Five Tips for B2B Startups Considering PR and Social Media

I was recently asked for five tips for B2B startups considering PR and social media. I came up with these five somewhat random tips, and will come up with more next month. This is not meant to be comprehensive but they are intended to help be specific to the process of PR and social media.

Let me know what you think.

1.      If your startup has never engaged in PR before, ask the following questions:

·        Are you ready? We’ve had some clients who thought they were ready to launch but weren’t. It can take time to actually be ready – but you don’t necessarily need a finalized product or service. You do need to have strong positioning and compelling messages, a clear understanding of what differentiates your business from the competition. This can be a challenge since startups often pivot their business model until they get traction.

·        Who will be coordinating the PR program? Will it be the founder, a marketing executive, an office manager, or someone else? And will that person have the time and resources? We’ve worked with people at those levels, and have made it work but it can be difficult if PR is just another plate they need to keep spinning.

·        Do you need ongoing PR or is project-based a better fit? From an agency perspective, an ongoing PR campaign is better – and not just from a cash flow perspective but because it enables long-term strategies -- but that may not be ideal for cash-stretched startups with not a lot of news. Talk to your prospective agency; if they aren’t interested in project work until your startup has established a regular flow of news, they might not be the right agency for you.

2.      Are you goals realistic? There are two levels to this:

·        Are you realistic in terms of your story, resources, customers, etc.? You may have a great product and a great proof of concept, but if you don’t have a paying customer, some media won’t be able to cover you. (This is particularly true in B2B markets.) We’ve also been told by clients that they want to launch within two months but when we get in, we find they’re not ready (see #1, above).

·        Are you realistic in terms of your goals based on your budgets and internal resources? Recently a prospective customer with the related businesses asked us to 1) Pitch radio and podcast interviews for both businesses 2) Get bloggers to write about them; 3) Identify speaking opportunities; 4) Provide content to external sites that will create back links; and 5) Maximize earned media. All these goals were reasonable – except his budget had only enough in it to pursue only one of these goals, not all five of them.

·        Are you realistic in terms of outcomes? You may have a great announcement but the media and those on social media may not be able to write about it. A reporter once turned down a story about a $30 investment round because he had declined to cover a larger round that had been announced the week before.

3.      Can you be a thought leader? To be successful and to engage with current and prospective customers on social media, you need to continually develop new content on topics relevant to your customers. You can use these pieces to show that you understand your customers’ pain points and can help them address them. These thought leadership pieces don’t have to be white papers and case studies – they can be 300-word articles. But it is important to make sure these pieces are useful and not all about you.

4.      Even if you don’t have the budget yet, plan for marketing integration. That means, make sure whoever is writing your thought leadership content also knows what your keywords are. Make sure your sales keeps you informed about key trends affecting your customers as well as customer wins and milestones – those are things that can be turned into articles and press releases. Make sure whoever is handling your social media is aware of what everyone else is doing – they can post content about your latest article or case study, about your trade show booth or speaking opportunity or sales promotion. Even at small startups, it’s interesting how many of those activities are kept in separate in a silo. But you can generate much more traction if you leverage all the sales and marketing efforts your undertaking. And, if you’re not investing in all these tactics yet, that’s okay; just keep them in mind for when you do.

5.      When focusing on social media, keep in mind: clients don’t like to be marketed to. So make sure only one in 10 posts is a true marketing post – the rest can be about your industry, your region, but especially about your clients pain points as well as about your company’s personality and values. More than ever, people want to do business with companies they like, and social media is a great way to create and enhance your company’s personality.

Charlie Sheen Makes the Case for Strong PR Support. Inadvertently.

If you've been living on Mars, you may have overlooked the media blitz of your fellow Martian now living on Earth. Perhaps you've been focusing instead on news of lesser importance, like figuring the correct spelling of Libyan dictator Moammer or Muammar Gadhafi, Gaddafi, Qaddafi, Khadafy, or Khadafi; frankly, I prefer to call him Colonel Mo.)

For the rest of us, it's been hard to avoid the real-time train wreck that is Charlie Sheen.  (You've seen or read about them so I'm not going to include the ton of links here.)

I've been talking about the role of public relations in the age of social media quite a bit since a panel I moderated in Oct., including with a reporter and with students at a local university, where I guest lectured earlier this week. And the reason I broke the Charlie Sheen-free-zone I had tried to establish is because I
think Sheen's rants support the case that publicists still play an important role in the lives of their clients, whether an actor or an organization.

Here are three things that Sheen's meltdown can teach us:

1. You may not notice a publicist's behind-the-scenes work when things are going well, but you certainly can see the impact when there's no guidance from a PR professional. A strong publicist is important to provide objective counsel on the types of program on which to appear and the tenor and nature of the comments one should consider making during those appearances.  Clearly, that's not been happening here, leading to Sheen's publicist quitting, saying he was "unable to work effectively” with Sheen -- something of an understatement.  Lest you think it's only an issue with Sheen, remember what Tom Cruise's appearances were like after he replaced his publicist with his sister.
2. You can lose good will and reputation quickly.  For nearly a decade, Sheen has been the lead actor in TV's top-rated comedy, but in a matter of a week, Sheen has gone from delivering punch lines to being the punch line.
3. It can take a long time to repair your reputation.  Just ask Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise.  At this point, Cruise has taken steps to rebuild his reputation, but he had been the top box office star for years, but that changed after he performed his own stunts on Oprah's couch.  Meanwhile, as for Gibson, last night Letterman ran a segment that inter cut lines from Gibson's taped phone calls with Sheen's off-the-wall recent interviews.
4. You can never underestimate the public's interest in a celebrity meltdown. Sheen's story is ubiquitous; it takes more effort to avoid it than to read, see, hear, talk or tweet about it. You might not realize it but there's actually a lot of other news -- some of it actually important with significant implications for us as a country -- being crowded out by Sheen's meltdown. For example, the state of the Arab world and their push against dictators; just because Mubarak has stepped down doesn't mean story's over.  But it's now harder to find news about Egypt. There's the possible budget showdown that, not surprisingly, has been postponed, along with the protests in Wisconsin. But Sheen, followed today by the news of the firing of Dior designer John Galliano, seem to fascinate people. You can't ask why do people care; they just do.
5. You can't just wing it, you need a good story to tell, even if you've got a movie to plug. This lesson comes from an appearance last night of actress Amanda Seyfried on the Late Show with David Letterman.  Letterman's never been a great interviewer but last night, Seyfried's appearance came off as flat and unfunny. The lines she kept expecting to pay off with laughs never hit.  What's perhaps interesting is that she had previously appeared on the Late Show just a few weeks earlier, and had done a much better job.  (In searching for Seyfried & Letterman, her prior appearance showed up first; the brief segment, below, was the comic highlight but doesn't do much for her image.).  Last night, they didn't have much to talk about, not even her upcoming movie.  The lesson this teaches is that you always need a plan and key messages for what you want to say. Even stars need to think ahead for their goal for any media appearance, and shaping that story is something a good publicist should do.

I know that entertainment PR is a specialized niche, but the lessons of Sheen's meltdown are relevant to other parts of the PR world. And it helps make the case for getting good PR support ahead of time. Cleaning up after a disaster is always more complicated slogging than addressing issues before they turn into a crisis.

What is PR in the Age of Social Media?

One of the challenges facing the public relations industry is that the general public does not seem to have a clear idea of what we do.

They might think PR is just about throwing events or parties -- like The Spin Crowd or Samantha on "Sex and the City."

Or they might think it's about trying to "spin" the facts, as was the case with several major crises last year (such as BP's oil spill).

But based on anecdotal experience from many years in the business, while the general public understands what advertising is all about, they don't have a strong grasp of PR.

That's why, I think, people seem to think they don't need PR in the age of social media.  Interestingly, at a panel I moderated late last year, several journalists thought PR could be on its death throes.  They seemed a bit gleeful about it, too.  As if traditional journalism isn't go through the same challenges.

Dave Folkens at CommUnity Business wrote a blog post last year, "Five Ideas to Repair the Credibility of PR," that contains some good ideas about what the PR industry should do.  (Interestingly, more than 15 years ago, the industry made similar points about its failure to communicate the value of PR; I guess we have not made any progress.)

I think it's more important than ever to make the case for PR because we can help organizations engage with key public via social media channels. 

So, to get back to the headline for this post.  Social media can be used to announce news (instead of press releases) and to engage with reporters and customers.  But PR can help organizations to communicate via social media and a range of other channels.

A lot of companies now use social media as a customer service function -- without eliminating their call centers or email support.  The same should be true for PR.

And then the PR industry needs to do a better job of communicating the value we bring and do a better job of engaging with our key audiences.

Fast Company & 8 Tips on the Future of Marketing

Ok, so this is not going to be a Valentine's Day post.

The current issue of Fast Company features a compelling article, "The Future of Advertising" by Danielle Sacks that raises some key points for all marketing-related agencies, including PR:

• Marketing can't just be entertaining. It must be useful.
• Marketing can no longer be just glossy concepts perfected before going to the client to approve.
• Digital is incremental, experimental, continually optimized, in perpetual beta.
• Digital will change how you make money, staff projects, price things.
• Digital isn't just one channel -- it's a medium that blooms thousands of other mediums, leading to fragmented audiences via fragmented access points (search, geotagging, iPad, mobile apps, and social networks.
• While there has never been more to reach consumers, it's never been more ways to connect.
• Creating more work for less money -- which means that agencies of all sorts are paying the know ho of being in an industry that doesn't know to protect its own interests, according to Jean Marie Dru, Chair of TBWA.
• The rules will keep changing.
  

Sacks cites an article Dru wrote in Advertising Age, "Endless Pressure on Price Traps Agencies, Clients in Death Spiral," which is also worth reading.

What will the future of marketing be in 2011? It's clear that marketing will continue to evolve, and quickly. We think it's clear that companies can no longer sit on the sidelines of social media as a fad. For more of what we think, check back soon for our annual list of trends.

Six Reasons PR is Not Dead...Yet

There are a lot of people who like to predict the death of things.

Long after TV was supposed to kill off radio (as depicted in "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first video aired by MTV), pundits have been declaring the deaths of LPs (that's what came before CDs for those born after 1982), VHS and VCRs (replaced by DVDs), DVDs (replaced by blu-ray), landlines (replaced by cellphones), incandescent light bulbs (to be replaced by compact fluorescent to be replaced by LEDs).

I know I left off fax machines, but most people seem to have forgotten about faxes.

What's interesting is that not all those technologies have died as predicted. But that hasn't stopped people from continuing to make similar predictions about other things.

Like PR, for example.

At a panel on PR and social media that I moderated for the New England Venture Network (which we cosponsored) as part of BREW Boston (Boston Regional Entrepreneurs Week), the question of PR's death came up right away.

In fact, the question came up earlier that day on Twitter as people discussed that night's panel.

Half the panel -- comprised of blogger Paul Gillin, Xconomy's Greg Huang, BBJ/Mass High Tech's Galen Moore, and Fortune.com's Dan Primack -- came prepared to say that PR is dead.

I think that PR as it was conducted in "The Sweet Smell of Success" circa 1957 is dead. And PR the way it was conducted 15 years ago or even 10 years ago, is, if not dead, certainly not doing well.

But PR as it can be practiced today is not dead. It has evolved, however, just as advertising and journalism have evolved.

In fact, I think that PR, advertising and journalism are all in the boat, and that we all need to figure out new ways of operating.

Here are some reasons why PR is not dead:

1. Despite the hype, a lot of companies still are not fully engaged on social media. For those companies, especially, PR is still an effective way to communicate their story.
   
2. The media is certainly evolving, but it's still important to work with them. PR still handles this best.
   
3. The press release continues to be a useful tool, the panel declared. Even if it is no longer the most important component for making announcements, it's still part of the announcement process.
4. Advertising can still be very expensive, and not just for startups. Public relations can be a much more cost-effective way to market a company. Paul Alexander at Liberty Mutual recently told the Ad Club of Boston that PR is great, cost-effective resource to handle social media.
   
5. Advertising functions and agencies can position a company and find key differentiators, but they don't necessarily know how to work with editorial, reporters, etc. (For that matter, we wouldn't know how to create and place ads.)
6. As this year saw, thanks to BP, Toyota, H-P, poor communications can make crisis communications worse. PR can be best positioned to plan for and execute communications during a crisis.

On the other hand, the sole reason that PR is dead is because of the rise of social media.

Let me know if you think I left out a reason why PR is not dead. Or if there are more reasons why PR is dead.

Here are some other articles that discuss whether or not PR is dead:

• Is PR Dead? and The Role of PR Firms in Social Media and Inbound Marketing by HubSpot
• Is PR Relevant? by InkSpot
• How to Bootstrap Your Public Relations by Inc. Magazine
  

Should Publicists Be Reported On in News Stories

A recent exchange in the New York Times touched on the role of publicists in the journalism process, following a New York Times Magazine profile of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. that mentioned his publicist (though not by name) nearly a dozen times in the article.

I can't remember a publicist getting so much mention in any celebrity profile before. The unnamed publicist was part of a key and controlling theme in the profile.

And that sparked the issue: "A strong ethical argument can be made that the reader should be made aware of the circumstances under which an interview was conducted. Isn’t the reader entitled to be aware of these conditions?" asked Larry Bloomstein, a reader from Dix Hills, NY.

The response from the Times was also interesting. According to Philip B. Corbett, standards editor:

"There are no clear-cut rules for when such interactions (by a publicist) should be noted in a story. My rule of thumb would be simple: If the information would significantly inform the reader’s understanding of the story, we should probably include it. The same goes for other details of how an interview takes place.

The Times' Public Editor or ombudsman, Arthuer S. Brisbane went on to suggest that:

"Publicists and other handlers should be more visible to readers, and perhaps not only to enhance readers’ understanding of a story. Some readers want to know when a third party is actively working to obtain or shape coverage for a news subject. Unfortunately, this activity takes place largely out of the view of readers. I believe that news organizations, including The Times, need to be more transparent and let readers see behind the scenes. The penalty for failing to do so is to invite suspicion that coverage can be manipulated."

We live and do business in an age of transparency, but would reporting on how publicists arrange interviews be useful information for readers or would that information serve as a distraction to the larger story?

Check out the entire exchange here.

L.A. Kings Hires Its Own Reporter -- An idea for the rest of us?

Increasingly, professional sports teams are hiring their own reporters, rather than rely on their local papers.

Check out: "As Coverage Wanes, Los Angeles Kings Hire Own Reporter." Just as with social media, the new Kings reporter (who gets a bump in pay and perhaps better long-term job stability) Rich Hammond contends that fans will know the difference between reporting and public relations.

In other words, it comes down to credibility.

But if there's not much coverage elsewhere, fans won't really have much of an alternative to either, and may not be able to tell the difference.

It's not just sports teams, either. Check out: "ESPN’s Boston Site and Patriots Line Up on the Same Side of the Ball."

So the question: should PR functions hire their own reporter to generate coverage? In some cases, that could make sense, such as several nonprofit research institutes I'm familiar with -- that have lots of news about studies and programs they conduct. That could be worthwhile.

For the rest, especially B2B companies, that might be overkill. Though they could solve the perennial need that companies have: to promote customers who won't speak for attribution.

Then again, the credibility arises. I bet more companies might consider working with now-freelancing trade reporters. The question: who will blink first at the sign of negative news by a hired journalist: the journalist or the company itself.

What do you think?

Would Adverting Agencies, Spending Their Own Money, Buy Ads or Engage in PR?

When it comes to spending their own money, advertising executives may choose not to advertise because that's too costly. Instead, according to a panel discussion, they may choose product placement, sponsorship, and digital PR.

In a panel discussion of "New Idea Agencies" that appears in the July/August issue of Fast Company, Carl Johnson, cofounder of Anomaly, said of marketing their own brands, "One of the most amusing things is, of course, we haven't bought a single ad in support of any of our brands. Not one... Why would we? You can do so much if you know what you're doing with product placement, sponsorship, digital PR. It's that whole 'I haven't got any money, so I'll have to think.' It makes you much better at grinding out media without paying."

That's a wonderful tribute to the power of PR. Check out the entire article, "More Creative Shops Are Commercializing Their Own Product Lines: With major advertisers cutting costs, creative shops are increasingly commercializing their own product ideas."

AIG's PR Crisis: Four Agencies Still Not Making Headway

I know that most blogs and people I talk to on Twitter have written off AIG and its ability to salvage its image.

I wrote Five PR Steps AIG Should Take anyway because the company is not going away yet. I've witnessed two firms -- a small family business and a mid-size law firm -- as they tried to wind down business, and it took years for it to happen. And compared to AIG, they were relatively simple businesses.

Since AIG is going to be around in one form or another, I believe its management will need to engage a PR firm to help it communicate to Congress and taxpayers as well as the usual stakeholders.

Turns out, according to a BreakingNews.com article, Dizzying PR binge, AIG has hired four PR agencies:

• Kekst & Company, handling its asset sales
  
• Sard Verbinnen, handling IR
  
• Hill & Knowlton, focusing on inside the Beltway
  
• Burson-Marsteller, focusing on inside the Beltway

I assume H&K and B-M are focusing on lobbying, but they probably need to do more in communicating with the rest of us.

So, like it or not, AIG is working to improve its image. For more on some of what AIG's PR machine is doing, check out TalkingPointsMemo's AIG's PR Blitz.

It will be interesting to see how effective they are.

Five PR Steps AIG Should Take

There's been some discussions online and on Twitter about whether some companies are beyond the help of PR.

Mostly, the discussion centers on AIG.

If they don't change how they operate, then I agree: AIG is beyond the help of PR.

But I don't think that has to be the case.

Pre-crisis, AIG needed to focus on investor relations, not consumer PR because it does not sell to consumers. That has changed. As taxpayers, we now own 80% of AIG, having contributed more than $170 billion. AIG still needs IR, but it needs to reach out to the rest of us, too.

Here are five PR steps AIG needs to consider:

1. Apologize for mistakes made. Make it sincere, make sure people have a chance to hear it. It better be sincere because the public can tell when it's not. Act as if your jobs depend on it -- because the taxpayers and the country need you to get this right.
   
2. Explain the steps they're taking to get on solid footing. The taxpayers have committed at least $170 billion. Depending on whether you prefer the government cliche -- sooner or later that will add up to real money -- or the advertising spend cliche -- I know I waste 50% of my media buy, I just can't figure out which 50% -- AIG needs to clearly explain how it is using taxpayer money to get on solid footing. JetBlue pubslihed it passenger bill of rights, explaining the steps it would take; AIG needs to publish something similar, something easy to understand. This is complicated stuff, just check out part of the current explanation: "The facility carried a rate of LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate – a widely used benchmark used to set short-term interest rates) plus 8.5%, a commitment fee of 2% on the loan principal and a fee on the undrawn portion of 8.5%." Meanwhile, the document that includes "AIG’s Plans Going Forward" could include some specific bulleted points to make it easy to understand what the company is doing.
3. Recognize that the culture of million-dollar bonuses and life pre-crisis has changed. They need to start by rescinding the bonuses. But they need to go further, and make significant changes to how the company and its employees interact with the public. Goldman Sachs employees now visiting New York City have to stay at Embassy Suites, not the Ritz, both to save money and because it owns Embassy Suites. Employees are grumbling about the change, but it's the right thing to do. In fact, AIG needs to take a hard look at the way it operates, from catered lunches to offsite golf boondogles and ask themselves, "Would I like news of this to be on the front pages of the New York Times?" Or, worse, "Would I like to see this as a segment on the Daily Show?"
   
4. Make sure PR counsel has a seat at the table, and listen to them. If they say a move or decision or event would look bad if made public -- listen to them. Realize you're operating under crisis conditions, and your PR should reflect that. Yes, that can be an expensive way to conduct a PR program, but it may help avoid significant problems. After all, taxpayers who feel wronged are more outspoken than shareholders. Taxpayers will complain, loudly and often, to politicians. And that won't help down the road, when AIG needs more money.
   
5. Continue to provide status updates on the progress AIG is making, be accessible, and engage by offering ways for the public to provide feedback. The image right now is a company run amock. AIG's senior management needs to continue to demonstrate that it is getting its house in order. That means being transparent. That means being accountable. That means making significant changes to "that's the way we always did things." By the way, AIG does have a web page devoted to informing the public; it's called AIG Moving Forward, and it's available from a button off the home page. The last time the page seemed to have been updated was March 2 -- that's more than two weeks ago -- with one link from March 14. It needs to be updated on a daily basis. It needs to have its CEO Ed Liddy regularly provide a video update on its site. And AIG Moving Forward needs to make it easier for people to comment and provide feedback. Overall, the site didn't look very friendly or engaging.
   

There are more specific steps AIG should consider -- namely measure stakeholders' attitudes, establish benchmarks, develop a stakeholder communications strategy. But that would require AIG to want to engage the American people. So far, the company has not sought to engage us. It has taken our money but shown little desire to be accountable or to act as if it finally recognizes that the new normal means the old way of doing business no longer works.

Wal-Mart selects five PR agencies

A big trend in PR among clients, a few years back, was to consolidate the number of agencies to boost efficiencies. IBM Software, which had multiple agencies operating in the US, led the consolidation trend about a decade ago.

Now, signaling a change in direction, Wal-Mart has decided to enlist five agencies, instead of one, to get best of breed capabilities. Apparently, they found that so-called efficiencies came at a price in terms of effectiveness.

If other companies follow Wal-Mart's lead, that could bode well for smaller agencies.

WSJ Article Serves as Reminder: Keep Confidential Information Confidential

For all of us in PR, the headline says it all: "Husband of Partner in Financial-PR Firm Stole Information on Mergers."