An important lesson about content from the PR network

Over the last week or so, I have been networking a lot with PR pros in the Denver area. I didn’t get their permission to write about them, so I’ll just thank them as a group – Thank you all for taking time out of your schedules to meet with me and giving me something to write about on my blog.

One thing stood out in all of the conversations I had with them – content is still king. Whether you’re making a post on Facebook or writing a history book for your employer, the content in words or pictures or moving pictures is what will connect with your audience.

Audiences can’t and won’t connect with your company or brand, especially in today’s message-saturated world, unless you have content that attracts them, pulls them in, makes them a believer and eventually inspires them to be an ambassador. Content is still the king. Without stellar content, you don’t have anything.

Content can come in many forms, words, pictures and moving pictures: flyers, point of purchase materials, advertisements, press releases, website copy, videos, Facebook posts, corporate intranet posts, corporate emails and memos, etc … I could go on for a long time so I’ll stop, but it should be obvious that without these things, we really wouldn’t be able to run a business, at least not successfully.

But the real trick isn’t just hiring someone or using someone you have to create content, it’s creating excellent, cohesive, compelling, creative, (insert positive adjective here) content. Many organizations look at content like it’s a giant task list that they will check off as they go along.

Unfortunately, the task list didn’t have a required form at the top that forces them to create a fully-integrated content strategy. Without it, companies pepper customers, employees, interest groups, government officials and all of their obscure family members with messages that often don’t coincide, let alone, agree with one another.

That’s why I’m a believer in fully-integrated communications, even if that means communications needs at least a dotted line to sales and marketing. Think about it. What would happen if half of your accounting team reported up to the CEO and the other half reported up to the CFO and you didn’t have a controller. I have a feeling you’d end up with a lot of numbers that just don’t reconcile with each other and you’d probably end up with a roommate named Bubba in a federal prison.

The same is true with corporate communication, except you’re more likely to end up in the unemployment line than in a federal prison. People want consistent, compelling messages, and they’re quick to point out inconsistencies. Having been in communications for over a dozen years, I’ve taken that phone call many times.

If you need help with your strategic communications structure and messaging, Jakel Communications can help. Contact our Denver PR agency today. 

PR: More than just media relations

It happens all the time. I talk about public relations and people immediately start asking about the reporters I know or what the media is saying about (insert your recent breaking news here).

Public relations has “public” in it for a reason. It’s not just media relations. It’s much more than that. It’s about connecting with the public in an authentic and transparent manner. You might think that sounds like marketing, but there’s a fine line between marketing and public relations.

Marketing in many respects is a way to sell something to a consumer and to get them to perceive a brand in a certain way. Sure, that’s evolving today and marketing is encroaching on the public relations space. In fact, many public relations professionals report up to marketing. I know because I was one of them.

But I was also a PR practitioner so I played the role at times of expressing during meetings what the consumer would buy or not buy from the marketing efforts. My healthy skepticism, I like to think, had the impact of making the messages more authentic or real.

PR isn’t necessarily about making sales. Sure, sales has to be part of the ROI on PR efforts or there wouldn’t be a reason for PR to exist. But sales are a product of the company and the public creating a mutually beneficial relationship. If PR can ensure that the company is creating benefits for the various publics they interact with, it saves the company money from unnecessary crises and it generates sales from the publics that have what they believe is a mutually beneficial relationship.

That’s why I’m such a believer in the PRSA’s recently published definition of public relations:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

Jakel Communications is committed to this definition not just because it’s accurate, but because doing it well leads to significant value for both the organization and the public. If you need help making PR work, contact our Denver public relations agency today.

PR Lessons from March Madness

It’s March and for many of us that means March Madness. I’m fortunate this year in that I get to watch the day games while working. While it seems like it’s nothing more than entertainment to most, to me it’s a learning opportunity. Actually, for all PR professionals, it’s a learning opportunity.

It’s the most celebrated tournament in all of sports because of what it offers to the public and how it’s delivered to the public by the NCAA. Here are a few lessons from the event.

1. Emotion is the key to connecting with the public. The NCAA Tournament is chalk full of emotion, and the brilliant marketing and PR minds of CBS, the NCAA and ESPN use it to their advantage. Even those who don’t like basketball can salivate over the tournament because of the underdog. Very little is more powerful than watching a 12-seed, no-name college take down a 5-seed school with traveling fans and shirtless super-fans with painted chests. Then, there’s the song CBS plays every year: “One Shining Moment.” It’s laced with emotion and relevancy for the tournament in that each team gets that one moment (one game) to shine. And if they’re the underdog that eliminates Duke, North Carolina, Kansas or any of the perennial Final Four teams, that moment is huge. 
2. Engagement is powerful. Who doesn’t fill out a bracket? Even the President of the United States fills one out. OK, there are some non-basketball fans who watch without filling out a bracket. But office bracket pools are abundant this time of year and they have a tendency to help the NCAA grow its fan base. How many people do you know in your office pool who know nothing about basketball? I bet there is at least one in small pools and at least 5-10 in large pools. Every year, a new someone or many new someone’s enter every pool. And inevitably there is someone who makes a side bet with a friend who loses and has to buy the jersey of the opposing team to wear it for a day.  There’s your ROI right there.
3. Loyal customers are invaluable to your reputation. No matter what organization you represent, crises are going to happen and something negative is going to hit the news about the organization at some point. If you don’t have a solid reputation, the damage is going to be significant. If you do have a solid reputation, you have loyal customers who will stick with you and help you weather the storm. That truth is most apparent in college sports. Many of the teams in the tourney have been hit with NCAA sanctions at one point or another because of how difficult it is to oversee the complex system, but they’ve weathered the storms because they have loyal fans – fans who will forgive them and stick with them through almost anything. Loyal customers and fans accept that the organization isn’t perfect and when someone within the organization makes a mistake, the organization will fix the problem and make it right.

There are so many more lessons PR professionals can learn from the tournament. Feel free to share them here.

If you need help using emotion to reach your customers, developing ways to engage your customers or securing loyal customers, Jakel Communications can help. Contact our Denver PR agency today. 

Reasons to not go social

No, I’m not one of those you-must-be-in-social-media-or-your-business-will-die guys. I don’t believe there’s a single communication medium out there in which that is entirely true. Even email could be done without in some industries.

Sometimes, social media engagement just doesn’t make sense for your organization or even your industry. For example, if your product is primarily for retired people and their children have no influence on the purchase decision, you probably don’t need to be in social media. (Detractors will cite how many 60+ customers are now on Facebook, but they’ll forget that those customers are primarily on the site to see pictures of their grandchildren, not much else.)

That said, I do believe that most businesses (99% or more) can benefit from a comprehensive social media strategy. Yet, the timing might not be right for you right now. Here are some reasons to not go social …

1. You don’t have any resources available to do it. If you can’t put any resources toward your social efforts to monitor the page every day, post new content regularly and respond to customers, you should not go social. In addition, you shouldn’t go social unless you’re committed to providing something of value to customers there. You don’t need a lot of resources, but you have to put some toward it for it to be successful. Look at it this way: you couldn’t start a magazine tomorrow with no money and expect 100,000 readers by the end of the week. You need to put effort and money into it for it to be successful.
2. You don’t believe there will be any return on investment. Let’s not kid ourselves. Nearly every time we have tried to convince ourselves that something was going to work that we truly didn’t believe would work, we found out we were right. Not because we were right but because we only acknowledged the negatives of the experiment.  If you don’t believe in it, don’t do it and keep researching until you see the real benefit.  In most cases, there is one out there and once you find it, you’ll be able to create an effective strategy for it.
3. Your customers aren’t using social media to engage with you or your product and are telling you they won’t. As odd as this sounds, it is really true in some industries. There is, however, something to be said about customers not knowing what they don’t know. In other words, you don’t have a social media page up, so your customers don’t know what value it can actually bring to them. You have to be careful with this reason. Make sure there isn’t any value in it and that your customers won’t use it before you assume they know for certain they wouldn’t. You don’t know what you don’t know either.

These are three basic reasons why you shouldn’t be in social media. Personally, I believe companies with these reasons are few and far between. So, don’t take this as an excuse for you not being more social. Really consider what branding opportunities you might be missing by not being in social media. And read my reasons for going social.

If you need help determining whether social media is right for your organization, contact Jakel Communications, a Denver PR firm. We can help you make the right decision and start moving in the right direction.

A case for going social

No matter where you are at in your thinking about social media, if you’re not at least considering going social, you’re missing out on a lot of marketing opportunity. That doesn’t mean you have to or should go social tomorrow, but at some point you will or you’ll pay the price through missed opportunity. Here are three reasons to go social:

1. People, a lot of people, spend their time, a lot of time, there. Whether you like it or not, your company’s messages are competing with the millions of messages customers see every day, even if those messages aren’t from your competitors. Their attention is simply drawn to messages that resonate with them personally and professionally. According to a Pew Research Center study, 67% of American Internet users are on Facebook. And according to a Nielsen report, American Internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other Internet brand. Being there just makes sense if you can find a way.
2. Social media is becoming a primary communication medium. People use their Facebook accounts and LinkedIn accounts as some old-school executives would use their rolodexes. And in some cases people only communicate via Facebook. It has even replaced email for some people. That means it’s stealing eyeballs from your email marketing campaigns – not in huge quantities right now, but it’s going to get larger. Being there will help you offset some of that loss. And your organization will learn how to use social media effectively as it continues to grow.
3. If there is one department in your organization that you don’t want to become stagnant or behind the times, it’s your marketing department. Marketing has and always will be the place where you find vision into the future. Sure, part of it is because you have so many creative types there who aren’t working nose to the grindstone on some spreadsheet. But it’s mostly because they have to anticipate customer trends before they hit or they can expect a call from the c-suite asking them why customers are going to the competitor more often than their organization. They have to be ahead of the times, constantly trying to find the next big thing. Social media is where they’re going to find it today. It’s where your customers are and, if nothing else, it’s a place to listen to what they have to say about you. And they’ll say a lot once you put the page up. That’s a guarantee.

These are just a few reasons to go social. There are many more. But there are reasons not to go social as well. I'll share those in tomorrow's post. Jakel Communications can help you navigate the social media world. Contact us today!

Stop, think, strategize before implementing social media

So you’ve decided that you need to be in social media. The tendency is jump on it and create the Facebook page and the Twitter account right now. 

It’s easy, so why not.

Hold on. As they say, anything that’s worth doing is difficult. If social media were that easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing. Either you need to re-evaluate your reasons for jumping into social or you need to back up and consider the strategy first.

Here’s how I look at social media and the steps I would take in developing a social media presence. (Of course, there are a lot of ways to do this, but this is my preferred method.)

1. Determine what you want to accomplish that might involve social media. The “might” is key. It is always possible that social media isn’t the best tool to use. If it isn’t the right tool or a supporting tool, don’t use it and wait until it is the right tool before you implement a strategy. I say this because there are still a lot of skeptics at the executive level and you don’t want your first foray into social media to be a failure. You want it to be successful.
2. Look at your overall business goals and write out how social media fits into those business goals. Even if you’re not the CEO, this is an important step. If social media is going to work for you, you have to see its value in the grand scheme of things.
3. Craft a social media strategy. The strategy must, absolutely must, refer to your overall business objectives. If it does not, the strategy will be nothing more than a science project. The goals you write into the strategy should support the overall business goals.
4. Double, triple, quadruple check that you can implement the strategy with minimal resources. Social media activities can quickly consume the time and energy of your people, and you are rarely allowed to hire a social media guru, especially when you get started. You have to prove the case.
5. Take baby steps toward implementation. It’s normal for any strategy involving a shiny new tool to be grandiose in nature. If you’re a visionary person like me, you might believe that it could reshape the entire organization. Take a step back from that and implement it in bite-sized chunks, testing one small element of the strategy at a time. This will help you find the social media groove that works for your organization. Over time, it will slowly become an important brick in the foundation of your marketing efforts. 

That’s the magic of slowly integrating social media into your efforts through strategy rather than tactics. If you throw everything at social media too fast, it becomes an organization fad, something we tried once that didn’t work. The only reason it didn’t work was because you threw everything at it.

Like any new technology or medium, especially those that are evolving fast, there isn’t enough information to create the perfect roadmap that works for every company. Throwing everything at it in this one grand promotional scheme introduces way too many variables, so many that nobody will be able to pinpoint why it didn’t work. Instead, they’ll throw the entire thing out the window – the baby with the bath water.

Again, this is easier said than done, so you might want to hire a professional just to get you started. Jakel Communications can help. Contact our Colorado public relations firm today!