Jayme Soulati, Author at soulati.com

The Happy Friday Series: Being Happily Half Empty

11/08/2013 By Jayme Soulati

You meet the most remarkable and provocative people online. When you engage a tad deeper and peel back the layers, you see the seedling sprouting into the fruit of the earth. That’s Jenn Whinnem.

When she wrote this Happy Friday Series, Glass Half Empty and Happy in February 2013, she knew it very well could be regarded as different with a bit of a twist.

Indeed.

Laura Click, Jenn Whinnem and Stanford Smith at Social Slam 2012

My Twitter Pal, Jenn

Jenn Whinnem is the best writer I’ve seen around, and she’s an amazingly good editor, too. She works at the Connecticut Health Foundation, and she’s #RockHot, teaching peers and colleagues about social media and communications because she is totally an expert.

Jenn recently married, and she’s step mom to a young boy. She is always around to listen to me rant about something on my mind, and she’s always there to pitch in and pick up the ball to help. The load she manages every day puts her squarely in my stratosphere of respect every day, and she manages half empty quite well; better than most.

I want to say thanks to Jenn for being the consummate community manager, friend, peer, colleague, and avid listener. I also want to thank her for writing with her neck out to show a side of persona, perspective, and pizazz that is not mainstream at all. I like that, for she consistently makes me think a little harder and a bit differently.

Thank you, Ms. Whinnem for writing here and being you.

How To Select News Release Distribution Services

11/06/2013 By Jayme Soulati

News releases are distributed in a variety of ways:

One-to-one media relations from public relations professionals to media

A distribution via a media list developed via Cision, Vocus or other media databases

An online only news release distribution service e.g. PR Web

A traditional wire like PR Newswire, BusinessWire or Marketwired which also blend and distribute with online outlets

There are resellers of these services that may have a limited distribution or fewer bells and whistles. What’s often a feature for companies watching the bottom line of out-of-pocket expenses is price. Resellers come in less than the primary suppliers; which features are sacrificed for price? It’s hard to know.

In fact, it’s hard to know the best recommendation any more for clients and companies. Recently, I was asked my professional opinion on the difference between the online only news release distribution service compared to the more traditional wire.

I’m going to try to provide thoughts via an in-depth analysis of metrics from a very recent distribution for a client. Keep reading to hear my thoughts and do add yours, too?

Online News Release

Prior to Google switching up news release optimization and requiring no-follow links for online news dissemination, there was a creeping practice of “SEO PR” where some professionals were optimizing public relations content for search marketing benefit.

Back in the day about three years ago, results for online news releases were fabulously successful and companies realized high traffic to websites as a result. Today, times are a bit rougher; there are hundreds of news releases issued every single day from a variety of platforms and channels.

The suite of outlets picking up news releases via online only distribution is impressive, but when you look closely at the outlets, they may not be the best places for the news, especially if the news is a niche topic for a business-to-business audience.

Metrics for Online News Release Distribution via PRWeb (Actual)

57,489 impressions from a feed or web page
1,096 reads — number who loaded a full version
49 interactions — clicks, download, forward, website interaction
109 online pick up

When you examine the outlets that picked up the news from the traditional wire, they are more popular news sites with a slew of broadcast TV websites, daily papers and business journals.

Metrics for PR Newswire Distribution (Actual via eReleases reseller)

(eReleases report says it distributes news to 5,900 websites and traditional news rooms with 1.5 million views of news releases; PR Newswire says it distributes to 200,000 media and 8,000 websites.)

2371 Views

0 Downloads

When you look at the data only, the online distribution service wins by a long shot; but, are numbers always accurate? No, you need the interpretation, and that’s what we’re trying to do here; but, there’s a missing link.

Website Analytics Required

When a company is putting news on both the online only and traditional wire service (with some online outlets, too), the best idea is to do a split test with a link on one of the services or a different quote and a different link or quote on the other distribution service.

Also, understanding traffic to web pages via Google analytics or Clicky is helpful and rounds out the picture. Without incorporating these data into the full analysis, it would be hard to determine which distribution service is better.

Pricing

PRWeb has five levels of pricing from $99 to $499 depending on whether the news is a multi-media news release with images and video or merely an extremely basic version.

PR Newswire is a membership service and members receive pricing accordingly. This service, however, is the absolute top of the line with all the real and required services publicly traded global companies need…and more.

eReleases is a reseller of PR Newswire and they do a great job. They have tiered pricing, too, with a “personal publicist” service. I use them often for news distribution on the PR Newswire. The difference is you don’t get everything PRNewswire offers, and the price reflects that.

Marketwired phoned me yesterday to inform me more about its 10 vertical distributions with emphasis on the Associated Press

What Is The News

To make a determination about which service to use, professionals have to analyze the news. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Is the news national, breaking news?
Is there a time element to the news?
Is it specialty niche news that appeals to a specific segment?
Is it for trade media in vertical markets?
Is it business-to-business news or consumers with wide appeal?
Is it regional news to a smaller audience?
Does the news tie in with a seasonal event, current event, or trend?
Is it oriented to research supported by evidence, proof points or data?
Is the news investor related for a publicly traded company?
Is the company a startup, corporation or non-profit?
Is the news global? Should you launch simultaneously on several continents?

Knowing whether the news is important enough to warrant national distribution is the responsibility of the media relations professional. Media relations professionals will also know when to use online distribution only, wire service only, or both.

Best Analysis

So, with all of the above which doesn’t clearly or definitively point to one over the other, the best analysis is frequency. In order to understand which distribution service may provide best results, then consider this:

Get five news releases out the door using both services

Ensure the news is valuable and more hard hitting

Analyze results from reports and compare data side by side

Incorporate news content into that analysis, too

In My Professional Opinion…Taking into consideration all of the factors above, here is my professional opinion about which service provides better opportunity.

The answer is very lawyerly — it depends.

1. Look at the quality of the news
2. Determine who should get the news
3. What is the objective — traffic, views, clicks, earned media
4. Incorporate analytics from start to finish
5. Distribute five to seven news releases and do a comparative analysis
6. Review the metrics and conduct your analysis

Big Data Analysis Invades Amazon TV

11/05/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Deutsch: Logo von Amazon.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Amazon continues to surprise. Its latest segue from online shopping and shipping megalopolis is a venture into streaming video via Amazon Studios. The team is attempting to predict the next hit TV series from pilots featured on Amazon’s website in April.

Rather than use internal creative professionals from studios and production houses to select TV pilots for long-term runs, Amazon put 13 pilots on its website and allowed visitors to vote.

Here’s what’s amazingly basic about this whole story. The metrics Amazon used to determine its pilot selection were:

Likes
Shares
Votes
Surveys
Comments

This fascinates me because of its simplicity. There is so much emphasis being placed on big data analysis and how data drive strategy. While Amazon is certainly using big data (in this case a lot of people placing votes, right?) to influence video streaming program selection, it didn’t indicate it used in-depth software and programming to analyze which show will become a hit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Amazon Mines User Data in Search of TV Hits,” on Nov. 2-3, 2013, Amazon Studios has selected three of the top-ranked vote getters and put them into production. The pilots are slated to be made available to Amazon Prime members in November.

What does this imply for your own big data analysis? Could we perhaps be putting too much emphasis in data when the simpler metrics of likes, shares, votes, and comments are sufficient?

How are you using big data in your business? Is its analysis truly driving strategy, lead generation, and sales?

Coming from a public relations background where data used to be the bailiwick of marketing, the numbers were rarely my favorite. It’s hard to crack that barrier to entry, but it’s stupid not to. Numbers do tell stories especially when you’re smart enough to interpret them.

The Happy Friday Series: The Happiness Crusade

11/01/2013 By Jayme Soulati

On the AllArminda blog, Arminda Lindsay wrote a post Oct. 23, 2013 sharing this story below about launching her happiness crusade. I extrapolate that blog post right her and make Arminda the subject of this Happy Friday Series. P.S. You can also find her writings at YumVeg.com where vegan food and cooking are her delight.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Arminda IRL at ConvergeSouth where I had the opportunity to keynote the content marketing track of that conference. During that time, she permitted me the opportunity to corral her into doing a Soulati Media On The Street (below).

(What I love about this post is that I get to combine my two faves into one — The Happy Friday Series and Soulati Media On The Street!)

Since our face-to-face, we’ve had a session during which we spoke about the journey from personal to professional blogger, and she’s received some homework to rocket launch her goals. I love this woman’s heart and spirit, watch and listen:

Arminda Lindsay Says:

On February 13, 2012, I started a 21-day “dopamine challenge” titled Creating Positive. Many of you joined me in that initiative (and it’s not too late to get started) because happiness is year-round and a lifetime journey. While there have been many changes in my life since I first penned that post, one thing is for sure: my heart is still full of gratitude. It’s so full that I keep writing out more and more.

My list is growing and I’m filling up notebooks. Pages and pages of things for which I’m grateful and/or that make me smile and bring me happiness. My list is very personal and unique to my life, as is your list. This is the reason I can pick up one of my notebooks and open to any page and start reading through my list and immediately begin to smile as I am instantly transported to another day, place, and moment in time that ignited a spark of joy in my heart.

Shawn Achor (whose TED Talk inspired me to start my own challenge) writes in his book The Happiness Advantage that

“. . . our attitudes and behaviors don’t only infect the people we interact with directly — like our colleagues, friends, and families — but that each individual’s influence actually appears to extend to people within three degrees. So when you. . . make positive changes in your own life, you are unconsciously shaping the behavior of an incredible number of people. . . . [T]here are nearly 1,000 people within three degrees of most of us. This is a true ripple effect — by trying to make ourselves happier and more successful, we actually have the ability to improve the lives of 1,000 people around us” (p201).

That’s empowering. To me, at least. And I love that by embracing the life I live I have the potential within me to positively impact the lives of thousands of other people. Thousands.

I can’t wait for happiness to find me like some elusive carrot forever dangling at the end of its proverbial stick. You will never reach it if that’s your aim. Your “I’ll be happy when _________ ” will forever evade you.

“Waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward” (Achor 4).

Motivation? Efficiency? Resilience? Creativity? Productivity? Yes, please!

Happiness is now. Happiness is your choice. Happiness is within you.

Come on my happiness crusade and create positive in your life today, tomorrow and always! Will you join me?

7 Selling Factors And Relationship Building (Babolat)

10/31/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Selling. Relationship building, and the deal.

What do you think is the most important when someone is trying to make the sale? The deal may be the lowest and best one; yet, there’s something more to earning the sale than just the numbers.

As a professional blogger and public relations professional of three decades, I am pitched every day by sales people trying to lure me in. The tools of my trade are expensive especially for any solo business, and I know I must make an investment in many of them in order to service my clients well and efficiently.

Each year at this time, it becomes a battle between the two largest media vendors and others wanting a piece of the action vying for my business. Each year I weigh the deal to determine the best approach for my clients. But, this year was different.

7 Selling Factors to Earn the Business

The Deal.

When you’re a solo business and every expense penny counts, the total of the expenditure matters. How much is the very first answer I want to hear.

Sales Team.

Sadly, one of the vendors has a revolving door of sales staff. They email and call me frequently, they fight over territory, and I never know who my sales rep is should I need to call. The trust in the infrastructure of an organization is absolutely akin to the stability of the sales team. On the other side of the street, I just heard from the same sales rep I had last year; this business is tough…having the same face and name selling me over two years says something.

Service.

How about the service side? Will they be there to support the customer? Will they be knowledgeable and will there also be videos or Q&A and live chat features to help me should I have an issue? I’m not one to call in for help; it’s a time suck. I want to find the answer myself or better yet, make the product usability intuitive.

Salesmanship.

The young woman with whom I spoke yesterday told me she wasn’t going to hard sell me because that wasn’t her style. I appreciate that. When someone slips me the slime, I run. When you’re authentic and genuine with me, that’s when I listen and exchange helpful selling tips in return.

The Product.

There’s no question you get what you pay for. Because I have used both these products extensively during the long tenure of my career, I’m familiar with the product and each has selling points while one has more failures, in my opinion. Usability, as mentioned above, needs to be intuitive. I don’t want to have to guess where to find something; that’s frustrating, annoying and a time suck.

Closing The Deal.

When someone tells me they are coming back to me as they need to speak with their boss about the features of the package I need and they don’t for more than four days, then I seriously consider what happened. Turns out illness put my sales woman on her back, and I fell through the cracks. Understood; yet the deadline for my deal to close is today and that means I’m in conversations with a variety of vendors to seal it.

Relationship Building.

I’ve saved the best for last. There are so many, many ways to build relationships to earn a sale. I’m going to tell you what impresses me the most.
1. Visit my blog and make a comment. There is content galore in this site, and archives from the last four years. There’s got to be a way to impress me.

2. Know who I am as a customer and professional. When you take a moment to read my bio or remark on something I shared or wrote on the Interwebz, that means you’re really getting to know me and my needs.

3. Acknowledge the fact the sales team is a revolving door, but you’re going to work hard to earn my trust in selling to me.

4. Instead of selling me, educate me and tell me how your product has improved, especially if I tell you I don’t care for it.

5. Engage with me on social media. Let me tell you a story about tennis racquets.

Babolat Tennis And Earning the Sale

Happy Halloweenie #Tennis! via soulati

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a tennis freak. In the fall and winter, when I can reclaim an evening as my own (kidlet has every night for her extracurriculars), I play about six hours a week. I’ve been demoing new racquets, and tweeting about my demos with Babolat.

My friend Brian Vickery plays extensively too, and his family of four are all Babolat users. I’ve been a Prince loyalist until I began my quest to find the best racquet.

I’ve now demoed about five or six Babolats, and I’m still not certain which one to invest in (tennis racquets average $200 each, and you need two of the same).

Yesterday, I tweeted Brian and mentioned I didn’t think Babolat was on Twitter as I had mentioned its name and it racquets by name a variety of times and crickets. Lo, I got several immediate tweets and a phone call from Babolat sales!! How freaking exciting is that??

Tickled, I tweeted back and made the phone call.What ensued was the most amazing conversation I’ve ever had with someone in sales who wasn’t selling; he was educating.

We talked about racquet stiffness and weighting, body wear and tear, and strings. We talked strings every which way from Sunday (don’t you love that expression?), and I was the happiest camper in the world because Babolat was treating me as if I was on the ATP circuit. As merely a 3.5/4.0 USTA player, I have a ways to go before I join the professionals and beat the crap out of them (heh). BUT, here’s the point…Daniel of Babolat didn’t treat me like a low life; he put me on the top of his pedestal as the most important tennis player in the world.

He built a relationship with me, he treated me respectfully, and guess what else he shared?

Brand Engagement On Twitter

Babolat had seen my tweets with Brian over time; they saw that I was only mentioning the brand in my posts and not addressing the tweets to Babolat.

The sales team wasn’t sure whether to intercede on the conversation; they didn’t want to interfere as it looked like we were not asking for help.

I assured Daniel of Babolat to absolutely toss out a tweet saying “Hey, we noticed your tweets about our racquets, is there anything we can do to help your decision?”

Having that kind of “we’re here to help” tweet from a trusted brand is what jazzes consumers. I’m not one to hit the forums or Facebook and sift through line after line of content that doesn’t concern me. If I want something, I will post it on Twitter and wait for the brand’s response.
In this case, I was tentative as a consumer thinking I was too much a small fry for Babolat’s attention, and Babolat the brand was tentative thinking they shouldn’t jump in with a “hey, we’re here” tweet.

Relationship Building Fuels Brand Loyalty

And, now, after that story? Where do you think my loyalty lies? I’m going to become a Babolat user for the first time. I’m going to invest in the Babolat Drive Max, a lighter weight racquet, RED (yay!), and get it weighted. Then I’m going to put more expensive softer strings on it to protect my arm and get the controlled power (at least that’s what I think Daniel told me). And, before I do all of that, I’m going to call Daniel or tweet him again because he invited me to do that whenever I wanted to. He gave me his cell phone and I programmed him into speed dial! (Just kidding, but that’s how he made me feel.)

Brand loyalty has so much more to do with product and service selection, and all the factors I listed above are critical; yet relationship building is by far the most. The Babolat story happened yesterday, and it jazzed my brand loyalty as a first-time customer for the long-term.

How about you, can you relate?