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Archives for February 2013

Today We Reflect And Celebrate

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Every year on this day exactly (told you my lucky number is 13), reflection is in the air. About what you say? Let me share:

  • Being In Business. My years as a solopreneur, agency owner, freelancer, dog walker and kid/house sitter have been the most rewarding for healthy spirit. I was working for myself. It was and is up to me how much money I can make and how hard I can work. Being accountable to yourself and whom you hire in business is heady stuff. It requires constant attention, thinking and action. Along the way, there are peeps to meet and relationships to build; there are even folks to care for. That’s what drives me, this being in business stuff. It doesn’t matter how one defines me; if I’m the one determining how money rolls in the door and buying my own health insurance and dropping pennies into a retirement plan, then I’m in business; bona fide.
  • Being A Single Mom By Choice (In Business). The path I took to motherhood is unlike most other women. It is rewarding and stressful and puts perspective on money-making like you wouldn’t believe. I’m no longer able to squeak by on a dog-walker wage; I have to earn the beau coup bucks for the kidlet. She lends a wonderful purpose to why I get up every day and work to the bone to rinse and repeat. There’s no other way to select the single-mother-by-choice (not without nice $$ luggage, mind you) than to be in business for self. Yet, I have never defined myself as “mother of kidlet;” my identity remains “Jayme Soulati and this is my daughter.”
  • Social Media. In 2008, I was a single mom in business in a dreary basement not in Chicago with zero friends and negative zero ability to go find them. I was seriously depressed with my place and then along came Twitter where I began to meet some astonishing new friends who Mark W. Schaefer summarized nicely about in his 1000 post yesterday. He and Jon Buscall and Jenn Whinnem were the earliest of my social media friends, soon followed by Erica Allison, Gini Dietrich, Danny Brown, and a boatload of others from the early Twitter banter days. Yes, Twitter was a nightly festival; it rocked with banter and #RockHot snark. I did 140 with peeps around the world, and I was whole again. Last year on this day I sat for hours in the morning thanking well wishers on Facebook; this year (just 365 later), I’m having to do that on Google+, text messages, Twitter, LinkedIn AND Facebook. It’s heady, celebratory and so amazing how Twitter (and social) changed my life.
  • Values. Twice in business in the last five months I made the choice to walk away from a client and leave money on the table. Prior, that was unheard of; I would take it on the chin, buck up and carry forth to earn the almighty dollar. Today, not so much. If it feels bad; if I find a lack of respect (the value that has risen to the top of late to my surprise), then I need to move along and overturn the stone elsewhere for the buried treasure. I thank you Peg Fitzpatrick for your gift Monday. The smiles that created on this face were day-long.
  • Opportunity. I kid you not when I tell you I feel like a kid…in a candy store! From a lowly PR peep in Chicago who got a chance at Manning, Selvage & Lee because I had researched the name of the managing director, James O. Ahtes, and the hiring VP, Dutton Morehouse, had never met a corn detassler, to a marketer, social media upstart (I can’t be an expert), professional blogger, and now digital marketer and self-published author to be…OMGosh…may I tell you the sky is the limit, please? And, will you believe me? It takes gumption, passion, and a zest for learning to keep on. Some made fun of me when I wrote this post on 50 Shades of Wiser as I had used that darn book title everyone loves to hate. Had anyone stopped to really read it, the theme there was about aging gracefully in this social media sector where maturity is a benefit and seasoned doesn’t mean salt.
  • Celebration. Today, I celebrate you. Each of you in this community and beyond who take time to comment and let me know you’re not lurking every day push me to excel and strive for the next innovation. You can see it happening, I know, and your patience as I churned through the steps to get here today is appreciated. Never one to jump in first, it takes me time to look at all the angles and find a way to carpe diem (the one thing I took away from advertising class at the University of Wisconsin) and DIY (which I’m trying not to do as much!). For all of you here who have contributed to where I’m at today, thank you. My wish is for many more with you, right here.

Reflect AND Celebrate!

 

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Streamlining Blogger Outreach With Inkybee

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inkybeeIt’s getting harder and harder for media relations practitioners to earn stories. There is a depletion of journos at print and broadcast outlets, and social media has altered forever the course of media relations.

Where are publicity hungry professionals turning to secure “ink” for their clients?

To Bloggers.

Blogger Outreach

There’s something agencies do called blogger outreach. It’s quite similar to media relations only it’s done with bloggers who may also have a background in public relations. When I get a pitch from a peer blogger, I typically find a way to work the content in to my blog IF it’s relevant.

Gini Dietrich went on a rant yesterday right here on Spin Sucks about how she hates PR people and provided seven tips on how to pitch bloggers better. She’s a PR pro (and I am, too), so that means she gets to say she hates her peers.

What Hugh Anderson of Forth Metrics in the U.K. has been doing is writing a few e-books and great blog posts about blogger relations/outreach. He and his team have made it a topic of choice; so much so that they made a huge announcement late last week about a new platform for blogger outreach two years in the making.

Inkybee

I jumped on the beta of Inkybee to see what his fuss was about, and I stuck around. You know a beta is great when you keep jumping from one section of the platform to the next to poke holes and try to break it. There wasn’t much broken, but I still had questions, so Hugh and I Skyped on Friday so I could get in his head a bit more.

Here’s the gist:

Inkybee is for PR pros doing blogger outreach. You enter in key words and wait for InkyBee to churn the blogs that include your key words in the category you’re seeking. I put in social media just to see if my peer group popped up; more than 1900 blogs were returned via a ranking algorithm to my email box. It wasn’t right away, but I was very impressed with the list.

When you open the home page, you’ll find great tutorials on how to navigate and use the site. The best personal touch is that InkyBee uses personalized sticky notes throughout navigation to share instruction. There are also links to both of the Inkybee blogger outreach ebooks; one of them I already downloaded, and it’s full of testimonials from the field’s leaders – one of them Ms. Dietrich herself.

The lists are awesome and really push you quickly into the task of identifying bloggers with keywords you want in your outreach and even those you’d like to look at for guest posting and business development.

When setting up a campaign, you can track and measure; this step I’ll reserve until I have an active campaign to test.

As with anything just entering beta, there are kinks to work out; I’d say, though, that Inkybee already looks polished, clean and impressive. I encourage each of you to take up the call and sign on to the free beta right now.

Anyone who has tested a product, service or online tool knows it can only get better with real-time feedback. Won’t you please lend yours?

 

 

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Dust Off Your Company Mission Statement

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ben-and-jerry-mission-statement

Courtesy of Ben and Jerry’s

Before a company establishes a blog, it’s important to determine its goals. Maybe it’s to drive sales or strengthen a brand; or, perhaps it’s to become an influencer in a category or sector. Either way, a blog has goals just like program strategy has goals.

If you own or work at a company, having business goals are also critical. Everything implemented throughout the company is in alignment with business goals.

What of a company mission statement?

No matter the size of your team, if you’re a small-to-medium business (SMB), then you need to think strategically about your company’s purpose. What is the philosophy you’ll guide your teams with? With whom are you engaging and in what location? Do you have a product or service you want to particularly focus on that should be added to your mission statement?

I honed in on the word “mission” in a story by Crain’s Chicago Business when I saw the viral video by the Chicago Music Exchange called “100 Riffs.” The owner of the Chicago Music Exchange asked its employees to create viral video (I think you can only create video with the hopes of it going viral, really).

The video of 100 riffs on the history of rock in one take did go viral and is still being viewed on YouTube. The campaign was submitted to Crain’s Chicago Business and was featured in a story. The owner of the Chicago Music Exchange said the video aligned with its mission, was perfect for customers, and showcased the very essence of the Chicago retailer of music equipment.

In the Jan. 28, 2013 issue of Advertising Age, a story “How the usually dry annual report has become brands’ secret marketing weapon,” detailed how a bland annual report took the 2012 Cannes International Festival of Creativity by storm.

Austria Solar submitted what looked to be a completely blank white book as its annual report. The pages were solid white with no ink…until someone took the book outside and exposed it to solar rays. The sun’s rays reacted with the specially treated paper to bring the words inside to light, literally.

Here’s the hitch…the article stated, “While it could have come across as gimmicky, it was a solid concept that conveyed the company’s mission in a single, startling moment.”

Think about that a sec…here is a reporter making the connection from a highly creative annual report the likes no juror at this international competition has ever seen to the company’s mission. When do reporters draw that bridge? When something so extremely innovative makes someone connect the dots to the company that launched it. Fabulous, eh?

We can draw the same correlation to the Chicago Music Exchange video, too. It asked the staff to develop something that showed customers its equipment, talent, knowledge, and love for music  — all part of the mission.

We rarely see mission statements of companies; they’re oft hidden on websites or buried deep in a dusty file cabinet. Every so often, pull your mission statement off the shelf and see if your company is adhering to that original intent, philosophy, and strategy with highly creative products, services and actions.

 

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The Happy Friday Series: Glass Half Empty & Happy

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A woman I designated as  Social Media Woman of the Year 2012 graces us today with her always unique perspective on life, topics and happenstance. I encourage your read today as we continue The Happy Friday Series with awesome guest appearances thus far by Peg Fitzpatrick, Susan Silver and Paula Kiger. Jenn Whinnem is our guest today, and you may want to read her “coming out” story that debuted on this blog in 2010 before you read what’s below.

Jenn Whinnem Says:

credit: sodahead.com

credit: sodahead.com

The Glass is Half Empty and I Couldn’t be Happier.

Come here. Want to hear a secret? Here’s how I survived public humiliation and other fallout from:

  • Having to leave my dream college, one year in
  • Unemployment
  • Canceling my own wedding two months beforehand
  • The slow ratcheting up of an ultimately fatal illness
  • Several romances gone south (like all the way to the south pole, hanging out with the penguins south)

Until age nine, I drank a lot of Mylanta, because I was a really nervous kid and my stomach hurt from being so nervous. The short version was that I was terrified at all times that I would embarrass myself in public.

But then I got philosophy!

At age nine or so, I read Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You. “What are you so afraid of?” someone asks the protagonist. “The worst it can do is kill you.”

The light bulb went off. I was so relieved, I cried. Public humiliation would hurt, but not kill me.

Yeah, at age nine, I accepted my death, and put down the Mylanta. If I did in fact die, okay, I’d be dead, so it wouldn’t matter. But nobody was going to kill me if I said the wrong thing to a relative at my birthday party or accidentally farted in the grocery store.

Some people this is really weird, or even dark, that a nine year old thought about death like this. But I never was an optimist. I’m also not a pessimist. I consider myself more of an absurdist.

Here is the resiliency I developed as a result of my philosophy:

  • Any time I found myself in a rotten situation, I would determine the worst case scenario
  • It wouldn’t be death
  • So then I’d figure out how to deal with the other inevitable losses
  • And I’d FIND the humor in it (this is the absurd part).

See, if it doesn’t kill you, it’s just going to be inconvenient. Don’t sweat inconvenient. Take a day to sulk, then suck it up and be done with it.

Someone sues you? Hire a lawyer. Can’t afford one? Whatever, you can make it work. Clients haven’t paid you, and you are going to miss your mortgage payment? Be late on your payment. Take charge of what you can control.

It’s not that I think that any of this is ideal. I’d rather not be sued or default on my mortgage. But here’s what you’ll find:

  • You don’t feel powerless anymore. You have an ACTION PLAN.
  • Since you’re focused on action and not victimhood, people will crawl out of the woodwork to help you. Emotional drowning scares good helpers away. (it is okay to feel blech, but not to drown).
  • At least one person you know has been in your situation and knows how to navigate it.

Optimism didn’t really work for me. What did work was embracing reality, having a good laugh, and getting ON with it.

What’s your strategy for minimizing freak-outs when life hands you a lemon tree?

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Did Anyone Media Train Lance Armstrong?

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Cover of The Power of Body Language

During the station (there were two of them), I was particularly interested in body language, facial expressions, and an earnest apology with sincerity.

What we got was a stone “who” only on occasion succeeded in being sincere. Only once did he tear up and that was when he was speaking about the regret he had for his eldest son. Not once did he look into the camera and speak one to one with any viewer; in particular those he most bullied and abused.

When media relations specialists work with spokespeople, we do what’s called media training.
Everyone is familiar with the word “handler” in political and celebrity circles. That’s the pro who manages the media and turns away reporters getting too close for comfort. That’s also the publicist who has the frontline backdoor role to be on top of current events with a snappy response.

It’s obvious Lance Armstrong didn’t have a handler (they probably couldn’t lie like he did) nor did he have any formal media training.

Here’s what the pros say about Lance Armstrong’s performance (from ):

Lance Armstrong’s Marketability

  • , Sports business reporter, ESPN: “Lance Armstrong doesn’t have any future marketability; it’s over. It was his inspiring story of a cancer survivor triumphing in races that made him marketable. If the wins are not legit, then neither is he.”

Lance Armstrong’s Body Language

  • Tonya Reiman, author, “The Power of Body Language:” This is the first time I ever heard the term “fig-leafed” – he nervously covered his groin with his hands. He was also wringing his hands, crossed his legs, tucked his hands between his legs, touched his face, bit his lip, took deep breaths, and swallowed hard. Tonya says these are all signs of a man under serious pressure and his face showed “so much arrogance and not enough real remorse” which is what viewers wanted to see.

Lance Armstrong and PR

  • Mike Paul is a crisis PR expert quoted in Advertising Age. He believes Lance only partially told the truth. In not so many words, Mike believes Armstrong failed his first crisis-PR move (when “scandal-plagued athletes often do confessional interviews where they come clean and throw themselves at the mercy of the court of public opinion.”)

How To Prepare For Media Interviews

Regardless of whether you’re a “scandal-plagued athlete” or a bona fide Wall Street executive, there are stones to turn over and it’s reporters’ jobs to find them (except in the case of the scandal!). Preparing for an interview with the Wall Street Journal is akin to Lance Armstrong preparing for an interview with Oprah. It takes hours and hours of pre-interview preparation prior to sitting in front of an investigative reporter or someone with the skills the likes of Oprah Winfrey.

Here are several media training tips:
1. This tool is golden when it comes to putting a story on one page.
2. Hire a media trainer who consults with a media relations professional. You need someone from the outside who isn’t close to the situation to come in and drill. In the case of Lance Armstrong, he should’ve been preparing and practicing just like it was a presidential debate.
3. Write a Q&A document with every single possible question that could be raised. Answer these questions using a message map. In the case of Lance Armstrong, however, there was more than a decade of lies to address and rectify in advance of the Oprah interview.
4. Rehearse, but be careful how rehearsed answers become. Lance was too stone-faced; however, no amount of preparation was going to allow him to break down in front of an international audience. He failed to earn respect from anyone; he succeeded in being labeled a consummate liar.
5. Review reporters’ history of interviews and writings. This is a job for any good media relations professional. It’s called writing a brief. It allows spokespeople to reference previous stories, break the ice, and also be prepared for the type of style and to expect a barrage or line of questioning.

Here’s the nutshell…no one in this era of visible online identity should ever assume anything is private. Prepare for an interview as if you’re Lance Armstrong being interviewed by Oprah.

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