Last night, I had the honour of attending the Canadian launch of the C100 in downtown Ottawa at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

What is the C100? It’s a group of those ex-pat Canadians who we refer to when we lament the “brain drain.” They have stepped up to put their time, money and Rolodexes into helping our strongest early-stage companies acquire the mentoring, business contacts and exposure to potential investors they need in North America’s hottest technology nexus — Silicon Valley.

Or to say it another way:

C100 is a non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to supporting Canadian technology entrepreneurship and investment, comprised of a select group of Canadians based primarily in Silicon Valley, including executives of leading technology companies, experienced start-up entrepreneurs and venture capital investors.

There are Canadians that fit that bill all over the Valley said Chris Albinson, one of the founders of the C100 and co-founder and managing director of life sciences and technology investment firm Panorama Capital.

Last fall, overwhelmed by stories from disheartened Canadian entrepreneurs who were struggling to stay afloat as investment dollars dried up due to the economic downturn, as well as the demise of Nortel Networks and the impact this would have on the entire Canadian innovation ecosystem, the founders of C100 decided to do something. They looked to the examples set by other ex-pat communities in the Valley, notably the Israelis, and the networks they had set up to help start-up companies from back home make a name for themselves in the Valley.

At a dinner where 65 guests showed up despite only 50 invitations having been sent out, the audience was challenged to step up and commit to doing something. By the end of the night, 64 guests had endorsed the idea that would become the C100 and each had committed $800 to its creation.

Five months later, the C100 has earned the support and sponsorship of government, economic development agencies and technology incubators across Canada, from EDC and DFAIT, to OCRI, MaRS and Communitech in Ontario.  Seventy Canadian companies have been introduced in the Valley and provided with crucial mentoring and exposure from those who have been there and done it first.

After only five months, five of those 70 companies have secured venture capital investment — a total of US$45 million. And this is just the start.

Incidentally, one of the companies that has benefited from C100’s help is cloud data governance specialist PerspecSys of Waterloo, a new inmedia client. Only last week, PerspecSys was one of 20 Canadian companies that were part of 48hrs in the Valley, a C100 initiative carried out in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada. 48hrs is a fun and intense two-day mentoring and business development program designed to help Canadian entrepreneurs connect with the advice, resources and networks they need to grow their businesses.

While on the junket, PerspecSys competed in the elevator pitch sessions before a judging panel of hard-nosed Valley investors and other tech sector players at the Plug and Play Spring EXPO. It beat out about 40 other U.S. and Canadian companies to take top honours due to the strength of its go-to-market strategy and an innovative solution that lies at the confluence of two key growth markets – cloud computing and securing sensitive corporate data to meet compliancy requirements.

So, hat’s off to the C100 — yet another example of how adversity breeds creative leadership and opportunity. It is this kind of grassroots community effort that will drive a bright future for Canadian entrepreneurship and innovation.

Technorati Tags: C100, DFAIT, Foreign Affairs, PerspecSys, entrepreneur, Silicon Valley, Plug and Play Expo, venture capital, brain drain, cloud computing, OCRI, MaRS, Communitech, Chris Albinson, EDC

Many moons ago, we wrote a post that gave a general overview of how awards fit into an integrated PR program. All of this information still rings true. Awards can be a worthwhile part of your communications program, but make sure that the ROI is worth it if it’s something you have to pay steep fees to enter. The best kind of award is the one where entry isn’t even necessary, where you’re singled out by experts in your field for being the best at what you do. You can’t buy that kind of third-party validation from reputable sources and it may cause prospects and competitors to both sit up and take notice of you.

Since many of our clients have had the good fortune lately of winning some prestigious awards and being singled out as some of the best at what they do, and since I’m working on a report for a new client that maps out appropriate awards opportunities for the year ahead, safe to say that I’ve got awards on the brain.

I’d like to publicly congratulate several of our clients for recent distinctions bestowed upon them:

UNIT4 Business Software, a top-six provider of ERP software worldwide, was named Employer of the Year at last week’s VIATeC Awards, which honour Vancouver Island technology companies. We like working for them; they must also be a pretty good place at which to work.

PerspecSys, whose hybrid cloud platform that mitigates the data privacy, residency and security concerns inherent to using SaaS applications in the public cloud, was both feted as one of Gartner Group’s “Cool Vendor in Cloud Security Services 2010” and named as finalist in the Global Cloud Security Challenge 2010. We’ll be telling the world a lot more about PerspecSys starting tomorrow.

Touch Bionics, the company behind cutting edge bionic technology like the i-LIMB Hand and ProDigits, was recently awarded the Queen’s Award for innovation, the most prestigious award in the UK for business performance. It’s another nice nod for a client that, it is safe to say, is the most decorated of any we’ve ever worked with.

Keep up the great work!

Technorati Tags: awards, UNIT4 Business Software, PerspecSys, Touch Bionics

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

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.

No matter how busy we become and how far flung we are from the people we need to communicate with to carry out our work, there is still no substitute for good old-fashioned face-to-face contact.

In recent weeks, I have been working on a series of business profiles that will run in an upcoming supplement in the Ottawa Business Journal. These are largely 350- to 500-word pieces for which I must interview the principal of each business and perhaps a couple of reference customers. (Nothing validates your business more than a good reference customer).

Considering the size of the articles I must produce, I could easily garner the information I need over the phone. It would be quicker and more efficient from a time-management perspective. But I’ve chosen to visit each of these businesses in person.  They are all local businesses, so why not take advantage of the opportunity to interview the principals in their natural environment?

So much of the work I do at inmedia is with clients outside Ottawa and with trade and industry media spread across the continent and beyond. It’s refreshing to actually put a face to a name and enjoy the interaction of meeting in the flesh. A face-to-face meeting is by its very nature much more intimate and dynamic than two bodiless voices communicating across wires and networks. There is definitely something lost when you can’t look into the eyes of the person who is speaking to you. Body language is a critical part of any human interaction.

Nonetheless, we frequently have little choice but to conference by phone, (as I am about to do with inmedia client Xsilva Systems of Montreal, thanks to a service called Calliflower). And while communicating in this manner may not be as ideal as in person, there are ways to make the most of it. Richard Laermer at the Bad Pitch Blog offers plenty of helpful advice on the subject, and it all begins with planning ahead and staying focused on the matters at hand during the call.

Technorati Tags: communications, conference calls, clients

Two inmedia clients, PIKA Technologies Inc. and Vocantas Inc., are finalists in two different categories of the 2009 OCRI Awards. Interestingly, both work with advanced voice technologies.

PIKA, a developer of media-processing hardware and software, made the cut in the Product of the Year category while Vocantas, which develops advanced interactive voice-response systems, is a finalist for Technology Commercialization Partnership.

We’ll be cheering on these favoured finalists and all the outstanding Ottawa companies that will be waiting for the envelope at the OCRI Awards Gala April 8.

Technorati Tags: OCRI Awards, PIKA, Vocantas

If “location, location, location” is the axiom of real estate agents, then “reference customers, reference customers, reference customers” is the public relations equivalent.

Customers who have deployed a vendor’s product or service provide validation and demonstrate uptake in the market. They can speak in dollars and cents terms about why they adopted a particular product and the benefits and return on investment they have derived from it. This, more often than not, will make an editor sit up and take notice.

I’ve seen promising editorial opportunities with big name media outlets drift away for the simple reason that a client could not provide a happy customer willing to stand up and provide that third-party endorsement.

But is having the platinum, diamond-encrusted reference customer eager to shout your praises from the rooftops the ticket to piles of positive media coverage?

It certainly helps. However, that customer story must still be developed and presented in a manner that fits the current editorial needs of the media being targeted.

One of our clients, for example, has an enthusiastic reference customer on board who can articulate the pain points that were addressed by our client’s product and how it contributed to the overall growth and success of the customer’s business during a dramatic market boom.

However, the industry in which both client and customer operate is, like so many others right now, experiencing a downturn. Several of the media that I contacted no longer have the appetite for the growth and success story that was the obvious angle to pursue during the market upswing. That’s yesterday’s news. The angle that is timely and relevant now is how the customer is going to weather the downturn and how our client’s product will provide the operational efficiencies and cost savings that will improve margins and boost the bottom line.

As one editor put it, “It’s easy to succeed during a boom. The real test of a company’s viability is how it survives a downturn.” For many media outlets, that’s the story that is relevant now. Can we deliver that angle? Yes. But only by directly contacting the media most important to our client with a solid story angle and having an informal chat with each editor were we able to determine what elements of the reference customer’s story are the most important to garner the ink we want for our client.

Technorati Tags: pitching, reference customers, media relations, public relations