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What follows is a guest post by Nicole Jordan, a former client at the Rubicon Project.  Nicole is also a blogger of some renown.  When Rubicon decided to cut the string, I asked Nicole if she’d be willing to share her secrets for creating strong client/agency partnerships in a guest post... Luckily for us, she not only agreed to the request, but also threw in a few kind words for our team!

Here’s Nicole:

Being a former client of SHIFT’s and a fellow PR blogger, I welcomed the chance to contribute to Todd’s series around the value of PR agencies. The majority of my career was spent in high-tech PR agencies, so having the shoe on the other foot is definitely an enlightening experience.

I got to experience the RFP process with different agencies and clearly saw the ones who nailed it (SHIFT) and the ones who didn’t (I won’t say).  In fact, we hired SHIFT on the spot. We liked their ideas and opinions on my company’s industry and, more importantly, we liked their energy and enthusiasm. We could easily see them as part of our team.

My SHIFT team literally helped be the company’s eyes and ears. Alerting us to posts and trends that we should comment on or create discussions around with panels, awards, keynotes, etc. The team kept an eye on reporting trends and recommended timely angles that addressed our key markets. And while I was busy dealing with internal messaging and strategies, contributed articles, customer relations activities and countless other things, my team kept the boat steered straight ahead by keeping us current with the people we needed to.

I am a big believer in the value of PR agencies; I just think the traditional agency model needs a little refinement of its knowledge base.  That’s one reason I was drawn to SHIFT in the first place:  I know they don’t like the box and embrace the bold. They’re working hard to elevate the meaning of a “PR agency.”  They genuinely want to help move the needle for their clients.

But sometimes clients don’t make it easy. I’ve had tough clients, we all have. Just a few communication adjustments on the client side when working with an agency can help yield even greater results from a passionate agency team.

1. Trust them with information. As an agency worker I always appreciated when clients would share confidential documents that helped me better understand what was happening with the business.  While working with SHIFT I would forward all kinds of typically-taboo materials because I knew it would help my team. The more I help them know my business, the higher the quality of work with speaking opps, pitches, helping write blog and article responses, etc.

2. Let them inside. Working on-site is always an enormous benefit for absorbing more of the business but when that’s not possible add your team’s name, or the account lead, to distribution emails. We gave our SHIFT team Rubicon Project email addresses to pitch from, to make it easier with certain media, and we added them to our internal Yammer stream so they could keep up with what was happening inside, including: confidential new client wins, revenue numbers, goals, silly inside company jokes, articles being passed around, etc.  And they would reply and contribute on occasion, which was nice since the company employees came to know and trust them.

3.  Share the vision. Too often corporate managers don’t engage their teams when it comes to strategy and planning, nor do they help them understand the long-term vision. I always tried to relay our company’s market vision as it unfolded. If your agency knows where you’re trying to take your brand in 6-12-18 months the quality of strategic recommendations will be fruitful.  Remember, building a brand is a block-by-block process. No one knows building with tiny blocks better than PR agencies!

4. Juice your creative. Since PR has branched out to touch so many other areas of the business, engage your PR team to recommend strategies outside media and blogger programs. If a quarterly goal is customer retention, engage that creative PR team you hired in a brainstorm to think of direct mail, or Internet marketing or events or articles that help achieve that goal.  Agencies are breeding grounds for creative marketing ideas: the good ones don’t mind being asked to think outside their typical safety zone.  Tap into that creativity once in awhile.

5. Communicate your needs. Every client is different. They each like reports different, how much phone communication there is, how information is presented, etc. Agencies aim high to service their clients but it can be challenging at times because they’re not mind readers.  All kinds of things frustrate clients. I remember back in my agency days, one internal contact was very specific about how we phrased emails to her with press opportunities because of the way she needed to pass it on to the CEO.  We crafted them in her preferred formula to make it easy for her to get in front of the CEO in a way that was most effective. Totally fine but it took some trial and error to figure it out.

Figure out what it is you need and communicate it. If you don’t, they won’t be able to fix it, which I guarantee they want to.

When you view your PR agency as just “a vendor” you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s hard for a team to feel motivated if they don’t feel believed in.  And PR is largely fueled by passion. So if they aren’t feeling it, you’ll feel it too. Instead, treat PR as what it is, a two-way communication between interested parties, both striving toward the same goal – to achieve results for your business.

To answer the question: “If you like SHIFT so much, how come you’re not still working with them?” The reason is the same as the majority of companies in the industry… We’re tightening up in all departments and re-allocating resources. Bringing it all in-house. We’ve seen this dance before 8 years ago…That said, I loved working with my SHIFT team.  I still keep in touch with them and hope to work with them again someday.

Posted by Todd Defren at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (9)

We talk a whole lot about Blogger Relations, and that’s a valuable conversation that will continue to be relevant for a long time to come. 

But, blogs are only one part of the Social Media scene.  We hardly ever talk about the opportunity for companies to perform well in user forums, e.g., Amazon.com, Angie’s List, TripAdvisor, Epinions and Yelp.  (Disclosure: Yelp is a former SHIFT client.)

While it’s true that “only” B2C companies have a play in such forums — well, that’s a whole lotta companies — especially if you think about the deep-dive’s worth of local content on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Angie’s List. 

The growing ubiquity (and popularity) of User Review sites will make this an increasingly important issue for B2C marketers at companies of all sizes and types.

Here are 10 rules for participation in Online User Review sites:

#1.  Read & understand each site’s Terms Of Use (TOS), especially how they pertain to businesses that might be reviewed (and don’t break those rules).

#2.  Track the sites daily, to see what people are saying about your company.  Most Social Media Monitoring firms are working on ways to automate this process, if they haven’t figured it out already.

#3.  Join the conversation (where TOS allow you to), responding to both good and bad reviews.  Remember that your “audience” is not just the commenters, but also the infinitely larger number of “lurkers” who will read these reviews and responses.  Remember that Google will likely catalog all of this content, as well.

#4.  You should thank people for saying nice things about your company/product.

#5.  When someone posts a negative review, don’t get defensive. 

#6.  When you post responses to negative reviews, make it clear in your response that you are present, you are listening and you are there to help fix any issues.  Even if you don’t agree with the issue, remember that perception is reality, and most readers will assume that there is a “nugget of truth” in every rant.

#7.  If possible, communicate directly with the person who posted the review, in a transparent and non-defensive way, to see if you can rectify the situation.  DON’T pretend to be someone you’re not, i.e., “just another user” with a made-up name.

#8.  If someone posts something that is clearly batshitcrazy, reply promptly and courteously but don’t engage in a lot of back-and-forth.  Just leave it alone – you can’t fix it.  Most readers will see that you are doing your level best to be nice and responsive to everybody, including Mr. Batshitcrazy.  They’ll understand if you don’t engage an obvious hater.

#9.  You think that that negative and false review is harming your business?  Don’t sue the hosting company (Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.) to take it down.  This just makes you look guilty to consumers.  You must simply do what you can to knock the socks off of future customers, so that they post more positive stuff.  While this process takes more time than you’d like, it is the best way to make it obvious to everyone reading the reviews that your brand’s haters are clueless loons.  Surround the brand haters with authentic brand evangelists.

#10.  Make it obvious and easy for your good customers to post reviews: make sure they know that you appreciate it when they post on these relevant review sites.  Add the appropriate links to your business cards and e-mail signatures. 

This is a high-level look at the best practices in user review site marketing.  It may seem simple but I’ve seen companies of all sizes screw this up pretty regularly.

Do you have more tips or experiences to share?

Posted by Todd Defren at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (20)

I was going over some old presentations that I’d saved in my “Research” folder, and came across a great diagram that Richard Edelman had used at one point.  It was meant to depict the evolution of PR in the Social Media era.

It got me to wondering about the other big recipients of marketing dollars: the advertising guys.  How are they evolving?  Here’s my take, which is a riff on Mr. Edelman’s original concept:

As you can see, PR is becoming increasingly interpersonal: there is a daily flow of interaction, responsiveness and adaptation going on amongst PR people and their ever-expanding publics.  Good PR pros are becoming increasingly open — clear and casual, responsive and transparent. 

Meanwhile, the advertising folks are coming to embrace more and more user-generated content, but as PAID media (versus EARNED media), the advertising execs’ ability to flex the corporate message is practically non-existent.  They can only move into the “CONTROLLED Collaboration” quadrant of this diagram because ads are, by definition, an official corporate branding exercise.

Yes, the advertising industry will always have an edge in terms of sex appeal, and the future of advertising (particularly in a mobile online world) is still quite exciting.  But advertising’s intrinsic, long-term value to the corporate brand is declining in the Social Media era. And the PR industry is the happy beneficiary.

Agree?  Disagree?  Are you at least glad I’m back from vacation?

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (25)

I am happy to report that Laura “Pistachio” Fitton — the brilliant, revolutionary thinker and unmatched Queen of Twitterville — is now a “Tweeter In Residence” at SHIFT Communications’ Boston office.

Laura’s company, Pistachio Consulting, is advising Fortune 1000 companies about how to use microsharing technologies like Twitter to re-engineer their business.  In recognition of her Social Media smarts, she was recently named a Fellow of the Society of New Communications Research.

Laura is not a SHIFT employee, but she’s been hanging her shingle here for the past few months, and will be working from our offices for the forseeable future. 

In return, SHIFT employees and clients get the benefit of Laura’s counsel on an as-needed basis — she’s in our brainstorming meetings, and is happy to provide some spot consulting here and there for SHIFT clients who are interested in doing a “deeper dive” into the twittersphere.

On that note, by the way, I will be leaving you for a bit.  Taking a one-week vacation.  Have a good week without Yours Truly.  I hope to return to hear more of your feedback about the Social Media Marketing e-book!

Photo credit: C.C. Chapman

Posted by Todd Defren at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I get a lot of questions about the “appropriateness” of using Social Media techniques for Business to Business (B2B).  

Arguments against tapping Social Media in B2B circles range from “we already know all of our customers” to “we have a very technical, specialized product” to “our customers are very conventional,” etc.

But let’s simplify this: are your customers online? 

If your customers are online, you should be considering Social Media strategies. 

And trust me: your customers are online.  They are not faceless corporate drones — they are individuals; they have Internet access; they surf the web; they use Google; they do research on the best practices and products in their industry.  Will they find you online — in places beyond your website?

You already know all your customers?  Then you must know where they tend to hang out online: you should make sure that they find your content there…

You have a very technical product?  Well, there are a ton of techie types who use del.icio.us for social bookmarking.  Do a search on the del.icio.us site for the tags and terms related to your industry.  If, say, 500 people have saved relevant content, you can reach out directly to them to show off your own content, relying on the context of their proven interest to ward off spamminess…

My point is simple.  The world of business is increasingly moving online.  And businesses are comprised of people.  Find the people important to your business and make sure that your company’s best assets are found in all the relevant places.

… Or am I missing something?

Posted by Todd Defren at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (4)

Big news!  I wrote an e-book comprised of my “best thinking” of the past 5 years. 

If you want to skip right to the good stuff, click here for the e-book.

If you’ve been reading this blog since its launch in June 2004, there won’t be a whole lot of surprises … but the tale of the blog stats suggests that most PR-Squared readers did not discover this blog until fairly recently. 

The e-book packages up all the “best stuff” nicely, and more importantly it’s in a user-friendly PDF format that allows you to FORWARD TO A FRIEND.

Let’s face it: most of this blog’s readers already “get it.”  You understand that we are poised on the “brink” of amazing change.  You can already see how Social Media is irresistably changing the face of Marketing. 

But, I’ll bet you have a ton of friends who either “don’t get it” or only kinda-sorta do.

Download the e-book.  Send it to your friends, with my compliments.  Because the e-book starts off slow with some basic principles, and then advances to some fairly sophisticated techniques, almost anyone intrigued by Social Media Marketing will get something out of it.  At least, that’s my hope!

I am fortunate to have some amazing friends.  David Meerman Scott was happy to gimme a thumb’s-up even before he read the e-book:

Brink - Views on Todd Defren's New e-Book 

And the peerless Ann Handley of MarketingProfs (who actually did read it, bless her!) didn’t hesitate to excerpt it and offer the e-book as a download at her incredible and influential site.  Thank you, Ann!

Now I need your help.  Will you help me spread the word? 

I’ve got a lot invested in this baby.  We’re talking about FIVE YEARS’ worth of ideas, crammed into a 40–page e-book. 

Will you tweet the link?  Will you email it to a colleague?  Will you read it, and give me some feedback? — Did it help you?

Thanks!!

Posted by Todd Defren at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (60)

I got a big kick out of the LinkLove campaign from my old friends at Hubspot.  It’s that whole “give before you get,” virtuous loop concept that benefits everyone involved.

Sign in with your Twitter handle and offer up the name of a site that you think deserves more linklove (a.k.a. Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. Google Juice), and that link not only gets publicly (and adorably) tweeted, but also gains a link on Hubspot’s special landing page. 

Hubspot also benefits, of course, via all the credit they gain for the idea (in the form of linklove from blog posts like mine, and on Twitter).

There’s a great little music video on the site, featuring former SHIFTer Rebecca Corliss.  (She never sang in our office, unfortunately!  We clearly missed out on a treat.)

Check it out, and Share the Love!

Disclosure: the gang at Hubspot are former clients, and current friends.

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (3)

As noted in an earlier post, one of my goals for PR-Squared is to share more case studies in 2009.

The following case study earned a “commendation of excellence” from the Society of New Communications Research.  It’s been lightly edited for length and tone…

The client, MobileSphere, focuses on providing mobile messaging and telephony solutions to service providers, enterprises, universities and consumers.

BACKGROUND: Last year marked the launch of MobileSphere’s new product, “slydial.” Slydial is a free service that allows users to leave a voicemail message on someone else’s cellphone — without actually ringing them.  An ideal way to save time, avoid an awkward conversation or relay information without interrupting friends or business contacts.

SHIFT Communications was tapped to get the word out for this launch project.

Both the client contacts and Agency reps knew that this fun, clever service could have a viral effect … if the right people were talking about it.  Targeting the blogger community was a must.  While the slydial service may be most appealing to the 18-35 year old demographic, the product can be used by anyone.  So SHIFT’s targets included: business bloggers, tech bloggers, women’s lifestyle bloggers, men’s lifestyle bloggers, teen bloggers, gossip bloggers, and mobile industry bloggers.

GOAL: To attract new users to the slydial service at the beta launch. Before the launch, slydial had 5,000 private alpha users.

PLAN:  Given the simplicity of the service, the plan itself was also simple — but incredibly time consuming.  We created unique angles and pitches for each and every blogger, helping them to see how and why their specific reader community would use slydial.

We also knew that the breadth of our outreach might preclude doing 1:1 interviews with every single blogger who expressed interest, so we made it a priority to develop a multimedia-heavy social media news release (SMR) — including cute videos like the one that appends this post (above).  We were sure to include enough content that bloggers could post directly off the SMR without needing an interview, if that was their preference.

MobileSphere co-founder and EVP of Marketing & Business Development Gavin Macomber and Marketing Manager Rima Patel were integral to the entire process, fielding questions from the SHIFT blogger relations team during the SMR and pitch development process. 

RESULTS:  In one month of blogger relations outreach, MobileSphere’s slydial service was covered in 381 blog posts. These results were the direct result of SHIFT’s blogger relations outreach, combined with the viral effect of the initial, high-profile posts.  These posts were just as varied as the pitches that were sent.

To show the diversity and influence of the pitches and the resulting coverage, here are five highlights: TechCrunch (tech blog), Perez Hilton (gossip blog), U.S. News & World Report: Dave’s Download (business blog), GearCrave (guys’ gadget blog) and ShinyShiny (women’s tech blog).

Wanna see the diversity of pitches?  Here’s what we used for TechCrunch and Perez Hilton:

Pitch to TechCrunch:

I saw your post a couple weeks ago, “Think Before You Voicemail,” so I know how you feel about voicemail, and I agree with you on all points.  I try to avoid leaving people voicemails, at work and in my personal life, and would much rather send and receive emails or texts.  But, as you mentioned, sometimes you need to use voicemail – to convey tone or emotion, or because you’re on the road and need to relay more information than you can type while driving or otherwise multi-tasking.

As you mentioned, there are a few startups out there that are trying to make voicemail more useful.  One of them is MobileSphere.  Today, the company introduced a new service called slydial, which is a free voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone’s mobile phone voicemail.  (etc.)

Pitch to Perez Hilton:

I work for a PR agency and have a client that just launched a new service today.  I thought of you because this service has the potential to make the celeb dating scene a lot more interesting, if that’s even possible! It even has a cool name - slydial!

If LC could leave Heidi a voicemail without the possibility of Heidi picking up the phone, what do you think she would say?  What about Mario Lopez?  He got caught cheating on his long-time girlfriend.  Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten caught if he had a better way to juggle his multiple girlfriends.  Don’t forget John Mayer, the ultimate celebrity serial dater….need I say more?  What these celebs need is a voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone’s voicemail without the risk of them picking up – enter slydial! 

Unlike other messaging services the missed call will appear to come from your own phone, not some unknown random number.  It’s the ultimate illusion of communication!  Feuding celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian can finally get the last word in! (etc.)

ROI:  By hitting online consumers from all angles (both blogs and mainstream media), the PR program helped boost slydial’s 5,000 private alpha users to more than 200,000 beta users in less than two weeks.  We were able to directly correlate the new-user spikes to the coverage.  (But I’m not telling whether TechCrunch or Perez Hilton resulted in more users.  Sorry.  Trade secret.)

I hope to share more case studies in the months ahead!

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Posted by Todd Defren at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (15)

I probably shouldn’t write this post. 

After all, when a proven buyer of PR services fires their agency, SHIFT Communications certainly aims to be in the mix when the new RFP is offered up.  That’s how we pay the bills.

But times are tough and it’s not all about me.  So let me say this to Clients Everywhere:

It’s a shame that your current agency disappointed you.  You are well within your rights to consider swapping out PR agencies. 

However, if you trust the senior management at your current firm; if your problems are related to the performance/creativity of your team but not to the agency’s training and capabilities, consider asking for a brand new team, instead of firing your agency outright.

Sometimes a team burns out; sometimes a team is being mismanaged by its VP; sometimes the chemistry is not there: we’re talking about people after all, who may be well-intentioned but are fallible.  Sometimes the same team can have both raving fans and disgruntled detractors simultaneously.  Different metrics, personalities, etc., work differently for different clients.

Meanwhile, though, if you still trust the firm’s senior management, your ears should perk up when they suggest that they can offer a new team that might do a better job.  If you believe that your current agency provides good training and reporting practices, your willingness to try out a new squad means that you are effectively “getting a new agency” without going through the rigamarole of the Agency Review process.

If it’s still not working out with the new team, though — well, obviously, you should just call me!

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (15)