Great PR Manners Go a Long Way
First, look at this great PR letter sent to me by Scott Duehlmeier from the Summit Group:
Chris-
Good evening, my name is Scott Duehlmeier with The Summit Group (PR/AD agency) in Salt Lake City, Utah. We recently created a social media department, and are working with a client who specializes in the creation of social networking platforms. I know they have very specific announcements coming up, and I was wondering if you even like to receive these types of announcements (elearning, online collaboration, marketing, social networking, corporate training.) The last thing I would want to do is just start blindly sending press releases or other correspondence your way, without even an introduction email asking you if you would even be interested in receiving these type of announcements.
I know you must get countless email a day regarding this type of thing, so I wanted to at least send you an email introducing myself and gauge your interest level. I’ll be in touch, thank you for your time.
Best-
Scott Duehlmeier
THE SUMMIT GROUP COMMUNICATIONS
So what? Manners, that’s what. Scott wrote me a very polite, very personal-seeming opt-in letter, asking me if I wanted to receive more info from him about clients that fit the profile he perceived about me from my blog. Answer= yes.
And in great part, it’s because Scott did a great job of sending a human-sounding letter.
As my storyteller friend Clarence would say, “Marinate.”
50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job. Not every company needs a blog. YouTube worked for BlendTec, but it might not work for your company. And yet, there’s something to this. Over the last three days, I’ve spoken to four HUGE brands in America that are considering social media for one project or another, and there are many more out there working on how these tools might integrate into their business needs. Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along. Note: I mix PR and Marketing. They should get back together again.
Please feel free to share this with others, and reblog it, provided you link back to [chrisbrogan.com] as the source.
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50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
- Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
- Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
- For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
- Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
- Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
- Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
- Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
- Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
- Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
- Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
- Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
- Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
- Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
- Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
- Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
- Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
- Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
- Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
- Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
- Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
- Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
- Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
- Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
- Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
- Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
- Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
- Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
- Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
- Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
- Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
- Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
- Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
- Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
- Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
- Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
- Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
- Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
- Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
- Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
- Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
- Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
- Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
- Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
- Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
- Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
- People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
- Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
- Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
- Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.
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Consider this a start. You probably could add another 50 tips for marketers and PR professionals to consider by adding to the comments section, or blogging an additional list at your site. I know you’ve got some ideas that I’ve missed. Care to share?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Example of a Great PR Pitch
Tom O’Brien took a chance tonight. He decided to send a pitch to a blogger, and see what would happen. And now, I’m going to show Tom (and you) what happened, first by reprinting his letter to me, and then, by commenting on his letter to me.
Tom sent this from his personal account. It was real and human right from the start.
Hi Chris:
As I read your (and lots of other blogs), it’s clear that bloggers don’t like to be blindly pitched by PR Firms. (As a (not prominent) blogger myself, I think I’d welcome the attention – but I digress.)
Tom has led with deference to what a blogger wants (thank you) and then self-deprecation that made me appreciate his point of view. I want to address Tom’s point about attention: sure, we love the attention, and it feeds a small part of our ego if we feel like you’re opening up a new relationship, and not just lobbing a press release at us (or me, at least. Let me say “me.”). Tom made me feel at home with this opening.
So, here’s my own pitch, I hope it isn’t too spammy.
1. MotiveQuest has developed a tool to measure brand advocacy in social media
2. This measure has been proven as a leading indicator of sales.
3. We have just announced it – the Online Promoter ScoreTM
Easy. It’s a list. It’s a numbered list. I love this. Brevity at it’s finest. I didn’t have to wade through a stupid fake newspaper headline and quotes from people I don’t know or care about.
Given the continuous debate about social media metrics around here, I think this is big news. And this is my Social Media Release.
Tom’s right on key here. This is DEFINITELY something we talk about a lot. I spent a little time with an agency today, and that was the key thing we talked about as a sticking point.
If you would like to learn more and perhaps write about this you can:
1. Schedule a brief call with me at MotiveQuest (tobrien@xxxxxxxx.com)
2. Here’s the press release
3. Here’s the Brand Advocacy landing page with the how, what and why of Online Promoter Score
4. Here’s the AdAge article about it: Linking Web Buzz to Mini Sales
5. Here’s my blog post about it Brand Advocacy Matters
6. Here’s our del.icio.us page with lots of articles about brand advocacy and related topics.
Again with the list. This was AWESOME. It felt like choosing off a menu. I felt like I knew immediately what to do with this opportunity.
If you can’t stand to get any more email from me, just let me know and I won’t do this again.
Funny and disarming, and also very very very human.
Lessons Learned
Dear PR Professionals–
Tom did everything right here. He started by identifying with me on a personal level, and letting me know within the first paragraph that he knew my perspective. He went on to tell me why this might be pertinent to me. He went into very brief, simple, bulleted lists, showing me how I could pursue the opportunity to write about this. He finished with a human offer of opting out.
Please try to dissect this further, take it to your labs, and learn from it. Please realize that maybe what’s missing, is a two part process.
- Send me the disarming email with simple-to-digest info first.
- If I respond positively, then see whether I need your big fat press release written as if it’s going to Walt Mossberg’s next article.
Step 1 is the secret sauce here, PR friends. Start by establishing your human side. Connect with me. Give me something really easy to consider.
And THEN see if I want a Step 2.
Is this faster? no. More efficient? no. Best way to do it? I think so.
What do you think?
