A Cutting Edge Focus on Social Media for Business was the thrust of this week’s Ottawa Network event, but while each of the presenters offered useful insights on the abrupt paradigm shifts in customer and media engagement driven by Web 2.0, what struck me was that no matter how much some things change, they remain the same.

Chris Biber, president and CEO of SearchingWorks, started off the evening by reiterating that social media, be it Twitter, Youtube or a blog, is simply another set of tools in the marketing toolbox, while marketing itself is simply the “consistent application of common sense.”

It all begins of course, by taking the time to research and understand your customers. Who are they? Where are they? What interests them? And what are their needs and expectations? The same basic foundation that’s always been a requisite for an effective marketing program. The difference now, of course, being that social media allows for a much more candid and informal two-way flow of communication between company and customer.

But this is a conversation that cannot be dominated by a “me, me, me” approach. While companies and brands can make themselves part of the conversation and attempt to direct it, they can’t expect to control it. Nor will their audience respond favourably to anything that is blatantly self-serving or promotional.

Rick Radko, president of R-Cubed, drawing on his software-engineering background, took a different perspective and focused on the application of social media as an internal, rather than external, communications tool set. From online tools for document sharing and collaboration, to wikis, Rick talked about how “Enterprise 2.0″ is becoming the norm for organizations with teleworkers and remote offices, to keep staff in touch and part of a common corporate culture.

In particular, Rick touched on using a wiki to keep staff informed on everything from new corporate directives, to who down the hall is offering to car pool. It’s the digitization of that ubiquitous cork board that adorns staff lunch rooms everywhere, plastered with pushpins and dead-tree notices.

Lastly, Natasha D’Souza, founder of Virtual EyeSee, talked about the distinctions between the social media release, versus the traditional news release, an example of which she offered for a recent Mother’s Day event she held. As her example illustrates, the social media release tends to be less formal and directly addresses the intended audience. It also moves up the contact information and incorporates multimedia elements to support it, from pictures, to video and links to other relevant sources of information.

Two things in particular struck me about the structure of a social media release and how she used it.

First, is the volume of supporting content that can be added, in terms of pictures, video, links and so forth. In the good ol’ days of tree slaying, a comprehensive package such as this was called a media kit. Is the social media release, in its fully realized form, in many ways not simply the digitization of this traditional public relations tool? (Editor’s note: Actually, long before the term “social media release” was ever coined, savvy PR practitioners have been offering their contacts multimedia-rich content. And we’ve been hosting or delivering that content via electronic channels for decades. The web has made it easier for practitioners to do it all themselves but there are still some media formats — broadcast-quality b-roll, for example — that you probably don’t want to host yourself.)

The second point came when one attendee asked Natasha how she distributed this social media release. And this is where another classic and intrinsic element of marketing and PR came in. She researched the influential bloggers in the Ottawa area who would be interested in her Mother’s Day event and contacted them to pitch the event and direct them to her release. Proving once again that they’ve yet to come up with a social media tool that is a suitable substitute for hard work and old-fashioned solicitation.

Technorati Tags: public relations, marketing, social media, blogging, Twitter, wiki, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0

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

Recently, Francis fielded a question on LinkedIn about the value of running a survey to generate media coverage.

Surveys can be used effectively to position a company, but not if the company is perceived simply as a sponsor of an external survey. Francis cited the example of one IT consultancy that, on inmedia’s counsel, did away with its external survey of CIOs and instead realized much better media traction from publishing the results of an internal census of its own IT experts. The spotlight was shifted from a group of faceless CIOs to the consultancy’s own knowledge keepers, positioning the consultancy as an authoritative subject matter expert rather than a mere survey sponsor.

As the editor of a business publication, I saw almost daily news releases plugging a survey that, on the surface at least, provided profound insights into one issue or another of relevance to the Ottawa business community. However, the appeal factor quickly evaporated when, upon closer inspection, it was revealed that said survey was sponsored by a major credit card company or software vendor.

This made the objectivity of the data presented, and the conclusions drawn from it, immediately suspect to me. After all, the sponsoring organization would not go to the time and effort to promote survey results that didn’t support its own sales and marketing efforts, now would it? It was this obvious vested interest that made me reluctant to devote even a couple of hundred words of coverage with an online news brief.

When trying to come up with ingenious and cunning ways to engage with the media, there is, once again, simply no substitute for taking the time and effort to understand:

1. Who are the media that are relevant to your organization? Which ones have the clout to move your market and a focus that includes the products and services that you offer?

2. Who on staff specifically covers your offering or the specific markets that you target?

3. What kind of content is the publication looking for and how can you provide it? When you pursue potential customers, you position your product or service as a solution to a problem. Attracting the interest of the media is no different. In Francis’s example above, by putting the spotlight on its own internal thought leaders, this IT consultancy was conveying the value it could provide to a publication in search of expert opinion and insight on pertinent issues and topics.

Answering these questions takes research and the patience and persistence to secure that all-important first conversation with an editor. This is relationship building based upon your ability to offer something that is relevant and valuable. Prove that you’re useful, and your foot is firmly wedged in the door. It is not about flogging today’s news release, though that does present a good excuse to pick up the phone.

Don’t operate under the false assumption that following this process faithfully is a magic bullet that guarantees results, or that great things will happen over night. It still takes time.

For one client, I have been working to place a leadership piece with a key publication since February. The editor held on to the draft we submitted for almost two months before coming back with requested revisions that essentially gut much of the article’s original focus and content. But he’s still interested. With another magazine that lies at the pinnacle of this client’s wish list, I have been touching base with the editor every few weeks for the past three months and finally hope to garner a firm commitment in June when work commences on a signature fall issue.

Invariably, great results are the result of this kind of furious paddling below the waterline, rather than something like a sponsored survey that can fall into the category of gimmickry. The sooner you take to the water and get to work, the sooner those media clippings will begin to add up.

Technorati Tags: public relations, marketing, media relations, pitching

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

Seeing the forest for the trees
Francis is fond of describing our roles here at inmedia as “advocates in the court of public opinion.” That’s a much more appropriate and accurate label than “spin doctors.”

But the role of advocate is more than simply conveying our clients’ stories to the outlets that matter. We must also be willing to impress upon clients the agendas, or the simple realities, of the markets we are trying to reach on their behalf. What elements of their story must we have to effectively attract and retain the attention of the media we are targeting? What works? What doesn’t? How is the way the client wants to approach things more of a hindrance than a help to our efforts? To adequately serve our clients, we must deliver frank and honest counsel that sometimes includes feedback from the marketplace that may be painful to hear.

Over at the PR Conversations blog, Kristen E. Sukulac offers an interesting perspective on this by citing a classic exercise in inattentional blindness and change blindness.

PR helps raise venture capital
Bottom line here: good PR pays. Don’t take my word for it. This post at PR Squared may be a couple of weeks old, but the findings of the study it cites are timeless. A survey of 300 U.S. startups that received funding in the past three years found a clear correlation between employing a PR program and greater success in securing new financing.

Time well wasted?
And over at really practical marketing, Mark Nagurski gives a no nonsense primer and how to create, and derive value from, an effective online presence and the pitfalls that come of looking at it in terms of traditional advertising. In his view, less can be a whole lot more.

Technorati Tags: public relations, media relations, social media, venture capital, financing

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

“I’ve just come to expect that my (public relations) agency can’t write,” was the astonishing admission I heard a few weeks back from a vice president at one of Ottawa’s larger technology companies who called us to see if we’d be interested in participating in an agency review process.

(I’ve promised not to name him (or her) for reasons that will be obvious as you read the rest of this post.)

I could hardly believe my ears. But yes, he said, it had long been his experience that the PR practitioners he had been dealing with from a range of different agencies and across a number of companies just weren’t very good writers, and so it fell to him to write most of the materials used in his campaigns. One of the key reasons he was approaching inmedia, he told me, was our very strong reputation in the marketplace as superb writers, a reputation he said was confirmed when he read our blog and web site.

I chalked this one up to what I assumed was just an unfortunate experience on the part of one technology marketing executive until I relayed the story to a colleague last week, a CEO at another technology company here in Ottawa and an insightful marketer in his own right. I was again utterly gobsmacked when he said he didn’t view writing as a core requirement in the PR function, that the ability to pitch the story was far more important.

“And what do you do,” I asked him, “When the pitch is initially well received and the next words out of the reporter or editor’s mouth are, ‘Sounds good, send me something about it.’?”

Here’s the thing. To work at inmedia and, I believe, to be an effective media relations practitioner anywhere, you must be able to write at an expert level and you must be able to effectively pitch what you’ve written. There is no hierarchy between these two fundamental skills. Lack one, and you’re out of the game.

And here’s why.

To believe, as these two otherwise successful technology marketers clearly do, that writing is either not terribly important or that your PR function, whether internal or an agency, can be permitted to be lousy writers, is to completely beggar the entire communications process.

In the first instance, despite all the wonderful new communications tools at our disposal, most journalists still want to see something in cold, hard black and white, even if it is delivered electronically. And even if they don’t ask for it, it’s just gotta be in your best interests to give them well-written material so they have the complete story, with all the relevant facts and accurate spellings of company, product and people’s names to which they can refer. This is just so basic I’m staggered it needs stating.

Second, how in the heck does a PR practitioner demonstrate her or his understanding of the story without writing about it? Yes, a properly written document proves the communicator can — gasp! — communicate. That is, the words run together in some sort of comprehensible order, everything is spelled correctly and the commas and periods are in the right places. But it still won’t be any good unless the person writing it actually has a thorough grasp of the subject matter.

Effective writing is not a case of cutting and pasting bits and pieces from other documents to make a different document and it needs to be more than a merely technically accurate use of words, grammar and punctuation. Effective writing is the process of distilling what has been learned — from other documents, certainly, but also, and critically, from interviews with a range of subject-matter experts — into a new piece of work. It not only communicates the story to all who read it, it also demonstrates understanding.

Bottom line: If your agency can’t write about it well, they almost certainly can’t pitch it well. And even worse, they probably don’t even understand it well.

So, did we get the business? Well, that’s another story that I cover here: The Ottawa inferiority complex theorem strikes again.

Technorati Tags: writing, pitching, media relations, business development

Yesterday, research analyst Brian Summer posted a blog on ZDNet about how to conduct, or rather, how not to conduct an effective analyst day. While the post is clearly written with more than a little tongue in cheek, his points are well made.

In particular Summer’s comment around over-hyping a product should be taken to heart by many technology companies. He states, “Sure, any one can tell a story but you don’t need someone who’s clearly drank too much of the corporate Kool-Aid giving your pitch. Over zealous pitchmen are unintentionally obnoxious and impossible to believe.” In my experience this is certainly the case, and it ties closely into another of his points that analysts are smart enough to be able to read between the lines.

Working in tech PR, I can relate to many of his points, it’s incredible how many companies will insist on refering to themselves as some kind of ”leader” in all their communications, even when this claim has absolutely no founding whatsoever. If you are a market leader, then by all means, shout it from the rooftops. For the rest of us, far better to address your market by focusing on the truly strong elements of your story, than adopting the language of hype to create an impression that will be seen through by most at first glance.

Technorati Tags: public relations, analyst relations, pitching, ZDNet 

One word: Cuil.

This supposed “Google-killer” launched to much ballyhoo earlier this week. Problem is that the product itself is not yet ready for prime time and so it has, as many media have said, “stumbled out of the gate.” In today’s fast paced tech environment, it’s a costly misstep for a company to generate so much publicity when the product itself isn’t up to par, especially when it’s something so high profile as taking on the most successful search engine in history.

I’m sure the Cuil powers that be are questioning both their branding and their launch strategy this week, with influential bloggers being unable to resist the urge to deem the offering “Totally UnCuil.” Ouch.

Technorati Tags: public relations, publicity, PR disaster, Cuil

In previous posts, we have made fleeting reference to the changes in our business since we each began our PR careers and also to our interest in clean technology and protecting the environment in other ways. A post in today’s MarketingProfs newsletter marries those two topics together and therefore resonates with us.

When I was involved in more consumer focused media relations and publicity, there was, at the time, a requirement for hard copy press kits by the hundreds that were packaged together with the consumer goods we were offering up for review, sent out by mail, by courier and offered up at media events. As time wore on and as technology and how people accessed and consumed information changed, we gradually got away from hard copy photos and press kits in favour of electronic versions. Although it was not with environmental considerations in mind at the time, upon reflection, there was indeed a monumentous reduction in the amount of paper and energy used to distribute the relevant media materials.

Fast forward to present day, when technology is even more pervasive in our lives. I honestly have a difficult time recollecting the last time that I put together a hard copy media kit, but can confidently say that it was at least several years ago. It’s great that our industry has moved, or is making the move, to be more environmentally friendly, whether it’s a conscious effort or a happy by-product of the changing way in which media gets its information.

Technorati Tags: environment, public relations