Entries tagged with “Public Relations”.
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Thu 17 Jun 2010
Posted by Mike Bawden under Public Relations
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(from Bill Stoller/The Publicity Insider)
June 15, 2010 - The online press release has taken on much more significance than the old school 20th Century version. In the old days (say, 5 -10 years ago), PR agencies and in-house staff cranked out paper press releases and dutifully distributed them via regular mail to slightly overwhelmed, slightly interested reporters.
Man, have things changed – for the better!
Today, PR-educated publicity seekers (you), can not only get your fair share of the publicity-pie, you can now take your info directly to the public.
Reality: If you don’t know what you’re doing in writing and distributing your shiny new press release, you can waste a ton of time and effort.
Why reinvent the wheel?
Solution: Here’s a new, state-of-the-art, no-cost whitepaper:
“Writing Great Online News Releases: How to Release Your News Across the Web to Get the Best Results”.
The whitepaper includes the following essential topics:
- Before you write your release – a list of do’s and don’ts;
- Best practices for every element of your release: the headline, lead paragraph, body, boilerplate, contact info;
- How to optimize your online news release for web searches;
- A list of popular press release topics;
- A final checklist for formatting your release
Download it here.
Mon 14 Jun 2010
Posted by Mike Bawden under Events, Seminars/Webinars
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(from Bulldog Reporter)
When: Thursday, June 17
Where: Teleconference
Cost: $99 per registrant
No one needs to tell you that the economy is picking up speed again—with consumers opening up their wallets as they haven’t done in several years. The upshot is that this coming holiday season promises to be a boon … if you can get your product or service in front of product review and gift guide editors now. After all, the early bird gets the media hit when it comes to gift guides—and many outlets are doing their seasonal planning right now. It’s the same for summer wedding gift guides, Valentine’s Day gift guides, Mother’s and Father’s Day gift guides,graduation gift guides and so on.
So what are the new consumer triggers that drive Americans to buy now? What are the new editorial hot buttons that gatekeepers at the nation’s top gift guides require when it comes to products and goods they’ll cover? And how can you get your product or service out in front of them before the competition does? To learn the answers and win a spot for your gift when and where it counts most, join Bulldog Reporter’s PR University for a behind the scenes look at thesecrets of scoring valuable coverage in the nation’s top gift guides—from the very editorial gatekeepers who decide what runs and what doesn’t. They’ll outline what they’re looking for now, this year’s hottest items, the latest consumer buying behaviors and trends—and how public relations can position items for optimal product placement in front of millions of shoppers this promising turnaround year.
What You Will Learn
- The New Consumer Mindset: What cautious consumers and the value-seeking public want now in holiday gifts and products—and from the products coverage they trust
- 2010 & 2011 Editorial Hot Buttons: The gadgets, goods, gear andtop shopping trends editors will be covering this holiday season as the economy gathers steam—and how to emphasize these pegs in your media outreach
- How top holiday gift guides differ in scope and mission—and how to use these insights to get products reviewed in today’s changing media environment
- Early-Bird Techniques: Best ways to pitch embargoed products, negotiate exclusive first looks and manage beta runs months in advance
- Pitching product blogs and websites: How online gift guides differ from their print counterparts—and how to provide multimedia toboost your digital footprint
- Cost-Cutting Tips: Easy ways to get product in the right editor’s hands without wasting time and money on blanket campaigns
- Packaging, pitches and press kits that grabs editors’ attentionevery time
- New Product Protocols: What journalists can (and can’t) receive and how they prefer to receive mailed items and seasonal gifts
- How JPEGs, graphics and four-color artwork can help you edge out the competition for valuable editorial real estate
- Why freelancers could be your back door to coverage … and how to use them as allies when pitching seasonal products to top editors
- How smaller concerns can earn more holiday coverage than corporate giants with deeper pockets (and resources)
- Social Media Update: How these media outlets use social media to source and seek product to cover—plus how you can use tools like Twitter to build relationships with them and even pitch items for them cover
- Advanced Media Relations: How the best PR pros have gained the ear—and trust—of these editorial gatekeepers—and how you can do the same
This seminar is offered as part of Bulldog Reporter’s PR University. Register Now to make sure you have a spot!
Thu 3 Jun 2010
Posted by Mike Bawden under PR News Headlines
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Fri 23 Apr 2010
Posted by Mike Bawden under B2B Marketing
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For some, the mix of social media with B2B marketing is a tough one to swallow. While several business marketers were quick to jump onto web sites, the communications tended to be one-way (not interactive), with many web sites becoming little more than electronic brochures that were cheaper to produce and easier to distribute than their paper predecessors.
But with the ‘web came the promise of interactivity. And that promise is now starting to mature in the form of social media (or Web 2.0). But what’s a business to do if it sells, primarily, to other businesses?
Thanks to Brandon Bryce, President & CEO of Large Mouth Communications and an article that recently appeared on the Large Mouth web site entitled “Who’s afraid of the Web 2.0?”
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Tue 13 Apr 2010
Nobody ever likes to think about what they’ll do when things go wrong. As corporate marketers, a big piece of your job is to make sure things go right. So, what are you doing to make sure a crisis doesn’t permanently derail your company?
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Mon 1 Feb 2010
They say the fasted way to kill a bad product is with good advertising.
I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Mancrunch stunt finally raised enough hackles in the gay community to motivate a few curious bloggers to do the legwork necessary to find out what was really going on. Kudo’s to Lyndon Evans for writing a blog post that provides a fairly concise summary of the whole affair. A second post debunking the Mancrunch controversy, written by Alex Blaze, provides even more sordid details on the site, its ownership and makes a direct connection between the site and other online dating sites of questionable moral values (i.e. these other sites promote affairs and secret/discreet relationships focusing primarily on sex).
(NOTE: Both links go to sites with gay content and may be considered NSFW in some situations.)
And here’s one other thing of note – it looks like this stunt (and the ensuing controversy) isn’t a first-time experience for Mancrunch’s ownership (represented by Bridge & Tunnel PR’s Dominic Friesen and Elissa Buchter). As pointed out in a piece appearing in Tuesday’s LA Times (by Dan Neil), another site represented by Friesen and Buchter – AshleyMadison.com – ran the same gauntlet last year, generating tons of press and web links in the process.
The tv guys have caught on, as Mr. Neil reports in his column:
Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning, policy and government affairs at CBS, told Reuters: “A whole cottage industry has grown up out of trying to make use of network turndowns. . . . They’ve found a loophole in an otherwise well-intentioned process.”
So what’s the point of this whole exercise?
It’s all about search engine placement and creating as many in-bound links as possible for the lowest possible cost. Because search engine placement means traffic and for web sites that charge desperate people a monthly membership fee – traffic means big bucks. If you were searching the Internet for this kind of site, you would find over 2,000 stories about Mancrunch listed before the first link to a competing site.
Mission accomplished.
It’s too bad they had to hijack the Super Bowl to do it. But for those of us not in the targeted demographic, we’ll hardly notice. None of these marketing shenanigans are going to impact the telecast of the game – unless the Mancrunch people have a “Heidi moment” planned for the fourth quarter.
UPDATE: 02/03 @ 10:00 pm – Popped back into the office this evening and found a link to an article covering this issue that included an interview with me. Big thanks to Michael Tripplet at Mediaite.com for taking the time out of his day to call me and talk about this entire situation in more detail.
Mon 19 Oct 2009
Posted by Mike Bawden under Public Relations
1 Comment
So much time is spent talking about audience engagement; and as marketers we often use the word “audience” to mean “customer.” So much time and effort is spent trying to identify appropriate prospects and then doing what it takes to capture their attention, we often forget an audience who, if engaged, can generate a significant increase in the bottom line performance of almost any company. Who are these people?
Your employees.
So often overlooked and very often ignored – most employees in most companies often feel disassociated from their employer’s balance sheet. Sales and production goals are (very often) dictated and abstract, received without any kind of context to the work-a-day world in which most employees operate.
That’s why internal communications programs can do more than just improve morale. Properly designed and implemented, they can work wonders when it comes to improving operational performance.
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Tue 15 Sep 2009
(Editor’s Note: This is one of my favorite blog posts – not just for the comments it generated but for the way it addressed a re-occuring theme: that, somehow, PR is dead and Social Media killed it. C’mon people. Get over it.)
I’m going to try and infuse something that’s been missing from this whole “Social Media is killing PR” meme that seems to be sweeping through the Blogosphere/Twitterverse lately.
A little common sense.
This maelstrom has been whipped up, primarily, by PR’s and journalists/bloggers working in the technology space. And the echo is practically deafening.
While there have been plenty of valid points raised about the nature of public relations, the profession’s current and future place in the enterprise, the role of blogging and other Web 2.0 apps in brand building, sales and CRM – I’ve come to one major conclusion:
Social media “experts” need to get over themselves and PR people need to stop looking over their shoulder to see who’s trying to do them in.
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Mon 31 Aug 2009
Posted by Mike Bawden under Marketing
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It’s the perpetual marketing question: “How do we know what we’re doing makes a difference?” And it’s a question that’s only answered by the most ambigious phrase known to man …
“It depends.”
The inability to quantitatively answer the question and all it’s related derivations (e.g. “How do we know it will work? What is going to work best? etc.) is the underlying cause for the continuous contraction and expansion of in-house marketing departments. It’s also the driving force behind job changes for marketing people (average tenure is less than two years), the tendency for clients to look for new agencies every three years and the high dissatisfaction level with “Chief Marketing Officers” at major brands.
We live and work in an industry that is, by its very nature, creative and changing with the times. As a result, it’s extremely hard to quantify.
And things that are hard to quantify are hard to measure.
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Wed 19 Aug 2009
It started off inocently enough. But Beth Brody from BrodyPR made a simple mistake. She e-mailed the same pitch to a big list of contacts and included that contact list in the CC field which ignited a series of “Reply All” responses that, in tun, went to the same distribution list.
Over and over again.
It’s sort of like the media relations equivalent of being at a rock concert and the audience gets more caught up in keeping that damn beachball bouncing around in the crowd than they do in what’s going on onstage. Then, the next thing you know, the grumpy musical purists start yelling for people to sit down and the kids start complaining that nobody ever lets them have any fun anymore …
Lucky for me (I guess) that I was at a client meeting while all this was going on and I just walked in on the carnage afterward. Today there’s been a virtual pile-up on the social news media highway – and I’m viewing it as a first responder.
Maybe “pile up” isn’t nearly as accurate as “pile on” when you see how other PR professionals took advantage of Beth Brody’s lapse in judgement to cast dispersions, fluff up their own reputation and build blog traffic.
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Tue 18 Aug 2009
Posted by Mike Bawden under Marketing
[3] Comments
James Hobday, CEO of pr2go, said that after talking to more than 500 UK-based business people, more than three out of four of them didn’t understand what PR is.
In an article that appeared on SocialMedia Today, Hobday said: “We’re not talking your average man in the street here, we’re talking marketing managers and directors of large businesses with multiple regional sites needing localised PR.”
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Fri 24 Apr 2009
Posted by Mike Bawden under Brand Crafting, Marketing
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The Apple iPhone has been a tremendous marketing success. This week (today, in fact), Apple’s iTunes Apps Store just distributed its one billionth application for the iPhone. This last quarter, Apple shipped over three and a half million iPhones. Profits are up and things are looking good.
Well, except for that one misguided iPhone app debuting this week. The “Baby Shaker” app.
“This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store,” said Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokesperson. ”When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention.”
Amid all great news, someone always seems to have to spoil the party, don’t they.
Fortunately, Apple not only did the right thing by removing the app, they promptly apologized and, more importantly, they acknowledged the role Apple customers had in making the recall possible. Whatever the lingering lifespan this app is likely to have in the ether that is the Internet, it’s unlikely Apple will be tainted as a result.
The Apple brand has its loyal advocates and acolytes. They received the recognition they were do and, no doubt, see themselves as part of the Apple tribe responsible for keeping the brand pure as a result of this action and public recognition.
All in all, it’s a great example of positive brand reinforcement with your key audiences. Kudo’s to Apple.
And for those of you really interested in learning more about the state of Apple’s iPhone apps, I strongly suggest your read Nicholas Kolakowski’s story in eWeek. Very interesting and informative.
