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Wanna Be a Star? Four Ways to Tell

I recently found this in my email inbox:

Contestants Wanted for New Business Reality Show

Entrepreneurs wanted for new Reality Web Series that will become a PBS Special. "The Apprentice" meets "Oprah" in an online show where participants make real changes on their 'inside world" in order to achieve measurable success in their "outside world." Business Growth through Personal Growth.

Requirements: 

Candidates should be successful entrepreneurs and small business owners who understand the power of mastermind teams, personal growth work, subconscious reprogramming, and cutting edge online, social, and mass media marketing. We are looking for 18 strong entrepreneurial self-promoters to join us on this cutting edge project intended to be a PBS Special beyond its life as a web reality series. There is a fee to participate.SUBMIT your headshot, plus links to your websites and related press material for immediate consideration. The adventure begins January 1!

Reality TV is everywhere – and now it’s coming to PBS. (Probably at 4 in the morning, but hey, who’s knocking it?)

Suddenly, normally prudent business owners wondered whether they had the calling; at least one colleague emailed me about whether this could be a good investment.

Here are four quick ways to figure out whether you’ll get a call-back, and if you’ll even want one, assuming you’re willing to pay for your minute of TV, or web-based, stardom:

1. On-camera publicity can be very useful, depending on the outlet. Is this the kind of company you want to be seen with?
2. Play the odds. Before you shoot your first audition, dig into the selection process. How many finalists does it take to find a winner? Remember, this is their process, not yours. And you’re cattle until you’re called.
3. Know the hook. Every producer has a team in mind, and drama, and a story arc, and the camera. What’s the angle they’re looking for? Is your angle good enough (and one you’re willing to share)?
4. Dare to say “no.” A good show isn’t necessarily what's good for business.

Know that just applying will be a big distraction and an even bigger distraction if you go all the way. At the end of it all, what will it do for business? And would you actually want your customers to see it?

Some folks say that all PR is good PR. Not me. Not this time. Never mind paying for it.

By: Amy Bermar
Twitter: @amybermar

 

The Emma Sullivan and Governor Brownback Incident: A Lesson in “Social” Engagement

When Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s office contacted a state high school, apparently irate about student Emma Sullivan’s particularly critical Tweet, lots of lessons were learned about social media. But there’s one in particular that businesses should take note of: Don’t criticize the conversation – engage in it.

Trying to put an end to criticism in social outposts with pure might often encourages critics to use that same platform as a speaker box against you. Not surprisingly, the governor’s move backfired. Sullivan received a flurry of support, and ended up with five times as many followers as the governor.

What should Brownback’s office have done when they saw the Tweet? Tweeted back. Asked what she was unhappy about. Asked for her input. Asked for constructive feedback. It may not have gotten her to agree with the governor’s policies, but it would have been positive engagement – and who knows, maybe it would have won the favor of a few on-the-fence constituents who took notice.

Brownback eventually backed down – acknowledging Sullivan’s right to freedom of speech that was at the center of the controversy, in a public apology, mostly ending the story. But had his office engaged instead of going on the offensive, it could have avoided one of the biggest headaches it will ever experience. Businesses can learn from this misstep - and recognize when criticism online can become an opportunity for positive engagement.

By: Robert Klucevsek
Twitter: @RobertKlucevsek

Public Relations Is...

Public relations is constantly evolving thanks to the introduction of new social media channels and the broadening scope of what PR professionals “do”. So, it makes sense that the Public Relations Society of America is making a push to update how we define our industry. The current definition is as old as I am:

Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.

Now, while I definitely don’t consider myself old, the current definition is certainly outdated and doesn’t accurately or fairly depict all that we as PR professionals do for our clients. The intro to PR courses I took in school taught me that PR was an outlet to help a company tell its story – primarily through press releases and media kits. There were no discussions about thought leadership and lead generation campaigns, branding or competitive positioning, or blogging, tweeting and pinning – things that we do on a daily basis to get our clients’ stories heard and position them as thought-leaders in their respective markets.

On that note, I offer my own definition to the PRSA:

Public relations is a medium that gives a voice to a company/person/product through the use of traditional and non-traditional media channels. It is an outlet that helps define a company’s brand while positioning it for success in its industry.

So - how do you define PR?

By: Jacke D'Andrea
Twitter: @jackiedandrea

Four Mobile Apps for PR Pros (Beyond Twitter)

Like everybody, PR pros and marketers are spending more time on the road. Like everybody, we’re usually glued to our Blackberrys smartphones and tablets.

We certainly love our Twitter, RSS, and Evernote apps for helping us stay connected and organized, but here are a few more mobile apps that can help PR pros be even more productive on the road.

CardMunch
If conferences were Super Mario Bros., business cards would be the coins – not the biggest goal, but a pretty good indicator of success.

Unfortunately, they’re also likely to end up in a desk drawer or briefcase.

With CardMunch, you can quickly snap a photo of a business card, the app will ship the image off to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and within a few hours you’ll have an electronic record of your new acquaintance’s contact info.

Check out Rafe Needleman’s recent CardMuch review over at CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57326975-250/rafe-recommends-scan-your-business-cards-with-cardmunch/

Vimeo (for iPhone)
For marketers, video is the future. While professional productions are great, there’s a lot to be said for short videos that are that quick and easy to shoot, chop, and ship.

With Vimeo’s iPhone app, users can shoot a video, trim the footage, and upload the video right on their phone. At a user conference or trade show, attendees can document customer testimonials, product demos, or presentations in real-time.

Here’s a handy video of the Vimeo app at Engagdet: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/30/vimeos-gratis-ios-video-editing-app-punks-imovie-in-its-own-hou/

DropBox
Don’t feel like breaking out the laptop to review documents on the road? The DropBox mobile app gives you instant access to your files, without having to actually upload anything to your mobile device.

It’s also great if you fail to print out enough copies of a meeting agenda for everyone, which, of course, I’ve definitely never done. Obviously.

FlightView
Is this a shameless plug for one of our own clients? You bet it is.

Regardless, squeezing a quick meeting in between two flights in a single day isn’t entirely unheard of. With the FlightView app, travelers can get up-to-date flight information in the conference room, taxi, or security gate.

Check out AndroidGuys for a review of the latest Flightview app: http://www.androidguys.com/2011/09/27/flightview-20-arrives-push-notifications/

By: Dan Carlson
Twitter: @dancarlson317 

The ABCs of Selling, from Three Top CEOs

There’s nothing like hearing a CEO talk about sales. I just heard three of them – all men – talk about the real deal of selling: into CEOs, into IT, and sometimes, into their boards.

PR and sales ought to be joined at the hip – and increasingly, we are. It’s our job to drive more leads that close faster. Building brand is hugely valuable – and certainly part of it. Being able to make the numbers, for marketing and sales, is even better.

So when Bill Hewitt, the CEO, president and director of Kalido, a 10-year-old start-up, and Patrick Morley,  the president and CEO of Bit9, who has six ventures and three IPOs behind him, and Steve Orenberg, the chief sales officer of the U.S. unit of Kaspersky Labs, offered to talk about how they sell, 150 suits jammed the room, at a breakfast sponsored by NETSEA, the local networking group for sales professionals.

The #1 Question
All three agreed: What do CEOs care about when you’re trying to sell them? There’s only one universal answer: Growing revenue. And occasionally, how to book it. So when you’re selling into the top seat, don’t back into it. It is always, always, about the money.

That’s especially important because most IT sales these days are about driving incremental value, and often, ripping something out. Just managing this process requires an intense understanding of the corporate culture, organizational change, and macro-shifts in the industry or economy. It also means the sales team needs to know more; about the company, the context, and the players.

What’s Changed
“You have to know how things are being bought today –which is more important than the way things are being sold.” That’s from Stephen Orenberg. Three years ago, procurement and finance pretty much took over. Now, and more often than anyone likes, when an enterprise sales guy asks the buyer what the budget is, he doesn’t even claim to know. That’s a problem.

So the savviest do the work-around. They scope out publicly available data on all key players. They know where they live, when they bought their house, how much their mortgage is, and a lot of other data you’d like to think no one sees. And they use it to profile the buyer, and tune their approach.

And What Doesn’t Work
These CEOs admitted that they block sales guys like themselves. For starters, they get about 15 to 20 pitches a day, from guys just like the suits sitting in the room. And most of the pitches stink. And this is where it started to sound sadly like a bad PR pitch. These so-called sales emails talk about the pitcher’s name, and company, and product. But not the CEO’s company, something relevant, and how to solve a real problem. Maybe 30 percent do it right. And those emails get read. Especially when the sales rep also asks who they should follow up with.

And that’s when a good lead is born.

By: Amy Bermar
Twitter: @amybermar

What’s in a Handle?

That which we call an account by any other name would tweet as influentially. 

Picking your Twitter handle may seem simple, right? The intuitive choice would be your name or your company name. Maybe you’re like me and have a surname in the Top 25 most common in the US, so you’ll resort to throwing a number at the end or jumbling up the order of first and last (suddenly Pilot Inspektor Lee seems to have lucked out somehow). But this obvious path isn’t always the best for companies. It could be that your product is better known than your company name or maybe you market to different verticals and should create more than one account. There are plenty of reasons to think outside the box when it comes to choosing a handle – after all, you should be doing all you can to stand out amongst all the noise.  

WarrenSapp vs QBKIlla – If you’re recruiting a defensive tackle for an NFL team, who would seem like more of a quarterback sacking expert? Let’s say, for the sake of this post, that Warren Sapp is an unknown athlete looking to get recruited, if a user doesn’t know Sapp by name but wants someone with his talents, QBKilla is a far more likely handle to come up in a recruiter’s search. And in case recruiters were searching his name, it’s still there in the header above his handle on his profile.

Blackberry vs RIM – This may be a sensitive example to use right now, but it shows how product names can overshadow company names. If a customer wants to search for the latest phone by RIM (Research in Motion), chances are they will search for “Latest Blackberry” not “Latest RIM Phone” (but, like Warren Sapp, you’ll see that RIM still fits its name in the header). Consider adopting a product name as your handle, if it is more recognizable to users.

Adidas vs AdidasFootball vs Adi_Originals (and so on and so on) – After 30 seconds of searching for “Adidas” on Twitter, I found over 10 handles relating to the company’s different market segments. Do you target more than one vertical? Here at Corporate Ink we have three Twitter accounts in order to cater more specifically to our primary spaces (PR, Security, and Supply Chain). Create multiple accounts so you don’t inundate your followers with content that is unrelated to them.

Playtex vs Playtex – Did you know that Playtex the seller of feminine products, and Playtex the seller of feminine apparel, are two completely separate companies? If there is an organization with your company’s name, or one very similar, set yourself apart in Twitter searches by using one of the previous approaches. This will avoid confusing potential followers and, if you choose wisely, can position you as more of an industry expert.

You still can’t judge an account by its handle, but a strategically chosen handle may get a user to at least click through and read.

By: Joanna Clark
Twitter: @JoannaClark5

How to Pitch and Place Infographics in the Press

Infographics are slowly taking over the online universe. According to this infographic (yes, this is a blog on infographics that references an infographic on infographics), the word infographic is mentioned online every 1.7 seconds. That means, on any given day, infographics are being blogged, tweeted and talked about online more than 51,000 times.

Sounds like a good way to get your message out, huh? But the more pressing question isn’t around whether or not infographics are an effective marketing tool, but rather how to go about placing them with meaningful media outlets.

Here’s a quick reality check: pitching infographics isn’t much different from pitching any other story. Of course, there are a few caveats, but the basic strategy remains the same.

The first step: understand your story and your audience. The best way to do this is by ensuring that you can answer two questions about your pitch angle: so what, and who cares? In other words, why is this infographic important, who is going to be interested in viewing it and why does it make sense for the publication or blog to publish it right now?

Once you have your story fleshed out, the next step is targeted outreach. Do you know which publications typically run infographics? Not all accept them. (Fast Company, USA Today and Mashable are three high-profile outlets to shoot for.) Do you know which reporters are in charge of infographic review, and which topics he/she is interested in covering? Reporters and bloggers can receive thousands of emails a day, so ensuring that your pitch is targeted and meaningful to their audience is critical.

Specifically for infographics, most bloggers and publications want exclusivity, so be sure to promise that in your pitch … and follow through with it, of course. Also, due to the abundance of poorly designed infographics, if you have an example of one that your company has already created, share the link with the editor so he can envisions the end result (don’t attach – reporters hate attachments).

Here are a few additional email pitching tips – useful for all forms of media, including infographics:

1. Send with an attention-grabbing subject line: The most important step is getting the reporter to open your email!
2. Shorter is better: Remember, reporters have to sort through thousands of emails a day and are often on deadline – they don’t have time to read your 300-word pitch.
3. Personalize, personalize, and personalize:  If a reporter thinks they’re being spammed, the email gets trashed.
4. Make it newsworthy: If you’re struggling to get someone’s attention, scan the news for recent stories and headlines that relate to your pitch. If there’s a piece of breaking news or a new supporting report, leverage it to gain the journalist attention.

A few other points to remember: the infographic is for the publication’s readers, not your company. Don’t worry if the message isn’t super tight with your key message. And if you’re struggling to catch reporters by email, try pitching it via the phone where you can sell the idea verbally.

And finally, once you place the idea (sometimes you need to create the infographic first), just because you have a bunch of statistics and a few photos, that doesn’t mean it’s a good infographic.  The story needs to flow, make sense and it can’t look like an advertisement.

By: Greg Hakim
Twitter: @DreamHakim 

What the Futurists Know: 10 Trends in Internet Use

It’s not often I’m sitting at the table with a guy who advises Obama, Google and Sarkozy. But Jeff Cole, who leads the Digital Future report at Annenberg’s School of Communications, was the keynote at a conference I helped organize for Worldcom Public Relations Group, our global network of partner PR firms, and he was primed to talk about what he’s learned studying how we use the Internet for the past 11 years.

That’s actually a long time, in Internet time. Lifetimes, even. He and his team are now tracking behavior in 34 countries, which gives them, and us, a pretty interesting vantage point on change.

Among the most interesting points he shared were forecasts about the future:

1. Facebook will continue to grow, but probably only for another few years. Once it hits a billion-or-so members, people will defect to smaller networks. It’s not clear the form they’ll take, or how many we’ll be able to actively manage. Several years ago, Forrester Research said we could handle three. In The Influentials, the most connected touch as many as 21 groups.
2. By 2016, we’ll be spending 50 hours each week ‘relaxing’ in front of a screen. That’s nearly 300% more time than we spent with TVs in 1975. (And it will be a climb of nearly 50% more than the 35 hours we spent with our screens just last year.)  Where does that ‘extra’ time come from? Sleep.
3. Ratings for live TV ‘events’ continue to climb. Not because it’s better, but because TV is now communal. With a phone in one hand, we’re ‘with’ people who aren’t in the room. Laugh tracks suddenly stop being necessary, when our Twitter and Facebook friends are laughing along with us.
4. But not everyone is moving online. In fact, two percent drop off each year. Some lose access through their work, others by choice. Should we care about them?
5. Newspapers will not go away, the same way radio didn’t disappear when movies came in. They’ll shrink, and adapt. There may well be only four or five ‘major’ dailies that truly survive, even digitally. The most successful will become global brands, with international editions. The likely contenders are the most obvious: USAToday, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
6. This generation of teens will never read newspapers. (Ten years ago, teens didn’t care about newspapers, either, but picked them up by the time they were in their mid-20s.) This generation is also the last that will own CDs.
7. By 2015, there will be more than 3 billion smart-phones. Despite how often we manage to lose our phones, we are actually becoming more likely to leave our wallet behind than our phones; our phones are rapidly becoming our connection to the world.

There were three other data points that were interesting enough to share, even though they’re more about today than tomorrow.

1. Teens are more interested in news than at any time since the 1930s, because they know that what happens half-way around the world can change their own lives. They’re getting this news from friends, of course, or by sites that ‘curate’ the content.
2. 80% of teens sleep next to their phone.
3. Only 4 to 6 percent of people who have PCs really ‘need’ them, based on the applications they use; the rest of us can live with a tablet. Add to this that ‘everyone’ with an iPad is ready to get rid of their PC, and it’s easy to understand why Apple was ready to drop the price, but realized it didn’t need to.

By: Amy Bermar
Twitter: @amybermar

Don’t Tweet that the Sky is Falling. Tweet How to Not Get Crushed.

Data shows that negative remarks on Twitter will lead to fewer followers, according to HubSpot’s Dan Zarella. This can be expressions of fear, anger, sorrow, etc..

This presents a bit of a conundrum for the typical enterprise technology marketer whose messages sometimes involve a fair amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), particularly in the security space.

So how can you tweet positively and effectively when you’re messaging around bad news? Should you even bother?

Subscribing to a prime Twitter tenet, you want to tweet useful info – things your followers will find interesting. Will they find bad news, like a major data breach, interesting? Sure they will, but helpful and neutral data linking to the story is a better approach than a FUD headline, if one subscribes to the belief that negative tweets will reduce followers. 

News is great; gripes and complaints aren’t. Tweets that address the challenges but offer solutions are a much more positive approach that avoids those feelings of doom and gloom. And if you can do this without being too salesy, your Tweets are in good shape.

By: George Robertson
Twitter: @newssource