeking job security, don't think about becoming a chief marketing officer. Over the last few months, the CMOs of Home Depot, Wendy's, Rite Aid, and Chico's CHS changed over."

Read the rest of How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

Most PR people are spammers - Chris Anderson now blocks you and I may be next

At every one of my speeches, I say PR people are spammers. That gets everyone's attention so I have an opportunity to explain what I mean.

I get several hundred unsolicited press releases and PR pitches every week. Well over 99% of them are not targeted to me, instead they are sent to me because I am on various PR people’s lists because of this blog, because of my books, and because I am a contributing editor to EContent Magazine and have written for a bunch of other publications. I’m getting the identical piece of spam email as hundreds of other poor journalists.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail recently lamented that he gets 300 emails a day and he’s had it. So he's blocked PR people and has published a list of those blocked on his blog.

Chris says: "So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that's why my email address is public)."

I couldn't agree more.

At my speaking gigs, after I get people's attention by saying PR people are spammers and describe the worst practices, I also offer ideas how to be successful with the media:

> Read our blogs.
> Comment on our blogs.
> Read our books.
> Read our publications (or watch & listen to our TV & radio shows).
> Attend our speaking gigs.
> Publish your own blog.
> Send well-crafted, personal email telling us something that is interesting and helpful.

I kind of like the idea of blocking the PR people who spam and naming names on this blog...

Strumpette managing editor Amanda Chapel resigns role as PR industry watchdog

I've been a huge fan of Strumpette "a naked journal of the PR business" and Amanda Chapel, the nom de plume of Strumpette’s managing editor, since the site's beginnings. Strumpette is a site that dares to challenge the status quo, that isn’t scared to tell it like it is, and that takes on the vested interests in the PR business. In doing so, Amanda shows what’s wrong with much of PR as it is practiced today.

Amanda is a terrific writer. Some of her posts are so sharply written that I needed a band-aid after reading. Each post made me think. As I told Amanda, her writing influenced my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and I was honored to recognize her in the acknowledgments.

In Amanda's retirement announcement, she says: “BUT now I am tired; and now regrettably, I seem to spend all my time revisiting the same battles previously won. I spend all my time trying to keep the Web's rising tide of small literal minds at bay. As you can imagine, it's overwhelmingly tedious and exhausting. All while the largest association of our profession is spending BIG MONEY on a veritable reenactment of 'The Masque of the Red Death'!"

I've traded emails with Amanda's handlers several times and have enjoyed the one-on-ones too. I do hope that Strumpette itself will live on and I look forward to hearing what’s next for those who worked Amanda's magic.

"You have the right to be angry with me" - Marion Jones shows how to gracefully admit guilt

We're going off on a bit of a tangent here this morning...

I've watched the emotional admission of guilt by Olympic track superstar Marion Jones several times and I'm struck by what a terrific job she did in her four minute speech. This is a must-see.

Of course, I don't condone her cheating or lying. But I find the grace and honesty in Jones' public admission to be something that is almost unheard of these days. This is one of the most powerful speeches I have heard in a long time and in it, Jones shows politicians, businesspeople, athletes, and actors how to gracefully admit guilt.

Here's a woman who just admitted in a United States District Courthouse in White Plains New York to using performance-enhancing drugs and to making false statements in two separate government investigations.

Later, when she faced her fans, family and a large media contingent to apologize for her mistakes, Jones appeared to be speaking without notes. She explained the situation, apologized personally to her family members, offered words to her loyal and supportive fans, track and field officials, all the while holding her considerable emotions in check.

It is remarkable to witness.

The International Olympic Committee will likely move to strip her of the five medals she won, including three gold, at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. But Jones tells us that she lost a lot more.

“It is with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you that I have betrayed your trust… You have the right to be angry with me. I have let them down, I have let my country down and I have let myself down.”

The New PR Generation

October 1, 2007 update. Robert French wrote a terrific post about his students and what they are learning in his class. I wish I had teachers like him when I was in school.

+++++++++++

I have completely come around to a new understanding of where the Public Relations profession is heading. It is so exciting to know that many young people about to enter the PR world will be equipped with an understanding of social media and the tools of web-based communications. The New PR Generation will be nothing like the current one! Watch out.

As I travel around the country speaking at conferences, I encounter hundreds of PR and marketing professionals who are struggling to understand and adapt to the new worlds of blogs, Wikis, chat rooms, YouTube and social networking like Facebook. Some immediately grasp the possibilities of online PR using the tools of social media. The people who get excited about the new rules understand that when you want to reach an audience, begging mainstream media to write about you is not the only solution.

However, many hundreds of PR pros, sadly, do not want to know. They happily go to their meetings at the four letter associations that perpetuate the myth that public relations is the same thing as media relations. These old-line PR people continue to believe that the only way to reach people is via magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Robert French who teaches public relations at Auburn University. He told me that the class of 25 people in his PR Writing class will read The New Rules of Marketing and PR and each week the students will blog about what they've read. Robert explained the purpose is to (a) help them begin to consider the new and changing world of PR and marketing they are entering and (b) to help them get started with social media - blogs, in particular.

Cool. Robert and I traded a few emails, but I didn't think much more about it until today.

My Google alerts popped up with a post from one of Robert’s PR students. In a blog post called Wow, This Stuff Really is Important Jackie relates a story of meeting several "old school" PR people (Jackie's words). Jackie talked with them about the new ideas of Facebook and blogs, and podcasts and ended up being asked to speak at a workshop.

Jackie says: "Those of us studying Public Relations here at Auburn University do not realize just how lucky we are…to be going through college at a time when our field is so drastically transforming. So the next time I find myself whining about having to write another blog entry, I am going to remind myself of all the people who didn’t even know what a blog was and be grateful that my professors are giving me such hands on experience, not busy work."

Watch out. When Jackie and the rest of Robert’s class and other members of the New PR Generation graduate and start out in PR agencies and at companies, we’ll finally, really be in a new world.

PR Tip: Pitching bloggers and journalists who wear many hats

As I was reading Rachel's post over at Behind the Buzz, I was struck by another tip that I want to add to what Mark Hinkle and I have said on our blogs about How to pitch a blogger.

Many bloggers wear multiple hats. For example, I am a contributing editor to EContent Magazine, a contributing writer to The Pragmatic Marketer, and I occasionally write for other publications (MarketingProfs and RainToday for example). Obviously, I am a blogger here at WebInkNow, but I also have a blog about Apollo moon mission artifacts and I have written three books (most recent is The New Rules of Marketing & PR).

I know many bloggers like me who are journalists and bloggers. For example Ron Miller is a freelance technology writer since 1988. He has written for publications such as eWeek, Internetnews.com, InformationWeek Business Week SmallBiz, EMedia, Federal Computer Week, CMP Linux Pipeline, Linux Planet and PC Magazine Online.

Yeah, I know this is a long lead in to the tip. But here it is: When you pitch someone who wears multiple hats, it is a good idea to tell us why you are pitching and which publication you are pitching.

For me, it just doesn't work to just send a "you might be interested" pitch. I get hundreds of email pitches and press releases a week and I don't read any of the untargeted ones. Don't waste your time or mine.

However, I do read the ones that are specific.

To interest me, you need to say something like: "I've read your blog and based on what you write about in WebInkNow, this is something I thought you should know about. Here's why..."

So if you're pitching a blogger, make sure that you are very clear about that fact because all bloggers wears multiple hats.