Help needed for upcoming book - Could you please share 1 to 2 paragraphs (max) of how you have helped a company user PR 2.0 to do something better, more signifcant, and effective?
I'm looking for quick anecdotes about how you tried something new as it relates to new PR or social media marketing and the benefits and results you realized. I'll provide you with full credit of course. Just a quick 1 -2 paragraph (go to 3 if you have to) that talks casually about how you had a challenge, embraced new and social media, garnered success and learned something along the way. Please send sooner than later :)
Cheers!
Answers (10)
Jeffrey P
Technical leader who embraces change, innovation, and process improvement.
Best Answers in: Commercial Real Estate (1), Business Development (1), Professional Networking (1), Computer Networking (1)
Great question. I was able to take the helm of our corporate blog for a couple of posts. Readers were able to post comments and I made the effort to answer or at least acknowledge the comment, whether they were in praise or being critical.
Additionally, the blog posts were for an announcement for yet another service that I would have personal contact with customers. In this service, customers could post their comments and/or thoughts without any sort of moderation. I represented the company and Product Management to the customer. I actively took feedback to the PM and discussed it with my peers. While I couldn't make everyone happy, the customers really appreciated the contact; it was something absent from the company for some time.
The end result was that I was let go from this company, and when I announced it in this "forum," even my staunchest critics said they'd miss me and the appreciated my efforts. I didn't expect that. I felt like I had made a difference and it felt good.
Links:
Eric M
Experienced corporate communicator and crisis communications consultant
Best Answers in: Public Relations (3), Internet Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1)
While at the Nuclear Energy Institute, I created a blog that helped the industry rally support online and served as a platform for media criticism. In turn, our actions also encouraged other industry supporters to start their own online platforms and create an informal network of allies that worked together to share information and defend industry positions.
Links:
Murli Menon 2600+ T
Author- "ZeNLP-the power to relax" (LION/Mylink500) "Stress management through ZeNLP meditation" Zen+NLP=ZeNLP
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (3), Travel Tools (2), Mentoring (1), Budgeting (1), Career Management (1), Professional Networking (1), Computer Networking (1)
I am from India and author of two bestselling books on ZeNLP. I am writing a commissioned book "Vegan soup for the traveller", which is a vegan's travellogue of travelling through Tibet, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia Vietnam and Indonesia. However, to keep the flow, I kept writing on the road and whenever I reached a WIFI facility uploaded my travel article + pictures onto my blogsite. Within three years, I have completed the manuscript of a trilogy of travel books. At the same time I could upload travellogues on visit to nearly 100 destinations including Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet, Paigutso Lake in Tibet, Tonle Sap lake in Tibet, Volcanic lake in Cambodia, Morakkot cave in Thailand, Batu caves in Malaysia, Kampung Bantul in Indonesia, Lake Toba in Indonesia within a few hours of returning from these exotic destinations. I used my time travelling to key in the blog and wi-fi to upload it on our website tips4ceos.com. I put up the links to my blog on linkedin, xing and all Web 2.0 social networking sites I am a member of. Soon, a growing number of my linkedin contacts including Mike Pockoky from Canada, Ronal Woperesis from Netherlands and Umesh Nair from India started chatting with me on Skype and posted links to my blog from theirs . Mike runs Sophistica blogsite. Ron is the author of books on attention at lulu.com.
After my return to India, I was astounded to find that, my travel blog was republished with my byline in two of India's leading magazines, In Tourism Asean Singapore and "By The Way" magazine. Several inflight magazines of airlines emailed me for republishing rights and thanks to linkedin several U.S. and U.K. based publishers including my present publishers are negotiating with me for the rights for the three travel books that are ready with me for publishing and which are up to date with the latest travel information for those visiting south east Asia including details on where to stay on a low budget, where to eat vegan food, what to eat in remote tropical rainforests. Also the amount of feedback I received flooded our mailbox at tips4ceos.com
I will attribute my success to web 2.0, linkedin and PR 2.0 to do something better, more significant and effective. See the links to my blog
Links:
Hi Brian - As I'm a big advocate of not having a conversation unless you have something to say, I often counsel my clients to first track, respond and interact with existing blogs before launching their own.
By using this approach, my client, a New York-based technology infrastructure designer for real estate developments, was able to share some very focused dialogue, via email and the blog, on the developments of green technology in real estate.
Based on this dialogue, and plenty of conversation in other channels (contributed articles, interviews and speaking engagements) we helped create enough presence in this arena to secure an in-depth feature posting opportunity, and subsequent video feature, for a blog that is advocating good policy and practices for energy use.
The end results is:
1. my client has been introduced to social media,
2. they've learned that it's not where you say it, it's what you have to say (if it's not compelling, it doesn't matter if its featured in a blog or newspaper - it doesn't reflect well on the author)
3. They have used their for-profit enterprise to further the mission of a very worth-while non-profit mission (sustainable energy)
Now they are raring to go, and look forward to launching a blog that is focused in topic and rich in content.
Thanks again Brian - good luck with the book.
Best,
Pam
I built a blog to share press highlights for our company in the outdoor industry. It was developed to give sales representatives more tools when selling our products to buyers. It ended up being a huge benefit to our company making PR- an often misunderstood component internally- a more transparent and appreciated thing.
While it seems simple, the idea has been embraced and emulated now by various companies in our industry who had never thought of a blog as a distribution tool for PR coverage. Rather, they used it as a traditional blog for their brands.
We are preparing to make the blog public- stripping out some of the circulation numbers and inside anecdotes.
Jason Kintzler, Senior Communications Manager- Brunton & Gerber Legendary Blades
Links:
John W
Owner, Wagner Communications | a full-service marketing and public relations firm
Brian:
Allison Gower, CEO of mobility marketing provider qtags, was an early adopter of blogging. She originally used her blog to reach media and tech bloggers about the text messaging service, then later found it was also a good resource for partners and vendors, enabling them to keep tabs on the company's new offerings and opportunities.
With basically no PR/marketing budget, Allison was able to significantly build qtags' profile, garnering both media coverage and new clients.
Links:
Jocelyn B
Co-founder, JBLH Communications, "We'll Talk About You All Day Long!"
Best Answers in: Public Relations (6), Events Marketing (1), Professional Books and Resources (1)
Brian - I just launched a client 2+ weeks ago, figuring that I wouldn't get too much mainstream media (as the opps were limited to begin with), so I pitched about 30 blogs in the client's industry space. To my surprise, 15 of them responded within 3 days and wrote about the client. And my client's orders have been pouring in since.
If you need more info, please contact me offline: Jocelyn-JBLH(at)nyc.rr.com
We have a blog, the Digital Money Blog, that has been mildly successful. As an experiment, we took the best posts from the blog and published them as a book (The Digital Money Reader). This has proved tremendously popular with customers, partly because it's the ideal format for the bus, train and plane. We therefore went on to do the same with the Digital Identity Blog.
On a recent business trip, it was clear to me that introducing yourself by giving someone a signed book -- even if it is only of blog posts -- is far more effective as an introduction that giving them marketing collateral.
Links:
Alex G
Online Marketing Professional
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Purchasing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Business Development (1), Writing and Editing (1), Supply Chain Management (1)
We had the challenge of getting more exposure on niche-specific online forums, dictionaries and blogs. The task was definitely not a precise science. While searching for an effective solution we decided to create a series of research-based yet task-specific articles which could serve as insightful tutorials for our target audience.
I went through the article submission process getting and in a reasonably short period of time, not only the pieces were used as tutorials and reference material, but also we received a constant flow of user comments and ongoing traffic to our web-site. It still pays off big.
Links:
Alex G also suggests these experts on this topic:
Eric G
Marketing Creative Director, SmartMarket Media
Best Answers in: Advertising (3), Internet Marketing (3), Graphic Design (3), Viral Marketing (2), Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Direct Marketing (1), Mobile Marketing (1), Web Development (1)
Hi Brian,
Here's an example that we utilized for my own company using social media marketing for our own PR with measurable results. In September I was named by a regional Business Journal to their 40 Under Forty list, an event that celebrates 40 business people making a difference in their community and in the business world under the age of 40. So we created a web-based movie to send out to our existing customers that ended with a call-to-action page which made the movie simple to forward on to a friend. Our goal in creating the piece was to maximize our exposure in the regional B2B market and to develop a relationship with the business journal that put on the event. We sent it to our contact at the Business Journal to get their "blessing" before sending it out. They called us within 15 minutes to say that it had already been forwarded around their entire office and they wanted to show it at the awards banquet the next night with over 500 attendees. After the event the owner of the Business Journal came up to me and asked if they could send it out on their e-newsletter to a list of over 4000 subscribers (mostly business owners & C level executive subscribers). Within about two weeks after the event our e-newsletter subscriber list doubled and from that event (and subsequent contact through our e-newsletter) we have created web-based marketing movies for four companies that attended that event, created a movie for the business journal and are now creating two other web-based movies for business journals in other states that are owned by the same company. The business journal was so impressed by our product and quality that there entire sales staff are now reselling for my company. All from that one little web-based movie we did! The first link I provided below is for the original movie, the following two links are a movie we recently completed for an attendee of the event, followed by a link to our website. Please contact me if you have any questions. Best of luck!
