Understanding whether or not your business needs to be using social media is a critical component in the development of a strategic marketing and public relations plan. To make this decision, you need to understand who your customers are by segment and then comprehend where they place their attention and how or if they use social media.

Do they use SM?

Not every business’s customers are using social media or are spending the majority of their time there. As an example, I don’t believe a wholesale lumber yard’s customers (who are general contractors and homebuilders) are spending time engaged in social media. But research can tell you whether or not they do.

Flowtown posted a blog article that makes the point eloquently:

Not everyone has the patience for the cultivation and care social media marketing requires to do it well. They look for short cuts because they are fixated on the wrong numbers and placing value on the wrong things. For those with patience there are rewards, though: There are many case studies out there to prove that social media marketing can be a valuable addition to a company’s marketing mix; it can enhance and amplify their traditional and online marketing efforts and can have a positive impact on a company’s brand, customer service capabilities and, eventually, sales.

In the race to social media and the rapid adoption in the past years, many have “jumped on the bandwagon” who mistake the reasons to be involved in social media.

Social Media Truth

Social media is not about saving money, using free tools or broadcasting messages. It is about creating a positive relationship where one receives permission to converse and share interesting content, ideas, and thoughts. Sometimes those are about our core business, and sometimes they are about where to find the best priced business lunch.

*Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons user Intersection Consulting

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.”

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

As the dust settles on this year we see the frantic scramble to get into social media normalizing. More businesses understand the new conversation channels or are at least trying to incorporate them in their mix. We understand that television and print media while changing will not go away. We understand that there is a conversation and that the customer truly owns the brand.

What do you see in your crystal ball for 2010?

We recognize that the U.S. is composed of a diverse population, with 38% of us being over 44 years of age; 37.4% of us being 18-44 years of age and the remainder under 17 years of age.

As marketing and business communications professionals, this means we comprehend each audience segment has preferred information channels. As we promote our services and products, we understand that a 21 year old will get their news from Google reader and that at 58 year old from most probably from either TV or print media. That there are some of us who, while in the older segments, use new technology, embracing mobile media as much as the younger generations. We also understand that not only younger generations care about social responsibility; that social responsibility is a required part of being in business. That when it comes to media relations, the media are just as stressed as other business segments and are trying to do as much with fewer resources. That our job is to work in tandem with them by supplying truly interesting information and sources to help them do their jobs.

2010 promises to be rich with opportunity for small businesses to act like big corporations when it comes to reaching customers through all the channels with a straight to consumer approach that is more about what the customer wants in their lives.

In summary:

• Marketing Communications
  • More segmentation of message—We’ll use Twitter, Facebook, the local newspaper as well as television, and increasingly, mobile technology.
  • Social media acceptance as one of the major message delivery vehicles
  • Social responsibility as a requirement of doing business
  • Blurring of the difference between advertising and public relations
• For PR
  • Video pitching
  • Social media acceptance as one of the major message delivery vehicles to media contacts and the consumer
  • Increasing message delivery direct to the consumer
  • We’ll turn more to multi media releases, using the power of video sharing, and pod casts to enrich press releases
  • Public relations professionals as major advisors for not only publicity but for advertising and marketing messages.

Share your prognostications with us. We look forward to learning from everyone how they see the new year shaping up for them.

Today her story is written up in The Anderson Independent. Journalist Charmaine Smith-Miles captured Andi’s spirit and her pluck.

Once again, I am struck by the ability we have as public relations professionals to do good. Many perceive us as flacks shilling for celebrity clients. However, the vast majority of us work daily to bring interesting news to light. We frequently share our abilities with non-profit organizations whose missions we align with.

At the close of this year and the opening of the next, as marketing and public relations pros, we need to remember the power we have to make change, embrace it and work to make our world a better place.

We’re doing our part, how about you? Share your pro bono efforts with us.

Listen to your PR pro.

We often find ourselves having to help clients comprehend that just because you are in business, doing what you are supposed to do in your specialty, and are successful at it; there is no reason to write about your company. Except, if you are using ground-breaking new technology that advances the industry, or is dramatically more profitable, or has landed Oprah as a client…and then you probably should not be talking about your clients.

This article from Susan Young makes the point that unrealisstic expectations from public relations firms’ clients often cause issues.

When you hire a PR pro, you have done so because you recognize that you either can’t or don’t wish to manage your company’s public relations program. If your PR counsel tells you that you need to be doing something newsworthy, listen to them. That’s why you are paying the PR firm.

I’ve heard of an old saying that is abbreviated PPPPPPP. Boy is it true.

Your company’s public relations/special events should be planned just as a bride plans her wedding. You should think carefully before making the commitment to undertake a PR program and then you should plan diligently. And, just like a bride, you should use lots of check lists.

Everyone looks forward to the Big Day. If you are opening a new branch, store, adding a new product line, promoting or laying off staff, you need to be prepared.

Think of what message you want to communicate and why, who cares and why, what will they want to know, will they need to be invited to an event and if they are invited, do you include them on every party of only the main event.

Don’t leave anything to chance. Think each and every item through and prepare ahead so that you won’t have to react, but instead can act. And on the day your big news breaks, you will be prepared.

**Photo credit: William P. Smithem; Bride on her wedding day at the Francis Beidler Swamp in Dorchester County. Thanks, Bill. For more of Bill’s website designs.