In an effort to make a lighter weight Social Media News Release Template I created the SNAP (Social Network Announcement Page) template:

Social Network Announcement Page (SNAP) was created by leveraging the Bootstrap from Twitter framework and my previous Clean And Simple Social Media News Release Template

You can download SNAP (Social Network Announcement Page) for free and modify it for your own needs. You’ll need a decent understanding of HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc, but it’s a good starting point.

You can also embed the entire SNAP into another website (currently only in 300×300 iframe) and the CSS takes care of making it look good. Take a look here:

<iframe style="width:300px;height:300px" src="http://smnr.howtophil.com/snap"><br /><a href="http://smnr.howtophil.com/snap"></a></iframe>

Feel free to let me know what you think and if you use it. Thanks.

If you want to succeed in running a kitchen for the homeless in Washington, DC, or have wildly successful social media marketing campaigns, it all comes down to one thing: do you respect and appreciate your guests?

Do you cut-corners and just serve slop or do you prepare organic, healthy, and delicious meals with an obsession for presentation and taste?

I volunteer as sous chef at a Washington, DC, homeless kitchen. They serve fresh, organic dinners to folks who really need a healthy meal. Miriam’s Kitchen treats everyone who dines there as respected and honored guests. I have learned a lot about how to be a much better social media marketer as a direct result of working both in the kitchen as a sous chef and also as dining room captain. Can someone who isn’t in love with the taste of food be a top chef? You know what they say, “never trust a skinny chef.”

Well, it seems to me that there are quite a few PR and marketing companies that aren’t in love with social media. Even worse, they have downright contempt for the honest denizens of social media. Can you truly be effecting in social media marketing, digital PR, and SEO if you’re not completely in love with it? Can one ever trust a skinny social media maven?

And even if you’re not in love with social media, can you be truly effective if you don’t taste what you make? If you’re too “busy” or too “above” rolling up your sleeves and getting into the kitchen, can you actually create social media campaigns that are fashionable, timely, au courant? Are you serving campaigns that nobody’s ordering — and would you even know?

Too often, for too many traditional agencies, social is just another channel, another product to sell in order to be integrated and full-service — there’s very little passion — or respect — for online community. Much of this is not intentional, it’s just that “full-service” agencies, and their practitioners, are oftentimes spread too thin over too many media and too broad mission.

It reminds me of a recent experience I had at Miriam’s: I prepared enough sauce to feed one-hundred-and-fifty homeless men and women and forgot to even taste it. Seriously. I was so busy chopping onions, peeling and crushing tomatoes; browning the onion and garlic; and adding oregano, basil, olive oil, salt, and pepper in the too short amount of time I had that I never dipped in a plastic tasting spoon to see if it all worked together.

I looked at my watch: I was on time! However, I looked over at John Murphy, head dinner chef at Miriam’s Kitchen, and my boss.

“How does it taste?” he asked. I looked at him dumbfounded.

“We can’t feed our guests with food that doesn’t taste good,” John continued while dipping a clean plastic tasting spoon into the sauce and tasting it, “that you wouldn’t eat and enjoy yourself — you need to always monitor the food you’re cooking by both taste and presentation.”

“I know we’re in a rush but you must put yourself out there in the dining room and you must make sure what you serve isn’t just nutritious, organic and fresh but also appealing to the eye and palate.”

In my mad rush to deliver, I completely forgot that the food I was preparing didn’t just have to get done but also needed to be delicious, compelling, appealing, and well-seasoned. And, so I tasted. It was bland.

I doctored it up and the results were delicious — and so was the presentation, with fresh basil and rosemary adding green to a sea of red when it was finally served to the kitchen’s guests. So, what happens if you’re not willing to be an active participant in the flavor of the meals you serve.

Corporate folks used to call it “eating your own dog food,” right?

What I see in the social media marketing and PR space, however, are lots of folks who are cooking and cooking and cooking without ever taking an interest in tasting. What I mean in this case is that there are too many social media marketers who have zero interest in social media, social networks, technology, or online community.

And, even if you do taste-as-you-go, how’s your palette? Maybe you’re serving fast food but you have a foodie palate — are you able to connect with your guests cook to their unique taste in food? Are you able to produce meals that appeal to your guests or do you feel contempt for their lack of sophistication, always trying to force tastes and textures that might, in fact, disgust them and drive them away, never to return.

How well do you know the palette of your market online? How much of a died-in-the-wool social media consumer are you yourself? How engaged are you on Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter, or Google+ yourself? — to say nothing of message boards, forums, or reddit.

You make think your know how to market to online denizens but just because you may understand how to market or promote using traditional tools to traditional markets doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to map those strategies directly to this new, vibrant, global online market — or, to map those recipes directly to your new restaurant.

Are you invested in social media? Are you a fanboy or fangirl of social networks? Do you spend too much time developing online relationships in online communities? Are you the first person rushing around to try to get an invite to Pinterest, for example? If not, do you really have the sort of passion and commitment to knowing your audience well enough to be able to cook for them?

Via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Related articles

• Taste everything well before serving up your social media offerings (socialmedia.biz)
• Taste-as-you-go during social media marketing prep (biznology.com)
• An end-of-year thank you from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Virante Director of Social Media Marketing to be Panelist in Major Webinar About Google+ (virante.com)
• Using social media to give customers a taste of your business (marketing.yell.com)
• Results Are In: The Top Tool to Help with Social Media Marketing (community.constantcontact.com)
• Social Media and Email Marketing: Your Word of Mouth Engine (community.constantcontact.com)
• 11 Keys to Social Media Marketing Success (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Learn Social Media Marketing On A Horse (newmediarockstars.com)
• Jennings Social Media Marketing Announces Motostew Plus as a New Client (jenningssocialmedia.com)

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on Marketing Conversation, but I return bearing a gift!

I was setting up a social media news release for HowToPhil and decided to try out Bootstrap from Twitter as a framework. After a few hours I constructed my SMNR and then also stripped out all the HowToPhil branding to make a template I could release to all of you:

Check out the HowToPhil SMNR

Download the Clean And Simple Social Media News/Press Release By HowToPhil

Take a look at what the Clean And Simple Social Media News/Press Release Template looks like before you modify it

You can quickly set up a social media news/press release using this template if you have a fairly decent understanding of HTML, CSS, javascript, etc.

The latest version will always be available on HowToPhil.com.

Let me know if you have questions or suggestions for making the template better. I’m also interested in links to sites that are using my template and just good old fashion compliments.

Sixty percent of Americans will judge your company based on your online presence, think about that for a moment. Though your website plays an important role in your online presence, there is more to it. People search for your brand and judge your company based on what comes up on search engines as well. Investing in online PR helps you manage your online presence and it isn’t something that solely belongs in the future. In fact, it is becoming a vital part of any marketing strategy in this day and age. Having a powerful online presence can put your brand leaps and bounds ahead of the competition with minimal effort on your behalf. Do you want to set your brand apart? Well you need to be tech savvy in our tech-savvy world.

Via PRMarketing.com

The status of marketing is at a crossroads right now, where the paradigms of the past are fading away concurrently to the birth of future ones, with little to no place for the present. Sound confusing? Well, it is. The rise of the online reputation managment company, for example, isn’t the only harbinger of the changing of the guards. As far as the value of the Internet in corporate branding, social media and several new technological phase-changes are sweeping in a new era of marketing strategies. Here are some of the tops examples:

Real time communication. Because it is now possible to undertake projects collaboratively and in real-time using a combination of cloud services and social media, marketers possess the ability to micro-manage their campaigns far more effectively. Real time social media interactions make it so that companies can now custom-tailor their marketing campaigns to meet the latest developments in the real world and mirror the latest online trends.

By integrating Google alerts with keywords you can even stay on top of the international dynamics of real-time marketing. The resistance to using social media in marketing is rooted in not understanding that the benefits of social media lie fundamentally in its real-time nature. Facebook Hangouts is just the beginning. Fusions of services like Skype, Google docs, and Twitter will make marketing an incredibly fluid process that requires sophisticated online skills and entirely new divisions.

Virtual reality communities. In addition to traditional advertising and newer strategies like inbound marketing, the future of online marketing will be heavily focused on virtual reality marketing that can target people spend much of their time as avatars. Digital TV, strengthened fiber optic networks, the bundling of cable, phone and Internet services and 4G networks, as well as the popularity of cutting edge gaming platforms like Wii and Kinect make it clear that in the future more and more people people will use the Internet for much of their recreational time. It’s also likely that more and more people will take part in communities like Second Life, which already has a burgeoning niche economy and online currency. The coming years should see a growing emphasis on marketing to virtual reality communities.

Smartphones everywhere. The incredible rise of the smartphone as a ubiquitous personal assistant puts it in the crosshairs of all marketers as the next great battlefield. Accompanying location-based social media sites like Foursquare and Gowalla will come a legion of marketing teams. They will look to utilize smartphone advertising in conjunction with advanced real-time communication, augmented reality browsers, and other coming developments. The public sphere will continue to be the hunting ground of marketers, but it will the public sphere 3.0, the one infused into our mobile devices.

These three examples—real time communication, virtual reality communities, and smartphones—underscore the rapid change in marketing strategies. As the commercial world sees physical space merges with cyber space, we can expect consumers to demand more of their Internet providers and more savviness from marketers.

It is an undeniable fact that everyone has started to take notice of the powerful impact that a well targeted blogger outreach campaign can have on a product.

PR shops tailored specifically at reaching bloggers are popping up all over the place, and why shouldn’t they? There are millions of bloggers and even more blog readers. It would be a tragedy to leave these influencers untapped.In my position at Abraham Harrison

I am fortunate enough to serve as a bit of a gate-keeper in regards to the various pitches that come in for Chris Abraham.

Since we are in the industry of blogger outreach, and have been for 5 years now, I find these pitches to be quite interesting (even if they aren’t necessarily pitches that are applicable to Chris).

I like to look at the layout of the pitch. Are they tracking the email? Do they include links? Where are they linking to? Is there a social media news release? How easy are they making it for bloggers to post about their product?

Now I have a confession to make. On occasion, I like to take this curiosity one step further (I view it as scoping out the competition) and well, I like to respond. But not with your typical responses of “Great, I’ll make sure Chris sees this!” or “Thank you, but no, this isn’t a fit”. I like to throw them curve balls.

Most recently Chris received a timely pitch for a Facebook app called The Mural of Love (here, I will even throw y’all a bone and provide the link he was sent http://apps.facebook.com/themural).

What caught my attention was this email was a follow up email to an earlier sent message that I had merely chosen to ignore. I admired their persistence, it is something we incorporate into our campaigns as well. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

So, I read the pitch and clicked the link.

Side note: to access the application I had to grant permission to my Facebook page, that is where I declined and lost interest altogether. I find whenever I do that, “I” end up posting on ex-boyfriend’s walls, or inviting my 75-year old Nana to play “Drug Wars” with me, completely without my knowledge or endorsement. Had I been provided with a Social Media News Release and more information before having to allow access perhaps I would have continued. I digress, back to the story.

Now, if any of you know anything about Chris you know this…While he may be a hopeless romantic/social media guru, the odds of him combining these two things and paying to send virtual teddy bears, flowers, and chocolates to his potential suitors’ Facebook pages are pretty slim. At his age, and this point in his seasoned love life, I truly hope he has advanced past this type of digital flirtation. For goodness sakes, he is a Forbes Top 50 Most Powerful Social Media Influencer, he can’t just be posting teddy bears all over the place!

Curiosity killed the cat and I had to email back. I said….

“Thank you, XXXXXX, but Chris is a middle aged bachelor so I am not sure that this app has much relevance to him.

I do admire your persistence, the brevity of your message model, and as a fellow practitioner I have some suggestions. I really think you all could benefit from incorporating social media news releases into your pitches.

When you are “cold emailing” and asking someone to click on a link and grant access to their Facebook wall more information prior to making that request would be beneficial. We do social media news releases for all of our clients. They not only make it easier for bloggers to post, but they also provide any and all information available for the blogger to research.

So they can rest assured that this is a legitimate pitch, offer, product, etc. I would love to hop on a call with you and/or your CEO and talk a little bit further about SMNR’s and how we might be able to help you offer them for your clients.”

What response do you think I got back?

………….radio silence……………

Which resulted in what? Me writing this post as a precautionary tale of how you need to have a contingency plan for all kinds of responses.

Bloggers are an eclectic, cheeky, and brutally honest bunch. You can’t just fire and forget because you don’t like the response you get back, or it is something out of the ordinary.

The out of the ordinary responses are the ones you have to be the most careful with!

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• The Social Media News Release explained in detail (socialmedia.biz)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• The anachronistic social media isolationist (socialmedia.biz)
• Social media success demands talent above technology (socialmedia.biz)
• Being Pretty Isn’t Enough for Social Media Success (socialmedia.biz)
• Can PR leave behind magical thinking for science? (socialmedia.biz)
• President Chris Abraham in Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers (marketingconversation.com)
• Choose talent over tech for your Social Media Marketing PR campaign (chrisabraham.com)
• Can Your Facebook Page Be Profitable? (marketingwithoutanet.com)
• Travel PR Agency NJC Communications Launches A-La-Carte Public Relations Services for Travel, Hospitality and Tourism Companies (prweb.com)

While neither marketing nor social media are sciences, one needs to use scientific principles to be most effective when it comes to both branding and prospecting online. It doesn’t take an Einstein to succeed in social media marketing, but to does take a scientist. Are you rigorously collecting metrics and data to see if what you’re doing is resulting in sales conversions or extending your brand or are you relying on things you’ve learned from The Secret? Is your social media marketing campaign relying too much on magical realism, the power of positive thinking, and general superstition?

Or, are you so confident in your social media marketing plan that you really don’t care what your experiment says? That no matter how little pick-up you get in the media or no matter how few followers you garner or how little engagement, it isn’t your fault but must be because the market’s not ready for you or because you knew that social media marketing wasn’t effective anyway.

Well, that’s just bad science. Don’t let your social media hypothesis dictate your conclusion

If you want to be an effective scientist, it is essential that you allow the results of your experiments — your observations — to speak for themselves. While having a hypothesis going into the lab is always part one, allowing the empirical data to realign or even contradict your initial predictions is essential. That said, it’s hard on the ego to see something fail. It’s even harder to take the data as it comes and turn it into something useful in the end. This is how innovation happens, of course; and this is how scientific breakthroughs happen, too: not incrementally but in finding order in the chaos of unpredicted results.

There is a lot of bad science in social media marketing. Even a long decade after the Cluetrain Manifesto brought us the 95 theses that taught us that markets are conversations and that brands don’t own their brands anymore — a hypothesis that has proven itself prophetic — there are still many brands that have adopted blogs and social networks simply as new broadcast channels and have simply used social media as a handy way of listening in on the rude thing that people are saying about them.

Science is about testing. Testing and retesting and being willing and able to cut loose any and all processes that prove ineffective and moving those resources into things that either work outright or show general promise. It is about not being attached to outcome. Finally, it is also about sticking to your guns and powering through on your commitment to seeing your experiments and your tests through. There are too many ghost towns littering social media that are the direct result of abandoned experiments, abandoned dreams — actually, more often, they succumbed to a crisis of faith.

The advertising industry has already adopted science and testing, but not because they wanted to. These were not men who had faith in science — they thought that advertising was an art. While early online marketing started to make advertising nervous, it wasn’t until Google launched AdWords that advertising began to evolve from art to science. The same thing is happening to direct marketing. From A/B testing to sophisticated engagement metrics, the science of advertising and marketing is becoming more de facto than fringe.

PR as the last bastion of magical thinking

PR is the last bastion of The Secret, the last bastion of superstition and magical thinking. The last business communication vocation that struggles against the harsh accountability of hard science, the cruel nakedness of quantitative metrics over the soft fuzzies of qualitative metrics.

Just because you’ve adopted social media doesn’t mean you’re modern. It is strangely possible to map your 19th century PR strategies onto a 21st century media platform without missing a beat. Take responsibility for your campaigns and do not let your hunches and experience dictate your successes and failures — let the data inform you and when it informs you that you’re just spinning your wheels, it is essential to do whatever it takes to adjust your campaign to maximize performance, amplify influence, and optimize for conversions.

Everything else is just doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, a sure sign of insanity — or so said none other than Albert Einstein.

Via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

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• Don’t Let Your Social Media Hypothesis Dictate Your Conclusion (biznology.com)
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• Manufacturer Kicks Off 2012 Social Media Marketing Program – Program to Complement Current Marketing Campaigns (prweb.com)
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• FREE Webinar: Jumpstart Your 2012 Video + Social Media Marketing Strategy (reelseo.com)
• Is Social Media Just a fad or is it here to stay? (socialmediaspectrum2010.wordpress.com)
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Bloggers, site managers, and SEO specialists are always looking for new ways to boost traffic to their page and exposure for their business. They use social media platforms to market their website, they utilize backlinks and interactive features to maximize views and click-throughs, and they try to increase conversion rate with live chat software. Now, many of these people are looking to an old medium as the next frontier for online marketing and SEO: video.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the many benefits that video content can offer. For a marketer, it can drive traffic by diversifying your site’s content, its sophistication, and its likelihood of appearing towards the top of an organic Google search. On the SEO front, video allows for the incorporation of keywords and media libraries that can boost a site’s page rank. Video is also an appealing platform for advertisers (among whom embedded video ads are currently all the rage) and social media experts (who can more successfully integrate a site and a social media page through the use of video). There’s no question about it: video is all the rage these days, and people from all walks of internet life have been racing to get on board.

So for all these reasons, you may naturally be looking to start making video posts yourself. But there’s just one problem: you don’t know what content to put in these videos. You have an online business or blog upon which written content is not unfamiliar, but you have no idea how to translate that into video – and, moreover, how to make videos that will also engage the viewer and positively promote your business in the process.

On that note, here are a few of the most successful and proven approaches that you can take when it comes to video content:

-The Humorous Infomercial. This approach allows online businesses to contrast a serious written tone with a humorous video approach. Humor is a great way to interest and engage the viewer, after all, and the infomercial setting provides a great way to explicitly market a product or service without being forceful about it.

-The Corporate Culture. Some video marketers take a more relaxed and less scripted approaching, opting instead to showcase the business’ employers using the company’s products or services around the office. The shoe retailer Zappos has used this style with considerable success.

-The Informative One-On-One. Many videos will simply show the blogger, business owner, or site manager talking candidly into the camera. While these videos may not generate as much excitement as more humorous ones, they provide a great forum to address consumer issues and put a human face onto a virtual enterprise. Companies such as Google have made extensive use of this technique.

These are just a few of the main approaches taken towards video content. No matter what approach you choose, make sure that your video is clear, professional, and informative on some level. If done correctly, you will hopefully realize a traffic or SEO boost as a result.

…And he gets double credit for being 33, my favorite number. The man, the myth, the legend has done it again. Abraham Harrison President Chris Abraham made the cut this week as one of Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. Way to go! He’s in great company alongside Chris Brogan, President of Human Works and Gary Vaynerchuk– wine and video king. The list was compiled using PeekYou’s social pull metrics, a handy tool measuring the number of people in your secondary networks. Check out the whole list and let us know who else you think you have made the cut.

Related articles

• The anachronistic social media isolationist (socialmedia.biz)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• Christmas came early for the Abraham Harrison team (marketingconversation.com)
• Being Pretty Isn’t Enough for Social Media Success (socialmedia.biz)
• Christmas is a perfect time to make havoc online (socialmedia.biz)

To follow up on my last post, Being pretty isn’t enough for social media success, I wanted to discuss what I like to call Social Media Isolationism or Social Media Agoraphobia. And there are two forms of this sort of isolationism: invitational and exclusionary. They both mean you don’t venture outside your own four social media walls; however, the first is welcoming and the other is dismissive.

The welcoming pineapple

Jay Gatsby was a welcoming pineapple. He desperately wanted to woo his beloved Daisy and opened his grand home hoping he just might, one night, find her at one of his lavish parties. Or, at the very least, create enough buzz so that his lost love might hear of him and ask about him.

Not always the direct result of a grand romantic gesture, the welcoming pineapple is often associated with the feeling that one is so appealing, so compelling a brand, product, or service that your friends and neighbors should very well come a-calling. You host awesome dinner parties, right? You have the biggest television, have your own pool and tennis court, and have several guest rooms. Why would you ever want to leave your own social media home?

Why wouldn’t everyone want to take advantage of your generosity and party favor to want to go anywhere else, to say nothing of staying home in their pallid, beige, one-bedroom apartments? This generosity often comes with the stink of superiority or ego that eventually turns people off.

And if the proffered goodies are so compelling as to compel, this commitment might very well be contingent only upon the bounty, the booty, the swag lavished. In other words, your friends are bought and paid for and are your friends forever (or until you run out of cookies and candies and a subscription to cable).

In terms of a country, this open-border country would be glad to allow anyone in but since this country is obviously so awesome, offering everything and anything you could very well ever want in the first place, people just visit, nobody really ever leaves and a majority don’t even possess a passport.

Good fences make good neighbors

There are other social media isolationists who treat their following like a gardener maintains a Bonsai tree: letting it grow then pruning it back. Limiting its natural growth patterns with the goal of cultivating something elegant, controllable, exceptional, and beautiful — and planned. The operative word here is control.

There is a strong desire among the good fences variety of social media isolationists to want to maintain a semblance of control over brand perception, brand response, and brand buzz. This social media isolationist would surely turn off (or moderate) comments if at all possible.

This form of social media agoraphobic never lowers himself to engaging with riffraff and never suffers fools gladly. In many cases, he blocks competitors, rarely follows anyone back, and limits real engagement to the worthy and the notable. Only A-listers need apply.

This is the sort of social media expert who most likely has a pristine living room with white couches and chairs neatly enshrined in a clear vinyl cover. This is the sort of person who collects beautiful heritage silver and china, never to see the copious staining gravies and beet juice of a holiday dinner.

It doesn’t matter that social media is, by its very nature, chaotic, organic, anonymous, spontaneous, unpredictable, and crazy; it means nothing that the life of something beautiful can readily be strangled out of it when the collar’s too tight; and it means nothing that your detailed business plan and marketing strategy may be too macro, too myopic — that what you’ve made exclusively for one use may well be adopted “off prescription” for something completely different and more profitable — something this sort of isolationist would very well never be able to see.

And, if he could, he wouldn’t want it that way because that’s not the right way and it shouldn’t be done this way. Social media’s just not cricket.

In terms of a country, this walled-up land would be glad to exclude everyone; but, more realistically, it’s willing to limit visas and green cards to only the pedigreed: money, power, influence, esteem, connections, or education. Full funding for controlled borders and everyone had better carry their papers with them. I mean, why allow anyone in, since this country is obviously so awesome.

A majority possess passports; however, why leave? Too much chaos, uncertainty, and people who don’t look like the sort of people they’re used to.

Social media globalists unite

Neither the welcoming pineapple nor the good fences are effective in social media marketing because there are innately no borders in the Internet. Yes, maybe there is are language and cultural barriers, but these are as meaningless as the lines that separate nation states.

The Internet has rendered the world flat. Facebook is expected to reach a billion members in April.

And that’s to say nothing of the bloggers, the tweeters, the pinsters, the borders, the messengers, the redditers, the diggers, the flickrers, the tumblrs, the googlers, and, yes, even the spacers — they’re global, they curious, they’re ambitious, and they have as much right to your attention as anyone else.

Whether you’re an exclusionary or inclusive isolationist, you’re still unwilling to leave your social media homeland. You’re unwilling to go out there and meet your future real best friends. Instead, you either having to buy them or remain too afraid and afeard to make friends at all–or at least the wrong type of friends.

To be sure, you’ll never know where your next windfall will come from. You also don’t know who that fairy godmother is or what she looks like. It’s essential to get out there and spend some of your time and energy going exploring, finding new lands and new faces, and expanding your natural core, your natural base.

While there may well be zero barriers to you because the Internet has flattened the business world for you, there are also zero barriers between you and your best future customers! So, go git ‘em Tiger!

Via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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Public relations in the non-digital world can certainly be a messy and complicated affair. If your business is looking to offset bad press, respond to a story, advertise business speaker for conferences, or highlight a new promotion there are numerous strategies for properly conveying that message to the public. But regardless of the content, the medium used is usually the same – a press release or a statement.

Digital PR, on the other hand, offers multiple ways for communicating a message to the consumer. You can send out an email to all subscribers. You can post your message on Facebook or Google+. And, of course, you can announce it via a post on Twitter. Of all these options, which one is the best? Which medium provides the most effective and beneficial way of signaling a piece of information to your target customer? These are questions that digital PR managers often find themselves asking.

Most managers answer these questions with a catch-all approach. When a new company promotion comes along, for example, they advertise it via email, Facebook, Twitter, and any other available social media option. They Tweet it, and then reTweet it, and then Tweet it some more. There’s nothing wrong with this technique; after all, it’s free, takes little time, and insures that your message is conveyed as thoroughly as possible.

But some PR managers find it beneficial to be more nuanced in their approach. Since the more a company posts or tweets the lower the value of each individual update, these managers don’t want to dissuade consumers by overusing a given social media outlet. Instead, they seek to develop a system where different PR needs are met with different PR media.

There are many ways to go about devising such a system, and in this article we will highlight a simple and oft-effective one: choosing your PR medium based on consumer loyalty. What exactly does this mean? For any business, there is a spectrum of potential public relations announcements. On the one end are those announcements targeted towards the company’s most loyal customers. On the other end are those intended for mass dissemination among the general public. And, in the middle, are those announcements that seek to cover current, potential, and future customers all at once.

So what social media outlet should be used for each of these? Here’s a quick rundown:

-Messages for loyal customers: Email

-Messages for loyal, peripheral, and potential customers: Twitter

-Messages for the public: Facebook

This list is based on studies showing that Twitter is a more “engaged” communication medium than Facebook, and that email subscriptions continue to outpace both of these sites in this regard. So now, by differentiating based upon loyalty levels, you can more concertedly target your PR message for the right ears. Even for those who have found success with more mass-produced PR campaigns, it’s always good to have a more nuanced approach in mind.

These days, it often seems as though every person with a business or a product has chosen to market their idea via social media. The impetus behind this is completely understandable: social media is cheap, highly accessible, and provides access to a wide demographic of current and potential consumers. A business loses nothing and stands to gain greater exposure by going the social media route.

This is great, of course, because social media opens up countless PR opportunities for businesses both large and small. But the increasing universality of social media use does, however, have a downside. With a larger and larger percentage of companies turning to online PR solutions, the internet has become a far more “crowded” place. Internet users are bombarded with social media marketing every time they go online. It’s harder to stand out and get heard.

Let’s consider, for a moment, a real world equivalent. Say you’ve set up a fruit stall at a quiet local marketplace. Your stall is straightforward and basic, but the lack of competition means that any visitor will see and consider your stall. But then the market becomes more popular. More and more stalls spring up all around you, and suddenly you’re wedged between a booth that sells personalized pens and a flashy neighbor that also peddles fruit. You no longer have a unique or highly visible offering. What to do? In this case, you may try a few approaches to make your stall more differentiated and unique:

-Highlight distinctions between your fruit stall and a neighboring one

-Narrow the focus of your stall (ie begin selling only peaches)

-Try to move locations in the marketplace and access better traffic

-Build a new stall that stands out more

Now, let’s apply these practical, real-world responses to the world of online social media. After all, whether you have realized it or not, your virtual marketplace is an extremely crowded one. No longer is it purely sufficient to have a social media presence. Now you also need to have a presence that is as unique as possible:

-Highlight distinctions. Use blog and Twitter posts to self-congratulate when a positive distinction comes to light.

-Narrow the focus. You’re not going to change your product offerings (as in the fruit example above), but you can still target your social media activities towards a more narrow range of your consumer demographic.

-Access more traffic. Get more views on your social media pages by working to increase Facebook Likes and inbound links. Generally speaking, a well-focused ad and SEO strategy is very important here.

-Stand out more. Make your social media pages stand out by using services like Pagemodo and taking more risks with web design.

There are many ways to create a unique and differentiated approach in the social media world. Whatever you do, though, keep our marketplace example in mind and take concerted, practical steps whenever possible to stand out from the online cacophony. The social media landscape is an ever more crowded one. It’s also important, therefore, to acknowledge this and react accordingly.

I’m hungry. A burger sounded good. Any West Coast suggestions? While you ponder, check out this week’s social media infographic from Bundlepost Social Media. Yes, I know there’s many Wendy’s advertisement connotations but it’s also an interesting way to look at the substance of strategy and execution in online marketing. Okay enough brainstorming time, where am I getting this burger from?

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Our esteemed leader had his television début on Washington Business Report a few weeks ago on WJLA ABC7. He was invited on by Rebecca Cooper because she stumbled upon the Abraham Harrison website and liked our humor and our business.  So, here’s the video of the segment for you to check out:

Happy Friday!

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I always tell clients that it is no longer enough to be beautiful when it comes to marketing online. The Internet has become more like an Oscar after-party than it is like the airport Ramada. Online, you’re never the lone beauty in the hotel lounge. Online, you’re surrounded by equal or greater beauties. What’s more, the most successful online social media barflies are aggressive in addition to gorgeous. Too many companies that have invested vast resources in social have Pretty Boy/Girl Syndrome. A symptom of this disease is an expectation that others will go out of their way to pursue you.

No matter how much money you spend on a graphic designer, a social media expert, and a community manager, you may very well not find the kind of success you want and expect from your investment in social media and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Being beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming is no longer good enough when you’re not just competing with the student body for Prom King and Queen, you’re now competing with potentially every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth. The Internet has flattened the market, allowing anyone to eat your lunch, so just ringing the dinner bell after you launch your social media presence is not going to work as well as you expect.

Mind you, there are exceptions. If there are holes in the market–a vacuum–then filling that need will result in amazing success. Another exception is celebrity. If you already have an undeniable fan-base, it will translate perfectly into success online. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, we have neither.

In order to compete on a world stage, it is essential to aggressively recruit new members. Not just new members, but passionate, enthusiastic, members who will do what you expected Facebook, Google+, and Twitter to do for you in the first place: create firestorms of buzz and word-of-mouth influence. To become a channel of primary, secondary, and tertiary influence that result in your members sharing your content on their walls, resulting on an organic growth, ultimately snowballing into massive conversions and stellar online sales.

Do some research and you’ll find out, to your astonishment, that a majority of those viral videos with over a million views were not “upload it to YouTube and they will come.” Most of them skyrocketed as the direct result of some form of publicity campaign, be it grass roots or from an agency.

Be the catalyst of your natural social media success. Take your fate into your own hands and get off of that bar stool and walk over and start some conversations with all the folks you want to meet. This can include a long-tail blogger outreach campaign, it should include an A-list influencer outreach, be they on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever.

Membership in your community is a later stage of the hearts-and-minds campaign in which you need to engage. Just collecting Likes or Follows doesn’t often result in engagement. If you spend any time on your Facebook Page Insights, which you do, you’ll understand how important performance is to the success of your social media campaign. You need both quantity and quality of Likes. I won’t kid you: more is better; however, if you have hundreds of thousands of Likes on your Facebook Page but have negligible engagement in your posts in the form of likes and comments, then you will not earn the sort of gravity and popularity to elbow on your members’ Facebook Wall.

If you’re able to prospect passionate followers by going out there–to where they live on their own blogs, forums, Listservs, social networks, and communities–to find them, recruit them, convert them, and win them over, then you’ll start seeing the true power of world-of-mouth marketing.

Via SocialMedia.biz via Biznology.

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WaveMetrix recently released the sixth edition of their quarterly report, covering social media trends. Keyword this quarter? Creativity!

Brands profiled include HP, Axe, and Converse and the creative ways they’ve ellicited positive responses from fans using social media. Standout tactics include Hewlett-Packards use of Twitter hashtags, then printing the 2012 consumer wishes on balloons; Pairs of Converse boots in mystery locations with only Facebook posts as clues, and Axe’s outreach to fans in the creation process of an online graphic novel as promotion for a new spray.

With social media advances, it’s no longer a question of technology, but rather a question of creating conversation. WaveMetrix notes the importance of letting fans lead the discussion about your brand. Consumer 2 Consumer communication increased tenfold in Q3 through tactics of “Twitter Parties” and gaming apps.

WaveMetrix also reiterates the importance of targeting specific demographics. There’s an abundance of brands aiming their initiatives at very defined age and gender groups including Harvey Nichols, Dr Pepper and Diesel. Of course this approach has only been successful when agencies research and identify exactly what kinds of humor and intellects will hit home with their audiences. Jobs well done? Harvey Nichols “Walk of Shame” ad campaign didn’t alienate older audiences because it poked fun in a positive way at its younger demographic.  Jobs not so well done? Dr. Pepper‘s “No Women Allowed” caused tension in both male and female audiences.

The quarterly trend report includes a lot of analysis of real-time Tweets. Marketers have found that there is a very small window of opportunity to leverage a lot of engagement during events like the Consumer Electronics Show or the X Factor finale. In order for consumers to be interested and active, the goals of the conversation need to be consistent.

Takeaways for Q3: Consistency, Content, Creativity. Let’s see what the relationship between these three entails in Q1. Download the full report for more information.

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All signs suggest that the new frontier of marketing is data mining, which is a cross-discipline practice that involve collecting user data from social media archives and other sources. This data can be used by marketing firms in order to get more accurate, empirical information about trends so you can customize campaigns more effectively. The advantage of data mining is having an edge on competitors, the disadvantage is the additional dent in your budget that will come with allocating the proper resources towards this challenging new strategy.

Whether you’re compiling profiles on consumer reactions to vending machines or environmentally safe cleaning detergent, data mining can offer a unique approach to both marketing and advertising. Fortunately, you don’t necessarily have to eviscerate your budget in order to tap into its strength. There is such a thing as ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) data mining. A creative marketer should know how to use social media in order to construct compelling consumer profiles, which can be utilized in multiple campaigns across multiple demographics. Creating a Facebook fan page and gauging the metrics of ‘likes’, comments, and shares is just the beginning. So too is wielding Twitter as a meme-tester, or a way to glean which trends are flourishing and which trends are waning.

A truly creative marketer will embed him/herself into various social media forums, niche or no, in order to understand consumer trends. Etsy.com, for example, is a social media site for craft-makers who create DIY jewelery, clothes and other crafts. The fact that it’s DIY is incidental; Etsy is a treasure trove of taste and preference information. Similarly, Deviant Art, Pinterest, and any number of online communities can be ‘mined’, so to speak, for information.

Is this predatory? Well, perhaps. But since when did the online world have any sort of grassroots purity that was distinct from corporate interest. Marketers of the future will have to forgo whatever compunction they may have toward collecting personal (though not ‘private’) information through publicly available means. This not hacking into organic communities and plundering their creative reserves, it’s leveraging transparent data in order to create more accurate and focused marketing pitches.

Whatever marketing strategies you employ, the future will be a place of online information gathering. More people are reporting their likes, dislikes, and preferences online than ever before and the success of many marketing campaigns will depend on the ability to interpret this information in a meaningful way. DIY data mining offers a significant method towards this end.

Everyone talks about social media plans. But do you really know what it takes to create one? A social media plan, whether it is for personal use or for your business, isn’t just one set of rules, but many different guidelines. Here are step-by-step guidelines that can help you with your plan:

1. Start listening.

It’s important to know what people are already saying about your brand. By using specific key words you can set up a dashboard with feed readers, creating an easy to understand display of what people are saying about your brand. Try Netvibes for your dashboard, it’s the platform I prefer. Also, set up Google Alerts for your brand so you know whenever anyone says something new and relevant that will show up on Google. The key is to know what communities you want to be involved in, before you throw yourself into the vast world of social media.

2. Determine your goal.

Know what you want to accomplish. Do you want to increase sales, increase brand awareness or gain more traffic to your site? Know your goal before you start, that way you’ll know what you need to be tracking when it comes to the measurement portion of your plan.

3. Know who you are and who is best suited to show that in your company.

Outspoken Media has some great thoughts on knowing who you are. Generally, it’s having the ability to tell a story about yourself or about your brand that is going to make other people want to interact with you online. On that note: DO NOT LIE! Being transparent is extremely important, because if you’re not it only takes about 4 seconds to do a Google search and find out the truth.

Knowing who you are means knowing who your customers are, too. Figure out who your target audience is. Knowing the demographics and psychographics of your audience will help you with step 4 when you choose which channels to use.

After determining who you are, make sure the person you’ve chosen to implement the social media plan reflects the image you would like to maintain online. You also need to make sure you have the time and the necessary resources, because if you stop a few months into it, you’ve wasted not only time, but money that could have been better spent on another marketing plan.

4. Decide what channels to use.

Not every social networking site is going to fit your goal. It’s important to choose the sites that will. Although it would make sense to use facebook if your goal is customer communication or brand exposure, it wouldn’t make sense to use it if your goal is SEO. Take a look at this chart from Drew’s Marketing Minute  it will help you decide what sites work best for your goal.

5. Create rules.

You need rules for engaging with people online. What are you going to do when someone says you’re doing something great? And what are you going to do when someone tells you that your brand sucks? Make sure your rules leave room for flexibility but create a solid guideline for how to react in both good and bad situations.

6. Creating and Scheduling Content.

Now you’re ready to start creating content. Know how often you want to be pushing information out, making sure you don’t flood your fans and followers news feed. The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to schedule all of your posts. Try Hootesuite or Tweetdeck, they’re both easy to use and free. Watch your noise to signal ratio as well. People don’t really care about what you’re eating for lunch as much as they care about the big sale over the weekend. Remember, quality over quantity.

7. Engage, be genuine and be transparent.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Be transparent and be genuine. No one wants to talk to a robot and no one wants to talk to a liar. Engage with people online. Decide what you’re going to do to encourage participation. You don’t want to be talking at people online, you want to talk with them.

8. Measure, analyze and rework your plan.

Are you accomplishing your goal? If your goal was to increase sales, have you? If your goal was to get more traffic on your site, what does Google Analytics say? Do you have more traffic then you did before you started your social media plan? If something isn’t working take time to rework and rethink. If your plan is working but you’re running out of money to fund it, analyze your overall marketing plan and consider cutting your losses; maybe you can get rid of something else and focus on social media.

Don’t expect results right away. A social media plan can take anywhere from two to six months, and sometimes longer, before you really start to see results. And if it didn’t work for you, figure out if it’s worth it. If your brand was doing better with traditional forms of marketing, then it’s probably a good idea to stick to what works for your brand.

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“The only thing better than ambition is wild ambition,” says Eloqua after releasing the infographic A History of Disruptive Innovations in B2B Marketing on Friday. It’s a tall order to change the world, but that’s what this infographic takes a look it– the breakthrough innovations that have played a large role in the lives of B2B marketing gurus. Be sure to check out Eloqua’s blog post about the introduction of this groundbreaking infographic in conjunction with the release of Eloqua Engage for iPad.

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Last week, I wrote about how to succeed with B-list bloggers, but maybe some of you aren’t convinced.

So, this week, I want to draw an analogy to successful Google AdWords approaches so that you can see how to apply that same technique to blogger outreach. When it comes to reaching out to bloggers online, there’s a lot you can learn from Google AdWords. Long-tail blogger outreach is like long-tail Google AdWords advertising. Instead of putting all your money on the top 10 most expensive and popular keywords that everyone bids on, smart advertisers segment their markets and hyper-target their highest-performing keywords with their most compelling ads and content while always pruning away their worst performers.

The same should be done with blogger outreach. There will always be blogs that are out of your league and your target audience. Instead of hitting your head against the wall by trying to make it onto TechCrunch and Mashable, learn to segment your blogger list, target more precisely while expanding your pool of bloggers past the top most blogs that tend also to be the most exclusive and difficult to break into — out of your league — to blogs and bloggers who are just starting out, who blog more from passion than ad revenue, and who are naturally more receptive to your content and your message based on a natural affinity.

Affiliate marketers have learned that they can reliably make money by spending money on Google AdWords by finding keyword phrases with such low bids that they can make money from the relatively small commissions or bounty they get from converting the click throughs to sales. Millions in yearly profits cent by cent, dollar by dollar. A cascade of small sales made by people who were so well targeted to that they were almost powerless to resist.

The same thing can be done with blogger outreach. If you’re able to find yourself thousands of bloggers who have yet to be discovered by your all your competitors, you’ll be able to secure hundreds of earned media mentions. In concert, hundreds of earned media mentions both drown out a single post on TechCrunch and also do a better job or finding what you really want: sales.

All the most successful AdWords gurus, such as Adam Viener of imwave, realize that you can only make money in affiliate marketing with Google AdWords if you can make more money from your converted sales than you spend. You can’t do this unless you find the magic sweet spot where there aren’t many competing bidders who are bidding up the price of your keyword phrases so that you can both keep your spending low and also increase the likelihood that those who do stumble upon your ad will not only click through, costing you money, but also make a trackable major purchase, resulting in a commission–in commissions–that cover the costs of the ads and then some. This is not easy and the field fluctuates.

It takes expertise and vigilance, Adam tells me, and a mistake can be costly. One possibly apocryphal story reported that there was a very profitable keyword phrase that suddenly also became popular and the bids shot up without someone noticing, resulting in the equivalent of a Range Rover being lost in one day. Because of such high risks tantamount to the stock market, these folks are very good at discovering and milking the long tail, realizing that making a little bit here and there spread concurrently over hundreds and thousands of ads and keywords is more profitable, long term, than making a single big score.

If you’re loaded with cash and don’t really care about extracting value from your campaign, you can spend all your money on trying to get your ad copy at the top of every Google Search just to see it there but being constantly outbid by others, ultimately clearing out your budget or maxing your credit card; the same can be said with regards to blogger outreach: you can spend all your budgeted time and money pursuing the top bloggers while constantly being blocked by content from bigger, sexier, richer, more impressive national and global brands that have exclusive content and truckloads of valuable review products, better assets, and a promise of more and better traffic resulting in higher advertising revenue.

The most obvious thing you can learn is how easily it is to get outbid. Another thing you’ll learn is that AdWords can rapidly burn all your cash with nothing to show for it. Finally, you’ll learn that Google doesn’t wage a fair fight — they both play favorites as well as giving preference to quality of ad over quantity of bid.

What this means in Google AdWords ads is that you’re rewarded for the following: 1) Having lots of cash: a fool and his money are soon parted 2) Finding new markets: Being willing to hunt out holes in the market — keyword combinations that are not so obvious but are hyper-targeted to appeal to a new segment of visitors, bringing new opportunities for Google to make money 3) Creating an irresistible ad: no matter how much money you’re willing to spend, Google doesn’t make money unless visitors are compelled to click through 4) Becoming a long-term client: there are many cases where no amount or money and wit will claim you the top ad position on Google search, inline with organic search, because that spot almost always goes to the client who has made Google the most money, historically, over time.

These lessons map perfectly to blogger outreach.

The blogosphere rewards specialization and laser-targeting

The most desired, desirable, and “easy” keywords are like the top bloggers with the highest Alltop rankings and Klout scores are constantly being pursued. How realistic are you that you can even compete with all the others vying for their time and copy? If you’re Dell or Sony, you probably have the sort of brand recognition and respect to be able to get a blogger to schedule time to review your new gizmo pretty thoroughly. You’ll probably also have the sort of marketing budget that would allow you to offer a review product to everyone you engage.

You’ll probably have a graphic design department and a staff of copywriters who can develop an amusing and compelling pitch which could include press junkets and personal meet and greets. Finally, a company like Dell is able to commit the long-term time, staff, and expense account towards making sure their communications team developed and professional as well as personal relationship with as many online influencers and online journalists over time — to use Google AdWords parlance, they have learned how to appeal to Google on all levels.

How many levels are you able to compete on? If you’re unable to compete on any of these levels, you’ll go bankrupt trying. It’s not that A-List tech bloggers are corrupt, it’s just that they’re under pressure as well. They have only 24-hours/day and they’re heavily rewarded with traffic when they’re able to get exclusive content from a national player such as Dell. In the same way that Google AdWords rewards its clients for trying harder and digging deeper into the “long tail” in order to find new, under-served, markets, the blogosphere also rewards specialization and laser-targeting.

In a perfect world, one should only spend one’s AdWords budget on keywords phrases that display ads only to people who will convert into clients and customers. The better one knows one’s market and customer and the more time one spends finding out who and where they are and engaging them there, the more value you can extract from your sweat and cash.

Let’s say you’re preparing to launch your new book online and you want to use bloggers as an essential distribution channel, both great ideas. However, let’s think this through. Are you internationally famous crime fiction writer James Ellroy or are you an unknown first-time, self-published, crime fiction-writer? Do you have a huge war chest to fuel your promotional campaign or are you running on sweat equity? Do you have thousands of friends online who are already committed to buying your book because you have been developing your popularity online by sharing chapters and answering questions and giving free advice or have you been busily scribbling your work on yellow pads and consider your work protected by strict copyright and not something to dilute by giving it away?

Novice Google AdWords users waste a lot of money with limited results when they start out because they don’t understand how the competition works in contextual ad-buying: It’s an auction. A complicated auction.

In short, the way it works is that every keyword combination, such as “social media marketing,” competes with four things: the general popularity of the search, the quality of the keyword ad, the long-term success of the campaign, and how much money others are willing to bid for their ad based on their keyword choice, also dependent on their prior successes, ad spends, and long-term commitment. In shorter, while how much you’re willing to bid for a keyword phrase is important, it isn’t that simple.

With blogger outreach, you face the same odds as for paid search. If you are targeting only the top blogs, you’ll face immense competition and can easily be outgunned by bigger foes. If you target the long tail of bloggers, you can more easily land your targets and will build up success one blog at a time, rather than in one fell swoop.

Via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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An online business has the luxury of avoiding many expenses and issues that affect traditional companies. It probably doesn’t have to lease commercial space or use a StorageMart to store old files. It doesn’t need to worry as much about its geographic base, employee commuting costs, and storage inventory. The fact that so many startups these days focus their efforts online, consequently, should come as little surprise considering the substantial cost advantages.

But what an online business lacks in bricks and mortar, it all-too-often also lacks in the arena of credibility. For all its increased hassles and costs, a traditional small business secures a measure of credibility simply by operating a storefront in your local area. The physical space with an awning out front signals strongly to the passing world that a reputable and likely profitable enterprise operates inside. A small, online business has no similar ability to automatically establish credibility. The consumer, for our purposes, does not perceive a store and a website as the same thing.

Fortunately, however, even the smallest online business has the ability to establish credibility on a national level. There are many ways to go about doing this. Here’s a quick primer:

Grow Your Facebook Page

For a small business, the more its Facebook page has – of “Likes,” posts, friends, pictures, etc – the more credibility it can assume. Work on growing your page by getting friends, family members, and colleagues to “Like” it; by posting professionally-worded comments and promotions on at least a weekly basis; by uploading photographs of your company’s logos and designs; and by “Liking” the Facebook pages of vertical companies that enjoy a measure of credibility.

Maximize Professionalism on Your Site

When making your website, it is important to ensure that every word, image, and any other detail are placed with an eye towards the establishment of a crisp and professional design. This does not mean that your site needs to have dozens of pages and an assortment of different styles and media. Rather, you should just insure that proper attention is given to your specific wording and your layout.

SEO

Many businesses scoff at SEO practices on the notion that a spot or two in Google search results is nothing to lose sleep over. But studies have shown that sites listed higher in results are far more likely accessed – and, even if they are not, their appearance towards the top confers upon them a status and a credibility going forward. For this reason, SEO may be a beneficial option for your online firm.

Hopefully these tips can help your online business continue to build its credibility. In the internet world, unlike in the traditional one, businesses are assumed guilty until proven innocent as far as credibility is concerned. This means that credibility is attainable – but that it won’t come naturally. It’s your job as a manager to make it happen.

So many marketing professionals are already trying to redefine social media for the coming year. Will Facebook and Twitter maintain their clout or will smaller start-ups sneak up from behind? Is it time to pull a “Myspace” on Foursquare and LinkedIn? Something to ponder over the weekend. Thanks to Josef Ohlsson Collentine for sourcing this infographic.

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Digital advertising has quickly advanced from a fringe buy to an imperative part of companies’ media mix.

Let’s go back ten years. Online advertising was maybe a fraction of the US total media spend. If it only took twelve years to get to where we are technologically, I can’t even fathom what 2024 will bring.

Robert Channick of the Chicago Tribune brings up an interesting point. The medium has leapfrogged every advertising vehicle except for television. Is this the next step? Could the two be integrated to create the next marketing revolution?

Channick’s research shows that online advertising is looking at a 20 percent increase in 2012. Everything from search and banner ads to commercial videos will clock in at $31 billion, only 2 percent growth in the U.S. ad spend. Marketers are chasing their audiences, they’re seeing the internet as the vital ingredient that its been groomed to be. Facebook pages have become the infomercials of this generation. The introduction of technologies like smartphones, high-speed Internet and the almighty iEverything has only prompted more creativity. Search advertising is the largest segment of online spending at 46 percent, video advertising is the fastest-growing, up an impressive 52 percent from last year.

Now it’s a question of finding the happy medium. The lines have blurred so much between digital and traditional advertising, it’s interesting to see clients become so much more familiar with the bells and whistles of social media. Where you used to have to spend hours explaining Facebook and Twitter and hand hold through the process, now companies are itching to make their online presence known.

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Career Cast has come out with “The most stressful jobs of 2012” and to my surprise, Public Relations Executive followed not far behind Police Officer.

At #7 on the list, PR Executives even come before the Corporate Executive on the stress test. This doesn’t mean that every Public Relations Executive is going to have an extremely stressful job; it just means the majority of them do. Just the same, the police officer who sits behind a desk for eight hours a day isn’t going to be as stressed out as the one who patrols the streets.

Why is the Public Relations Executive so high on the list? PR Executives are in charge of maintaining the positive image of the corporation, company, person or government entity they represent. Sometimes this is a difficult task, especially when the client is involved in any type of scandal or controversy. Being the intermediate of communication, the PR Executive often acts as the voice of the client while interacting with the media and the public. In a very competitive field, meeting deadlines and making speeches is a large part of the job.

Ironically, the Event Planner comes in at #6 on the list, which is often categorized as a type of Public Relations.  Moral of the story… If you’re looking for a place to relax, the Public Relations industry is probably not for you. But if you’re looking for a career that is going to keep you on your toes and give your something different to do everyday, then you’re on the right track.

As 2011 has come and gone, there are many things that we can take away from the year as to better our experiences with social media. Whether you deal with contract management systems or sell cars, your online reputation is highly important and how you use social media could easily make or break you in a matter of minutes. So take a minute to learn from some of 2011′s top social media PR fails, and reflect on how you can avoid doing any of the following:

Too Soon, Kenneth Cole. Too Soon.

Twitter seems to be the hotbox of bad social media moves this year, and no one offended a nation quicker than Kenneth Cole. With a simple February Tweet stating “Millions in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available,” Kenneth Cole nearly ruined its brand. The company did apologize an hour and a half later, but damage was already done. A fake Twitter account was created, KennethColePR, which further exploited the company’s original poor move.

Lesson: Never exploit a controversial situation to promote your company or brand – even if you and a few co-workers think it is funny. Others most likely won’t and those who were directly affected will be down right outraged and most likely come after your brand.

Chrysler Offends the Motor City

Within months of releasing a marketing campaign declaring its cars where “imported from the U.S.,” Chrysler found itself in a bit of a mess when one a member of its employed social media agency Tweeted “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f*cking drive.” The city the company is located in nearly revolted against Chrysler, and demanded immediate apologies – which came a little too late. In fact, before apologizing, Chrysler claimed its Twitter account was hacked, only later to have that statement proven wrong.

Lesson: Never outright attack a group of people – especially if your company is located within the same city and thrives off of its workforce. Also, when you are caught red-handed don’t lie. Come clean, and the masses will be more likely to forgive you.

Wiener Poses for the Camera

U.S. Representative Anthony Wiener ruined his entire career by submitting a few inappropriate pics to a mistress via Twitter. Within hours the pictures went viral, and every new studio in the country was questioning what Rep. Wiener was doing. Worse yet, was that Wiener denied the entire event publicly only to later come clean about his actions. Now the public didn’t trust him or his judgment, and were quick to force him in to resignation.

Lesson: Always think twice before hitting the send button. Just because you think a post or picture that is being sent is private doesn’t mean that it will remain private. In fact, it could go public, or even worse, viral, and destroy your reputation in a matter of minutes. Again, like the Chrysler debacle, don’t lie when you are caught red-handed.

Social media is an integral part of any business’ success. However, with its use also comes a high level of responsibility. One false Facebook post or Twitter Tweet can ruin a reputation that took years to build. So before you submit, remember to look at what you are actually posting. Your company’s longevity depends on it.

I was featured in a segment on Washington Business Report with Rebecca Cooper this morning on WJLA ABC7. The interview was a segment that featured DC-area small businesses. In it, I discussed social media marketing, long-tail blogger outreach, and blogger PR.  Please check it out and let me know what you think:

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Search engine optimization and public relations go hand in hand –just like peanut butter and jelly. While it’s possible to have one without the other, to maximize their effectiveness, you need to employ both tactics.

Online PR is an excellent tool for creating content that creates natural, organic backlinks by utilizing keywords and links within press releases. It can also improve your reputation by creating positive content that pushes negative reviews down in the search engines.

However, PR isn’t just for businesses.  Individuals, such as celebrities and politicians, take advantage of public relations all the time.  Nevertheless, there are many traps you can fall into if you don’t know what you’re doing, and the results of these pitfalls can be disastrous.

The current presidential race has presented several examples of public relations faux pas that could have been avoided.   Here are just a few:

Herman Cain Denies Sexual Allegations

Background:  Over the past few months, several women have come forward alleging that Herman Cain sexually harassed them.   Another woman came forward claiming that she engaged in a long-term affair with the presidential hopeful.  Cain denied all of these allegations, claiming he had never even met some of the women.

The Pitfall:  Using the “deny, deny, deny” technique (also known as the “Liar Liar Pants on Fire” technique).

What he should have done: The absolute worst thing you can do during a crisis situation is tell a lie—especially when you are in the public eye.  Someone, somewhere, will eventually catch you, and then your credibility will plummet even further.  Cain should have taken control of the story by confirming what events had taken place, and making a public apology if necessary.  You would think that Cain would have learned from the Bill Clinton scandal and the Anthony Weiner controversy and would have realized that lies come back to haunt you. But I suppose everybody thinks they are the exception to the rule.  Hint:  You’re not.  Better to play it safe than sorry.

Michele Bachmann Loses New Hampshire Campaign Staff

 Background: Back in October, Michele Bachmann’s entire New Hampshire campaign staff resigned, citing frustration with the campaign.  When Bachmann was interviewed about the incident, she responded that she was not aware that anybody had resigned.  In the weeks following the incident, the New Hampshire campaign staff started giving additional details about their sudden resignation.  They stated that they were frustrated because. Bachmann’s national staff had essentially ignored the New Hampshire team, and had not paid them their wages in more than a month.

The Pitfall:  Ignorance.

What She Should Have Done: Ignorance was shown both in Bachmann’s lack of knowledge about her New Hampshire team quitting, and in neglecting them to the point that they resigned.  It’s important to always know what is going on in your organization—from knowing that your employees are frustrated, to knowing that they no longer work for you.

Disgruntled employees can be the biggest threat to any organization because they know the dirt, and can easily take to the media to spill it.  I know there’s a saying out there that “any publicity is good publicity,” but this is not the case.  Practicing internal PR is a must in order to manage your organization effectively.

Rick Perry’s Debate Blunders

Background: Rick Perry has been infamous this campaign season for his terrible debating skills.  At one point in October, the Texas governor made a comment that he didn’t want to participate in the debates anymore.  He later changed his mind after he was criticized (and I’m sure after his campaign staff told him the move would be political suicide), but his debating skills have not improved.   Since his statement, Perry has been known as the “forgetful” politician—forgetting which government agencies he would eliminate if he were elected president, forgetting the nation’s legal voting age, forgetting how many Supreme Court justices there are and forgetting the name of a Supreme Court justice he was criticizing.

On a search engine optimization related note, Perry currently holds the title for the most hated video on YouTube, which is reportedly the world’s second-largest search engine.    The video currently has more than 660,000 dislikes, stealing the title from Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video.

The Pitfall:  Being unprepared.

What He Should Have Done:  Practice speaking in front of a mirror, and bring note cards to debates and interviews.  Just do anything but wing it.  It is essential to be prepared in PR; not doing so can hurt your reputation as an expert and bring about unwanted publicity.

Jon Huntsman “Sells Out” on Global Warming

Background:  In August, Jon Huntsman tweeted, “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.” However, just a few weeks ago at the Heritage Foundation, Huntsman seemed to back off that statement by implying that science might not have all the answers.

The Pitfall:  Not sticking to your guns.

What He Should Have Done:  Jon Huntsman should have either a) never tweeted his position on global warming or b) made his statement at the Heritage Foundation to be in line with the tweet.  A social media marketing strategy could have done wonders in this situation.  You can’t have it both ways to please everyone.  If you try, you just end up disappointing everybody.

Newt Gingrich Thinks Poor Kids Should Clean Dirty Toilets

Background:  On more than one occasion, Newt Gingrich has stated that he would do away with child labor laws in order to allow “poor kids” to work as janitors and earn money for their families.  He also stated that he believes schools should get rid of their janitorial staff and hire the students to clean the schools.  Gingrich claims that this would teach children a good work ethic and give students a sense of pride in their schools.  Gingrich has since backed off from his comments.

The Pitfall:  Offending your publics.

What He Should Have Done:  Gingrich should have done some quick research on his publics to find out if they agreed with eliminating child labor laws.  By making such a bold, unpopular statement, Gingrich offended many voters, which could jeopardize his presidential bid.

Rick Santorum Feels the Wrath of the Bloggers

Background: Almost 10 years ago, Rick Santorum made some disparaging remarks about the gay community.  One blogger, Dan Savage, was angered by the remarks and held a contest on his blog to redefine the meaning of the word “Santorum.”  The new definition was meant to be shocking and offensive.   Savage then encouraged his followers to link to the definition.  The campaign was so successful, that it outranks the senators own website and Wikipedia page.  Savage recently threatened to redefine the word “Rick” if the senator does not play nice.  Last year, Santorum approached Google asking them to remove the website from its rankings, but Google decided to take a transparent approach.

The Pitfall:  Offending the wrong people

What He Should Have Done:  So, as mentioned before, it’s impossible to please everybody.  However, Santorum has done little to fix his Google problem.  Santorum should have employed a few search engine optimization tactics to outrank the website and nip the problem in the butt.

Mitt Romney Flip-Flops

Background:  Over the past few years, Mitt Romney has been famous for taking a stance on an issue one day, and then changing that stance, causing him to be labeled a “flip-flopper.”  There is even an entire website dedicated to keeping track of all the flip-flops that Mitt Romney has made.

The Pitfall: Trying to please everybody.

What He Should Have Done: The fact of the matter is, you’re not going to please everybody, and you shouldn’t try. Mitt Romney needs to concentrate on pleasing his publics.  Utilizing online public relations would also be a good idea to offset the flip-flop website.

Obama’s Online Store Took All My Money

 Background:  Barack Obama hasn’t really ramped up his campaign yet, but I wanted to keep this blog post as unbiased as possible.  So this anecdote is a personal one.  Recently, I was trying to purchase two coffee mugs for some Obama fans on my Christmas list.  I put my credit card info in, and a dialogue box popped up saying “I’m sorry, your payment did not go through, please try again.”  I then proceeded to “try again” 42 times before eventually giving up.  A few days later I received a bank statement in the mail saying I had been charged overdraft fees.  After a tearful call to the bank, I was told that while I was never officially charged for my purchase, I had $40.00 withheld 42 times on my bank account.  Long story short, those coffee mugs cost me a lot more than $40.

The Pitfall:  Detail disorientation.

What He Should Have Done: OK, so I doubt the president himself is the code monkey for his own website, as I’m sure he has more pressing issues to worry about (like war and the economy and stuff).  However, his campaign team needs to become more detail oriented – especially if they are promoting said coffee mug over the social media channels every day.   Mistakes can hurt a company’s reputation and cost a lot of money, and a political campaign is no different.

Candidates RSVP “No” to Trump Debate

Background: Donald Trump announced that he would be hosting a Republican debate on Dec. 27.  Trump also announced that he would officially endorse one of the candidates for president following the debate.

All but two (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum) of the Republican candidates have said that they would not attend the debate because they were afraid that Trump would find a way to turn the event into an episode of “The Apprentice.” Critics say that this is not becoming of the presidency.    Trump was eventually forced to cancel the debate.

The Pitfall:  None.

What They Should Have Done.   This is one move political candidates have done right.  It shows the American people that they take the campaign very seriously and do not wish to see the campaign turn into a reality TV show for sheer entertainment.

Whether you’re a business looking to improve your image, or an individual looking for advice on how to manage your reputation, public relations can do wonders.  If you’re seeking more common public relations pitfalls and how to avoid them, check out this PRMarketing.com e-book.

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Things are heating up following this week’s Iowa caucuses and many marketing professionals wonder how social media will play into the upcoming presidential election. Thanks Sandbox Industries and lab42 for supplying this insightful look at what social networking sites are doing for the race. Happy Friday!

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Internet domain registrar giant GoDaddy gave support to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week. It quickly withdrew support but not before a backlash of customer transfers caused front page news.

A Reddit user started a thread Thursday, Dec 22 calling for GoDaddy loyalists to drop their domain names after GoDaddy showed its SOPA support. The SOPA act, also known as H.R. 3261 proposes allowing the government to block any site which has been accused of copyright infringement. It’s raised a ruckus and not in a totally positive way. Many critics are worried that the vague wording within the bill will lead the government to knock off sites too easily.

Users hypothesized December 29 as the day of reckoning for GoDaddy. GoDaddy made bold steps, even making public announcements that it heavily opposes SOPA:

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better… It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

However, naysayers had another think coming. Results show that GoDaddy actually had a positive December 29, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day. There were nearly double the number of transfers in as out (27,843 in to 14,492 out) as well as more new registrations than deleted domains (43,304 new registrations compared to 35,907 deletions) (Daily Changes).

A week later, the boycott has more or less fizzled and as PR initiatives continue to show, sometimes any press is good press.

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It’s always a tough question: would you rather be the smallest fish in a big pond or the biggest fish in a small pond?

Would you prefer to be the ugliest pretty person or the prettiest ugly person? Would you prefer to have the lowest IQ at MIT or the highest IQ at State?

This is all according to your preference, but when it comes to a blogger outreach campaign, the decision is never so zero-sum, not nearly so either/or. You can always do both, right? You can always secure hundreds of long-tail earned media mentions while you’re desperately working on securing coverage on Mashable and TechCrunch. You can lock in hundreds of posts short term while you’re wining and dining Pete Cashmore in Manhattan to make sure you become BFFs, so that you’ll have that inside track on getting column inches for your future newsworthy announcements.

However, in the meanwhile, getting those hundreds of posts on B-list-through-Z-list blogs ensures that you start building your reputation as a player. Consider this your bush league experience. Like doing your time in the small clubs. Paying your dues. In fact, most journalists and A-list bloggers glean their story ideas from the blogs they reach, from their influencers, blogs and bloggers who may well be less popular but are still highly influential.

Do you have the sort of news, offerings, and quality of content that can compete with the big players? Do you have the kind of prior relationships with the top bloggers and journalists or do they not know you from Adam?

This is not only about blogger ego and their desire to be treated like demigods by multinational agencies and their billion dollar consumer electronics clients–though that doesn’t hurt–it also has to do with the prestige of the blog’s content as well as the aspiration of what the blog and the blogger wants to become.

Where do you fit on that? You need to be realistic. You need to judge fairly where you are in the competition. Do you have the time, the resources, the reputation, the newsworthiness, the novelty, or the prior relationship to make it into TechCrunch? If not, that’s OK. There is no reason to fight over the top 25 blogs of your industry or the top 100 blogs in general, because there may be over one billion blogs worldwide, which equates to one out of every six people in the world.

Realistically, unless you’re the quarterback of your high school football team, you’re being unrealistic if you limit your options for prom to just the captain of the cheerleaders. There are so many appealing dates for prom everywhere in school. If you’re only applying to Harvard and Yale, you had better also be not only at the top of your class but also a legacy, score a perfect score on your SAT, letter on a sport, and have a well-developed set of extracurricular activities.

Work toward Prom King and an incoming freshman spot at Harvard College, but plan also on going to prom with someone and to college at all. Aim high but have a plan B and C. Remember, also, that being the best lover with the best prom date you get can always results in better dates in the future and being the best student in the college you are accepted to can always result in getting to Harvard as a transfer or in graduate school later.

Focus on being a big fish in a small pond. As you are working to succeed at that, you’ll naturally graduate to the A-list if you have the goods. But if you shoot for the A-list pond exclusively, and you don’t make the cut, you won’t have done anything to win with the B-list.

Start small and grow to make blogger outreach work for you.

Via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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