I’ve seen this question several times in LinkedIn and other forums: “What would you do if Penn State were your client?” It’s similar to the ones that swirled for months during the BP oil spill in the gulf and the tense posturing that followed. And the answer is the same for both questions, and any other like them: “I don’t know, exactly, because I’m not on the inside, hearing the secrets, reading the face of the guy who has to go on camera, seeing the possibilities and the problems first hand. And I don’t know, more importantly, because I haven’t spent hours and hours researching, interviewing, formulating and preparing.”

So my advice is to stop wasting your time thinking about the crisis you aren’t called to handle, the one you’ll never need to walk through, and start thinking about the ones that might become your waking nightmare tomorrow. Or later today, for that matter. There are some things every single business owner should do, right now, to help prepare for the inevitable, and believe it or not, one of them is NOT putting a PR pro on retainer.

1. Develop a set of “Who We Are” statements. This need not be a formal process or an official mission statement. The value of official mission statements varies inversely with the size of the company printing them on internal posters. But knowing what you stand for, really, and knowing your employees know it, feel it, live it, is crucial to avoiding many crisis in the first place. If your statements are just hollow words… either take a harder look at who you are, even if it’s painful or you don’t like what you see (you can change it going forward), or fire some people who aren’t rowing in the same direction.
2. Think deeply about your business environment. Categorize risks… do your employees travel by car to locations? To client’s offices or homes? Is your company in the business of advising people on a course of action that might affect their health, wealth, enjoyment or happiness? Are there regulations that change or may change that affect how you do business? Is employee turnover high? Do you have proprietary information that could be vulnerable? Make some notes about some of the possibilities, including ones that don’t seem all that likely, such as a high-profile client claiming your employee’s errant word of advice during a chance meeting at a local restaurant caused him to lose (face, millions, a bet…whatever). If there are vulnerabilities that can be fixed or addressed, do that. Have a meeting with your employees and explain the “always representing” aspect of today’s connected marketplace. Have a social media policy in place. Make sure insurance, handbooks, regulations and information are all up to date and appropriately structured or protected. Do some research into other companies similar to yours, in the same fields, and what crisis they’ve weathered… how well, in what ways, with what tools?
3. Get to know some key people in your local media, trade publications, or other venues, including bloggers, social media influencers, city councilors, etc. This is not an overnight thing and following someone on Twitter or connecting on Facebook is not “getting to know them.” You need to have someone who will take your call if a storm does hit and provide you a friendly, or at least neutral, opportunity to share your side of a story. Remember… sometimes it’s not an accusation or a lawsuit. Sometimes it’s a video posted to YouTube about your business practices or showing all the bit of grass your lawn company missed the last time they serviced an irate customer’s yard.

Take a deep breath… when that YouTube video about the missed grass hits, and someone forwards it to you in an email, what then? How do you know when, or if, you should take action? How long, how much, how far? Those are the next things we’ll cover on the blog. In the meantime… what other prep work would you recommend?

From this past week’s Optimization Summit #optsum social media conference: How to Rock PR Coverage for Your Business or Brand. It was a two-hour workshop all about finding your stories and sharing them effectively. Enjoyed the audience’s involvement, questions and results. They were rocking their first pitchengine.com releases before the end of the workshop.

And from this past week’s Oklahoma Municipal League‘s Annual Meeting: Using ICSC To Attract Retail for Cities. A primer for cities wanting to grow their retail base.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be leading a two-part workshop at the 2011 Optimization Summit on How to ROCK Press Coverage for Your Business or Brand. It’s a bigger, badder and more hands-on version of an presentation I put together six months ago for the Social Media Tulsa conference and I’m thrilled I’ll get to share some good stuff about what I do & know and how to make it all work for other peoples’ businesses. One question I get asked all the time is some form of, “When you spend time telling others what you know and how to do what you do, aren’t you afraid they’ll, well, do it? Without you? Aren’t you essentially teaching people how to NOT need you?”

Leaving out the whole, “I’ve been doing this thing I do for a long, long time and all that experience can’t be shared in a two hour workshop” angle (And it’s inherently insulting, by the way, to assume I CAN share everything I know in a workshop), let’s take a look at the underlying motivation of the question. The key is “aren’t you afraid…?” and the answer is yes. Of spiders, of heights, of not being able to find good coffee when I need it, of milk in the carton (it’s a long story)…. Yes. Of teaching business owners or brand managers about New PR and how they can use it to their best advantage? Nope.

New PR is much like Old PR in that it’s driven by the story. We as humans are hardwired to retain stories, to seek meaning and context for information. A good story is the heart of any PR effort. Always has been, always will be. What I teach people is first to find their story. Not their mission/vision/goals/new product release blurb. Their story. Or, stories… It’s not the easiest thing in the world to think about your business or brand from new perspectives and to figure out where your human touchpoints are as a business. So learning how to spot a good story, idea, trend or opportunity is the first thing we’ll be talking about in the workshop tomorrow. We’ll also be talking about the tools of New PR, the reasons why they matter, the long term effects of doing a good job with New PR and how to put it all together into a package that is shareable, sendable, marketable and effective. I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t have a story somewhere just waiting, begging sometimes, to be told. It’s in learning to see the potential and how to align it with business goals and marketing campaigns (which hopefully were conceived in partnership with the PR peeps, but I digress…) that “doing PR” becomes something much more powerful. I can’t teach everything I know in a workshop, but if I can help people learn to look at their day to day work, business environment or content in a New PR kind of way and take some steps toward implementing a strategy that works to build their brand, it will be a good day.

I’m not afraid because sharing what I know, about something I love, expands the universe of potential clients for me and potential stories for us all. And that, I think, is something to embrace, not fear. If you’re at this year’s #Optsum, I hope to connect and share some stories while we’re here.

(and my apologies… if you ever tweeted or shared a post from the site, the numbers were all lost when I changed servers. I appreciate each and every share… just don’t have who recommended, liked, tweeted, etc., anymore)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Blake Ewings’ closing keynote at last weeks’ Social Media Tulsa conference. One of the key takeaways for me was this statement:

It doesn’t mean only “tweet positive” but it does mean when sending thoughts, links, info etc. out into the world, we should all be mindful of the larger effect. It’s easy to say, “If you wouldn’t want your Mom to know, don’t post it,” but really, most of us feel a little more insulated in our online worlds than that. We use the public conversation to share our private frustrations. Sometimes, before we’ve taken the time to try to solve them privately. I have been guilty of this…

I’m still processing how and what I want to change about how I participate in the public conversation. What kind of social responsibility comes with a larger-than-average audience online? Mine isn’t anything like the superstars of the Interwebs, but it’s exponentially larger than the “average Jane” on Twitter, Facebook, etc. What obligations does that, or should that, entail as far as sharing?

And… based on some feedback I’ve already gotten on this post… does being more human actually give you more of a voice? Do people just care more if they “know you?” My instincts and experience tell me yes.

Like I said, still processing… and interested to hear your thoughts!

Speaker Group from 2011 #SMTulsa conference. Image by Captured Charms Photography

When I entered the Hyatt Downtown hotel to find the registration area for the Social Media Tulsa 2011 Conference, I was running a wee bit behind, had parked (and trekked) two blocks carrying my very heavy laptop, iPad, charging cords and cable connector laden bag, and was mentally rehearsing the presentation I would shortly be giving on New PR: Beyond the Press Release. In short, I was not really focused on the people or environment around me. Don’t we all get that way? A little wrapped up in our own to-do lists, pressing work, writing, whatever?

Then I rounded a corner about five people said, almost simultaneously, “Hey! It’s Mandy!” I had kind of “Norm!” moment. (If you don’t get it… here’s a YouTube vid to help you, first minute will do it.) And yes, five people mildly excited to see me does equal a “moment” for me. Don’t judge.

The point is I snapped back to the present… engaged, listened, conversed, became social. I left the mental gymnastics and the day’s earlier frustrations behind and settled into the moment. I met lots new people, learned some new information, witnessed other professionals sharing what they knew with the audience. And I presented my session on Public Relations and how to use social tools to get better results. It was a blast… not just because speaking, teaching and interacting like that energizes me, but because the audience rocked. They had great questions, and didn’t wait until very end to ask them. That meant we had the opportunity to branch out and explore a few topics like negative comments, corporate versus personal voices and other aspects of the world of socially enabled public relations. People in the audience were connecting with each other, too, which means more knowledge-sharing and learning per capita than what would have happened if it were just me talking up there.

I left at the end of the day reminded of why I love what I do… I love finding the (sometimes hidden) stories in a company or personal story and helping to tell them through public relations, marketing or even traditional advertising. But, if you don’t get out there and meet people, listen to what they wonder, what they question, what they believe, what they want… you miss out on lots of great stories. Even if they aren’t the kind that need to be told to a wider audience.

I like to speak because I like to connect, listen, learn and share. I like to speak at events like Social Media Tulsa and last month’s Spark and Hustle because the audience they attract is top notch, and that elevates the conversation and connections to a place where the time spent preparing, delivering, and attending the whole conference is totally worth it.

Thanks, SMTulsa people, for making the day such a vivid reminder of why I love what I do and for sharing your day with me and the other speakers… and most especially thanks to Cheryl Lawson for putting the whole thing together. Can’t wait till next year!

Photo Credit: Captured Charms Photography.

Last summer, I moderated the PR panel at the Get Social Conference in OKC (Oklahoma City for the uninitiated). The conversation turned quickly to How do I Get Media Coverage? Panelists were Dave Rhea from the statewide Journal Record newspaper, Andrew Speno from Fox25 News in OKC and Mike Koehler, blogger, PR pro and former reporter. Here are some of their PR pearls of wisdom:

1.) Don’t suck. Pretty simple, but powerful when you think about it. Don’t be a user… don’t lie… don’t spam… don’t be disrespectful. Don’t pitch news that isn’t news. If you’re in PR, you know what I’m talking about, whether or not you are following the advice. If you’re not in PR, what I mean is be human first. You need to reach out and interest another human in your story if you want it covered, and that means it needs to be interesting to other humans. And that you need to respect the time and attention of the media people you’re trying to reach.

2.) Write well. Headlines matter… and if you’re e-mailing, that means the subject line of your e-mail should be something OTHER than “News Advisory!” or “MEDIA ALERT!!!!” Special note: multiple exclamation points don’t make your news more newsworthy, they just make you seem desperate.

3.) Think about timing. Andew suggested having your press conference or announcement on Sunday afternoon. Stations spend all day Sunday scrambling to fill the same broadcast time they have to fill on Friday night. Mike mentioned a situation where a local group sponsoring a tournament wanted coverage… the same day as a major OU/OSU game, a draft and a coaching scandal. Obviously, some things are beyond control and cannot be planned for, but not planning your little league coaches awards ceremony on the same day as college football season kicks off will help your chances.

4.) Think about angles. Is something happening RIGHT NOW that you can add to, build on, be an expert for? For instance, as snow blankets Oklahoma, again, and people go into bunker mode, again, are you a mental health professional who can speak to the real aspects of “cabin fever” and how to help? Recognize that “Mental Health Service Adds Dr. X to Lineup” isn’t really interesting beyond anyone in Dr. X’s family. Dr. X talking about cabin fever, however, is timely, relevant, and his (new) affiliation with your practice will certainly be in the story.

5.) Don’t always be selling. Be the person who’s always available, always good for a quote, or for an honest attempt to help source a story. Coming through for reporters means you get on their “people who don’t annoy me” list and you are much more likely to get their attention when you need it.

Dave Rhea summed it up this way: Be Real and Don’t Be Boring. Pretty succinct, I think.

In my opinion, here’s what small business owners should do, first, to start this process: Use the search functions in social media and find and follow every individual in their respective niche or local markets. Listen to and read what they tweet or share. Get to know them (that whole Be Real and Don’t Suck part mentioned above) and what makes them tick. Every reporter or blogger has trigger subjects… things they’re passionate about. Find out what they are. Re-share relevant information. I did a radio interview on this subject, and using social media to help achieve better PR, available here, if you wanna give it a listen for more info.

Using social media to achieve better PR results isn’t fundamentally different… it’s a connection engine that helps you find and then build relationships with media contacts. In the end, good public relations is still about relationships. Social media can help you build them more quickly and nurture them more easily.

There’s only 5 things on this list… anything you think is missing from our Don’t Be Ignored list?

(A version of this post was originally posted over at The Journal Record’s blog hub but this a topic I’ve been seeing a lot lately, so wanted to re-share with the audience over here… plus, some updates/edits have been made to this version. — Mandy)

Big ideas already coming out of my #optsum attendance at Jason Falls’ session…. SEO and good content are not mutually exclusive. There are good tools out there, for free or little cost, which each give you portions of the picture you need. You must baseline well, track well, and revisit as needed to make sure you’re moving the needle. New media marketing must be more responsive, more technical, and more involved in content direction, not just creation.

Understand that your business blog is most likely NOT a community of dedicated fans, or even casual community members. It’s most likely a destination for first time visitors who’ve found you via an external site. Like search. Most likely, 80% of those who visit your site do not know anything about you… they found some part of your site via a specific search term.

Understand that the average Google search is 4 words long. And the next most common? 5 words. And the more specific the search term you win with SEO, the more qualified the buyer. Case in point: Winning “New Media Marketing” is less advantageous than winning “Tulsa New Media Marketing Agency”

Rinse and Repeat >> stay on top of your keyword research and SEO analytics. They change frequently… get into that data at least quarterly.

Focus on what you qualified traffic / prospects you want… if your blog is truly about growing your business, stop writing about just what you want and write about what will drive the results you want. (or vlog, or create other content ).

Corporate blogs need to reach a critical mass before they will really drive leads effectively. Starting and stopping is not helpful. Around 20-ish seems to be where the curve starts to grow. 50+ posts is when things start to take off. Of course, this assumes that the posts are quality ones and they relate to your desired traffic, keywords, etc.

So where does this leave you if you’re blogging for your business?  It’s time to take a good hard look at structure, organization, focus and results so your business can blog purposefully.

And now my brain is full. Follow @jasonfalls on Twitter so you can see his presentation.

Yes, I’m making changes on the blog/site. And yeah, it’s dark and the colors aren’t “me.” I’m working on it… you did arrive at the right place, it just doesn’t look like home yet. I loved the clean, simple lines and colors of my old site/theme, but the limited functionality was hindering its usability. So it may be a little messy ’round here for a bit, but I think you’ll like it once the changes are implemented. And if you don’t, or if you have ideas on what you’d like to see, tell me!

Thanks for coming:)

NOTE: This post will be the framing for the #SMchat on Twitter on Wednesday, August 18th, from noon to 1 PM CST.

Or…. Why winning new clients, friends or donors is so much easier when you do the hard work of investigation, positioning and delivering, and how to do it better.

Get going on the path to community and conversion.

First, some quick definitions:

I’ve written about Complacency before, and how complacency breeds contempt for your audience. In this case, I’m talking about having a George Lopez-like attitude of, “I GOT this!” when it comes to making sure you’re offering something of value to people who have the ways and means to buy it and that you’re operating in the right venues to get their attention.

Context is the real and the digital landscape we operate within. It means all of the influencing factors we consciously or unconsciously take into account when we evaluate the potential, intent, or veracity of a bit of data. Context is what changes data into information.

Collaboration is purposefully working together with another entity… person, place or business, to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

Conversion is the golden moment when a prospect becomes a client, a shopper becomes a buyer, or an idea takes hold and becomes a movement.

Now… here’s why all this matters and why you should consider the “Four Cs” of doing business in 2010.

Today context (all those influencing factors) changes more rapidly then ever before. If you assume, as a business or brand, that what worked last month or even last week, will work this week… you allow complacency to frame your offerings and your engagement.  Better to seek feedback, monitor and listen actively, find new ways to be relevant and timely through smart collaboration and the use of tools like social media, integrated marketing, relationships and networking, dashboard-type web monitoring applications, community (meatspace or meetspace) to keep tabs on context. Conversions aren’t permanent since context is always influencing customers. Building community in whatever way is most appropriate for your brand, business, idea or personal cult is a long-term way to collaborate directly with your most important audience. If they think you care, and are actually listening, they’ll  tell you what they want and need from you. All (ha!) you have to do is deliver the goods… whether that’s information, product, services, results-as-promised is what converts a customer into an advocate and someone who’ll want to be in community with you.

When you become part of the context of your customer’s lives to the extent that you’re in community with them, it’s much harder for you to become complacent…. would you let down your friends? Lie to them? Make assumptions and not even bother to beg forgiveness? Of course not. You won’t want to let your community down, either.

Bottom line? Remember that complacency breeds contempt for your audience, and that audience uses the ever-changing filter of context to determine who gets their attention. If you want to stay relevant and get through the filters, spend some time collaborating with people, offline and online. Use social tools, use engagement mechanisms like web sites and email, use old-fashioned suggestion boxes if they work. Because conversion, in the usual sense of the word in online circles, isn’t the ultimate goal.It’s just a step on the path building the kind of contextually relevant community that leads to long-term brand or business success.

What do you think? Do we need “4 Cs” along with the “4 Ps” these days? Give us your best examples of relevant communities creating their own context? Am I just nuts?

photo credit: Landscape_Photography on flickr.com (some beautiful work there!)

QUESTIONS we’ll be considering:

How do you guard against complacency?

How do you determine contextual factors? How can SM affect or provide context?

How can you collaborate with your audience through SM?

(and others, as the discussion develops)

Many thanks to Doug Stewart, a guy dedicated to helping small businesses dominate their space on the web, for asking me to talk with him for a few minutes about effectively using social media and PR together to market businesses. If you’ve never heard me speak, here’s your chance If you have and you’re game for more… bless you, firstly, and secondly, enjoy the interview!

Have a topic you want to see me cover here? I’ve been toying with the idea of breaking my no-video style… what would you most like to see/hear for the first vid post on this blog?