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PR 2.0 Tactics

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.

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?

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?

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

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?