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Your Blog, You and 2014

01/06/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Bet you didn’t notice this blog had nearly a two-week hiatus, or maybe you did. There wasn’t a day that went by I wasn’t guilty to not be writing despite the lowest-trafficked periods of the year.

What I continued to tell myself is that this holiday break was critical for my need to rejuvenate and refresh my moxie while getting inspired to write about a whole bunch of new topics.

You see, blogging becomes part of you; it gets under your skin, and courses through your blood. There’s never a conversation or interaction in which I don’t identify a topic or two to write on. It makes me a better listener; it’s inherent now with easy thought to add to the endless stream of ideas.

How about you?

If you’ve been blogging on nigh a year, perhaps this sort of topical instinct isn’t happening yet; no worries! Trust me when I tell you it will!

If you’ve been blogging three years, you should absolutely have blog topics written all over the place on scraps of paper. Maybe you’re truly an electronic wizard (which means you use the other side of your brain a tad more than creatives), and you can organize your thoughts into a list. Does List.ly have private list-building?

It’s A New Year

What I’m trying to say is that a new year is always psychologically, well, new. You know? The ball drops at midnight, and the pressure is on to be more…you know, more.

Let me try to explain.

As the years go by and blogging becomes part of your inner psyche, you want to grow. Your blog has to change with the times and become more exciting in parallel to your own growth journey.

As you transform, so, too, does your blog.

This morning, I just read a friend’s post about taking a huge hiatus and coming back to find fewer folks who’ve stayed the course, fewer comments, and fewer success stories with nil banter. Indeed. Bill Dorman is right; it’s a tough road blogging. That’s why you need goals and aspirations.

Have you thought about how you want your blog to grow and what you’d like to see happen in your house? Do that; it’s time.

Used to be we blogged more for the fun of it and to have a party in the comments; maybe a good old Team Blog Jack, too. Now, though, that’s pretty much dried up; you’re gonna need to reach deep within and find the divining rod into your heart. Then? Let the floodgates open and turn it up a notch; pour out your passion like never before aligned so closely with your business goals. You need your blog to make that happen; it’s the only steady you have on the social sphere.

Blowing Up Your Business

In 2013, I successfully blew up my business. I’m told that’s what entrepreneurs do; they reach a brick wall and rather than go over, they dynamite. Perhaps they get to the other side, or perhaps they drown in TNT. I’m the latter, and here’s the good news. I KNOW IT. I know I blew up my business (and only I can define internally what that means), and I also know that 2014 is critical to regroup and rebuild.

What that also means is the blog is part of the larger plan, too.

Want to know something really simple? There’s nothing like blogging to showcase smarts, expertise, personality, and to give gifts.

Soulati-‘TUDE! Is Turning Four!

My blogging birthday is coming up; we’re gonna be FOUR! That is HUGE! It’s so #RockHot I can’t even tell you.

I’m seeking ideas for how to celebrate Soulati-‘TUDE! IS FOUR.

Perhaps I’ll plan a virtual party; perhaps I’ll launch 4 guest posts on the same day, perhaps I’ll donate to four charities, or…what? What shall I do to celebrate?

My journey has been so rewarding, and here’s a secret. Without this blog and you, I never would’ve made it (I am not kidding).

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG!

Content Marketing Needs Mobile Publishing Apps

12/05/2013 By Jayme Soulati

When you say and see content marketing touted all over the Interwebz, it’s more about blogging, right? But what about the other pieces of content so critical to attaining goals and objectives? The white paper is one of the most important documents a business can include in its content marketing strategy; yet, few engage with white papers?

Why?

The first reason there are fewer white papers is obvious – they are more challenging to write, right?

Secondly, if a business does not have a solid inbound marketing strategy to use white papers as a lead generator for sales, then companies merely rely on blogging.

Revisiting Inbound Marketing

As a digital marketer, the goal for inbound marketing is to feature content as the lure, if you will, to generate leads from external audiences which turn into conversions.
Think of a funnel when considering what inbound marketing looks like. At the top of the wide open funnel is a wide berth of content ideas e.g. 10 reasons why you need a certified plumber; 25 social media tips from an SEO consultant; 7 critical mobile apps to fuel your mobile marketing strategy in 2014, and more.

These pieces of content can be blog posts, lists, tip sheets and even broader white papers on related topics to these respective themes. They are offered to interested prospects via a call to action in a sidebar of a website on a website page and even more pertinent – on a specialized landing page.
Once the individual indicates they want to download the content, they are asked for their email via a form and the free content is made available.

Publishing Formats for Content

Because a white paper is lengthier than a page; they’re often about 2000 words, give or take 800, the immediate format consideration is a PDF. Think about PDFs a moment. This file format is ubiquitous, and everyone relies on it. However, is it the best file format for your content marketing strategy?

No, and here’s why…PDFs are one dimensional without hyperlinks and without the ability to convert leads, without SEO, and basically, they are DEAD!

Now think a moment about your company newsletter (yes, there are still b-to-b companies publishing newsletters). Typically, it’s posted in a news center as a PDF or sent as a PDF in an email marketing campaign, right?

New Mobile Ways To Publish Pieces of Content

The proliferation of mobile marketing is the biggest trend since sliced bread. I’m not kidding. There are data galore shoving businesses to responsive mobile marketing, and your company needs to get there, too.

The first step is to make your website mobile responsive. You want the pages and elements of your site to scale to any portable and mobile device. Just last weekend, I sat in the movie theater during the pre-movie junk surfing sites on my iPhone, posting to Twitter and resharing content plus commenting on blogs. Look around the movie theater next time and see if others are doing the same? Then, think about your company’s website and worry that it’s responsive for this mobile audience.

Secondly, explore mobile publishing platforms. I recently explored a web app that makes publishing live content, such as white papers, magazines and newsletters, a breeze. Check out this demo of Readz right here. What you’ll see is the ability to scroll pages, click on hyperlinks, enlarge images, and simulate reading a document page by page – from left to right (unlike a PDF that is up to down in a vertical orientation).

You may use the cool iPad apps like Flipboard or daily newspapers and magazines? These apps make the user experience way more intensely entertaining. It’s time for you to do the same with your mobile- and-inbound marketing strategy. Eliminate the dead PDF file format from your content marketing and put in a live publishing platform for all your documents; your audience will thank you.

{Disclaimer: Sponsored Post}

Startups Should Hire PR Early

12/02/2013 By Jayme Soulati

During the earliest stages of a startup, there are many discussions and decisions about how a business will launch and with which bells and whistles to go to market. Marketing needs to be involved in these earliest stages; does public relations?

The very lawyerly answer is, it depends.

When you work with a hybrid public relations professional who brings 30 years of experience to a team, then public relations influences a startup’s business strategy. There is even counsel delivered by public relations that can influence business model. This expertise comes from years of innate knowledge acquired from representing clients across industries.

A public relations professional is a startup’s single-most critical member of the team, especially during pre-launch.

Why?

While marketing morphs the business, public relations stands in the wings absorbing the dynamics of company culture and adding expertise from the outside looking in. While executives are safely spinning their business model, public relations contributes external perspective from the vantage point of a variety of stakeholders.

What will media ask; what will executives say?
What would investors and boards of advisors want set up at the start point?
Will consumers be able to understand why this company matters?

Startups Spend Time Inside

The formation of a company requires intense focus on the inside of a company. There’s so much more that happens beyond writing a mission statement or determining company values, structure and model.

What’s likely most confusing is the fact that public relations, in the presence of marketing, will not influence the inside of a company as much as it will influence how the company is positioned for external consumption.

Please read that again.

Therein lies the major differentiator among marketing and public relations – we who do the latter will always be listening for the language we need from marketing to describe and position a company for audiences who reside outside the company.

Throughout my career, I have influenced the business model of a startup. Because I bring such a breadth of experience across industries, it’s comfortable for me to share insights based on three decades of influencing results and driving measurable campaigns.

Ultimately, the best team for a startup is one where marketing and PR work hand in hand so all the expertise is conjoined with the same goal. Usually, that’s rare as the startup budget cannot afford a seasoned or deep team with these key players.

Would I to choose which professional to hire at the outset, it would be public relations – a seasoned, hybrid professional who has continually innovated and morphed alongside industry and technology.

PR And Marketing

Public relations is blending more with marketing than ever before; that’s nothing new, it’s been happening for years, yet now everyone is finally labeling what’s happening. Although the disciplines of marketing and public relations are blurring, there is still a major gap in understanding of how public relations delivers.

The logical progression for a startup is to hire marketing to morph its insides with branding, mission, vision, values, etc. When done, public relations enters from the wings during pre-launch. The positioning begins.

Public relations rolls in with a message mapping process.
Executives are trained to deliver strong messages to external audiences.
The business model is tested with all the key audiences in mind.
A strategy unfolds to announce the company’s existence with the differentiators in place.
A media relations strategy is launched to announce to the market this company exists and is serious about earning a spot in the vertical market.
Social media and blogs are launched to continuously push content.
Public relations and marketing blend and work cohesively to execute strategy.

No Budget? Hire PR

What if a startup is working on a shoestring budget? There are seasoned public relations professionals who can bootstrap alongside a startup.

When a startup needs communications and marketing counsel, a public relations professional is the best hire at the outset. Someone who knows enough about technology, business, messaging, strategy, positioning, marketing blend, and much more.

Having the ability to write professionally is critical; adding someone to the team who is a professional blogger and media relations professional is smart for a startup.

To understand more about why PR is a better hire for startups than marketing,

contact Jayme Soulati at jayme at Soulati dot com. The hands-on experience is there.

You may dial 937-312-1363, as well.

Social Media, IT And Analytics Have Created Title Soup

11/25/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Advertising Age featured a story, “Don’t Call Me CMO: Top Marketers Say Job Has Evolved Beyond Title,” I find quite amusing.

The giggle is more about the why.

Why do people feel the need to define themselves based on a single three-to-five word title? When a professional reaches the level of chief anything officer, they have successfully moved along the professional development career path to become a chief.

Why don’t we call everyone in the C-suite “Chief Cook & Bottle Washer?” That would sum up the role we’re all playing in the workplace today, right? Technology, analytics and social media have created a pea soup of necessary qualifications, and the chief marketer appears to be the most confused.

According to the article, some of the “better titles than CMO” proffered are:

Chief Value Officer – what does “value” really mean? Value of what?
Chief Growth Officer – isn’t marketing about growth already?
Chief Innovation Officer – ah-hah, but limiting right? You come up with the ideas only and don’t put them into action?
Chief Commercial Strategist – as opposed to residential?
Chief Customer Officer – Who is the customer? Inside, outside? Maybe this means a sales person who is adopting a role in the C-Suite.

Title Soup in PR

Coming from a discipline of marketing frequently at odds about titles and roles, I get the confusion and need to create identity in the marketplace. Public relations professionals have been grappling with professional branding for a very long time; of late, we’ve been quite clever about hiding behind a really cool title to mask the fact we’re in public relations.

Perhaps it’s cool to be in public relations again?

I have now adopted the new label of “hybrid PR” for myself, thanks to Gini Dietrich’s blog post awhile ago when she described all the things PR peeps do in the marketing arena and it matched my competency. The only problem is it still requires explanation. At least hybrid vehicles paved the way for a combo engine, and people looking at a title can guess that hybrid means many things added to the mix. It’s pretty easy for me to just be president of Soulati Media, Inc. because that it indeed the title put on incorporation documents to get my federal tax ID number.

For those who lead teams in a corporate environment, there is so much merging and blending happening that I can see why the title thing has become an issue.

I don’t think there is a title for the chief marketing officer that can capture everything they’re responsible for, do you? The kettle has to simmer first before anyone will be able to tell.

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?