PR Agency UK, Edinburgh, Scotland, DIY PR

Blogging for Business in East Lothian

2010-04-23T14:01:00.005+01:00

Did a presentation today at East Lothian Chamber of Commerce on Blogging for Business with Taryn Willis who runs the delightfully named Phenomenoodle - a dedicated WordPress website service - www.phenomenoodle.com.

Taryn's skills allows businesses to skip over the more rigid and inflexible traditional website format for a more Google-friendly and easier-to-update blog-based website. Perfect for some of the non-techie people who were there this morning: some whom had not yet managed to get their businesses online. And her tagline emphases she's aiming at exceptionally creative people: the sort that benefit from being able to easily upload photos and video. With East Lothian's focus on attracting more creatives into the area, she is well placed to help them.

My bit of the talk covered the general PR context: why businesses need to engage with social media: can your business afford to ignore sites like Facebook whose membership is so large that, if it were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world? (Thanks to the inestimable Stef Thomas at No Red Braces for pointing me towards that cracking statistic at his excellent social media workshop for 4networking.biz in Edinburgh yesterday). And showed how it all linked-up: engaging with people in 1-to-1 conversations and relationship-building to create niche communities by posting and cross-posting between sites such as Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook and your blog.

Both Taryn and I are big fans of taking that cross-linking a stage further and integrating your blog and website at your own domain name. That's because blogs are easier to update and get much faster results on Google than webpages. This blog is integrated with the PHPR website to give me the best of both worlds thanks to Simon Allen at Shopfitter.com.

Taryn neatly drew an important line between likability and competence. She rightly points out that blogs are a great way to demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness online.

As we ran through the benefits and gave some examples, you could see lightbulb moments going on across the room. At the end, an accountant rushed off leaving me with the parting shot that he was off to "give it a go". Brilliant!

2010-04-21T16:02:00.001+01:00

Toastmasters International's Edinburgh Speakers Bureau did their first gig yesterday - book speakers at
http://ping.fm/EIrvy

6 Tips to Make Your White Paper Interesting

2010-04-19T18:35:00.004+01:00

So many people without an original thought in their head re-hash other people's thoughts and think this is enough to create 'thought leadership'. Not surprisingly, many white papers turn out to be ineffably dull.

At least The White Paper Pundit is doing something about it.

In 5 Ways to Create a more Engaging Introduction (http://www.whitepapercompany.com/blog/?p=4638), he returns PR and marketeers to the basics of good journalism and writing: remember to engage the reader.

The tips are familiar to most journalists and editors.

They include:

1) creating compelling headlines,

2) recruiting authoritative sources to back up your position, and

3) relate the heading to that expert endorsement.

4) use graphics to underline your point - and get your key message to those that skim, rather than read. And the more visuals that do that, the merrier.

5) Plus a highlighted sign off that encapsulates your key message.

6) I'd add using sub-headings and captions to echo the key points, but that's probably implicit in the earlier points.

As ever in communications, it's a case of picking one line through a story and making everything else serve that line. Broadcasters do that all the time, even when they show two opposing sides of a question.

You will have spotted that I've just done a re-hash with a little extra content from my own editing experience. But hey - this is a blog, aiming to pass on thoughts from the coalface rather than any pretensions of 'thought leadership'.

I'll save that for the white paper...

Look out for the Giant Avatar of Portobello!

2010-04-19T10:45:00.007+01:00

Being a creative agency, it's great having The Big Things on the Beach public arts project on our doorstep to stimulate our senses.

PHPR has been a garden gallery host in one of their previous events and we are always intrigued by their installations. Now a 6 metre high inflatable sculpture that 'captures the spirit of Portobello" is on its way. It is Grennan + Sperandio's Giant Avatar of Portobello - the second of three Imagine Porty Prom public arts commissions by Big Things on the Beach for their 2010 offering.

The giant Avatar launches on 1st May at 2pm at the Portobello Public Art House at the foot of King's Road - EH15 1DX. It will appear the following day on the beach 2pm-6pm at Pitville Street. On Monday 3rd May it will be outside the Bank of Scotland in Portobello High Street from 10am - 2pm. If the weather is poor it will be inside the Portobello Town Hall.

The first Imagine Porty Prom commission earlier this month was Michael Pinsky's Stroke - projected images on the Portobello swimming pool at night. It was an ethereal experience, made all the better for involving a host of local people.

http://www.bigthingsonthebeach.org.uk/

PHPR provides up to one week's time a year in support for the arts, education and community projects as part of its CSR policy. Our MD is a volunteer adviser for the Travelling Gallery, arranged through A&B Scotland's Board Bank.

Chrometa's Intelligent Time Logging Keeps PHPR on Track

2010-04-02T17:37:00.002+01:00

Whether PR is billed on results, ROI, profit share, PR for equity or whatever (and we have been known to selectively engage with all of these), somewhere along the line a timelog is needed to underpin those arrangements.

We do think it important to offer clients a timelog as PHPR is committed to operating on a transparent basis - we also pass on expenses at cost. But when it comes to putting the timelog together, we've tried various systems and they've all needed quite a bit of intervention from us and I suspect that we have missed a lot of small details over the years. It has to be said that most PR people, being creative, are not filled with enthusiasm for routine administrative tasks and we are no exception.

There's also a motivational issue, because we know that a timelog does not adequately reflect the value we deliver, so there's resentment if it takes a lot of time to do.

Sometimes the biggest results in PR come from one crackingly well-handled phone call made at just the right time to someone we've interacted with for years (and even if you wanted to, can you imagine the hassle of logging that chain of relationship-building?).

Well Chrometa's time logging ability doesn't extend to a backlog of personal interactions, but I'm really glad a friend suggested I took a free trial. It's rare that you find a program that really does significantly improve an aspect of your everyday working life, but for us, Chrometa is that rarity.

It seems to log absolutely everything I do on the computer (and a few moves made automatically by the system that I can filter out as not relevant to my timelog).

If I haven't moved the cursor for a while it will prompt me to log the time spent away. But most impressively of all, it doesn't just tell me how long a file is open. It tells me what percentage of the time it was being actively used. Great when you forget to close a file after working on it, or you are switching between various jobs.

The detail is excellent, across all sorts of programs, plus individual emails and files, plus online activity. Streets ahead of the old MS Outlook Journal.

All I have to do is drag and drop the activity into client folders that I set up very easily. I don't have to key anything in at all. Then I export it to a spreadsheet. Brilliant!

It is looks clean and simple to use, and it is. Plus the help files genuinely communicate solutions usefully. There are no signs of conflict with the 80 or so pieces of software I run. I did have to accept a license for SysInternals, a required Windows component for Chrometa, but that was just a click.

I was about to buy the program (a one-off $99) when I discovered that I could have it free for life if I blogged about it. So here you are. I am very happy to do so. I hope that you do too as this little gem deserves to gain recognition.

PHPRtv now up on YouTube

2010-03-30T20:07:00.004+01:00

A couple of posts ago, I said that I would make a "PR for technology" video. I made the promise when I found there were no PR for technology videos on YouTube when I was playing with Google's Wonder Wheel.

I've finally launched PHPR's own TV channel on YouTube with the above PR for technology video. After years of clarifying messages for technology companies, I'm using the video to urge for clarity at the top end of technology communications to communicate with end users more effectively.

Like me, it's short and sweet - well, short, anyway!

Clear PR and Gobbledygook warning signal.

2010-03-29T17:36:00.011+01:00

The Scotsman newspaper carried an article the other day on communications in business. It said,

"....good communication is more important than ever.
While corporate communications was once seen as a post-strategy delivery of information process, best practice communication is now firmly focused at the sharp end of business strategy development."

The above was written by a communications professional whose blushes I spare here because this wording seems laced with management speak. I can only imagine how any 'strategic target audience' a company has in mind would react to being an unwitting part of "a post-strategy delivery of information process." It sounds painful.

I assume it means something like: "the tail end of strategic communications" or "simple information delivery." But I'm not sure, and frankly,I don't care as I feel the will to love ebbing away...

But the article confirms a long-held suspicion that the word 'strategy' is a good "potential gobbledygook ahead warning signal." There are a few of them around and I'll no doubt return to the theme.

I also suspect that many people spray the word 'strategic' around with only a hazy notion of what their organisation's strategy actually is and how it differs from the vision, the mission and the goals, but that's another story.

The People's Boat Brings Sponsorship to Everyone

2010-03-26T19:43:00.002Z

It's not often PHPR sponsors a round-the-world race yacht, but we have - and you can too - from £25! See http://ping.fm/hQzJJ

WhoLinksToMe verification test for PHPR

2010-03-25T16:59:00.001Z

How Google's Wonder Wheel Sparked an Edinburgh Technology PR video idea

2010-03-10T15:27:00.004Z

Google's wonder wheel is not well known, yet it's useful for generating ideas.

Using the wonder wheel option returns search results on Google arranged in a wheel that resembles a mind-map. The spokes represent search terms. The natural results for your search are displayed to the right of the wheel.

The wheel format allows you to quickly see the search results. Click a spoke and another wheel pops up with more results, allowing you to drill down and chase threads of ideas. Then it's easy to refine your results by choosing to show results for "images" or "videos" - which are displayed like the results of a regular Google search.

Using this wheel/refined search combo, you may find information gaps, as I did in this example.

Technology PR agency search spots a gap:

Key a search term into Google as per normal

When the results appear, look above them - just below the Google search box - to see a blue shaded bar containing the words "show options" - click on that.

A list with 4 groups drops down to the right of your search results. The group called "standard view" contains the "wonder wheel" option . Click and your results show a neat wonder wheel.

Click a spoke of your wheel to see another wheel popping up based on a further 10 results relating to the spoke you just clicked.

Follow your thoughts and click away to spark off ideas for articles or blogs - and throw up opportunities.

Using a search on "PR"(UK pages), I clicked on a"technology PR agencies"spoke because technology PR is one of PHPR's strengths. I refined the list to see "videos" - there were no results. Excellent. That means there's a gap in the market and I'm now off to make a technology PR agency video!

Edinburgh's Inspiring Hi-Tech Breakfast Network

2010-02-26T11:30:00.008Z

Just back from the first of what I'm sure will be many "last Friday of the month" business breakfast networking sessions, bringing together Edinburgh’s inspiring hi-tech people, organisations and their support communities.

Emulating a successful project in Cheshire, the Edinburgh Science Triangle team have started pulling together Edinburgh’s most dynamic hi-tech individuals from all sectors.

25 people turned up for this first meeting and the level of buzz around the room was palpable. Apparently the Cheshire initiative grew from 20 and now over 100 regularly attend and it is the network of choice for anyone in the IT and technology sectors in the area. Major collaborations have spun out of that network and it's hoped that this will happen in Edinburgh.

There was a real spread of technologies there today, everything from opto electronics to pharma and life sciences, through to IT. Plus key support players.

They meet at Heriot-Watt University at 8-9.30am on the last Friday of the month for relaxed but high-intensity knowledge sharing. Breakfast and the event are free but places are limited, so registration is essential - see the new http://www.edinburghsciencetriangle.com/ website - it's in beta and you may have to scroll down for the events. They include a whole series of events to make more of Edinburgh's leading position in science and technology research and innovation, such as:

March 11, Innovation Workshop 6: How business relationships help or hinder innovation at Pentlands Science Park

March 12, Innovation Workshop 7: The Accidental Leader at Heriot-Watt Research Park

March 15, Technology Strategy Board: Investing in Scottish Innovation, George Hotel.

March 15, Beermat Entrepreneur Masterclass with Mike Southon, Pentlands Science Park

March 17, Life Sciences Regional Roadshow, Our Dynamic Earth

March 26, Business Breakfast at Heriot Watt

March 29, Start-up Creation in the Field of Microsystems, Heriot-Watt Research Park

April 13, Edinburgh Science Triangle at the Festival: Edinburgh Firsts, Appleton Tower, University of Edinburgh

April 30, Business Breakfast at Heriot Watt

The events series involves:

The City of Edinburgh Council
Edinburgh International Science Festival
Edinburgh Science Triangle
Institute for System Level Integration
Nexxus Edinburgh hub in partnership with Edinburgh Science Triangle
Office for Life Sciences
Technology Strategy Board
UK Trade & Investment

How to be Interesting On-line

2010-02-24T12:10:00.004Z

Seth Liss, SunSentinel.com's news community manager has some good tips for those of us who have noticed less feedback from social media activity recently. More people have piled into social media with varying levels of communications skills, muddying the waters for us all.

Time was, being on social media was novel and we all reacted to each other. Now everyone's at it, the boring get blanked out. So Seth's advice starts with the obvious: drop the minutiae of everyday living. We've all un-followed Tweeters who are obsessed by their everyday existence.

But I do agree that when you do post a newsworthy event, it's the details you bring out that make it more interesting. Every PR person and reporter knows this - and we are all occasional reporters now. As he says, 'I want to read more than: "My child took his first steps today." I want to know how it came about, where did it happen, how many steps, and how it made you feel.' Hard to do in 140 characters, I know, but whoever said good communications skills are easy?

He also reminds us to clear off to a private space if we are start engaging in a 1-2-1 conversation. I think it's a bit like talking loudly during a film in the cinema.

Seth's really nailed it when he suggests putting posts with links into context. There's no point in recommending something without giving us a clue so we can judge for ourselves whether we might agree with you. As he points out: "That approach makes it easier to agree or disagree and open the conversation up to others in your network."

Seth recruits good PR research to make a point. If you're thinking of going for the promotional jugular in your posts, you may want to consider that Edelman's Trust Barometer survey showed that "the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company has dropped from 45 percent to 25 percent since 2008." (Edelman is the world's largest PR company and their annual Trust Barometer survey is based on nearly 5,000 25-minute interviews with informed people aged 24-60 in 20 countries)

So, if being promotional and your day-to-day wanderings are a no-no: what does work? As ever in PR, sharing good information is the key to being worth reading or listened to. He counsels us to develop expertise and share learnings if we want to be valued sources of interesting material.

His next observation is harder to do, but it makes a lot of sense: timing is key. Most people dip into their social media accounts so: "Know when to post." I'm going to start noting when people I admire are posting so we're more likely to deepen the connection. That's the whole point of social media.

Finally he repeats advice given by everyone I respect in the on-line PR game: listen first, then comment. "If people know you are interested in what they have to say, they will most likely be curious about what you have to say as well."

That's why following people you're interested in often produces a reciprocal response.

I'd say it pays to listen well before you speak, then you stand to engage with the best in your field. And that further builds your on line reputation. And boosting reputation is what PR is all about on and offline.

Is David Brent sabotaging your PR?

2010-01-29T15:23:00.002Z

Jargon and abbreviations are a handy shortcut when communicating with fellow specialists, but it excludes others. That's why jargon is a serious barrier to general communications and PR.

In a world where budgets need to be signed off by a variety of specialists, including finance departments, we would argue that jargon is an expensive liability, not an asset.

Clients sometimes say they have to prove to clients that they can speak the technical lingo. That's fine. But please don't hit people with incomprehensible jargon on the main web pages. There's a place for technical language and it's in technical papers and reports.

The Internet gives us the ability to layer information, so those needing more detail can click through to increasingly denser layers.

Even when speaking to technical specialists, nowadays there are so many narrow specialisms. It's quite likely that two similarly qualified engineers could baffle each other with jargon. But would they admit that? Or gloss over the point?
Why risk it?

Jargon simply doesn't foster useful or productive business relationships.

In general business areas, jargon has crept in as a form of one-up-man-ship. People use ridiculous jargon to signal they're up with the latest management fads, as satirised so mercilessly by the David Brent character in 'The Office' TV series a few years ago.

Since that programme, many people associate 'management-speak' with idiots who may harbour a penchant for bad break-dancing!

A recent Accountemps survey of 150 top US executives listed the following top annoying jargon words:

Leverage
Reach out
It is what it is
Viral
Game changer
Disconnect
Value-add
Circle back
Socialise
Interface

Words on the list that also appeared in their earlier (2004) survey were:

At the end of the day
Synergy
Solution
Think outside the box
On the same page
Customer-centric

Sad to say, almost of all of these words have been suggested to us for inclusion in web copy.

The David Brents live on...

Environmental Legislation Over-view

2010-01-26T20:05:00.002Z

Thank you Business Environment Partnership (www.thebep.org.uk) and Edinburgh Council for today's workshop for smaller businesses on environmental legislation. With good input from SEPA on their advisory and monitoring roles.

Since 1990, enviro requirements on business have been mounting, thanks to European legislation. But exactly how that affects individual businesses can be tricky to work out. There's certainly no shortage of paid-for services to subscribe to, and consultants to lead you through the maze.

I'm very pleased to discover the excellent free resources at http://ping.fm/FwvKv which includes a questionnaire they created (http://ping.fm/iaVafnetregs/links/97472.aspx) where you can get a bespoke answer as to your environmental compliance requirements. It's apparently the same questionnaire that appears on the Business Link site (www.businesslink.gov.uk/), just in case you've been through that particular hoop already.

Once you have your legislation list, that's the foundation for your Environmental Management System (EMS). Then you need to to dig deeper to find out what you need to do about each individual piece of legislation by searching www.netregs.gov.uk. There's a free text box at the top right, but you can also run searches by business type, enviro topic, or go through current & future legislation. Netregs streams info according to location as the Scottish Parliament have their own variants, as do England & Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The Netregs site has been recently re-vamped so it's worth re-visiting if you haven't been there for a while.

You can sign up for their updates so you stay up-to-date.

There's enough info there to help you create your own Environmental Management System (EMS).
I'm told they are going to expand their e-learning tools for specific sectors. These currently cover agriculture plus food and drink.

Another way to get help with planning your EMS is to go in for the VIBES awards, Scotland's top environmental awards for business, which feed into the European environmental awards, with seriously good international publicity exposure and networking opportunities.

The VIBES application form covers the main building blocks you need and the feedback from the judges (free to all award applicants) will give you an expert steer. I used that to move our long-standing environment policy (first written in 1986, based on reduce, re-use and re-cycle) to a more sophisticated level encompassing carbon offsetting for necessary business energy use and travel. We got our expert feedback and followed the judges' advice. We entered again last year, to be rewarded with a place on the shortlist.

Once shortlisted, you receive an intensive visit from the judges, to prove you have demonstrated exceptional environmental performance, and of course, it's a great opportunity to get further bespoke advice. And we got serious new business enquiries at the awards ceremony itself, which was a welcome bonus.

One of the key messages I took away from today's workshop is that it's not enough to assume a waste contractor has the full range of licences they need for both transporting and disposing of different types of waste. You need to check this and be able to stream your waste for the most cost-effective disposal.

You also need to make sure that the paper trail is properly signed off when you hand over the responsibility for your waste to a contractor.

Otherwise, if your stuff is found dumped illegally, you can't prove you were not responsible and you will be held liable. That could mean a fine of several thousands of pounds.

Useful free PDF creation software

2009-12-03T18:14:00.003Z

Free enterprise-level PDF & XPS creation software from Global Graphics called gDoc Creator: http://ping.fm/V1DM9

Online complaints do more damage

2009-11-30T10:03:00.003Z

Convergys survey shows negative posts by-pass complaints departments, costing companies c30 customers per complaint and putting off others. Shows the need for monitoring and managing feedback and keeping tabs on what's happening to your reputation both offline and online.

Techno Babble

2009-11-30T09:52:00.003Z

As we're a B2B PR specialist agency, we deal with a lot of technical clients and have had to deal with a fair amount of techno babble.

Reducing stuff down to initials is fine in a close-knit technical community, but specialisms are so narrow these days that even well qualified people can encounter terms that are meaningless. So why carry this stuff over to press releases and websites where people of real influence lose the will to live after the first sentence? Not to mention potential clients' procurement officers and finance people who have to sign off the purchase decision?

A few clients have argued they need to demonstrate they have the technical know-how and that's fine. It just doesn't need to be visible at the first glance of the home page. And surely the line up of second and third degrees on their people page does signal more than a smattering of knowledge?

This is where the Internet really scores: enabling hierarchical information to be arranged so that visitors can chose to click through to well signposted complexity as they travel through the information avenues on a website. And White Papers or Reports can underline your technical abilities without baffling those site visitors that need more general information. Not everyone needs to see all the branches, twigs, leaves and roots of the tree to know they're in a birch wood.

If you find yourself in such a wood, surrounding by numbers and letters, there's a techno-babble translation tool here: http://ping.fm/O40mZ

Edinburgh on Google Logo

2009-11-30T09:46:00.004Z

Good to see Edinburgh Castle on Google for St Andrew's day

PHPR collect VIBES awards 2009 certificate at Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh

2009-11-25T20:12:00.009Z

Being good PR people, we spun our VIBES news round our contacts and have ended up seven positive results: several of which are really promising meeting requests.

There is also another agency wanting to know how to get the VIBES, so we've pointed them to the VIBES site where it's easy to download the entry forms and all the practical notes on the different award categories: http://www.vibes.org.uk/enter.htm

Plus Margot Grantham, the Scottish director of the excellent Athena network for women sent me a flyer with useful info regarding free recession-busting workshops in Edinburgh for small businesses run by the Business Environment Partnership alongside the City of Edinburgh Council. We are more than happy to pass this info on. The leaflet says:

As part of their Economic Resilience Action Plan the City of Edinburgh Council are working with the Business Environment Partnership to run a series of free workshops at the City of Edinburgh Council Chambers. Upcoming workshops are designed to give practical ideas to cut utility bill costs and understand current & future environmental legislation that may have a financial impact on your business.

Demystifying environmental legislation. What SME’s need to know to ensure compliance – 26th January 2010

Understand your utility bills to cut costs – 25th February 2010

They point out that a 20% cut in energy costs represents the same bottom line benefit as a 5% increase in sales....

The ‘One-Stop-Shop’ provides free tailored advice to any Edinburgh-based company from a microsized start-up to a larger SME. Advice ranges from Government funded grants & loans, resource efficiency, green marketing opportunities to legislation with the aim of identifying cost saving or new sales opportunities for businesses.

Find out more about the workshops or their free advisory service at http://www.thebep.org.uk/ The lady dealing with registrations is called Amy.

Is PHPR Scotland's Greenest PR Agency?

2009-11-24T21:23:00.003Z

PHPR is delighted that we received a VIBES Scotland shortlisted certificate at the awards ceremony held in the Scottish Parliament last night. VIBES are Scotland's top environmental awards for business. http://www.vibes.org.uk/

We had a serious new business enquiry just after the awards ceremony and we will be fixing up an initial meeting later on today: positive proof that VIBES awards are good for business.

The significance of getting this far in the VIBES awards was really brought home when David Sigsworth, chairman of SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) said, "The companies on the VIBES shortlist & the winners are recognised by multiple agencies and the Scottish Government for exceptional environmental performance."

PHPR was shortlisted for the best management award for small businesses (less than 50 employees). We are a very small business, and PR doesn't use lots of materials to manufacture things, so the savings we can make through environmental measures are quite small. But they do add up. We have been reducing, re-using and re-cycling since 1986. Each year we add to the eco measures we undertake and most of them benefit our bottom line. And we do help to spread the word and encourage other companies to gain the business benefits of implementing practical environmental measures.

We think we may be the first Scottish PR agency to get this far in the VIBES awards. Until we find out whether any other PR company has been recognised by VIBES for exceptional environmental performance in the last 10 years, we certainly can claim to be one of the greenest PR agencies in Scotland - and that's official!

We worked hard for that recognition. The VIBES awards are tough. Even after attending a half day course on building the business case for a VIBES award, we found the application process was very demanding. It took ages to pull together all the information and do the calculations to prove the savings we achieve. But at each stage we found out more about implementing green measures in business, and demonstrating the savings. And going through that process sparked off ideas for other measures we could try. Our first entry last year gave us really useful feedback from the expert judges - advice that we worked hard to implement before we entered VIBES this year. Yes, we did indeed put ourselves through the VIBES application process twice to get to this stage!

PHPR was one of nine Edinburgh businesses shortlisted:

Aquamarine Power

Balfour Beatty Rail

Edinburgh Napier University

Maximillion

PHPR Ltd

Prestonfield Hotel

Rabbies Trail Burners

Wilderness Scotland

William Waugh

VIBES is a partnership between: Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Environmental Protection UK, Envirowise and NetRegs.
With support from Business Environment Partnership, CBI Scotland, Energy Saving Trust, Federation of Small Businesses Scotland and Forward Scotland.

Does Advertising Work?

2009-11-19T05:37:00.005Z

picture created with www.wordle.net

It is said that advertising is the last refuge of those who are not creative. That seems odd since advertising solutions: iconic images and catchphrase strap lines are surely the pinnacle of promotional creativity?

But small budgets can't stretch to that level of advertising. Even when you have strong design and creativity, you need heavily repeated inserts or screenings to gain attention. Even the best ads are hard to predict in terms of effects. They say most people don't even register the first three times an advert runs in most publications. Most small businesses stop at one insertion, thereby guaranteeing failure unless they are very lucky.

But there are some situations that are resistant to clever PR alternatives. For example, the need to shift a pile of beds to make way for new stock or generate a very fast cash-flow injection. Unless Mary Queen of Scots really did sleep in them all, this cries out for advertising in the local media on and offline. Plus some freebie posts on suitable online sites.

Don't forget to use those vouchers Google gives away for £30 of free AdWords. I got mine when I registered my business on Google Maps, but I've seen the offer fall out of business magazines. Every little helps as long as you have a good landing page on your website to convert interest from the ad into sales. And a well-written and optimised site that anticipates the information a buyer might need, and delivers that with a clear call to action on every page. It's always worth testing the form of words that works for your business online. By then, you'll be well beyond Google's £30 freebie, but at least they offer free analytic tools and helpful hints.

I always find that going back to the basics keeps me focussed. You'll save a lot of money and effort if you think about who you need to reach and whether you can reach them any other way before getting out the advertising chequebook.

The most powerful question you can ask yourself is: How do I.....? Then go for a walk, or have a shower - whatever activity is good for you when you need a great idea.

Would special offer leaflet drops be most effective? What about an in-store event with treats and discounts for existing customers? If they are suitable beds, what about ringing guest houses and hotels with a bulk buy deal to renew all their beds (and take away the old ones to minimise the hassle factor). A deal on matching bedside tables and wardrobes might clinch it?

This is the fourth in a series of posts re-visiting the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood. The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business. As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months. The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Clear Expression for PR

2009-11-18T20:19:00.002Z

"If you think in terms of what problems you solve instead of what services you offer, your messages will be simpler."
http://ping.fm/CCcPp

That's such a good approach to marketing and PR communications. Less is always more!

Eco Car

2009-11-18T20:16:00.005Z

Look out for Nissan's 'Leaf' in 2010 - an all-electric car doing 100 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 90mph.

We're currently up for a Scottish environmental award: VIBES, which may be a first for a Scottish PR agency? We have seen the business sense in "reduce, re-use, recycle" and have run our Edinburgh PR agency on that basis since 1986. Plus we do like to keep abreast of promising eco-tech developments.

Gaming brings new audience to Twitter

2009-11-18T19:57:00.003Z

Xbox Live will integrate Facebook and Twitter directly into online gaming, bringing a whole new audience to Twitter.

Influential Tweeters

2009-11-18T19:55:00.003Z

The Klout Twitter app measures the influencing powers of individual Tweeps to "find the people the world listens to,"

Klout now lets you see the most influential Tweeters on a topic so you can build a Twitter list of the results.

Really useful for PR as it is all about reputation and influence.