Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend Macworld|iWorld 2012 on behalf our client the Omni Group, a leading developer of productivity applications made exclusively for Mac OS X, iPhone and iPad. There was much to see during the show from gymnasts jumping on trampolines to showcase Polk Audio’s UltraFit sports headphones to the Silent Frisco dance party. And I can’t forget to mention comedian and The Daily Show contributor Rob Cordrry’s Macworld appearance and visit to the Omni Group’s booth.
While speculation continues around whether Macworld will remain relevant and well attended given Apple’s departure from the show three years ago, many agree that the show is alive and well. In fact, given the increased demand and fanfare around iOS devices, the conference has added “iWorld” to its name in a nod to the importance of the iPad and iPhone.
For the Omni Group, Macworld has always been and will continue to be a key event to attend. Unlike other companies who may have brick and mortar retail stores allowing them to chat with customers on a day-to-day basis, Macworld provides a unique, ideal platform for the Omni Group to reconnect with its customers, meet with the media, continue fostering industry relationships and showcase its latest offerings. In fact, many consider the Omni Group a Macworld veteran and admire its dedication to the show as 2012 marked its 12th straight year of attendance.
In the weeks leading up to Macworld|iWorld, Communiqué PR helped the Omni Group secure 17 briefings with both tech trade and Apple-focused publications such as Ars Technica, Macworld, GigaOm, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), Technologizer and The Register, among others. The goal for these meetings was to share the Omni Group’s 2012 vision and product roadmap, provide a sneak peek at upcoming products and offer perspective on current trends in the productivity apps industry.
While at the show, I had the privilege of hosting these interviews and spending time with the Omni Group’s CEO Ken Case, who has a clear passion for his team and the productivity apps that they create. His passion, industry expertise and highly regarded productivity apps are already resonating throughout coverage. Thus far, these meetings have resulted in more than 15 pieces of coverage from outlets such as AOL/TUAW, Macworld and Ars Technica.
Attending the conference was definitely a great experience and opened my eyes to all the great innovations taking place in the Apple community. And if the packed show floor is any indication of Macworld’s future, I think it’s safe to say that the conference is here to stay.
Every February, I gear up to watch each and every major film nominated for an Academy Award. I fully trust these films will impress and entertain me because of the credibility bestowed by their nominations. They are, by the simple virtue of their selection, deemed to be the best. Everyone may not necessarily agree, but we come to know popular and successful actors, actresses, musicians and the like through these award-winning nominations and achievements.
The same can be said for business. How often do we find ourselves looking for credibility before we purchase something new? With websites such as Yelp and CitySearch, we constantly seek companies boasting four or five stars in ratings or with a “Best Of” award under their belts. In this type of environment, it is crucial for any business to gain recognition for its outstanding achievements and innovative services or products in order to distinguish themselves from competitors.
Therefore, business or industry awards must not be overlooked or forgotten, especially given the current economic climate where competition for new customers is fierce. Discovering appropriate awards for your company can be difficult, but using an outside source may help the process. Your PR partner may be able to suggest awards to pursue, or you can do research using online tools to find information about a variety of award programs.
Awards can contribute to successful public recognition in the following manner:
- Visibility. Awards can help garner a significant amount of visibility in a certain market or industry, and attract new customers, investors and donors by giving an organization an edge over its competitors.
- Validate. Awards speak volumes about a company’s products or services and substantiate their credibility. Even an award nomination can be helpful because it validates a company’s leadership in its given market and proves it is ahead of the curve.
- Testimony. Winning an award or even being nominated serves as testament to a company’s work ethic, dedication and unique specialty. New customers will likely consider a company or organization’s work over another if it has won an award. Furthermore, current customers may view the award as a good thing, reinforcing their loyalty and willingness to share information about a product or service.
- Reputation. An award can improve the perceived reputation of a company to the general public, new customers, donors, investors and the like. Recognition may transform a company’s reputation from “pretty good”, to excellent.
- Differentiate. An award sets a company apart from competitors and differentiates the quality of its achievements and services from others. An award helps a company stand out for excellence over and above many other agencies and suppliers in the same industry.
Given the contributions and impact awards can have on employees, customers and the company itself, it can be important to make submission for awards a critical part of any marketing or public-relations plan. For tips on how to write a successful award submission, take a look at our previous blog post.
How have awards impacted your business in the past? We would love to know what helped you succeed in winning a certain award.
Email is a primary form of communication for many professionals. What once was a casual correspondence now serves as the primary means for many people to share information.
At Communiqué PR, we ensure we are developing clear messages when communicating over email. To do this, we recommend having someone else review your note. Having another set of eyes look over what you’re communicating will help ensure that you are clearly delivering the best message possible.
I recently came across an article in Ragan.com written by Josh Gordesky that highlights email mistakes you should never make. I’ve included some of those suggestions below, along with examples from my own experience.
Are you guilty of any of these?
- Your email is too long. Emails should be clear and concise. If your email is too long, your recipient will likely lose interest. In addition, long and scattered emails can be perceived as careless or not important. Also, large chunks of text can cause a reader’s eyes to glaze over. Gordesky suggests setting a 300-word limit for email to ensure you have a clear focus and eliminate useless words. When detailing a complicated topic, I like to bullet out information that is most important or limit paragraphs to a few sentences to make the email easy to scan.
- Your email is too vague. Many people scan email subject lines and decide what to open, delete or file in a matter of seconds. If your subject line is vague or the beginning of your message is not compelling, you could risk having an important message be deleted. For tips on making a subject line sexy, read our previous blog post.
- Your email is too self-centered. Consider your audience and their needs as you write an email. As communication professionals, we try to anticipate the needs of our clients when communicating. If your note contains too many “I” statements, your reader could lose interest. Put the focus back on the recipient. Instead of saying, “I will send you a draft tomorrow” try the occasional, “You will receive the draft tomorrow.”
- Your email is too passive. Sentences written in an active voice tend to get your point across more quickly and clearly. For example, a passive sentence reads, “The document was delivered by the Fedex man.” In an active sentence, the message now reads, “The Fedex man delivered the document.” This is a much more concise sentence. For more tips on how to write active and avoid passive, visit Grammar Girl, this is a great tool.
- Your email has too many attachments. Some people include attachments as context for their email, but this can cause information overload that can detract from your message. A reader can be easily confused by too many attachments. If possible, copy and paste the referenced text from the attachment into the text of the email. It makes it easier on the recipient.
As the workforce becomes more mobile in nature, a clearly developed email will save you and your reader valuable time.
Recently I have been reflecting on Communiqué PR’s standard of practice and our philosophy around client service. Colleen Moffitt and I feel passionately about the topic and how we apply these standards.
Here is how we describe our client-service ethic:
1. First and foremost, it means having a client-centered perspective, acknowledging the clients’ needs and putting service ahead of self-interest. It’s about partnership and making the client’s life as easy as possible while helping the individual and her company meet key business and communication objectives.
2. It means delivering quality work as aggressively as possible. At Communiqué PR, this means striving to get work done as soon as possible as opposed to right before it’s needed or due.
3. Client service means adding value with each interaction. To do this, we have to understand what an individual and the organization values. We have to strive to understand this and even be a step ahead of clients.
4. It’s about showing we care about each individual manager or executive. We work to demonstrate that we have a vested interest in the individual’s success. We understand that to achieve client delight and retain business, it is not enough to simply deliver the work. People want to know we care deeply about them.
5. It’s about sharing how we can help as opposed to saying what we cannot do. Whenever possible, we look for solutions to problems and how we can positively impact the outcome.
6. It’s about establishing shared expectations around when work will be completed, what it will cost, and what results will be achieved. Some examples of how we arrive at shared expectations include:
Suggesting a deadline, but asking the client when he/she needs the work. “If I deliver this to you by ____________, will this meet your needs?” Or “If we secure five articles in these publications ________, will that be considered a win for you?” Or “Would it be helpful if we outlined our thoughts on ___________?”
7. And finally, it means having an ability to read between the lines on client requests. What is the individual’s underlying need and message? How does he or she feel about the work or working with us on an emotional level?
It is not always easy to apply these principles, but our goal is to provide exceptional service as we harness PR and social media to drive meaningful and measurable results. And we’ll continue to aspire to uphold these standards with each client interaction.
Jennifer
Not many social media tools enable a Syrian native living in America with his newborn baby to virtually see his family for the first time in 18 years. It’s now possible using Google+ and its new app “Hangouts,” a powerful way to connect people around the world using live multi-way video chats among up to 10 simultaneous users.
This was the opening story at a Puget Sound American Marketing Association event I recently attended. The presenter, Amit Fulay, product manager for Google+ Hangouts, used his Syrian friend as an example to showcase the powerful impact Hangouts can have. Hangouts allowed Amit’s friend, his friend’s sister in Dubai, his mother and father in Syria, and other family members around the world to virtually congregate for the first time in nearly two decades.
Not only can Google+ Hangouts dramatically impact personal experiences, it also can impact how people engage with brands, businesses and other key audiences. We recently posted a blog on Google+ detailing the benefits of adopting a page and offering guidance on how to get started with Hangouts and Circles. (A Circle allows individuals to group his or her followers.)
While Amit’s presentation reinforced our impression that Google+ is likely to have a big impact on businesses, the most successful users of this new platform are the ones who recognize that different groups care about different things and target their messages accordingly. With Hangouts, Google+ now offers any person or business a great opportunity to make sharing information more targeted, personal and integrated.
Several other success stories Amit shared about Google+ include:
- Dell: Known for technology services, devices and support, Dell has created an impressive presence on Google+. CEO Michael Dell hosts Hangouts to engage with the public and establish a personal connection with Dell’s customers. According to an article published by GigaOM, Dell also is considering hosting customer service through Hangouts as well, moving beyond the traditional call-center environment.
- Dallas Cowboys: This NFL team is considered one of the most successful brand pages on all of Google+. Some 16,300 people have added the Dallas Cowboys to their personal Circles and the team recently had multiple players participate in Hangouts to connect with these fans and answer their questions. Although Hangouts only allows 10 participants at one time, with the Hangouts On Air feature, a Hangout can be broadcast to other viewers who are able to watch the proceedings in real time. The feedback from fans has been very positive.
- Will.i.am: Famed producer, rapper and frontman for the Grammy-winning “Black Eyes Peas” broadcast a concert in Central Park via Hangouts. In between sets during the concert, he shared the behind-the-scenes activities with thousands of fans across the globe. The Hangouts he hosted received an overwhelmingly positive response, and by using the Hangouts On Air feature, it was recorded, archived, edited and pushed to YouTube for further viewing.
- AKB48: This unique 59-women music group sent Google+ viral as the new social media tool in Japan. Google+ has the ability to translate comments, posts and more on AKB48’s brand page into various foreign languages for people around the world who want to know what is happening with the group. Similar to Will.i.am’s efforts, AKB48 hosts Hangouts with fans and broadcasts concerts. In addition, the AKB48 brand page connects to separate Google+ pages for each member of the band, making them more individual, personable and accessible to fans. This makes their overall brand page engaging, unique and exciting for fans around the world.
- Daria Musk: This talented musician is Google+’s first music star. She has an incredible story on her website describing a transformation from hopeful small town musician to world renowned singer/songwriter using Google+. On July 16, 2011, Daria hosted the first ever “pro-level Google+ Hangout Concert” in which she drew thousands of viewers and participants from around the world. On Daria’s website she explained audience members “came up with an etiquette of ‘rotating’ in and out of the 9 ‘front row seats’ inside the Hangout to let other people interact with me where we laughed, marveled at the technology and became friends as I played and sang through the night.” You can read more about Daria’s experience here.
Amit concluded the presentation by highlighting the key ways to achieve success on Google+:
- Make a brand page accessible, personal and engaging
- Segregate your customers for targeted communications
- Focus on organic experiences
- Think social and real time
- Plan for reach
- Broadcast, multicast and unicast
With these closing remarks, Amit intended to give each audience member a leg-up on getting their Google+ brand pages off and running.
Have you interacted with customers on Google+ Hangouts? How do you utilize the app? We would love to hear your comments and opinions about building a brand with Google+ Hangouts.
Katherine Turney
As PR practitioners, the Internet is a powerful tool for storytelling, via blogs, newswires, social media sites and more. SOPA and PIPA have the potential to dramatically impact these channels, so we have been carefully monitoring the debate and watching protests unfold.
Content creators at the highest risk of piracy are proponents for the acts, and for good reasons. The music and film industries have struggled with protecting stolen content for years. Illicit content is swapped and traded daily through torrents and other file sharing sites, and industry professionals want websites to be held accountable for stolen content. As Motion Picture Association of America’s Michael O’Leary said in an interview on PBS Newshour, “It’s not just the film producers who are hurt, it is millions of Americans who make their livelihood in the film and television production industry all across the United States.”
Online giants, such as Google, completely support the protection of copyrighted content, but they are opposed to SOPA and PIPA because the acts would hold web advertisers, search engines, Internet service providers and others accountable to restrict any content that has been accused of a copyright infringement, no matter how small or large. Many believe this changes the transparent, organic nature of the Internet. Wikipedia argues that the acts would force “website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites.”
The contentious debate between the supporters and opposition of SOPA and PIPA has been detailed, informative and interesting, and we will continue to follow its progress and keep you posted on the outcome. Marketing Land has a very informative Q&A on SOPA if you would like more information: http://marketingland.com/what-all-marketers-need-to-know-about-sopa-1677