Communications strategist Caroline Kealey has, over the past 10 years, marched to her own drum as the founder and chief executive of Ingenium Communications.

Her consultancy has carved a niche for itself in the nation’s capital and across the country in the “art and science of communications and marketing strategy” providing, in addition to its strategic communications and marketing services, facilitation, training and organizational development.

As with so many other consultancies, regardless of their discipline, this meant that Ingenium’s intellectual property resided almost entirely within the grey matter of its people, and especially of its leader, Kealey herself.

Six years ago, Kealey decided to change that. Despite being a busy single mother with a full-time business, she set out to lever the insight and expertise developed over a 20-year career into an educational resource for professional development and training. The Ingenium team, with a substantial amount of goodwill and in-kind support from friends and allies, set to work. The outcome is the Results Map, deemed by its creators to be the most comprehensive online tool for strategic communications planning available in the world.

Kealey took the time to share her thoughts on the tenacity required to launch her new venture, the challenges of bootstrapping, and the strategic marketing that has turned a largely local consultancy into a global play within a matter of weeks.

Q: Where did you get the idea for Results Map?

A: I think the idea came from my experience in having written now close to 400 communications strategies across a wide range of sectors and clients. I realized that much of the process is quite repeatable and that we had quite a lot of expertise in this specialized area. I also realized that, while seemingly a bit odd coming from someone who makes her living as an external consultant, optimally this process is most beneficial if it’s done in-house. So, I came up with the idea to package what we’ve learned from experience and create a methodology that communicators can easily apply within their organizations, tapping into their unique knowledge and experience with their subject matter and audiences.

Q: How did you go about validating the idea?

A: This whole project has been bootstrapped on the back of our traditional consulting practice and therefore integrates hundreds of conversations as part of regular client engagements and workshops. We carried out extensive market research to establish if there is anything like this … we looked at comparable solutions for other disciplines and went through an extensive process of one-and-one interviews in 2008 with people in different facets of the industry – academia, public, private, para-public sectors. We used all this to map out a business plan and worked with a focus group of 30 people to validate the concept from both a business and marketing point of view.

Q: What key challenges did you face turning this into a commercially available product?

A: This was far and away the most significant and complex project I have ever managed. The process has been ongoing over a six-year period and has been self-financed. The sheer tenacity and the focus required was a major challenge since the project had to run alongside our regular work and business development. Stitching this together into something coherent with an end goal in mind was a very significant challenge. This is not for the faint of heart.

Q: Where did you turn for sources of funding and other support to develop and launch Results Map?

A: One of the most extraordinary experiences throughout this process has been the generosity of the community in providing expertise (and) resources and offering to make valuable connections. I was really moved to the extent to which people are willing to support an entrepreneur who has a dream. That was a big part of our success - tapping into a lot of local in-kind support, and connections. We wanted to self-finance as much as possible, but did call upon the BDC and a private investor, both of whom have been extremely supportive.

Q: How do you characterize your experience, as an entrepreneur, in trying to secure funding and other key pieces of the puzzle?

A: As is often the case, it’s hard to appreciate the sheer volume of work and energy that this has required. In terms of lessons learned, you can’t underestimate the time and effort that isn’t immediately visible when you set out - the complexity of translation to another language, finding an online payment solution that works, developing a marketing plan, and addressing innumerable technological challenges. It all takes deep consideration, analysis and quality decision-making to position the company for success, and adjust in real-time to dependencies and changes in the development plan.

Q: What key entrepreneurial lessons did you learn through this? What would you do different next time?

A: If you roll back the clock, this could have gone in many different directions. Early on I became concerned by time-to-market and that other people would come in and scoop us. But that was fairly short-lived because I had trouble imagining that there would be too many others who would have the passion to drive through such a difficult task … call it stubbornness or stick-to-it-ness, it was clear that it was the road less travelled.

Most of the development work I did on this was between 5 and 7 a.m. before I got my kids up to get ready for school; that’s obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.

The technical development of the product took place over six months. This was very aggressive and in hindsight could have been done more comfortably over a year or 18 months. However, we had committed to complete and present by June 2010 at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference in Toronto. As a result, we licensed our training platform from Telesto, a local development firm. Again, my whole orientation was on niche expertise, not on developing a tool in-house, from the ground up. This proved to be a good decision because the time and cost required to create a platform from scratch would have been prohibitive.

Q: What has been the market response to Results Map?

A: A few weeks ago I was running a local consulting company. Now our technology is on four continents and we are writing proposals for Fortune 500 companies … We have reached into some spheres that would not have been possible two weeks ago. We even have the government of Tanzania interested in our methodology.

This is precisely what we wanted to do with this product, have a global impact, and so far it’s off to the races.

Q: How did you take advantage of your attendance at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference to launch of Results Map?

A: We had a whole strategy to make a splash at that event to capitalize on the fact that there were 1,500 communicators there from around the world. We ran a Twitter contest, a guerilla marketing campaign, exhibited with a booth, and I was a speaker. We very much took our own advice on having a plan and executing against that plan on a shoestring budget. People told us we were one of the highlights of the event, and that is entirely the result of our careful planning in terms of marketing, planning and positioning.

Now the challenge is chasing down all of our leads. The scope of our business has exploded in the space of a couple of weeks so while I’d thought the product development was the end of a goal, it really is just the beginning.

Technorati Tags: marketing, startup, entrepreneur, Results Map, Ingenium, Telesto, online tool, Fortune 500, strategic communications, communications strategy, bootstrap, BDC

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

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

It’s been a busy time for Twitter.

The microblogging platform, on which all of the authors on this blog have accounts - @FrancisMoran, @LindaForrest and @inmedian - has recently announced several key partnerships that will move the social media platform from the early adopter stage to the mainstream. Microsoft and Google announced a few weeks ago that they would include “Tweets” in their search results, legitimizing for many skeptics the platform as a bona fide media channel and information source. Then, today, a partnership with LinkedIn was announced wherein Twitterstreams will be included in LinkedIn profiles.

This is a big step, and should increase adoption in the professional world from the dismal figures IDC collected earlier this year. Not to mention how it will impact Twitter’s bottom-line; it’s value was theoretical for a very long time but with a handful of powerful partnerships such as these, the money will be rolling in.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, LinkedIn, social media, partnerships

MediaBistro put together a tongue-in-cheek list of the five most prevalent types of Tweets from PR people. While it’s meant to be comical, it hits the nail on the head in most instances. I, for one, have rolled my eyes more than once at some of the more absurd Tweets that fall into these categories.

We inmedianauts will try our best to avoid committing these Twitter sins in future. That is, when we’re not too busy surreptitiously pushing our clients, hanging out at lavish parties, squabbling, complaining or sharing our excitement about the next big thing!!!

Technorati Tags: MediaBistro, PR, Twitter

Senator Ted Kennedy died late yesterday, the latest tragedy in the long string to befall the family that has so captivated the world these last 50 years. His passing is also the latest high-profile death to spawn a flurry of internet traffic, blog posts, Tweets, and the like.

Being a child of the 80s, it has been a rough year, with iconic figures like Michael Jackson and John Hughes, director of some of my favourite movies, passing away unexpectedly, shocking their many followers.

We truly live in an era of mass communication. Sometimes that brings us together, other times it alienates us. In times when people need to have even a virtual shoulder to cry on, the many means of expression available to them, the virtual support system at their ready disposal is of great comfort indeed.

Bob Lefsetz, editor of the Lefsetz Letter, a music industry trade newsletter, was on the Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos last year talking about just how messed up the music industry is (quite) and he touched on the fact that in today’s modern age, there is so much media available that we’re less connected to one another. Ironically, the glut of media channels meant to provide us with more content, ostensibly, one assumes, in order to provide us with more cultural touch points to be able to discuss with one another, is providing each of us with customized content that it’s unlikely that any of our friends or contacts are aware of. His example was a television show that he’d seen and adored that aired on an obscure cable channel and despite his evangelism about the program, had yet to meet another human who had seen it.

These recent high profile deaths and the public’s reaction to them represent the flip side to Lefsetz’s argument. When Michael Jackson died, it was said that he almost took the internet with him, so compelled were his legions of fans to flock to news sites, to write blog posts about what his music had meant to them, what his impact on our society had been, some to mock, others to mourn…

What can we as modern marketers learn from this? In the same way that on a personal level the many channels available to us can draw us closer or push us further apart, they accomplish the same when used for business, for promotion. The media channels are many, the messages on them innumerable, but focused messaging on the proper channels can bring your market closer, can provide them with the niche information that they need, can, in short, sell more of your stuff.

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

BBC technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, posts an interesting piece on the dot.life blog about the slating of the new BlackBerry Storm by English comedian, Stephen Fry. No, this wasn’t part of a stand-up routine, but rather a series of messages on Twitter, where Fry apparently has a following of thousands.

I note Fry’s comment at the end of the post, essentially stating that he thought one of the results of the Net and social networking has been to make everyone more equal in their influence. But has this truly been the case?

Certainly in Fry’s case it is partially true, but while his newfound influence in the field of gadgets and consumer technology can be attributed in part to the social networking revolution, it is also true that he is a man who had a considerable public profile before the Internet was even considered a medium of any significance.

The web and its associated technologies have certainly given a voice to millions, but in terms of real influence, the masses still invariably turn to those who have commanded attention beyond the four walls of the internet.  Of course there are some exceptions to the rule, but the notion that we all have equal influence is generally only as true online as it is in the world at large.

Technorati Tags: social media, Internet, BBC, Stephen Fry, BlackBerry Storm

All right, just to make sure everyone is caught up and on the same page now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not have a heart attack over the weekend.

But all it took was a bogus posting to CNN’s online citizen journalism portal to demonstrate once again just how viral the web can be and and sucker punch Apple’s stock price. This has sparked plenty of commentary and navel gazing today about the risks of allowing average citizens to break so-called “news” without their scoop first being subjected to scrutiny and third-party verification. Check out Scott Karp’s take on how this was a failure of open systems and Matthew Ingram on how this was not a failure of citizen journalism.

This incident does reinforce the importance of trusted and reliable sources to bring us news and information that has in some way been confirmed and verified. The fact that CNN’s citizen journalism site, iReport, allows such misinformation to be uploaded and broadcast to the world, should serve as a wake-up call that content that’s been judged in some way is more important now than ever.

Sure, the nature of the web allowed this false report to be corrected as quickly as it was initially broadcast. But that’s irrelevant. For a period of time, those who were paying attention believed the CEO of a major publicly traded company was in a potentially life-threatening condition, with the hit to Apple’s stock price only the most obvious example of the chaos that can quickly ensure from such misinformation. As Karp says, such uncensored citizen journalism is an open invitation to those with malicious intentions to manipulate the public for their own ends. And the intent doesn’t have to be malicious for damage to be done. Someone with the most honourable of intentions can do similar harm simply by being wrong.

Of course, there should be a distinction made between eye-witness news – such as providing an account as a bystander or participant, or capturing on video a disaster or other dramatic event –and broadcasting unconfirmed rumours or outright lies. Even in this always-on world, we still need gatekeepers of some sort to make that judgment call.

Technorati Tags: citizen journalism, media, Steve Jobs, Apple, news reporting

Is it surrealist to blog about blogging? It’s not my intention, but should this post turn into an Escher-esque experience, I’ll ask you to please bear with me.

There has been considerable media coverage in recent days about corporate blogging and blogging as it pertains to B2B marketing. Forrester, a well respected technology analyst firm, recently released a study analyzing the role of blogs in b2b marketing and survey results that indicate, “The number of business-to-business (B2B) firms that started blogging in 2007 plummeted compared with 2006 as corporate bloggers ran into roadblocks stemming from a misalignment between invested effort and expected returns. Rather than cross blogging off of the marketing communication list, B2B marketers would do better to embrace one of the four strategies prominently used by bloggers to attract readers, build conversations, and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers.

Four Blog Strategies Produce Community Marketing Value

Strategy One: Be A Conversation Starter, Not A Spoiler

Strategy Two: Make Blog Content Entertaining, Easy To Digest And To Use

Strategy Three: Connect The Dots Between Events And Community Involvement

Strategy Four: Invite Thought Leaders, But Coach Them On Community Etiquette”

According to The Leading Edge, a PR technology trends blog, “infrequent and boring content” is what ails the high tech companies that responded to the survey. This blog has some interesting statistics from the study and I would encourage you to visit the link above to find out more.

The bottom line is that blogging, like any other marketing activity, should adhere to best practices. Those companies that are not deriving value from this particular communication channel are probably not meeting all of the challenges inherent with utilizing a new method of communication to reach customers, influencers and prospects. Since blogging was the “hot, new thing,” you would be hard pressed to find a company that hasn’t at least considered hopping on the bandwagon and starting its own blog. Those that are likely to be successful, though, are the ones that carefully considered the reasoning behind the blog, the objectives that the companies were hoping to accomplish by starting their blogs, and how this channel could support their full range of marketing activities.

Coming up with fresh, intelligent, conversation-starting blog posts with regularity can be challenging, to be sure, but whether the effort and potential return on investment are worthwhile is a question that each company must answer for itself before diving headlong into blogging.

Technorati Tags: blogging, public relations