THINKing

Tweeta20 – A Non-Profit Social Media Pilot Project

On Tuesday, May 11, nine Charlotte social media folks and I will spend an hour trying to raise money for Thompson Child & Family Focus, an organization that has spent nearly 125 years providing education, treatment and support for children traumatized by sexual abuse, domestic violence or rampant neglect.

During Thompson’s annual meeting at noon May 11, we will sit at a Twitter Table and encourage our followers to Tweet A $20 or more. Each contributor of $20 or more will be entered to win two tickets to WICKED at Charlotte, NC’s Ovens Auditorium.

We’re using the hashtag #Tweeta20 in all of our social media postings  so we can keep up with the social stream, primarily from our Charlotte area social followers.

How can you help? I’m glad you asked.

• Follow Thompson on Twitter @thompsoncff
• Become a Facebook fan of Thompson Child & Family Focus
• Share news on your blog, in your tweets or Facebook status updates about the promotion and use the #Tweeta20 hashtag
• Follow our Tweets from noon to 1 p.m. on May 11 and please RT our #Tweeta20 tweets
• Go ahead and #Tweeta20. We’re taking donations!
• Send any other ideas you have to tweak our #Tweeta20 promotion.

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The Forgotten P

Graduates of Marketing 101 all know about the Four Ps of marketing – product, placement and promotion seem to be top of mind. But the forgotten P – in my opinion – is price. Pricing can be an excellent way to differentiate yourself. I’m not talking about low-balling your competitors either. I’m talking about using pricing strategically to address consumer pain.

Consider how airlines price tickets and then charge you what in essence are nuisance fees. They charge you extra for bags. They charge you for food and drink. These fees are all part of pricing and when done incorrectly can really hurt your brand. Jackie Huba has a good post on this topic.

Here at My Creative Team, we decided at the outset that we would price our work on a per project basis. As long as the scope of the project doesn’t change, we don’t charge a client any more than we quoted them initially.  It is harder to set pricing when you are using freelancers, but it is worth it. Our clients love the fact that they know how much something is going to cost them.

Most agencies and web design firms give you a rough estimate and then keep hitting you with extra hours to complete the project. This hurts your brand. So, pricing is just one of the ways – but a very important one – that we have used to differentiate ourselves. In everything we do, we try to make sure we live out our brand promise: We Make You Look Good.

Have you forgotten pricing, or are you using it effectively? Let us know.

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Phelps’ Bad PR “Shot”

Human fish Michael Phelps has two strikes against him and – although I hope I’m wrong – I predict he will strike out.

As you have heard by now, Phelps was photographed taking a marijuana bong shot. He jeopardized his multi-million dollar endorsement deals with this latest in what some call youthful indiscretions.

From a PR perspective, he has done the right things. He quickly apologized to his sponsors and to the public at-large for his “regrettable” behavior. Now, I’m not sure if he was apologizing for the bong hit or for having his photo taken while taking the bong hit. My guess is the latter. He has always been fawned on as being special. I don’t think anyone is giving him solid guidance on how to be gold medal winner, Michael Phelps.

This is not the first for Phelps in the youthful indiscretion category. You might remember his drunk driving arrest in 2004. There’s a pattern here folks.

Michael, a word from an admirer of your athletic ability: if you are going to make a living off being a role model, you have to be a good role model.

I’m not moralizing here. After all, I’m a Baby Boomer. We pretty much invented marijuana. I’m just saying that if you have a squeaky clean reputation, it needs to remain so if you are going to trade off it.

Now, a word for companies who use celebrity endorsers. Stop it. OK, that was two words. I’ve always thought the risks too great and the benefits too slim to justify this activity.

What do you think?

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A Question Of Trust

Forrester Research has a new study indicating consumers don’t trust corporate blogs. In fact, only 16 percent of respondents say they trust corporate blogs. According to a story in Online Media Daily,

That makes them the lowest-rated source of reliable information among 18 categories Forrester asked about including Web portals, print newspapers, radio and personal blogs. “Email from people that you know” rated highest in trustworthiness, at 77%. So should companies simply give up on blogging? No, says Forrester. The lack of credibility stems from corporate blogs’ focus on self-promotion, pushing products and services at the expense of two-way communication with customers.

Typical old school corporate behavior: broadcasting not engaging in dialogue. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think corporations can use their blogs to tell their stories. Got a critic blasting you? Then, the corporation can use the blog to tell its side of the story. Want to tout what your employees are doing outside of the work environment? Excellent use of a blog. Need to air some corporate news. That’s OK, too. How about developing an online community for customers? Even better. Just stay away from blatant product promotion.

Corporate blogger, how are you using your blog?

What are others saying about this topic?

How Trusted Is Your Corporate Blog?

Are They Worth Doing?

People Don’t Trust Corporate Blogs 

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Marketing Landscape In Flux

A couple of recent items have me thinking about what is happening in the marketing landscape around us. We talked recently about the PR study done at Annenberg School of Communications concerning best practices and how the industry is not doing a good job of measuring its effectiveness.

On the heels of this study, we see items like this one from Ad Age about longtime advertisers pulling the plug on their big broadcast ad programs.

Marketers are moving their budgets into other areas, such as mobile text message advertising. And we read about companies like Hershey’s doing in-home promotions to reach their audiences. Add to that what is happening on the social media front, and I see a full-scale renovation of the marketing landscape.

Finally, marketers are going to have to deal with consumers on a one-to-one basis if they want to differentiate their products and services, as well as build customer loyalty. This is good news for the consumer, and ultimately for the smart marketers out there. Are you among that number?

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Pitching Bloggers

I was pretty hard on a so-called PR practitioner whose bad blog pitch went awry and got him into social media trouble. So, I thought perhaps we should take a crack at helping PR people who would like to pitch bloggers but don’t know how.

Ogilvy PR developed its own outreach code of ethics, which is a good starting place. Here are a few tips from the code:

• We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

• We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

• We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.

• Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

Here are a few other good articles on pitching bloggers that you may want to read before you tread onto this shaky social ground.

How Do I Get Placement On Blogs – Social Media Explorer

How To Pitch Bloggers – Problogger

The Myth of Cultivating Bloggers – Church of the Customer

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BlogUpp!

You’ll notice the window in the sidebar to the right that provides a thumbnail snapshot of another blog. This is from BlogUpp!, a new blog promotion tool widget that I am trying. I’ll report back on how it works to drive traffic. Here’s what BlogUpp! says about itself:

• BlogUpp! snapshots your blog and reads your RSS regularly
• Blog’s thumbnail shows on other blogs with our service activated
• The thumbnail is accompanied by your blog’s most recent article
• For every 10 readers of your blog, it is shown to 9 readers on other blogs
• An identical widget projects on your weblog, listing relevant blogs
• Each link clicked in the widget opens a new window, not closing your blog
• And all this is completely free and with no effort whatsoever

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New Business: Do Great Work For Current Clients

New Business Primer – Part 1

New Business Primer – Part 2

New Business Primer – Part 3

My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

You’ve heard it all before when it comes to stats about customer retention. Acquiring a customer costs five to 10 times more than retaining one. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67 percent more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred as many as seven other people.

So, if your focus is on acquiring new customers instead of keeping the ones you have, you are off the mark. Here is a brief overview on how to retain customers.

• Ask. New York Mayor Ed Koch was famous for asking “How am I doing? He always knew where he stood, even if he wasn’t always happy about the answer. So, survey your customers about their likes and dislikes. Then, follow through with the information you receive.
• Profile. Learn as much as you can about your customers and then do something with that information to show them that you value them. Find out what makes a “best” customer and then put programs in place to move more of your customers into this category.
• Reward. Humans like to be treated as if they are special, and they will return to businesses where they have had these positive experiences. Reward them with special deals, or just pay a little more attention to them. In this era of digital communication, just sending a hand-written note gets you major points.

New business is exciting, I’ll admit. But it is the clients you have that will bring you the most success over the long run. Don’t spend five to 10 times more to bring in that new customer. Instead, invest a fraction of that to keep your customers coming back and referring similar “best” customers.

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Sharing With madKast

Have you noticed the little green “Share” icon that recently has popped up to the right of my blog headlines? That’s for a new service from madKast. I’m giving it a test drive to see if I like it better than the previous bookmarking widget I was using.

madKast has the added benefit of providing traffic-related stats. The widget hasn’t been installed long enough to provide much data. But here is our analytics page if you want to take a look.

madKast doesn’t currently offer StumbleUpon sharing, which I think is critical. I mentioned this to madKast’s Josh Larson and he says they are working on it. Why don’t you visit one of the posts here at THINKing and try the widget?

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Hunting New Business: A Primer

DC (digital colleague) Rodger Johnson asked me recently about how a new PR Counselor can acquire new accounts. I don’t know that I have any words of wisdom but I do know how I did it successfully. So, that will be the story of this new series of posts. If you have other advice, please wade in.

I’ll start from the beginning, and I mean the beginning.

I was making a new business pitch to a Charlotte area professional services firm shortly after going out on my own. The second meeting took place after I had provided a detailed proposal to the company on how I work. From the two meetings and the proposal it was made abundantly clear that mine was a comprehensive, strategic approach to communications.

One of the partners asked me if there was a “PR light” alternative. This meant that he wanted a tactical program that required very little involvement or input from him and the other partners. I assured him there was, but that was not my approach.

I guess I could have taken the company’s money every month just to perform a few tactical activities, but it would have been wrong for both of us. I wouldn’t feel right taking their money, nor would I be happy implementing a program that a PR intern could accomplish easily.

Needless to say, the firm selected another communications agency. To understand why this new business loss was a success, we need to look at a definition of positioning. That’s up next time.

New Business Primer – Part 2

New Business Primer – Part 3

New Business Primer – Part 4

New Business Primer – Part 5

New Business Primer – Part 6

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