Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
In the world of professional services with today’s uncertain economic times, many people cringe at the thought of saying “no”, especially to a client or prospective client. However, there are times when saying no is exactly what needs to be said. So how does one say “no” effectively?
Bud Caddell, strategy director for advertising agency Victors and Spoils, recently published a blog post titled, “Saying no is a powerful service to offer clients,” which I think captures some great points. Bud writes, “If communicated the right way, “no” means that you’re unwilling to build a business around projects that do a disservice to their organization.” The reality is being in a services-oriented business, it can be hard to say no – even when it is the right thing to do for everyone involved.
I have found that instead of simply stating “no,” offering solutions can be more valuable and allow you to hone in on finding a solution that works for all parties. To be effective, it is important to have a shared understanding of the underlying objective so you can be in a position to suggest viable alternatives. Just as when you’re undertaking a successful negotiation, identify the other party’s interests and do not focus simply on pushing your point of view.
As Bruce Patton, cofounder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and coauthor of “Getting to Yes” shared in a side bar in “Strategic Public Relations,” to identify the other party’s interests you can ask, “Why is that important to you?” or “What would be wrong with something like this?” Alternatively you can offer, “If we did something like this, would that be of interest?” or “We can pursue this option or these other options. Which of these would be worth exploring from your point of view?” Once you understand the underlying interest, it is easier to shift to a viable solution without having to say “no.”
The Harvard Business Review published an article earlier this year entitled, “This Year, Say Yes to Saying No,” that offers some additional tips on how to say “no.”
Remember your business may benefit from saying no; however, you can still add value by helping to identify alternative solutions to accomplish the underlying objective.
We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share your tips or experiences effectively saying “no.”
Did you hear about that car accident on Capitol Hill? What about the construction mess at the intersection of Pike and Pine? The new bakery that just opened around the corner? It’s not likely you’ll hear about what’s going on in your own neighborhood from your local newspaper, favorite TV news channel or radio station. However, more and more people are turning to hyperlocal networks to get dialed into what’s happening in their immediate surroundings. In fact, a recent Pew Research study indicates that 20 percent of all adults (27 percent of all Internet users) use digital tools including Twitter, hyperlocal networks and text to keep informed about community issues such as weather, crime, traffic or events.
A hyperlocal network is defined as something that connects people locally and could include blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. With the recent rise in social media, neighborhood organizations and community members are turning to these outlets to receive information about activities, events and news impacting their community. The Pew Research study found nearly one in 10 social network users joined an online group focused on community issues in the past 12 months. As communities continue to turn to the online world, so too are companies and organizations looking to reach local audiences.
The increasing popularity of social media coupled with the shifting media landscape and cities spreading further and further out of metro areas, is making it a challenge for local media to produce quality journalism about all the communities a particular city serves. This is where hyperlocal networks can become a powerful medium for bridging the gap. For example, in Seattle we have a number of hyperlocal networks such as Queen Anne View, Fremont Universe and BallardBlog that cover specific neighborhoods. Many residents (and even mainstream local media) are turning to these networks to gather and share relevant information that they simply can’t get from mainstream news sources.
Consider this, A la Mode Pies a new online pie company based in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle recently opened. While mainstream local media were interested in the news, they simply didn’t have the resources to cover the company. However, CHS Capitol Hill Blog, a hyperlocal neighborhood blog, was very interested in the story as there was an onslaught of pie companies opening in the neighborhood causing one to wonder if Capitol Hill was becoming a battleground for Seattle’s pie fans. As a result of the piece in the CHS Capitol Hill Blog, business nearly tripled for this pie company as neighbors wanted to support the new business.
From a PR perspective, the rise of hyperlocal networks is also impacting PR professionals who are looking for the most effective mediums to reach target audiences. Hyperlocal journalists and bloggers are an emerging category of influential media and a group that should not be ignored. In addition to building and fostering relationships with traditional local media, PR professionals should consider developing relationships with hyperlocal bloggers as part of their media relations program.
So you’ve developed a great product. The funding is locked down, a marketing plan is set into gear and the product is ready to be launched into the world. Before you release your new product into the wild, you might want to consider developing a product demonstration. A demo can help a company validate and solicit feedback regarding its product or solution, as well as be used to educate and create awareness and buzz with target audiences.
Product demos are valuable for two reasons. The first is product demos can validate whether or not a product or solution will resonate with a target audience(s). A company invests a lot of time, effort, and money into developing a product and it is important to understand whether the product is of value to your target audience. This could be done in two ways – one way is to develop a beta version or test drive of your product and use this as a means to solicit early feedback from customers. Another way is to create a traditional product demo that can be seeded with industry analysts and other influentials to secure feedback and allow a company to tweak the product before it is released.
Earth Class Mail is one company that is leveraging product demos to help potential customers understand how its product works. The company recently launched an interactive “test drive” of its online mail management solutions. The test drive incorporates innovative technology to simulate a true user experience without requiring users to sign up for a trial account. In addition, the company hosts a more traditional video demo on its website offering potential customer two ways to learn about their products.
The second reason product demos are valuable is that they can be a great way to create engagement and spur conversation. A compelling product demo (such as the recent demo of Apple iPad) can create broad awareness and buzz and drive discussions in articles, on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and word of mouth.
Apple is a great example of a company that has successfully used product demos to build buzz and broad awareness with consumers, media and other audiences. Two to three times a year, Apple and more specifically, CEO Steve Jobs, steps on stage to present the company’s latest innovation to a plethora of reporters, developers and Apple enthusiasts. Many of these reporters and enthusiasts post photos and videos of these demos with follow-up pieces including detailed information about every aspect of the product. These demos and resulting stories create a rolling thunder of conversation leading up to the product’s release.
Consider these tips when creating a product demo:
- Keep it short – a demo should only take five to 10 minutes to conduct. You want to give the audience a taste of what the product is about and pique their interest in learning more.
- Be sure to discuss and/or demonstrate the benefits for the end user. The key features and functionalities of a product are important, but ultimately, a potential customer wants to know how this product is going to make their life easier or better.
- Consider creating a demo potential customers can interact with not just watch. By offering an opportunity to interact with the product in a test drive scenario, you’re enabling them to use the product in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Companies should consider strategically incorporating product demos into their marketing and PR plans. A compelling product demo can be extremely valuable in the development of a product and can go a long way in educating potential customers, driving broad awareness and influencing purchasing decisions.
For more information on how to leverage product demos, please contact us at [email protected].
Jeff Wilson and Melissa Liton
Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO) recently featured a new service from mBLAST called AwardSync. This free service enables award organizers to post information and publicize industry award programs. It also makes it easy for organizations and PR professionals to find awards relevant to their specific industry and vertical market. AwardSync provides information about deadlines and enables users to filter and save searches. We recently tested the service and found it offers intuitive search functionalities much like Google and can be a valuable resource when developing awards programs for clients.
Clearly, pursuing and winning the right industry awards can help organizations increase sales, raise awareness of their products and services, recruit talent, and establish thought leadership with a wide range of audiences including consumers, industry experts, venture capitalists and influential media.
We’ve developed numerous awards programs on behalf of our clients. Most recently, we developed an awards calendar for one of our newest clients Earth Class Mail, a provider of online mail management solutions designed to meet the needs of individuals, small businesses and international license partners. We researched vertical categories including finance, legal and technology innovation. We were able to find a number of industry awards in these categories by searching on AwardSync.
As you consider developing an awards calendar on behalf of your organization or client, we encourage you to register for AwardSync and test out their service. For tips on creating winning award submissions, visit our past blog here.
Businesses are using social media for a variety of communication objectives – providing customer support, sharing breaking news and offering promotional information. The power of these networks to easily and quickly gather real-time perceptions is unprecedented. Market research that used to take thousands of dollars and weeks if not months to complete, can now be gathered in the moment to guide timely business decisions.
An article in The New York Times this weekend titled, “We’ll Make You a Star (if the Web Agrees),” highlights how Bravo uses social media to fine-tune story lines, identify fan-favorite characters and research audience wants. A research executive at Bravo states in the article, “We do a lot of passive listening lurking on the Web, interpreting the themes we see on our message boards, etcetera.”
Listening via these mediums is helping the network determine what key audiences think about specific storylines, characters and shows. Executives can then allocate resources and make timely changes based on that information before they lose viewers.
This opportunity is not isolated to consumer-facing brands; B-to-B organizations can also gather information in order to guide product development, messaging and resource allocation. We have worked with companies who have been able to leverage social media to determine brand perceptions within key verticals or with specific audiences. This information has then been used to determine how to weigh activities within the organization.
Use social media to your company’s advantage. The first step is to start listening and monitoring what is said about your brand, your products and trends in the industry. It could pay big dividends.
A number of people have recently asked me about social media and its relation to fundraising. Some of the questions we have been asked include:
- How can we leverage social media to raise money for our nonprofit organization?
- Will our online or social media fundraising activities cannibalize our traditional fundraising activities?
- How do we set up a social media campaign to raise money?
We decided to conduct some additional research on the topic and make it the subject of one of our articles. Here are some of our findings.
Many organizations both large and small are using social media to successfully build awareness and secure money for their organizations. Consider Scott Stadum’s experience. Scott is a former user experience analyst and a current volunteer with idealist.org, a website that facilitates connections between individuals and institutions that are interested in improving their communities. The site receives more than 50,000 unique visitors each day.
Scott has been a part of two major campaigns. The first fundraising campaign is aimed at raising money to cover some of the operating costs for idealist.org. The organization has created a banner across the top of its website with a “donate now” tab making it easy for people to give. At the time of writing, they have had 7,543 people donate a total of $245,988 and are closing in on the halfway mark of the $500,000 goal.
idealist.org also has made it easy for people to share information about the organization with a “Share this Via” button that allows one to post information to his or her Facebook, Twitter, Digg or Reddit accounts. Idealist also maintains its own presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, which has been essential in its fundraising activities.
The second campaign that Scott was involved with was the Chase Community Giving challenge on Facebook.
According to Scott, the Chase Community Giving challenge was exciting, because Chase was giving away $5 million to various charities, and asked people on Facebook to help pick the nonprofits to receive this money. (The company gave 100 charities $25K, five runner-ups got $100K and one charity, Invisible Children, Inc. received $1M.)
The contest was relatively simple. People visited www.facebook.com/ChaseCommunityGiving to vote for their favorite nonprofit and then suggested friends and others on Facebook do the same. The nonprofits on the list focus on issues such as education, healthcare, housing, environmental issues, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.
As part of the Chase Community Giving, idealist.org was one of the runner ups that was awarded $100K.
We asked Scott to explain how they ended up winning the $100k and learned that the organization did a lot of planning and strategizing around the Chase Community Giving challenge. “Idealist really took a coordinated approach to this challenge. Each office came up with its game plan. We asked our employees to leverage their personal social media accounts to drive votes.”
The organization also leveraged e-mail and its official accounts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn to drive votes and massive viral awareness of the contest. “Idealist has been very active in engaging with communities via these platforms, so it was natural that we’d ask for votes and support during the Chase Community Giving challenge. We were able to reach and galvanize our supporters quickly.”
Finally, in one instance, they took the plea for support to the streets. “At the time of the challenge, I was working in Argentina in the Buenos Aires office. Many people in Argentina are using Facebook, so we decided to dress up like bankers and go out and give away bottled water with a flyer on the challenge, along with a request that people vote for us. The event on the streets of Buenos Aires was a success, and it led to media coverage, which undoubtedly helped us secure more votes.”
Scott concludes that social media has been a real boon for idealist.org. It has made reaching new audiences very easy. He believes more nonprofits can leverage social media for fundraising to reach different demographic profiles and target audiences than they’d reach through traditional fundraising activities, such as telethons or letter writing campaigns.