6 Tips to Make Your White Paper Interesting

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

Environmental Legislation Over-view

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.

Edinburgh on Google Logo

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

PHPR collect VIBES awards 2009 certificate at Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh

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.

Does Advertising Work?

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

"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

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.

Influential Tweeters

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.

New Twitter Search by Business

Twitter's new search via third-party app will allow search by business - helping businesses promote, defend, or address problems fast.

Orange deal integrates Twitter in UK TV

Orange has made deals with U.K. TV cos to integrate Twitter into news progs, films, TV shows, and football games.

Orange SMS Tweets

UK users can tweet via SMS with Vodafone, O2, and now Orange, at 86444.

Snapshot puts Orange UK into the Twitter Picture

Orange UK users can send picture messages to Twitter thanks to Orange's picture message site called Snapshot.

UK's Global Cultural Impact

The UK has had an outsized cultural impact on the world. From music to sports to literature...and now-MMS with Twitter. http://ping.fm/AQGu9

Social Media Friends Data

The real cost of 'free' social media is our friends' data?

Schedule Priorities says Covey

"The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." Stephen R. Covey. Brilliant!

So often we end up with so many PR ideas, that it's hard to get them all done. The window of opportunity is not long in the news agenda.

The Main Thing is to Keep an Eye on the ball

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing" Stephen R. Covey.

So true in a creative biz like ours! That is going to sit at the top of my GoogleNotes gadget for the next few weeks to keep me focused on client's key objectives which is the key to all good PR.

30 low cost PR tips at 4networking

Looking forward to giving 30 lo-cost PR tips at 4networking.biz in Leith, Edinburgh on 24th November. £10 inc breakfast.

Jo Malone Helps Entrepreneurs

Calling all UK aspiring entrepreneurs! New BBC 1 series with Jo Malone is here to help.

Let's hope the new entrepreneurs have as much fun and fulfilment as I've had running PHPR in Edinburgh for 22 years. It still gives me a buzz when our PR gets taken up in the media, or our online PR gets clients onto Google page 1.

Social Media Trends

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 David Armano: Harvard Business Review: More popular, more mobile, less social.

VIBES awards - PHPR shortlisted for top Scottish environmental awards

Just got invite to the VIBES awards ceremony (Scotland's top eco awards for biz) at the Scottish Parliament. We're short-listed! Think that may be a first for a Scottish PR agency? Fingers crossed!

Outsourcing

"Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy." Groucho Marx

I smile at this as I plough on, identifying tasks that I can parcel up and outsource. I keep on paring down to the elements of running a PR agency in Edinburgh that I love: meeting people and coming up with interesting ideas to put them onto the news agenda, both on and offline.

Bolder PR

"You must do the things you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

I've got this sitting at the top of my to do list this month to inspire me to be bolder. After 22 years of running a PR business in Edinburgh, I do find good quotes are more than just a quick pick-me-up. Placed strategically, they help me to stay fully motivated.

Gorkana Trial Looking Good

Trialling Gorkana media data. Not cheap, but they do good networking events & advance features is free 'till the end of the month. Seems good on Edinburgh media, which is our local PR list and has excellent online PR lists.

Fuel Cells Challenge

Carbon Trust's Polymer Fuel Cells Challenge has £8m to support projects that promise to slash the cost of fuel cells.

We're currently short-listed for a Scottish environmental award, which I think is quite unusual for a PR agency, so we keep an eye on new eco-tech developments. And situated on Edinburgh's sea-front, we are particularly interested in staying cosy!

Organising PR

Task lists are too general to be much use when we get round to implementing them - we've forgotten the intended details. Much better to break the task down and add notes so we don't just give up at the thought of doing the whole thing at once.

Branding social media

Promote your brand consistently by registering an available username on the best social media sites. with http://ping.fm/RtycM

Creative Thinking in PR

"The flypaper of an unfocused mind"..."may trap new ideas and unexpected associations" better than reasoning.

That goes alongside the thought that few really good ideas come to you in the office.

That's one of the reasons our PR agency is beside the beach in Edinburgh - when we need a good idea we go for a walk. All those negative ions work wonders!

Daydreaming up better ideas?

Daydreaming activates areas of the brain that solve complex problems and may be the only time they work together.

Another good reason for our PR agency to work in a seaside location - honest!

Ideas for PR

How often do you have a great idea at your desk? No? In the shower? Or in bed? Breakthrough by not working!

We've always found the seaside location for our PR agency in Edinburgh is great for thinking up good PR campaigns and ideas.

All Work is no fun

Hard work overrated says co-founder of Flick in Fast Company. It may be bad for you!

We like hard work at PHPR, but when it extends to long hours we're so glad we're located our PR agency by the sea on the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh. Great for taking a break and coming up with fresh ideas.

Brad at 4networking in Scotland

See details for Brad Burton at 4 networking in Edinburgh 13 & 14 + Glasgow 15th.

4networking founder in Edinburgh

Looking forward to top motivator & 4networking founder, Brad Burton, speaking in Edinburgh on 13 & 14 + Glasgow on 15th

Clarity in Communications

Jon Moon's simple idea about Words in Tables has spawned many ramifications, but they all lead to one end: better communications. Ignore his ideas at your peril! Always insightful and entertaining, his free taster sessions on injecting clarity into communications are an education in themselves.

Build relationships with the media online

An inexpensive online training courses from the National Union of Journalists' Scottish office shows how editors and journalists select stories and how to connect to them. Called Interactive Media Awareness.

Ambassadors in Business Boost Brand and Referrals

This is the start of a series of posts, re-visiting the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's MD's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood (pub: Batsford 1998). They are a mix of sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines 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.

The techniques can be used for most sizes of business and organisations.

At PHPR, we mainly work with business-to-business clients. We need to ensure that clients get the best possible PR, sales and marketing advice, so we have evolved a list of several hundred techniques to ensure we can cover most bases in most industry sectors.

These 30 techniques are more than enough to get started on. We are kicking off with one of the least used: Ambassadors.

Ambassadors - some people call them brand ambassadors - have the potential to bring great benefits to any business that thrives on recommendations: and that is most of them!

1) Ambassadors

Ambassadors are common for countries and NGOs, but companies rarely use them.

I believe ambassadors can particularly benefit small businesses and they should be a more widespread phenomenon. Why?
Being asked to be an ambassador is flattering to the most influential people in your field, which is rarely a bad thing.

Having a good ambassador aligns your business with the best people.

Ambassadors are eminently quotable and add kudos to your business

An ambassador programme leverages word of mouth recommendations from people whose opinion is respected.

Having ambassadors gets you closer to people who matter.

What's not to like about ambassadors?

If you have good contacts with prominent individuals associated with your field, could they become your ambassadors? Whether they are from business, industry, commerce, professional bodies, societies, associations or universities, local councils or governing bodies, potential ambassadors are people who are in a position to make influential recommendations. They might be customers, old colleagues, friends, fellow committee members in professional bodies or contacts from the past. Or a former mentor

Even if you can't immediately think of anyone, just remember that most people like helping others and hold the thought in the back of your mind that you are seeking an ambassador. Once you acknowledge that you are looking for one, a suitable person is much more likely to appear. That's because we tend to see what we are looking for.

Most successful people work hard, but also admit to being lucky. But you can give your luck a helping hand

If you visualise being successful and attracting a helpful ambassador, your subconscious doesn't know the difference between imagining and reality, so it will start drawing you towards things that help you achieve your goals. You won't find an ambassador just by imagining one, but visualising having an ambassador will make you feel more hopeful and energised and boost your chances of finding one.

Why not list finding ambassadors on your PR plan?

Ambassadors lend an air of credibility to your organisation. They are not colleagues or contacts on referral programmes, recommending you for some sort of reward or quid pro quo.

Referrals are more likely to be generated by equals. Ambassadors will actively promote your business because they believe in you and what you are trying to do. They like to see younger up and coming business people develop. And it's a two-way street. You will keep them fresh and up-to-date with new technology and the latest thinking in your sphere. And take them to interesting places to swap notes on the industry and your latest ideas.

I would also suggest that you periodically give your ambassador something that money can't buy easily.

Maybe you know a skilled artist whose style reflects your ambassador's own taste?

Or you have written a book you can dedicate to them?

Something special hand-crafted with their name that you have carefully judged is to their taste?

Or a bottle of their favourite and difficult to obtain single malt or wine?

Hard to obtain tickets to something they will love?

All of these things are worth more than a more expensive present and they force you to really pay attention to your ambassador's preferences: something that will make them feel special and appreciated.

Ambassadors may also be regarded by many as opinion formers and they may in fact be both. The difference is, opinion formers are useful, but are more remote than ambassadors. You may seek to influence opinion-formers, but it is unlikely that an opinion-former will actively promote your business in the way an ambassador does.

If they do make excellent comments about you or your business, your opinion-former has just re-classified him or herself as a potential ambassador.




The word-art for this post was created at www.wordle.net.

Why Connecting is the New Networking

Most people would do anything other than walk into a roomful of strangers. Yet making worthwhile connections in business is the single most powerful form of publicity you can achieve. Not ‘working the room’ touching base with everyone, exchanging cards and connecting with nobody. Connecting is finding people you genuinely like: people you can do business with.
Heartfelt recommendations from people that know you really does bring in new business. It works because the people that like you, tend to gather similar people, so their contacts are also likely to like your approach.
That experience of walking into a roomful of strangers, along with public speaking were both famously ranked before death itself in a study of things people feared most. And that was a study run in the US. We in the UK tend to think they do communications better over there.
Yes, many Americans are good communicators, and I promise you there’s a very good reason for that. Toastmasters International. Portland, Oregon is a US city with a population equivalent to my hometown of Edinburgh, UK. Portland has 125 Toastmasters’ clubs to our two – and one of those is very new!
Toastmasters is a not-for-profit self-help that offers a ridiculously good public speaking training plus impromptu speaking practice (ideal for connecting with people) and a leadership skills programme that is ludicrously good value for money. It costs around £100 a year (clubs vary according to the costs of meeting rooms etc) for fortnightly 2 hour training and practice sessions.
There are great 1-2-1 trainers who’ll get you faster results, but without the practice opportunities, how long will that last?
Toastmasters offers regular practice along with proven training resources and powerful feedback.
There’s a reason Toastmasters is the world’s largest public speaking training organisation, with over 4 million people trained in most countries throughout the world.
Go onto toastmasters.org and find a club! (scroll past the map which shows the UK HQ to find results for your area).

Google on Caffeine Tastes Even Better

Google's new search engine is called Caffeine and it's not quite ready yet. But an early version is available to web developer to provide feedback. Google claim it will deliver faster, better results, and index content faster. As usual with Google, most of the work is under the bonnet so we will notice little obvious change.

But what will it do to our carefully optimised websites? That's why they are asking for feedback from developers.

But to get an idea of how it is shaping up as far as your site and your key search engine terms, a web developer has set up a neat side-by-side comparison site at www.comparegoogle.com - no, not compare the meerkats...

I ran the search terms we've been getting onto page 1 of Google's natural search results for clients using well-written content on monitored press release sites. All of them performed slightly better on the caffeinated version, so I'm looking forward to Google with a dash of caffeine.

PHPR short-listed for a VIBES award

Awards are great for business. Many are free to enter and you get to call your business an award-winning enterprise for evermore. Entering is time-consuming, but the best offer expert judges' feedback, so that every entrant benefits.

We have won awards in the past, but I am particularly pleased to hear that PHPR is on the shortlist for the top Scottish environmental awards for business - VIBES. Are we the first Scottish PR agency to be shortlisted?

The VIBES application form process is designed to create a robust environmental policy, so being short-listed is really encouraging as we now know that we are on the right track.

Taking care of our environment is not just a PR exercise for us. We have reduced, re-used and recycled since 1986, so we must have spared a few trees by now. But we were short on measuring and documenting our evidence, as we found out by entering VIBES last year.

Like all the best awards, VIBES (it stands for Vision in Business for the Environment of Scotland) gives expert judge's feedback to every entrant. The idea of entering last year was to use the feedback to do better this year. It has worked.

The main focus is on providing supporting evidence and we addressed some of that in the application. We will be visited at our Edinburgh base and judged in September.

Fingers and toes crossed!

Is your online sales process losing customers?

I am indebted to Simon Allen at shopfitter.com, the pay-as-you-go e-commerce solution, for sending me a link to this article. It details a case study where the requirement to register resulted in an $300 million loss in online sales revenues.

http://www.uie.com:80/articles/three_hund_million_button/

I don't know about you, but I recognised myself in Jared M Spool's description of online behaviour when website users are confronted by a simple login/registration form involving just a email address and password, with login/register options and a forgotten password link.

We see this all the time, so we assume it's a well proven formula that will work if we copy it.

Yet how often do we arrive at a similar form and wonder whether we have registered or not with the site? It's fine if we use the site a lot, but a real pain if we don't. I buy from very few sites frequently enough to remember all the login details as I vary passwords from time to time and different sites have slightly different requirements. It seems I'm not the only one.

Just like the users they researched in the article, I put in an email address and stab way at a variety of the usual passwords. And if I've changed my email address, was it before or after I registered? No wonder they found some people had registered several times. Others (to the tune of some $300 million) gave up and either found another seller that was easier to buy from, or did without.

Most users resented the registration process. First-time buyers weren't sure whether they would be repeat customers so they had no interest in relationship building. They viewed the process as yet another spam generator. Most repeat customers couldn't remember whether they were new or not.

Yet how many marketing people bang on about collecting email addresses to create a permission-based list that will be your future gold dust? Yes, the ability to send well-timed and well-spaced offers and interesting information to customers will surely generate repeat sales. But it is counter-productive if the timing of the contact information collection gets in the way of the first sale. I suspect you need to analyse user-experience to determine the best point in your repeat sales cycle and make the process as easy as possible - every keystroke counts online.

Simon was making the point that this doesn't happen with web shops on the shopfitter.com platform, and it's a good point.

I remember being commissioned to write a series of case studies (one of our specialities) for an online payment provider that didn't require the payee to register. The first interviewee reported a 24% increase in revenues on the day they switched to this payment services provider. When I asked the others, none had noticed, but when they looked into it, all saw 20+% increases in sales as a result of a massive drop in failed carts (purchases abandoned during the sales process).

The next time I'm specifying or re-vamping a web site, I know I'll be looking at removing barriers to sales, not creating them. The memory of the $300 million invisible sales hurdle will live on in my memory.

Insight from knock-backs

There's a great post by Adele Revella on her Buyer Persona blog here: http://ow.ly/gY5J. The piece shows how to delve behind sales knock-backs to gain great insight.

It reinforces what David Meerman Scott says in his seminal book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, about conversations with customers being crucial to doing good business.

I think Adele's post gives some great examples of how to do just that

I'm grateful to fellow PR Boutiques International member, Wendy Marx http://www.wendymarxpr.com for pointing me towards a link posted by Stephanie Tilton http://twitter.com/stephanietilton which led me to the Buyer Persona blog piece.

Blogging or lifestreaming for business?

There’s been a bit of a stushi over the last month with a key figure in the blogosphere, Steve Rubel, announcing he was quitting blogging for lifestreaming (posting snippets on micro media like Twitter).

I’m not ready to stop blogging, but I do love http://Twitter.com. I’ve found some of the more influential (rated by numbers of followers) tweeters on PR using http://wefollow.com and its tag search facility. You can use it to find good tweeters on any subject you want.

Interestingly, the tweeter with most followers (heading for 3 million at the time of writing) http://twitter.com/aplusk is not one of the many celebrity tweeters, but an entrepreneur. Although I guess he’s become a celebrity with that following.

By following the top PR tweeters, I’ve picked up great snippets of information with little effort as the 140 character posts are so succinct. And there’s a lot less spam on the direct messaging than my emails carry. That may change, but I can always turn direct messages off, because they give me control over the information I choose to receive.

Of course, many tweeters punctuate their nuggets of gold with trivia that only their best mate, their mum and partner would be interested in, and even that might be stretching it a bit. But you can stop following them, or hang in there for the odd nugget: the choice is yours. And the best build up a following by being interesting.

Stephen Fry’s tweets are often fascinating. But few can write like that. Or have the magnetic persona to rise above the trivial.

A persona largely forged by offline media.

It’s the interaction of the on and offline that is so powerful because we can make so much more impact by using different channels. Even when PR was largely offline, I wrote the DIY PR book (pub. Batsford 1998, now out of print but second hand copies are on Amazon if you want offline PR info) outlining 30 low cost ways to communicate, encouraging people to use a mix to meet personal information preferences.

The beauty of online media is that you can link them all up (services like tweetdeck (http://tweetdeck.com/beta/) allow you to manage posts to Twitter and Face-book and you can put your twit-stream up on your Face Book for example. Posterous (http://posterous.com/) enables you to post to all your favourite media sites in one go. Their site looks ridiculously cool and I’m starting to play with that.

I’m sure there will be lots of other interesting tools coming down the line and we’ll all be off onto the next big thing. But they are all tools allowing you to connect with people that are interested in your key topics and interests. Hopefully you are working at the things you love. That makes the publicity and communicating that passion very easy. Now you can interact with those people, if they want to, but more importantly, how they want to.

Steve Rubel is probably right in the long run. More people are accessing info via phones with relatively titchy screens so the trend is for succinct comms. Twitter is good training for that.

But meanwhile, there’s plenty of people searching on Google and landing on web sites and blogs because the extended content they carry lends itself to being searched. And most business tweets carry a link to a website of blog anyway.

I think of online media like a menu. A tweet is the starter to whet the appetite, full media sites like websites, blogs and Face Book are the main courses with lots of rich content on the plate. The proof of the pudding is the interaction you stimulate and whether you can translate that into sales for your business without putting people off with hard sell tactics.

That’s why I think PR and journalism skills will be in the online media mix long-term. Because we were trained to get stories past much fiercer gatekeepers than any online registration process. We were trained to make stories interesting enough for editors select for their audience and invest in the paper, ink, or bandwidth to carry the story. Nowadays anyone can be a publisher, but the acid test is whether they build an audience.

See you at http://twitter.com/PennyHaywood

Find Tweeters worth Following on Twitter with wefollow

It's a good idea to keep an eye out on social media when you're in PR. Quite often you can spot trends or potential problems. Early reaction to a trend can catch great media coverage. And early reaction to a problem brewing can often be enough to resolve the issue.

You don't have to spend a fortune on monitoring your business reputation online. Ferret out comment mentioning your business name or key search terms on websites, forums and in the news using Google plus their news alerts service.

But finding the most influential tweeters on Twitter was a bit of a hit or miss using apps like Twollow. Not any longer. Have just discovered wefollow on Twitter and I like it.

It is a directory and you can use it to find entrepreneurs, celebs etc.

But use it on a keyword search and it will dig out the people who are tweeting in your sector. The results come back ranking Tweeters numerically according to the number of followers they have attracted, which gives a fair indication of their influence.

And helps you see where you are in the pecking order too. You do have to register to be placed, so it's not totally comprehensive, but I suspect most people wanting to be seen as a heavyweight in a subject area will be seriously tempted to sign up once their following builds.

No laws for free information

If you want all your news free of charge, can you retain quality news outlets?

Several UK media have seen their offline circulation plummet as more people access content online. But despite higher online readerships, many media are reportedly struggling to make money online as content users blank out a lot of online advertising. And that means shedding writers and relying more on standard fare from news agencies and press hand-outs from PR.


Does it matter?


Well, yes, if you want to generate high quality media coverage sitting alongside material people actually want to read. Material that packs the editorial endorsement factor that is a powerfull recommendation of your company to thousands and sometimes millions of others.

Yes, it matters if you want an editorial endorsement that you can wear like a badge of honour for the next squillion years: "as seen on BBC TV" or "as seen in the FT", with links to the coverage or a hotlink to a quote from it.

Yes it matters if you want a media recommendation your business can be proud of, because someone has to pay editorial staff to create the content that you are proud to be seen in, and edit the publication to maintain its reputation for credibility.

A media recommendation where anyone can get a look in is no recommendation at all, regardless of whether the news source is on or offline.

So it matters when an influential author like Chris Anderson writes a new book, called “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” arguing that there is a law dictating that anything made of ideas, like information, gravitates inexorably to being free - that it 'wants' to be free. And he doesn't mean unfettered free speech. He is talking about free of charge.

Now free of charge, when it comes to information usually translates into a vastly reduced budget to invest in good writers. You would think that PR people would welcome that as it might open doors for news releases to be used almost wholesale. But I know I am not alone in being more concerned with the bigger picture. Sure, getting news releases taken up is one thing, but a swing towards accepting unrestricted content reduces the impact of coverage on the site to the point that it would be worthless from a PR point of view.

Anderson is editor of the popular Wired magazine and author of the best-selling book, The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand. In that book he argued the Internet offers everything to everyone, and trailing in the wake of success, a tail of endless near misses can now have a market. That never convinced me entirely. I can see that there is more of a long tail than before the Internet, when physical shop space limited the choice on offer. But I've always thought that assuming an upward graph line will continue forever is just that: an assumption. So I couldn't see how the tail of unlimited demand would continue indefinitely. Surely the near misses would start drifting further off the mark and become irrelevant?

In today's issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews Anderson's latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price and finds similar holes in the idea that a tendency towards free information is the only force affecting pricing online. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

Gladwell is no stranger to big ideas. He was named one of the top 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2005 and his books: The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers have all been international best-sellers.


Gladwell takes Anderson's examples of how we all rush to free services, so they cost a bomb to handle the demand, like YouTube, forcing owners to retreat from the abundance thinking model that propels free information. Universal free information is often of such questionable quality that even YouTube pays for professional content provide from TV stations and film production companies for quality content to keep users happy and deliver audiences for advertisers.

Gladwell says there are plenty of models where information is running in just the opposite direction from free - in drug companies, for example where the high costs of trialling to meet regulations need to be recouped. Or where both models are used: the New York Times puts its content up free on the Web site, but the Wall Street Journal has over a million subscribers paying for online access to its content.

Gladwell predicts Apple could make more from selling iPhone downloads than from the iPhone itself and may one day offer the phone free to boost download sales (yes, please!). Or give away downloads to boost the phone sales. Or carry on charging for both.

He concludes that the only law is that "the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws".

And that's good news for those who want quality journalism to continue, because quality comes from an editing process to sort the wheat from the chaff. Plus sources to provide information and run around getting pictures set up and arranging interviews (PR people). Plus someone to write it up and place the information in context - and that understanding of context comes with in-depth experience in a sector.

All that means skilled intelligent human intervention - and with humans come minor factors like a liking for food, a need for clothes and a roof over their heads, plus obligations to care for family members and spending money.

In short: great media needs to be paid for somewhere down the line.

And great media is an inspiration and a challenge to PR people to come up with issues-led ideas and spokespeople that can stretch to fit the news agenda, add to the debate and showcase their company's talent. And when they do, they get all the conferred credit that editorial endorsement can bring.

Used well (and I've seen an astonishing number of businesses fail to capitalise on good quality coverage of their businesses) good editorial endorsement is like a prestigious award and can be referred to almost indefinitely thereafter.

Business Ethics & PR

Inspired by an article in last year's Harvard Business Review that said: "True professions have codes of conduct," written by Harvard Business School professors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, the students researched and created their own code.

Around half of the 886 graduating Harvard Business School students signed up, pledging to "manage the companies they work for in a way that safeguards not just the interests of stakeholders, but of fellow employees, customers, and the larger society in which they function".

Part of me wonders what the other half will do with their business lives.

But if you are looking to add inspiring moral vision to your enterprise, you could do worse than to base your business ethics on a version of their code of conduct here: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/06.11/hbsoath.html.

But if you do establish a code, you need to ensure you adhere to it, from top to bottom within the company with regular examples of walking the talk. If you don't it will backfire badly as an obvious load of claptrap, damaging your reputation.

There's only so much that PR can sort out, even with the best PR team on the case.

There's no getting round the fact that it takes time to heal a damaged reputation.

The best PR practice of all is to walk whatever talk you choose, and to operate fairly.

Google's forthcoming Wave

Google's forthcoming Wave looks like email meets instant messaging, only better (imo). I think it will be rather handy for working on collaborative projects - and in PR, what project isn't collaborative these days? Good for fine-tuning press releases, articles, online PR materials, web copy and other marcoms text.

Wave is due to be launched later this year.

As MicroSoft tries to move into Google territory with Bing and Google is attempting to venture into MicroSoft territory with Wave, the first video below provides an overview of both Bing and Wave. It also demonstrates the added value that good media analysis brings to a subject, if you compare it to the second video below, but that was a preview for developers, and it does contain a useful demo of Wave.









(you can skip the long preamble - the actual Wave demo starts c6 mins 30 secs into the video).


I've already blogged on Bing. With Wave I like the almost instant transmission of characters as people type in replies, so you can be formulating your response and not staring at a "X is typing" message. I don't think speaking through a keyboard can ever be truly like a conversation, as Google claims, but I think it does look more conversational than instant messaging.

There's a very neat trick where you can take some bits of the online conversation to selected recipients and the ones missed out don't know. And easily add others in later - there's a neat playback facility the newcomers can use to replay the wave construction sequence to make sense of it unfolding.

Nice one Google.

Using WordTracker to boost your online sales

It's great when you get your hands on something that is genuinely useful, so I'm grateful to Ian Burgess at http://www.linked-it.co.uk/ for pointing me towards http://www.WordTracker.com.

He explained keyword research in Google Analytics is based on past performance, whereas WordTracker is predictive and they are an excellent way to find extra profit avenues from your search terms.

A new version of WordTracker is coming down the line that looks very useful if this beta video is anything to go by:

Wordtracker New Tool Tutorial from Wordtracker on Vimeo.

If most of your online business comes from searches involving just 20 keywords, finding another 20 good keywords would give you a decent hike in new business. WordTracker provides initial free tools and tutorials to turbo-charge your keywords research, with enhanced paid-for offerings.

As WordTracker's free tutorial says: "you can't get enough good keywords", and they open up avenues to unexplored profits, and provide useful information. The words I've looked at to date have shown unexpected differences in popularity. I'll be reviewing my content. Can I encourage you to take a look if you're not using WordTracker already?

And there's good marketing and management advice to be had at http://www.linked-it.co.uk.

Touches that sell online

The PR, sales and marketing touches that nudge a prospective customer into making a buy decision go something like this, although at any stage, a particularly strong recommendation from a trusted person or a respected media source (on or offline) can accelerate the process dramatically. As can 'clicking' with someone who has already got a well-developed need for your product or services and has already done a fair amount of research.

A potential customer stumbles across your website in an unrelated search (touch 1) and think 'that's interesting'. They may even save your URL in their favourites. Then forget all about it until a blog they're following recommends you (touch 2), but the phone rings and they get side-tracked.

Then they notice a piece about you in a trade or consumer publication (on or offline). Or on Face-book, Twitter etc (touch 3). Since this is the third time your name has come up, they start to remember you (the memory likes to work in groups of three, which is why triads are so popular and memorable in prose and speeches).

So they note down the name and look up your website (touch 4).

If the page they land on takes them to something interesting (instead of a wait for flash content to download) and the interesting content contains a clear and easy call to action on the page, you may well accelerate them on to the next touch.

Activating the call to action does what it says on the tin. A call to action is an exhortation to take action accompanied by an easy way to initiate the next step in the sales dialogue: click on an email address for further info, or a Skype call button etc) (touch 5). If they respond to a call to action, they have seriously entered your sales pipeline and are now a qualified or 'hot' sales prospect and should be tagged as such in your database or CRM program (such as www.salesforce.com).

You respond to their enquiry with further marketing information (touch 6). Plus an invitation to another call to action (touch 7) - maybe a special offer, a white paper to download, a newsletter to subscribe to (collecting their info into a permission-based database if you didn't capture it at touch 6).

Now you have their permission (always with an easy unsubscribe route and backed by a good data privacy management system following good data protection practices - see http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk) you can embark on a relationship-building series of exchanges (touches 8 onwards).

Depending on the nature of your product or service and your communications strategy and company ethos, your company's marketing and sales materials will flow alongside these relationship building exchanges, via automated responses, information provision and further calls to action and website interactions into negotiated sales. Larger sales and service contracts may have to be reeled in via a tendering system or individual sales exchanges on the telephone, presentations at meetings, or via mail or email.

Looking backwards through this process, are there any points where your PR, sales and marketing could be strengthened? Are there any points where the sales process ceases to flow? Points where you lose them?

See the next post to make the most of your sales enquiries.

Touches for Sales

Sales people talk about the number of 'touches' it takes to make a sale: 'touches' being the number of nudges towards a sale that a prospective customer needs before they finally choose to buy from you. Obviously there are less touches on the way to picking up a chocolate bar with the milk, although branding and advertising touches may well influence the 'impulse' decision.

Even with seemingly simple online purchases, it can take 9 or more touches to make a successful sale. The Internet makes it much easier to deliver touches at the point the customer is making the buying decision.

But the multiplicity of touches can be very confusing if you are seeking to nail just one magic sales bullet that lands customers. Especially if you have been diligently asking new clients how they heard about you, as recommended in most business marketing guides. At best, a new customer will remember the last touch towards their purchase decision. That last touch is often just the tip of the whole publicity chain.

So what touches work? It will vary from business to business (and individual buyers) across the mix of sales, marketing and PR touches that collectively topple the decision over the sales edge into a purchase. Usually personal recommendations, enough media coverage to create buzz on and offline, good information on and offline, high visibility and plenty of new things happening, plus good connections will boost a business. The business will also need to offer an effective and available product or service at a reasonable price.

To find out more about why people buy from you, you will need to develop a relationship with customers to discover more of the marketing mix that actually drove them to you. And even then, they won't remember some of the process!

It makes sense therefore to cover plenty of ways to 'touch' your potential customers in your marketing strategy. Track what seems to be making a difference by asking new clients and by looking at the sales figures. There are hundreds of marketing, PR and sales tactics that can be deployed. Generally a mix of PR, sales and marketing tactics together deliver up to 50% more sales than concentrating individually on just PR, or on sales, or marketing on its own.

The choice of individual publicity tactics is usually a trade-off: budget v time, proven tactics v new opportunities (but if your competitors are not using a tactic, there's often a good reason for that).

Most powerful for most businesses is trusted word of mouth recommendations (on or offline) and you can enhance that with referrals incentives. But you usually need to add good marketing materials (including a good website that performs well in searches) plus social media interaction and good sales processes to reel new customers in.

Media recommendation is also very powerful as it carries the editorial endorsement factor ('as seen on TV', or 'marvellous' says The Times) and the media reach many thousands of people. Referring to that media coverage on your on and offline sales and marketing materials is important to monetise that editorial endorsement and ensure it carries on working for you.

We advise clients to run 10 on and offline sales, marketing and PR techniques at any one time, testing every 3-6 months the effects of dropping one and trying another.

See how it all works together in my next blog.

Barriers to online sales

No point in creating hurdles customers have to leap before they can buy from you online.

I stumbled across a surprising hurdle when I was writing case studies for an online payment processor. One interviewee mentioned they had a 24% hike in sales on the day they switched from one payment service provider to another, due to the decrease in 'failed carts': in this case, abandoned transactions during the payment part of the sale.

I asked the other 3 interviewees if they had seen a similar difference. None of them had been tracking failed carts during the change over, but they took a look. Sure enough, they all reported over 20% growth in sales on the day they switched online payment service provider, but had attributed the growth to other factors. The increase in sales persisted thereafter.

I was writing these case studies a while ago, so individual payment services providers may have changed the way they work now. My interviewees reckoned the uplift was due to the new payment service provider making it much easier for the customer to pay online. They didn't have to go through a cumbersome registration process. One less barrier to the sale. And a 20% hike in sales without any additional sales, marketing or PR? Now that's a potential added bonus that's well worth checking out!

Looks like the cost of services is not necessarily the only factor when choosing an online payment service provider. In this case, it was one of the most expensive providers that created the biggest barrier to sales, making it an even less attractive proposition.

But it's not just the payment process on your site, it's the site as a whole. Are there any online barriers you could remove for your customers to make your website more sales effective?

It's very hard to see your website the way a first-time user sees it. Can you test your site using people with no familiarity with your website? Friends and family? Or run a short test as part of a recruitment selection process? Record testers talking through their actions and feelings as they work their way through a series of tasks on your website to collect information and make a purchase. That could produce very useful information on both the potential recruits and your website.

Some usability experts reckon they get over 100% uplift in sales by streamlining pages and placing clear and appropriate calls to action on key landing web pages. They test variants again and again against the free Google analytics service. Are there any tweaks you can make to test, refine and fine-tune the sales results from your site?

As my favourite NLP master and trainer (Erick Rainey) says: "There is no failure, only feedback!"

Here's to your ecommerce success.

The Twitterati

Twitter is like Marmite. Clients and colleagues either love or loathe it. Those that hate it inevitably say something like: who cares what you had for breakfast?

And they’re right. Validating your lonely existence is not what Twitter is about. There’s plenty of rubbish on the internet, but we don’t dismiss it out of hand just because of that.

We are seeing more enquiries about how to use Twitter effectively. And no wonder clients are interested. ComScore shows Twitter has gone from under 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site world-wide in February, to 32 million in April, up from 19 million in March 2009. Even more impressively, that score only includes website visitors, not the millions who access it via phones.

But if it’s the early adopters of funky new social media you are after, or if you think Twitter is the cool place to be, think again! It’s months since I read in the ad magazine, Revolution that the super cool had already abandoned Twitter when the corporate suits moved in for a clutch of other social media platforms.

It keeps happening. Remember all the fuss about Friends Reunited and MySpace? A lot of money piled in and they’re not exactly flavour of the month now.

There are loads of new social media platforms all hoping to be the next big thing.
That doesn’t stop companies engaging with the Twitterati, as long as they do engage and don’t just sell: that goes down like a lead balloon in any social media format.
But it’s wise to stay flexible and avoid putting all the eggs in one social media basket.

There are plenty of next big things brewing.

The Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope is a brilliant reminder of how important it is to put myself in others' shoes. If he can do that with George Bush, and use empathy to try and resolve wars and conflicts, surely it's worth a go if you find yourself in dispute?

No-one's suggested: be a pushover, but I do like to keep an eye on the big picture. Disputes can be very damaging if they escalate. They flood people with negativity which uses up energy that could be better employed in more positive directions. And hands up those who would rather make lawyers rich over themselves?

A few minutes in someone else's shoes can show they may not be right, but they do have a point. A point you can use to create a third solution that you can also live with?

And how much useful business energy is wasted worrying about competitors? They are often your greatest learning tool. Or collaborators? There may be times when smaller businesses can co-operate to deliver a better solution and take business from a larger company? Your competitors are in the same business so you may well have more in common with them than your clients?

Could it be that together we can all go further than we can as isolated little islands?

Could it be that focusing on long term collaborative opportunities would open up different avenues?

Could you be in danger of protecting your rights to the point of antagonising people that could be of real benefit in other circumstances?

In a world where empathy and co-operation get a look-in, only you know what it could be for your business........ !

Social Media at Work

If you employ people, do you allow them access to Facebook at work? For many readers, the question will seem quite silly. Most sensible businesses have an online policy that indicates the acceptable limits of online behaviour, understanding that it's good for business if staff network with their peers.

But a survey of Australian employees found that 55% claimed their boss had banned social networking sites like Facebook and My Space. This compares with similar bans on 20 per cent of workers in Britain, 12 per cent in France, 11 per cent in Spain, 10 per cent in Germany and 6 per cent in Italy. That's a lot of people affected.

There is never a perfect answer to this in PR terms. PR is defined as the art of managing reputation. Reputation in PR terms is made up of the sum total of everything that you say and do, and everything that is said and done about you. Including social media activity.

Some might see blocking social media postings as a PR necessity, but I'm inclined to think that a sensible policy for social networking brings rewards. After all, the classic 6 degrees of separation that indicates we are all connected applies to staff too. They often have great contacts.

Before you reach for a blanket ban, or if want to know how to achieve a sensible policy, you could do worse than check out this posting at AcidLabs http://www.acidlabs.org/2009/02/20/blocking-never-works/

Life changing lists

You could avoid a car crash - and make fundamental changes to your business and personal life, just by reading and applying the ideas in this illuminating Harvard Business post here:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/05/two-lists-you-should-look-at-e.html

Not a bad way to finish off your week! Have a great weekend.

Microsoft's Bing V Google

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft's new search engine and Google. You'll see there's life in the older dog yet - but I doubt it was coincidence that led to Google announcing their next generation Wave is on the way the other day!

Enjoy!

What will Microsoft's new search engine do to online businesses?

Looking at the latest trailer for Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, due to be launched on June 3rd.



I never thought I would say this, because I'm a big Google fan. But I like the way Bing organises the information on local businesses. I do wonder if the Bing approach may boost the best in each category to the detriment of the rest and ultimately reduce choice?

Microsoft prefer to say they are providing a "decision engine".

Certainly the way information is presented with the option to drill down on the features you are most interested in looks useful for researching buying big ticket consumer products and services. And there's a cashback incentive built-in. It seems to be collating the comparison sites on the preview video, so I am not sure if smaller retailers can make an impression there.

The flight price forecast feature that predicts when prices will be cheapest looks cool if it's effective. I've seen an awful lot of online promises to find cheap flights that don't survive comparison with a manual search on the well-known low fare airline sites. But, eco considerations aside, a predictor that helps nail cheap flights effectively would be good for business and personal traveller's' budgets at a time when most people feel the need to be careful with their cash.

I'm personally not so keen on the facility that limits health topics to reputable health information sources, but acknowledge that it may be a good starting point for research into a problem. My doubts stem from a guess that it may not cover alternative therapies. I prefer to try the gentlest alternatives available first and only reach for pills as a last resort as all drugs have side effects and I have experienced some scary ones.

What impact do I think Bing will have on current SEO practices? And what that will mean for online PR and marketing? It's really too early to say: Bing isn't here yet, but it will be interesting to try out. There's a lot of negative comment about it shaping up to be a big adfest. I'm not so sure. Nothing's perfect and I think it could be useful for some searches.

I suspect the sort of businesses that used to do well from Yellow Pages could flourish from the localised information allied to the recommendations and other related information Bing offers. And comparison sites look like they will get a boost.

Will I abandon Google as my main search engine? Probably not. I'm not mad about being spoon fed all my information. I'm a curious creature: I like the serendipity that Googling offers. And I like choice. Plus Google will no doubt leapfrog Bing with it's own ideas. And that competitive process could be good for all of us.

But I wouldn't be surprised if a fair amount of large company ad revenue flows to Bing if it works like the video says.

Why Online PR is Brilliant for small businesses - especially online businesss

I keep seeing a lot of search engine optimisation people claiming to do PR, and some of the text examples are so optimized they are a really clunky read.

The whole point about being online is to establish conversations and relationships directly with customers and anyone else you want to talk to.

You don't do that by throwing optimised content at them.

You do write brilliantly interesting or useful material that compels people to recommend you and you place it very well. Then wait for the comments.
PR folk have been identifying audiences to speak to and adapting content for them for years, so have a head start, but anyone with a passion for the subject will give them a close run for their money if they crack the placement angles.

One of the best explanations of how it all works is "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott. Having been online and in PR for a long time, I'd pieced together a lot of the points he makes. But he was the one that pulled it all together and made sense of it - and a fair number of folk agree judging by the popularity of his book.

Online PR lets you to build a brand through making great connections: with bloggers and key influencers, which can include online media.

Meerman Scott notes that online is where marketing and PR meet, and in my book DIY PR, I made a point of highlighting that small businesses don't separate PR, marketing and sales. It's all publicity or promotion. That's why most small business owners will 'get' online PR and marketing. They are unencumbered by the separate training routes for PR and marketing and can happily get stuck into results-driven online promotion. Meerman Scott shows it's not rocket science. But it does need application and effort. With every major purchasing decision involving a Google search, it's worth getting your online PR and marketing right.

Confidence in Business

Really interesting piece in this week's New Scientist, reporting on research showing confidence is as important as IQ in exam success.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17187-confidence-as-important-as-iq-in-exam-success.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn17187

Having been in Toastmasters for some 8 years, I've witnessed the effect of the Toastmasters' programme in boosting people's confidence many times, and the changes it makes to their lives. Public speaking must be one of the toughest barometers of personal confidence. In fact, there's a well-known US survey conducted by a major newspaper that reported walking into a roomful of strangers and public speaking inspired more fear than death itself!

It's brilliant to see people coming in to their first Toastmasters' meeting stuttering and visibly shaking, um-ing and er-ing all over the place. Then 10 speeches later, plus a liberal dose of impromptu speaking practice and a lot of encouraging support and constructive feedback, they are transformed.
Boosting presentation skills and confidence feeds through to all aspects of business and helps with networking, client and staff relations and of course, pitching for new business or investment.

I've now got to the point that I can almost count on getting a new client every time I speak in public. It doesn't always happen immediately, but I'm often amazed by the length of time people remember my speeches. I did one nearly 2.5 years ago to a women's business network. I remember it well because I had a terrible cold at the time and thought I might lose my voice. A few months ago, I got a call out of the blue from someone who remembered that talk. She is a lovely lady with a really interesting business idea: online travel salvage (http://www.travelsalvage.com/).

They offer a market for you to transfer a cancelled holiday or flight to another buyer. It works because most holiday companies offer pitifully small refunds, but do allow transfers. The transfer option gives the seller a chance to get more money back, and the buyer gets a travel bargain, so it's a win:win for both sides. They're just building up the cancelled holidays and flights just now, so there's not a massive choice yet, but I think they're more than worth a try if you need to offload a cancellation. or are looking for a travel bargain.

We did a one-off ad hoc online press release and boosted their web traffic 250%. Best of all, that resulted in coverage in a well-known national magazine: in fact they are currently Prima's website of the month (June issue).

And all that interesting business and these results stemmed from just one talk 2.5 years ago - aided by the practice and feedback I get in public speaking at Toastmasters clubs in Edinburgh!

If you fancy a break, I see Travel Salvage have a holiday in Spain for 2 people (flights from Newcastle on 6th June & accommodation) currently going for just over £100....

And if you fancy coming along to one of the 12,000 Toastmasters clubs world-wide to improve your public speaking and leadership skills using proven Toastmasters educational materials, most clubs offer up to 3 free meetings for guests before they ask you to join. The two Edinburgh clubs (called Capital Communicators and Waverley Communicators) meet fortnightly. To give you an idea of costs, each Edinburgh club charges £42 for 6 months to cover meeting room costs and fees to Toastmasters International (TMI), plus a single joining fee of £20 to Toastmasters. Obviously local meeting room rates and expenses will vary, but price is not generally a barrier to joining Toastmasters.

Once you join, you can attend any open Toastmaster club meeting in the world as a guest, so even on a bargain break, you could find a Toastmasters club where you can meet locals and participate in the club meeting! I found one in Forres, in the Scottish Highlands. It's fair to say that Forres is not a major conurbation, but they are close to a major RAF base and the leading spiritual centre called Findhorn, which has attracted many eco businesses. My husband and I had a great evening and met loads of interesting people. And I got yet more public speaking practice.

Toastmasters is definitely recommended for confidence boosting and broadening your horizons.

Online News Rooms

One of the first things I usually do for clients is sort out an online news room on their site with their web designer. Given all the wonderfully rich and detailed search engine content that can go up there, creating your very own online newsroom is too good an opportunity to miss. I'm amazed that even companies with internal PR advisers, or previous PR professionals, often have not got round to this. Indeed, some web designers that say they offer SEO services have asked me what an online news room is, and what should it contain.

It's really important if you want media coverage to have an online news room. Reporters rarely read releases these days: they are swamped by them. But they do what anyone does when they need information. When they're asked by an editor to write about a topic, they usually turn to Google to search for relevant information. So it really matters that you put useful content about key issues that are relevant to your industry up there in your online news room.

The online news room allows you to put up all your news releases and articles, plus background on your company, bios of key people etc. It builds up into a large body of highly relevant search engine friendly content that will really help the media write about you. And boost your website performance in online searches.

You can also add product and service background information. In fact anything a journalist might be interested in. Of course, if you have press kits, they should go up. And photos (but be sure to have a link or a request form for high resolution images as web pictures are far too small for print media). Maybe you run events that the media would be interested in? Or have good blogs, videos or podcasts that can be linked to? And financial information that you are willing to disclose - maybe about your backers (with their approval, of course).

If you run the analytics, it's amazing how many ordinary site visitors like to see what you're putting out to the media: the new room is a very popular page on a website. That means you are communicating your company progress and background to all sorts of useful people through an online news room: potential recruits, investors and clients, plus suppliers and advisers. Existing staff, friends and family will all be better able to recommend your business if they can tap into good quality information on the site. Especially if it is distilled into media-friendly factual nuggets stripped of all the marketing BS.

It's really important that people can find their way round the information in the news room, so it has to be searchable. A recent survey of journalists in the US showed well over 90% needed news search-ability on a site. At the most basic level you can put up a list of headlines with jump links to the release text below, but that will only cover a screen-shot sized list of headlines. Anything more needs to be properly searchable, but it is not rocket science as Google has a 'search this site' option you can highlight. I'm sure your web designer will come up with something more elegant if you wish.

And good PRs should be able to come up with an inexhaustible supply of ideas for releases to keep your newsroom fuelled.

Blogging tips

I'm indebted to *David Meerman Scott's Twitter page yesterday for a link to this set of tips about professional blogging from a professional blogger and self-confessed geek called Yehuda Berlinger. I reckon he outlines a pretty clear road from start-up to star of the blogosphere and I will be working to apply a lot of his tips, including having a massive cringe at all the blogs I set up in my initial experimental phase ("not professional" says Berlinger and I agree).

As Simon Allen at Shopfitter says, "Google loves blogs" and certainly the posts on blogs appear a lot faster online than many website updates, so you get results faster with blogs if you're trying to drive more web traffic.

You can track that with the excellent free Google Analytics tools. You can even get free Google lessons and qualifications in all of this wizard stuff to enable you to boost your web traffic and increase your confidence at handling it all. Good on Google!

David is the author of the excellent "New Rules of Marketing and PR" book which outlines how to reach buyers online directly. Highly recommended (and no, I don't get anything for that!).

Going Viral

When viral marketeers can make scissors and used frying oil fly (not together), it's time to re-visit how to capture the online imagination. No daft YouTube videos here: just solid inspiration and food for thought to get your business moving.

Check out: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/135/made-to-stick-getting-your-ideas-to-fly.html?partner=homepage_newsletter

And once you succeed, don't forget to blog about it, write a news article and distribute online, post comments on all your social media, include it in your newsletter, and tell everyone about it. And hey, if you feel like it, go on: make the video and podcast.....!

Online Directories

Every month or so we check out the searches that potential clients might use to find companies like us. For example, one of the searches we run is on PR + Edinburgh.

Although we work for clients all over the UK, clients in Edinburgh reduce travel time (and we're always keen to reduce our carbon footprint) and we do see them face-to-face more frequently. That allows us to have deeper relationships with the key people involved. We do use collaborative working tools and webcams for conferencing. But full-on PR consultancy demands a close working relationship with the only other person involved in the business who has a 360 degree vision remit: the MD/CEO. We're the people that spot the problems and build the strategy to maximise the business reputation.

This time, during the monthly SEO trawl on PR + Edinburgh I noticed some of the more successful business directories (i.e. coming up on Google p1 searches of PR + Edinburgh) are taking their company details from bizwiki.co.uk. We were represented on bizwiki.co.uk, but the details were basic to say the least. I quickly rectified that and look forward to seeing fuller listings appear on multiple sites. I'm all in favour of sites that save us time and effort and Bizwiki.co.uk looks like a handy tool for UK business recognition online.

Check it out!

PR: Spin or Substance?

There is a hang-over from the overt spin-doctoring practiced by political parties that has tainted PR with a reputation for white-washing unpleasant truths. That may be possible for a while in politics, but Churchill's point still rings true today: You can fool some of the people all of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

There's a world of difference between public sector PR, which is fighting off media interest, and commercial PR, which is usually fighting for media coverage.
But it's all too easy to get coverage in either the public or the commercial sphere when things go horrendously wrong.

PR is not very effective as whitewash - or green wash. It's never a substitute for fixing things. But it’s a great tool when you’re in the middle of fixing things, because it allows professional communicators to inject extra clarity into what can become a conflicting and confused scenario. The discipline of clarifying the key objectives, defining the key audiences, and crafting messages for each audience (including staff), and delivering those messages down multi-channels will stand an organisation in good stead long after the incident has passed, although they will do much better in the first few critical hours of a crisis if there has been regularly reviewed preparation, training and practice for potential disasters.

You don't need to practice for every conceivable disaster. A very experienced PR practitioner should have an understanding of the media approaches and the common underlying themes and help you build a broad base to adapt for most scenarios.
PR is not the solution when something goes wrong: speedy and effective remedial action is the only lasting solution, but PR is the best communications tool to communicate that there is a remedy being applied.

Good communications gradually evens up the bad messages with more positive stories and helps restore something that can’t be bought: some people call it buzz, but I call it the confidence that comes out of faith in a future.

The Magic of Integrating PR, Marketing and Sales for Business Success

Research shows that PR boosts sales and marketing by up to 50%.
But 50% of zero sales and marketing is still zero.
You need to get PR, sales and marketing working together to boost business brilliantly.

Trouble is: sales, marketing and PR have become so complex, they have evolved into different disciplines, where the people are all trained and accredited separately by different institutions. Each practitioner knows a little about the others, but often views them as competition for the promotional budget, instead of an ally to deliver better results.

Go round the marketing and communications professions and you'll find it's a classic case of asking a man with a hammer what the solution is. 9 times out of 10, the man with a hammer will suggest a nail. So it is with sales, marketing and PR professionals.

The sales man will point out that without sales, there is no income, but few salespeople would relish selling if they were not backed up with good marketing communications materials. And most would find their job a lot easier against a background of reputation-enhancing, profile-raising PR to drive traffic to the sales channels on and offline.

The marketing man will demonstrate that without researching the market, finding the right niche in terms of features, market, packaging, distribution and price, you can have great sales teams but no-one will know anything about your offering.

And PR people will argue that without a reputation, you can't trade effectively (just look at what happened all those years ago when Gerard Ratner claimed his products were c**p).

And of course, they are all right.

But what's interesting is that, with the advent of online PR, the distinction between PR/marketing/sales is breaking down.

Traders can directly interact with their buyers online. Especially if they can create content that actually interests people. That's opposed to reeling off lists of features & benefits expressed in the second person in a forlorn hope than one might strike a chord with a potential customer ....

And nowhere is that activity hotter than on the front page of Google. Almost all major purchases nowadays start with a Google search online.

Despite being a small agency, since the start of this year we've been getting clients onto the front page of Google's natural search results with a combination of PR, journalism and marketing techniques. What's interesting is that the results have been persisting, sometimes for months. And clients report their website ratings have also been boosted on Google.