DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

Google's wonder wheel does not seem to be well known, yet it is an incredibly versatile tool when you are in need of ideas.

The wonder wheel arranges Google's search results in a mind-mapping style wheel. Each spoke of the wheel shows a key search term relating to the natural results for your search - the full results are shown on the right hand side.

The mind-mapping display lets you see your search results at a glance. Click on a spoke to drill down into an area of your results and another wheel pops up.

At any time, you can refine your results to select images or videos relating to one of the spokes on a wonder wheel. Those results are then shown as a regular Google search results display.

Using a combination of the wheel and a refined search, you can spot gaps to fill, as you'll see in the following example.

Technology PR agency search spots a gap:

To use the wonder wheel, key in a search term.

Just below the Google search box there's a blue bar and inside that bar on the left click on the words "show options".

A list drops down to the right of your search results, currently arranged in 4 groups. The second last group, called "standard view" contains the option. Click to get your results displayed as a wonder wheel.

Click on a spoke of the wheel and another wheel appears with a further 10 results. Each wheel shows the number of pages indexed on the main term and 10 related search results.

A few clicks on the spokes and you'll be full of ideas for your blog piece or article.

It's also good for showing up opportunities. For example, I followed the spokes of a search on "PR"(UK pages) and clicked on the spoke "technology PR agencies" because we do technology PR. Then I went back to the list on the left and chose "videos" - and got no results!

Awesome!

It's about time there was a technology PR agency video and I'm off to make one!

Labels: article, blog, Google search results, Google's wonder wheel, mind map, mind mapping, online video, PR, search, technology PR, technology PR agency, videos, wonder wheel

posted by Penny Haywood Calder  # 15:27 0 Comments

Got some thought provoking tips on social media from Seth Liss, SunSentinel.com's news community manager. He's making the point that a lot more people are using social media now and it's harder to get noticed. But social media is still a better bet than advertising for driving business to ecommerce sites, so it's worth making the effort.

He kicks off with the obvious: drop the drab everyday stuff.

When you do post a newsworthy event, he points out that it's the details that make it more interesting. How did it happen? Where? How does that make you feel? Not easy in 140 characters, but when was really good communication ever easy?

He reminds us to avoid engaging in a 1-2-1 conversation on public sites - it's really boring for everyone else.

He also reminds us to place posts with links into context. We need to judge for ourselves whether the link is worth pursuing.

It looks as if people have had enough of blatent promotional messages from their friends. Edelman's Trust Barometer survey shows "the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company has dropped from 45 percent to 25 percent since 2008." (Edelman's annual Trust Barometer survey is based on nearly 5,000 25-minute interviews with informed people aged 24-60 in 20 countries).

He suggests sharing good information is the key to being interesting. Develop interesting sidelights on your business sector to demonstrate your knowledge in action.

Plus timing is key. Most people dip into their social media accounts so they miss a lot: If you can spot patterns when key people are posting, you can predict when they are more likely to see your posts.

Finally advises: listen first, then comment. "If people know you are interested in what they have to say, they will most likely be curious about what you have to say as well."

I'd say: there's no quick fix. It's a case of listening well before you speak to have a better chance of engaging with well respected people with a good following. People who enhance your own line reputation, and in turn, that boosts your online business.

Labels: DIY PR, ecommerce, online PR, online PR and marketing, online sales, PHPR, PR, social media

A recent Accountemps survey of 150 top US executives listed the following top annoying jargon words:

Leverage

Reach out

It is what it is

Viral

Game changer

Disconnect

Value-add

Circle back

Socialise

Interface

Despite the list originating in the US, these are all terms I come across a lot.


The list also included words that previously appeared in their earlier (2004) survey, which sadly we still see today:

At the end of the day

Synergy

Solution

Think outside the box

On the same page

Customer-centric

People use jargon to indicate they're up with the latest management fads, as immortalised by the David Brent character in 'The Office' TV series a few years ago. As a result, far from being impressed by jargon, it's more likely to produce an image of an ineffectual man with a bad break-dancing tendency!

It's not a good image. It's not good PR. It's not even good communication.

Labels: clear communications, content, copy, copy writing, jargon, PR

There's no shortage of paid help and expensive subscriptions to keep you abreast of environmental legislation for business, but there are some great free resources. Use them to create an Environmental Management System (EMS) to demonstrate your serious commitment to the environment. And reduce the likelihood of expensive fines by keeping up to date with a number of recent changes that affect most businesses.

At a time when businesses need every edge they can get, being able to demonstrate credible green credentials is a real PR plus - a key business asset.

Log onto useful free resources at the http://wwwnetregs.gov.uk/ site, which has been recently re-vamped. It includes a questionnaire http://ping.fm/iaVafnetregs/links/97472.aspx)where you can get a bespoke answer as to your environmental compliance requirements.

That will give you a legislation list, which is the start of your EMS. You will find out how each individual piece of legislation impacts on your type of business using the search tools on www.netregs.gov.uk. Netregs will stream info according to business type and the regional variants for Scotland, England & Wales, plus Northern Ireland.

Environment legislation is driven by Europe and there are more changes in the pipeline. It's worth signing up for the Netregs updates to stay up-to-date.

Labels: DIY PR, environment, green car, Penny Haywood, PHPR, PR

Staff are at the front line and spend a lot of their waking hours with you, so they could be your business' most knowledgeable and credible advocates - if you give them the information they need.

Even if the 6 degrees of separation theory has been disproved, most people are better connected than we realise: your staff among them. Even if it’s only friends like them who would be good workers, saving you lots of recruitment costs and time. But you’d be amazed at who their uncle knows.. so keep them up to speed with the company. But they can't pass on good news about your business if they don't know it!

Same goes for your family and friends. I once met a wife who was playing tennis with the wife of the top guy on her husband's key potential client list. He hadn't told her, so she never even thought to mention the surname of her tennis pal to him... A simple dinner invitation was all it took when I pointed out the connection.

And advisers.

Your lawyer and accountant are dealing with 100s of businesses a year. Why shouldn't they refer you if they come across a need for your services? But you won't be at the front of their mind when they come across someone who needs your goods or services if you don't keep them up-to-date with positive feedback. And they are businesses too. You might want to explore a more formal arrangement to cross promoting each other?

But different people swim into your orbit at different times and there comes a point when keeping track of these newsletters and contact actions needs to be organised so you don’t send out the same snippet or newsletter twice to the same person. It's all too easy to do if you get a few interruptions in your day...

This is where a CRM (customer relationship management) program like SalesForce or Act! or the free open source program: ChannelCRM.dk (it has been translated into English) could be very useful. Don't let the ‘customer’ bit in the name put you off - these are contact management systems that work well for managing communications with potential client.

This is the seventh in a series of posts re-visiting some of the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood.

The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business.
That's because:

PR raises awareness.

Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).

Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison.
As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months.
The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: 6 degrees of separation, communications, DIY PR, ecommerce, PR, running a business

Referrals are much more influential than your own sales spiel – they are credible because they are third party endorsements.

They are vital for B2B businesses and are the fastest way to boost any business. So why not have a Referrals Plan to maximise your referrals chances?

Roy Sheppherd’s book shows you how with over 100 non-cheesy ways to ramp up your referrals – it’s called Rapid Results Referrals. Nothing new. Only common sense. But how many referrals tactics are you currently using?

How often do you hear about Referrals Plans? … Exactly! You’ll be miles in front of the businesses that are not using a planned referrals campaign.

Just choose up to 10 referrals ideas from the book and work with them for 6 months, review, ditch what doesn’t work and top up with new ones. Repeat twice a year. Easy!

This is the sixth in a series of posts re-visiting some of the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood.

The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business.

That's because:

PR raises awareness.

Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).

Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison.

As the series develops, choose a few ideas to trial for a few months.
The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR/marketing/sales Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: DIY PR, PHPR, PR, referrals

Generally, the high value sales “follow the face”, especially in the early stages of generating business-to-business service sales, even if the sale and most of the service delivery happens online.

1-2-1 networking and building relationships and referrals is key at this stage.
But you can accelerate a business relationship in between seeing people face to face by staying in contact in a thoughtful and helpful way. For example:

1) Provide personalised news snippets – maybe send a link and a note - like a personal Tweet?
2) Keep them up to speed with e-newsletters if you have contact permission and know they'll be interested
3) Hang out online and comment on their blog, answer or comment on their forum posts - that's really good for generating feel-good as many blogs don't generate much feedback.
4) Ring if you have news that could be very useful – keep it light. No pressure.

It's worth keeping in mind when you are desperate for a sale that they tend to come when you don't push. Not everyone is immediately ready or able to buy immediately, so these contact efforts are never about in-your-face selling. It's about being a familiar and trusted contact - and being at the front of their mind when they are ready.

This is the fifth in a series of posts re-visiting some of the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood.

The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business.

That's because:

PR raises awareness.
Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).
Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison.

As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months.

The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: boosting your business, business promotion, DIY PR, ecommerce, online sales, PR, public relations, publicity

Small budgets rarely stretch to the really effective levels of advertising. Unless you already have strong design skills, you'll need to buy those in. And ads need to be repeated often to achieve impact. That's the bit most small businesses forget. Many small businesses stop at one insertion, but most people don't notice the first three times an advert runs in most publications.

But what do you do when you need to shift, for example, loads of beds in a hurry? Unless Mary Queen of Scots slept in all of them, they will need to be advertised in the local media on and offline. The clever PR alternatives would just take too much time.

TIP: Google sometimes gives away vouchers for £30 of free AdWords. Mine arrived by post after I registered my business on Google Maps, but sometimes these offers falls out of business magazines.

It helps to have a well-written, optimised site that anticipates the information a buyer might need, and answers that, ending with a clear call to action on every page.

You'll save a lot of money if you think about who you need to reach. Can you reach them any other way?

• Would an in-store event work, with treats and discounts for invited existing customers?
• Or a leaflet drop?
• Can you ring round guest houses and hotels offering a bulk deal (and take away the old ones to minimise the hassle?). Can you offer matching bedside tables and wardrobes?
  

Advertising does work if you have a large budget and top creative skills. It can be an expensive first resort for those with smaller pockets.


This is the fourth in a series of posts re-visiting the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood. The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business. As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months. The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: advertising, DIY PR, PR

Small budgets rarely stretch to the really effective levels of advertising. Unless you already have strong design skills, you'll need to buy those in. And ads need to be repeated often to achieve impact. That's the bit most small businesses forget. Many small businesses stop at one insertion, but most people don't notice the first three times an advert runs in most publications.

But what do you do when you need to shift, for example, loads of beds in a hurry? Unless Mary Queen of Scots slept in all of them, they will need to be advertised in the local media on and offline. The clever PR alternatives would just take too much time.

TIP: Google sometimes gives away vouchers for £30 of free AdWords. Mine arrived by post after I registered my business on Google Maps, but sometimes these offers falls out of business magazines.

It helps to have a well-written, optimised site that anticipates the information a buyer might need, and answers that, ending with a clear call to action on every page.

You'll save a lot of money if you think about who you need to reach. Can you reach them any other way?

Would an in-store event work, with treats and discounts for invited existing customers? Or a leaflet drop? Can you ring round guest houses and hotels offering a bulk deal (and take away the old ones to minimise the hassle?). Can you offer matching bedside tables and wardrobes?

Advertising does work if you have a large budget and top creative skills. It can be an expensive first resort for those with smaller pockets.

This is the fourth in a series of posts re-visiting the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood. The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business. As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months. The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: advertising, DIY PR, ecommerce, PR, PR Edinburgh, public relations, publicity, small businesses, SMEs

Looking forward to giving 30 lo-cost PR tips at 4networking.biz in Leith, Edinburgh on 24th November. £10 inc breakfast.

Labels: 4networking, DIY PR, Edinburgh, PR

"The flypaper of an unfocused mind"..."may trap new ideas and unexpected associations" better than reasoning according to researchers. So instead of working hard, try lightening up to get some perspective on the things that are important and allow the mental cogs to freewheel once in a while.

Labels: creative thinking, PR, running a business

How often do you have a great idea at your desk? No? In the shower? Or in bed? Breakthrough by not working!

Labels: creative thinking, PR, running a business

See details for Brad Burton at 4 networking in Edinburgh 13 & 14 + Glasgow 15th at: http://ping.fm/VCe3d

Labels: 4networking, Brad Burton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, PR

Fantastic level of energy at the 4networking Edinburgh Haymarket meeting this morning - and 3 more business appointments
www.4networking.biz

Labels: 4Networking Edinburgh, PR

Jon Moon's simple idea about Words in Tables has spawned many ramifications, but they all lead to one end: better communications. Always insightful and entertaining, his free taster sessions on injecting clarity into communications are an education in themselves.

Labels: clear communications, Jon Moon, PR, Words in Tables

Look out for an inexpensive online training courses from the National Union of Journalists' Scottish office shows how editors and journalists select stories and how to connect to them. Called Interactive Media Awareness.

Labels: NUJ, PR, Scotland, training

The National Union for Journalists in Scotland have produced a bargain (imho) online course designed to teach how to produce intelligible and attractive copy, with headings that are fit for professional publications.

Labels: journalism, NUJ, PR, Scotland, training, writing

Tom Davenport's The Next Big Thing blog at Harvard Business says forwarding info is a way of saying, "I know what you're interested in, and I'm thinking about you."

But he points out "you can go too far with forwarding" and advises against being "a mass forwarder". Many executives complain they got too many indiscriminate forwards.

He says, "Forwarding to a list (or retweeting to a list of followers, BTW) cheapens the networking value of the act. It's the online equivalent of finding a credit card offer from Capital One in your mailbox".

Labels: Harvard Business, PR, social media, social media etiquette

Very clever internet image montage app being developed called PhotoSketch - pulls images from the web together using text tags then blends and synthesises.

Labels: photo montage, PR

• Blog headlines into tweets.


• Facebook postings in Tweetdeck point to my blog.


• Ping.fm covers lots of social media and bookmarking sites in one go.


• A blog post can be re-edited into an e-newsletter.

Let's hear your ways to streamline the working day to get more PR, marketing & sales done. After all, that's what brings home the bacon!

Labels: PR, time for marketing, time for PR

Does the thought of walking into a roomful of strangers make your hands clammy?
But making great connections in business is powerful publicity. Connecting with like-minded people brings great business results. People you like, tend to like others that are like you. So their contacts are more likely to like your approach.
Gain confidence at impromptu speaking at Toastmasters: a not-for-profit group of clubs that offer excellent public speaking training and impromptu speaking practice at ludicrously good value for money imo. For around £100 a year (clubs costs vary) for fortnightly 2-hour training and practice.
You can get faster results with 1-2-1 trainers, but how long will that last without practice?
There's a reason Toastmasters is the world's largest public speaking training organisation, with over 4 million people trained in most countries throughout the world. It works and I've seen it change people.
Find a club at toastmasters.org (scroll past the map which shows the UK HQ to find results for your area).

Labels: PR, public speaking, Toastmasters International, UK

Looking at some of the affiliate marketing schemes being pushed on Twitter or into your email inboxes, some sound quite convincing. Then you delve deeper.

The photo of the person on the Twitter account is clearly not the same person featured on the website or blog promo blurb. Either that, or they've aged 20 years and had a lot of really bad cosmetic surgery after making all that money!

Then there's the 'proof' of wealth. A badly scanned tax form with a company name not immediately obviously related to either the Tweeter or the person featured in the promo material. For all I know, it could be anyone's tax return or even a mock-up?

Then there is often a picture of a big house. Call me a cynic, but I think I could manage to take a picure of a very large house.

Plus all the other people who are sending messages that would appear to be pushing the same or a similar opportunity.

Often the pitch is a proven SEO or marketing system that runs on autopilot, so no experience is needed. At this point every fibre of my PR reputational management being is sounding a warning bell. Marketing without expertise? What sort of messages will be going out?

At some point the admittedly well-written text crunches some numbers. One I looked at suggested by reaching c2 million people, you could expect 400+ sales and take a slice of the action. And of course, the person offering you this wonderful opportunity to spam the other c1,999,550 people takes a small slice too. You run the risk of being blocked by the c1,999,550 people. OK, you can use a throw-away email address and set up a disposable Twitter account, but is that any way to run a business?

In the current economic climate, obviously quite a few people are going for it. If they are desperate, I wish them well. I hope they become rich and that these opportunities don't involve a scam.

But this numbers approach does highlight the marketing mindset taken to extremes. I think it illustrates why PR and marketing don't always see eye to eye. Marketing likes branding, and crunching the numbers and counting the sales. PR is about building influence, raising profile and safe-guarding business reputation, creating trust so that the marketing and sales efforts work well.

The truth is, sales, marketing and PR each bring a lot of advantages to the table, but by combining them you get a balanced approach and much greater long term business benefits. Not short term 'experts' with a little social media experience.

Would you rather be sending stuff to peopke who don't want it. Or walking into a pitch with well crafted marketing materials and a great company reputation backed by a clutch of on and offline cuttings from reputable sources? Plus some great metrics and feedback to inform your sales pitch? That's how PR, marketing and sales work together to build a long term business proposition that provide livlihoods for the many people who don't want to go it alone as freelancers or entrepreneurs, or spammers.

Labels: email, marketing, PR, PR sales and marketing synergy, Twitter

Sometimes, getting the name out there is all it takes to create buzz to boost a business. Online, we have so many tools to do just that, like blogging.

But there's been a bit of a stushi over the last month with a key figure in the blogosphere, Steve Rubel, announcing he was quitting blogging for lifestreaming (posting snippets on micro media like Twitter).

I'm not ready to stop blogging, but I do love Twitter. I've found some of the more influential (rated by numbers of followers) tweeters on PR using http://wefollow.com and its tag search facility. You can use it to find good tweeters on any subject you want.

Interestingly, the tweeter with most followers (heading for 3 million at the time of writing) http://twitter.com/aplusk is not one of the many celebrity tweeters, but an entrepreneur. Although I guess he's become a celebrity with that following.

By following the top PR tweeters, I've picked up great snippets of information with little effort as the 140 character posts are so succinct. And there's a lot less spam on the direct messaging than my emails carry. That may change, but I can always turn direct messages off, because they give me control over the information I choose to receive.

Of course, many tweeters punctuate their nuggets of gold with trivia that only their best mate, their mum and partner would be interested in, and even that might be stretching it a bit. But you can stop following them, or hang in there for the odd nugget: the choice is yours. And the best build up a following by being interesting.

Stephen Fry's tweets are often fascinating. But few can write like that. Or have the magnetic persona to rise above the trivial.

A persona largely forged by offline media.

It's the interaction of the on and offline that is so powerful because we can make so much more impact by using different channels. Even when PR was largely offline, I wrote the DIY PR book (pub. Batsford 1998, now out of print but second hand copies are on Amazon if you want offline PR info) outlining 30 low cost ways to communicate, encouraging people to use a mix to meet personal information preferences.

The beauty of online media is that you can link them all up. Services like tweetdeck allow you to manage posts to Twitter and Face-book and you can put your twit-stream up on your Face Book for example. Posterous enables you to post to all your favourite media sites in one go. Their site looks ridiculously cool and I'm starting to play with that.

I'm sure there will be lots of other interesting tools coming down the line and we'll all be off onto the next big thing. But they are all tools allowing you to connect with people that are interested in your key topics and interests. Hopefully you are working at the things you love. That makes the publicity and communicating that passion very easy. Now you can interact with those people, if they want to, but more importantly, how they want to.

Steve Rubel is probably right in the long run. More people are accessing info via phones with relatively titchy screens so the trend is for succinct comms. Twitter is good training for that.

But meanwhile, there's plenty of people searching on Google and landing on web sites and blogs because the extended content they carry lends itself to being searched. And most business tweets carry a link to a website of blog anyway.

I think of online media like a menu. A tweet is the starter to whet the appetite, full media sites like websites, blogs and Face Book are the main courses with lots of rich content on the plate. The proof of the pudding is the interaction you stimulate and whether you can translate that into sales for your business without putting people off with hard sell tactics.

That's why I think PR and journalism skills will be in the online media mix long-term. Because we were trained to get stories past much fiercer gatekeepers than any online registration process. We were trained to make stories interesting enough for editors select for their audience and invest in the paper, ink, or bandwidth to carry the story. Nowadays anyone can be a publisher, but the acid test is whether they build an audience.

See you on Twitter.com/PennyHaywood

Labels: DIY PR, posterous, PR, tweetdeck, Twitter, wefollow

If you run your own ecommerce site, you probably have generated additional content to boost your SEO, so you know how hard it can be to generate good content.

Particularly if writing snappy informative copy is not your thing. With so much free content out there, an investment in good writing is not often high on the publicity budget. But a failure to invest in writing goes much deeper and the current trend towards shedding writers in the media could affect all businesses.

The big question is, with all the free news around, can we retain quality news outlets where a mention is respected to the extent that it boosts a business reputation?

Several UK media have seen their offline circulation plummet as more people access content online. But despite higher online readerships, many media are reportedly struggling to make money online as content users blank out a lot of online advertising.


Does it matter?


Well, yes, if you want to generate high quality media coverage (on or offline) that people choose to read. Material that packs a powerful editorial endorsement factor, recommending your company to thousands and sometimes millions of others.

Yes, it matters If you want an editorial endorsement that you can wear like a badge of honour for the next squillion years: "as seen on BBC TV" or "as featured in the FT", with links to the coverage or a hotlink to a quote from it.

Yes it matters if you want a media recommendation your business can be proud of, because someone has to pay editorial staff to create the content that you are proud to be seen in, and edit the publication to maintain its reputation for credibility.

A media recommendation where anyone can get a look in is no recommendation at all, regardless of whether the news source is on or offline.

So it matters when an influential author like Chris Anderson writes a new book, called “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” arguing that there is a law dictating that anything made of ideas, like information, gravitates inexorably to being free - that it 'wants' to be free. And he doesn't mean unfettered free speech. He is talking about free of charge.


Now free of charge, when it comes to information usually translates into a vastly reduced budget to invest in good writers. You would think that PR people would welcome that as it might open doors for news releases to be used almost wholesale. But I know I am not alone in being more concerned with the bigger picture. Sure, getting news releases taken up is one thing, but a swing towards accepting unrestricted content reduces the impact of coverage on the site to the point that it would be worthless from a PR point of view.

Anderson is editor of the popular Wired magazine and author of the best-selling book, The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand. In that book he argued the Internet offers everything to everyone, and trailing in the wake of an initial success, a tail of endless near misses can now have a market. That never convinced me entirely. I can see that there is more of a long tail than before the Internet, when physical shop space limited the choice on offer. But I've always thought that assuming an upward graph line will continue forever is just that: an assumption. So I couldn't see how the tail of unlimited demand would continue indefinitely. Surely the near misses would start drifting further off the mark and become irrelevant?

In today's issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews Anderson's latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price and finds similar holes in the idea that a tendency towards free information is the only force affecting pricing online. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

Gladwell is no stranger to big ideas. He was named one of the top 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2005 and his books: The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers have all been international best-sellers.


Gladwell takes Anderson's examples of how we all rush to free services, so they cost a bomb to handle the demand, like YouTube, forcing owners to retreat from the abundance thinking model that propels free information. Universal free information is often of such questionable quality that even YouTube pays for professional content provide from TV stations and film production companies for quality content to keep users happy and deliver audiences for advertisers.

Gladwell says there are plenty of models where information is running in just the opposite direction from free - in drug companies, for example where the high costs of trialling to meet regulations need to be recouped. Or where both models are used: the New York Times puts its content up free on the Web site, but the Wall Street Journal has over a million subscribers paying for online access to its content.

Gladwell predicts Apple could make more from selling iPhone downloads than from the iPhone itself and may one day offer the phone free to boost download sales (yes, please!). Or give away downloads to boost the phone sales. Or carry on charging for both.

He concludes that the only law is that "the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws".

And that's good news for those who want quality journalism to continue, because quality comes from an editing process to sort the wheat from the chaff. Plus sources to provide information and run around getting pictures set up and arranging interviews (PR people). Plus someone to write it up and place the information in context - and that understanding of context comes with in-depth experience in a sector.

All that means skilled intelligent human intervention - and with humans come minor factors like a liking for food, a need for clothes and a roof over their heads, plus obligations to care for family members and spending money.

In short: great media needs to be paid for somewhere down the line.

And great media is an inspiration and a challenge to PR people to come up with issues-led ideas and spokespeople that can stretch to fit the news agenda, add to the debate and showcase their company's talent. And when they do, they get all the conferred credit that editorial endorsement can bring.

Used well (and I've seen an astonishing number of businesses fail to capitalise on good quality coverage of their businesses) good editorial endorsement is like a prestigious award and can be referred to almost indefinitely thereafter.

Labels: Chris Anderson, content, ecommerce, editorial endorsement, Free The Future of a Radical Price, issues-led PR, Malcolm Gladwell, online PR, PR, The Long Tail, The New Yorker, YouTube

Inspired by an article in last year's Harvard Business Review that said: "True professions have codes of conduct," written by Harvard Business School professors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, the students researched and created their own code.

Around half of the 886 graduating Harvard Business School students signed up, pledging to "manage the companies they work for in a way that safeguards not just the interests of stakeholders, but of fellow employees, customers, and the larger society in which they function".

Part of me wonders what the other half will do with their business lives.

But if you are looking to add inspiring moral vision to your enterprise, you could do worse than to base your business ethics on a version of their code of conduct here: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/06.11/hbsoath.html.

But if you do establish a code, you need to ensure you adhere to it, from top to bottom within the company with regular examples of walking the talk. If you don't it will backfire badly as an obvious load of claptrap, damaging your reputation.

There's only so much that PR can sort out, even with the best PR team on the case.

There's no getting round the fact that it takes time to heal a damaged reputation.

The best PR practice of all is to walk whatever talk you choose, and to operate fairly.

Labels: Business Ethics, Code of Conduct, Harvard Business, PR, running a business

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. But you may be struggling to know what's effective?

The standard advice is to monitor what works, then do more of it! And of course there's a lot of truth in the saying: "you can't manage what you haven't measured". But it's easier said than done.

If you ask customers at the point of sale how they heard of you, most people will stop after one answer: probably the most recent thing that brought them to you. Now that is an important clue, but would they have bought if you hadn't come recommended (word of mouth, or in the media, or online)?

Would they have bought if your website was out-of date or the branding wasn't attractive and the brand values consistent?

In most cases the 'buy' decision is a complex balance between:

• Your profile and reputation (PR), plus
• A clear understanding and attraction to what you are selling (marketing and branding) plus
• A good sales process to ensure lots of referrals and to clinch the deal efficiently.

Plenty of people will offer clever tools to monitor what works for you, but you'll only really find out by talking to customers and getting their feedback on all aspects of your sales, marketing and PR.

Plus you'll pick up invaluable feedback and ideas for developing your products and services in response to demand and for new markets.

Labels: marketing, on and offline PR, PR, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy, sales

We work with businesses of all sizes. Over the last 22 years. I've noticed the main difference between the smaller and the larger business is that many small to medium businesses don't think they have a marketing budget, but they always turn out to have spent a fair amount: they just aren't tracking it effectively. Some will flatly deny having a sales or PR budget.

If you're one of them, try adding up all the money and the time you spent in the last 12 months on any of these, you have the makings of your time/money budget:

• the website,
• taking a 'special deal' in a directory or an advertising feature,
• your membership subs & meeting fees plus time for attending networking events, the online directory listings and forums, plus social networking sites,
• writing sales proposals,
• PowerPoint presentations,
• responding to sales enquiries
• encouraging referrals from customers or complementary businesses
• signage for a building and/or vehicle
• maybe some Pay Per Click experiments?
• or a promo item?
• marketing materials - folders, leaflets, brochures?
• a mailing list?
• email fliers
• a newsletter?
• a blog?
• photos,
• videos or pod casts
• local sponsorship in kind?
• stalls at trade fairs
• other sales, marketing, PR promotional activity?

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. Use that as the baseline, and think how you could improve that spend of time and money in the next financial year.

One of the most valuable things you can do to further your business is to think about how you can find out more about your customers and how they found you, so you can concentrate resources on the things that are proven to work. It's much better to record feedback rather than rely on memory because we often remember more about encounters with emotional content.

Years ago, local shopkeepers in my high street said they had mainly elderly customers and were worried about their reliance on a dying breed of customer. But when they were asked to tick age groups of customers and record comments, it turned out there were at least as many busy mums, who actually spent more, but they hadn't talked as much so they failed to make much impression and weren't remembered.

Labels: budgeting for PR, marketing, on and offline PR, PR, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy, sales