Social Media as PR Tequila posted by Christina Williams at Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I had a CEO compare Page One’s work to a tequila shot the other day. I took it as a compliment.

“I really feel like we’ve turned a corner,” he told me as he drove through the streets of San Francisco, clutching his blackberry. “I like being part of the conversation. And Page One, you guys were the lubricant. You were the shots of tequila.”

So what’s he talking about?

The most important aspect of media these days — no matter what community you’re trying to reach — is participating in a conversation. That’s why “social media” has become the Next Big Thing.

Nothing is one-way anymore and if you’re not having a two-way conversation you’re being left behind.

My two favorite social media tools for dipping into the online conversation are blogs and a Twitter feed. Twitter is great for rapid-fire, real-time exchanges, while blogs provide the opportunity for more thought out commentary, with room for all the blog bling: charts, links, graphs and photos.

Good PR is all about noticing openings in the conversation and finding a place for your client at the right table so they can join in. All these new social media tools are just more ways to grok the seating chart.

So why did this CEO compare our work to tequila? Well in addition to being a good-time guy he’s also smart. And when he piped up with a particularly timely blog post about the growing influence of Facebook online, we made sure the right people saw it and incorporated it into their conversation on the topic.

In one day, his blog saw a 600 percent traffic increase. He’s pulling his chair up to the table.

The work we do behind the scenes doesn’t go in a shot glass. It’s the relentless targeting of the right influencers in the right way, using all the tools at our disposal: A tweet, a note, a link. A few more.

But if the metaphor works for you, what we do is tequila in action. Just enough to get a good vibe going, never so much that you regret it in the morning.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Podcast posted by Lindsay Mecca at Wednesday, March 11, 2009

In PR, you never stop worrying about results. You're always looking for the fresh angle, the cool insight, the clever pitch that converts to clips or sucks in huge new Web traffic.

But we all face that moment when the client is too slammed to get back with what you need right away. The content well is running dry. All of your pitches seem to miss the strike zone. What's a pro to do?

What a client never wants to hear from you is: "Well, I tried to reach you but you were unresponsive," to excuse poor results. No one likes blame shifting, and clients are not paying you to "try to reach them." They are paying you to get results. When you are on the hook for results, and you always are, you have to get creative.

I took a ride on the "Get Creative Express" a few weeks ago with a brand new client when I was looking for angles for pitches. I wasn't yet well versed enough in their industry to create my own content from scratch, and I had a very busy client (who, in case they are reading this, I ADORE) who was slow to respond to my slew of (nagging and urgent) requests for information that day.

The solution? Maybe there was something that their former agency did recently that might spark an idea? I poked around the client's media coverage in the previous months before we started to get an idea of the CEO's voice and his views of a few key issues. I found a PR goldmine in a podcast with the CEO. Put my headphones in, cranked up the volume. Twenty minutes later, I had a page of notes about the dilemma developers face in the cloud.

Next step, I drafted a post for my client's corporate blog based on the CEO's comments in the podcast. When it went live, I pitched it to reporters who had recently covered the cloud and/or application development.

The result? In two weeks, I closed on five briefings and five clips (and one pending feature story) with online coverage that reached an audience of more than a million people. Yes, and a very happy client. Not bad for the first two weeks on a new account.

It's too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you simply don't know enough to generate good content (I get it - I'm a Human Biology major working in high-tech PR). Just remember that being independent and proactive when it comes to finding and evaluating pitch angles will pay big dividends. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your clients' responses to your questions -- the content you need is out there already. Find it and start pitching.

Who Says You Need a Press Release? MokaFive iPhone Sentinel Blog Launch posted by Jenna at Monday, October 13, 2008

Tired of drafting those pesky press releases? Why not use your blog to break news?

That's what we did with MokaFive last month for the company's iPhone Sentinel prototype. The News: Vinod Khosla-backed desktop virtualization vendor launches plug-in for iPhone users to carry a full desktop on the iPhone.

The Challenge: Drive prototype downloads during VMworld – one of the biggest virtualization industry events of the year. With Microsoft's own virtualization event the week prior and only seven days to prepare, we can generate buzz in the middle of this loud press circus, right?

Right! We skipped the formal press release and hit the blogosphere directly via the MokaFive corporate blog. Why? Rather than reach typical press release outlets, MokaFive wanted to target a very specific audience – cream-of-the-crop tech enthusiasts who would download and test the prototype, then offer helpful feedback on the product.

During VMworld, our news hit The New York Times, CNET, TechRepublic, jkOnTheRun, Life Hacker, Mobile Devices Today, DaniWeb, LinuxStreet and more. Many of the blogs were syndicated, too.

MokaFive's web traffic quadrupled on the day of the announcement. Life Hacker alone referred more than 2,800 people to MokaFive's web site. According to Radian6, there were 85 total blogs talking about MokaFive 15-29 Sept; 35 of these were posted the day of our blog announcement. There were also 50 blogs that mentioned "iPhone Sentinel" 15-29 Sept; 30 of which ran the same day as our blog announcement.

MokaFive saw an increase of 273% in visitors to their downloads page. In addition, the MokaFive Player page went from fewer than 50 visits the week before VMworld to more than 8,000 visits during the week of our blog announcement. In addition, downloads from MokaFive's community site increased by 50%.

Key takeaways:
1) Consider strategies to build up your blog readership so your first blog-only launch is sure to reach your target audience.

2) Messaging and important talking points can easily get lost in the fast-paced start-up environment. While the exercise of writing a press release often helps distill key takeaways you want to communicate, it's not the only tool for grooming spokespeople. Make sure you always carefully prep spokespeople – with or without a press release – or they may look sloppy in interviews.

3) Don't expect your blog to do all the work. Consider ways to market your blog to make it visible within the communities you want to reach. Then, get your PR team to pitch like crazy. For example, our top blog hits (NYT, CNET) came from personal relationships and hardcore pitching.

4) Make sure the "news" is worthy. Although Microsoft, Sun, VMware, Citrix, HP, Dell, Red Hat and a variety of startups were making desktop virtualization product and customer announcements last month, MokaFive is the first to move virtual desktops to mobile phones.

If you're considering using your corporate blog as a platform for breaking news, go for it! If you're a seasoned PR pro with the right relationships in place, what's to lose?