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Traditional Media Relations By Firefox

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In the battle for users, the search engine wars  heated up a notch with Mozilla Firefox pulling ahead a smidge with a recent front page Wall Street Journal Marketplace article regarding tracking deterrence.

The irony is that while Firefox announced it had launched a web tool to deter privacy infringement, the sites that scam, phish, scan, and covertly “steal” our data must agree not to practice this behavior for the web tool to be effective. (That’s an LOL if I ever heard one.)

The other two major search engines, Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have the capability to launch a web tool similarly but Firefox snared the limelight for a minute with its traditional media relations thrust and first-out-of-the-gate positioning.

How important is traditional media relations to companies?

Very.

Imagine the stakeholders and business audiences reading this story. Now look at how much that story will influence users. I, for one, had a positive reaction after reading the piece and was glad I use Firefox.

As for media impact, any time a story appears in a national print daily the likes of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, the cascade of resulting media impressions is fierce.

As a business, your company needs to consider all communications strategies to positively influence your business goals:

  • Start with defining your business goals and set communications objectives and strategies to align to the company’s growth.
  • Conduct messaging to develop your foundation and platform for communicating to various audiences and how.
  • Include in your public relations mix traditional media relations ala what I mention above along with social media communications or online engagement marketing (the term I now prefer).
  • When there’s a good story to tell with all the elements for a national piece, ensure you hire the professionals familiar with pitching media. How we conduct media relations today varies greatly from how we used to secure story hits. The internet has altered how business is conducted; yet, media continue to operate with some of the same principles as pre-internet days.

Who has a success or challenge story to share about media relations these days?

Launching “I’m A Super Working Mom”

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I receive a lot if inspiration for creativity from Twitter. This second big idea came from a tweet in passing about our weekend loads with Neicole Crepeau. You may recall that it is with her that the brainstorm for my second business blog was launched, The SMB Collective (for which I seek writers, if you’re interested?)

Michelle Quillin, co-owner of New England Multimedia, spoke with me about vlogging. She also suggested that my single mother (by choice) status was a marketing tool. (I did not immediately agree nor do I now, but am swaying.)

Upon tweeting with Michelle and Neicole about our usual weekend load, she with four children and a business, and me painting kitchen cabinets all weekend, it quickly became apparent I needed to recognize and support we super working moms.

Introducing “I Am a Super Working Mom.”

This acknowledgment campaign has few, yet critical, objectives:

  • Recognize professional moms who balance work/life either successfully or not
  • Feature short kudos and stories right here and via my new Soulati Media Facebook page (P.S. Please join me there.)
  • Have regular blog fodder that is more fun and acknowledging of the social media relationships I’ve created and come to cherish

Criteria to Self-Nominate or Nominate Another

  • The only requirement I prefer is that the woman featured is a professional working mother; marriage status is not anyone’s business (but if I can play matchmaker at the same time, well, heck yeah!).

Storytelling

When submitting information for a short story, I’d like to know the following, please (and anything else that strikes your fancy):

  • About the business you run, manage or are employed at.
  • Number/ages of children, pets and other caregiving roles you manage in your home.
  • What a typical weekend for you is like
  • What secrets can you share about managing the load; do you ever have time for yourself?
  • How to reach you via social media, blogs, website, etc.

I know I need to go first, but perhaps I can practice on a few peeps I know. I believe you know who you are, right? Neicole Crepeau, Michelle Quillin, Mojdeh Hojjati, Ivonne Vazquez, Gini Dietrich, Christina Ampersad, and the list goes on and on; it’s exhaustive!

How to Play

  • Self-nominate and answer a bit about yourself
  • Give me permission to draft a short piece and share it with you for approval
  • Share a jpg of beautiful  you without the kids
  • Nominate someone you’d like to recognize and we’ll work it up for the queue. Plans today are to draft a story 1-2/week depending on available content.

I’m excited about doing something fun and pseudo businessy here; all work and no play makes mommies grumpy.

Social Media: We’re All Talking To Ourselves

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Six months ago, I presented to a DeVry University business class and was cheerleading about social media. Last night, I presented an updated deck to a new group of older students taking a intro to business course (many of them re-inventing themselves), and my thermometer around social media took a nose dive. So much so that the instructor asked me what had changed?

We’re all talking to ourselves in a big ubiquitous bubble. Among my Twitter peers, bloggers I follow, comments I post and read, and Facebook pages I like, those engaging are we in public relations, marketing, video production, virtual assistants, website and application development, and other professional services. Invariably, the same names pop up over and over again in the same locations; you can run, but you can’t snare a comment first without someone else getting ahead of you.

Saw a product download tonight “Amplify Your Echo.” Indeed.

It seems to me, the mashup is slowly receding to boundaried categories with confined conversations:

  • Social media leaders who publish the most-followed blogs and have the most followers on Twitter. These folks share in the limelight and their content is rich while they educate the masses. Likely, they’re monetizing their social engagement investment with books, speaking gigs, or paid projects.
  • Small to Medium Businesses might be engaging online direct to customer or prospect to create their own community, but they are definitely NOT joining the conversation in and amongst the professional services crowd. (The latter want to identify an SMB owner to sell their services.)
  • I can back up this statement with my own research to find small-to-medium business owners to enhance my Twitter stream (for my second blog at The SMB Collective). My search on Twellow and Listorious spawned many business coaches seeking new clients, blatantly.
  • Public relations professionals at many varying degrees of career development are thick into social media (and if they’re not, they ought to be) to learn from the leaders who, in spite of themselves, are also teachers of the pack. Wonder how many thought leaders relish the idea that they’re de facto teachers when they’d likely prefer to gain a few new clients instead?

Public relations people prefer to talk with their own kind, share in the jargon and marketing speak with which we’re all familiar. That, however, gets us practitioners nowhere fast. Creating a brand as an influencer is dandy; but, what’s the next step to get beyond the time investment with no ROI?

Taking this one step further, what would happen if you stopped blogging, tweeting, Facebooking? Do either of these social channels earn you new business? If you’re in professional services (like public relations, financial planning, legal, accounting) have you been able to productize your online engagement investment in order to monetize it?

In the last week, these thoughts have begun to surface as I begin to bump heads with an amazing “in” crowd on social media. While I never tried to integrate that way, I naturally gravitated to them and them to me. Like breeds like in the case of public relations, and the banter is highly rewarding with people who “get it.”

I don’t have the answers right now, but I sense a sea change coming – like the talk around the blogosphere about the bubble bursting (in re Groupon valuation and Google’s $6 billion offer).

If you can shed some light, I can sure use the help; meanwhile, see you on comment 26 on that A-lister blogger’s next post.

Should PR Do Location-Based Marketing?

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Just wrote another blog post today at The SMB Collective, my second business blog where I write on small-business issues with my peer group. That post is about Foursquare and how businesses should claim brand identity on Foursquare (and Yelp and others) even if the timing is not quite right for launch of location-based marketing.

That post got me thinking about the role of public relations. I’ve been reading in Advertising Age and a few other places that 2011 is the year of PR. Folks are saying social media is the perfect purview of public relations, and it’s logical that PR practitioners would manage content marketing. I fully agree.

Should we also “do” location-based marketing, too? YES, why not?

I think we ought to jump right in and claim that one, but not all alone. Location-based marketing requires some awesome digital expertise with mobile apps IT and design, retail marketing, general marketing and branding along with events knowledge.

Public relations needs to promote the fact that a business is engaging in location-based marketing by storytelling and sharing the news on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and LinkedIn. Any business with a success story to tout needs the help of public relations. In addition, good old fashioned traditional media would be interested in hearing about a solid case study on location-based marketing, too.

Location-based marketing services require all integrated marketing practitioners to adopt a piece of the pie. Public relations needs to work a bit harder to justify itself as a cook in that kitchen.

What do you think about that?

Hey, PR Master Web 5.0 or Die

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It’s the year of public relations, or so I’ve heard. In my more-than-quarter-century in this profession, every year is the year of public relations, IMHO (in my humble opinion). I’ve relished this industry because it suits my thirst for the next new trove of knowledge to quench my intense curiosity to know more about everything.

Which leads me to Web 5.0 (isn’t that the version we’ve gravitated to without anyone really stating it?)…there is so much (too much) to learn, grasp, master. Anyone trying is going to fail miserably unless they’re being awarded a grant to master every app in the cloud, how each smart phone works, what new technology helps computers run more efficiently, etc.

I had a grand chat Friday with Michelle Quillin at New England Multimedia. It’s been my goal to connect via voice with my tweeps so I can close the gap of written word and still images on Twitter and Facebook. She shared with me the successes she and her business partner husband, Scott, have had adding social media to their growing web design, WordPress, and video business.

We spoke about where I need to move next; she said monetize and head directly to vlogging, and I said, “GASP!!” [Two of my public relations peers do this very well — Jontus Media, Inc. and Arment Dietrich.]

Any public relations person who’s any public relations person must continually re-invent. That puts us squarely behind the eight ball to walk the talk. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to, can’t find the time, have no time, or the kids’ evening events are getting in the way – those of us interested in mastering a teeny piece of the pie must engage.

Why?

Because our clients and companies need us to know how to do this; they’re turning to the leaders to put the trough of water right in front of a nose, conveniently, and without the learning curve. That’s why our learning curve is both painful and exciting. Look at it this way, the world would be pretty darn flat if everyone worked the same way without twists and turns.

I’m groaning up the hill with the rest, but my outlook for 2011 sees the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping there will be a “just say no” time when I can turn the other cheek to the latest gadgetry and widget. But, when my house is not in order and when there are way too many cool new things to glean, then I’m in – with 20 toes and 30 fingers.

How about you?