When playing chess, strategy is the key to winning. It's no different when it comes to planning public relations for your business.

Just as Shira Levine writes in American Express Open‘s blog post on why you need strategic public relations, we’ve long championed knowing what you want to happen when planning your public relations campaign. Know your brand. Stay current. All your public relations must be aligned with a carefully planned business goal.

Levine’s six points to guide you in the development of a strategic pr campaign bear repeating:  (I’ve added my thoughts in blue beneath her thoughts.)

1. Be message-driven. Have goals and stick to communicating the most important message of your brand. Focus on driving mind share.

To which I add, know your message! Take time to comprehend your brand and don’t begin promoting your company just because you are “open.”

2. Consider geographic components. If the product is locally focused and distributed in specific places, don’t waste coverage in places where the product or service can’t be bought. Win the markets you have!

While it’s nice to get kudos from a national magazine, if you aren’t selling a product that is available across the country or on your website, you will not be growing your business. And isn’t that the goal?

3. Have a call to action. Your editorial should have a call to action for the consumer; for example, to visit your website or store. Focus on communicating the message of what exactly you want your consumer to do.

When developing a strategic campaign, it’s great to tie your publicity to an event, contest or limited time frame.

4. Understand what type of media you want and need for your message.Ten years ago the media landscape was much different. How you target print vs. electronic media is different. Weekly and daily publications operate differently.

“Recognize unconventional target audiences,” says Olguin. “That’s how we deal with our client: New Castle Brown Ale. For that client, a blogger or blog site like Thrillist works better strategically than USA Today.”

Recognize that media aren’t targets! You want to cultivate relationships, not just shoot news to them. Don’t let your press release become like a message in a bottle, cast out there just to see where it washes up.

5. Be time-driven. Have something in your PR campaign to tie the news back to. It could be a news peg, a hook, something newsworthy, etc. The launch of a product is always good. A new message for the marketplace can work. Just make sure it coincides with your business objective.

Just remember, public relations is like spring! It’s about news.

6. Recognize the power of the blogosphere. “Peer-to-peer communication is more valuable than category experts,” says Olguin “Tripadvisor and Yelp, for example, are incredibly important, but so is a blogger in Syracuse who says a restaurant is cool. So is Jason Chen from Gizmodo. Vertically-oriented blog writers live and breathe their category. Even if they aren’t trained on their topics they are super influential with the leverage they have over their followers. They can bring multiple placements, are easy to find, and you don’t have to spend much money to have a measurable impact.”

Blogs are a powerful and reach those who make purchasing decisions.

Know your brand. Know your message. Know your audience. Then strategically plan your public relations campaign.

Public speaking is proven, time-tested way to position your company as a knowledgeable, credible authority in your business segment or industry. It is one of the public relations tactics that continues to provide great return on your time-investment.

Develop a presentation

It is important to develop your talk or presentation on topics of interest to the audience. Your talk must not be an advertisement for your company. It must always be a way to share knowledge and leave the attendees more knowledgeable than when they arrived.

Get over your fear

Public speaking is a fearful thing for many, but there are many ways to lessen your fear. Start small and offer to contribute to meetings you attend. Practice speaking out when you are comfortable or join Toastmasters.

10 Tips to Gain Public Speaking Opportunities

1. Develop one or two talks of no more than 20 minutes length on current topics that are important to the types of buyers your firm serves.
2. Practice your presentation with colleagues, employees or friends. Ask them what they learned from your presentation and adjust your presentation so that your audience takes away what you intend that they take away.
3. Write a summary of your talk outlining your topic, what the attendees will learn or what benefits they will gain, the desired audience size and type, resources you provide (such as books, or take-away-notes), and facility / audio visual needs.
4. Make a list of the organizations, clubs and associations that have members who may benefit from the information you have to share.
5. Learn who books or plans programs and speakers for each of the groups.
6. Establish a relationship with these planners either by contacting them directly or asking a colleague or member of the group to introduce you.
7. Attend a meeting of the group, if meetings are open, or ask a colleague to invite you as a guest.
8. After gaining familiarity with the group and their normal procedures, adjust your summary to fit the group and send it to the program chair person with your request to be considered as a speaker, suggesting how you feel your presentation may be of benefit to the attendees.
9. Continually be aware of new groups and organizations and add them to your list.
10. Continue to attend association, organization and group meetings as possible, being aware of trends that effect members of the group so that you may be aware of new opportunities to speak.

You’re the winner!

One of the most beloved of all time is the contest. Some contests are sweepstakes where a winner is selected at random after you “enter” a pool of qualified customers. The most famous of these is Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. Others are simple fishbowl lotteries of all entrants, such as the drawing of a business card at your local business networking group meeting. Still others are contests where entrants must comply with a set of rules. The most famous one of these that comes to mind is the Pillsbury Bake Off.

Marketing contests for small businesses

While these examples are associated with large corporations, there are many ways small businesses can implement these same concepts.

Charleston Magazine's Get Cooking Charleston contest requires entrants to use ingredients from Charleston

In Charleston for example, our local magazine just announced their Get Cooking Charleston! competition, a recipe contest and cook-off. The qualifications require all entrants to use ingredients that are either historically or geographically tied to Charleston. One of the sponsors is Piggly Wiggly Carolina whose marketing always makes the connection to Charleston’s culture and way of life. It’s smart of them to sponsor this competition. It supports their brand and positioning in the market. Same for Charleston Magazine.

Contest must be aligned with products & positioning

Your small business can do this too. If you are the maker of a product such as hand painted note cards hold an old fashioned letter writing contest. Perhaps you are a bar, you could hold a competition for the next new menu item or specialty cocktail.

Partnerships extend your reach

When you set up your contest, seek partners who may extend your reach into a new demographic, but perhaps have not yet reached. The classic example is a restaurant who wishes to reach wine aficionados and partners with a local or regional winery. You can share expenses, accomplish a common goal and cross market to each others lists.

Your company’s vendors can be your contest co-sponsors and larger vendors often have partnership marketing dollars that they can share with your small business. Homebuilders do this with their vendors quite frequently.

Enter rather than sponsor

However, you don’t have to hold the competition, you can enter a competition! The Get Cooking Charleston competition is a wonderful opportunity for businesses in the food and beverage industry segment.  Want to enter? Begin to look for local, regional and national competitions. You can enter them as an individual or as a representative of your business as Charleston entrepreneur Margaret Bjork of Private Eyes Undies did when she entered the “I am Free Enterprise” contest or just as Charleston singer Amanda L. did when she entered the Folger’s jingle contest.

Enter to win

If you enter a contest, enter to win; advice offered by internationally renowned opera singer Shirley Verrett during an opera master class. She said, “Don’t just try, bring your very best! Believe you’ll win and do everything you can to be the winner.” Do your business and your self proud.

And remember the advice of Thomas Jefferson:  “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

Most all of us have tips and tricks that we use to manage our business. No doubt you also have apps that you use and which allow you to manage your business more efficiently.  I have found a few great apps that I cannot live without and which help me manage my business.

These five applications have allowed me to boost my productivity.

KeePass

We all have a kadjillion usernames and passwords. Who can keep track of them all? Don’t put them in a spreadsheet or Word doc. Keep them in an encrypted database. KeePass, an OpenSource password management application,  is great for keeping me organized. It allows my business partner and me to sort, enter, retrieve and manage passwords from a simple interface. And when combined with DropBox, we can have our encrypted password files available whenever/wherever we log on with one of our computers.

Jott

I don’t know about you, but when I’m driving, I find that I think of all kinds of things I have to do. Instead of trying to hold all that in my mind, I Jott myself. Jott is a web based application that transcribes voice messages to text and then e-mails them and text messages them to the recipient.  I subscribe to Jott and when I call, the app takes all my notes to myself or others, and e-mails them to me and to the intended recipient. Jott interfaces with Microsoft Outlook and allows me to make appointments, tasks and draft e-mails. It interfaces with lots of other apps too. Jott is great for helping me track my mileage for business. I just Jott the beginning and ending odometer reading, and then add to my spreadsheet.

Skype

If you don’t Skype you should. We did away with our landlines and got Skype numbers for our business. We can call all over the continent for a very low flat-price. In addition, Skype makes conference calls a breeze. Just create a conference call group, add all the member’s numbers and click to call! Everyone on the line at one time in one place. Not only are conference calls easier, but virtual face to face meetings are too. And I can share my desktop as well, oh, and there’s chat function too.

Google Voice

I love my Google Voice! If I listed all the attributes of this wonderful app, you’d never read about anything else. So, I’ll list what is best to me. I can’t live without call forwarding and voice to text transcription that forwards the text message to my phone. Then there’s the Chrome Google Voice extension that allows me to call any number displayed on a website with the app which rings my designated number then connects me to my called number. It’s just like having a virtual assistant. Then there’s the Google Voice widget for my website which allows anyone to call me just by clicking!  And the other great perk of Google Voice is the ability to call back a number from the Google Voice mailbox and return to the mail box to manage/listen to more messages. It’s all very simple and complex–and all incredible!

Google Docs

Cloud apps are the best. I can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and share them right from the same screen with co-creators or editors. I can publish them to the web as pages with unique URLs too which makes the sharing of press releases easy. I can also easily add images, change the HTML or CSS attributes of any item.

What are your 5?

There are so many other apps that I’ve used to enhance the day-to-day management of my business. But, I’d love to know which ones you find indispensable!

I’ve recently “moved houses” as our British friends say. In doing so, I’ve touched every piece of stuff that I own and have come to the conclusion that there is too much of it. The other realization that crystallized during this process is that some of the stuff should have been ditched long ago. Some items that I’d been keeping for sentimental reasons no longer have value, or function as they should, so they have been purged or donated to others who can use them.

It occurs to me that it’s the same with a company’s marketing, public relations and advertising. Every so often, we need to evaluate  to determine if the things we’ve kept have any use, purpose or even if they are functioning for our firm.

5 Steps to Stay Current

So here are my recommendations:

1. Annually review your advertising placements and determine which ones have actually served your firm. For example, are you still using the printed Yellow Pages? If so, determine how many new customers you received from this expense.
2. Annually review your website for functionality. Digital technology changes so fast and so often that a website designed and coded 3 years ago may now be out of date functionally.
3. Monthly (or weekly) review your website for updated content. Search engines regularly scan websites and index fresh content. As a matter of fact, they have a preference for fresh content. Blogging, project photos, recent honors and awards, client testimonials and reviews are all ways to add freshness to your site.
4. Every 5 years review your branding. Your branding should be something that will be relevant for many years so while you may not need rebranding it may need freshening up. In the last few years, brands such as Wal-Mart and ATT have revised their identities and messaging to be more contemporary. Your firm should do the same.
5. Annually review your financial allocations for marketing, public relations and promotions. If the competitive space in which your company performs is crowded, you may need to step up your game in order to stand out. You might do this by adding new activities, placements, or marketing personnel. You may not need to add anything to your budget; you may just need to shift your priorities. But, you won’t know until you evaluate.

Be proactive for better results

If you undertake these five items, you can be sure you won’t be in the position that I was when I moved and can be assured that your marketing communications will be more current.

photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons image from ARTS

She took note of my use of subheads and the way images were being displayed in the posts and said she’d like to “dress up her posts a bit.” Here are the things that I suggested to her.

Use subheads like this

First, using subheads related to the following paragraph is a tidy way to eliminate long blocks of unbroken copy. Second, for the reader with little time, subheads allow for quick scanning of pages as well. Third, you can make them keyword rich and support your SEO goals.

Use images to add impact

There are many sources of images. A few that I’ve used are royalty free stock sites such as iStock and Stock.XCHNG. Another good source of images for blogs is flickr creative commons attribution license area. A note:  There are restrictions on the usage of all these sites’ images. You must adhere to the terms of use for each site and each work.

I like to use image management extensions that provide more flexibility in your blog posts. In our WordPress based blogs and websites created for our clients, we use the NextGEN gallery tools. You can display a group of images as thumbnails, as a slide show or as an image gallery. While the gallery options in WordPress have improved, they are still not optimal. NextGEN is very easy to manage and use and really dresses up your blog posts.

Other tips on writing better blog posts

Several posts of recent have offered tips and thoughts on how to create compelling and punchy content. HubSpot’s blog post addresses ways to create posts that are designed to support your SEO and Internet Marketing goals. Robert Holland on Ragan offers his tips to make blog posts sticky.

To paraphrase what my high schools friends would say to me in 1973, “write on.”

Photo credit: flickr creative commons laffy4k

The continuing decline in newspaper circulation numbers is  reported today.

In my opinion, this trend confirms the manner in which people are consuming news these days. Those less than 60 years of age are more frequently getting news online; often almost instantaneously through Twitter, RSS feeds and online readers. The rising use of mobile devices will continue to drive this trend.

News reporters and news outlets are on Twitter in greater numbers. There they share their stories and promote their outlets. So rather than as days of old, readers are finding their news digitally, causing the slide in circulation.

Make sure your public relations efforts targeted to those less than 60 years of age are sent in mediums that are being consumed by digital users.

Insight gained from the State of the News Media is somewhat grim; so grim that Gawker proclaimed in their headline, “There Is Literally No Way to Make Money Selling News.” Advertising has fallen in every sector except cable news ads where it barely eked out growth. All news delivery vehicles are under severe pressure. On the whole, consumers don’t wish to pay for content.

However, there are bright spots such as the growth of community supported journalism which blends journalistic standards and community sourced news such as what we see in Charleston, SC with TheDigitel.com. But community supported journalism sites lack the deep pockets of traditional news sites and are more fragile.

Total U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation

Weekday and Sunday Editions, 1990-2008

Newspapers aren't the only vehicle will fewer consumers

What does this mean to the practice of public relations?

It means that fewer consumers are watching television news or getting their news from traditional news media such as the daily newspaper or Newsweek magazine. And that news rooms of all types are not well staffed and are frequently sharing news gathering staff with either their local competitors, the local daily newspaper or radio. Ironically, when examining online news websites’ traffic loyalty, frequency, depth of visit and time on site, the longest visits came from visitors to conservative news websites.

Top 20 Websites in 2009

It’s imperative to:

• Create integrated campaigns because audiences haven’t died in traditional media, they are just shrinking at a large rate.
• Do more work to provide all the content a news purveyor needs. This means video clips, stills, fact sheets, sources, quotes.
• Go direct to consumers with Social Media.
• When we seek to place stories; use news aggregator sites to reach a broad group of consumers.
• We must take the role of producing authoritative content in order to get our client’s stories where the consumer is attentive.

We must think of the most direct path to the eyes and ears of our customer’s consumers and place content where they will interact and engage with it.

More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007…

A study by Babson College and Baruch College found that Americans age 55 and above started 18.9 percent of all businesses created in 2008, compared with 10 percent in 2001. The 55-and-overs are playing a larger role in entrepreneurship partly because the number of Americans in that age category is rising rapidly. “

Remembering the different communication styles of each cohort is critical to successful communication. Boomers starting their own businesses may muddy the water, adopting the styles of Gen Y as needed. Pew Research has a very in-depth article comparing generational communications styles and self identifying traits that helps provide insight into how to reach each cohort.

Segment your message and deliver it in the channel to which your customers are most attentive.

Risk management and prior planning allow you to weather a business crisis.

As human beings we my not accept the fact that unexpected things happen. In our personal lives, we manage our risks by taking good care of our physical selves, purchasing insurance for our health, our homes, our cars and our high value items. We even undertake financial planning.

When it comes to your business do you pro-actively manage your risks? If we are prudent we have a line of credit to help even out cash flow issues. We may have a team who offers redundant support so that if one person is out, another can pick up the pieces and continue the work flow. We may even have liability insurance.

However, do you have risk management or crisis management plans in place for your business? If you are a restaurant owner, do you know how you’d react if a patron contracted serious food poisoning and your restaurant was the source? If you are a limousine driver and one of your vehicles was involved in an unfortunate accident, how would you respond? Or if you had an employee who embezzled money from you; how would you mitigate the public’s perception that you should have been more knowledgeable about what was happening in your business?

As the people at Sea World have learned, tragic things happen to businesses. How you respond to the crisis can dictate how you will survive the consequences of the tragedy. Even if the negative event is not a life-ending, how will you mitigate or respond to the public’s perceptions of your firm?

Professional public relations practitioners are skilled in analyzing the types of situations you may encounter and helping you create an outline of how you will respond. Don’t wait until you have a tragedy to plan your response. Outline your response now so you won’t have to guess at your reactions; you will instead be prepared.