Establishing a Spokesperson as an Expert

How do you establish a spokesperson as an expert among media and bloggers?

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By Jennifer Manocchio

This is a strategy we often use for clients to help increase brand awareness for a company or product, establish credibility and differentiate themselves from their competitors.  It is a process and does take time.

The key to positioning a company spokesperson as an expert is to first identify what areas he or she is truly an expert in and identify what makes him or her an expert.  For example, if he or she is an expert in the cleaning products industry, identify what specifically he or she can discuss about cleaning products.  Can he or she discuss chemical make-up, cleaning tips for specific surfaces, marketing, packaging or distribution?

Additionally, be sure to provide solid credentials to support your spokesperson as an expert.  This can include how many years he or she worked in the industry, education, accreditations, training, workshops/presentations he or she conducted and past media who have used him or her as a resource.

Second, create a biography using the information you have gathered that identifies why your spokesperson is an expert and what makes him or her an expert.  Third, let key gatekeepers like influential media and bloggers know he or she is an expert by sending them the biography.

But it doesn’t stop there.  It is imperative to continue providing the media and bloggers with relevant information for their audience related to your spokesperson’s expertise.  This can be accomplished a number of ways, including contacting media and bloggers with your expert’s opinion on recent news or events, sending media and bloggers tips or industry trends your expert identifies or comments on, and responding to media and blogger resources like ProfNet, HARO and PitchRate when your expert can be a resource. You can also schedule interviews with media and bloggers when your expert is attending industry shows/events, but be sure to give the media and bloggers a reason why your expert is worth their time. This is where dedication and continuous communication with the media and bloggers will pay off.

The most exciting aspect about establishing your spokesperson as an expert is the more exposure he or she receives, the more credibility he or she gains and the easier it becomes!

Have questions or want to learn more about establishing your spokesperson as an expert?  Contact me at jennifer at sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Monitoring Media Coverage

What’s the best way to monitor media coverage?

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By Kayleigh Fitch, guest blogger

While there are several tactics you can use to successfully monitor media coverage, the method you choose will largely depend on the media you are targeting.

For large-scale campaigns targeting national print and online media, professional monitoring services like BurrellesLuce or Cision are the most effective and time-efficient way to monitor print coverage from thousands of newspapers, magazines, newsletters, web sites and blogs.  These services can be costly, but considerably less than the time you will spend monitoring thousands of newspapers, magazines, web sites and blogs.  Professional monitoring services are also a good option if you plan to monitor international publications.

If a professional monitoring service doesn’t fit your budget but you still want to monitor print media coverage, focus your attention on the most influential publications for your target audience.  Maintain a detailed media call log with records of communications to reporters.  If a reporter plans to run your story or has interviewed your company’s spokesperson, you can ask when the story is set to run and order a copy of the magazine or newspaper.

If your media relations efforts are primarily focused on online media, use online tracking services like Google Alerts, and Google News.  Be sure to include quotation marks around keyword phrases, names or multi-word company names.  Search for keywords you believe may appear in the article’s headline. Also, try searching for your spokesperson’s name or company name in quotation marks. This is a cost-effective approach, but not necessarily foolproof; you will not capture all the coverage you are looking for and you will have to wade through lots of extraneous coverage that does not apply.

For media relations campaigns focused on radio and television stations, use a broadcast monitoring service.  National services like VMS Digital will monitor for selected keywords at no cost and provide you with the video/audio clips when they are identified; however, the clips can be expensive.

When developing a strategy for monitoring media coverage, consider the types of media your campaign targets, costs of professional services, the time you are willing to invest and how important it is to obtain copies of every media clip.

For questions or help getting and monitoring media coverage, contact me at 440.333.0001 ext. 105 or kayleigh at sweeneypr.com.

Comparing Email to Direct Mail

We have a very small target audience – maybe 50 organizations with 1-3 contacts in each company – that we want to establish lines of communications with and build relationships leading to sales.  Is direct mail or e-mail a better bet?

Founder & President of Midwest Mechanical Contracting Firm

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By Jim Sweeney

As you might imagine, there are pros and cons to both tactics.

A physical mailer, particularly if it is dimensional, colorful or incorporates sound, has a much better chance of engaging the recipient.  The receiver is more likely to see it, open it and review it. On the other hand, an email with the right subject line can and will get opened, and if it incorporates good messages, offers and functions, it will also get reviewed.

The life of both mailers is limited (by the recipient’s choice) once opened. However, a direct mailer may survive longer depending upon format and contents (e.g., a pen with imprinted logo may stick around for months).  But the value after the initial mailing is questionable.

A physical mailer can be expensive to produce – copy, design, printing, premium and mailing.  But so too can an HTML email – copy, design, programming and distribution. However, because the database is so small, printing only 50 direct mailers will be a potential problem, since you will be required to either use digital printing techniques (lower quality, higher cost) or overprint jobs based upon printers’ minimum requirements (which could be anywhere from 250 units to 1,000 units).

Response mechanisms for a direct mailer can include a business reply card, a phone number, a fax number, a web site and/or an email address.  An email can offer all of these as well, plus a direct link to a landing page and/or web site. In addition, assuming you employ an email distribution services like iContact, you can get immediate feedback (open rates and click through rates); you can also use web analytics to measure traffic and purchasing patterns related to the email.

A direct mailer can take longer to print (days) and distribute (more days), while an email, once produced, can be distributed almost at will.

But perhaps the most important consideration is the preference/behavior of your target audience. In the case of a mechanical contracting business – particularly in the Midwest –most relationship building and business is still done in person or over the phone. While maintenance personnel are not shunning the Internet, they are not using it routinely to communicate via e-mail. However, if your target audience consists of deskbound executives or traveling businesspeople who are hotwired into their e-mail service, they are more likely to read your email within moments of receiving it.

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly encourage you to test both direct mail and e-mail campaigns – either simultaneously or within a few weeks of each other (being cognizant of holidays and business cycles) – and document results.  Then apply whatever analytics you have available to determine the true cost and value of each campaign.

You may discover that one, the other, both or neither is the right answer. But that’s fine; through testing you will find the right answer for your situation.

To discover if you are using the correct strategies to reach your target audience and produce the best ROI, contact me at 440.333.0001 ext. 101 or jim at sweeneypr.com.

Is Traditional Marketing Dying?

With interactive/social media gaining in popularity for marketing messages, do you think traditional marketing mediums will ever disappear completely? How do you think this shift in media has affected the way we market our brands? Will traditional marketing ever be at the forefront of marketing again?

We have a Focus Community member that is looking for some help with this – any insight?

Focus Community Manager

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By Jennifer Manocchio

Traditional marketing is not dying, and it never will.  While we have more marketing tools in the toolbox than we ever had before, this doesn’t mean the more traditional tools will become obsolete.  Just like billboard advertising isn’t always the best strategy for the objectives you are trying to achieve or your target audience, social media isn’t always the best strategy for every objective or every target audience.

Also, while it is hard to believe, not everyone has a computer, Internet access or a mobile phone, and not everyone is on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.

Consider these facts:

• Only 80% of U.S. households have Internet access.

• There are fewer than 10 million U.S. Twitter users (some reports say only 1 million).

• Facebook claims to now have 250 million global members; that’s just 3% of the global population and only a sliver of the United States population.

• Less than 90% of Americans have a mobile phone.

While interactive marketing and social media can be very effective at producing results,  so can many tools in the marketing toolbox.  It is just a matter of employing the best marketing strategies to achieve your objectives in the most cost-effective way.  In other words, it is about choosing the right tool for the job, regardless of whether that tool is your trusty hammer or your new high-tech drill.

Have questions about social media or mass marketing, contact me at jennifer at sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Best Days and Times to Distribute Email

From your experience what are the best times to distribute email marketing campaigns?

President at ProNetworkMedia

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By Jennifer Manocchio

The answer to this question is not black and white.  While there are studies conducted on the best day and time to send business-to-business and consumer emails, the answer really depends on your subscriber base. For example, if you are sending an email to a business audience, sending the email on weekends might produce a low open rate.  However, if you are targeting consumers, this might be an effective time to distribute your message.

Consider the results from our agency e-newletter (InSites).  We distribute InSites weekly to our client and prospect database that features top marketing stories.  While we avoid distributing on Monday or Friday, it doesn’t seem to matter what day we distribute the email during the week.  We have tested different days and haven’t seen a change in open rate, which remains in the 26-31% range.  What this tells us is we have a following that reads the e-newsletter on a regular basis no matter the day of the week.  We attribute the fluctuation in open rates to the subject lines and people being out of the office.

On the consumer side, we recently started an e-marketing campaign for a retailer in the healthcare industry.  We typically distribute the emails on a Tuesday or Wednesday because the client’s web site traffic tends to spike on Monday and drop off throughout the week.  Distributing it on a Tuesday or Wednesday helps increase the web site traffic when it typically is down.  Since this is only our third distribution to the database, it is hard to say whether day and time are affecting open rates.  However, to our surprise, consumers continue to open the email weeks or even a month after the distribution.  This tells us some of the contacts on the list don’t check their personal emails very often and the day and time of distribution don’t really affect this group.

The most effective way to determine when to distribute email is to test the days and times that you distribute email and determine when is most effective based on the open and click through rates.  However, you need to take more into consideration than just the distribution day and time.  The relationship you have with your subscribers, the from line and the subject line can also affect your open rates.

Want to know more about email marketing best practices, contact me at jennifer at sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Building a Targeted Media List

We recently hired several new employees and have written a news release announcing the growth. What media outlets and journalists at those outlets should I send the news release to?

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By Kayleigh Fitch, Guest Blogger

When announcing corporate news (i.e. hiring a new employee, announcing a promotion, or receiving an award) it is best to create a separate media list because most media outlets have a member of the editorial staff who handles promotions and corporate news.

Following are tips on how to effectively target the media outlets and the journalists at those outlets.

Choosing the Media Outlets

When deciding which local and national media outlets to include on the list, consider geography and editorial focus.

Local Media: Most local print publications reserve specific sections to announce local business news. Include the major daily newspapers in your region, local business publications and weekly newspapers covering your company’s geographic location and the new or promoted employee’s city of residence.

As a general rule, do not send your corporate news to local television or radio stations. However, there can be exceptions to this rule. Examples include; your company is highly recognized as one of the most influential businesses in your city or region or you are hiring a unique or well-known employee.

Trade Media: When considering which trade media outlets to include on your list, choose publications that report specifically on your company’s industry and related vertical industries.

National Media: National print and broadcast media like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, NRP, CNN, etc. will not likely be interested in your company news or new hires unless you can tie that into a recent trend or your company is doing something truly unique.

Choosing the Media Contacts

Once you decide which media outlets to send your news release to, you will need to ensure you have the right media contacts on your list.

For local newspapers and business magazines, it is generally best to target business editors or reporters assigned to cover corporate news sections like “People on the Move” or “Corporate Announcements”.

Likewise, most industry trade magazines have reporters assigned to specifically cover corporate news announcements. But in some cases the responsibility for those announcements may fall on the reporter covering your company’s specific industry segment. For example, a higher education trade magazine may assign a specific reporter to cover all news at small private colleges in the Midwest. Most trade magazines list reporters and their beats directly on their web sites.

Also, consider sending your corporate announcements to relevant local and industry web sites, as well as submitting it to news release distribution sites (PR Newswire, Business Wire, PR Web, Open PR, PR Log).

For questions or more information about developing media databases, please contact me at Kayleigh@sweeneypr.com or 440.333.0001 ext. 105.

Increasing Traffic to Your Web Site

What are the most popular, yet inexpensive, methods for promoting a web site?

David

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By Jim Sweeney

If by popular you mean “effective,” and if by effective you mean “drive traffic to your site,” there are many ways – online and offline – to achieve this goal.

Of course, there is a critical presumption here that your site is worthy of visiting, that it delivers what your target audiences are looking for – education, engagement, sales. There is also the equally critical presumption that you have done everything possible to optimize your web site for search; SEO and SEM are essential. But let’s just set those issues aside for now.

Here are some things you can and should do to promote your site. Some of them (especially the “no cost” items) are pretty elementary and others are a little more advanced, but all of them should be standard practice:

1. Publicity: Every news release you distribute should incorporate your web address in the body of the release.
2. Blogger Relations: Every blogger communication, whether to a single blog or a network/group of bloggers should incorporate your web address.  Better still, your communication should require blog fans to go to your web site for exclusive information, discounts or samples.
3. E-Mail: Incorporate your web address into your e-mail signature.
4. E-Mail Marketing: E-newsletters or promotional mailings should all link directly or through a landing page to your web site.
5. Stationery: If you haven’t done so yet, add your web address to your business cards and stationery.
6. Advertising: Radio, print, billboard and TV advertising should all incorporate your web address.  And all online advertising should link directly to your web site or to a specific landing page on your site.
7. Literature: Same as stationery; add it now… and this especially includes newsletters and magazines (does anyone print newsletters and magazines anymore?)
8. Merchandise: Got company shirts, jackets, pens, coffee mugs, signage, etc.? Incorporate your web address on all of them.
9. Links: Wherever it makes sense and is possible, establish links from other web sites to yours.
10. Direct Mail: From post cards to multi-part mailings, wherever there is space and it makes sense, incorporate your web address.
11. Blogging: If you blog, make sure your blog is on your web site and incorporate links to various pages on your site whenever it is reasonable within a post.
12. Twittering: Assuming you’ve got some valuable content on your web site (such as your blog), you can use your Twitter account – whether being proactive or responsive – to send followers to your site.
13. Comments: If you comment on other blogs or online articles, be sure to include a link to your site whenever it makes sense.
14. Message Boards: Same as comments; if you are sharing your thoughts or expertise on a message board and the opportunity presents itself to link back to your web site, do it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the virtual world really isn’t virtual; it’s real. And just like in the physical world, you have to be involved.  You wouldn’t open up a storefront on Main Street and just wait to see if traffic showed up. Well, your web site is your storefront, and you want traffic, so make the investment of time and money, and you will likely see an equitable return.

Have questions about increasing quality traffic to your web site, contact me at 440.333.0001 ext. 101 or jim@sweeneypr.com.

How to Determine the Value of a Blog

Should I send a product sample to this blogger?

I would love to feature your product with a product review and giveaway! My blog is receiving 18,000+ unique visitors per month – additional stats and information are available on my media page. I am happy to answer any questions and set up a review and giveaway for you.

Beth, marketing/sales director, consumer product company

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By Jennifer Manocchio

With millions of blogs on the web it can be a challenge to determine what blogs to invest your time and money.  This is precisely why we created a three-step approach at the agency to evaluate blogs prior to committing client’s products for reviews and giveaways.

1.  Review the blog content and consider the following:  content, voice and interaction.  Is the blog well written?  Do you like the approach the blogger is taking with product reviews?  Do you see other major product brands being reviewed on the blog? Are readers posting comments and interacting with the blogger?

2.  Check http://www.compete.com or http://www.quantcast.com to see if the web site statistics are available.  Traffic to blogs varies greatly so you want to be sure there is significant traffic coming to the blog.  However, Quantcast and Compete will not show statistics from some blog publishing platforms like WordPress and Blog Spot.  So don’t rule out blogs on WordPress or Blog Spot even though you cannot get an accurate number of visitors.

3.  Get the blog’s authority and ranking on http://www.technorati.com.  Technorati is a database of more than a million blogs.  While not all blogs are included in Technorati’s database, it is still beneficial to check because most credible and widely read blogs are in the system.

When you enter the blog into Technorati, you will typically get two numbers in the search results – the authority and the ranking.  The authority is the number of other blogs and web sites that are linking to that particular blog.  The higher the authority is, the more credible the blog.  The ranking indicates how well a blog compares to other blogs in the Technorati database.  The lower the number is, the higher the ranking, the more credible the blog.

Once you have the data, the next step is to determine whether the blog is a good fit.  Blog traffic and Technorati authority and ranking vary by industry.  For example, if you are evaluating mommy blogs they tend to get more traffic, have a higher Technorti authority and lower Technorait ranking than a blog focused on a specific topic like diabetes.  It will probably be beneficial to evaluate a few different blogs in a specific category to determine if the numbers are favorable.

If you have any questions about evaluating blogs or our approach to conducting blogger relations, please contact me at jennifer@sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Benefits of Creating a Web Site in Spanish

Is it worth the investment to make our web site available in Spanish?

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By Jennifer Manocchio

There are two key considerations that will help determine if it is beneficial to translate your web site into Spanish or another language.  First, what is the market potential?  If you could potentially increase your market share, the cost associated with translating your web site could be worth the investment.

Considering the growth of the Hispanic population in the United States – 15.1% of the U.S. population is Hispanic according to the U.S. Census Bureau – there could be an excellent opportunity to increase your market share.  However, this does not mean the entire U.S. Hispanic population is Spanish-speaking by any means.

The second consideration is branding.  If you are sensitive to the Spanish-speaking community, will that create credibility for your brand among that target audience?  The long-term branding benefits might even outweigh any short-term financial investment.

However, regardless of why you do it, how you do it is equally important.  It is imperative you use professional translation services that can pick up the subtleties of the language and culture.  If you do not show respect and sensitivity, it could have a negative effect on your sales and brand.

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Have a marketing, public relations, social media or advertising question?  Post your question below or email exeqnation at gmail dot com.  We are committed to answering your marketing questions real time.  And if we don’t know the answer, we’ll contact one of our valued partners who will

How Big Is Your PR Agency’s Rolodex?

Does your public relations agency need to have good relationships with media contacts to be successful?

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By Jennifer Manocchio

If I had a quarter for the number of people who have asked us this question in agency reviews, I could buy a lot of Cokes!

There really is no need for an agency to have a Rolodex of media contacts whom they have excellent relationships with.  It isn’t so much about the relationships as it is the process. If you craft a good story, the media will listen. A solid professional reputation for producing quality story ideas is a much more powerful asset to an agency than a few relationships.

Today it is more critical than ever to be an expert when it comes to the media relations process because the media industry is changing so drastically.  There have been a significant number of layoffs and buyouts that often result in new reporters covering new beats.  We have even seen media outlets stop covering specific beats all together.  Also, less staff means reporters have less time to listen to story pitches.  This means that even the most comprehensive Rolodex could be obsolete in a matter of weeks.

On the other hand, it can be worthwhile to build relationships with media who cover your beat because it can help your pitch get heard/seen.  The best way to build a relationship is to continually go to the media with good story ideas (even when they aren’t about your company) and respond promptly when asked for information, product samples, interviews, etc.  However, simply having a relationship doesn’t mean the media will be interested in every story you pitch.

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Have a marketing, public relations, social media or advertising question?  Post your question below or email exeqnation at gmail dot com.  We are committed to answering your marketing questions real time.  And if we don’t know the answer, we’ll contact one of our valued partners who will