PR 101

NOTE: Because of the Memorial Day Holiday in the United States, I will not be posting a blog next week. The next blog will be posted June 1.

Someone once asked bank robber Willie Sutton why he chose to make his living the way he did. He replied: “because that’s where the money is.”

The same holds true for social media. Why should you and your company be involved in it? Because that’s where the people are. More and more people are forgoing traditional media. Now, they want to talk about a product or event before spending their money. They want as much information as possible before they buy something. They want to hear from the most authoritative sources. They turn to social media for that information.

What smart marketers know is that social media is allowing people to form communities. A community can form around a cause, an event, a product or a company. But it is a community where people talk to each other. As I said last week, there are conversations going on right now about your brand. You should be part of it, but whether you are or not, the conversation is going to happen. What you want to be is the host, determining the conversation’s directions and subjects. As the host, you want to give people the best reason to join circle.

Many companies are starting to get it. It can been seen in the remarkable growth of  social media in the marketplace.

Consider these examples:

•    Forty-two million American women use social media tools on a regular basis, according to a recent social media survey by BlogHer, the women’s blog network, along with iVillage and Compass Partners. That’s over half of all adult American women, according to an article in Small Business Trends.  As they spend more time with social media, women are spending correspondingly less time with traditional media; 39 percent less time on newspapers, 36 percent less time reading magazines, and 30 percent less time watching TV, the article noted.
•    The 35-year-old to 54-year-old demographic led the growth of Facebook in 2008, with use jumping by 276 percent, a study conducted by iStrategyLabs found.
•    Toyota’s new campaign for its revamped Prius hybrid will for the first time make use of Facebook, Twitter and HowStuffWorks. The social media effort will be integrated with other sites and Toyota’s consumer sites. Many, many other companies are moving into social media campaigns.
•    Small businesses across the United States are finding social media levels the playing field for them. They can now compete with much larger companies in building awareness. Implementing a social media plan costs a lot less than traditional methods.

I could go on for a long time about what is happening in social media. But, I know all of you are following the trends, because you are all smart entrepreneurs and marketers. I also suspect you are more than a little overwhelmed by all of the social media choices out there.

Right now, I have over two dozen social media websites bookmarked on my web browser. A lot of people would see that as confusing and wonder I need that many different sites.

Let me use a somewhat lame analogy. I used be a professional bicycle mechanic. I still do a lot of work on bikes. I have a very large tool box with many specialized tools. Each does something different, from tensioning a brake cable to installing pedals. I need them all. Owning a just a few would severely limit my ability to do what has to be done on my bicycles.

The same is true for social media.  Don’t think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg and all the others as individual sites. Instead think of them as hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers. You need a complete set of tools to do any job. You need a complete set of sites to do a campaign.

Of course, just having the tools, as opposed to knowing how to use them, is a very different thing. Just signing up for Twitter and tweeting about a client is not, in and of itself, going to build much brand awareness.

As social media expert Brian Solis has said: “The conversations that drive and define Social Media require a genuine and participatory approach. Just because you have the latest tools to reach people, or have played around with them, doesn’t mean you can throw the same old marketing at them. And, it doesn’t qualify you to attempt to do so without first thinking about why and how, as it relates to the people you’re trying to reach.”

As another social media expert Simon U. Ford has pointed out, social media is made up of social networks, blogs, vlogs (video podcasts), podcasts, social networks rich media platforms, distribution channels, and micro‐content and content aggregation. Each of those areas is made up of many different applications. It is confusing to a newcomer.

Ford is perhaps one of maybe a dozen people who have solved the puzzle. He has made very effective use of social media. He has coordinated events, sold EBooks and run very effective campaigns.

Besides Ford and Solis, there are few others who really get social media. That list includes Josh Bereano, Chris Brogan and Sarah Evans. Right now, social media is kind of like Oklahoma during the land rush. A lot of people are trying to stake claims. Not all of them are going to succeed. It will take awhile for things to be sorted out.

However, there are things you can do right now to learn social media.

Let’s  review the sites I consider the Big Four of social networking: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. These are four tools that must be in your social media toolbox. Facebook has some fantastic business applications. LinkedIn has become the place where professionals talk to each other. Twitter provides a way to instantly contact potential customers to tell them about your product. If you are going to provide any kind of video endorsements, YouTube is a must.

The key, and this is where you need an expert, is how to link those sites into a single campaign. We will talk about in my next blog.

I post this every Monday. As a new feature, if you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

If you want to subscribe to this blog, please use the RSS feed link in the upper right hand corner.

In addition, please join my community. In the upper right hand corner, there is a widget marked Google Friend Connect. Please join. This is an example of cutting edge social media.

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.

Email me at jjcole54@gmail.com

Look on the upper right corner of this blog. You will see a widget marked My Community. That’s Google Friend Connect. What is it – well the short answer is that’s a way for you and I to connect. It links the various social sites – Facebook, Digg, MySpace and all the others – into a single chain. It eliminates the silos.

The long answer is Google Friend Connect is the latest example of how Social Media is changing everything we do. It is fulfilling the predictions made two decades ago of how the Web was going to remake society.

Therefore, for those of us in marketing and public relations, Social Media is not a game changer. It is a whole new game, with new rules, new plays and a new scoring system.

Consider this: the number of people using social media has surpassed the number of people surfing for pornography. Don’t laugh – until 2008, pornography was the number use of the web. Pornography companies were the first to make a profit on the Internet.

Why has Social Media taken off? What Social Media has done is make it easy for anyone to communicate and share information. People can now share anything with anyone: they create groups with similar interests, or they just shotgun blast it out onto the web.

What does this have to with marketing and public relations? Let me give you an example.

Last November, an advertisement ran that equated wearing baby slings with back and neck pain. The cure? Take the painkiller Motrin®. The hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers who carry their children that way were not amused. They attacked using every Social Media method available: emails campaigns; blogs; comments on Facebook and other friend site; and most importantly Twitter.

There were thousands of tweets from angry moms. As blogger Laura Fitton explains, by using Twitter those Moms killed the campaign. And they got Johnson and Johnson to apologize. This happened in about 16 hours. To paraphrase a current television commercial, “that’s the power of social media baby!”

I am not the first person to say this, but maybe I am the first person to say it to you. What’s happening is there are now literally millions of people all over the world who are having conversations about all kinds of things. Three of those topics are the products they buy, the companies that produce the products and the places from which they make their purchases.

If a customer has a bad experience with the product or is angry about the service, it is very simple to tell hundreds of thousands of people almost instantaneously. A company’s reputation, customer base, and market share could be destroyed in a day or less. Frightening, isn’t it?

In the old days (25 years ago), if a company angered a customer, what was the customer going to do? Write a letter that would be read by some low level person who would send back a form letter. The original letter would usually be filed under “ignore.” Tell everyone they knew? Even assuming the six degrees of separation thing is accurate, at most a couple of hundred people might hear about the issue. That’s not enough to make a CEO drop an extra ice cube into the scotch glass.

This is what the “conversation” used to look like:

Company  —————————>  Customer

It was all one way. The company had the upper hand. It lectured, it didn’t converse.

This is what it looks like today:

Courtesy of Brian Solis: http://www.briansolis.com

Now, the customer will probably email the company. But, they are also just as likely to post on something on Facebook or Twitter. If others find what was said interesting, they will forward the post to others. Others will join in the conversation. See what can happen.

As Business Week put it in a May 7 article: “Once wedded to a single networking platform, a member’s “social graph”–password, profile, list of friends–is becoming portable. In other words, as they surf the Web, users increasingly will be able to define themselves by their social network of origin.

“That’s big. It signals that Web companies are no longer in a race to build “destination sites” that attract vast numbers of users. Instead, social networking players are racing to extend their influence over the entire Web by exporting their social features to all sites.”

As a marketer, you want to be right in the middle, in the space marked conversation. That conversation is going to happen whether you or your client is part of it. It is much better to the middle, listening and influencing the flow. Influencing the conversation is the key. If you provide timely, accurate information, you have control. If you answer complaints in a timely, accurate manner, you have control. But you got be a part of the conversation.

Here’s something to consider about some of the social media sites.

Social Media Matrix

I defy any marketer to reach and engage a group that size without Social Media. It cannot be done any other way.

Now, while Social Media can kill a brand, it can also build one. Smart companies have realized that. A search in Twibs.com, the Twitter business directory, turned up more than 12,000 companies using Twitter. The really smart ones, such as Zappos and Apple, constantly monitor the mini-blogging service. Seeing a way to overtake rival Cole, Pepsi is moving into social media in a very big way.

However, these companies are not just listing themselves on these sites – they are joining in the conversation. They engage with customers, monitor for problems and introduce new products. They also link to company information, company blogs and other information.

As social marketing expert Simon Ford says: think of this as a party. Do want to go to a dull, boring party where the host is barely visible and expects you to entertain yourself? What usually happens then is the rowdies take over – think spam.

What you to do, Ford explains, is engage with your guests. You want to give them a reason to stay at the party. You do that by providing interesting content. You blog about a new product, or you will deal with a customer complaint. If you do that, you will have a better chance of succeeding.

Oh, by the way, join me on Google Friend Connect. Become part of the Social Media movement.

Next week, I will write about how I think you should get started on social media.

I post this every Monday. As a new feature, if you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

If you want to subscribe to this blog, please use the RSS feed link in the upper right hand corner,

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.

Email me at jjcole54@gmail.com

Several years ago I had an insurance company as a client. The company sold various types of business insurance through about 3,000 independent agents. Its management worked hard to get the right messages to those agents; ones that made the agents feel like part of the team.

The insurance company knew that communicating with the people who sold their products was probably the most important kind of communication they did. People who make or sell a company’s products are the most important ambassadors. If they receive little or no information, or the information is delivered in a way in which they aren’t going to pay attention, there’s a problem. The insurance hit that problem head on.

Companies spend lots of time carefully crafting messages designed to make employees feel part of the effort. And then those companies fall flat on their faces. Why? They forget the second half of the communications equation, one that is as equally important as the message.

What don’t they do? They don’t use a delivery system that ensures their employees will pay attention to the message.

Think how much information you receive on a normal day. It comes at you from everywhere – television, radio, newspapers, emails, websites, social networks and talk around the water cooler. It comes from family, friends, employers, advertisers and a lot of other places. How much of it really stands out? How much do you retain? There is so much noise today that is very hard to stand out.

This insurance company used two primary ways to communicate with its agents and employees: a printed newsletter and email. Company executives thought those were more than adequate. The feedback from agents on the two methods was good – when they heard from the agents. The assumption was that since not much was being heard, things must be okay.

That bubble burst when the company sent out an email detailing changes in the way agents were compensated. Of the 3,000 messages sent, approximately 10 percent were opened. The company was shocked that a message on such an important topic received so little attention. The email got lost in the noise.

So the insurance company’s management came to the agency. They didn’t know what to do. To be honest I didn’t either. So I called a couple of friends who are insurance agents – neither of them handled this company’s products – and asked what the problem was with the company’s methods.

They both told me what I suspected about too many emails. So, I asked what would be a format that would work – how could someone an agent’s attention? One of them had just bought an IPod. He was talking about how cool it was. He then told me how he was downloading things from ITunes called podcasts. I went to ITunes and listened to a few. The light bulb went on.

We did a series of podcasts for the company on a variety of topics. The download rare exceeded 95 percent. We did a survey to ascertain how many people were actually listening. It was around 75 percent. The insurance company said it was the highest rate of communication they ever had.

What about that 25 percent who didn’t download or listen? We reached them through the printed newsletter. That’s an equally valid method.

The takeaway from this is simple: when you want to reach your employees, really reach them, you need to find a method that works. You need to use multiple methods. No one method is perfect.

Let me cover the methods I suggest to clients:

* Face-to-face communication. This is still one of the most effective, and surprisingly, underused methods. People like to hear news and information from another human being. There is also a lot more credibility when it is coming from trusted manager. With today’s technology, the speaker and the listeners can be 10,000 miles apart. It is still face-to-face. One thing about that – if your company has multiple offices, make sure employees can “talk back” and ask questions. It is not that hard, there are many websites that provide the software for that. I think it is underused because many managers don’t want to face tough questions.
* As I just showed, a podcast or a video podcast, called a Vlog. The advantage of that is people can download and listen at their leisure. But again, have some way people can ask questions. It is pretty simple to put a Q & A forum on a website.
* A printed newsletter. Many employees still like to receive something they can hold in their hands.
* A blog written by senior management. If possible, the CEO should write it. There are CEOs that already do that, most notably Jonathan Schwartz,  president and CEO, Sun Microsystems; Craig Newmarkk, CEO, Craig’s List, and Mark Cuban, chairman, HDNet and owner Dallas Mavericks owner. Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh is particularly famous for his blog. They have all said is good way to talk to their people.
* A company Wiki. Employees can post information about experiences or problems they’ve had and how they dealt with them. That saves a lot of time and trouble.

There is one more method I am going to blog out next week – social media. It is starting to trump every other form of communication. But you are going to have to wait on that one.

I post this every Monday. As a new feature, if you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.