The 26-Hour Day

My last post on PR/Blogger Relations prompted this response from a client: “I don’t understand the value of bloggers from a business perspective.” He went on to say that it seems inexperienced bloggers can be extremely disruptive to businesses when they are misinformed or inaccurate. Anyone can be a blogger, how do I know blogger outreach will be beneficial to my business?

Excellent questions. The short answer is you can never be 100% sure it will be beneficial and that’s no different than traditional media relations. But blogger outreach should be a considerable component in your PR efforts and here is why:

Let’s start with the value of bloggers:

Blogs are growing in popularity and power (influence). This is a fact. A 2008 State of the Blogosphere study conducted by Technorati, the #1 Blog search engine reports that blogs had between 77.1 and 94.1 million unique visitors in the US alone. I didn’t take the time to find a more updated number. We can assume quite safely that this number has grown dramatically since then.

Bloggers blog to share expertise. Through their knowledge and influence, they become thought leaders in their subject matter, and garner a loyal following.  A loyal following subscribes to the posts (again, no different than a magazine or newspaper). My mom loves to cut news articles of interest and mail them to me. That allows her to share the article with an audience of ONE.

Now, subscribers share the posts with their individual audiences via social bookmarking sites such as delicious and stumble, and facebook and twitter. The audience has potential for exponential growth.

Let’s talk about travel blogs specifically. One of my favorite travel blogs is The Vacation Gals because they tell great stories and blog about a variety of wonderful destinations and adventures for families, girlfriend and romantic getaways.  Kara Williams is the Coloradogal. Here is what she had to say in response to my question, what value do my clients receive in working with bloggers?

1. We usually write for more than one online outlet :: more links for your client, higher search engine ranking results. (i.e. travel bloggers often guest post on others’ blogs, even if they are not actively pitching other sites for paid assignments).
2. We’re de facto travel agents for our readers (and our friends/family). At The Vacation Gals, we often get, “Where should I go for my honeymoon in Florida” or “What’s the best theme park for preschoolers in California?” If your clients are top of mind (if we’ve visited) we often recommend.
3. We’re blogging as we go – instantaneous coverage (no six-month lead time for print magazines)
4. We share the same goal as you and your clients – we want eyeballs to our blog (more page views=more we can charge for advertising); you want eyeballs to the coverage of your hotel/resort/destination. (LG comment: I love this part – it goes back to our relationship of collaboration. it’s about helping each other, it’s not a one-way relationship)

Tom Johansmeyer echoes Kara’s Number 1 above via twitter. Clicks for the client. You have very measurable impact via clicks to your website, retweets, and the level of interaction. You can see his blogging genius at top travel blogs Gadling and Luxist (to name a few).

I’ll add a few things here: Blogs have very real and large readerships, the stories stay on the web forever driving traffic to your site and coming up in searches.

Vetting the bloggers. Now to part two of the question and making sure the blog and the blogger are the right fit for you as the business owner.

Reading recommendation: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. In this book by Tamar Weinberg, she tells a story that not only illustrates the influence of bloggers, but also the power they have if they are inaccurate or misinformed. In a nutshell, Engadget (an influential gadget blog) reported (falsely, it later turned out) in 2007 that Apple was delaying the launch of some new products. Engadget was the only news source to report this, and Apple’s stock plummeted, costing the company a reported $4 billion.

It can happen to the best of us, and certainly this is a real and valid concern. Here is where you rely on your ever competent and knowledgeable PR lady (shameless plug) to ensure you are entering a mutually beneficial relationship. (See PR/blogger Relations Manifesto).

Your goal in media outreach (whatever that media format may be) is to find influencers who have the power to drive their audience to take action and purchase your product.

Steps to do this include:

• Subject matter and fit with audience
• Level of audience interactivity on blog, twitter and facebook (if appropriate)
• Reputation, quoted in other news sources? guest blogging elsewhere? (means exposure to new audiences)
• Important: it’s not the job of the blogger to give you exposure. You are helping them with content for a story that is of interest to their readers. No one wants to feel like a pawn in your marketing scheme.

Some of you have asked me for links to other top and favorite travel blogs. Here are a few:
Deliciousbaby
WorldHum
National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel Blog
Elliot – (Chris Elliot’s blog)
BrooklynNomad

There are way too many great ones to list here, and I hate to leave out friends and colleagues, so please add your favorite to the comments section.
Any additional value points to add regarding bloggers?

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Millions of people are active on Twitter daily to learn, teach and network. If you, as an organization, are on Twitter to broadcast your news, sales and promotions alone, then you have likely been frustrated about “getting it”.

Following are some tips to help you build your community, and deepen relationships with your current and potential customers. This should be your primary goal for being there. Sales growth is the objective.

But first, some fundamentals. What is your strategy? Who is your target audience, and what do you want to accomplish? When I ask that, I don’t just mean “to increase sales”. That’s a given. Make a plan for what type of information you want to share with your audience. How can you be of help to your customers so they will purchase your service or product?

Secondly, a great profile pic (avatar) and a compelling online bio along with a link to your website or blog are a must.

A quick look at an organization’s twitter page and I can make a snap decision if I want to be following their stream or not.

Here is how I decide if I want to follow you:

• Is there relevant content in your twitter stream? Content that interests me, educates me, and/or entertains me?
• Are there any @ symbols in your twitter stream? This shows me you are interacting with us as individuals – answering our questions, engaging with us. If there are none, you are what I call Output Only. The boring guy at the cocktail party that talks non-stop about himself and then walks away. Sometimes I make an exception and follow these twitter streams, but with rare exceptions – like @breakingnews, for example.
• Who is tweeting on behalf of the organization? There should be a person behind the brand. I don’t want to tweet with a thing, I want a person and a personality to go with it.
• Is your feed full of links to your blog and YouTube videos? There’s a fine line between sharing your blog and videos, and again, mixing it with interaction. If you are using twitter simply to drive traffic to your blog, etc, you’ve lost my interest. If I want to subscribe to your blog, I’ll do that.

Are you harnessing the power of Twitter?

• If you’re using the web-based Twitter application, you’re missing out on many powerful features to help you reach your goals. Download tweetdeck or hootsuite. I promise you, you’ll start to get it now.
• Set up search columns for key words to your organization and industry. This will help you to respond to questions directly related to your business by people you are likely not following. I’ve seen a number of questions go unanswered locally, including my own, because you aren’t paying attention to the twitterverse.
• Watch what your competitors are doing on twitter. Set up a column pertaining to them, and their keywords.
• Go out and actively follow people. Use a directory such as twellow and search people to follow based on geographic location, or key words in your potential customers’ bios.
• Conduct market research: once you have a decent, loyal following. Ask them questions that help you understand your customer better.

Lastly, and I can’t say it enough: Don’t just talk about yourself. Balance with the following: Ask me what I’m doing, share news from your industry that I might find interesting. Retweet what others are talking about. Tell me something personal but not mundane – I love a good story.

Does this help?

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I am really looking forward to watching this scenario play out: Pepsi will replace it’s spendy Superbowl ads with a $20 million dollar social media campaign to make the world a better place. Remember how Coke wanted to teach the world to sing in harmony? It sounds like Pepsi is putting its money where its mouth is.

If this is news to you, read more about it here.

Now that is one vote of confidence for social media if I’ve ever seen one. I get a lot of questions here in the region, in our smaller communities about the longevity of social media. “Is it just a fad?”

Social media is not a fad. The technologies are.

According to Larry Woodard’s article, Superbowl ads reach 95.4 million viewers, or 42% of homes. Social media reaches 85 percent of the golden 18-34 demographic.

It’s more targeted and it’s more meaningful.

Of course, execution will be key. The $20 million campaign will center around their Refresh Everything website where, starting January 13th, you and I can submit our projects for funding. Site visitors can start voting February 1^st. The campaign will run for a year, rather than 30 seconds. Of course, after I submit my project, I’ll be plugging it for votes on all the social media outlets.

This signals a major shift in marketing strategy and I love the direction.

• Brands will have to be more interactive and develop more meaningful relationships with their customers in order to compete. Social media technologies make this possible and in fact, mandatory.
• It means no more talking at me, and telling me what to do.
• Maybe brands will see I don’t need a rock star to entice me to buy your product.
• Make me think, make me feel, make me be proud to support your brand.

What do you think? are you as excited as I am or am I just a geek?

Do you like Pepsi’s strategy? Any predictions on its success? Can we apply this lesson to our smaller communities and budgets?

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AKA, how to throw a great cocktail party.

If you’re like me, you give your party guest list a lot of thought so that everyone will have fun, meet new people, and learn something new.

Huh, that sounds a lot like what your facebook fan page should do.

Gathering an audience/following is key to your social media experience. I’m starting with facebook here, because it was requested by one of my readers, and because it is most relevant right now to small town social media. My experience shows that a much higher percentage of people are on facebook than Twitter in the smaller markets. So lets start here, but we’ll get going on twitter next.

How can I get more fans on my facebook page?

Strategy: Think about what you hope to accomplish with your fan page. What is your voice, what will you talk about and what will you do? And how often will you do it? Are you managing it or are you assigning one of your charismatic staff to handle it? Give yourself some guidelines and stick to them.

Be authentic: Social media outlets are a sacred space. Users want to interact, learn and laugh. So. Don’t tell me what to do and don’t talk down to me. I really hate that and I’m sure you do too. You will lose followers if you are a bore.

Develop relationships: This is not about selling your product. This is about developing a community and brand loyalty. Which drives sales. Show interest in your followers and interact with them proactively. Make them feel special.

I received this suggestion from @krisbordessa: Suggests getting fans involved. When they comment (on your page), their friends see (it in their newsfeed) and join. She’s still building hers: Team Challenges

Some basics:

• - Invite people to become your fan on all your marketing materials, radio ads, website, email marketing.
• - Create a signature for all your employee emails with a link and invitation.
• - Set up an easy to remember URL: at this link http://www.facebook.com/username

Be creative: ROW Adventures is giving away a trip to Galapagos. I received a facebook screenshot from them via email the other night along with ten compelling reasons why I should become a fan. I immediately asked if I could use it as a good example. Not only can I possibly win a trip to GALAPAGOS, but I also can engage in meaningful topics and issues like: eco-travel and sustainability. I can meet people that will be on my upcoming trip and post the photos and video after my trip. It’s making your website obsolete. All of this is important to their customer.

How can you apply this to your current and potential customers?

• - Buy a flip cam and do a video of a cooking demonstration, a wine pairing, the ski conditions.
• - Show photos of the special of the day, the new snow, the big fish that was just caught on your guided fishing trip.
• - Backstage pass: Give fans an inside look behind the scenes.

@lisadjenkins manages the Hells Canyon Visitors Bureau fan page. When I became a fan, she immediately welcomed me on the fan page status. Everyone in the group now knows I am there, and it made me smile, and feel welcome. She informs fans on events, new products, the weather, and deals and ideas for getaways.

Finally, keep in mind who you want at your cocktail party and focus on quality over quantity. Stay focused on your message and your strategy.

Who else has ideas for organizations trying to grow their fan base? Please comment below, and provide a link to your fan page. I’d also like to hear about what you want to read here. I take requests. and thanks for the feedback so far!

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Speed networking machine

Originally uploaded by Richard-G

I’ve noticed the biggest reluctance to getting into social networking is related to time management and productivity issues.

I say, don’t be afraid.

It’s the most efficient way to network and a godsend for those of us in small town who want to broaden their reach.

Five reasons social media is time-efficient:

1.  You don’t have to look good, you just have to be thought-provoking and informative. The cocktail party analogy in my previous post, is very apt. Now you can attend the party in your long johns or you know, those nights when you don’t feel like going to “that thing”.

2.  Maximum contact in minimal time. Face it, in real life we all say we will keep in touch, but we  know what that means. When else have you been able to stay in touch with so many people in so little time. In a 10– or 15-minute session. you can update your organization’s news or events, and spend a few minutes commenting on your followers’ news and answering questions (be it about you or about others).

And therefore,
3.   Social media helps you to form deeper relationships, even without direct interaction. You know more about what is happening in others lives than ever before. You’re getting data on your customers, WOW! You’re congratulating them on the birth of a baby, their recent graduation. You know if they are dissatisfied with your brand. You know if a potential client is out there looking for your goods and services.

4.   Small Talk is Dead. I grew up in New York, and I like to get right to the point. I LOVE that social media has changed the social etiquette. You have to be a lot more thoughtful, and concise in 140 characters or a facebook update. It doesn’t mean you care less, it’s just being more efficient.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing will ever replace the face-to-face networking, but you can only be in place at one time:

5.  Social media is worldwide, 24/7. There is no geographic limitation. And when you are an organization that is trying to reach outside your small community, that is critical.

The major time investment is on the front end: Schedule a day or a weekend to set up your pages, and to spend time developing your following. (to be discussed in a future post), and learn the ins and outs of each site. Once you get going, it can take as little or as much time as you want. And it’s up to you to keep that time productive.

I was going to blog about tips to manage your time, but why re-create that wheel when my very smart friend Gini Dietrich brought it down to a science for you here.

Do you agree? Do you find spending a chunk of time daily on your social media outlets save you time over the long run? Or no?

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