Buy iPad, Cancel Newspaper

Interesting post at Fortune about a survey by Missouri School of Journalism's survey of 1,609 iPad owners:

 

• Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses.
• More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Among the 931 respondents who indicated that they currently subscribe to print newspapers, there is a statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlation between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling their print subscriptions. (emphasis ours)
• For example, more than half (58.1%) of the respondents who subscribe to printed newspapers and use their iPad at least an hour a day for news said they are very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within the next six months.
• More than three out of 10 (30.6%) respondents indicated that they do not subscribe to printed newspapers, with another one out of 10 (10.7%) saying that they had already canceled their subscriptions to printed newspapers and switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.

Wow...as if the Internet wasn't the first nail in the coffin of the newspaper industry (print edition), but tablets like the iPad give us even less reason to flip through big floppy print pages. It's been tough going for awhile...what kind of business model can be successful when you charge for printed content but give away the same content online for free?

The demand for content is out there in high numbers, but the willingness to pay for something so readily available for free puts newspapers in a precarious position.

Will we have to stop calling them "online newspaper"? If most people read their news online or on tablets, they may need to rename their industry.

Beware of Business After Basketball

Last week, after a long day of work followed by being a taxi cab service for the kids followed by me spending an hour in my role as assistant coach to a basketball team of 9 year olds -- I held a conference call with prospective clients in Singapore. Don't, repeat, don't, ever do that.

I was not sharp. I was dull.

My throat got dry and I couldn't talk.

And they no longer reply to my emails. It doesn't matter that I have proven results (it's MY client that was positioned in the top 5 selling iPad apps of 2010, along with Apple's 3 apps and Angry Birds, thank you very much) -- but I was raspy and not overly articulate and that probably sealed my doom.

This is where international business gets tricky for me. I've got clients in the UK and Russia, but they're lovely people who never want to talk on the phone so email is grand. For those who like conference calls, it's going to require me to somehow live a full life during the day and still somehow present myself as credible when they want to talk at their 10 in the morning and my 9 at night.

And I won't forget the bottled water next time either! I'm going to avoid the situation though because, let's face it, I'm not a night person. Don't judge me when I'm braindead after yelling at 9 year olds who can't make a simple unguarded layup for Pete's sake!

Probably one of my favorite commercials ever...

So clever and well done. Good use of a classic tune to tie it together with the point of their ad. Kudos!

Thou Shalt Not Facebook

Thought this was interesting.

"The Rev. Cedric Miller says much of his recent marital counseling has included infidelity stemming from the social-network website."

Probably online porn is another problem for his parisoners. I can see where Facebook is a problem -- mostly because people get sucked into it and it slowly eats away their life. But also I'm sure old flames are rekindled so to speak. I've found old friends on Facebook that I haven't seen for 20 years -- but no ex-girlfriends.

I liked the comment following the news post: "Facebook doesn't cause adultery - People cause adultery."

Why blog?

Sometimes I get in a blogging funk. Heck, just look at how often I've been posting to this thing! Sometimes I blog in a flurry, and then I ignore it for awhile. Sometimes I wonder why bother -- is there anybody out there?

Well, of course there are. Last night someone responded to a critique of the movie Happy Feet I wrote years ago on another of my blogs (a blog I haven't posted to since 2007!). That one little movie review occasionally inspires people to pop in to tell me how moronic my views were. And it proves that people do find you and are listening!

Today I saw this nice post on reasons to post -- even IF no one is listening to you. Here are my favorites:

1. Search engine benefits. This may be the most obvious business benefit of blogging. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content. HubSpot research shows that sites with blogs get 55 percent more traffic than sites without blogs—even if there are no readers! 

3. Infinite search life. A few weeks ago I received a call from a potential new customer in the Middle East looking to me as a possible marketing consultant. I had to wonder how in the world they found me! Turns out they were looking for somebody who could help explain where the future of social media was going, and when they entered this into Google, a blog post I wrote a year ago popped up! Your content keeps working for you month after month! 

8. PR. Blog posts have the opportunity for massive reach. When one of my posts gets picked up by an aggregation service, my message has a chance to be heard by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would not occur with a press release or status update. 

Making Money with Mobile Apps

Computerworld has a good article on the challenges and how-tos of making money with mobile apps. Since so much of my business is helping mobile app developers make money of them (by getting as much publicity as possible for their apps), I thought I would share this great article on my blog.

It is useful in that it discusses the three models of making money (monetizing) mobile apps: freemium (giving away a less functional version to entice people to pony up for a more feature-rich version); service-and-subscription model (providing a reader for instance, then selling the content on a montly basis); ad-funded model (free version with ads, or pay for a version that is ad-free); pay-for-product (sold!).

The article mainly lacks in how you actually make your app stand out in such a crowded marketplace. What advertising to use, what forms of social media, how to maximize PR (news and reviews), etc.

From the PR perspective, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter of others asking writers to do the same thing I'm asking them to do -- namely, write about my clients' apps. So I'm getting as much as I can and then helping companies to distinguish themselves in the app store with keywords, well-written copy, and managing social media.

Counting ticks on Twitter

I've said it before, but I'm not much into Twitter. It's a huge deal and shouldn't be ignored as part of a marketing communications strategy, but I've always wondered how much impact a tweet I make might have.

Let's say I have 1,000 followers. If I tweet something, not all of those thousand people will see it. It will likely scroll off their main Twitter page before they see it and how many dig deeper than the first page -- especially if they follow a large number of people? Of those who see it, a chunk of them won't care about it, and of those who may care about it, not many will probably click on a link to explore further.

In an article I saw on Ragan, Katie Paine said "how many of your followers really respond to anything you put out there? I figure it's only 10 or 20 out of the 330,000 people I allegedly 'reach' according to most influence analyzers."

To be effective, you not only need to increase your followers to increase your odds, but you also have to build a base of "quality" followers to target with your tweets. Be sure you are including your Twitter address on your website, forum posts and anywhere else where people who are most interested in what you have to say are hanging out.

BookLover - Great App for Bibliophiles

How Real Are Your Facebook Fans?

There are businesses that help your small business set up a Facebook Fan Page and then invite everyone they know to become a fan of it. I get these requests from two different such companies all the time -- inviting me to "like" a company that has hired them to do just that. But I've never heard of the companies, and sometimes those companies are local retailers in far distant lands!

It never hurts to have too many fans, but if you're judging the success of your fan page by the number of people who like your page and those people don't REALLY like your page (and therefore don't engage you at all or could possibly become a customer) then what's the point?

I'd rather target who I'm inviting -- get real fans who will engage you on your Facebook page and share with others that they really like it. Judge your page more on active users and posts rather than purely on number of fans.

Does Twitter Make Your Business "Cool"?

Scobleizer posted a piece on the tale of two motorbike racers. One is atop the rankings, but the other has a better brand and embraces the idea of engaging people via Twitter. He even puts his Twitter page on his cycle. So who gets the fan love? Not the top ranked racer.

So Scoble poses the question: does adding Twitter to a brand make it cooler?


He thinks it does:


1. It sends a signal to the world that you want to hear from your customers.
2. It sends a signal to the world that you’ll use the latest technology to communicate with them. Many of whom are no longer using email.
3. It lets you feature your customers. The pictures on Lorenzo's bike are his fans on Twitter. Win-win.
4. It gives your team a way to communicate in one stream all the photos and stuff.
5. It lets you bridge audiences around the world. Look at how he mixes Spanish and English together on Tweets.

SEO Your Press Release

I sent out a press release a couple weeks ago and a blogger friend of mine shot back a note and suggested an alternative headline that he thought would have been more direct. "Yes," I replied, "but the search engines would have yawned at that one."

Press releases are now written for an online audience of news searchers, rather than just for journalists. Each press release needs to be crafted with the headline and body written to attract attention and click-throughs.

Here's a good article on it from BusinessWired.

"When you are talking about search engines and your press release, optimizing headlines means incorporating your most important keywords. Keywords being the words or phrases you’d like to rank well for in search engines. This is not a simple task, as your headline should also be compelling to your target audience and convey the content of the release.

Since search engines heavily factor page titles when determining rankings, optimizing the headline is the single most important task within press release optimization."

Finding the Right Blog

In my PR biz of publicizing mobile software developers, I discovered early on the high value of finding and developing relationships with bloggers who have a high-level interest in mobile tech. They're not journalists in the traditional sense, but the good ones have a niche following of people who would be a good audience for my clients.

Sometimes, the most popular blogs are really difficult to crack. They hear from PR people all the time -- and what makes me different than all those others? I need to do more than keep sending product news to them. I have to be a resource for them. I need to follow what they're interested in writing about, and engage them in dialogue about it even if it has absolutely nothing to do with any of my clients. If they response and find me a "wise ol' owl" who is fun and useful to talk to, I may have made a new friend in the blogger business and can become a trusted source.

How do you find good blogs? Start by searching your topic keyword(s) at Google Blog Search and Technorati. You may also want to add BlogPulse to that list for fun. Build a list of blogs, then look at each one to see if they have their own favorite blogs listed out for you!

Microblogs, such as Twitter, can be researched at TweetScan and Topsy. BlackBerry users can have Twitter hits on their keywords sent to their mobiles using an app called Twitterlerts.

If you want to follow what's being said about your company or brand in the social media sphere, try searching at SocialMention which will also pick up news from Twitter and blogs.

No To Arts District - Dot Com

I'm watching the 10:00 news the other night with my wife and there's a story on an effort to turn Topeka's somewhat dilapidated yet promising North Topeka business area into a cool arts district. I'm all for that! It's like it's own little downtown and I love the entrepreneurship of North Topeka, and I think those old buildings would lend themselves nicely to an artsy area.

The news announcer told us of their website, www.notoartsdistrict.com, and pronounced it NoTo (sounds like Toto) Arts District - Dot Com. My wife looks up from her laptop and sees it spelled out on the screen and says "no to Arts district?"

Chalk this one up to another really unfortunate choice of a URL. Yes, a campaign for something that, if read the way it is spelled, sounds as if it is against it.

Which reminds me of an old email I received a long time ago featuring really bad website names. I know it's getting ever more difficult to find good domain names -- trust me, I have to do this pretty often -- but SERIOUSLY folks, if you think it could have a double meaning that would make you and your organization look foolish, don't go there! 

Here's the list:

1. "Who Represents" is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com
2 . Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com
5. There's the Italian Power Generator company, www.powergenitalia.com
6. And don't forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales ,
www ...molestationnursery.com
7. If you're looking for IP computer software, there's always
www.ipanywhere.com
8. The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is www.cummingfirst.com
9. And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site,
www.speedofart.com

Shortening Long Links for Twitter Posts

You want to tweet a link to a great article about Apple's new iOS 4, or a great app that you like, but out of 140 characters, the link itself takes up 100 of them. What do you do?

Let's say your tweetable link is http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/198758/goodreader_for_ipad_adds_vga_output_performance_boost.html.

Go to http://bit.ly/ and enter that URL in the URL Shortener, then click on "Shorten." The URL is shortened to http://bit.ly/dbhD2z.

Then when you hover over that shortened URL, it gives you the option to copy it to your clipboard, which you can then paste into your Twitter post.

A Big BP Person Caring for the Small People

As if the oil spill hasn't been the biggest PR disaster any company has ever suffered, I saw on the news last night that the company’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said: “People say that large oil companies don’t care about the small people. But we care. We care about the small people.”

Speaking as one such small person, "Wow, are you kidding me?"


The company's PR people, poor damned souls as they are, jumped out of the lake of fire they currently find themselves in long enough to blame it on a clumsy translation. I don't care if he's a Swede or not, "small people" is a universal term used by snobby elitists worldwide.

I imagine a sliver of their problem is that Brits and Swedes are communicating to  people they have absolutely nothing in common with -- the small people of southern US. That's a huge communication gap to overcome. Then again, from what I've seen of response to the president's speech the other night about the matter, he and his plan for a panel and to "make them pay" didn't fare much better. They just want action down there. Spare us the panels and recriminations until AFTER the problem has been solved.

Fast websites rank higher among customers, Google

One thing I've always recognized is the impatience of net surfers. I know it because I am one -- and have become even more impatient as the years and technology advances has brought us ever-faster loading times. What I used to tolerate in terms of page loading now will cause me to move on to another site if the one I aimed at is just a wee bit too slow to load.

I'm not alone. Here's a good read on the topic. In this article, it refers to an experiment conducted by Google in which they slowed down the delivery of search results. They found that increasing a page's loading time by less than half a second has a measurably negative impact on searchers. And, the author found, "the customer is highly, highly impatient. They scan a page like they scan a signpost as they're driving down a motorway. They hardly even read full sentences."

Which is why marketers who write the copy for their websites like they do an informational brochure -- heavy with graphics and large blocks of text -- are missing the opportunity. To take the article's author's metaphor a step further, it's like the highway department putting the "how to merge" section of the driver's manual on the sign next to the highway instead of the recognizable symbol for doing the same thing.

Fresh look at Perception Management

My wife and I just had to run over to the church to do some promotional set-up for our VBS registration table. I was walking through the darkened halls and looked up at a wall-mounted brochure rack. For the first time I noticed the words on the sign above it: "Information to Educate." Really? It just looks like brochures to me, and I GUESS that's the point of brochures, right? To educate?

But what a dorky way to say it.

Which made me think what would happen if I were able to take my old-timer blinders off and see the place fresh for the first time. What would I REALLY see, and would I be impressed or not?

It's hard to see things through the eyes of a visitor, or in the case of a business, your customer. You see the same place so often that the signs on the walls and the rust on the railings just becomes part of the landscape.

Get a notepad out and just try to see things as if you'd never seen them before. Secret shop your own place and see what you discover. If you find it an impossible task, for some reason, ask an outsider to do the same thing.

We don't want to miss the obvious and glaring signs and dirt and grime and cobwebs and bad service that outsiders will notice and forever impact their perceptions.

Writing for the Web

I'm often asked what distinguishes our web site design services from others. While I see some beautifully designed sites out there, they are usually designed by, well, designers. The copy on the site is usually provided to them by the client and is often the same kind of marketing material that would go in their printed brochures. My answer to them is that our web sites are written for the web, and we follow rules to make sure the site accomplishes its objectives in terms how people read a website and how search engines scan them.

The first thing you need to know is that online readers want their information quick -- they've trained themselves to scan pages for the content they're looking for. They pop from site to site and don't have the patience for reading long paragraphs of text on your site.

Your copy must be both written and organized in such a way to get the readers' attention fast and directing them to the information they want and will help them navigate your site easily.

Keep your sentences and paragraphs as brief as possible. Use headers to help the readers scan, and make them clever enough to compel them to read that section.Put some useful links in the body of your article that can help your reader find both the information they want or the product they want to buy. Like any convenience store, signs and good organization can help people have a rewarding experience -- and get them in and out of there as quickly as they'd like, while lingering long enough to do business with you.

If you link to outside pages, make sure those links open up another window so they're not actually leaving your site! Why on earth would you link somewhere else? Like I mentioned earlier, people are scanners and they want to find useful information. If your site is found to be a resource for useful information -- even if it lies outside the boundaries of your own site -- then people will come back to it.


And, lastly, look for the keywords you know your customers are searching for and be sure they are included a number of times in the body of the text, in headers and in meta tags.

One of the sites I wrote that I think works well is not one we designed at all. Check out www.ringomo.com. Not to brag or anything, but I really like the short bursts of useful text, interesting headers, and good use of links to direct you where you want to go for the right information.

Church Marketing

I'm charged with "communications" at our church -- which entails both internal and external marketing. It's the most fun you can have in ministry, until you have to come up with a new logo that somehow encapsulates and represents both the old-time religion folks and the Millennials who don't care much about the institution of "church" but just want to get busy helping people.

This video has been around for awhile, but I watched it again last night and I just have to laugh every time I see it.



I've never understood how the collective Christian church, representing the Person who without a doubt was the greatest communicator who ever walked the planet, could be so lousy at communicating. Church Marketing Sucks! Which is, of course, why there is a great website by that very name!

Because of the new logo project I've been undertaking, I've searched the web to see what other churches have done with their logos and websites. Ugly stuff, let me tell you! Like any organization, a logo needs to reflect the organization's purpose and culture rather than being contrary to it. If the logos and websites I witnessed are reflective of their respective churches, then I would expect the churches to be very cookie-cutterish, emotionless, and unimaginative.

There were, however, some gems out there. Here are some of the churches that I think really stood out for their attractive websites and logos:

Calvary Church
Grace Community Church
Kingsfield Church
Stonebriar Community Church
The Crossings

A Touch of Luck?

I was on the treadmill this morning and looked up to the TV screen on the wall of the gym in time to see an ESPN replay of a PGA golfer chipping out of a sand trap. The ball delicately dropped a few feet short of the hole and rolled forward until -- PLUNK -- a miracle shot worthy of an ESPN highlight.

I don't know who the golfer was, but he's obviously talented enough to use his sand wedge to make such a great shot -- but not talented enough to avoid the bunker in the first place. His shot was both skill and luck. Sometimes it takes a good mix of both to be successful. If it was pure skill, pro golfers would never be in the bunker, and every tough shot would end up in the hole. Skill gets them close, but luck takes them the rest of the way.

When I'm launching a new app for, say, the iPad, the techniques may be similar as I'm reaching out to many of the same writers. Some of these campaigns are crazy successful (check out GoodReader -- STILL the #2 best-selling iPad app in the iTunes App Store after several weeks) while other campaigns are successful but maybe not what I'd hoped (boffo!). The difference may be timing, message, or the product itself, but some of it is just the level of luck -- hitting the right shot with the wind just-so and a squirrel that brushes the ball with his fluffy tail to cause the ball to drop in the hole.

We can't count on luck, so we must learn and practice the best techniques to get us as close to the cup as we can get (and perhaps a dash of luck will give us a highlight of our own).

Advertising in the good times and bad

There's nothing like impeccable timing to start a business. I launched TK Magazine, for example, almost 4 years ago, and 1 year into it the economy began to fall apart. It's been a rough few years, mostly because the magazine is advertiser supported and companies slooooowed their advertising down or stopped it altogether.

There's the old story of Post vs Kelloggs from the days of the Great Depression. When the economy crashed and burned, Post pulled the reins on its advertising to save cash, while Kelloggs continued advertising -- realizing that it needed to continue pushing its message out there to the market. Going into the Great Depression, Kelloggs and Post each owned about the same percentage of the overall cereal market, but after the recovery, Kelloggs was so far out in front that to this day Post is still a Kelloggs wannabe.

It's been a BIT easier to sell ads as of late, but I admire those small business owners who realized that if they disappeared during the bad times, customers would be drawn to competitors who didn't and they may not be able to win them back during the good times.

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” –Thomas Jefferson

 

Masterful Media Relations

Way back when I had just left the restaurant industry and got hired on with my first (and only) PR agency (that's not my own), I learned from the worst about media relations. My old boss got everything wrong when it came to developing relationships with the people who can make or break our efforts on behalf of clients. The line she used that really sticks with me is "Screw the media -- they don't pay us." Even a PR neophyte knew that was a stupid attitude, and only deepens the negative attitude many in the media have toward PR people.

I ignored the boss's advice. Within a year of starting that job, bigger agencies were calling me to set up interviews. How did they know anything about me? They asked journalists in Dallas who the best media relations people were and my name kept coming up. Some of those opportunities seemed pretty good, but I decided I'd rather enter the world of the gainfully self-employed. After all, if a complete nonsensical ninny could make a living at this business, I could reverse engineer everything she practiced and be more successful.

While my old agency had a revolving door of clients, often leaving after the first six months, I've got three clients that have been with me for 9-10 years now. Am I bragging? Ehhhh...maybe a little.

Back to media relations, I really enjoyed this article that compares media relations to dating.

#1 is my favorite:
1. The best pickup line is a basic introduction
Are your legs tired? You know, because you’ve been running through my mind since you walked into this place. That’s an example of a bad pickup line in dating circles. You know what the most effective pickup line is? Hello, my name is [insert your name].
The same goes for media relations. A fancy opening line, no matter how clever you think it is, will only result in a reporter rolling their eyes at you. Introduce yourself professionally, let them know who you are and why you’re calling and you’ll get things off on the right foot. Don’t use a cheesy pickup line when introducing yourself to a journalist.

One time I pitched a CNET reporter on an app called LobsterTunes in a manner that was probably too cute by half. But with an app called LobsterTunes, what's a PR guy to do? She called me on it and said she might have been more interested if I'd left off the cheesy intro. Now I leave the cheese for after I've gotten to know a journalist better and they can tell by the clever pitch that I've got my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. It's like the kind of jokes you can tell your old buddies that wouldn't have told them when you first met them.

That said, you don't want to come off as dry. You can be clever without being cheesy. I appreciate cleverness, but just make sure your pitch doesn't peg the cheese-meter.

10 Dos and Don’ts for Brands on Twitter

From Mashable:

Interesting tips for using Twitter to support, promote and defend your brand. Click to the post for the details on each, but here are the 10 headers...

1. Don't be a showoff
2. Use proper grammar and spelling
3. Don't get too personal
4. Don't auto-Tweet
5. Don't leave air in the conversation
6. Don't overtweet
7. Do shout out to those who tweet about you
8. Do monitor keywords and competitors
9. Do make an informative profile
10. Do fish where the fish are

To me, the most interesting AND most painful as a PR guy is #1: "Give Twitter users your features and benefits. Let them know about special deals. Don’t post links to your latest press release, promote articles written by your CEO or make extravagant claims. A good rule of thumb to determine whether a tweet is user-friendly or brand vanity is to ask yourself, “If I didn’t work here, would I care about this?” If you’re not sure, ask a brutally honest friend who doesn’t work at your company."

When I have a good press release, I want to at least link to it. There are journalists and bloggers that follow me. So what do we do? From #3: "Keep your conversations warm but professional; it’s what users expect from a brand ambassador, and anything else comes off as creepy."

Twitter is a place for conversations, not broadcasting. And if you're going to converse, who wants to converse with someone jargonizing in PR-speak? When I tweet announcements, I keep them casual and fun. I also like to use it for breaking or leaking the news. Twitter followers like getting exclusives! Who doesn't?

No more Ning

As I've mentioned before, I administer a couple of Ning social networks. The value proposition was that you could, for free, set-up your own social network. It's great for clubs, churches, networking associations, etc. to provide a Facebook-like experience for those who share a common affinity around the organization or interest.

This was the promise on which oodles of groups started their Ning networks and got people to sign up, upload pictures, blog posts, calendar items and all sorts of other content.

But now Ning is going to press the Delete key on your Ning if you don't pony up!

From their website:

"We recently made the decision to focus 100 percent of the company on enhancing the features and services we offer to paying Network Creators. As part of this change, we'll be phasing out our free service. We will announce further details about Ning's product roadmap and different pricing options on May 4, 2010."

I'm not naive enough to think that businesses don't need to re-think their business model from time-to-time, especially if you're not making money. But when you're entire business model has been based on a free social network, and you get people to spend hours of their time building and maintaining their Ning site, you shouldn't just hit Delete on them. It's a broken promise. I'm not here to tell Ning how to do their business (ok, I've done it before with the spam thing, so I might as well do it again) but it doesn't seem like a good thing to build your business on a promise and then back out on it. It's bait and switch, and the bait now smells pretty fishy.  Sorry, terrible pun!

Judging books by their covers

I was perusing the bookshelves of Target the other night and wandered past the "Young Adult" section. "Did the lights go out?" I ask myself. No, it's just that pretty much every book for teens and "young adults" are black. I know they're into vampires big time, and you can't really have a happy, cheerful color on the covers of books about vampires -- but not all those books are about vampires.

The content of the book doesn't matter if the cover doesn't appeal to the target audience. Obviously book publishers have discovered young adults have an affinity for black.

Regardless of what "content" is in your "book" (the product you sell, if you're not getting the metaphor), is your cover designed to reach your target audience?

Now if I were publishing a popular book for young adults, and knowing that everyone else's book would hardly be distinguishable from each other, I'd make mine in red.

The need to SEO your press release

If you don't understand how to write a good SEOed press release, the result will be either a press release that isn’t optimized at all or one that’s over-optimized and difficult to read. Have you ever read a press release with too much emphasis on trying to impress search engines? Hello Mr. Press Release Writer! Your news still needs to be understood by PEOPLE! Don't obsess over cramming keywords in every paragraph of your press release. Instead, do research on which keywords are effective and use the effectively where it doesn't sacrifice readability. A good press release should be easy-to-read that also just happens to be optimized for search engines.

Google has a keyword tool that you can use to analyze your website to determine keywords that may attract the most attention.

Many newswires, such as PRWeb, will let you embed links back to your site -- and if they're well placed and turn keywords into anchor links that take the reader to relevant pages on your site, then your press release expands its ability to not only drive traffic to your site, but help educate readers by steering them to the right places for more information.

The value of public relations

Toronto-based MDC Partners has announced it has acquired a majority interest in Sloane & Company, a New York-based public relations firm. Miles Nadal, MDC chairman, has said he's willing to spend up to $100 million on agency and personnel acquisitions in the coming months! Hey Miles! Over here in Topeka is a great boutique agency specializing in the booming mobile app business!

Here's his quote that I'd like to splash around today:

"We believe that most of the innovative initiatives happening in marketing communications today are happening within the public relations arena," Nadal said in a statement. "Clients are under enormous pressure to deliver measurable results in a shorter and shorter time frame. Smaller entrepreneurial firms that are empowered to think differently, have the ability to do brilliant work and want to share the wealth, are the best partners for us."

For all of the negative flack the PR biz gets, especially from our friends in the media who have to put up with cold-pitches and poorly aimed emails from PR people who don't do their homework, it is true that the best results and the greatest innovation comes from within the PR disciplines. Engaging publics through social media is much more a function of the PR form of strategic communication than other forms of marketing communication.

Since I started Talon 12 years ago, it's amazing how many times I've had to reinvent what I do. With technology and consumer changes, the task of the PR force is to recognize how to leverage those new technologies to reach those new consumers and influence them favorably toward the organizations we represent.

This is what Winning Rules is all about. Let me know if you discover any of those "innovative initiatives" Nadal talks about so we can explore them together.

Topeka This!

The ultimate kick-back for re-naming Topeka after Google for the month of March, Google renames itself Topeka for... (presumably April Fools Day?)

Well played gentlemen!

From Google's, er, I mean, Topeka's blog post this morning:

• As our lawyers remind us, branded product names can achieve such popularity as to risk losing their trademark status (see cellophane, zippers, trampolines, et al). So we hope all of you will do your best to remember our new name’s proper usage:

Getting Insight into Facebook

I serve as Admin over several Facebook Fan Pages -- one for my business, one for my church, and a few for clients. Lately I've been getting emails from Facebook reporting on how much traffic and other activity each Page gets:

• Fans this week
• Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week
• Visits to your page this week

After each item, it gives you the comparable number from the previous week. Thank you Facebook! I love it.

Another tool that is often overlooked is Facebook Insights. For a Page Admin, you'll find it in the left column of your page. Under Insights, click on See All to get more detailed reports on your page's activity.

From the Facebook Help definition, "Facebook Insights measures user exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook Page. By understanding activity and performance, fans and ad respondents, and trends and comparisons, you are better equipped to improve your business on Facebook and elsewhere. Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads."

I recently read that there are more than 1.4M Facebook Pages, including 700,000 small businesses. There are just too many users to ignore unless you're convinced that your audience isn't on Facebook for some reason. But even if you think your audience is too old for Facebook, I just checked the Insights for my church Facebook page and for a church that is trending younger (certainly under 50), 34% are over 45 and 16% are over 55.

The useful data that Facebook provides lets you know whether you or being effective in reaching your target audience with your Page and any ads that point to it. Don't ignore this information!

Annoying Ning

I administer a couple different Ning social networks (which is a create-your-own network service). Ning offers nice features for groups to have their own social networking, such as pictures, video, blogs, chat, etc.

BUT BEWARE!

Anyone who is a member of your Ning can submit blog posts. You can control which ones get published if you're the admin, but it doesn't stop spammers from auto-sending loads of crap. I had to create a rule in my Outlook inbox that if the subject line says I "have a Ning blog post to approve" the email automatically goes to my junk folder. That folder had received about 60 of those emails today!

When I checked my Ning, I had 150+ first name members with gmail addresses. I deleted them all and reported them for spam, then changed my settings so that I have to approve all new members.

Ning needs to give the admin the ability to limit who can post to the blogs. I looked and there's only an option to moderate posts or not.

SEOing Press Releases

I've been a customer of PRWeb for years -- back when I first met the founder in his tiny Dallas office and tried to talk him into letting me do his PR. Back then, he didn't have a budget and I didn't have a clue. I remember he had one small server on the floor of his office. Now David is no longer with the company -- it was purchased by Vocus a few years ago.

PRWeb does a really good job, I think, of helping you to create press releases that are search engine optimized. You build-in hyperlinks, categorize your news, insert keywords (or at least you did...recently I haven't spotted that field) and pictures, and can change the name of the URL to include 2 keywords that might help to attract more search engine attention.

Regardless of the wire service you use, if any, your press releases should be written with search engines in mind. Most of the time, your news will be read online.

Benefits of an SEOed press release include:

• Improved search engine ranking
• Publicity in online media
• Increased website traffic
• Leads and sales!

When using PRWeb, I should say that you can pay them extra to get help with making sure all of the features you qualify for (based on the package you acquire) are used. I'd be happy to help as well, having done hundreds of them over the years.

In fact, check out our MobilityNewswire website. This site pulls in our PRWeb RSS feeds from press releases we set up for our mobile software development clients.

Pay to Play Journalism

A CNET writer that I work with from time to time sent me a link to a Wired article on the topic of "pay to play" review sites. The sites mentioned in the article, AppCraver and TheIphoneAppReview, both have sent me replies when I've pitched apps to them for review that I could get my app reviewed or expedited for a fee. This practice of editorial for a fee is common in mainstream media in other countries, but in the US we like to think that there is a firm line between editorial and advertising coverage.

I don't pay for reviews or any other kind of coverage because the practice is damaging to the credibility of the editorial review process which makes PR so much more, well, credible, than display advertising. The benefits of PR is that the perceived value of the information is so much higher because of the implied 3rd party endorsement of the journalist who is not compensated by the subject of the article. Simply put, rewarding this kind of media with revenue to get them to write a review will encourage this kind of "advertorial" business to flourish and, as a result, water down the advantage my service offers over other types of marketing communications.

Especially egregious is when these reviews don't disclose that they've been compensated for the article so the reader can judge for themselves whether or not the writing was biased in favor of the subject.

The line between advertising and editorial is one that gets blurred now in every form of media. Until recently, I published my city's business magazine and of course those who spent money advertising in the magazine wanted to be our quoted experts in the feature articles.

So how is a website or other form of media supposed to generate revenue? I personally think having ads and editorial that happen to feature the same companies just isn't the same kind of crime as making them pay for editorial coverage. Sure, all things being equal, if someone I worked with as an advertiser in the magazine happened to be a great source for an article, I saw no harm in quoting them because I knew them and their expertise couldn't be questioned just because they also placed a display ad somewhere in the magazine.

But the "pay to play" practice where payment for editorial coverage is required is bad for my business and the journalism business because it reduces the credibility of both. Everyone knows that websites and other media are supported by advertising, so the media company should clearly state its policy on the line between journalism and advertising and let the consumer judge the veracity of their content.

The End of Publishing?

Check out this very clever video that demonstrates how much we may be misunderstanding the upcoming generation and how it speaks to the publishing industry in the era of the Nook, Kindle and iPad.

Getting noticed on the web

I've spent a bit of time over the past few days looking at church websites. Man, they're bad! Of course, that's why there's a website called Church Marketing Sucks! As the communication team leader at my church (charged with internal and external publicity), I want our church website to look good, offer usable content, and be easily found by people looking for a church home. Unfortunately, our website comes with a subscription-based church management system that offers a really grand "behind the curtain" online community for members -- and while better than most church websites, ours still sucks.

We're going to take matters into our own hands and develop our own website that looks much better, is written for the web, and is search engine optimized.

When you put together a great looking website, how do you get people to find it? If you're looking for local traffic, you can advertise it to your local market in the newspaper, on Facebook or Google, or on radio or TV (if that makes sense to your kind of business). Don't forget the obvious: put it on your business cards, stationery and brochures!

There are important steps you need to take that will pay off in much bigger results for building your web traffic. Include target keywords and phrases that your prospects would be using to find you online. If you don't overwhelm your pages with meaningless words, the prominent use of keywords will make the page more appealing to the search engines and more meaningful to potential customers.

Carefully evaluate the benefits of online advertising (banners and pay-per-click). The nice thing is you can tell pretty easily if your investment is paying off and then adjust your budget to those ads that get the best results.

And use a blog and social media (Twitter and Facebook are no-brainers for many kinds of businesses) to connect with and keep in touch with customers -- and remind them about you and your website.

Google, Kansas

Over at my Kevin in the Kan blog, I've been writing about my hometown's efforts to woo Google to select it as a test site for its high-speed fiber optic network (which would bring surfing speeds of 100x faster than what most people have now).

I thought I would mention it here too because of how viral this grassroots effort has become. It is really a grand lesson in the power of social media and word of mouth (and how a community can work together WITH its government toward a common goal).

The latest PR move is when the mayor proclaimed that during the month of March, Topeka shall hereby be known as Google, Kansas. A silly move to attract Google's attention? Perhaps. That's what some are saying, but it's getting noticed! Here is some of the press attention Topeka (err...Google) has picked up:

CNBC
Wall Street Journal
BusinessWeek 
CNN (I like this one a lot...good job Mayor Bunten)
Christian Science Monitor
San Jose Mercury
The Week
The Register (UK)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
San Francisco Business Times
Washington Post
Computerworld/Networkworld
Kansas City Star
CNET
National Post
Associated Press
Examiner.com
Barron's
Connected Planet
Newser
Los Angeles Times
Digital Trends
VentureBeat
TMCnet
NBC Bay Area
TechCrunch
PC World
 

The local effort has been pretty much exclusively through Facebook and other social media, plus local get-togethers. Check out the ThinkBigTopeka site for more info on the campaign.

Funny video

Enjoy this video of a dialogue between a hapless PR fellow and a blogger who covers social media, just not B2B. So funny.



If you're offended by the F-word, it is used frequently. I stopped using it as part of my day-to-day vocabulary when I was 17, and don't normally like to hear it in a professional setting especially. But, ok, it's kind of funny in this case.

Increasing Twitter Followers

When it comes to social media, everything has its place:

Facebook is MOSTLY for my personal friends, acquaintances, and a bunch of people that I know somewhat. In retrospect, I wish I would have limited it only to people that I really know, instead of the 450+ people that I'm sure I've met at some point.

LinkedIn is where I prefer to network professionally, and I have this blog connected to it so that anyone following me on LinkedIn can easily see my thoughts on any given day. I've joined a number of business groups on LinkedIn and have made some good connections there.

Twitter is the odd one I was never sure what to do with. I'm not one of those who wants to tweet when I go to the bathroom or have a bologna sandwich, or how cool so-and-so was on such-and-such awards show last night. I pretty much use it to tweet about successful media placements for my PR clients so that more people can discover how awesome they are, and of course that will hopefully make me look like a good PR guy that others will want to use. In order for that approach to be a success, I need followers!

To increase the number of followers, I've been finding people who tweet about topics I tweet about -- mobile technology -- and begin following them. I often get followed back, and people discover me on those Twitter pages and begin following me because they too like learning about mobile apps.

I have heard that around 30% of the people you follow will follow you back.

I just downloaded something new to help me greatly expand my number of followers. It's called Twitter Adder, and it is supposed to help me manage Twitter followers, auto follow, and auto unfollow. I'll let you know how it goes!

Doesn't Google Buzz just sound like a great PR thing?

I signed up for Google Buzz -- because what PR guy doesn't like anything that has the word "buzz" in it.

Buzz turns my Gmail into another social networking opportunity. Woo hoo! Just what I needed. Here it is in a nutshell:

* Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail)
* "Rich fast sharing" combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
* Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
* Inbox integration (instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content, like the photo viewer we mentioned above)
* "Recommended Buzz" puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you're not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

But, much to Google's chagrine, the "buzz" has been mostly bad. I've heard from several of my friends who have nixed it after a brief trial run.

This article highlights some of the most notable negatives:

Buzz seemed to have a mind of its own, picking names in your email inbox , and selecting them randomly for you to follow in your "Buzz" network.

"Thanks Google Buzz, I'm automatically following 3 ex-girlfriends. #fail," wrote Tony Pitluga of Pittsburgh in a tweet that was widely re-tweeted last week.

Another problem users discovered is that Google makes public everything you do in Buzz in its search engine, unless you set the privacy settings ahead of time.

Can Buzz bounce back? Google announced some improvements and should get credit for reacting quickly -- but as for me, I'll turn it off. I have Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and that's enough social networking for me. Why add one more?

Don't be a pain in the Wave

I've been looking at Google Wave as a PR tool. Wave was introduced last year as a way to streamline communications into a single "wave" - it streams email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management into one platform.

What can you do on a wave? Your friends or colleagues can hold discussions, share files, chat, or comment on any of your post on any forum.

For PR pros, Wave changes the game. Anybody can contribute to the story with links, wikis, pictures, etc. BuzzMachine summarized it nicely here: "It combines the notions of a process as people add and subtract and update; it has the benefit of a wiki – a snapshot of current knowledge; it can be live; it can feed a blog page with the latest; it can feed Twitter with updates; it is itself the collaborative tool that lets participants question each other."

What I like is that Wave may return PR agents to communication agents versus just emailers of information. They can employ creative and engaging communication with anyone who joins the wave to get the word out about company news.

So leave it to PR people to already start getting a bad rap with a new technology tool. In my research, I found Jennifer Leggio's post highlighting some low-lights of how PR people have been violating the rules of engagement via social media:

1. Adding a journalist / blogger on Facebook and entering into a trusted network only to blatantly pitch said journalist / blogger on his or her “wall”
2. Spam @ messaging a journalist / blogger on Twitter multiple times to get them to review / write about your news or technology
3. Commenting on unrelated FriendFeed posts to try and get the writer’s attention

In a related post, Jason Perlow noted an early violation of Wave "PR Protocol" (if there's not such a thing, there soon will be). A pomegranate juice company I'd never heard of added him to their Wave -- you're not opted in, you're forced in.

Jason said: "As if using and trying to get used to Google Wave was bad enough, the PR agencies and marketing firms of the world have decided to start taking advantage of us, because we’re a captive audience and if they’ve ever contacted us in the past via e-mail on GMail, they now have a full contact database of people to torture by Google Wave if they were able to get an invite onto the system."

PR friends, Google Wave has a lot of potential for us, but let's respect the space of those influencers we want to connect with. Let's not be a pain in the wave and enlarge the credibility chasm our industry has with many in the media.

I'm back

Wow...I really ignored the Winning Rules blog didn't I? Since I last posted, I published 2 more years of TK Magazine and just recently divested myself from the magazine publishing business. I still own and operate The Business Center, which is Topeka's executive suites and virtual officing center.

But my true loves and main interests (in biz anyway) are still TalonPR and Talon Communications Group; the former offers public relations and social media support for mobile software developers while the latter offers graphic design, web marketing and public relations for any kind of business or non-profit.

I've been doing my personal blogging over at KevinintheKan.com, where I dump whatever random thoughts that cross my mind on the ills of our country and my state.

Back to WinningRules, though, I want to return to highlighting the "Winning Rules" and best practices of Web communications and marketing. There's already good blogs out there that cover it, of course, but hey, this is what I know so hopefully you'll find practical info here you can use in your own business.

Subscribe to this feed and please share your own thoughts.