PR communications to the press have become instantaneous through e-mail distributions, social media interactions and Web sites. Yes, it’s efficient. But in an effort to hasten the steps that drive publicity, some PR practitioners or self-promoting businesses have gotten sloppy.  They are depersonalizing the recipients/users of the information they are producing.

The reality is that the publishing world is suffering in this economy too.  Editors are taking on more work as their staff of reporters and writers is smaller than ever.  Some are editing multiple publications simultaneously.  And all of them are striving daily to meet deadlines with quality content.

Savvy PR professionals can take advantage of this editorial state of affairs by falling back upon the core methodology of our trade:  content is king.

This means you should:

• Personalize each individual pitch. Spam e-mails inundate writers and editors and can harm the reputation of the sender and the client they represent.
• Make their job easy.  This means that your media contacts should never have to dig for basic information.  A company backgrounder should present the basic facts about a business: including its history, competitive niche, products/services, key executives etc.
• Present story ideas proactively. Sending a pitch with a tenuous tie to an editorial calendar topic for the publication is weak draw for publicity.  Do the research on both competitors and previously published articles to know what’s missing from the publication’s content.  Then present options for the reporter to use your client as a resource OR offer a by-lined article.

It’s a version of the Golden Rule.  Pitch onto others as you would have others pitch unto you.

In the early days of social media, the catch phrase was “join the conversation.” No matter what happened, join the conversation was the catch-all answer. Is it too soon to refer to it as “so last decade”? No?

Your Web site is boring? join the conversation

Your sales team isn’t closing deals? join the conversation

Online review sites are tearing apart your product? join the conversation

Is your competitor eating your lunch? join the conversation!

But the truth is that “joining the conversation” has no direct influence on ROI. All it means is that you are showing up to the party and you are left to yourself thinking, “okay, I’m here… now what?” Just because you show up, doesn’t guarantee that you will be welcomed or that you even have anything valuable to share. Conversation is just one small piece of the puzzle, and sometimes does more harm than good. What is not said enough is that sometimes sitting back and watching the conversation play out without you is the best social media strategy.  Inactivity is a tough pill for social media consultants to swallow, especially when they charge by the hour and not program success.

For example, let’s compare it to SEO. If you have a killer Google Pagerank and are pulling in tons of traffic, but visitors are left confused, disappointed and wondering how they ended up getting to your site and immediately leave, you have accomplished nothing. The truth is that a huge portion of your traffic is junk. There are no conversions, there is no ROI.

Now, I am not saying that social media engagement and online conversations can’t deliver true ROI, but not likely to do so on their own. Is the organic search traffic you get attracting the right audience? Does your sales team really understand what customer prospects are looking for? Does your product fail to deliver on its promises? Are your competitors out innovating you? These are all questions that can be answered by simple listening to social media streams, without conversation.

The next time your social media/PR agency drops the join the conversation bomb, challenge them. Force them to tie the strategy that they are recommending back to ROI and answer the big “and then what?” question.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/margolove/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

While Facebook is arguably one the best places to stay connected with friends and family, it’s also a powerful marketing tool that we have helped leverage on behalf of many clients. A stat recently came out that 25% of all US page views are on Facebook, showing the immense reach that the site has built.

One campaign that we launched for a major Boston hospital was focused on driving attendance at an event that they were running, educating prospective patients on  available varicose vein treatments. We were happy to once again prove that there is business value in Facebook, even if you aren’t a farmer, mobster or in a wagon train going down the Oregon trail. (Anyone remember that app?)

In fact, statistics show that mothers and middle-aged women are the fastest growing population on Facebook.  CCA used that knowledge to help our client after learning that their target audience was women, ages 45-60, with concerns about varicose veins and/or possible treatments for varicose veins.

By targeting users through their social data and geographic proximity to the various events that were being hosted, we were able achieve an ROI that far surpassed that of other traditional marketing tactics that were being used.

Here are the results of the campaign:

• Over a 5 week period the targeted ads were shown 2,042,151 times
• 773 people clicked on the ads
• 17 people registered for the event directly through Facebook
• Cost was a fraction of the budget compared to spending on local newspapers and radio
• Cost per conversion (attendee):

Facebook: $42.80

Radio equated to $525

Newspapers equated to $128.53

What was most powerful about this campaign was not only the capability to use Facebook to target the users that mattered to us, but the ability to do so without the hefty budget of traditional radio and newspaper advertising. Leveraging public social data to place relevant messages in front of audiences willing to listen may be one of the most underestimated impacts on marketing that the social media revolution has caused.

Although the thousands of articles about social media often overshadow it, e-mail remains highly effective as a results-oriented platform that can increase sales and drive traffic to your Web site or Facebook page.

Importantly, e-mail is the most popular and effective medium for sharing information online.

In a recent study from ShareThis.com -

• 46 percent of consumers said they share information via email
• 33 percent said they share information via Facebook
• 14.5 percent said they use other channels to share information
• 6 percent said they share information via Twitter

Our recommendation for this coming year: Maintain and even strengthen your e-mail marketing efforts. Your e-mail program and your Web site are still the pillars of your online marketing efforts.

Google’s Marissa Mayer announced, at the end of Google Search Event that Google will soon receive real-time access from Facebook Fan Page updates.

“Facebook will be providing us with a feed of updates from public profile pages, also known as Facebook pages,” says Mayer.

This is a great opportunity for the more than 1.6 million active Fan Pages on Facebook, of which almost half are local business, who are sharing content on a regular basis. With Facebook profiles and Fan Pages being indexed by Google, businesses can leverage their Fan Pages as part of their Search Engine Optimization strategy.

By continuing to update your Fan Page on a regular basis with relevant, engaging content, your Fan Page will likely be found by prospects and customers who are searching for products and services on Google. If you execute the strategy properly, you could grow your fan base exponentially and get your company in front of more qualified prospects who are actively searching right now for what you offer.

The thing that I’ve seen consistently raise eyebrows when presenting marketing communications strategies to clients is the idea that social media programs do NOT have to live in their own isolated bubble.

“Wait, you mean the intelligence that I gather through my email campaign can be used in my PR/Facebook/Twitter/SEO programs (and visa versa)?!”

Yes.

Each medium does have its own challenges. You can’t treat people the same over email as you would over Facebook. It just doesn’t work. BUT, the information you gather from how your audience best responds to email campaigns to what keywords they search and have alerts set for to what types of blog posts they are most likely to “like” on your Facebook fan page has no boundaries (other than extrapolating to unrelated audiences).

Audience behavior intelligence is universal.

Don’t just collect all that information and stare at it. Use it! Understand the way that your audience behaves on Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/Linkedin/Google so that you can be exactly where they are, in ways that they want to see you while encouraging the behavior that you want them to express  (phone calls, link sharing, blog post publishing…).

For a lot of marketers, social media technology itself still seems pretty foreign, but let’s not forget that behind (most) of those Twitter accounts is still another human that has the same basic needs and desires as any other person.

Because when you break it all down, your Twitter followers aren’t all that different from your Facebook fans and your YouTube channel subscribers. They just choose different channels to engage with your brand and the content you produce.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wackystuff/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

With every brand, big or small, clawing to create some tangible value out of all the buzz around social media marketing, let us not forget that traditional media is far from dead.

After yet another year of being declared buried and forgotten, television, radio and even newspapers are still alive. Sure, newspapers weren’t exactly in great shape before the recession. Yes, they’ve been hurt like every other business and yes, just like every other business they’re refining their business model. But before you write up a death certificate for traditional media and leave them out of your marketing  plan, consider this:

• Television: 99 percent of video viewing was done on a television in the past year; less than 5 percent of TV viewing was DVR or TiVo playback. (Source: Ball State University’s Center for Media Design)
• Radio: Broadcast radio (free AM/FM radio) has the largest listening audience of all audio platforms (satellite, iPod, CDs) with 122 minutes of daily use, while CDs are at 72 minutes and portable audio players (iPods/mp3 players) are at 69 minutes. (Source: Ball State University’s Center for Media Design)
• Newspapers: 74 percent of adults read newspapers both online and offline. In addition, 82 percent of households with incomes of more than $100,000 read the paper online and/or offline and newspapers are starting to successfully attract 18 to 34 year-olds to their Web sites. (Source: Integrated Newspaper Audience Report from Scarborough.com)

Traditional media isn’t dead, its role is simply evolving as new technologies emerge and the competitive universe grows increasingly crowded.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steeljam/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Tired of hearing about how the next big killer application is going to turn your business into a gold mine and make life easier for you?

Yes, we all know that mass media habits have changed and that we’re now a wired society, dependent on our computers and iPhones for information. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that something new equates to something better for your business.

As we become mesmerized by and inundated with new technologies, we tend to forget about the one deciding factor when purchasing a service or product from one company over another: human trust.

A stroke on a keyboard, an e-mail or a tweet will never replace the experience of meeting someone, shaking a hand and engaging in a conversation. When that happens, there’s trust and with trust comes customer loyalty. Optimizing for better ranks on Google will help bring people to your website and posting your updates on Facebook and LinkedIN will help connect you with more people, but there’s no replacement for meeting prospects in person!

As the holidays approach, we urge you to try the next big thing in marketing – human trust.

From the October 5th, 2009 New York Times:

“On Monday, the F.T.C. said it would revise rules about endorsements and testimonials in advertising that had been in place since 1980. The new regulations are aimed at the rapidly shifting new-media world and how advertisers are using bloggers and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to pitch their wares.”

So the jig is up. Advertising claims and the people who love them are once again under the microscope.

While I’ve used some pretty bodacious adjectives and gussied up a few product shots to bring out the best in my clients’ offerings, I’ve always tried to live by the slogan of one of my previous employers: truth well told.

Truth well told was originated by McCann-Erickson at a time when many products were making some pretty questionable claims. Even big companies were guilty: a 1914 ad for Ford’s Model T featured the headline “Buy it because it’s a better car” and suggested the reader get the particulars from a Ford dealer. Um…okaaaay….

Fast forward about a century. Laws and guidelines are in place to protect the public from misleading advertising claims and fuzzy endorsements. And generally speaking, I think the ad world does a pretty good job of policing itself as well. But, thanks to the anonymous nature of the internet, we’ve taken a few steps back.

I think the general public will always be wary of advertising but let’s get back on track. Let’s put our clients’ wares out there in the most honest, best possible creative light we can.

Let’s try the truth well blogged.

CCA recently received the honor of joining the 2009 Inc. 5,000 list as one of the country’s fastest growing privately held companies. After a rigorous vetting process, we are very proud to announce that we have been named to the prestigious list for the second time.

While we are proud of our accomplishment, it is our valued and respected clients that entrust us to build their brands—along with the talented team at CCA—that enabled us to not only be in the Inc. 5000 list in 2007, but again in 2009. Our thanks and gratitude go out to all of our past, current and future clients for your commitment to our brand of marketing and client services.

Especially in a time when marketing teams are constantly forced to defend their investments, we couldn’t be more humbled by this accomplishment. We are truly lucky to have such an amazing stable of companies that we view more partners than clients. It is these valuable partnerships that have allowed us to grow even under the toughest economic conditions.

Thanks to everyone to has helped us make this accomplishment possible. It has been a true team effort.