Public Relations Archives - Page 3 of 24

The Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe Antitrust Conspiracy And PR

05/05/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Mashable

Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe Systems conspired in the biggest hiring antitrust case the U.S. legal system has ever seen. Please tell me you’ve heard the news. I’m still reeling from the true ramifications of what it means for our allegedly anti-monopolistic economy.

It feels like political parties ran roughshod over the electorate, or the monarchies of Great Britain and the Saudi Arabia launched a war. Alas, it’s merely four giant Fortune 10 publicly traded U.S. corporations named Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems that conspired against their very own employees as if they were chattel.

The four leadership teams agreed behind closed doors the contents of which stayed hidden from 2005 to 2009 to a series of no-recruit agreements. Neither of them could recruit programmers from the other’s company. If they did, it was going to be war as stated by Steve Jobs to Sergey Brin, “If you hire a single one of these people, that means war,” extracted from Bloomberg Businessweek cover story May 5, 2014. [Read more…]

Why Get @GiniDietrich Spin Sucks And @Soulati Message Mapping Books

04/30/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Look at that headline for name dropping, eh? Well, you can’t exactly call me a butter–upper because Gini Dietrich happens to be a really good friend who has starred in my videos and I in hers.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s what this blog post is about:

Gini’s highly excellent book, Sand written about on s and promoted during a seven-week book tour Gini just completed.
along with a micro-course putting message mapping into action (you get that from the sidebar of this blog).

[Read more…]

What’s Your Marketing Value Chain?

04/09/2014 By Jayme Soulati

In a 20-minute presentation I gave yesterday…do you know how hard it is to deliver merely 20 minutes of value?…to some small business owners, I spoke on two cogs in the marketing value chain.

I delivered a caveat that this marketing value chain was of my creation with a PR core. I have no idea if there is such a thing as a value chain for marketers, but it sounded good enough to put into a diagram.

The Soulati Marketing Value Chain

Soulati Marketing Value Chain

Because I have 30 years as a public relations marketer, I know this hybrid approach to a blend of public relations and marketing is spot on. It’s what I do for my clients, and it’s what I listen for when speaking with businesses that may need my services.

Thus, in my presentation, I said that message mapping was the most critical aspect of the marketing value chain. Not only have I rebranded myself as a Message Mapping Master, I firmly believe this exercise is highly required by everyone who makes business happen. If you want to ask why, I have a new autoresponder series in the sidebar of my blog on top. Please sign up, and I proudly admit writing these myself (it was a true feat).

Get A FREE Message Mapping Book

If you stop by my site, you’ll also see the opportunity to download my free Message Mapping: Why You Need It & How To Do It ebook.

Promoting myself in this post is NOT the goal; however, I’m so excited with my new site and rebranding (it’s just been a short week!) that I had to plug a bit. [Read more…]

When Startups Flounder, Is PR To Blame?

02/17/2014 By Jayme Soulati

The factors contributing to success of a startup are myriad and must cohesively meld in the sandbox. While fundraising drives ultimate success, think of these and then ask which is to blame if the rocks start to skitter:

Team Strength. Like forming a hive with all the competency variations, a startup team has to be smart, committed, representative of the needs to take the company forward, and come with the skills required for the long term.
The Big Idea. Let’s say the big idea truly rocks and then it doesn’t. What happens to the startup if the business strategy and model continue to morph after launch? The very foundation of the business begins to waver, and uncertainty is the daily emotion.
Marketing & PR. Every single startup needs and gets marketing; yet, they often relegate public relations to the back burner. PR is brought on board to do the media relations, get the earned stories just after launch, and to create the excitement for continued fundraising and growth.
Fundraising. Crowdsourcing, friends and family, angels, venture capitalists, credit cards, loans, personal retirement are all methods of funding growth of a startup. Without the funds, the people hired to help the core team with the big idea can’t bootstrap into perpetuity.

The PR Component

When a startup launches into a crowded vertical with many big players who have owned the space for decades, it’s a challenge to earn attention by media without time for the little fish stories. There has to be news created and launched on a regular basis, and if that funnel of newsworthy content dries up, so too does any positive attention earned during launch.

When the business model waffles, public relations must play catch up to understand new objectives and develop revised strategy to keep external audiences interested.

Public relations success is critically dependent on all of the above factors weaving in and around one another to create buzz.

When you regard how public relations works with established business, it’s really no different, it just may be easier to identify the news and pitch it to an audience who recognizes an established brand.

So, to the question in the headline, is PR to blame if a startup flounders?

No, not at all.

Each of the components in the list above must be in synch in order to continue the growth curve with a hundred roadblocks.

The Solopreneur And The Hive

02/05/2014 By Jayme Soulati

I’ve been saying for years there’s no more going it alone as a solo entrepreneur; times up for individual practices of one.

Why?

From first-hand experience, I offer you this:

There is too much kerfuddle about what’s new online that requires competency and back-end smarts to make the online business go. What about that social media stuff? Who’s interpreting the big data, and who, for goodness sake, is installing all the plug-ins, widgets, badges and pages plus security on your site and landing pages, not to mention the calls to action and ohmygosh that list?

Beyond competency in all things online, brand and digital marketing plus the writing and strategy of it all, there’s also accounting, legal (more oriented to contracts) or other skill sets needed for teams’ success.

Get the picture?

If you’re still not tracking and nodding the head along with me, here’s solid proof my theory is justified. In the Feb. 3, 2014 Wall Street Journal Small Business Report, “Freelancing Alone—But Together,” the executive dean of St. Joseph’s College in New York writes a solid piece about consultants who find payload working together in a hive.

What Is A Hive

We’re not talking bees here, but do consider the queen and the workers building a colony. There’s a systematic method to that buzzing madness, right? And, now consider this hive mentality with a grouping of freelancers coming together with conjoined forces, competencies, experience, and services to represent clients.

According to Elance in the story in the Wall Street Journal, in 2013, there were 1.21 million jobs posted on its freelance site with 1.15 million freelancers available; do the math – a bit of a deficiency for professionals, eh?

Which suggests to me that the freelancer solopreneur has a bit of opportunity to make it rich; but hold on…as companies shed their full-timers, they’re not shedding the need for skills. This means that a hive has the opportunity to roll in and become the outsourced team, acting as if they are full-time. Do you have a hive success story of your own?

Hive Success

Imagine if you’re part of a hive with all the moving parts to make it buzz. Throughout my 30 years in public relations, I have put together virtual teams and bid together on RFPs. Back in the day, however, companies weren’t ready for that type of structure; perhaps they thought there wasn’t structure.

What I can share as the most critical point of working in a hive or virtual team is this – someone needs to lead. Sadly, organizational dynamics requires a leader; flat teams may work well in theory, but clients need a leading point person they turn to for issues, discussions and strategy.

Here are several factors that contribute to hive success:
1. Leadership – appoint your primary point person to represent the hive to clients.
2. Skill Set – get a variety of competencies on the team that are not competitive with one another.
3. Money – address the discomfort of money and pay up front; everyone carries the load and contributes to expenses while getting a fee commensurate with the budgets attracted and hours recorded
4. Unified Front – this becomes more esoteric; however, if a client is calling another hive member for help with an issue, that person has to inform the rest of the hive. The team must function as a unit and not as individual members especially when clients regard the hive as one company.

Hire Soulati Media

There’s beauty being a solo practice. I can morph into arrangements faster than a chameleon changes colors. I can slot into a marketing team and be an assistant product marketer or join a public relations team and put my media relations skills to work, or work with another solo marketer trying to get a blog up and running or take a larger role as a business strategist for a startup.

Why this is easier for me is due to my career as a generalist in agency public relations. I took on a plethora of roles and adopted skill sets to empower competency as the Internet era unfolded.

Soulati Media is seeking clients right now. Let’s begin with a message map and follow that up with some strategic marketing programs and execution. The team is here and standing by; better yet, Jayme Soulati is the leader with decades of competency to offer.

Be Part of My Hive

Honestly, my hive has been alive and well for a number of years. I draw upon the skill sets that are deficient in my purview and gladly so. It’s been a tough road for me because I am a DIY’er. I love to do it myself but when I do it poorly, it’s time to step aside and let the experts in.
There’s safety in numbers to an extent. What I have found is that people are happy to join a hive as long as they don’t have to lead, and that’s what I do best.

Care to join my hive?