Donation Plug to be a Good Citizen

by Jayme Soulati on 07/30/2010 in Business

Donations come in all shapes, sizes and dollar amounts. Charitable giving is something all of us need to do, and I don’t mean donating our junk to AmVets or Goodwill. What I mean is actually donating hard-earned cash to charities and not-for-profits and those they serve who need the money now more than ever to stay afloat.

I was so thrilled with myself when I got the call from the police federation, or fraternal order of police or firefighters, etc. The guy, always persistent and ticked off when I say “take me off the list,” opened the call with “Hi, Jayme, this is a paid fund-raiser for the blah, blah. Can we count on your donation today just like last time and is your address blah, blah?”

And, I said to his mouthful, “How much of my donation goes to the charitable organization you’re fund-raising for?” When he said 20 percent, I said, “thanks, but NO thanks.” We need to consider that more…where does our dollar go when donating to not-for-profits?

There are more than 1.5 million not-for-profits in the U.S. according to Foundation Center. There are ways to check on the ratio of operations dollars to services dollars. I like this site, Charity Navigator.  It offers plenty of resources for donors.

Think about the last time you made a charitable donation. Was it for Haiti? Was it for the Gulf vicitims of the oil spill? Was it for Hurricane Katrina? Are you merely a crisis giver? Or, perhaps you have a list of organizations you give to each year who appreciate your donation because they’re managing on a shoe-string budget. Maybe you’re a micro donor and text $10 when the call to action comes in or use Kiva or other fair-trade organization to share your wealth. I found Danny Brown’s 12for12K.org on Twitter and was happy to donate to its causes in 2009. There was a familiar and trustable face doing the soft ask.

Whatever your style of sharing money with those less fortunate, please ensure you have a style.

  • Start small with $10 given somewhere, but please start!
  • G to Kiva and give it as a gift (that’s how I was turned on to it; as a birthday gift to me).
  • Answer the invitation by a fund-raising committee of a local not-for-profit with $25, or go all out and donate $100.

It’s all tax-deductible, too, although speak with your accountant to ensure you follow federal guidelines about that.

Need a little push? Clothes That Work, Victoria Theater, League of Women Voters, Health For Peace, American Red Cross…no need to continue, is there?

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Pull Sales to Push Social Media

by Jayme Soulati on 07/26/2010 in Branding, Social Media Strategy

The July 12, 2010 Advertising Age features an interview with LG’s CMO Kwan Sup Lee. He is formerly of P&G and also worked pizza in Korea. LG owns a broad portfolio of consumer electronics products including microwaves and TVs. It is branding itself as a lifestyle company.

The more I study the influence of social media on sales, the more I realize the missing link IS sales. Just like public relations has yet to influence sales directly (we’re on peripheral vision), social media is not touching frontline sales, either.

The story listed five marketing challenges LG faces:

1. Focus on creating great products and then let marketing showcase them.

2. Forget about “one upmanship game” of tech features.

3. Use a broad product portfolio as a strength.

4. …understand your business, your consumers and your brand.

5. Don’t be intimidated by the competition.

Pretty basic and areas of concern by all companies, right? What’s blatantly missing is any mention of sales. The first challenge above is where I paused longest. How I’d like to edit #1 is:

Create great products supported by even greater marketing strategy and arm frontline sales with marketing tools and education about public relations and social media to influence a buy.

Public relations strategy provides a conduit to the customer, and social media channels allow direct, outside-in customer communication. The sales team, however, is WITH the customer face-t0-face whether B2B or B2C!

This strength of position by sales can help influence consumers to:

1. “Like” a Facebook page and subscribe to RSS feeds.

2.  Comment on a blog post or YouTube video with positive product feedback.

3. Ask for a Yelp comment.

4. Eliminate the blasted surveys with evey transaction we make and instead drive traffic to social media networks.

A flexible and nimble sales and management culture can make this happen and positively influence consumers’ buys. What do you think? Does this resonate with your thinking about what’s possible?

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Automating Social Media?

by Jayme Soulati on 07/22/2010 in Social Media Strategy

The “bots” are at it in force, and their victims are the industries nascent in adoption of social media. In a social-media presentation I gave recently to a group of 20 executives who own auto repair facilities nation-wide, someone announced they were doing a three-month trial with a supplier who is going to automate social media.

The man was excited about just approving content – to be written by another company, and watching them publish it on the various sites for him.

Why this is a bad idea is akin to allowing companies to access your bank account for a regularly scheduled debit.

No one, especially those starting out in social media should deliver the entire execution to an outside company. Message, tone, relationship, and content are at risk.

It was only a matter of time before this became the next trend for suppliers to pounce on. I am enduring the very same with those companies who write press releases and distribute them “free” on the Internet.

Executives and business leaders need to understand that social media strategy is part of integrated marketing. Social media is another powerful channel with which to communicate with audiences. Left to the automaters…that’s an absolute dead end.

I say no way to social media automation. What do you say?

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Social Media Tips & Auto Repair

by Jayme Soulati on 07/21/2010 in Social Media Strategy

We in social media often forget there are numerous industries and businessess nascent in social media adoption. While we continue to learn the intricacies about new channels, back-end tools, and amplifying our own brands, there are business leaders who still don’t know what Twitter is or why they need a Yelp profile to push local revenue.

This week, I gave a two-hour presentation in Chicago to a 20 group in the auto-repair industry on social media and amplifying brand. To the business leaders who are owners of five to 10 local collision-repair shops throughout the country, I provided the following recommendations to introduce social media and help them tie it in with the core marketing foundation:

  • Engage, for if you’re not engaged you cannot create community, control the message, or build reputation.
  • Re-trench the foundation that includes the brand, the Web site and the core communications strategy aligned with business goals.
  • Execute public relations as part of that core strategy so powerful content can be developed.
  • Cross pollinate all social networking sites with the Web site to drive search engine marketing.
  • Develop a corporate social media policy and select and train a front-line team to help build community, trust, transparency, and reputation.
  • Start slowly; do not tackle all social media channels at the same time. It’s not an all-or-nothing engagement, either.
  • Yelp is a must for local businesses, and a breadth of opportunity exists to take the lead in a region and vertical.
  • Because women 55-65 are the fastest-growing segment on Facebook, create a business page and begin a marketing thrust to create community and a new revenue stream among that demographic.
  • Managing “grudge” emotion is critical to diffuse from becoming an actual complaint or negative comment.
  • Leave Internet marketing to the professionals. It’s too complex to attempt on your own.
  • Respond to social media interactions within 12 hours max. If you wait 2.5 days to respond, you’re losing your community.

In your company and to your clients, are there other tips you might offer to those who are late to the party? We who lead have a ton of opportunity to help executives educate and navigate new media before the online world migrates to Web. 3.0.

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Google+: How Social Media Will Fall (Updated)

by Jayme Soulati on 07/16/2010 in Social Media

This post first appeared July 16, 2010, and what prompted me to head back through the archives to find it again was this post by Antonia Harler about Google — A Successful Road to  Failure. She shares all the write ups about Google + that we all have seen. And, she hit on what I suggested a year ago — no one has more time to develop yet another social network, do we?

See if this resonates from a year ago with you…I felt pretty strongly about developing more networks a year ago; I may be less against it today, but my time is more limited. Share your thoughts!

 

It’s all about community, connectivity and social networking, and people are joining in droves. Apparently, 96 percent of GenY have joined a social network. The fastest-growing segment on Facebook is women 55 – 65 years old.

The more cool social networks, publishing networks, and professional networks that launch to accompany Stumble, Posterous, YouTube, Friend Feed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and the like, the more consumers will weary. No one has time to find friends to add to a network. Do you?

I learned today that Stumble requires a network of Stumblers who share cool sites with one another. I’m always interested in seeing cool sites, but I’ve no time to develop a network of connected Web site lovers. When I launched Friend Feed, I thought I could consolidate my social media into one platform (which I can), but it, too, wants friends to connect on the same platform and be networked. On Twitter,  new followers invite me to join them on Facebook. Why? I don’t even know them.

And, that’s it.

That’s the reason social media will fall flat on its pitoot. People cannot spend eight hours a day creating community and populating it with more and more friends. There are only six degrees of separation from all of us, but seriously, folks, who has that many “friends” for real?

Not I.

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The Last PR Frontier — Sales

by Jayme Soulati on 07/14/2010 in Advertising/Selling, Public Relations

There’s not too many departments within an org chart that public relations hasn’t already touched. Methinks sales is the last frontier for public relations to influence, and it’s going to take some serious work.

My day-to-day with several clients is as a strategically aligned member of the marketing team where I blend public relations squarely into the marketing mix. The offering is much like content development, event strategy, creative brainstorming to influence lead generation and, in turn, the support of sales teams who bring in the bacon.

While logically explained, there’s no simple logic behind this mash up (PR and sales). In essence, public relations has swung so far from the sales team that we’re essentially non-existent to frontline sales. Here’s how:

  • PR has no standing among sales.
  • Sales depends on marketing.
  • Marketing beats to its leadership drum.
  • PR aligns communications strategy to business goals (which are sales goals, too).

In a perfect world, here’s what I envision a highly successful business model to look like:

  • Public relations and marketing form a cohesive team with PR feeding program strategy, content, event strategy, social media, media relations, and sales collateral into the team.
  • This marketing/PR team meets regularly with sales, and PR gets a chance to educate sales about its contribution to ROI, results.
  • Public relations attends sales meetings and even conducts trainings on what PR needs from sales to do its job.
  • Sales slowly begins to understand how PR works, and when marketing asks for customers to interview, sales will open InterAction CRM and allow PR to speak with customers for a story.
  • Sales is equipped with a message map completed by public relations so everyone says the same thing to key audiences.
  • Public relations is regarded as high value to the integrated team, and everyone wins.

Is this reality or un-reality to you?

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A-Lister Bloggers: New Print Feature Writers?

by Jayme Soulati on 07/08/2010 in Blogging 101

I get inspired by the amazing talent of the A-lister bloggers (at least in my book) to day-in and day-out craft thought leader social media content. How can this much provoking copy be created and most of it not begin to sound the same?

You know, there are only so many dresses on the rack; eventually, you’ll see another woman with the very same dress walking ahead of you on Michigan Avenue. (You get my drift, guys!)

Segue to the daily newspaper suffering from the demise of advertising, subscriptions and fewer journalists. It got me thinking about feature sections and pull-out special sections of the daily newspapers I read. Don’t you think these pages are chock full of a lot of nothing?

Here’s the brainstorm. A newspaper should contract 2x/week with some hot tamale bloggers and publish a new feature section with content that resonates a whole heckuva lot more than what print subscribers are paying for.

Here’s my list who can fill the queue; who else comes to mind?

  • Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer, who is so prolific and wordy hot that I shake my head and marvel.
  • Danny Brown, who launched 12for12K and has numerous awards as a Canadian blogger and is also of the Start Blogging Today set.
  • Mark W. Schaefer, Businesses Grow, who has become a B2B social media thought leader with his lively and thoughtful community.
  • Gregg Morris who pens a daily storytelling blog with a roundup of what’s going on across the 2.0 world
  • David Meerman Scott of Web Ink Now and a keen author of public relations blended social media works.

These gentlemen are noteworthy in their leadership in this social media space. I’m sure they’d appreciate your attention to tell them so, too.

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The Great American Content Mashup

by Jayme Soulati on 07/07/2010 in Social Media

I’m reading Jason Falls’s blog, Social Media Explorer, and if you’ve not subscribed to him, you’re missing the boat. In 500 words, Jason packs a punch with tips and lessons galore about social media and of late, content.

I predict the great American content mash up is ready to collide in our faces.

Everywhere you turn, Facebook pages are coming alive launched by companies that want a piece of the pie. But, look closely, the content is el stinko on many a fan page. How about Twitter? It’s not easy for some to write thoughts in 140 without littering the characters with “and” plus “that.” Thank goodness teen tweeps aren’t texting on Twitter although in those circles, I’m sure texting content exists.

And, then there are the blogs. I’m appreciative the bloggers I follow can write and write well. Sometimes you have to wonder who is doing the writing especially when the “author” is one popular dude (i.e. Seth Godin who posts the shortest blog fodder I’ve ever seen hit day light).

Content is king and having a content strategy will get you farther than a turtle with six legs.

Think about the numbers of people and companies engaged in content development today. Danny Brown wrote a recent blog post “52 factoids about the big 4 (and he didn’t call it that)” You’ll want to keep it for reference. It provides the user data for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  In a nutshell, users and traffic are astronomical and growing.

So what do I mean by the Great American Content Mash Up?

Writers from all walks of life have an opportunity to ghost write blogs, Facebook pages, Web sites, tweets, and more. It’s the next social media revolution as content needs collide with a limited number of high-quality writers.

Imagine the vertical markets that require specialty writers. Are there enough to go around to produce these communications? Probably not.

So, those self-employed, unemployed, newly graduated, or semi-retired, think about the opportunity facing the online world today. We need good writers, and we need them now. Is that your calling?

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BP, PR and The Fall

by Jayme Soulati on 07/06/2010 in Branding, Public Relations

It’s not too often public relations is visibly on the frontlines of a national crisis. When the client, BP in this case, is less than transparent and is deep into a situation (since April 10, 2010) with no immediate resolution and none foreseen until perhaps August, it is imperative public relations does everything possible to position a solution as genuine, train the spokespeople to be genuine,  and execute action-oriented and timely response.

In the June 7, 2010 Advertising Age, the story “Brunswick put to ultimate test as BP grows increasingly toxic,” references a global public relations firm that is most comfy as a financial communications agency and not an environmental- disaster crisis-communications shop.

Reporter Michael Bush references the good relationship with an early start in London 23 years ago between Brunswick and BP while suggesting the Washington D.C. office of the former is ill equipped to manage the crisis and perhaps its New York office would fare slightly better.

It was only a matter of time before the finger pointing began to swing in PR’s direction.

The work we public relations practitioners do on behalf of clients indeed includes counsel for behavior on the frontlines of a crisis. (Not sure why BP President Tony Hayward forgot his media training half of the time; was it due to pure exhaustion?)

No PR firm the size of Brunswick with HQ in London should manage a crisis of this proportion independently, regardless of the D.C. politicos on staff from the U.S. Treasury and White House who have foreign policy expertise.

This situation is similar to what happens to a past president of the United States. With all the earned expertise, he is relegated to the back burner to build a presidential library and author books rather than aid and abet the new admnistration. There are public relations agencies galore on the global scale with crisis communications expertise who can help the current situation with a fresh approach.

I am not one of these agencies nor am I a crisis communications expert who would even consider tackling a situation of this magnitude. (Levick Strategic Communications is doing a bang-up job with its own PR about this debacle; I’m seeing the firm quoted in a number of stories proffering counsel to BP on how it ought to manage this crisis.)

You can bet, however, that were I in the shoes of a Brunswick and internal BP corporate communications department, I’d scramble to invite illustrious public relations leaders to the boardroom to propose high-level solutions to this never-ending crisis.

It’s ludicrous local public relations firms in Texas at command central and the Gulf states have not been invited to the table to strategize strictly about regional people affected by this calamity who have lost their generations-old livelihood. How do you elect politicians? Karl Rove knows. You erupt the grassroots machine, one vote at a time.

Now that the pendulum has swung into anti-BP mode and it’s sticking, public relations is going to suffer trying to make change in this ever non-transparent debacle.

 For what it’s worth, BP and Brunswick, at this late date:

  • Call in the PR experts for some fresh ideas and begin to repair the damage that will take 10 times as long because your public face has been under water.
  • Invite regional PR expertise to the table to develop a Gulf States public relations campaign directed at the locals who live day to day off the sea for food and tourism.
  • Swallow your pride, cough up the dough, and tap the global PR community who work with oil companies on a daily basis. In fact, contact the Exxon-Valdez PR team for counsel on this situation. They’re still out there waiting, I’m sure.

And, if you’ve already done all this and I just don’t know about it, well, forgive me. Glad to hear it.

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Tribute to Jeff Bierig

by Jayme Soulati on 07/02/2010 in Public Relations

Were it not for social media and professional social networking, I would not have gotten the news that my long-time and dear Publicity Club of Chicago pal, Jeff Bierig, left this crazy world for new public relations endeavors, to be born anew in a different job other than the Illinois Institute of Technology or the Chicago Tribune.

When I first joined the PCC back in the late ‘80s, I was an upstart, and Jeff wasn’t that much more. He had a full head of black curls and a damn good radio voice especially when he dropped it to the normal baritone I loved so much. When he phoned me (before the days of caller I.D.) he never said his name; I always knew it was he.

Jeff and I shared laughs galore, flirts, stories about raising our children, his spouse out of work, and usually his own job search after departing a two-decade career as media relations director at the Chicago Tribune.

We bumped elbows and rubbed shoulders throughout my 15 years with PCC as president, as a two-term board member and committee chair of nearly every committee except for advertising (hah, I was not stupid). Jeff’s contribution to PCC was even longer than mine, probably because he never left!

When I moved from Chicago, Jeff and I remained in touch mostly via phone, but it was frequently periodic. He was a loving husband, adoring of his kids’ accomplishments, loved his EU holidays, concerts, music, and so much more.  I know he’s jammin’ on high right now.

Back in the day, PCC was a family; it was a professional community in which we grew and shared experiences that are now fond memories. Thanks, Jeff, for rollin’ the good times.  I miss you dearly.

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