March 2011
11 posts
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Social media is top online marketing channel for...
According to the American Express OPEN and Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) “Small Business Search Marketing Survey,” US small businesses recognize word-of-mouth as the top way their customers find them, followed by the Internet and search engines.
The reliance on word-of-mouth, likely along with the low cost of participating, has led small businesses to make social...
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Seven easy (and cheap) ways to promote your event
You don’t have to have a huge marketing budget to promte a special event that’s open to the public; it just takes a little bit of creativity and time. Here are seven things you can do that won’t cost a lot, but will ensure your event gets great visibility:
1. Create an event “landing page,” a one-page Internet site that has all the details about the event. If you use...
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Seven tips for designing a killer e-newsletter
Over the past few years e-mail marketing lost steam as social media began to take center stage. But while they are less prominent than Facebook and Twitter, e-newsletters are still one of the most effective (and cost-effective) ways to build relationships with customers and potential customers. Here are seven ways to make an e-mail newsletter work for your company:
1. Give them a reason to open...
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Don't forget the "social" part of social media
It’s a common mistake: businesses using their Facebook and and other social media sites pages to “advertise.” When you’re trying to build a business, it might seem like a good idea to use your social media sites as an extension of the rest of your marketing and advertising. This is a big mistake, and if you’ve done it, you’ve probably experienced an exodus of...
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“Q. Is web crawling hyphenated?
Web-crawling or web crawling?
A. Web crawling...”
– AP Stylebook online
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“For the first time, more people said they receive news from the Web than from...”
– Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism
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Social media "lurkers" the silent majority
Heidi Cohen writes for ClickZ that the vast majority of visitors to your social channels and communities are “lurkers” who rarely if ever actively particpate. A full ”90 percent is the great silent majority. They visit social media sites to read or view what others have created and commented on. These visitors are great for marketers since they’re spending time on your...
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Firm predicts customer service will become more...
MediaPost Publications reports that in the next two years, 30% of large companies will extend their online community activities to include improving customer service, compared to only about 5% in 2010, according to data from Gartner Inc.
The article reports, “We expect the high-profile nature of social networks and social CRM for customer service to rapidly advance adoption from early...
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February 2011
6 posts
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How an editorial calendar can help your social...
So many businesses jumped on the social media bandwagon, thinking it was the greatest marketing tool ever invented. The trouble is, once many of them set up their Facebook and Twitter pages, they assumed that their fans and friends would keep a steady stream of conversation going.
A tip we learned early on was that, similar to magazine editors, social media managers can benefit from an...
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“Everything on your (Web) site needs to show that you can be trusted. Real...”
– Sonia Simone, Copyblogger
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Have you checked your online reputation lately?
Facebook and Twitter have become essential components of many companies’ online marketing strategies, but there are a number of other sites on which customers comment about or rate their experiences, which may not always be positive. A question or complaint left unanswered on a site can easily tarnish your company’s brand and scare away potential customers. Find out what people are saying about...
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How to create a great About Us page on your Web...
“It’s one of the most important pages on a company’s Web site,” writes Chana Garcia for Inc.com, ”and also probably one of the most undervalued: the ubiquitous ‘About Us’ page—that section on your site that has been collecting virtual dust because you haven’t bothered to read it since, well, you first wrote it.” You may not be paying it much...
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“Last year … the average response rate for direct mail in the US was under...”
– EasyPURL.com
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One easy way to increase the odds of getting a...
Personalization is a great way to grab attention, and if you’re not taking the time to personalize your media pitches you may be hurting your odds of getting noticed.
Sure, you can quickly distribute your news release to all of your media contacts at once using a mass email. But think about what message you’re sending to them: chances are they’ll feel the same way you do when you...
January 2011
16 posts
3 tags
Use PR to change public perception
Public relations can build awareness of a new business, but it can also be used to change existing perceptions that may already be associated with your business. If your company has been around for a while, your important publics have likely already formed an opinion about it based on things they have read or heard in the media or through word of mouth.
Many times, that’s not a bad thing....
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“In 2011, 80 percent of marketers will use social media, and that is expected to...”
– Debra Aho Williamson, social media principal analyst at eMarketer
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The most retweetable words and phrases
Dan Zarrella, author of “The Social Media Marketing Book,” identified the most retweetable words and phrases, including:
• you
• Twitter
• post
• blog
• free
• media
• help
• follow
• how to
• top
• blog post
• check out
(as reported in The Public Relations Strategist by Ed Schipul)
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3 tips to help you develop a good media contact...
It’s useful to keep a list of journalists, editors, blog authors and producers who might be interested in sharing newsworthy information from your business. To build your list, first identify your markets and the people who matter. Document what they read and watch—these are your target media. The next step is to identify the people at your target media who write or talk about topics that relate...
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“It’s iPhone, except at the start of a sentence, as in: IPhones are coming to...”
– AP Stylebook
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2011 crisis communication—3 critical things your...
While a crisis at your business may not be on the same scale of those experienced by BP or Tiger Woods last year, a crisis management plan (CMP) is something every business or organization should have. Consider it an outline for reference but keep in mind that when you implement your plan, it will need to be flexible based on the type of crisis you are dealing with.
Your CMP should include three...
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New business? Try focusing on bloggers instead of...
If you’re a new business you might have better luck getting your business noticed by bloggers than being picked up by traditional media journalists. Influential bloggers have thousands of followers. Research those who write about your industry and start following them. Then if you think their followers could benefit from knowing about your business, contact them.
Media journalists may be...
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How to keep your pitch from getting deleted
Jeremy Porter recently blogged for Journalistics: “13 ways to keep your pitch from getting deleted”. One way, he writes, is to keep it personal.
“If you really want to keep your email from being deleted, make it personal. Demonstrate that you understand what the journalist writes about and that you’ve done your legwork. You should NEVER cut and paste a pitch or use mail merge...
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Bigger media list not neccessarily better
If you’re like a lot of people who want to earn publicity from sending out a news release, you probably think that the more reporters and news media you have on your distribution list, the better. But that’s a serious mistake that might be keeping your release from getting the coverage it deserves.
One of the most common mistakes public relations professionals make is trying to pitch...
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“Conventional marketing wisdom long held that a dissatisfied customer tells ten...”
– Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers
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the most crucial ingredient for PR is time.
Sometimes public relations is hard to explain to a new client. We can show them press clippings and news footage and magazine covers from our portfolio, and we can explain that our clients didn’t pay for any of it. We can also tell them that editorial is considered more credible—and therefore more valuable—than purchased advertising.
What is always hard to explain is that we...
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3 ways to make your story more newsworthy
Brad Phillips, founder and president of Phillips Media Relations outlines three ways to make a story more newsworthy to the press. Phillips was formerly a journalist for ABC News and CNN, and also headed the media relations department for the second largest environmental group in the world.
Here are three ideas from Phillips that you can use for your story.
1. Announce Something New — ...
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Love this tip from Pro PR Tips: Advice from a...
Tip #151: No clumping. At a working dinner (like an awards banquet or evening panel discussion), don’t seat all the journalists together. You’ll get more coverage if you actually put us in proximity to the people we get paid to talk to.
That said, the good journalists will ignore or hack the seating plans anyway. So, never mind.
Read more great tips here.
December 2010
19 posts
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“If you create great content and no one knows about it to link to it, you’re...”
– Brian Clark, Copyblogger
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The potential reach of social media + email...
A single share of your e-blast can be very powerful because of the number of followers that one email recipient can reach. Facebook says that the average user has 130 friends, so every 1,000 email subscribers represents a potential audience of 130,000 people—not taking into consideration that shared content can and usually is shared further once it’s been shared the first time.
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SEO tip for Facebook
Did you know you can optimize your Facebook page for search engines, the same as you do for your Web site? One easy way is to use keywords in your “About” box.
Under your fan page profile image you’ll find your “About” text box. When you fill in the information for this section, use keywords that people would use when searching for a business like yours. Be sure to include your...
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“Public Relations is critically important to any organization’s success, whether...”
– Michael Fineman, Inside the Minds: Public Relations Best Practices
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2010 most-watched YouTube videos
This week The Official YouTube Blog reported that the world watched more than 700 billion YouTube videos and uploaded more than 13 million hours of video in 2010. Its list of most-watched videos reflects the people, places and events that captured our collective attention this year. Here are the most-watched YouTube videos of 2010, compiled based on the view counts of videos uploaded during 2010....
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How to submit a news release to the associated...
Based in New York City and with more than 300 locations worldwide, the Associated Press (AP) is a not-for-profit news cooperative with 3,700 employees, two-thirds of whom are in the field gathering and reporting news every day. AP was founded in 1846 and since then has received 49 Pulitzer Prizes including 30 for photography. On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news...
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Fastest rising Google search queries in 2010
From the official Google Blog: Based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year, Zeitgeist shows the most popular and fastest growing queries from the year.
Fastest Rising Searches
chatroulette
ipad
justin bieber
nicki minaj
friv
myxer
katy perry
twitter
gamezer
facebook
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If they're not engaging, time to review what...
How does your business use social media? To make it an effective (and productive) strategy, you have to understand exactly what types of content and posts engage your clients and potential clients best.
In Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, success is determined by the amount of engagement that happens after you post. Daily updates. Trivia. Questions. Photos. Links. The weather....
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7 sample social media policies
Social Media Governance has a helpful online directory of social media policies that includes guidelines from 163 companies. If you’re working on a social media policy for your business, here are some great examples to reference that are included:
1. Best Buy
2. Flickr
3. Cisco
4. U.S. Department of Defense
5. Vanderbilt University
6. IBM
7. Dell
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5 risks of not having a social media policy
The growing phenomenon of social media has opened up risks along with its great benefits. Raj Malik of Network Solutions points out that “unauthorized or inappropriate commentary or posts online can:
1. “Get the Company, and you, in legal trouble with the U.S. and other government agencies, other companies, customers or the general public.
2. “Diminish the Company’s brand...
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The Creative Brief—a template for public relations...
A Creative Brief is an important tool that provides a connection between an organization’s marketing goals and objectives and the creative strategies being employed. Used correctly, it can ensure that a creative project is based on clear expectations, defined objectives and a means to measure the success of the creative work (brochure, Web site, signage, etc.)
Using a basic outline from the...
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Wrap your PR around a national holiday and watch...
There are official holidays for just about anything you can think of. For example, October is National Native American Heritage Month, and this year it was the perfect time for us to mobilize our PR efforts to promote a children’s book that was co-authored by two members of a local Native American tribe, the Perdido Bay Tribe of Lower Muscogee Creek Indians. We created a compelling...
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3 ways to improve your PR pitch for radio
Earlier this week I posted a list of public relations tips from some of my favorite journalists. Today’s post is compliments of my favorite radio newsman, Rob Williams, an award-winning news anchor who is one of the tops in his field. Rob provided the following list of things you can do to improve your odds when pitching a story to a radio station:
1. Focus your pitch.
Not more than 2 or 3...