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.

Is PHPR Scotland's Greenest PR Agency?

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHPR was one of nine Edinburgh businesses shortlisted:

• Aquamarine Power


• Balfour Beatty Rail


• Edinburgh Napier University


• Maximillion


• PHPR Ltd


• Prestonfield Hotel


• Rabbies Trail Burners


• Wilderness Scotland


• William Waugh
  

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

PR and the truth about 'free' publicity

I keep finding people equate PR with 'free' advertising in the media. While I can see why, the trouble comes when they think a few press mentions will perform the sales, marketing and PR miracle all on their own.

In truth, you'll get some sales enquiries sparked by media coverage, but many small businesses fail to use the coverage they do get to boost their sales and marketing.

Research shows that PR boosts sales and marketing by up to 50%, but 50% of zero sales and marketing is still zero.

Just like winning an award, where you can claim to be an award-winning business for life, getting good media coverage allows you a major claim to fame forever.

What's better than getting good media coverage online & offline)?

Getting lots of it! That creates a real buzz that builds business success on and offline, provided that the marketing shapes up to the hype and the sales process is effective.

But what's even better than lots of media coverage? Multiplying it!

We always tell people to give their PR coverage 'legs'. Make the most of any coverage you get by using it in all your marketing materials. It's so simple to lift a short attributed quote or phrase from the article (like they do in West End shows - "the solution" Joe Smith, The Times).

Why not lift a quote and:

• Put it up on your website
• And on your email signatures.
• Add it to your social media profile.
• Blog about it.
• Include it in your newsletter masthead or credentials piece.
• Add it to your sales proposals and letters.
• Pop it on the back of your biz card, on a card at reception: anywhere you can.
• Include a link to the article or programme online and when the link breaks because the piece is archived, take the link off, but keep the quote.
• And online PR coverage of your news, if you've included the right search terms (but not too often) will ensure that the search engine keep sending you targeted new business enquiries long after the initial buzz has settled.

If it all sound great, but you haven't got the time the time to do it all, that's where we help.

Budgeting for PR

Have you ever wondered how you get from the small business to the large business marketing effect? If you have the vision to accelerate out of the end of this recession, understanding the synergy between sales, marketing and PR and budgeting for them, will enable you to do just that: accelerate your business.

We work with businesses of all sizes and over the last 22 years. I've noticed the main difference between the smaller and the larger business is that many small to medium businesses don't think they have a marketing budget. And they rarely admit to having a sales or PR budget.

In reality, most small businesses have made a substantial investment of time and money.
If you add up all the money and the time you spent in the last 12 months on any of these, you have the makings of your budget:

• the website,
• taking a 'special deal' in a directory or an advertising feature,
• your membership subs & meeting fees plus time for attending networking events,
• the online directory listings and forums, plus social networking sites,
• writing sales proposals
• PowerPoint presentations
• responding to sales enquiries
• encouraging referrals from customers or complementary businesses
• signage for a building or vehicle
• maybe some Pay Per Click experiments?
• or a promo item?
• marketing materials - folders, leaflets, brochures?
• a mailing list?
• email flyers?
• a newsletter?
• a blog?
• photos, videos or podcasts?
• local sponsorship in kind?
• stalls at trade fairs
• other sales, marketing, PR promotional activity

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. But you may be struggling to know what's effective? The standard advice is to monitor what works, then do more of it! And of course there's a lot of truth in the saying: "you can't manage what you haven't measured". But it's easier said than done.

If you ask customers at the point of sale how they heard of you, most people will stop after one answer: probably the most recent thing that brought them to you. Now that is an important clue, but would they have bought if you hadn't come recommended (word of mouth, or in the media, or online)? Would they have bought if your website was out-of date or the branding wasn't attractive and the brand values consistent?

In most cases the 'buy' decision is a complex balance between:

• Your profile and reputation (PR), plus
• A clear understanding and attraction to what you are selling (marketing and branding) plus
• A good sales process to ensure lots of referrals and to clinch the deal efficiently.

Plenty of people will offer clever tools to monitor what works for you, but you'll only really find out by talking to customers and getting their feedback on all aspects of your sales, marketing and PR.

Plus you'll pick up invaluable feedback and ideas for developing your products and services in response to demand and for new markets.

More about the golden synergy between on and offline PR, marketing & sales next time.

New site

You may not see the difference, but this is a new site for PHPR. It now has a nice new integrated blog facility. Under the bonnet, the whole site's been re-developed by shopfitter.com to be search engine-friendly. Watch this space ...