May 2, 2008
Is e-mail a dead medium or are graphics making it ghost-like?
I don't really buy that e-mail is a dead communications form. If it is, I spend a good deal of my day in deadsville. As my official representative of the up-and-coming generation, my fourteen-year-old daughter doesn't do a lot of e-mail, but she doesn't have a job, either. The rest of us have to live in e-mail. But while e-mail isn't dead, there are some e-mail marketers doing everything they can to kill it.
Take a look at this e-mail I just received, ironically from some guy trying to show off his photography business:
Actually, this e-mail doesn't just contain graphics; it's all graphics. One of the best things you can do to get your e-mail read is to, like, use some text. Not type imbedded in graphics, but good old HTML text. Your creative or e-mail marketing folks should be testing your e-mails to make sure that they display some important words when the graphics don't get through, especially when most people have graphics turned off for their e-mail preview. In marketing communications days gone by, we used to say, "Graphics exist to draw the eye to copy." In the case of e-mail, the opposite is true. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but words are still the basic currency of communications.
Posted by Bob Brin at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 22, 2008
Are you in the social media circle(s)?
There was a time when New York, Boston or San Francisco PR firms had the advantage of claiming they did lunch with key reporters and analysts. Nowadays, traveling in the right circles is just as important, but they're online/mobile circles. The PR pro's job is to connect with the pundits, reporters and citizen journalists by reading and commenting on their blogs, earning your way into their Facebook friends list (and not getting blocked), joining up on the right social networks and groups, taking part in Twitter conversations with the right people, etc. At the least, public relations professionals need to know who the socialites are, what they're saying and with whom they're dialoging. More than ever, social media is earned media.
Posted by Bob Brin at 10:02 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
April 9, 2008
PR and search marketing
I hate to break it to you, but your Web site is not the center of the universe. Google is. I heard a presentation recently in which a Dell representative said that Google's search results page is your new home page. That's where people begin their search on your organization and what happens there is likely to stay etched in their memory.
PR (and I don't mean just publicity) is one of the most important disciplines for influencing what goes on in the search engine marketing space. PR and search marketing go hand-in-hand because your outreach efforts are vital to getting other web sites pointing to your site, as well as generating great content for your site(s). We think of search marketing as a solar system. At the center of our search engine marketing solar system is Google. How warmly this big star shines on you depends primarily on your site's popularity with other credible & popular sites and the volume and quality of content on your own site.
Continue reading "PR and search marketing"
Posted by Bob Brin at 5:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
March 30, 2008
Define or Differentiate? A Marketer's Dilemma
Fellow PRSA Counselors Academy member Eric Morgenstern of Morningstar Communications wrote an interesting article for Counsel -- the organication's monograph -- on the possibility that marketers are spending a little too much time on differentiation and not enough time on meeting -- or exceeding -- customer requirments. There's an excerpt below and you can purchase the full version for a nominal fee on the Counselors Academy Web site.
He makes some good points. Too many companies ask the question "how can we be different" when they should be asking "what does the customer want and how can we deliver better than the other guys?" When we're leading our Communicating for Action planning sessions, we make absolutely sure that, along side any differentiating messages, there are also clear "definers" that help a target audience understand the company.
Awareness first -- differentiation second. Or, as one of our clients said recently: "You've gotta be IN the game before you can separate yourself from the other players."
Continue reading "Define or Differentiate? A Marketer's Dilemma"
Posted by Matt Kucharski at 11:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
March 28, 2008
Newbie guide and analyst relations on Twitter
Twitter looks like it was designed way last century, but can be a useful tool and is gaining ground as a way to connect with analysts, a workgroup or a cluster of blusterers (also called twit knits) (OK I made that up). The idea is you can have a group of followers who want to know what you're doing or thinking at any given moment; kind of like blogging from your mobile phone. (I use it to let my college kids know we're headed to a volleyball game or eating seafood without them.) You can use it to follow an industry pundit or let your team know when you're headed into a meeting. While it may be a great way to connect with your friends, it's not that friendly so here's a useful guide. It's about a year old.
Also, here's an analyst blogging about using Twitter for analyst relations and connecting employees. Like blogging began, there's a lot of drivel out there, but try it out and look for the serious possibilities.
Posted by Bob Brin at 6:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
