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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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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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Viral Music Video Boosts Brand And Social Marketing Appeal

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Chicago-Music-Exchange-guitars

Image credit: Chicago Music Exchange on Google+

Knowing how much this community loves music, a story courtesy of Crain’s Chicago Business, shares how some businesses are benefitting from viral video to boost social marketing engagement.

In the January 28, 2013 issue of Crain’s, there’s a section Focus: Social Marketing and a story, “Chicago’s Social Marketing Standouts.” The Chicago Music Exchange owner challenged its staff to create a viral video. Alex Chadwick, a guitarist and salesman, made 100 Riffs (A Brief History of Rock N’ Roll).

Views of this video on YouTube are nearing 4.6 million (at the time of the print story, there were 4.31 million views on YouTube). Total views for the Chicago Music Exchange’s 223 other videos only amount to 6 million.

Elements of Viral Video

What made this video go viral? According to all the experts quoted in the story, the guitarist shows off his technical and musical prowess while taking the viewers through the history of music with 100 recognizable tunes. The video fits right in with the mission of the music equipment retailer, which doesn’t necessarily contribute to its viral nature, but it feels so right.

I absolutely enjoyed that! It’s worth all 12 minutes!

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PR Strategy For Business: The Company Launch

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News crew setting up to report on the floods (Photo credit: max_wedge)

Economics and economies are contributing to the start-up and along with the great idea to launch a company comes the need for solid public relations counsel to strategize about the best way to distribute news.

Gone are the days when launching the company was straightforward. What we used to do was develop a media list, write a press release and get it approved, and then start pitching media one by one with phone calls, followed by executive interviews, and stories that appeared in media outlets.

I’m not going to say that was easy, but it certainly pales in comparison to what we do today (she said with excitement!).

Blending Traditional With Digital

Launching a company today requires in-depth strategy and a healthy regard for the social media sphere.

When a start-up is launching a company website at the same time it’s trying to establish a brand and reputation, there are elements to activate that enable a one-two punch in logical sequence.

A website with language by copywriters and marketers needs to launch with the appropriate optimization and back-end analytics tools.

Meanwhile, a should be orchestrated from which a few news releases and fact sheets are created.

The media list is trickier these days. Media outlets have fewer reporters on staff and also fewer print editions. Many publications are strictly online which means the lead time for publishing the news (especially if it’s hard news with a time element) is zilch. If an editor likes a story, he can clear a blank web page and run it! Funny, but true; you get the idea of the immediacy of the news cycle.

What that means is the PR team has to button up and think about every news angle, its impact on the company, how it should be communicated, and when. Please read this sentence twice; it is that important for your business’s success.

Factors To Consider

  • Should the news go on the wire, just online or both?
  • Should social media channels post the news same day and repeat it or wait?
  • Which social media channel should be regarded as primary for corporate news; how about consumer news?
  • Should bloggers be pitched? How about important journalists? Should you pitch them online via Twitter or traditionally via phone and email?
  • Do you want to field requests for interviews that are inbound or do you want to be aggressive and pitch and earn the hits?
  • Is your spokesperson trained using the message map? Is there a Q&A developed so spokespeople are prepared and not blindsided?
  • Has the PR team created a media brief of reporters who call requesting an interview?
  • When should a blog post news of a launch? Before or after a news release?

And, there is so much more.

The primary takeaway is not to confuse you, Ms. or Mr. Business; it’s to encourage you to hire a qualified public relations strategist with media relations expertise. Have no fear…

 

 

 

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