There’s a witty little joke that’s been running on Twitter for some time now. I don’t remember when I first saw it, but every so often it pops into my Twitter stream and I click through to the punchline again. The otherwise redoubtable @missrougue, Montreal-based Tara Hunt, hooked me this morning.

The setup line is usually something like, “How to use Twitter for Marketing and PR” and a short link. Clicking on the link brings you to a one-page website that has the word “Don’t” in block black letters in the middle of the screen.

Ha ha.

But I could not more profoundly disagree with the sentiment.

Let me leave aside what I believe is the immense potential Twitter represents to engage with customers, stakeholders and others, what I would think is the very definition of marketing, and let me briefly cover how we at inmedia routinely use Twitter in our technology media relations practice.

1. We follow journalists who cover our clients and their space. Journos have been enthusiastic adopters of Twitter, using it to source ideas and contacts and to spread the word about what they’re working on. This brings us opportunities we can pitch our clients into and helps us understand even better what these reporters are interested in.

2. We actively pitch reporters through Twitter. Along with email and the telephone, Twitter has become a useful tool to reach out and touch a reporter. With a mere 140 characters at our disposal, you’ve got to believe we need to get the story down pat! And we do. Some reporters welcome this approach, and we embrace the channel where they do; others would prefer we not do so, and we respect their choice. Our front-line media relations practitioners can now count several instances of successful story pitches that were at least initiated, if not fully consummated, through Twitter.

3. We monitor Twitter for mentions of our clients, their competitors and their issues. While most of those mentions do not emanate from journalistic sources, tracking them helps our clients understand who is talking about them and what’s being said. If our clients are active on Twitter, they can engage across this channel. And even if they’re not, Twitter can be an early warning of an emerging event that could bode well or ill. Twitter has become just one more default source in our integrated monitoring efforts for clients.

4. We tweet major announcements by our clients. We count interested journalists, a broad range of technology executives, industry watchers and other influencers among our own lists of followers. So tweeting our clients’ news releases is just one more channel we can deploy on behalf of our dissemination efforts for our clients.

5. And, last but not least, we tweet major hits we get for our clients. I could tell you we do this for much the same reason as item number 4, and I would not be lying. Tweeting major stories attracts attention to them and so expands their reach and improves their impact. But to be thoroughly honest, we also do it to toot our own horns a bit. We like being able to announce that we just got coverage for a client on CNN, or in the New York Times or CIO or some other big-name outlet.

So I’m utterly persuaded, all joking aside, that Twitter is an effective new tool in the media relations tool box, one we’re happy to use extensively.

Technorati Tags: missrogue, Twitter, PR, marketing, public relations, media relations

I had a long and interesting chat with the publisher of a specialized trade publication this morning, the results of which turned my thoughts to the importance of getting a return on investment in PR. I mean this in two ways: first, getting the most value for your dollars spent with a PR practitioner or agency and second, getting the most eyeballs on your coverage.

With regards to the first, this was the particular scenario that I was discussing with the aforementioned publisher. Having pitched a series of contributed articles by email, I was calling to follow up and discuss the level of interest in my proposition. The publisher, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Canadian publishing world, talked about shrinking editorial space and how he’s unable to commit to publishing an article, however appropriate for his readership. With shrinking ad budgets, increasing competition from exclusively online publications and other factors, it’s not feasible for him to accept and commit, based on an abstract, to publishing something that would take up precious room on his pages. Rather, he’s suggested that we develop an article purely on spec, and that once submitted, he’ll review it and if he’s got the room and inclination, he’ll publish it.

This is an eminently reasonable proposition and he’s not alone in this position. However, look at it from my standpoint as a content developer for hire, and that of my client. It’s no easy feat writing a 1,000-plus-word article and the creation of said article would cost not inconsiderable time and money. Is this the best use of my limited time, given that each hour spent on the account has a dollar figure attached? Would my time be better spent creating content that I am certain will be published? This is calculus that has to be figured out on each and every opportunity that comes along: Is this the best use of my time and my client’s dollars?

Then there is the other half of the equation: the potential value of the coverage in terms of prospective customers, partners, channels and others who will see the article and pick up the phone. Trade publications can be highly focused propositions; they come as niche as you like. So, if you’re trying to reach a small specialized group and this opportunity, if it comes to fruition, will get your message out to them effectively, perhaps it’s worth your time and effort to develop a piece on spec.

Just a few weeks ago, another of my clients flat out turned down the opportunity to submit an article for an exclusively online publication. Having reviewed the circulation numbers for the print edition and the number of site visitors, it just didn’t make sense to them for me to spend my time writing an article that would be seen by limited readers, especially in an industry where hard copies get read far more frequently than virtual ones. For this client, it simply didn’t provide the return on investment that they were looking for, and that’s just fine. There are plenty of other opportunities to pursue on their behalf where the ROI is higher.

Each opportunity needs to be assessed and then harsh decisions made. There’s no right or wrong answer here; each circumstance requires each client and each PR practitioner to weigh the pros and cons of the situation and make an informed decision about how best to invest time and effort for the most return.

Technorati Tags: ROI, PR investment, contributed articles

It’s been a while since we pointed to other blogs that address public relations issues, so here’s a round-up of some recent posts of note:

Next Communications, in honour of the blogger’s 34th birthday, recently posted 34 Unforgettable Posts for PR People

Journalistics writes about building a better online newsroom whether you’re a big player or a small business.

While it seems that most of the marketplace easily forgets, PR Pros are People, Too, reminds Todd Defren in his post about clients thanking PR pros for doing exceptional work. I was lucky enough to work for a classy outfit called Six Degrees Records, a widely respected world music label for whom I did Canadian publicity  many moons ago. After a very successful album launch and a ton of press, the label sent me, quite unexpectedly, a big flower arrangement and a card of thanks. To this day, just the thought of that small gesture makes me smile.

Here’s an article on how the publicity machine keeps on chugging for those who seemingly will say anything to keep their name in the media. Apparently being a blowhard can be a quite lucrative profession. As I Tweeted yesterday, if we stop giving Ann Coulter an audience, she’ll just go away. There is such a thing as bad publicity - the kind that continues to give a forum to people who don’t deserve our attention (see also: Kate Gosselin).

Tip of the hat to Media Monitoring News for directing me to some of these posts (even though the links in its newsletter weren’t working properly…)

Technorati Tags: Public relations, high tech PR, B2B, blogging

A quick browse through my Google reader shows that it’s that time again. No, not the holidays. It’s time to gaze into the marketing crystal ball and make bold predictions about where marketing dollars will be spent in the upcoming year, what communications trends will appear and how we as marketers can best lever this knowledge.

I don’t pretend to be extraordinarily prescient when it comes to these things, so I’m going to put down my own crystal ball and instead point to a few posts on other blogs that might illuminate the near future for marketers.

A LinkedIn question about New Years resolutions for CEOs has garnered 5 responses so far. What are your clients’ resolutions for 2010 and where do your services fit into those plans?

According to this post, it’s going to be all about social media and email next year.

Will portable identities take off like this post predicts? Will B2B companies further expand usage of social media and take advantage of this brand portability?

And finally, this post predicts all of the above will take place in 2010.

Do you have any predictions for the year ahead?

Technorati Tags: social media, email, marketing, 2010, predictions

I sent out a news release last week for NetCentric Technologies, an Ottawa company launching a new product, their PDF Accessibility Wizard, an MS Office add-in that makes documents accessible to people with disabilities.

I spent spent considerable time developing the right media list, one that contained many niche and specialty publications, so I knew the targets I’d be going after were appropriate and likely to be interested in this new product. Now, NetCentric’s PAW is not page one news and certainly will not be covered by the mainstream media. However, it offers real value, especially to the government technology crowd who are mandated by law to make their documents accessible, and a product brief or technology spotlight, customer case study or product review in a specialty pub catering to this audience would serve the company very well.

Launch day rolled around, the release was sent out, and I began to follow up with the highest value of the media targets to whom we sent the release. Phone calls, emails, Tweets, whatever channel our targets were using, I attempted to make contact. As sometimes happens, it was really (and I mean REALLY) difficult to make contact. For whatever reason, it was really challenging to get hold of people. In a moment of despair, I jokingly Tweeted that perhaps people don’t answer their phones anymore…!

It was time to pull out the big guns. If I was going to get some worthwhile traction for my client, I was going to have to resort to the time-honored, secret weapon that we PR consultants absolutely know will result in coverage.

Much like magicians who condemn one of their own for revealing trade secrets, I’m sure my colleagues in the PR business are going to be terribly chagrined if I expose the secret to success in PR. It’s something we’ve held dear for all of our years in the business, the surefire way to get a response from media targets.

Are you ready? Here goes…

It’s persistence. Tenacity. KEEPING AT IT.

I know, it’s not terribly exciting, but that’s the secret to success. Hard work. Though as my favourite teacher always used to say, “work smart, not hard.” So, rather, it’s smart work … with a little elbow grease thrown in.

There is no magic bullet in PR, it’s just a lot of work, putting the right resources in front of the right targets, in whatever format makes the most sense. Where the worst of our industry all too often falls down is where the rubber hits the road. The release is sent, if it doesn’t click immediately, that’s the end of it. “We sent it out, the rest is up to the media.” Wrong.

If it didn’t click immediately, why not? Perhaps, as in this case, the publications being targeting are part-time propositions, or the person who typically writes about such things is on holiday, or is focused on a deadline, or myriad other good reasons. Use common sense, obviously; don’t fill the inboxes of editors and reporters with umpteen emails and voicemails from you. Rather, be persistent without being annoying.

I’ve had some really high-value conversations in the last eight hours, ones that not only secured my client coverage that will no doubt move their market, but also that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t kept at it. Because of the research we do at the outset of a campaign, I knew that I had the right information for the right targets; it was just a matter of time before it all came together.

Technorati Tags: tenacity, PR secrets, NetCentric Technologies

Anecdotally, it seems that September is always a busy time for a PR firm. Executives are coming back from the cottage, relaxed, and ready to work. This can mean that they’re ready to either start or restart a PR campaign with gusto, outline objectives for the year ahead, and commit some budget to meeting those objectives.

We’ve talked in the past about the folly of suspending marketing activities over the summer, advice that still holds true. Regardless, the reality is that we’ve got a number of launches slated for this Fall. Some clients are new, some are renewing their commitment to PR. Either way, there are a few items to keep in mind as you launch your PR campaign in the autumn:

Some longer lead publications will already be planning 2010. This is a great time to get on the radar of editors who are working to shape next year’s editorial calendars. If we can influence their decisions at this stage, we have the potential to make pitching our clients easier later on. In addition to helping shape editorial calendars, we’ll be collecting calendars as they’re released and checking where we will be able to pitch our clients into stories.

Just as they maintain a longer view into what editorial they will be crafting for next year, monthly lead times for some trade publications and commercial magazines are well in advance of publication dates, so the work that you do in September may not see print until the end of the year. Most clients have a range of media that cover the spectrum from instant coverage in blogs and online news portals, to daily and weekly papers and newsletters, to those with three-plus months of lead time, so if your PR firm has a dynamic media list, your coverage will span a reasonable period of time.

Although the field may be crowded in September, with your partners and competitors also likely ramping up their PR activities, this can work to your advantage. If a journalist is receiving pitches from similar companies, they may choose to do a round-up in a particular space or a comparison of competitive offerings. If partners are reaching out to the media, you can coordinate efforts to beef up your offering to key outlets. Of course, if you can bring customers to the table as well, you’ll be in great shape.

I had better get back to work on content development for these upcoming launches. Best practices are best practices, regardless of the time of year, but the tips above hold particular value as the leaves change and the wheels on school buses resume their revolutions round and round.

Technorati Tags: back to school, editorial calendars, lead times, summer vacation

The last year for me has been filled with work of a different sort entirely.

It’s hard to believe that I bid a fond farewell to the blogosphere just over one year ago, as I went on maternity leave. We welcomed wee Parker in early September of last year and since he was last written about in this forum, he’s changed from a baby to a little boy, toddling around, saying first words, changing our world in so many delightful ways.

I returned from leave to find some new clients in the stable, some familiar clients with new stories to tell and a heavy schedule of releases and launches slated for the Fall. It’s a busy time here at inmedia and I’m glad to be back on board to help lighten the load of my colleagues, connect with clients new and old and get back in touch with the media and analyst targets on their behalf.

As Francis has said, we’re renewing our commitment to the blog and look forward to reconnecting with our readers and with other writers in the marketing and PR realms online.

I was interviewed a few weeks back by the Ottawa Business Journal for a piece on marketing through a downturn. While a good bit of what I had to say did make it into the article, I thought it would be useful to expand on my thinking here. So, here are my 10 tips for marketing through a downturn.

1. Do as much marketing as you can afford

We’ve written a lot about the merit of maintaining your marketing spend through an economic downturn. There is still business to be written, markets to be taken and customers to be won. And a downturn, when many of your competitors may well be going quiet, often represents an unprecedented opportunity to grab a much larger share of voice.

2. Recalibrate your strategy and recast your budget strategically as opposed to simply cutting x% across the board

The OBJ reporter kept trying to get me to name the “one thing” that companies should do in response to a downturn. I resisted being so binary since a downturn represents doom to some but incredible opportunity to others. And even for those for whom it’s a challenge, an across-the-board response is rarely the right one.

At times like this, strategy becomes more valuable than ever. Know where you’re trying to go, the best way to get there, and how you’re going to know that you’ve arrived. Cut those marketing tactics that won’t help get you there and re-invest the money in the tactics that will.

3. Negotiate pricing

All the vectors you use to communicate to your marketplace are feeling the pinch right now. There is no better time to play hardball on pricing, or to negotiate added extras that usually cost a lot more. Most media outlets will cut their line rates or give you valuable extras like a free newsletter distribution, web conference, white paper distribution or even additional insertions. Trade show organizers may agree to a bigger booth space for the same price or throw in sponsorship opportunities or show guide advertising that in better times might cost you thousands more. Even if your supplier must hold the line on fundamentals, see if you can’t snag some of the valuable extras.

4. If you have channel or other partners, consider pooling budgets and activities to make your dollars go further

Can you share a trade show booth with partners? Can you initiate a co-op advertising program that sees you put up some of the cost while your channel partners put up the rest? Is the opposite available to you — are you a channel for an OEM with a co-op program?

5. Do not abandon measurement

If marketing is seen as the easiest thing for companies to cut during a downturn, then measurement is seen as the easiest thing for marketers to cut. After all, it doesn’t really contribute anything, right? Wrong. Harken back to tip No. 2: If you’re not measuring, you have no idea where you are or what got you there, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, and you simply can’t be strategic about your marketing spend. When times are good and there’s budget to spare, you might be able to afford to have some things work a little less effectively. When times are tough and every dollar must produce a result, you need to be measuring so you know which tactics are delivering and which ones aren’t.

6. Be transactional if there’s an immediate opportunity

As I’ve already noted, a downturn means different things for different companies. If there is good business that can be immediately secured, be highly transactional in going after it. Alter all your messaging to “Buy now,” and focus on tactics, like advertising and direct marketing, that communicate transactional messaging best.

7. If there isn’t an immediate opportunity, go long

It’s far more likely, however, that your customer’s buying cycle has stalled; it almost certainly has lengthened. So if your customers have hunkered down waiting for the storm to pass, there’s no point in blaring the hard sell at them or offering them discounts and other incentives to immediately do something they’re simply not going to. Does this mean you, too, should hunker down and draw the blinds until things blow over? No, it means your messaging should shift to support longer-term objectives such as awareness building, thought leadership and marketplace education. Tactics like media relations, trade shows and white papers that establish your authority and expertise are a better use of your resources if this is your reality.

8. In all communications, employ story telling that emphasizes how your product or service saves money or drives additional immediate revenue for your customers. Speak to the pain they’re feeling in a recession

Whatever the economic conditions, your marketing and communications messaging should be all about your customer, not you. You should always be speaking to the pain your customer feels that your product or service solves. In a recession, your customer’s pain is almost certainly all about revenue — making more of it or keeping more of it. Make sure you’re speaking to this.

9. Be overly attentive to your existing revenue base

“Love the one you’re with,” says the old song, and that’s never more relevant than in a downturn, when new customers are hardest to acquire. Your current customers are keeping you in business and it’s almost always cheaper to maintain and build business with existing customers than to find new ones. Lavish your existing customers with love, look for low-cost ways to improve the value you create for them, and communicate, communicate, communicate — let them know you love them.

10. Effective relationships never expire, so keep talking

Keep talking to everyone in your value chain, including suppliers, service providers, channels, influencers and, of course, customers and prospects. Even if they can’t use your services or you theirs just now, keeping those lines of communication open and full of useful information will serve you very well when the economy recovers.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, media relations, recession, downturn

It was business building 101 this morning at OCRI’s monthly Technology Executive Breakfast, with three executives representing different stages of a company’s growth offering pearls of wisdom and insights learned at the School of Hard Knocks.

Mark Edwards, president of Bent 360: MediaLab represented start-up companies; Rob Woodbridge, CEO of Rove, spoke for growing companies, while Jim Roche, founder and former CEO of Tundra Semiconductor and president and CEO of business and management consultancy Stratford Managers, represented established companies.

Here’s a rundown of the key points discussed by the panel:

1. Diversity among a group of partners or company founders is key to ensure one person’s weaknesses are offset by another’s strengths. Diverse backgrounds and skill sets are vital.

2. Focus. Focus. Focus. A company must have a clear understanding of its own identity. To whom is it selling? Why? What is its value proposition? As Jim commented, if an organization suffers from this lack of clarity, there will be confusion within the ranks, people will come to work at cross purposes and revenue growth will stagnate. Rob shared his experiences about the benefits of Rove’s decision to refocus around one single enterprise product rather than chasing multiple opportunities in both the enterprise and consumer markets with eight products.

3. There is no such thing as overnight success. Citing author Malcolm Gladwell and his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Jim talked about the 10,000-hour rule — the amount of hard work needed to truly master something and achieve success. He contended that behind every “overnight success story” there are, in fact, years of effort under the radar and behind the scenes.

4. Cold calling. Few people tackle this one with gusto, but as the panelists emphasized, if you start with people you know, your list of prospects will run out in short order. If you’re not making contact with clients or prospective clients on a regular basis, then you’re not in business. Mark himself aims to make five calls a day (not necessarily all cold). He emphasized the importance of using tools and databases such as LinkedIn, Dun & Bradstreet and Hoovers to develop contact lists. From there, the trick is to start calling and work through an organization until you have found the receptive individual who has buying authority, or can serve as your internal advocate with those that do. Just leaving a phone message breaks the ice and makes the follow-up call a warm one, he said.

5. When to shake up the management team or make a change was also discussed. Jim acknowledged that most organizations tend to be slow to identify and act on weaknesses that affect an organization. He emphasized the importance of executives acting on their gut instinct since they rarely have the luxury of making a decision with all the facts in hand. If you think there is a problem, there likely is. He considers it a sign of good leadership to be able to provide clear and consistent feedback on a subordinate’s performance with direct, and even brutal, honesty.

6. The value of mentoring was also discussed, not just in receiving it, but in giving it. According to Mark, the rewards flow both ways and he isn’t afraid to seek out as mentors people younger than himself if they have opinions he values and experiences that are relevant. Jim commented on more formalized mentorship in the form of advisory boards or boards of directors and spoke about the leads these people can provide into new customers or financing opportunities.

7. And then there was the cold hard truth that any company operating in the B2B space will have to look outside of its own backyard if it wants to growth. Jim said a Canadian B2B company should expect 70 to 80 per cent of its revenues to come from outside its home market. And though it is a challenge for an earlier-stage company to manage it, a presence on the ground in a foreign market, especially one as distant both geographically and culturally as China, is critical. The challenge is ensuring these staff remained linked into the organization and its culture through frequent contact with the home office, both by phone and in person.

8. And lastly, I can’t fail to mention Mark’s endorsement of engaging with a PR resource to help raise a company’s profile in its target markets.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurship, business development, marketing, management, leadership, OCRI, Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, B2B

Although it had its genesis in a consulting practice that was already several years old, and its first employee had been in place for several months, inmedia Public Relations Inc. was legally incorporated on November 5, 1998, and so today is our tenth birthday.

I would be less than forthright if I said that 10 years after launching a technology focused PR firm that I had accomplished what I thought would be in place a decade out. The tech meltdown damn near put us under and the continued severe contraction of Ottawa’s tech sector means we have slim pickings here at home. And my initial business proposition, that we could create an agency of excellence and extract a premium from the marketplace for that excellence, has proven to be a tough pitch in a market that too often has yet to be weaned off mediocrity.

But we survived the meltdown, the only exclusively B2B technology PR practice in the city to do so. Today, we get very well paid for our excellence from clients who have come to understand the difference. And our deliberate business development strategy over the past three or four years has been to embrace Ottawa clients certainly, but also to aggressively pursue business anywhere and everywhere we see a good opportunity.

My excellent colleague Danny Sullivan’s self-repatriation to his native Scotland a few years back opened a whole new front for us, and our far-reaching Google Adwords campaigns and this blog have brought us amazing opportunities from many other corners. With Ottawa accounting for about 35% of our revenues, we have embraced clients and projects in Calgary, Toronto, Montréal, Fredericton, Moncton and St. John’s; in Boston, Jersey City, San Jose and Chicago; and in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Farnborough and London.

If the business outcome has not been everything I hoped for 10 years ago, the experience has been nonetheless incredible. Most noteworthy has been the extraordinary people who have come to work with me here at inmedia. In an industry where average employee tenure has been pegged at less than a year, inmedianauts tend to hang around for much longer, with the average tenure here topping three years and some having spent five, six and even seven years on board. The consultants who work here are the real product that we sell, and I have had the unmitigated pleasure of consistently being able to bring to market the very best product in the PR industry, period.

Similarly, we have worked on some amazing projects with some of the brightest minds in technology, business and marketing. Our web site lists nearly 90 clients with whom we have worked over the past 10 years, and each and every one of them has represented a unique story, a unique set of market dynamics and a unique set of media and analyst targets to whom that story needed to be told. It is this ever-changing nature of the business that makes PR consulting so fascinating to me.

It has been rewarding, challenging and frustrating, as most any worthwhile venture inevitably is. It has also been a period of considerable personal and professional growth, and I look forward to learning even more as this little PR company continues.

Technorati Tags: inmedia Public Relations, public relations, technology, entrepreneurship, birthday