DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

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

I'm all in favour of business networking, and word of mouth is the most effective type of publicity, but it is limited to relatively small numbers because it is a one-to-one form of communications.

The grand-daddy of the one-to-many approach is media relations (both online and offline media), not only because it delivers the big numbers, but it also carries a powerful media editorial endorsement.



Like an award (which makes you forever an award-winning business) you can use a media accolade on all your publicity materials: as seen on TV/in the FT.com…. This confers a lot of credibility on your business and inspires confidence.



And we are talking of reaching very large numbers indeed: thousands of people.

Every town has a collection of local media, from community radio, newspapers, online sites and local interest magazines onwards, so look out for outlets for your news.

And don't forget the newsletters and blogs for the business clubs and the trade press relevant to you and your business.



Add a few of these up: it would take you several lifetimes to network with that lot. A really good story could reach them all in one single day!




For every person who contacted the business as a result of reading or hearing about you through the media, there were thousands in various stages of near readiness to buy, who needed a few more nudges with information and contact to finally land the sale.



That's why PR needs to work alongside marketing and sales.

• PR raises awareness and confers credibility.


• 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. And manages the relationship to get customer referrals and case studies to further boost your business.

Labels: DIY PR, Edinburgh, marketing, media relations, on and offline PR, online PR and marketing, Penny Haywood, sales

I've heard Brad Sugars, founder of ActionCoach business coaching say that you need to put in 10,000 hours to become an expert in a subject. I reckon I must have put in that in for online PR and marketing if you count taking formal learning and continuing to learn by applying it.

My CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) CPD Excellence log shows I've clocked up an average of 250 training hours a year, mainly on online PR and marketing. I've done that each year for the last 4 years. That's currently 1,000 hours of formal training logged, not counting at least 10 times more time refining that training through practice.

That's around an hour a working day on training. And that's not counting all the online PR and marketing tips I pick up while I'm working. Plus Twitter throws up all links and time chasing them is not logged. Nor is watching the world's top experts on TED.com, although it's fair to say that's not so focused on online PR and marketing, but it is useful information as I tend to stay within client industries.

Planning your training for each year in accordance with your training goals keeps the training focused and logging that training puts good statistics behind you.

I find that gives me confidence in negotiations: you are not just buying our time, You are buying into a whole structured development process that feeds into our business processes and service delivery.

But something as basic (and, let's face it, a tad tedious) as planning and logging time on training is something that many small company owners and freelancers put off doing. Large companies have structured training and development, with goals set and training recorded, but in my experience, their employees often put in less training hours than small business owners that have to stay on top of a wide variety of key business areas, on top of developments in their industry sector.

Would your business do better if you focused your training, and used it as added plus point for your business?

Labels: ActionCoach, Brad Sugars, online PR, online PR and marketing, training