Need Blogger Outreach? A Case Study in How NOT to Do It

How not to do blogger outreachBlogger outreach is an important component of both marketing and PR strategies. And there’s a right way to do it, and some very wrong ways. More on that in a minute.

Measuring influence (or trying to) is another key component of digital strategy, for both brands and agencies, not to mention a multimillion dollar business. There are many players in the market and, in our opinion, none of them have got this influence measurement thing completely figured out yet. And they won’t until they factor sentiment analysis into the equation. Continue reading

Groupon PR: Whoops! It Happens

“People forget we’re a new company. It’s one of those things where, OK, we’re still growing up as a company. Now that we figured that out, there’s no reason to think it’s going to happen again.”

So said a Groupon exec in response to a Financial Times reporter asking about accounting irregularities that have plagued the recently IPO’ed tech startup. Continue reading

Remember the Small Things Count

To-do list book. © by koalazymonkey

In the daily juggle it is sometimes hard to remember to do it all. If you didn’t know it, PR pros are human too. I know that I cross my fingers and hope that when I do forget to do something it is more minor than missing a TV appearance or forgetting to meet a client deadline.

“Organization is critical for success in public relations,” says Michael Hanson, Director of PR at The Modern Brand Company. “PR people are always on the go, juggling multiple pitches, refining infinite messages, brainstorming at all hours of the day, and so on. Sometimes the small things, do make a difference.”

PR pros are constantly focused on big things such as a big media interview, a big event or a big client prospect. Sometimes the smaller things are the tasks that are easier to forget. Continue reading

QR Code in the Wild

We at PRBC, and many others have discussed the use of QR codes in marketing programs.  It’s likely, as a SM/PR/Marketing community we’ve not only beaten a dead horse, but a dead & buried horse and made the likes of the ASPCA scratch their heads.

So, upon sitting down at a local establishment recently I was somewhat jazzed seeing this display on their table tents. Continue reading

5 Ways to Stop Cutting the Brown Grass in Social Media

When are you going to stop cutting the brown grass of PR?

During summer a few years ago, I was on my way to a meeting and I saw something that made me scratch my head. We were going through one of those incredibly dry summers and local watering bans had caused all known forms of vegetation to wither and die. Snapshots of our community could have easily doubled for the Sahara.

Naturally, in the absence of water, all the grass had died and turned brown yet I stood there and watched as a team of landscapers busily cut, trimmed and weed wacked away as if we lived in the tropics during rainy season and the grass had shot up a healthy two inches since their last sweep of the office park.

“For Pete’s sake,” I thought, “why in the world would they spend time cutting grass that was obviously dead?”

2012 was predicted to be the obvious maturation of social media for businesses. Reaching past the “shiny new object” status deeper into data and analytics and into new applications like targeted visual content generation, mobile, and real-time responses, this was the year we all could roll up our sleeves, dig in the garden, and reap the social media crops we had been cultivating for the past few years. Continue reading

Why Paywalls Ultimately Fail

Google announced a new partnership last week with Pandora, the New York Daily News, and several other media companies that could be the death of the paywall model. “Google Consumer Surveys” is a stunningly simple idea. Say you’re surfing the web, and click on a link to a story that would typically be behind a paywall. Rather than pay, you answer a simple marketing question, and as a result are granted access to the article. Google pays the entity five cents for each question answered, which is about $15 per 1,000 pageviews.

I’ve long maintained that paywalls are a terrible idea and do nothing but drive potential readers elsewhere. The ROI of putting your content behind a paywall is far less than charging appropriate advertising rates on your site, or other inventive ideas. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself Continue reading