Corporateinklings

Think, Before Making Fun, Online

2012-01-26T14:15:55Z

We can all agree that humor has its place in PR. A witty headline can grab more attention, a crafty subject line can get an email opened – but humor can become a PR nightmare when used in the wrong way.

Oftentimes humor is used as a brush-off, the hope that a situation can be diffused. Three high profile tweets show how humor can be abused, while two other situations teach a positive lesson on the power of humor in PR.

Gottfried quacks his last – It seems obvious that a natural disaster is never something to make light of, but Gilbert Gottfried missed the social cue. Following the floods in Japan, his tweets – yes multiple tweets – offer a prime example of tactless humor. The result: after 10 years of inspiring millions to mute Aflac commercials, Alfac muted Gottfried themselves.

Use caution around major events – Kenneth Cole took ethnocentricity to new heights when the company hijacked the socially charged #Cairo to promote its spring line (see Greg Hakim’s post on hijacking hashtags). The result: KC apologized and the designer will think twice before aligning spring dresses with spring uprisings.

Death, is it always too soon? – Roger Ebert may have had a positive social agenda when he tweeted about the alleged drunk driving death of Jackass star, Ryan Dunn. But when the tweet came hours after the accident, before alcohol was confirmed to be involved, thousands felt it was insensitive versus moral.

Now, as a student of social media and the teachings of transparency, I should add a disclaimer before we get to the positive examples: I am unabashedly in favor of all things Tina Fey – especially when it comes to 30 Rock. Now we can continue…

Choose your brush-offs wisely – Alec Baldwin is kicked off a plane for playing Words With Friends and next thing Tina Fey knows, American Airlines is talking about pulling the show from in-flight entertainment. With no lives in danger and no social movements involved, this situation was a perfect example of using humor as a PR brush-off.

Sensitivity comes first – Much like her character on 30 Rock, Fey’s cast doesn’t give her a break. So when Tracy Morgan launched into a homophobic rant during a stand-up routine, Fey condemned the action and offered no excuses for the star’s behavior. After expressing her genuine sentiments, the final line in the statement is an acceptable joke – for such a serious situation. Fey went one step further in last week’s episode by incorporating a similar storyline for Morgan’s character, Tracy Jordan. Although the on-air version of the incident is altered – Fey uses the show as a platform to provide some transparency on the issue, rather than run from it.

How Customer Satisfaction Surveys Tell the Future

2012-01-23T15:18:31Z

It’s funny – just asking customers what they want more of is one of the best ways to see where the market is heading, and where the pressure is strongest.

We’ve been surveying our customers via Net Promoter® for about five years, and each year, we ask three key questions:

How likely are you to recommend Corporate Ink to a friend or colleague?
What’s your primary reason for scoring this way?
What’s the one thing we could do to improve this score?

Then we ask a few spontaneous questions – to get a better understanding of where our clients are feeling the most pressure (which typically connects pretty tightly to how we can improve), and where they want to grow. As I look back, our clients’ comments, as a group, have been an uncannily accurate temperature check – and a read on the business environment.

Here’s what stood out by year, and what it really meant (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight):

Year	NPS feedback	What they were really telling us
2007:	Improve your turn-around time.	Fix the basics. I want to depend on you, and the pressure on me is intense. I can’t afford to have any mistakes.
2008:	Show me more what’s going on behind the scenes.	This PR business is becoming more important, and it’s harder. Help me sell you, and the work we’re doing together, to all of my stakeholders. Let’s do more PR for PR.
2009:	Tell me what’s ahead.	The marketplace was nearly frozen in place, and suddenly, no one knew how to plan. We had our finger on the pulse across industries, and customer bases. We became a window into visibility.
2010:	Become even smarter about my industry.	PR is no longer expendable, and it’s certainly not just about cranking out a news release. Arms-and-legs are tactical, and customers need strategy – that intersects with sales, competition, acquisitions, and integration, especially from a B2B customer’s perspective. So the more we understand about the sales process, and customers, and the intersecting elements in an enterprise sale, the better.
2011:	Tell me more about what’s going on: my market, and my competition.	No one has time to keep up, or read, or monitor, and the competition is moving fast. Everyone needs more eyes, ears and intelligence. Which is why we’re rolling out more programs for insight, communication, and sales acceleration in 2012.

So five years into Net Promoter, I’m still sold. It’s simple, quantifiable, and provides a steady stream of insight that can’t be pushed away.

#HashtagsShouldBeFun (Even in B2B)

2012-01-19T22:40:40Z

This week, ABC won Twitter.

Before airing its latest episode of Modern Family, there was moderate some buzz around an advocacy group’s campaign to get it pulled. The controversy? A plot focusing around a toddler using the F-word, on a few occasions (it was bleeped).

So what did ABC do? Right after the second bleep, a hashtag appears on screen – #modernfamily – as if to say, “Pretty wild, eh? Go Tweet about it!”

Genius? Wrong? Obvious? Whatever your take, it worked, with audiences flocking to share the laugh online. Take a look at the screenshot below, which captures hashtag use for #modernfamily. It skyrocketed right on queue, at levels it hasn’t seen since the season premiere.

While this was particularly well-played, and well-timed, Modern Family and ABC aren’t the only shows capitalizing on Twitter. There are plenty of examples, and many of the best take right from the plot. “Parks & Recreation” had a particularly effective campaign with #treatyoself, an on-screen hashtag in a plot where two characters do just that, for one day. The success came because it was inherently social, with audiences tweeting the tag while adding what they do to treat themselves.

Not enough companies are using social appeal – or humor – in B2B. It’s begging to be used. Why not these?

#InfoSecWorldProblems – Headaches security experts can relate to.
#SupplyChainIs – Supply chain experts share the humorous ways they’ve tried to describe the complicated nature of what they do to friends outside the industry.
#StuffPRPeopleSay – Actually, this one is real, after Hunter PR’s recent, hilarious video of the same title. Twitter results weren’t astounding for this one, but the video itself saw almost 50K hits. We even forwarded around our office.

But a hashtag on its own won’t carry much weight. Just like the TV-based tags wove in the plot, B2B needs to weave in the bigger business drivers – not just collateral. And it should tie in to spot-on content, or it’s a waste of time.

Is there a good hashtag campaign you’ve seen? Or run?

Mike Volpe: HubSpot’s CMO on Linking Marketing and Sales

2012-01-19T16:49:11Z

Every quarter, we bring together marketing executives to swap stories, share experiences and create some best practices. Mike, the CMO of HubSpot, spoke to the group earlier this week.

At a start-up, stopping isn’t really in the playbook. But six years in, I got a chance to think – and talk – at Corporate Ink’s recent breakfast for local tech marketing experts about what worked in our inbound marketing strategy, and what didn’t. So, 1,780 or so days into it – here’s a little bit of what stood out, what worked, and what’s worth doing more of.

Blogging We were early, and it really worked. There wasn’t much competition at the time, and we were manic about creating useful content. Today, we draw about 500,000 visits a month, and we’ve decided that content is our single-most powerful way to market; We post about a hundred articles a month. Our CEO blogged, too, and continues today. This was, and is, immensely powerful.

One way we’ve been able to make this work: Enlist everyone, and anyone, at the company who is interested in writing. Marketing is a gentle custodian of the blog, only. Anyone who has an article perform exceptionally well gets public praise, and lunch for their department, too. The power of a free lunch continues to amaze me.

Free tools Especially if they have the power to meet a real need, and give people a way of self-scoring, and scoring others. At the start, we graded websites and press releases. Now we offer graders for marketing, Twitter and Facebook. They’re like food trucks: They remain available as long as we think there’s enough demand for them. You can try our latest free tool at http://Marketing.Grader.com.

Being socially active When we rolled out our premiere grader, I talked about it everywhere I could, largely by providing feedback to people’s questions about marketing, and referring them, when it made sense, to the tool. It was a powerful way to build a base. It’s not too late; there’s always demand for quality information, and useful tools, especially if they’re free, exceptionally graphical, and easy to use.

Friending sales We work hard to dissolve the boundaries every way we can, and at the same time, draw one very clear line of when a lead is sales ready. We have a clear definition of when a lead is ready for sales, how many of those leads marketing needs to create each month, and what sales is required to do from that point forward. Culturally, everyone from teams meets weekly, because we wanted to build a culture where it’s OK to share what works, and what doesn’t. We reinforce this ‘no-secrets’ approach with a dashboard that combines all of our key metrics, which are visible to everyone on both teams. We’re one team: We win only when both groups win.

There’s more, of course, like hiring, webinars, videos, and building brand, inside and outside the company. That’s part of what keeps it interesting. Props to all the VPs at the Corporate Ink breakfast, whose experiences made this moment in the way-back machine such a great conversation. We’re all grappling with the same issues. It’s just the scale, and sometimes the speed, that changes.

By: Mike Volpe
Twitter:@mvolpe

Ranking the GOP Twitter Feeds

2012-01-19T14:51:38Z

Just like businesses, presidential campaigns can rely on Twitter to connect with fans and turn positive sentiment into a selling tool, ultimately driving traffic to the website and bringing in more revenue (or donations).

So which GOP candidate has the best Twitter strategy?

I’ve looked at the remaining candidates’ Twitter accounts, and ranked them, based on:

Who’s engaging users the most
Who’s promoting valuable content, including relevant articles and video
Whose tweets are most dynamic – using hashtags, mentions, and links

I also reviewed the candidates’ official campaign accounts rather than the candidates’ personal accounts, if applicable. The official feeds were stronger across the board.

From worst to best:

@RickSantorum: Santorum’s account is on the decline. In 2011, Santorum’s campaign was regularly retweeting and engaging others, and linking to relevant articles.

Today, the feed is hardly much more than an update provider – and a lousy one at that. Santorum’s hashtag usage is uninspired, usually alternating between ‘#fitn’ and the laughable ‘#gameon.’

@TeamRickPerry: Team Perry is trending downward, like Santorum. Last year, the account was all about engagement, often retweeting and thanking supporters.Today, Perry’s team is only mentioning the @GovernorPerry account, and hashtag usage is one-dimensional, relying heavily on one hashtag (recently #scdebate, #huckforum before that).

@MittRomney: Romney’s twitter is inconsistent, and doesn’t connect with others. Romney will go several days without a tweet, and will often tweet without a single link, mention, or hashtag.

Many of Mitt’s tweets are clearly designed to be retweeted, and it works (he’s usually retweeted by 100+ users), but Romney misses opportunities to directly connect with others, or drive traffic to his website.

@Newt2012HQ – Newt’s campaign Twitter feed is strong, for three reasons:

The majority of Newt’s tweets link back to favorable articles, his website, and videos (the fastest-growing form of content online).

Most candidates tweeted canned quotes during debates – Newt’s team retweeted dozens of accolades from supporters, which is far more impactful.
Newt’s team finds supporters on Twitter and reaches out, thanking them and asking for donations.

One big problem – they tweet too much, sometimes dozens of tweets a day. They’re begging to get unfollowed.

@RonPaul – Paul’s campaign is the best tweet architect of the bunch. The tweets are clear and compelling, link to valuable content, and complete with relevant mentions, and hashtags galore.

As a result, Paul’s tweets are regularly retweeted by 100+ users, like Romney, but are more consistent and stronger.

While Paul’s campaign isn’t quite at Newt’s level of engagement, the strength of the actual tweets makes up for it.