Tactics & Tools

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7 Ways to Bolster Your PR Results

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A successful PR campaign does not evolve on its own.

You need to develop a proactive mindset and a strategic plan that will help you earn the media coverage that will propel your organization to the next level of success. By focusing on developing relationships with customers, influencers, and suppliers, you can establish a solid foundation for a productive PR campaign. Below are seven ways to bolster your PR results.

 

1) Become a regular exhibitor at industry trade shows

Trade shows provide excellent forums for networking and showcasing your new products. If you are new to the trade show arena, make sure that you use discretion and maximize your resources. Here are a few tips to help you generate PR from your trade show participation:

  • Select your trade shows carefully. Avoid shows in their infancy in favor of established shows with a large number of attendees. Also, consider the location where the show will be held. Larger cities with easy airport access are typically better venues for trade shows.
  • Choose your booth location wisely. Booth location is often the key to a successful trade show. Corner booths and locations near the front expo entrance are good choices while locations at the back of the expo hall are less ideal. Exhibitors who register early typically have better access to the most desirable booth locations.
  • Invest in an eye-catching booth display. Creating a captivating, inviting ambiance will help drive traffic to your booth. And an inviting booth begins with an eye-catching display. Make sure that your display is clearly visible from afar and make sure that your booth is neat and free of clutter.
  • Explore speaking or sponsorship opportunities. Most trade shows offer exhibitors the opportunity to advertise in the exhibitor manual, sponsor a trade show event, or serve as a speaker on an exhibition topic. While exhibitors can usually expect to pay for these opportunities, they are a great means of fostering PR results.

 

2) Enlist the support of influencers

“…Collaborations with social media stars and celebrities can help to build your credibility among consumers, but that’s not the only benefit. Influencer marketing also gives you the ability to enhance your public relations efforts by filling engagement and trust building “holes” that traditional media can’t always deliver.”

 

– Rebekah Iliff, Chief strategy officer, AirPR

Influencers are outstanding brand ambassadors. Consumers are more apt to trust people than businesses, highlighting the key role that influencers now play in advertising and PR. As contrived marketing messages increasingly fail to engage audiences, social media influencers will continue to grow in popularity.

 

3) Focus on building key relationships

Relationships often serve as the building blocks of fruitful PR campaigns. Maintaining relationships with the individuals who helped your company succeed as well as those who can take your company to the next level of success is essential. In general, you should focus on establishing and maintaining relationships with four categories of people:

  • Customers: Happy customers are outstanding brand ambassadors, especially those who are active on social media. You can build strong relationships with customers by delivering products and services on time and by offering an unparalleled level of responsiveness.
  • Suppliers and vendors: Paying your vendors on time and treating them in a pleasant, respectful manner are two ways to earn rave reviews from suppliers and vendors. Also, make sure that your purchase orders are clear and organized, and try to provide an accurate forecast of upcoming needs.
  • Employees: Satisfied employees are more likely to provide favorable online reviews of your company as an employer. You can keep your employees engaged and satisfied by establishing a positive work culture and recognizing them for their accomplishments.
  • Business partners: Strive to work well with your business partners to ensure that you do not become one of the 70 percent of business partnerships that fail. You can improve your relationship with your business partners by communicating openly and honestly.

 

4) Zero in on millennials

“Millennials have incredible passion and a strong desire to make the world a better place…They want to create meaningful experiences with brand managers. Companies such as Toms, Starbucks and Chipotle have managed to attract and retain their attention. Those brand managers aren’t just speaking to people; they’re speaking with them.”

 

– Deirdre Breakenridge, CEO of Pure Performance Communications 

With millennials possessing $44 billion in annual spending power, connecting with millennials is essential to bolstering your PR results. In contrast to baby boomers and Generation X, millennials are more experience-driven consumers. Reaching millennials, therefore, requires a different approach that involves the following elements:

  • Increase your focus on creativity when branding your products and campaigns
  • Offer free events, activities, and trials to enable millennials to experience your products
  • Make sure that your website and social media sites are responsive and easy to navigate
  • Encourage millennials in your workforce to weigh in on your marketing campaigns

 

5) Engage with your audience

Engaging with your audience gives people a reason to return to your website, blog and social media pages. You build customer retention while elevating your PR results. Here are a few specific ways to engage with your audience:

  • Respond to blog post comments from your audience: Responding to audience comments regarding your blog posts enhances the quality of your blog and also helps you build your brand’s presence. Most importantly, it shows your audience that you value their feedback and are interested in engaging with them.
  • Use social media to showcase your customers and their accomplishments: Recognizing your customers’ recent awards and achievements will delight your clients and help you create a positive company culture. Additionally, you solidify your relationship with key clients while also showing prospective customers that you are a trusted resource for the products and services you provide.
  • Share content that will be useful to your audience: There is little doubt that sharing content is an effective PR strategy to employ. However, with millions of videos and blog posts published every month, you need to employ content intelligence to ensure that you systematically sort through the clutter and choose the most compelling content.
  • Introduce digital storytelling: If you are not already using digital storytelling to augment your PR strategy, then it is time to start. Storytelling’s use of narrative and local flavor to engage with customers makes it a powerful PR tool. The keys to success when introducing storytelling are to start small and make sure you link your storytelling to your company’s goals and missions.

 

6) Become a master of responsiveness

“Among respondents to The Social Habit who have ever attempted to contact a brand, product, or company through social media for customer support, 32% expect a response within 30 minutes.”

 

– Reinaldo S. Prado, LinkedIn

Studies show that more than 75 percent of people who submit an online inquiry expect an email response or a social media reply in less than six hours. With a growing number of consumers opting to engage with companies through social media or live chat, it is essential for you to take measures to increase your level of responsiveness. Here are a few specific ways to become more responsive:

  • Always respond to social media inquiries, even if you must use a pre-generated response.
  • If you advertise your live chat, make sure you have staff available at all hours to respond to inquiries.
  • Strive to respond to social media inquiries and online quote requests within an hour.
  • Make sure you have an official response prepared in case a customer posts a major concern.
  • Consider hiring an intern to monitor your social media and chat inquiries to ensure timely responses.

 

7) Make it easy for your audience to contribute feedback

“…You might want to create one hashtag for a dedicated campaign where consumers can share images of themselves with your product, and then create another hashtag that’s evergreen, where buyers can share their reviews and experiences with your product or service.”

– Jose Angelo Gallegos, Social Media Today

 

Providing convenient ways for audience members to provide feedback reiterates your dedication to listening to their needs. Additionally, customer feedback can be instrumental in helping you improve your business. The key to obtaining customer feedback is to make it easy and convenient for people to convey their comments. Some fast and convenient ways to encourage customers to provide feedback include the following:

  • Feature brief popup surveys on your website.
  • Distribute short comment cards and text surveys at promotional. events.
  • Enable customers to comment on your blog posts.
  • Simply ask customers for their feedback during trade shows and professional meetings.

 

What is the single best step you can take to bolster your PR results?

As outlined above, there are many measures you can take to enhance your PR status. However, the single best step you can take to maximize your PR results is to enlist the support of an accomplished marketing expert. A professional marketing specialist can help you develop a strategic campaign that will drive audience engagement, strengthen key relationships, and win over millennials. Most importantly, you will expand your market presence and build brand loyalty.

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A Dozen Surefire Ways to Help you Create Stellar Content

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Your ability to convert prospects into loyal customers hinges in great part upon the quality of your content. If you are willing to invest time and energy in the content you produce, you will reap the rewards and grow your customer base. Whether you are the Marketing Director of a rapidly growing startup or the CMO of a well-established software company, there are some proven measures you can take to produce content that will convert prospects to sales. Below are a dozen surefire strategies to help you deliver stellar content.

1) Make award-winning content a top priority

“The demand for fresh, high-value content marketing is high. If you invest time in creating it, you’ll reap the rewards. But, the competition is strong. Most marketers are going give up, but those who learn the tricks and get customer insights will grow their businesses.”

 

– Neil Patel, Entrepreneur and Best Selling Author

The first step on the journey to outstanding content is to make a firm commitment to developing an ongoing content improvement strategy. Stellar content does not magically arise out of thin air. It requires time and an ongoing investment from a dedicated resource. If you are willing to put forth a sustained effort, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor in the form of increased conversions.

2) Know your target audience like the back of your hand

Building a strong rapport with prospective customers requires you to really get to know your target audience. Identifying your audience’s primary preferences and expectations will help you customize your content to best meet their unique needs. There are many ways that you can learn about your target audience, including the following:

  • Attend or exhibit your products at industry trade shows
  • Follow conversations on social media
  • Keep tabs on your top competitors
  • Conduct surveys of your existing customer base

3) Select content that is relevant to your target audience

Today’s consumers are inundated with content. In order to stand out from the competition, you must make sure that you are creating content that is authentic, believable, useful, and relevant to your target audience. This will help position you as a legitimate force within your industry while earning the trust of prospective customers. Most importantly, this strategy will help you develop a loyal customer base that looks forward to the valuable content that you provide.

4) Choose a captivating headline

“The headline is the most important part of any piece of writing… Without a good headline the rest will not be read. By improving your headlines you will find that your writing will no longer be ignored, dismissed or deleted as they will be hungry to find out more.”

 

– Tony Hetherington, Writer and Editor

Crafting a captivating headline is essential to capturing your audience’s attention and prompting them to want to read further. It is the first impression that your customer will have when viewing your content, which is why headlines play a key role in your content strategy. There are several key things to remember as you create your headline, including the following:

  • Keep your headlines succinct, limiting them to no more than 10-15 words
  • Make sure your headline accurately represents the content you are presenting
  • Engage the audience by asking a compelling question in your headline
  • Include a shocking number or statistic that will surprise the reader

 

5) Make sure your introduction is enticing

Now that you have successfully captivated your audience with a great headline, you now owe it to your readers to craft an intriguing introduction. Studies show that human beings have an average attention span of 8 seconds, which is even shorter than the attention span of a goldfish. This means that your introduction must be concise, clear, and direct and never dull! You

6) Use images and graphics to support key points

In addition to offering a great introduction, you will help increase conversions by featuring high-quality images and infographics. With researchers finding that color visuals increase the willingness to read by 80 percent, you should consider using a multi-media approach as you design your content. Using a multi-media approach is particularly effective if your target audience includes millennials, who tend to revisit sites that include visuals.

7) Ensure that your content is scannable and well-organized

“Your audience doesn’t come to your website to read flowery prose; they don’t have time for that. They come because they want to be able to easily get the information they need and move on to something else.”

 

– Kim Keller, Blogger and Journalism Professor at the University of Memphis

Creating content that is scannable and well formatted is vital to keeping your audience engaged and interested in your products or services. Achieving this goal does not require any additional time or effort, and will positively impact your conversion rate. Here are some helpful tips to improve the scannability and readability of your content:

  • Break your content up into manageable sections
  • Try to use sentences that are no longer than 8 to 15 words in length
  • Use headers and bullet points to convey points
  • Ask a colleague or trusted customer to review content before you post it

 

8) Feature relevant testimonials

“Testimonials are powerful, essential and free marketing tools that have always been important. Today they are vital…Any business that has a legion of raving fans who are prepared to come out and not only share their experience but also recommend that others use this business, has a huge competitive advantage.”

 

– Andrew Griffiths, Entrepreneur and Author

An effective testimonial is one of the most effective tools in your content arsenal. Testimonials can help you position your company as a trusted leader in your industry and can help convince prospects to try your products and services. When deciding what type of testimonial to feature, remember that options include quotes, video testimonials, and product reviews. With more than 80 percent of customers trusting online reviews as much as they would a recommendation from a personal friend or family member, you can hardly afford not to include testimonials in your content.

9) Generate positive emotions

As you review your content, stop and think about the type of emotions that your content will stir among members of your target audience. In general, you should steer clear of content that evokes fear or a negative response among prospects. However, one of the most effective ways to convert prospects to customers is to reference a problem and highlight the way(s) that your product or service will solve that problem. In this way, you succeed in reducing anxiety and generating positive enthusiasm among prospects.

10) Empower your readers with useful information

Delivering content that is useful or helpful will go a long way toward winning over prospective customers. Fortunately, you do not have to be an award-winning writer to deliver award-winning content. In fact, you can create useful content quickly by following a few key suggestions:

  • Identify key questions facing your target market and answer them clearly
  • Offer a solution to a current problem that is plaguing your target market
  • Before you post your content, ask a few members of your target audience if they find the content helpful
  • Post a case study or success story about how your product or service has positively impacted the life of a customer

 

11) Make sure your content is consistent with your headline

Content that is different from or inconsistent with your headline can cause prospects to stop reading and abandon your page. Some readers even view this type of practice as a form of deceptive advertising, which is discouraged by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You can avoid frustrating prospective customers by ensuring that your content features material that directly relates to your headline.

12) Feature an irresistible call to action

“There are two main purposes of a call to action…: to tell someone what they should do, and give them the motivation to do so. A lot of people remember to tell people what they should do, but they forget the why part of that equation. Without that added in, you won’t see the types of conversion rates that you should.”

 

– Ana Gotter, Content Marketing Writer

Most CMOs and Marketing Directors are surprised to learn that 70 percent of small business websites lack a call to action. Failing to include a call to action on your website, marketing materials, or e-mail campaign can dramatically hinder your conversion rate. You can avoid missed conversion opportunities by crafting an irresistible call to action that motivates your customers to take the plunge and invest in your products. To optimize your conversion rate, make sure that your call to action button is vivid and placed in a highly visible location on your page.

What is the single best way to create stellar content?

Clearly, there are many steps you can take to create content that will convert into sales. However, the single best way to develop great content is to seek the guidance of an accomplished content delivery expert. A content delivery specialist will have the tools and resources to help you develop content that will entice your target audience and dramatically elevate your conversion rate. By enlisting the support of a seasoned communications strategist, you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your content is being developed by an industry expert.

Kenneth Hitchner is a communications strategist who protects and promotes brands. He is currently the director of public relations and social media at Creative Marketing Alliance and CMA Association Management. In prior assignments, he served as the spokesman for NJ Transit, the deputy press secretary for a Governor of New Jersey and the chief content officer for a nonprofit the put downsized, college-educated professionals back into the workplace during the Great Recession of 2008.

Your first dose of The Daily Fix

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My name is Kenneth Hitchner. And I’m a “fixer.”

I know how to make people and their brands look good by solving their problems. While most people think PR stands for “public relations,” I know it means “problem resolution.”

You see, I don’t do things; I get things done. That’s how I make a living.

People who look good acquire more fortune and fame. More specifically, they obtain more audience, more money, more votes.

In my world, currency comes in many forms: relationships, information, eyeballs and dollar bills. When done right, you will end up richer, wealthier – or both.

So how do I do it? Let’s just say that I use many tools to accomplish the task:

  • Media relations
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Social media
  • Internet
  • Executive communications
  • Employee communications

In my trade, there are no real tricks…only tact.

So welcome to a different place on the World Wide Web, a place where you are expected to think different thoughts. (How else could we change our lives for the better?)

If you give me your attention, I will promise to share with you my communications lessons from the for-profit, non-profit, government and political spaces.

In return, I ask that you contribute your thoughts, because special people give more. (That’s why they are special!) And together, we will help everyone look good in a brand-centric world.

Now, I could just tell you. But where’s the fun in that? Instead, I will show you.

So let’s begin. After all, it’s time for your Daily Fix.