Expose Yourself. I Dare You.

“The lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past.” -Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel

I have a question for you… What is one of the largest public relations and customer communication problems facing companies?

I can help you out… it is ignorance and the decision to simply not listen. This concept can stem from every corner of a corporation or a small business. The CEO chooses not to listen because they simple do not know or a small business owner decides to ignore the ever changing world of customer communication.

We are experiencing a shift in how customers relate to brands. You can no longer hide behind a massive white paper, public relations firm, or marketing campaign.

The time is now. Expose yourself. Take the dive into the world of online communication. Start a corporate blog. Start a twitter campaign for a product. Get your customer service department trained in the ways of social media.

Can you feel the winds of change blowing through your window? Or did you decide to yank it close…?

Only to experience it being shattered.

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Truth and Two-Way Communication: Using Social Media for PR

By Sarah Ann Noel

As a PR professional, I’ve been called a lot of things.
Truth-stretcher.
Spin doctor.
Media suck-up.
And of course, I shudder at most of these misconceptions, public relations being my livelihood. It demonstrates a valid point, however; public relations leaves a lot to be defined professionally speaking.

While I appreciate the creativity floating around what it is I do, from my standpoint, there is a good definition of public relations: Communicating controlled messages. PR professionals are not just communicators; it’s a different skill set because you must incorporate a strong focus and a missional sixth sense, to varying audiences.

This is why I love social media for PR, in the midst of questions whether it is a PR or a marketing function. Messages are direct—short and sweet. They’re targeted—you know who you’re reaching. They’re intentional—people are seeking the information.

For example, I know that consumers seeking my organization’s services are going to the website first. I try to include the most pertinent information for those consumers, alongside additional sources of information. The messaging on the website is succinct, severely controlled, and offers only the hardest of facts.

But in my organization’s LinkedIn group, the ideas fly. Industry professionals ask questions and answer questions; they promote projects and events; they offer updates on legislation and programs that affect our key players.

Then there’s our organizational blog. Knowing that this serves a predominantly internal communications function, I can include short updates, event notices, and resources for our employee network.

Three very different mediums serving very different purposes, but all achieving that same public relations goal: Communicating controlled messages.

I think there’s another benefit to social media in PR too, one that maybe goes unnoticed—there’s exceptional opportunity for increased two-way communication. In this industry, if you’re not on top of what the public is saying, you’re not doing your job well. And if you’re in PR and your social media outlets haven’t told you what the public is thinking, you’re not using your online tools well.

I mean, where did my disgruntled Sprint-customer-of-a-husband finally get his customer service questions answered? Twitter! After months of frustration, he stumbled across a Sprint manager on Twitter, made his concerns known, and the problem was resolved in a number of days. Social media outlets open the gateways to conversations, often times between a basic consumer and a decision-making member of any given organization. It creates a two-way communication stream essential to customer service (and public relations!) success.

Good public relations offers controlled messages, but it also puts power in the hands of the people by providing the information and opportunities that they need. Social media gives any PR professional the means to do exactly that. That’s not being a truth-stretcher; sheesh, I’m a truth-giver.

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Get Off Your Butt and Break the Rules

When did rules ever apply to the art of running a business?

Let me preface this post by saying that I do not mean moral, ethical, or legal rules. There are rules that each person has set aside for themselves whether spiritual or from the laws of the land. I am talking about business rules.

They are the rules predestined and applied by business owners, scholars, and business minds throughout the centuries. Rules on innovation and marketing that if applied correctly will help you run a business but…

Times are trying and individuals/companies are scraping to stay ahead of the competition and make a little bit of cash on the side. I am reading the book First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman and it had me thinking about the rules we apply to business marketing and thought-leadership.

I am sure you are thinking of typical rules that you apply on a daily basis in your business. What are they? Where did they come from? Why don’t you just break them?

My favorite example is from the minds that brought us Quicken and Quickbooks: Intuit. In the early days the founders were struggling to produce demand for their product. Distributors would not pick them up because, frankly, they were the 47th or so product on the market. They decided to take every cent of their $100,000 in the bank and invest it in marketing directly to the consumer and not the distributor.

We are not talking about 10% of their budget or a small portion of the revenue… they bet everything on this ONE idea. The rest is history. They broke the rules and changed the mold of how sass products were sold and distributed.

What is keeping you from breaking the rules? What is keeping you from adopting a social media strategy that could revolutionize the way you communicate? What is keeping you from starting a blog or starting a Facebook group?

Is it fear? Is it understanding? Is it resources?

To this I say, break all the rules. Live out your business and revolutionize the way you reach your customers. Empower your company to defeat fear and rise above the rest.

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Twitter Can and Will Drive Business

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating in a first hand account of how Twitter can drive a customer to a place of business. This, my friends, is the story:

I have been wanting (for awhile now) to get my second tattoo. It has been a self-debate on how much I should spend, where I should go to be “tatted,” and what tattoo I should ink into my skin. I finally came to the point where I was ready to take the dive and step out into the world of tattooing but I had one more question to answer:

Where should I go for a tattoo?

I decided to ask the Twitter world where I should get my tattoo because I believe in the concept of word-of-mouth marketing over any other system. I sent a tweet out that read:

Best place to get a tattoo in #Indianapolis?

Within minutes I had multiple tweets from individuals telling me their favorite place to be tattooed in Indianapolis. Metamorphosis won over the rest because of the evangelists (customers) that love and cherish the work of the shop.

The sad part of this entire marketing test is that I was not contacted by a tattoo shop on Twitter. The other shops in Indianapolis may have missed an opportunity to influence my buying decision because they failed to use Twitter as a communication medium.

I will be heading over to Metamorphosis this week to get the tattoo priced and to finally get inked. Let this be a lesson to all… if you train your customers to be your Evangelists and they use Twitter… you should also join them on the platform.

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The Most Valuable Commodity is Information

“The most valuable commodity in the world is information.” -Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wallstreet.

Oliver Stone understood the value of content and information while writing the movie Wallstreet in 1987. In the movie the concept of information is a little skewed because of the nature of the film but the idea still reigns true.

Gordon Gecko used information to learn about competition and his employees and the same goes for business owners across the globe. The global competitive landscape is demanding more from marketing and communication departments.

While I do not condone using information unethically… I am speaking more on developing thought leadership and trust behind your brand. It is important to create content that is valuable to your consumer… your demographic target… your niche as a company.

What are you creating that is helping your customer? What are you writing, sharing, and adopting that can change the way people view their daily routine?

Using Social Media As A Sales Tool

I have been debating (with myself) recently about the concept of using social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIN, Blogs, and Twitter as sales tools. A recurring picture keeps popping into my mind of a kettle warming on a stove waiting to boil over.. at just the right time.

Selling in social media can be directly related to the concept of the “slow boil.” You are producing content and creating relationships in the online environment that is slowly building your reputation as a thought leader. Your readers and your fans will be constantly involved in the conversation and trusting your advice when it comes to a specific topic or problem.

What happens when they reach a pain point? What happens when they realize they need your guidance and support?

I would venture to guess that it is going to be much easier to sell a prospect when they trust your opinion even before you walk in the door.

What do you think? Is social media a viable sales tool?

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Killing the Machine with Social Media

First off… a side note… If you are not reading Convince & Convert by Jason Baer you should be. He always gets me thinking and brainstorming on new methods and ideas to marketing through social media.

If you were to think back to the days of (what we will call) old-school marketing…the days where big money won and the more you broadcasted the higher the return…it can be debated that the marketing arm of many companies ran much like a machine. Yes, there was some creative thought process involved but the communication model was more machine-like than we would care to admit.

They (the machines) started churning out hundreds of thousands of ideas in order to plaster on our minds the benefits of their products and services. More often than not, it worked.

In the age of the Internet, open collaboration, and social media the machine is slowly dying and giving way to a more sophisticated school of thought. The customer is now crafting the message of brands. The customer has castrated the machine of marketing and created a new form of communication.

In the words of Jason, social media is now at the forefront of the customer experience. The thoughts and ideas of brands are no longer crafted in the board room (which many people would like to believe) but created in our living rooms, restaurants, gathering places, and keyboards.

As a business owner it is up to you to listen to this message. To never ignore the potential that social media can have on your brand and welcome the unison of voices which are the PEOPLE who love your product… and..

the people who do not.

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