PR 101

I have read all kinds of advice from “experts” on how to be a social media success. There is advice on using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and countless other sites. But I rarely see any of those people advising those who seek success to do the one thing that should be cornerstone of every social media campaign – blogging.

The key to marketing is twofold: to build word of mouth about your company and to increase your Google rankings. A blog is the best way to do both.

People who read and like your blog will tell others about it. They will retweet it, post it on Facebook, and generally spread the word. This builds credibility for your company. It builds Google rankings because the more people who read your blog, the higher Google will rank your company.

Look at the chart below from Cambridge, Mass. – based HubSpot. Note that companies that blog receive an average of 55 percent more visitors to their websites. But I am not going to bore you with a lot of data. Instead, I am going to tell how I do it.

Now granted I was a reporter from 26 years. I am used to writing on deadline. I know the rules of grammar. But as anyone who is a consistent reader knows I am not perfect. I strive for it, but I rarely reach it. You don’t have to be a great writer to be a blogger.

So here are my keys to blogging:

• First, lets talk about what a blog is not. It is not a sales tool. You try to sell something through a blog and you will have no readers. The social media sphere hates blatant attempts to sell.
• What a blog is a way to demonstrate yours or your company’s expertise in a particular area. It is also a way for current and potential clients and customers to connect with your company. It is a place for them to comment, compliment, debate, and criticize. It is a place for you to respond to all of that.
• Choose an overall theme. This blog focuses on social media, marketing and public relations. My readers know they come to PR 101 to read about those topics. This is important. Every successful blog I have read focuses on a particular area. Readers want to know what to expect when they come to the blog.
• Coming up with things to write about – this is often the toughest thing. It is what usually stops people from doing a blog. Here’s what I did before I started this blog more than two years ago: I wrote out a list of 24 things I felt I knew enough about to sound semi-intelligent about. That kept me going for about four months. Now I do research and follow what’s going on so I always have topics. I also try to have a couple of “evergreen” blogs in the hopper in case I am not able to write a new blog that week.
• A note about length – I read some blogging guides that say your piece should be no longer than 250 or 400 or 500 words. Balderdash. Some of my most read pieces have been over 1,000 words. Write something interesting and compelling and the readers will come.
• Be consistent when you publish. If you decide to post a new blog every Monday, do it. Readers want to know when they can expect to see a new post. Incidentally, I used to post on Mondays and Wednesdays. I moving that to Tuesday and Thursdays because of my work schedule.
• Do your research on the topic you are writing about. Yes a blog is part opinion. But back that opinion up with quotes and citations from your sources. When you do quote someone, link to the site from which the quote came, unless you actually interview them. If you interview them, make that clear. I do both. I think it provides a nice mix.
• It takes time to build a readership – usually at least six months. So be patient and don’t give up.
• To build that readership, you need to post links to your blog on as many sites as possible. I post on Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Delicious, Stumbleon, Friendfeed, Google Reader and Linkedin. I also have a dedicated group of readers who have requested I send them the link via email. In addition, I use Google Friend Connect, which is on my blog site. Those people also get the blog as soon as it is published.
• Which brings up another issue – make sure on your blog has share buttons so your readers can spread the word. I will always be grateful to those people who share my blog with their followers.

I think that advice should get you started. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

I am trying something new, but I need your help to do it. If have a question about social media, public relations, marketing or anything in between, post it as a question. I will answer one question each week. Please give it a try.

So I get an email the other day from a Linkedin connection. He wants me to invest in the next generation Groupon. It’s not going to happen. Why? Well because frankly it wasn’t a particularly creative idea. Creativity is what drives business success.

This is what I said in reply to the request:

“You don’t get rich by doing something somebody has already done. The Groupon space is getting pretty crowded, especially now that Facebook and Google are both jumping in.

“You get wealthy by coming up something entirely new, ala Facebook, Linkedin, or something like that. Each company founder identified an unmet need and filled it. That idea goes back to the founding of the Republic. Look at Edison, Bell, Ford, the Wright Bros., Watson, Jobs, Gates and others. They got there first and built empires.

“Come with up with a completely unique concept. I will be interested then.”

Being unique and creative are two keys to business success. It doesn’t matter if your company has one or 100 competitors. If your product and the way you market it are something new and exciting you will beat your competition like a drum. Actually the product doesn’t have to be that creative. If it a fills a need better than its competitors, you are going to be ahead of those competitors. Add in marketing in a way that attracts and engages your potential customers and you have driven the ball over the fence.

My agency works with established companies of all sizes. . Our clients, no matter the size or age of their company, are entrepreneurial. Their founders saw a need for something, came up with the product to fill that need, and took it to market. They didn’t copy anybody else. Because management has stuck with that, the companies are growing and dominating their competition.

Not wanting to just do what everyone else was doing in Milwaukee was why I decided to found my own agency. A lot of agencies still don’t understand what social media is or how to use it properly. A lot of them have seemingly rejected it. As importantly they also don’t know how to meld social media with traditional marketing and public relations. To ignore any of those three marketing channels seems to me to be the height of folly. It pretty much ensures creativity will be stifled. That’s the key to our success.

Entrepreneur and author Josh Linker drove that point home at Biztimes Milwaukee’s BizTech Conference-Expo last week. He spoke about companies have two choices: be creative or die.

In 1999 Linker founded an Internet copy called ePrize. He saw that while on-line advertising was taking off there was no online promotion company. ePrize is the company that developed all those games, contests and sweepstakes on-line companies offer. It has swamped its competition.

Linker points out in his book “Disciplined Dreaming” that: “Great companies are built on ideas. They discover new and compelling ways to solve problems for customers. They play to win rather than not-to-lost. In fact, we’ve reached a time when playing it safe has become the riskiest move of all. General Motors played it safe all the way to bankruptcy. Maxwell House played it safe as the more daring and creative Starbucks supplanted it as the leader of the coffee industry.”

Risk and creativity are two of the reasons I like social media and marketing in general. There are no guarantees, but the chances of success are much than just sitting on the bench. Think about it.

Clients often ask what it is going to take to successfully market their company or product. Well, to paraphrase that old saw about real estate, the primary rule for a successful marketing campaign is “branding, branding, branding.” In other words, the first thing that has to be done is create an image or identity for whatever is being sold.

That is something that often trips a client up. To someone who has been working at a company, or created a product, the brand is fixed and immutable. After all they reason, they know what they created. That’s well and good for them, but to the ultimate consumer that brand doesn’t exist.

While a product is a physical thing, its brand is not. As a speaker in class I am taking said the other night: “a brand doesn’t exist until it is fixed in a customer’s mind.”

A question I have started asking clients after hearing several speakers make this point is: “why would a customer want to buy your product?” Not why you want them to buy it, but why they should want it?

What a marketing agency has to do is create a consistent message about the product. The message helps a company create its image, its brand. It is that branding that lures a customer into making a purchase.

An important point to this is that after that the initial shot, the message and the image always have to be in sync. If there is any kind of disconnect, consumers will notice and turn to another brand. Companies often destroy their brands when they stray from their core message.

Here are the test questions every marketing person should be asking about their brand messaging: “is it true, is it believable, is it unique?” I didn’t invent that test, but I like it so I am using it. What the marketing plan should is make a product something people want to talk about.

As Milwaukee marketing executive Kevin Brandt said: “if you say something entirely new, entirely different, people will pay money to listen.”

Here’s an example that illustrates the point. I grew up near Troy, N.Y., which when I was young was the home of Arrow shirts. The shirt manufacturer, Cluett Peabody & Company, Inc. was an independent company until the 1980s.

In the early part of the 20^th century, a very strong brand was created around “The Arrow Collar Man.” According to Wikipedia “the Arrow Collar ads were a collaborative production of New York ad agency Calkins and Holden; Cluett, Peabody advertising director Charles Connolly; and commercial illustrator J. C. Leyendecker. Leyendecker’s model was his live-in companion, a Canadian named Charles Beach.

“Hundreds of printed advertisements were produced from 1907 to 1931 featuring the Arrow Collar Man. The fictional Arrow collar man became an icon and by 1920 received fan mail. President Theodore Roosevelt referred to him as a “superb portrait of the common man.” He inspired a Broadway musical Helen of Troy in 1923.” The message kept resonating long after the actual campaign stopped.

The Arrow Collar Man

Skip forward about 35 years. When I was about five or six, my parents bought me my first suit. To go with it, we drove over to Cluett, Peabody’s headquarters in Troy to buy an Arrow shirt from their outlet store. It seems to me they had children’s sizes. That first dress shirt instilled in me a strong love of button-down shirts that continues to this day, but I digress.

That was the first of many trips to Troy for dress shirts. I must have been about 16 or so when I first noticed that Arrow wasn’t the only shirt label being sold at the outlet. Along one wall were shirts with labels that included such names Marshall Fields, Filenes, Woodward & Lothrop, Abraham & Strauss. I knew those were department store names. There were many other such labels.

I asked one of the workers there what the difference was between those shirts and the ones with the Arrow labels. If memory serves, he told he there wasn’t much. Maybe a slightly bigger or smaller collar, or a different shade of blue, but essentially the shirts were the same.

Yet, I couldn’t buy one. I had to have an Arrow shirt. There was something about that label, about that Arrow image, that I wanted and had to have. That brand spoke to me. The idea that I would ever look anything like the idealized Arrow man is laughable. Yet, I would only wear those shirts because they bestowed the image of a self-confident, successful man.

That image created at the beginning of the 20^th Century had carried through to the late 1960s. It made myself and thousands of other men want that shirt because of that brand image.

That’s the definition of brand positioning. A good marketing agency will work hard to establish a brand such as the Arrow shirt. Next week I will take you behind the curtains to show how its done. Although be warned, creating a brand is more of an art than a science.