Shannon's thoughts on marketing, public relations, social technology, entrepreneurship and other things

Necessity
Work?
I don't have to work.
I don't have to do nothing
but eat, drink, stay black, and die.
This little old furnished room's
so small I can't whip a cat
without getting fur in my mouth
and my landlady's so old
her features is all run together
and God knows she sure can overcharge-
Which is why I reckon I *does*
have to work after all.
--Langston Hughes
Montage of a Dream Deferred, 1951

As Langston wrote 60 years ago, there are very few "have to's" in life; however, in business there are a great number of "need to's."

You need to market your business.
You don't have to have a Facebook page (Gasp!).

You need to find your customers.
You don't have to have a Twitter account (Get out!).

You need to generate revenue.
You don't even have to have a website (Blasphemy!).

There are a number of "old school" marketing tactics you can employ for your business. None of them are better or worse than any other, all of them require different levels of commitment and resources and all have been successful in one form or another. It is a question of which one(s) will work for you, not which one(s) you have to do. 

Some "Old School" Marketing Tactics

• transportation advertising (signs on buses and at bus stops)
• posters, flyers and postcards
• radio, television and print advertising
• movie advertising
• newsletter and program advertising
• referral and word-of-mouth
• incentive programs
• sponsorships
• networking
• billboards
• promotional items
• tradeshow exhibitions

These are a few methods for getting your message out; however, the best marketing campaign is the one that works for you in meeting your business objective. Before you begin expending valuable marketing resources, consider the following:

What is the goal of my marketing campaign?
Do I want to generate revenue, increase brand awareness or intimidate my competitors?
What marketing tactics are my competitors using?
What are the direct (capital) and indirect (time) costs?
Who is going to manage the campaign?
How long will the campaign last or run?
How will I know if the campaign is working?
What do success and failure look like?
Is the campaign going to reach my target audience?

However you decide to market yourself, remember, the only silver bullets are time and consistency.

Social media marketing is more than setting up a blog, updating your Facebook status and tweeting your organization's latest news. Doing those few activities are only the beginning to truly delving into social marketing. The organizations that "get it," understand the key concept of listening. They listen to their customers...all of them.

• What are your customers saying about your brand and products?
• Where are your customers saying things, which sites, platforms and technologies are they using?
• What are your customers saying to each other about your services?
• How does what they are saying about your brand compare to what they are saying about your competitors' brands?

Posting, updating, tweeting and connecting is no different than robocalling, direct mailing or advertising if you aren't listening to what your customers are saying via Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, etc. Otherwise your organization is just pushing out information you think your customers want via different channels.

Social media marketing requires listening to your customers, responding, listening, responding, listening, responding and so on and so on. Does this process sound familiar? It is called a conversation. Yes, organizations must engage their customers in conversations; it is the essence of social media marketing. However, conversations are only the beginning of the process. The goal is to develop relationships with your customers as a way to solidify brand loyalty.

A few things to remember as you begin to have conversations with your customers:

A sub-par product is a sub-par product, regardless of how wonderful your blog is --> be prepared to receive the good, bad and ugly about your brand
Once you open the listening floodgates, you can't close them --> be prepared to manage the conversations
Social media probably won't be *the* marketing silver bullet for your product --> be prepared to integrate your traditional and social marketing tactics

Nugget of knowledge: Remember the three P's, plan for success, prepare for the unexpected and produce your best work.

Is your organization a good listener?
Does it have processes in place to hear and respond to your customers?

Shonali, let’s begin at the beginning, what is your story?
I started my professional career as an actress.

Huh, what, you’re an actress? Who knew?
Yes, I earned my bachelor’s degree in economics and then completed a three-year program from the National School of Drama in New Delhi. I was an actress and director in India. I did mostly theater, but also some television and radio; my acting name was Shonali Ghosh. I began helping people with their public relations needs, which led me to start a business in event management and PR before I moved to the US.

[the author’s mouth hangs open as Shonali continues]

I moved to the US in 2000 after marrying an American, and he was very keen that I continue my acting career. But frankly, I’d been in the throes of the whole “drama thing” for so long, and I didn’t want to have to start at the bottom all over again in the States. Since I had some experience of PR, I started networking and found a job with a boutique PR agency in San Francisco, where we were living at the time. That was actually a terrific fit, because at the time, the agency did a lot of PR & marketing for Bay Area engagements of Broadway shows…so, in a way, I was still getting my theater “fix.” The rest is history as they say.

Now, having worked at small and large agencies, as well as in-house, I consider myself a PR agency of one. I’m not your typical agency, though, focusing solely or primarily on media relations. I like to work with individuals and organizations on their overall communication strategies.

Nugget of knowledge: My goal is to get them to understand how good communications can help them solve problems.

How have you been able to capitalize on your acting training and experience to help organizations with their communications?
Excellent question. First, part of acting is reacting, listening to your fellow cast members and reacting to them, this is where magic happens. To become a good actress, you have to listen with your eyes and your body. You have to pay attention and react to your audience as well because their reactions are not predictable. My training taught me how to be a good listener, and in turn, I’d like to think I help organizations become better listeners. Second, I learned to understand body language, which is an invaluable skill. Our tweets have body language. Word choice, capitalization, grammar and so on, comprise the body language of our tweets. Finally, I learned to project, not just my voice, but my energy. I leaned how to interact with an audience and bring them into the story we were telling.

Nugget of knowledge: This is key for organizations, as they have to capture and hold an audience’s attention with stories about products and services. It’s about my clients first, not me.

How did you begin your virtual life?
I began slowly with Twitter. I followed people I knew and respected in real life. My “tipping point” came after the terrorist attack in Mumbai, where I was anxiously trying to find out how my friends and family were. When the attacks started, there was nothing on TV here in the US. So I found news feeds from Indian television online and started sharing what I was seeing, or “secondary reporting” via tweets. I became immersed in it over those days; I remember it was Thanksgiving, and I pretty much spent it in front of my laptop and then the TV, when they started reporting on it here. And as you know, once you start, you can’t stop. Twitter is tough to understand until you actually do it. It was my comfort level with Twitter that led to my blogging.

Speaking of which, your blog is Waxing UnLyrical, how do you maintain it with everything else you’re involved in?*
It is difficult to get one’s head around blogging if one hasn’t done it before, and I’m trying to get better at it. I was hesitant at first, thinking like a lot of beginner bloggers, “why would anyone want to read my blog?” But as I got comfortable on Twitter, I realized that I often wanted to share opinions that needed more than 140 characters, and felt more and more compelled to turn to the medium. I jumped in at the start of 2009 and am trying to find ways to make it engaging, entertaining and enjoyable.

One advantage is that it’s a personal blog, so I write about whatever I want. Initially, I took this all over the place, even sharing recipes that I developed (I love to cook), but as I’ve been reading and learning more—I subscribe to quite a variety of different blogs to see what I can learn from them—I’m trying to focus it more and more on PR, social media and related topics. But there’s still a personal voice, I think, which I would not want to let go of, if I can help it. The other thing I’ve started doing recently is bringing on regular guest bloggers. This helps with the regularity of content and it also helps keep the blog fresh.

Is this a personal pay-it-forward plan?
You can say that, my first blog post was for Communication Overtones, by Kami Watson Huyse, APR, aka @kamichat. She really gave me the confidence to start writing; I mean, I’ve always been a decent writer, but not having written consistently for a while, I was intimidated by some of the blogging I saw. I still am, but a little less scared now, and I want to give that same opportunity to other bloggers.

Since so many people helped me get started, I figured that if I can help someone find their voice, then I want to do it.

*For those who don’t know Shonali, she is an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University, the current president of the International Association of Business Communicator’s DC Metro chapter, managing editor for Women Grow Business, contributor to BNET.com, an entrepreneur, public speaker and last, and certainly not least, a wife.

On Thursday October 28th, Network Solutions hosted a Twitter chat, You Don't Have to be BIG to Get Media Attention: PR Tips for Your Small Business. PR expert Shonali Burke (this week’s Awesomely Fantabulous Woman) and Washington Business Journal blogger Jennifer Nycz-Conner, along with the collective brilliance of the Twitterverse, shared valuable information on how small businesses can generate buzz about their organizations, products and services.

Below are some of the edited nuggets of knowledge from the chat. The complete stream is found at #netsol.

Where do I start with my public relations strategy?
@Shonali: Far too often we focus on PR tools & tactics without laying a foundation to tell a good story. That should be #1.
@Shonali (cont): I wrote this for @ownersonly recently: first lay the PR foundation for your biz: Three Keys to Laying a Strong PR Foundation
@CathyWebSavvyPR : PR strategy starts with goals - what do you want to accomplish, who is your audience, etc.
@ShannonRenee: [PR] strategy is like planning a road trip, gas up car, get snacks, map out direction, hotels, sites along way...then hit the road

What makes a story newsworthy?
@WBJonline: Newsworthiness comes down to one thing: News.
@WBJonline: For us, news means: Something new. Something different. Some big change that our readers will want to know about to run their biz.
@WBJonline: For #WBJ, news can be company A buys company B, or trend X is happening here.
@Susan_w: News = change or controversy!
@WBJonline: Also, exclusivity is important. By the time a press release goes out, it's no longer new news usually.
@CathyWebSavvyPR: A story's next steps are matching it 2 the right publication & writer & crafting it 2 meet needs of their readers
@WBJonline: Timeliness is key, too. We used to have weekly deadlines. Those are now daily, hourly.
@Baskervill: news is anything that is of interest to your audience

How can I get the media’s attention?
@WBJonline: Get our attention by knowing what we care about on behalf of audience and when we need it.
@Shonali: Remember the media are getting pitched a ton of stuff all the time. If you start using [social media] smartly, you can use that to get attn.
@CathyWebSavvyPR: PR is not about getting "THE MEDIA'S" Attn - but about finding the right media outlets that match your audience & theirs
@WBJonline: Getting media's attention is like anticipating client needs.
@Baskervill: You need to build a relationship with the media prior to submitting to their publication.
@WBJonline: Know what we're looking for. In the #WBJ case, we write stories about local businesses. Don't pitch non-local companies w/o DC tie.
@WBJonline: What does get our attention: Good, targeted, short pitches with exclusive info.
@WBJonline: Example: "Company A is about to hire 150 people because they landed client X. Would you like to know more?"

How do I dertermine what outlets would be interested in my story?
@WBJonline: I know this sounds totally obvious, but read them. Know what we have written.
@WBJonline: Oh! And don't, for the love of everything, try to interest us by telling us a competitor wrote about you. Please. Please.
@WBJonline: Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster than "XYZ publication just wrote about us, so you should too."
@WBJonline: When someone else has written the story, it's no longer news. (See A2)
@Shonali: No way around it, gotta do your research. Learn who the media/bloggers are that are important to you/your biz. Local + national.
@Shonali (cont): there are several databases you can subscribe to to build media/blogger lists. Note: they are usually not cheap.
@Baskervill: You have to research the publication. You can't send a press release to everyone.
@Baskervill (cont): It needs to be specific to that audience
@Shonali: When you're doing your media research, CRITICAL to find out more than name/contact. What are they interested in? Recent stories?
@scottstead: great resource for getting ur story in front of reporters, is be a source
@Baskervill: You have to remember that the journalist is more than an email address to send a release to.
@WBJonline: Re: Best time to contact: Deadlines, in a way, are dead. We're all publishing around the clock.
@WBJonline: Best thing to do is pitch short, bulleted, and if on phone, ask if it's a good time.
@WBJonline: Also, when pitching, keep in mind newsrooms are small, open spaces. If you pitch my colleague, and then me right after, I know.
@WBJonline: This is off Q, but something a lot of people don't know: Skip the attachments. Please. Keep emails short and attach free.
@WBJonline: Don't worry about making releases pretty. Just get us a few lines of text with the important why we care stuff first.
@WBJonline: Being a source doesn't always mean revealing a massive story, or even talking about yourself.
@WBJonline: Some of the best sources just call and say, hey, did you hear about XYZ... Or, I heard this thing is happening, did you know?

These are some of the other questions posed during the chat, along with resources:

What online tools can I use for public relations for my business?
Using Online Smarts to Become a Media Source

What are the best strategies & tactics for blogger relations?
The 5 C’s of Blogger Relations

Moving forward, How do I make a plan/set goals for PR for my small biz?
STACK the Deck in Your Favor

This is short, sweet and to the point, let's go:

1. Boost your SEO by spending the little bit of money required to purchase your domain --> once you have it, it's yours


2. Ask open-ended questions and request comments at the end of your blog post --> see the bottom of this post


3. Write about something other than your organization, your products and your services --> remember, it isn't always about you


4. Mix up your type of posts: long posts, shorter posts, lists, videos, interviews, audio, polls, photos, testimonials, reviews, etc. --> mixing the format keeps your readers interested


5. Have your blog posts go to your other online properties --> whether someone reads it on your Facebook page or goes to the URL, they're reading it


6. Bring in guest bloggers and be a guest blogger


7. Participate in other online and IRL social networks: Twitter chats, networking events, blog commemorative days, meetups and tweetups --> constantly work for new readers


8. Have your blog as part of your email signature, most services allow for hyperlinking --> easiest way to increase passive traffic


9. List your blog on your business card, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile and your Twitter bio --> let people know where to find you


10. Regularly read and leave valuable comments on other blogs in your niche, such as "nice post, have you considered...," "I disagree because..." or "these are additional resources..." -->conversation, conversation, conversation

What techniques have you used to increase your blog traffic?
What seemed like a good idea to increase your blog traffic, but turned out not to be?

Additional resources:
Blogging Basics 101
Mack Collier

Questions marketing professionals are asking and the answers they need to remember:

When did social marketing become a young people's profession?
Marketing professionals have adapted to new technologies for centuries from print to radio to television to web, and they will adopt social technology.

When did experience become the antithesis of creativity, ingenuity and inspiration?
Thinking outside of the box begins with experienced people who know what it means to be in the box.

When did working harder become better than working smarter?
Experience teaches people to prioritize, manage and delegate to efficiently and effectively reach objectives.

The perception of social techology as the marketing pervue of the young is understandable. Facebook was started in a college dorm room and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams, isn't yet 40 years old. However, the reality is experience is the best teacher. Experience teaches self discipline, decorum and humility, all of which are the foundations to successful marketing and PR campaigns, regardless of the medium or platform.

Marketing generalists need to know the basics of social marketing in order to stay current, keep up their skills and remain marketable in a tough economy. New people in the industry should consider expanding their knowledge beyond social to expand their skillset and be competitive. Marketing campaigns, especially based in the social space, require cross-functional cooperation across the organization to be effective.

Nugget of knowledge: Communication + Collaboration = Campaign Success

Twitter chats are vehicles to share information with your audience, demonstrate your subject matter expertise to new audiences and learn from your tweeps. However, as with all events, prep work is required to make them educational, interesting and valuable experiences for all involved.

The Hashtag
The hashtag is fundamental; it is the key, the focus and core of the chat. The best chat hashtags are simple, relevant and easy to remember. They convey the chat's topic and don't take up too many of the precious 140 characters. Some good examples are #blogchat, #brandchat and #measurepr, and some examples bad chat hashtags are #beginnerbloggingchat, #marketingandbrandingyourbusiness and #measuringyourpublicrelations. The former are easy to remember and you immediately know the chat’s topic; the latter are disastrous.
Nugget of knowledge: KISS – Keep It Succinct & Simple

Schedule
Setting a regular day and time for the chat is the key to participation and growth of the audience. Many of the established Twitter chats occur weekly. Newer chats start off bi-weekly or monthly, then become weekly as their audiences grow.

Website
As this is a Twitter chat, a Twitter account is the ideal place for information about the event; however, you can only put up so much information there. A static site or blog provides space for all of the chat’s pertinent information: the what, where, when, why and how of the event. A  Facebook Fan page or LinkedIn group are good alternatives or add-ons as well.
Nugget of knowledge: Always keep SEO in the back of your mind, even for marketing your Twitter chat.

Format
Currently, there are two basic formats for a Twitter chat, open mic and moderated. Open mic is just like it sounds, the chat’s host will start the conversation with a question and then the crowd sourcing begins. Tweeps answer, ask other questions, answer and ask follow-up questions. During a moderated chat the host serves as the event’s facilitator, there’s a guest subject matter expert and questions are fielded via the facilitator.

Recognition
It is important to remember, the Twitter chat is only as good as the tweeps. Replying, retweeting and acknowledging them during the chat are great ways to show appreciation for their participation. You can also list them on the website/blog or create a Twitter list for the chat.

Archive
Saving the chat discussion is as important as choosing the hashtag. The archive is a valuable resource for people to review post-chat. It is full of links, authors, books, dos & don’ts, how tos and tips, and most participants will have missed a lot of the information. The archive is also there for those who were unable to attend.
Nugget of knowledge: A Twitter chat archive is chock full of business ideas, potential blog topics and future influencers.

Additional Resources:
What the Hashtag?!
10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat
Twitter Chat Calendar

Calling a thing by its proper name is typically easy: car, house, dog, elephant, desk, tree and so on. Often it only takes a simple and discreet correction if the thing is incorrectly identified. However, with the proliferation of social technology, and the subsequent plethora of developers, early adopters, power-users and "experts," this category of thing has gotten mislabeled and become confusing, especially to the newbie.

Social (adj.), “pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations” Thus all of your online social activities should center on “friendly companionship or relations.”

Social technology – web-based tools and platforms used for social purposes, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.

Social network – followers, fans, friends and connections developed and maintaned on social platforms

Social media – user-generated content -- composition, video, photograph or spoken word -- created for and disseminated via social platforms

Social marketing – process of creating customer interest in a product via social technology

Information is power!

The word cloud is brought to you by Wordle.

On August 17th, @MarketingProfs launched #TechChat, "the first and only Twitter chat about social media marketing for the high-tech industry." And did they launch in style, their first guest was none other than Alltop founder and Reality Check author, Guy Kawasaki. These are some of the nuggets of knowledge Guy* shared, you can read the full transcript here.

#techchat [sic] I can't think of an org that shouldn't use it. In a sense, T[witter] is like "the Internet" 15 years ago.
#techchat I think the main purpose of social media is to increase page views :-)
#techchat I think the key to Twitter is providing great links as opposed to personal updates: "my cat rolled over."

#techchat [sic] Retweeting is the sincerest form of flattery!

#techchat Q. How to tie T back to sales? A. With custom landing page and coupon codes. I bet @delloutlet can tell you
#techchat T is great for sales. How else can you reach so many people so fast and so cheap?
#techchat T is the greatest marketing platform ever

#techchat And there are only 2 kinds of T users: those that want more followers and those that are lying.
@amoyal #techchat The best way to get good connections is to get more followers. It's the law of big numbers.
@RLMadMan #techchat I have 270,000 followers and I can have conversations. I try to answer every @ and D.
@amoyal #techchat If you don't retain your followers, it's bec u're not tweeting stuff that's interesting, not bec u have too many

#techchat Q about "influencers" I think "influencers" are bull shiitake. Nobodies are the new somebodies.
#techchat These days, "influencers" are fast followers, not leaders. This is why, ironically, you need to do mass marketing.
#techchat You don't know which "nobody" will be a "somebody" for your cause. The pyramid is inverted.
#techchat Also, influencers are so busy being caught up in their own BS and trappings, that they really don't "use" things well.
@mikefixs #techchat You'd be amazed at how little most influencers really know.

*These tweets are taken out of context and reading the transcript is recommended to receive complete understanding of Guy Kawasaki's tweets and the full value of the #techchat.