Blogging for Business in East Lothian

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!

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 to be Interesting On-line

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.

Online complaints do more damage

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.

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!

Gaming brings new audience to Twitter

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

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.

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.

Subbing Copy - time to revive a lost wordsmithing art?

The National Union for Journalists in Scotland have produced a bargain (imho) online course designed to teach how to produce intelligible and attractive copy, with headings that are fit for professional publication.

Forwarding Is the New Networking

Tom Davenport's The Next Big Thing blog at Harvard Business says forwarding info is a way of saying, "I know what you're interested in, and I'm thinking about you."

But he points out "you can go too far with forwarding" and advises against being "a mass forwarder". Many executives complain they got too many indiscriminate forwards.

He says, "Forwarding to a list (or retweeting to a list of followers, BTW) cheapens the networking value of the act. It's the online equivalent of finding a credit card offer from Capital One in your mailbox".

Why the Wrong People Get Laid Off

Really thought provoking piece in a Harvard Business School blog by Peter Bregman on "Why the Wrong People Get Laid Off - essentially they are "too confusing to fire" because no-one understands the consequences of getting rid of them. Means that in a downturn, better organised people who communicate more (and are much more effective employees) get the heave-ho. Another reason why smaller businesses have an edge over larger organisations? But also a warning not to let it happen in your business.

Focus to Boost Business

(picture created in http://www.wordle.com/)

How many times have you wished you had more time to promote the business? We can always find the time, provided that promotion is the top priority. But is it just a case of prioritising? Trouble is, whenever you prioritise, something else is demoted. So how can we make more time for key tasks?

One solution I've heard suggested is to tap into that "just before holiday" frenzy.

We all work like crazy before a holiday to clear the desk - all we need is to do that every day to increase our output... And when you're tired? Just imagine someone pointing a gun at your head - if that was real, all tiredness would vanish. Well yes. That's great in the short term. But how long would most people's health last, piling on the stress like that?

We can do a prodigious amount of work when we have a powerful motivating reason - saving lives, helping charities, going on hols, turning the business around, moving office or house etc. But we know it's for a finite period.

Sure, build a bit of rush time into a week, but there is another way: work smarter. And I'm not thinking about rushing out to buy the latest gadget. I had a harsh but valuable experience that taught me to focus on the important stuff only.

Recently I lost the use of my right arm for 8 weeks - a frozen shoulder. Agony. And I'm right-handed. Painkillers and a good physio sorted it out. I now use the free program called WorkRave to enforce breaks so I don't get another frozen shoulder. But boy, did I get a really good set of lessons in how to work efficiently. I didn't have any choice.

I addressed emails twice a day. I only looked at ones from clients, friends and family. And I painstakingly typed one line answers to clients. Anything else was done by phone. Guess what? I slashed my email time by half and still had time to cancel or block a load of email that was not immediately useful, saving more time in future.

Speeches, case studies, articles and releases were handled with speech to text software (Dragon-Dictate) and took less time to write than direct keystrokes as speech is generally more concise than the written word (I'd previously trained the software to recognise my voice).

And I rigorously recycled text to ensure our online marketing remained on course by questioning everything I created - how can I use it again for maximum impact? A blog headline becomes a tweet and a Facebook posting via Tweetdeck pointing back to the blog. Or use Ping.fm to cover lots of social media and bookmarking sites with one post. And if the subject is strong enough, it could edited into a e-newsletter and pushed to your permission-based e-mailing list.

I expect you can suggest more ways to streamline your working day: let's hear them!

Seeing the online PR light through training

PR people often ask me about how to get on top of online PR quickly.



I usually recommend David Meerman Scott's book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

I think that book is a great starting place, and they'll find that online PR and marketing are converging online, so the whole ballpark just got a lot bigger. But the truth is, one book, no matter how good, doesn't give you a licence to practice. I've also put in a major time investment in training.

My CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) CPD Excellence log shows I've clocked up an average of 250 hours a year, each year for the last 4 years. That's currently 1,000 hours of formal training logged, not counting at least 10 times more time refining that training through practice.

They say it takes 10,000 hours to develop an expertise in a subject, and I reckon I must be getting close to that by now if you add the "putting it into practice" element.

If you count on around 240 working days a year after subtracting weekends and holidays, I'm spending over an hour a day on logged training. Not all of it is online PR and marketing. There's useful stuff about business processes and public speaking skills in there too. But I'm always picking up online PR and marketing tips while I'm working. Twitter sends me off on all sorts of interesting links and that's not logged, nor is watching the world's top experts on TED.

So why don't I feel an expert on anything? I think the explanation lies in something my tutor in the philosophy department said over 30 years ago. Bear in mind that he was a renowned professor close to retirement: he said, "The more I know, the more I discover there is to know, so now I feel I know less than I did when I started". I can relate to that!

Sometimes you just have to get comfortable with the idea that you have put in the spadework and know a lot more than most.

But logging the time spent on training puts good statistics behind you. That's quite an important professional booster, especially for smaller company owners and freelancers that are not in large organisations with structured training and development programs run by development professionals. And it's not just PR professionals. I reckon this could apply to any knowledge-led service providers.

I never thought I would say this as I struggle each year to add up my hours and file my CPD reports, but thank you CIPR CPD Excellence program and CIPR's Debbie Liddle for ensuring that, no matter how busy I am, I plan my training year in accord with my business goals and log my hours.

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.

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.

There's marketing or marketing and PR!

Looking at some of the affiliate marketing schemes being pushed on Twitter or into your email inboxes, some sound quite convincing. Then you delve deeper.

The photo of the person on the Twitter account is clearly not the same person featured on the website or blog promo blurb. Either that, or they've aged 20 years and had a lot of really bad cosmetic surgery after making all that money!

Then there's the 'proof' of wealth. A badly scanned tax form with a company name not immediately obviously related to either the Tweeter or the person featured in the promo material. For all I know, it could be anyone's tax return or even a mock-up?

Then there is often a picture of a big house. Call me a cynic, but I think I could manage to take a picure of a very large house.

Plus all the other people who are sending messages that would appear to be pushing the same or a similar opportunity.

Often the pitch is a proven SEO or marketing system that runs on autopilot, so no experience is needed. At this point every fibre of my PR reputational management being is sounding a warning bell. Marketing without expertise? What sort of messages will be going out?

At some point the admittedly well-written text crunches some numbers. One I looked at suggested by reaching c2 million people, you could expect 400+ sales and take a slice of the action. And of course, the person offering you this wonderful opportunity to spam the other c1,999,550 people takes a small slice too. You run the risk of being blocked by the c1,999,550 people. OK, you can use a throw-away email address and set up a disposable Twitter account, but is that any way to run a business?

In the current economic climate, obviously quite a few people are going for it. If they are desperate, I wish them well. I hope they become rich and that these opportunities don't involve a scam.

But this numbers approach does highlight the marketing mindset taken to extremes. I think it illustrates why PR and marketing don't always see eye to eye. Marketing likes branding, and crunching the numbers and counting the sales. PR is about building influence, raising profile and safe-guarding business reputation, creating trust so that the marketing and sales efforts work well.

The truth is, sales, marketing and PR each bring a lot of advantages to the table, but by combining them you get a balanced approach and much greater long term business benefits. Not short term 'experts' with a little social media experience.

Would you rather be sending stuff to peopke who don't want it. Or walking into a pitch with well crafted marketing materials and a great company reputation backed by a clutch of on and offline cuttings from reputable sources? Plus some great metrics and feedback to inform your sales pitch? That's how PR, marketing and sales work together to build a long term business proposition that provide livlihoods for the many people who don't want to go it alone as freelancers or entrepreneurs, or spammers.

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.

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 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.

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.

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/

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.....!