By Danny Sullivan
Proactivity is something that all clients desire of their PR firms – an ability to move the program forward without having to check in and report at every stage. It’s certainly not an unreasonable expectation, and one that any agency worth its salt should be capable of meeting.
But proceed with caution. Agency proactivity, while a stated desire of the client, can be a double-edged sword for an agency. There are a couple of pitfalls to watch out for.
First, don’t be so proactive that you overstep the mark and make strategic changes or decisions without some form of approval from the client. It’s all very well to change a strategy for the right reasons, but these reasons usually need to be raised before the change occurs. It is important to establish at the outset of the program what kinds of decisions need to be made in conjunction with the client.
Second, proactivity can lead to periods of radio silence. If the program is one where the results will not be immediately apparent, then the client will be wondering what their agency is doing. An invisible agency won’t be around for long.
The key to avoiding such pitfalls is in effective communication with the client. There is no need to appraise them of every step that you take, but regular updates on progress that don’t require any input from them will go a long way to ensuring that you continue to be both proactive and visible.
By Francis Moran
One of the first of what I like to call “Francis’s favourite fictions,” or “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives,” was a line from the CEO of one of the very first tech companies I pitched when I originally ventured out on my own in the early 1990s. “I want to be on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen tomorrow morning,” he said.
I was a lot younger, thinner and more intemperate in those days, so I replied, “Okay. Go home and shoot your wife tonight.”
Right answer, just not terribly delicately put. However, he got the point and I got the gig.
What I was trying to say, of course, is that media relations usually doesn’t work that way and, for some companies, it never works that way. In fact, at inmedia, our objective is never Page 1 tomorrow. Rather, we try from the very outset to build the kind of foundation for an ongoing media relations effort that will generate meaningful coverage over the long haul. In the technology B2B space, where virtually all our clients are new, small and/or completely unknown, this means we first must thoroughly educate target media about the client, its story and how it will be of interest to the journalists and their audiences now and into the future. If this process delivers immediate coverage, so much the better, but that’s not the primary intent.
This first company was also the first time I tried out what has come to be known around here as a ramp up and roll out, or the media and analyst launch of a company that builds the foundation I’m talking about. The company had recorded many newsworthy successes in its history and had a market-leading presence in its space. However, as we also like to say around here, they call it the “news” business, not the “olds” business. So most of those achievements were now just so much fishwrap as far as the media were concerned.
What I did was develop a comprehensive set of materials that told the company’s complete story, including a timeline of its growth and successes and a couple of case studies that showcased its leadership position. I then sent that package out to the media I had identified, through research, as being at the intersection of Writes-about-this-subject and Influences-my-client’s-market. I followed up with each of them, had great conversations about how my client might feauture in future coverage, and even generated some really good immediate hits. Over the long run, I generated a constant stream of coverage about the client, including, eventually, a Page 1 piece in the Ottawa Citizen.
If a client today tells me the same thing — “I wanna be on Page 1 tomorrow.” — I tell him or her much the same thing. I just use a slightly more subtle approach now.
By Linda Forrest
Is it surrealist to blog about blogging? It’s not my intention, but should this post turn into an Escher-esque experience, I’ll ask you to please bear with me.
There has been considerable media coverage in recent days about corporate blogging and blogging as it pertains to B2B marketing. Forrester, a well respected technology analyst firm, recently released a study analyzing the role of blogs in b2b marketing and survey results that indicate, “The number of business-to-business (B2B) firms that started blogging in 2007 plummeted compared with 2006 as corporate bloggers ran into roadblocks stemming from a misalignment between invested effort and expected returns. Rather than cross blogging off of the marketing communication list, B2B marketers would do better to embrace one of the four strategies prominently used by bloggers to attract readers, build conversations, and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers.
Four Blog Strategies Produce Community Marketing Value
- Strategy One: Be A Conversation Starter, Not A Spoiler
- Strategy Two: Make Blog Content Entertaining, Easy To Digest And To Use
- Strategy Three: Connect The Dots Between Events And Community Involvement
- Strategy Four: Invite Thought Leaders, But Coach Them On Community Etiquette”
According to The Leading Edge, a PR technology trends blog, “infrequent and boring content” is what ails the high tech companies that responded to the survey. This blog has some interesting statistics from the study and I would encourage you to visit the link above to find out more.
The bottom line is that blogging, like any other marketing activity, should adhere to best practices. Those companies that are not deriving value from this particular communication channel are probably not meeting all of the challenges inherent with utilizing a new method of communication to reach customers, influencers and prospects. Since blogging was the “hot, new thing,” you would be hard pressed to find a company that hasn’t at least considered hopping on the bandwagon and starting its own blog. Those that are likely to be successful, though, are the ones that carefully considered the reasoning behind the blog, the objectives that the companies were hoping to accomplish by starting their blogs, and how this channel could support their full range of marketing activities.
Coming up with fresh, intelligent, conversation-starting blog posts with regularity can be challenging, to be sure, but whether the effort and potential return on investment are worthwhile is a question that each company must answer for itself before diving headlong into blogging.
By Danny Sullivan
I recently had a reporter come back to me to get a client’s comment for an article he was writing – a direct result of a previous conversation we had had about another story. It’s great when that happens, but all too uncommon.
Dealing with the media can be a frustrating experience. Perhaps you’ve developed a good story pitch and have managed to get a key reporter on the phone, but you get a response along the lines of, “Sounds interesting, but I’ve got too much on my plate just now. Keep in touch though.”
Sounds like a brush off, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. If you have done your research well, then you know that this reporter should be interested in your story and his request to stay in touch is genuine. The key point is not to give up on things after such a call.
It can be a challenge to maintain the motivation to keep checking back with reporters, but doing so is often the difference between success and failure. The media are a busy bunch, but if they’ve indicated interest, you just need to try and catch them at the right time. Don’t give up on a lead until you are sure the opportunity is gone.
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Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
June 27, 2008 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest As we here at inmedia are coordinating our upcoming vacation schedules and as next week has two major holidays in North America that kick off in earnest the sorts of summer activities that Nat King Cole envisioned in the song whose title is above, we begin to hear the common summer rumblings […]
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Dealing with the media ain’t rocket science
June 26, 2008 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette OCRI’s last Technology Executive Breakfast of the season this morning featured three media figures well-known in the local business community, commenting on how to successfully engage the media. With the catchy title of “Evaluating your media technique: Are you a hooker or a pusher?”, CFRA‘s Rob Snow, CTV-Ottawa’s Paul Brent and the […]
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Determining the right level of investment in PR
June 26, 2008 by Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan For companies looking to establish a PR program, there is a burning question that rises above all others: how much should I invest in PR to achieve the best return? Every company is different, and simply throwing more money at a program is not necessarily going to improve results. Is it reasonable to expect a […]
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If you’ve got it, use it
June 25, 2008 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette This may be a little off topic for a public relations blog, but it’s one of those issues that can have far-reaching consequences for any organization, impacting productivity, staff morale and the retention of top talent. I’m talking about vacation time. We want it, we count the days till we can take […]
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The best earbud ever and outstanding customer service, too
June 24, 2008 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran I have written a few posts (Take One and Take Two) about the generally lousy job too many companies do at taking care of their customers once they’ve made the sale. It’s a phenomenon that frustrates the customer in me and utterly bewilders the marketer in me. The customer frustration bit is […]
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The customer is your friend
June 23, 2008 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette Despite common misperception, Ottawa is home to entrepreneurs seasoned in the school of hard knocks who understand that the road to success is more often paved with customer interaction than it is by venture capital dollars or a preoccupation with product development behind closed doors. Jay Litkey is one such entrepreneur. He […]
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Fighting the ground war
June 23, 2008 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette Nothing develops deeper familiarity with the lay of the land than on-the-ground reconnaissance, a truth that was impressed upon me over the weekend. Last week I spent several days in Atlanta with one of our clients, Touch Bionics, maker of the world’s first fully articulating prosthetic hand, the i-LIMB. We were attending […]
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A healthy dose of sarcasm, but a point nonetheless
June 20, 2008 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest One of this morning’s newsletters directed me to a fellow blogger’s post on all of the silly reasons you don’t need PR. The post was written with the blogger’s tongue firmly in cheek and had me chuckling, but I’m sorry to report that, silly as they may seem in this context, we […]
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