Disruptive Voice

Tweeting Your Way to Better Analyst Relations

2009-06-04T21:12:57-04:00

Just like many bloggers and online journalists, analysts are turning to social media tools to engage directly with their industry audiences. With growing frequency, I get requests from analysts via DM on Twitter or a message on Facebook for more info on a company press announcement or for access to a customer.

Figuring our which of your industry’s analysts are using social media sites can be a tedious web-search task. But thanks to SageCircle, you can find the Twitter handle for analysts representing research firms from Analysis Mason to ZapThink.

Twitter is not a substitute for analyst briefings or picking up the phone and calling the researcher who follows your company. Twitter is another tool you can use to monitor what analysts are covering, while sharing with them tidbits and news updates about your company.

Check out SageCircle’s Twitter Directory of Analysts: http://tinyurl.com/SageDirectory.

Simple Wins Every Time

2009-03-26T07:56:06-04:00

Keeping things simple should be part of every company’s marketing & product strategies. Simplicity wins over complexity. The proof is all around us.

Take the Wii gaming console for example. Today Nintendo announced that this tiny box with goofy animated characters has sold more than 50 million units, beating out its rivals Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (30 million) and Sony’s PlayStation 3 (21 million). Hard-core gamers who love games with intricate stories and detailed graphics are more apt to buy an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. But your mom & dad are more likely to actually play Wii bowling or tennis. The simple gaming platform is the clear winner.

Look at the iPod, too. Most gadget review sites note that it’s not the best sound compared to many lower-costing mp3 players. But its easy-to-use design is a hit.

Even in B2B markets, simplicity dominates. When IBM runs print & TV ads for its servers, it could include lots of words about the products’ scalability, speed and more. Instead, it simplified the benefits pitch by showing how IT departments can go from a room full of network equipment and cables to a rack of IBM servers.

At too many companies, potential customers check out the website or review marketing collateral, and then ask, “What do you do?” It doesn’t matter how sophisticated you believe your products are or how much R&D you spent to develop them. Simplifying your sales and marketing message will get you more sales than a technical datasheet.

Focus on the benefits instead:
-    cost savings
-    improved productivity
-    easy configuration

Test your new messaging on partners and existing customers. Tweak your marketing as much as needed. Keeping it simple is your key to winning.

Get the Most from Your Press Announcements

2008-12-12T12:39:00-05:00

A few months ago I did a press announcement for a PR client that got the attention of its biggest partner, Microsoft. That press release made this IT solutions provider stand out among the hundreds of other Microsoft-certified IT solutions providers in North America, leading to kudos from the software giant.

The announcement also resulted in coverage in the telecom industry press, which this provider was targeting for the first time. Any business would be happy with this return on PR investment.

For a follow-up announcement, however, the IT solutions provider drafted its own release and posted it on a wire service, obviously expecting the same results. Instead, nothing happened. Nobody even noticed its press release.

You see, it takes more than posting a press release on the wires to get coverage. There are three fundamentals that should be followed when considering a press announcement:

1. Newsworthiness –- Find an angle, topic or event that will be relevant to the target audience, which includes both the media and the potential business customers. If you have nothing interesting to announce, save your money.

In the case of the IT solutions provider, it actually had compelling news –- an exclusive partnership with a major telecom vendor. But being PR virgins, the company execs did not know what angle to pursue, so they missed the mark in their press release draft.

2. Pitch the news –- Pitching a news story (that’s what your announcement is, by the way) is not easy, yet it is as crucial as the announcement itself. You have to know the journalists and bloggers and how to contact them based on their preferences, i.e. email, phone or even Facebook messaging. Then you have to present the news in a manner that is relevant to them and their audience. For instance, say you are announcing the hiring of a seasoned executive. If the publication has been writing features on industry cutbacks and layoffs in an economic downturn, a PR professional might position the hire as a company expansion when its competitors are scaling back. That’s interesting news.

Also, it takes a long time to build relationships with bloggers and journalists, but it’s the best way to generate news coverage about your company, product or solution. PR pros often pitch news about several companies to the same media outlets and blogs, so they know the writers and editors.

3. Follow-up -- After the press announcement hits the wire, send a copy directly to the journalists you targeted. Select a few who have shown interest to prop ose an interview with a company executive. Journalists sometimes refer to the flow of incoming news announcements as a "fire hose," meaning they are so inundated with press releases that they cannot cover everything. Your PR professional can make the journalists’ life easier by reminding them about a relevant, newsworthy item –- your press release –- and by having a quotable executive at the ready.

A lot of thought should go into your press announcements before your write them. When possible, build a campaign, in which you promote an ongoing theme, such as thought leadership in a particular technology or development of a broad ecosystem. And follow the steps above to improve your chances of generating media coverage.

5 Steps to Creating a Crisis PR Plan

2008-11-10T13:46:50-05:00

As the economy continues to sour, an increasing number of companies will be announcing disappointing news, such as missed quarterly sales goals or layoffs—or both. Every company should be prepared to deal with negative news, whether it’s generated by the company’s own bad decisions or unforeseen circumstances, such as failed servers that shut down services to thousands of people.

When a crisis hits, your corporate PR person or outside PR firm should act immediately to stifle rumors and negative reporting. But they can act efficiently only if there is a Crisis PR plan in place.

Here are five steps to creating a Crisis PR plan:

1.   Appoint a crisis team.
•   This team must have the authority to be decisive about what to do and say in a crisis.
•   Include a lead person from your outside agency.
•   This team should not be lead by someone in the Legal department. Lawyers tend to be overly cautious, which in a crisis can mean the company ultimately says nothing out of fear of legal ramifications.

2.   Appoint a spokesperson.
•   This is the primary point of contact for media inquiries.
•   Just because your CEO is the top official does not mean they are the best person to address the media.
•   This person should be comfortable answering questions and savvy enough to avoid landmines.

3. Gather all pertinent facts.
• The crisis team should collect all information related to the crisis: what happened and why; product info; launch dates; toll-free customer service numbers; and a list of who was impacted adversely.

4.   Identify your audiences.
•   External audiences include general media; friendly reporters; and investors.
•   Internal audiences include the board and employees. Why are employees crucial to your Crisis PR plan? Every employee can either be an evangelist or a critic of the company. You want to arm them with information that presents the company in a positive manner, so they will repeat the same message as corporate PR when their friends and former coworkers contact them for the inside scoop.

5. Plan to tell the truth.
• The crisis team, PR firm and corporate executives should agree at the outset to be truthful about the company’s responsibilities in any crisis.

The final step should not be taken lightly. A Crisis PR plan is intended to minimize damage to the company’s brand and reputation. Seasoned PR people can sometimes use the response to a crisis to help a company turn a negative incident into positive coverage, thus evoking goodwill about the brand.

But a Crisis PR strategy should not be a way of avoiding responsibility or dodging the truth. Not telling the truth to the media and other audiences leads to a slippery slope that usually results in corporate embarrassment and a high-ranking official becoming the fall guy.

As a former journalist I can tell you that corporate lies always find the light in the end. Remember Enron?

The Right Tool for the Job

2008-10-22T09:15:45-04:00

I am no webmaster. Ten years ago I played around with building web pages. But that was so I could understand the inner workings of web pages in order to be a better marketer.

Apparently, the fact that I am not a webmaster was evident in the design and layout of my blog. Apparently, the design of my blog was an embarrassment to my friends, colleagues and even my children – if you believe my ex-wife, who is a website developer and designer.

My talents lie in public relations and employing social media to promote ideas, products, solutions and companies. I can write—which is important in blogging—but cannot design.

The aesthetic appeal of a blog lends credibility to the author. Clean, inviting page design or compelling images have lured me to read an unfamiliar blogger’s post.

So I employed my critical yet talented ex-wife to re-design my blog.

How many times have you taken on a task for which you lack the skill set? Maybe you created a newsletter and focused on the content but not the look and feel. Maybe you launched a cool-looking website that has confusing navigation or lacks well-written content that explains what you do. Maybe you put out a press release and wondered why no media wrote about your company.

Knowing what you’re good at is critical to success. But knowing what you suck at is just as important. There is someone who loves creating whatever it is that you suck at doing.

Every home improvement do-it-yourself expert urges us to “Use the right tool for the job.” In business, the motto should be “Use the right talent for the job.”

The Power of Niche Blogs

2008-10-10T11:52:39-04:00

When candy powerhouse The Hershey Company decided to save a few bucks by substituting ingredients for real chocolate with fake chocolate, most consumers never noticed. But a niche blog, CandyBlog, follows the company that built its empire on the quality of its chocolate.

CandyBlog exposed the substitution of cocoa butter with oils from palm kernels, soybeans, sunflower and safflower, which led to a groundswell of negative media coverage, including The Today Show. One newspaper called Hershey’s use of misleading labels such as “made with chocolate” on its Mr. Goodbar, Milk Duds, and Take 5 candies “a blatant consumer rip-off.”

And the news just gets worse for Hershey, as eco-enthusiasts have jumped on t he bandwagon to point out that Hershey's use of palm oil contributes to deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Outsourcing opponents point out that Hershey shut down U.S. factories to make fake chocolate in Mexico. Health advocates note that eating palm oil contributes to cardiovascular disease.

Niche blogs that follow specific industries have grown in importance. Through RSS feeds and content sharing on the Web, companies can either see a spike in interest about their products/solutions or get slammed and have their brands damaged in days.

For Hershey, the cost savings haven’t been worth the negative coverage. But they might have gotten away with the cocoa butter substitution were it not for a blog that caters to candy lovers. Don't underestimate the power of small, niche blogs.

Telcos must open their networks to survive & thrive

2008-10-06T17:27:40-04:00

Venerable tech columnist Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal told a room full of telecom executives today that new mobile devices like the 3G iPhone and the G1 Google Android phone mark "a great moment of opportunity and significant challenge for the telecom industry."

With the transformation of mobile devices into handheld computers, telcos could be limited to being nothing but a network provider. Such was the prediction that Mossberg delivered to attendees of BroadSoft Connections in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Joining Mossberg was Jeff Cavins, who leads mobile app provider CallWave; Shawn Hardin, who heads social networking browser Flock.com; and Emily Green, the president of the Yankee Group research firm.

Mossberg began the session by holding up a humongous old Motorola portable phone to illustrate just how far mobile handsets and services have come. Part of the panel’s message was that telecom companies want to hold on to outdated business models, and consequently are being relegated to becoming little more than a pipe.

While telcos want to be part of the Web 2.0 evolution that is occurring, the changes are coming faster than they can alter their internal cultures to take advantage of new innovations. And, the panel said, telcos have to abandon their walled-garden approach to services that once made Internet pioneers like AOL successful, but eventually left them grasping for sustainability.

Green said telcos continue to focus on reliability at a time when consumers put up with mediocre service from mobile carriers in exchange for convenience. Choice, she said, is the dominant factor in consumer decision making.

Mossberg said so far Apple and Google have gotten it right: open the platform to innovation and let new, exciting things happen. For telcos to survive, they will have to open their networks to allow user-driven applications become part of the next generation of telecom services.

Add a Syndicated Feed to Boost Your PR Reach

2008-09-30T12:43:45-04:00

News announcements distributed via a reputable wire service and with social media aspects can appear on multiple websites and end up in prospects’ Google searches. Web savvy companies also post all of their news announcements on their own websites.

But many overlook the preference of Internet users to have information pulled to them rather than pushed at them. These users’ preference can be addressed using syndicated feeds. Adding a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or other type of feed to your site allows people who want to stay abreast of happenings with your company to get automatic alerts when you update content on the corporate site, add news announcements or make a new blog posting.

People know a feed is available on your site when they see the orange RSS icon or other feed logos. Provide multiple feed options instead of forcing users to choose a syndicated feed they do not already use.

Some popular feeds are:

· Google Reader

· MyYahoo

· FeedReader

For do it yourselfers, here’s a “How to” for building and using a RSS feed.

Intel does a good job using RSS in a way that allows readers to decide what specific content they want to follow. Given the ease of setting up RSS on your site, take advantage of syndicated feeds today to expand the reach of your PR.

Print Media’s Dead, Long Live New Media

2008-09-26T12:09:18-04:00

I come to bury newspapers, not to praise them.

For the second time in a week, I attended a high-tech event where newspaper reporters were present — and no one in the room seemed to notice. Just a few years ago, Washington Post tech reporters would avoid wearing name tags at networking events to keep from being mobbed by entrepreneurs and start-ups seeking coverage. Those days are gone.

Newspapers, which begrudgingly added online news distribution to their portfolios, are hurting. As readership plummets, so does the revenue from advertising. In a losing effort to stay in the black, newspapers are dumping hundreds of journalists, most of whom are their best talent.

The list of layoffs & buyouts is astounding:

· The Boston Globe bought out 60 staffers this year, following a 2007 buyout that led to the exit of Pulitzer Prize winners

· The Tampa Tribune offered buyouts to half its staff

· The New York Times cut 100 employees

· The Seattle Times eliminated 200 jobs

· The Modesto Bee unloaded 100 people

· The News & Observer—where I once worked as a reporter—cut 70 folks.

The news hole at print newspapers is shrinking fast. Many business sections don’t even carry a tech reporter any more. With the reduced headcount in newsrooms, beat reporters are often regulated to covering only publicly traded companies.

This all means you need to broaden your target list beyond traditional print media if you have a business and are seeking promotion. Print newspapers are failing because people are getting their news from non-traditional sources online.

Your public relations strategy needs to include niche blogs that cover your industry and Web-based news sites, such as Internet.com, bMighty and the online versions of traditional newspapers.

While your company might get lucky and land an article in a large daily newspaper, avoid putting all your PR eggs into this disappearing basket.

Social Networks Inside Companies

2008-09-23T16:22:16-04:00

A recent Harvard Business Review study found that internal corporate communications suck. While working on a paper about the social networks inside companies and how they are used to convey information across the organization, the researchers discovered that, for the most part, corporate social networks don’t exist.

But why are companies that invest a percentage of their earning into marketing their products and communicating their value to external audiences so dysfunctional when it comes to creating a united organization in which everyone understands the corporate objectives and how their individual work contributes to the company’s success?

The Harvard researchers found that organizations find the best internal communication occurs within separate business units or geographically isolated offices, but not cross-departmentally. In other words, the Marketing team knows what it is working on and how its activities will impact sales, the company’s perception and ecosystem, yet the rest of the organization probably doesn’t have clue about what Marketing is doing or why.

Effective internal communications is important. By fixing internal corporate communications, organizations:

- Achieve higher organizational effectiveness

- Improve morale

- Foster a family environment versus an “it’s just a job” mentality

- Engender loyalty

- Reduce employee attrition

- Create a small army of evangelists.

Many of the tools that organizations use to promote themselves and to communicate directly with their customers and partners can used to improve internal corporate communications. Here’s a short list of ways your company can keep everyone informed of what’s important to the organization and involved in the business’ growth:

Use social networking tools

- Podcasts, videocasts & microblogging tools like Yammer allow you to deliver snippets of information to employees in engaging mediums they already use outside the workplace.

Blogging

- Allowing executives, middle managers and rank-and-file employees to post to an internal blog opens up dialogue. Imagine allowing Marketing to get feedback on planned campaigns, or engineers inviting coworkers to beta test a new application.

- See Lorelle VanFossen’s post on “How to blog.”

eNewsletters

- Too often companies try to disseminate information internally via email. But everyone receives too many emails already. Condense the news & updates and compile them in an html newsletter that goes to the staff monthly. Include photos & images to keep it interesting.

Surveys

- Solicit feedback from employees on a quarterly basis and share the results. Sites like Survey Monkey and PollDaddy provide free or low-cost online survey options that compile the data for you.

Internal community site

- If you have the resources (web developer & budget) create a secure community site where employees can share documents and presentations, get help on projects, publicly thank project team members, give kudos for new sales, product launches or partnerships, and interact freely.

Brown bag lunches

- While technology can improve how we communicate, face-to-face interactions are crucial for instilling a communal sense of purpose and belonging. Senior executives can use brown bag lunches to reinforce messages disseminated through corporate social networking at all the corporate offices.

Each aspect of your internal corporate communications plan should have a champion – someone who oversees the activity and ensures that communications are timely and consistent. The new rules of public relations emphasize directly connecting to your target audience. The same applies to your most often-overlooked audience – the company staff.

Get serious about your internal social network, and watch your employees from Accounting to the CEO take to it like a teenager takes to MySpace.