Carson and Company

Media can also be part of your traffic

Companies are always trying to justify the amount of traffic they get to their web site. And too often, CEO’s blame the lack of sales to the web site and that the amount of traffic is not being converted, so therefore, they cancel the web marketing or the web site entirely.

What about the traffic that visits to learn about your company or product? Don’t they have any value to your company?

Did you ever think that these visitors might be some of the media?

Measuring the brand awarness is someting new and most people are not familiar on how to go about measuring this cyberspace media.

In my quest to help my clients better track, or measure their web site, I recommend that they consider looking into SEM Director. I found this by viewing another blogger in our industry called BRITOPIAN Marketing. He has some good stuff to say. Check his views. I usually recommend people read other points of view on these types of topics, this helps to better understand how valuable it is to market your site and how to incorporate publicity into this mix.

It should go unsaid, but companies have this wall between the marketing departments and the publicity people. Even if you use an outside pr firm, I see a lot of non-communication with the publicity firm and the other marketing people. My guess is no one is willing to share their "secrets" in fear of not getting credit. That my friends is what causes companies to slip in market share.

I also read something of interest from Mr. Brito. He talks about the 6C’s. It is a good way to describe the different areas of marketing. He refers to them as:

• Customer
• Consistency
• Creativity
• Culture
• Communication
• Change

If you want to know more about these categories, give me a call. I’ll be happy to send you his article on them.
Call me at: 949-477-9400, or just send me an email at gcarson@carsonandcompany.com.
Put in the subject– Article for the 6C’s.

See Also

• Get More From Your Web Site
  How to make the media notice you

One in a series

Publicity can be taught in school. It can also be learned being an intern at a publicity firm. What we are now facing are "poor" publicity skills.

I am not referring to the vocabulary or grammar that is used when you are communicating. Those are called the hard skills, like math. These are the soft skills that are not taught in schools or at any job.

Here is an example.
When you type someone an email you probably:

• Do not use capitalizations
• Or you type in all caps
• Your sentences are combined without punctuation
• Your signoff is your first name

Everyone is guilty of this, including pr professionals, who should be very communication sensitive. We are seeing more poor publicity skills when contacting publishers, pitching stories, or sending press releases, all through email. It is becoming habit and we are always in a rush, so who cares about publicity skills?

But if this were a typed letter, you would make sure the structure of the letter and the wording make smart business sense.

You can improve your pr skills by:

• Learning when and how to use style and "tone of voice"

• Knowing how to acknowledge, respond and signing off

• Knowing good practice guidelines for delivering your email service

• Developing practical skills for responding to emails

These are simple tips but seem to be forgotten when we communicate through email as we contact the media. Professionalism will always rank higher and gain more respect than those who think casual or informal communication is the key to favorable publicity.

See Also

• Develop Good Publicity Skills
  How to communicate to the press

How to get the most of a PR campaign

GET US FREE PUBLICITY!

These are the words we hear most often from clients. So how Free is it?

Publicity is a powerful method for getting your message to potential customers, but only when you know what you are doing.

Remember, nothing is free. If you have an in-house person, you are paying for that pr director, or manager to spend the time to write, distribute and meet with reporters.

Hiring a publicity firm has basically the same costs.
When you place an ad into a publication, or run a spot on radio or TV, those are controlled forms of media which can become costly for smaller companies.

When you get a release or article published, in comparison, it didn’t cost anything to have that visibilty in that, or those media. The cost was in the preliminary stages of developing the article and getting it to the right media.

Knowing how to write an article, or a press release (these require different writings) is critical of getting something published. Reporters and editors want to publish stories of interest and be informative for their audience.

I spoke about distribution before. This is also important. Shot gun mailing to all media will not do you any good. Targeting specific media will help to control the distribution and makes follow up more productive. Use the Internet news media whenever possible. Here you can modify the press release or articles and use keywords in the body of the information. Using a professional pr firm can help a public relations campaign become more successful, because they have the contacts and knowledge to get these published.

Bottom line. Is publicity free? I guess It all depends on what you consider free.

See Also

• Get the most with a Publicity Campaign
  Publicity can be a powerful media

Short or long, which is better for editors?

If you own a publicity firm, your clients are probably asking you to write articles that can be sent to the media, right?

And if you are a company, you’re probably asking your in-house pr person to do the same, or wondering why your publicity agency isn’t getting those articles published.

Well, this isn’t the only way to get noticed and published, but this suggestion is one method to consider. We call them "briefs".

These are short articles, usually less than 100 words. I share the same opinion as another company, called PR Ideas. He too writes that sending good short briefs can be excellent for editors who need fillers, or just short stories on different topics.

This can also position you or your company as experts in the field. Everyone is busy trying to jam long articles to reporters, publishers and editors. When in fact, they need short articles many times.

I like to think of doing these as a way to help the media people with their job and by showing them we offer a lot of valuable information.

On the other hand, don’t go wild sending dozens of these briefs every month. Especially to the same reporters. That will put you in a negative position with them. Timely briefs are good, but can be difficult for a publisher or reporter to consider if the timing is not right for them. I suggest doing timely briefs, and have a few that are not subject to an economic situation, or a trend or something that might become dated too soon.

See Also

• Ask Us About Briefs
  Know What Articles To Write