Polly's Power-PR

“Content is King.” Bill Gates is credited with coining the phrase in 1996. According to Onlinebusinesslab, “Content is what drives the web. The phrase can be interpreted to mean that without original and desirable content, any website is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors. No original quality content, no visitors.”

Perhaps content is still king to the Internet search engines, but making connections is the operative word for today’s Social Media. People are using Social Media sites to connect. The more connections you have, the more potential influence you can exert. Connections are King-makers!

Where does the PR Pro fit in today’s Social Media universe?

PR professionals have been providing credible content for years as part of their efforts to deliver a message on behalf of their clients to specified target audiences. PR Pros can produce well-researched, well documented, well thought out and well written content.

Today’s PR Pros have adopted the techniques of Social Media to target their clients’ messages to specific audiences. PR Pros seek to define, educate, motivate and influence public perception through Social Media.

Ah yes, with Social Media, everyone can be a do-it-yourself guru. But, postings to Social Media are often spur-of-the-moment impressions, not always well thought out or grammatically correct. If you want to conduct an effective educational or motivational campaign on Social Media, you should consider consulting a PR Pro, who can help empower your message.

An article in today’s Work It, Richmond email caught my attention. The headline – “VCU, UR offer lessons on taking advantage of unexpected publicity.”

The article was written by Jacob Geiger, the man about town for the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s online portal, Work It, Richmond.

Geiger’s article makes an interesting follow-up to my blog posting of January 16, “How you can become a winner in the media.” Attending a sell-out game of the VCU Rams prompted my blog comments. Geiger’s article featured comments by Cynthia Schmidt, director of marketing for Virginia Commonwealth University, on the success of the VCU rams men’s basketball team.

Geiger reports:

“The men’s basketball team at Virginia Commonwealth University wasn’t supposed to make the NCAA tournament last spring.

So when the Rams made it to the Sweet 16, joined by the University of Richmond Spiders, VCU Director of Marketing Cynthia Schmidt was left scrambling.

‘We were not prepared, so we treated it as a crisis, though certainly a good one,’ Schmidt told the American Marketing Association’s Richmond chapter at a lunch Wednesday.”

Schmidt said she treated the sudden surge in publicity by going into crisis mode. She used social media to feed the frenzy:

“Social media was so huge because everyone wanted to be a part of it,” Schmidt said. “We gave people what they needed to take action. Everyone is already conditioned to be viral, so we fed that machine through a new home page every day and through videos every other day.”

She reported the numbers. Web traffic increased from 3 million to 11.2 million hits the day VCU made the Final Four. Athletics giving increased 376% and overall giving went up 46%. The University of Richmond reported increased visibility but not quite as spectacular.

So, I’ll say it again: everybody loves a winner. Winning is good PR and it’s good for business. Just ask Virginia Commonwealth University.

Thanks to Jacob Geiger for sharing.

If you have a message to deliver, you can benefit from researching the views of your target audience and knowing the media they watch or read. This approach argues against a shotgun theory of PR – trying to disseminate your message everywhere – and suggests that you be more selective in where and how you send out your message.

Marc Fisher wrote an interesting commentary, entitled “All the news that confirms your views,” as the lead story in Saturday’s Washington Post. Fisher describes people in South Carolina accessing news sites that support their political views:

“With just hours remaining before South Carolina’s Republican primary, it’s clear to campaign strategists and voters alike that the revolution in how Americans get their news has dramatically altered the political process. There’s more campaign news and commentary out there than ever before, but more and more citizens are tucking themselves inside information silos where they see mainly what they already agree with. The result, according to voters, campaign strategists and a raft of studies that track users’ news choices, is an electorate in which conservatives and liberals often have not only their own opinions but also their own sets of facts, making it harder than ever to approach common ground.”

The news-searching activity Fisher describes supports the theory of cognitive dissonance, which you’ll learn as part of any communications course. Familiarity with the theory can be useful in your public relations and marketing efforts.

According to sticky-marketing.net, “The theory of cognitive dissonance, developed by Festinger in the 1950s, is that when a person experiences conflicting ideas, states of emotion, or feelings, they will be driven to reduce this state of tension and will take action to return to consonance (the opposite of dissonance).”

How to Apply Cognitive Dissonance to your Power-PR strategy:

I find MyEdCals, a database of editorial calendars, to be a useful source in identifying media (and the audiences they serve) who are interested in the information I want to disseminate for my clients. You can search by subject matter and myedcals will identify the publication or media, along with a short synopsis of their point of view and the appropriate contact person.

With that information, you can send out information to an audience already interested in the subject and expect a positive action, rather than re-action, because you share their world view.

Uggie the Jack Russell Terrier “stole the show” at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards. He interrupted an acceptance speech and won an interview with People Magazine. Of course, we live with a Jack Russell Terrier and they are natural attention-getters.

Uggie is the canine character from the movie, The Artist, which won the award for best picture (comedy or musical). The terrier captured the spotlight at the Globes ceremony by hopping on his hind legs, playing dead and tucking his head under his paws in an act of false modesty as he was interviewed for People Magazine. Aw shucks, folks!

Have you noticed how many dogs are appearing in commercials these days, not to mention the Rin TIn Tin and Lassie retrospectives? Uggie’s credits also include “Water for Elephants” and “Mr. Fix It.” If you have a PR campaign coming up and you have a dog, consider including him/her in your photo ops.

Apparently, Uggie fans have organized a “Consider Uggie” page on Facebook hoping he can qualify for a Best supporting actor award. Count me in!

Everybody loves a winner! That point hit home when I attended a Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) basketball game last week – the 11th consecutive sold-out game of the season. Wow!

VCU is my alma mater. I went to VCU’s night school to earn two degrees – a BA and an MBA. Everyone in Richmond, Virginia, knows about VCU, but during the 20 years I lived in Northern Virginia, nobody knew who they were… until they made the NCAA Final Four in March 2011. That’s when the national media discovered VCU. Winning is good PR and it’s good for business, I thought as I tried to calculate how many bucks the sold-old crowd at the Siegel Center brought into the VCU coffers.

Not everyone can have a winning basketball team, but you can win awards. Winning an award makes you feel good and its’ good PR: You could get your picture in the local media, as well the publications and websites of the sponsoring organizations. And it can help increase your business. As I said, it’s good PR!

Chambers of commerce, trade and professional groups offer great opportunities for small businesses to gain recognition. The Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Corporate Citizenship Awards are due on March 9.

Business publications also offer awards: Nominations for The Washington Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” are due on February 27.

There are two awards coming up that offer great opportunities for women in business: Virginia Lawyers Weekly “Influential Women of Virginia,” due on February 27, and Washington Smart CEO’s “Brava! Women Business Achievement Award.” due on March 2

All these awards help build a positive business image, enhance your credibility and give you bragging rights on your website and in Social Media. Ask a friend to nominate you or contact your PR professional. At PR Works, we specialize in award nominations.

Link-building is the name of the game today in public relations. A well-planned PR program builds inbound links to your website through news release distribution, article placement and awards nominations.

In a commentary on OpenForum, “6 Common SEO Mistakes on Small Business Websites,” Rae Hoffman-Dolan describes the importance of links:

“Links are still widely believed to be the single most important ‘off page’ SEO factor. Simply put, without links from other websites, your site won’t rank. The more competitive your niche? The more links you will need to get.

Unfortunately, many small business owners put their sites up and completely ignore the inbound link building process afterward. While link building can often be confusing to some small business owners, and it can definitely be time consuming, there is no doubt that if your goal is to improve your search engine rankings, you absolutely need inbound links.”

I recommend PR Web for the distribution of news releases. PR Web encourages you to include links in your news releases. These links should connect the reader to relevant pages on your company’s website. My caveat here: make sure there is relevant information on your website to support those links. Read the entire article by Hoffman-Dolan to learn more about how to how to make your website attractive to browsers.

Article placement is another way to build links. However, it’s not as easy as the “old days.” Google made changes to its search algorithm code-named Panda earlier this year. It’s designed to block articles from sites recognized as content farms which publish “low quality” articles “simply to attract clicks and advertising dollars.” Among sites “detected and penalized” is Demand Media’s eHow. Traffic flowing from search engines to eHow dropped 20 percent after the update.

Be sure to submit your commentaries to legitimate websites and recognized online publications. The Washington Business Journal, for example, accepts guest commentaries. Links to the author’s website are usually included with the article.

Another way to build links back to your website is to win awards. Many awards are sponsored by publications and winners are profiled in the publication and its website, with link-backs.

The legend of Santa Claus is one of the world’s best PR campaigns. Think about it. Santa Claus is known world-wide, sometimes by different names. He represent love and giving and children. People have added to Santa’s retinue over the years, with Mrs. Claus, the elves and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but Santa remains a constant. Every year, he gets more repeat business. People write about him and sing his praises. What a great role model for any business!

PR Daily recently ran an article on “6 PR Lessons from Santa Claus.” I find it worth repeating here.

Are you taking advantage of Facebook’s new “Subscribe” button? It looks like a great way to share your commentary beyond your groups of friends and family. To start attracting subscribers, add a “Subscribe” button to your Facebook page. That way, anyone who is interested in what you have to say, can tune in. Facebook provides directions on The Facebook Blog and explains that, with each posting, you can choose one of three distribution settings: public, friends and custom.

You can also subscribe to postings from people you don’t know but wish you did – the media, politicians and others – and receive their postings in your news feed.

According to ClickZ, Facebook has controlled 52% of online sharing in 2011, up from 44% in 2010 and 33% in 2009. With the introduction of the “Subscribe” button, I would say that Facebook is trying to increase their majority of online sharing in 2012. Of course, the competition is hot on their tail. The Stats from AddThis, shared by CLickZ show that Twitter controls 13.5% of the online sharing and is growing and a rate of 576.9%. Tumblr is growing at a rate of 1300%.

Advice from Polly’s Power-PR: take full advantage of these free distribution services.

I’ve seen everything now….The Washington Post is reporting on the Russian president’s Facebook postings! In the A-section of today’s Post, Kathy Lally reports:

“President Dmitry Medvedev used his Facebook page Sunday to disclose that he has ordered an investigation into reports of election fraud, a statement his audience greeted with derision.

“The posting quickly went viral and drew more than 8,000 mostly offended and even offensive comments in a little over six hours….”

I see two editorial points here. First is the fact that the president of one of the world’s most politically-restrictive societies is using social media to communicate with the public . According to reporter Lally, Medvedev is “famous for tweeting and carrying an iPad,” but Facebook is more personal: you have to “friend” a person in order to establish communication with him on Facebook.

Secondly, this story pays tribute to the ascendency of social media over traditional media. As an old-time PR Pro, I remember when political leaders used newspapers, radio and television to make their public statements. Now they post, tweet and “friend.” Who have you “friended” lately?

A niche in time saves nine! Of course, I’m rephrasing the old English proverb, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Forgive me, but it relates. When you’re starting a business, it’s best to find your special niche before you waste too much time and money trying to compete in the open market.

Michael Hess writes about this situation in his blog posting on cbsnews.com, “The biggest small business rule I wish I’d followed” :

“I made things more difficult than they needed to be when I started my current business eleven years ago. I disregarded some key wisdom and experienced gained in the successful 50-year-old business my family sold in 1998. In particular, I discounted the importance and benefits of having a true niche.”

I confess I wasn’t thinking of niches when I started my PR business in 1998. After hearing my 30-second introduction at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast -”I can help you get your name in the news”- a businessman came up to me and said, “That’s your niche! All businesses are interested in seeing their name in print.” Since then, I have narrowed my focus from the broad field of public relations to the narrow focus of publicity. It works for me and for my clients!

Here are some pointers to help you find your niche:

1. First you need to recognize your unique talents and abilities.

2. Analyze where your service or products fit in the overall market.

3. Provide something that people need or want.

4. Determine your target market segment.

5. Check out the competition.

6. Whatever you’re offering, do it better, differently or more economically than the competition.

7. If you want people to know about your business, get out and market. Use the same niche concept for your marketing.

According to the Marketing Titan:

“Niche marketing can refer to both marketing and business choice. In and of itself, niche marketing refers to finding a segment of the general market for a service or product line. One then develops a solution for the needs of that segment and then markets to it to get the word out.”

Find where your prospects hang out – what clubs and organizations they frequent – and go there. Start networking with them. Join groups on LinkedIn that represent your customers; make comments. Find the publications your potential customer reads and target your PR efforts there. Find your market niche and your message and stick to it. Make it yours.