Introduction

I serve as Social Media Specialist for Advice Unlimited LLC, a small, woman-owned public relations/marketing firm that has worked with the Federal government marketplace for nearly 30 years, helping companies with innovative technology get their solutions to the government. Every month, I’ll offer my thoughts and observations on social media and public relations/marketing in this unique market. Please email me with questions or comments.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Inbound Marketing: How it works and how you can benefit



In American society, there are advertisements in your face everywhere you look. There are ads on billboards, television, radio, social media, automobiles painted as advertisements, pop ups and ad banners on every website and even people dancing with signs on street corners. With so many advertising strategies to choose from, it can be hard to decide which one is right for you and your company. In a society so full of advertisements, we have to question whether the targeted audience is even seeing the message in the ad, or if they’ve become so saturated with in-your-face advertisements that they simply avert their gaze. I have been looking into the facts about push (or outbound) advertising strategies and the general consensus is that while useful for major corporations that can spend the money on huge advertising campaigns, outbound advertising is not well accepted and, quite frankly, is perceived as annoying and invasive by  members of the public. In the government market, sequestration has significantly curtailed outbound advertising and large scale trade shows. One advertising/marketing strategy that has been getting a lot of buzz is inbound marketing, and this can dovetail nicely with a focused public relations program – still the best bang for the buck in your marketing communications toolbox.

The pioneers of inbound marketing at Hubspot.com define it as marketing focused on getting found by customers. Traditional outbound marketing uses cold-calling, television ads, blast emails, print ads and trade shows. These strategies still can be used today, of course, but with the advancements in technology and the prevalence of social media, people are changing how they absorb their information. Inbound marketing is all about creating great content that will attract customers in a targeted market to your company’s services. The idea is to create incredible content, make the content available to the public in as many relevant places as possible, gather customers and leads from the distribution of your content and gather analytics on your content distribution to stay on top of productivity and efficiency. Public relations/marketing firms are devoting more time and energy to this way of thinking in the current climate.

Content is the most important element of inbound marketing.  It is essentially the lure on a fishing line and you need to make it the most appealing and interesting looking lure in order to attract the best fish in the market. The content should include pictures, videos or a fun interactive display that really catches the viewer’s attention. A public relations firm can be an amazing asset when creating content because that is what they excel at. Public relations specialists are trained to create content that is so interesting and insightful it will appeal to and be used by reputable and relevant publications. As with any aspect of public relations, knowing where to find the targeted audience is key. Once the content is created, the content is posted on as many blogs and social media websites as possible. This increases SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and creates a large funnel or hub for people searching your industry to find you and get enticed into visiting your website.

Once you have lured the public in with your immediate content, it is time to convert these people into customers. The immediate content should contain lots of photos, visually-stimulating media and short taglines about the product or service in order to catch your audience’s attention. Now you need to transform the public visitors into customers with your informative content. This information should show off the best features of your company. The public visitor needs to believe that you are the absolute best choice for what they need. The informative content should be strong at its basic level – this includes who you are, what you do, how you do it and why they should choose you over anyone else in the industry. We know that the public does not always have a lengthy attention span, so the content should be very informative in a concise package.

There are many inbound marketing strategies available to reach your potential customer through different communication channels to strengthen the relationship and help transform the visitor into a customer. It is important to remember the target audience, and leverage the tools and approaches that are most effective with that audience. For example, for consumer-facing products and services, a combination of email and social media marketing can be extremely effective.  According to Rob Zazueta, technology Evangelist at VerticalResponse, it is critical to combine email marketing and social media.  He states that, “companies that combine email and social media marketing have a 27% higher open rate than those who use email alone.” The first step is to acquire the customer’s email address in order to send out updates and promotional incentives. Advise them to follow your social media outlets but more importantly, encourage them to join an email list with exclusive incentives that will not be advertised through social media. Getting their email gives you a direct advertising channel to stimulate return sales. To develop the process and increase the reach of your company’s inbound marketing campaign, you should get your customers to share their successful experience with your company through their own social media outlets. This can be done by giving incentives or special offers to customers who do share your company with their network. This tactic can significantly increase your reach with very minimal cost to your business. The cost of the special offer will most often be paid for with new business from the customer’s social media sharing.

If you work with the government marketplace, particularly if you’re selling complex IT solutions, you would use a different approach that’s more focused on building long-term relationships and providing education and information to help the government make informed decisions around your solution. Always be respectful of the specific parameters you need to follow when reaching out to government customers. Many government employees won’t feel comfortable giving out their email, and cannot accept special incentive offers.  Still, there are creative and effective ways to use inbound marketing with this unique customer, to build awareness, relationships, and understanding of your solutions and services.

The most important element of inbound marketing is the content. A public relations firm can be a great asset when creating and spreading your company’s content for your audience to find. For additional information on inbound marketing and help developing an inbound marketing campaign, please contact me at Thomas@adviceunlimited.net, check out our website at www.adviceunlimited.net, and follow us on twitter www.twitter.com/AdviceUnlim.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Generation Y’s Writing Quality and its Effect on the Communications Industry



There is a lot of talk about Generation Y and the quality of their writing skills. The talk is mostly bad.  Teachers and business organizations claim that the writing skills of young adults today have significantly deteriorated from previous generations. The claim is that technology and a fast-paced lifestyle in the United States is to blame.  Spellcheck and other programs on the computer will fix small and potentially embarrassing spelling and grammatical errors, allowing students to rely on the technology and not their own knowledge of the English language when proofreading their work.  Fast-paced life in the United States has also been blamed, with many stating that young adults have shorter attention spans and are less interested in fully analyzing and creating in depth writing explanations.  Is this true?  What kind of impact does this have on the communications industry?  It is important to look at both sides of the argument before drawing a conclusion.
In my analysis of the situation, I found that there has indeed been some decline in writing quality from Generation Y.  If there was no decline in the writing ability of young adults today, there wouldn’t be so many articles and blogs discussing the issue. I can also say that as a recent college graduate from a top level University, I was astonished at the  poor quality of some people’s writing skills, which I discovered during peer review exercises  in my freshman, sophomore, junior and even senior-level writing courses.  Some were very good, but there were some that made me think, “How did this person get admitted to this University?” There were grammatical errors, run-on sentences that looked like paragraphs, paragraphs that were over a page long and quite frankly, writing that made no sense at all. 

Teachers in a recent Pew research study are agreeing with the noted decline in writing quality, as one experienced English teacher states that she “teaches accelerated students, but has noted a marked decline in the depth and analysis of their written work.” The teachers surveyed claimed that their students don’t understand how to pull useful information from their research to put into their writing, resulting in surface content that is useless.  
Something I found interesting while doing research on this topic is that Generation Y writes more than any previous generation.  However, the style of writing they are doing has changed.  I discovered that while this group might not be writing essays or novels, they are great at writing in social media form and blog posts, and they do it all the time.  In a 2009 article by Kaila Krayewski, a writer for suite101.com, she states, “Ninety percent of Gen Yers in the US own a PC, while 82 percent own a mobile. And, perhaps not surprisingly, they spend more time online than they do watching TV.”  According to a 2012 Forrester survey, the percentage of Generation Y that owns a mobile has skyrocketed to 97% -- Generation Y is also far more likely than any other age category to own a Smartphone.   It’s quite common for Generation Y to prefer to do their social media writing directly from their Smartphone, rather than using a PC.
Contrary to some opinions, there is evidence that Gen Y frequently uses online writing for intense, thoughtful debate – not meaningless, lazy rants filled with grammatical errors. Prime examples are political opinions during the 2012 Presidential election, the current economic crisis, environmental issues, and general online debate.  Many of these arguments are articulate and well written, using correct grammar. Their writing does not mimic that of short hand text messages with no structure, which is a common misperception.

Popular blog writer Penelope Trunk has stated that Generation Y is comprised of great writers. She argues in favor of the new generation when she states, “Information is changing, the flow of ideas is changing, and written communication is changing with it. Information overload is the feeling of not being able to deal with this change. Young people do not feel information overload, which is another sign that they are excellent writers for the new millennium: They can process and communicate new ideas at the new pace.”  Trunk makes a good point that Generation Y does not get as stressed because of rapid changes, since they grew up in the online culture that moves at a fast pace.  I agree with Trunk’s opinion that the new generation has the advantage of being used to the fast pace of the communications industry, but I still have mixed feelings overall -- there is a lot more to writing in the communications industry than the pace at which you can write. 

There are really two questions to be answered: what is the quality of Generation Y’s writing overall, and what is the quality of Generation Y’s writing in terms of the communications industry?  On the one hand, they are significantly better at writing for social media, blogs, and debates, and seem comfortable in engaging in this type of writing.  All of these styles of writing require attention to detail and correct grammar.  Where there seems to be a gap is when the writer needs to  slow down and do the quality research and critical thinking that is needed to write articles, white papers, and other in depth writing projects, including the types of writing demanded from communications professionals that would best serve their clients.   A Pew research study discussed in The New York Times article “Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say” stated that, “Adding to this problem is what is called a ‘Wikipedia problem’ where students become accustomed to finding quick answers on the internet and 76 percent of teachers believed students had been conditioned by the internet to find quick answers.”  If you are a journalist for a major publication, you must have high quality writing skills -- those in the communications industry who are writing feature articles, press releases or even pitching stories to reporters need to also have quality writing skills to gain the attention of these journalists and editors.  This requires patience and attention to detail as well as the ability to work at a fast pace and absorb new information easily and quickly.

To sum this all up, Generation Y has the advantage of being accustomed to writing at a fast pace, which is needed in the communications industry, but they should improve upon their in depth analysis skills and research to ensure they integrate the content and thoughtfulness needed for effective professional writing.  

I would love to hear the opinions of PR professionals and Human Resource professionals  on the quality of the writing they are seeing from entry level applicants over the last five or so years.  For more information on this topic, and to discover how we can leverage our team’s expert writing skills to help you capture the attention of your target audience, please contact me at Thomas@adviceunlimited.net.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Twitter: PR's Little Helper



Social media continues to grow and weave its way into people’s daily lives.  Specifically, I am talking about Twitter.  It is no longer a place where celebrities and athletes update their fans with what they are wearing that day or how good their gourmet salad was for lunch.  Businesses have adopted the social media site as a way of integrating their advertising campaigns into people’s social lives.  It is everywhere and hard to avoid noticing. Nearly every advertisement these days wears the stamp “Follow us on Twitter” at the bottom of the ad.  Posts are limited to 140 characters each; it’s not the size of the post, but the size of the audience the post reaches that matters.

While advertisers have taken the reins using Twitter to spread their ad campaigns, organizations can greatly benefit from using it to promote news, events, or anything they need to make public.  Websites like TinyURL.com and bit.ly will help cut your URL link to fewer characters, so your remaining post can really draw attention to what the link is for.  Bit.ly goes a bit (no pun intended) further with their free membership, giving analytics tracking of how many people clicked on your shortened link. It is so easy to write a quick title for a link to your feature article or press release and post it for your followers to view.  Having a catchy post is extremely important, because if the reader doesn’t know what it is for, they will probably skip right over it.  Using #hashtags and tweeting at other users (done by using the @ sign in conjunction with a user’s Twitter handle) can also make your post pop, attracting followers to the link provided.  Not only does the use of #hashtags and tweeting at people draw attention to your post, it can also expand your influence, increasing the size of the audience that sees your post.  

A substantial number of journalists and bloggers use Twitter these days, so connecting with them and making new contacts for future stories could expand your company’s reach even more.  Start following reporters you’re  interested in, retweet something they posted if it’s relevant to your area of business, and send them a private message if you have an appropriate pitch for them.   As with pitches in any medium, show interest in a reporter’s recent stories and do your research to ensure you’re targeting the correct person for the pitch in question.  My junior industry status has taught me to really do my research on reporters and their stories because it could mean the difference between making a new contact or sounding inexperienced and being discarded for wasting the reporter’s time with material that is irrelevant to them.

It is also important to keep a constant flow of news and updates going to your feed.  Social media like Twitter has a large mobile user base that has access to their news feed at all times, so it is important for your followers to see you posting regularly.  Posting a news story only every few weeks will drop your presence to the very bottom of your followers’ feeds, and they may forget you are there.  Having said that, quality is better than quantity, so make sure all posts are high quality and you’re not tweeting just to tweet.

Connecting with reporters on Twitter is a great forum for pitching your stories, but I also want to stress how important your following can be.  Anyone can have a Twitter account and have great compelling content being posted to it on a regular basis.  The key factor to a successful social media campaign is your following.  Who is viewing your content?  The content may be great, but without the proper following, that compelling content could mean nothing.  There are several ways to increase and improve your following on Twitter.  One method is to #hashtag and tweet at as many relevant contacts as possible – focus on those who have a larger following, in order for your tweets to end up on other people’s (their follower’s) feeds.  If these people like your tweet, then hopefully they will start following you too. 

Adding #hashtag key words can also increase your search engine optimization (SEO).  Another way of increasing your SEO is to link all of your social network posts together so they appear on every social network site you use.  With the same posts, key words, and links appearing on several different networks, search engines will have more than one place to link people to.  

In short, Twitter is everywhere and it is here to stay.  If you are using it already, great --keep expanding your following and releasing quality content.  If you are not using Twitter, don’t be afraid to start.  It is easy to set up and will prove to be a valuable part of your communications toolkit. I’d love to hear additional Twitter tips from other communications professionals – you can reach me at Thomas@adviceunlimited.net.  And you can follow me on twitter at @adviceunlim.