Archive for Best practices
10 tips for creating a better white paper
Posted by: | CommentsWhite papers are wonderful tools for helping educate and enlighten your target audiences. The reason they have not been very successful in the past is that too many people use them as brochure-like advertisements, forgetting what the true goal of a white paper is. Created properly, they serve as a document that provides timely information about your industry and which contains valuable knowledge that positions your company in a positive light for being so helpful.
Here are 10 tips for making the most of this kind of public relations tool:
- Choose a topic in your industry that is a timely or hot one, and pick a side. For example, if you are in the petroleum industry, a timely white paper right now would be the value of proper drilling equipment.
- Choose a title and subhead that clearly describe what your target audience will learn as a result of reading the white paper. Will they learn the pros and cons of a current industry issue? Will they learn how to do their job better?
- Leverage a lot of outside research, both paid and unpaid, to substantiate your position – industry articles, independent consultants, and analyst groups are all good authorities to quote.
- Also as part of the research, conduct a survey of your customer base to get a read on their opinions or where they are at on a particular project. For example, as part of a white paper on Y2K when the issue was uppermost in people’s minds, we surveyed the customer base to find out how far along they were with their Y2K assessment projects. Your customers always want to find out where they stand in terms of other people in their industry, and analysts as well value this customer base data. Read More→
Marion’s journey in self publishing
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I first met Marion a little over a year ago, when I limped into an Arizona Book Publishing Association meeting and grabbed a seat in the back. I was just starting to get out and about after struggling with piriformis syndrome. She came over immediately to greet me and welcomed me to the association.
I’ve gotten to know her better since then, and admire her mission and commitment to “giving voice” to others. She told me, “I have always been fascinated by who people are and where they come from, and why they live one side of the street instead of the other. Imagine my surprise when I met a group of women who chose to live on no street at all. What started out as a desire ‘to give voice’ to these women, wound up with a www.togivevoice.com website and an audio CD and then a book.”
Marion is a great example that you can be any age and from any walk of life to write a book that resonates with the public and exemplifies your passion. Over the past few years, she has given voice to these women in a variety of formats, including the book, the website, and through recorded interviews to help bring them alive. She has begun Internet-based marketing with blogs, podcasts and a Buy page on the website. Throughout the journey, she has relied on the Arizona Book Publishing Association to help her understand this new world of self-publishing. Read More→
Why it doesn’t make sense to be an early adopter
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If you’re one of the people who hasn’t stood in line for the premiere of “Eclipse,” or for the latest Apple iPhone, don’t feel bad. I think you might be onto something by waiting a little.
The Apple store here at the Phoenix Biltmore Fashion Square apparently had people getting in line more than 24 hours ahead of the opening. They were all waiting for the latest version of iPhone, which promised new features and new applications. In L.A., there were also hords of people camping overnight in order to see the first showing of the movie Eclipse.
I don’t know why so many people have this need to be a lemming and follow the crowds for the first of anything. I always like to wait a little, and it usually behooves me to do so. If you have ever worked in a company with the development team, you know that marketing usually wants to trumpet the latest feature to the public way before development is ready to release it. Consequently, what happens is that a lot of what is described in the marketing literature really doesn’t ring true with reality. There is always this delta between what the literature promises and what the features can actually do. Read More→
When and why to conduct a PR audit
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Whether your product is a book, a software application, or an association, there comes a time when you realize that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. That is where a PR audit comes in.
I’m grateful to Cindy Kim for asking me to contribute to her blog, The Marketing Journalist, on the subject of PR audits. Here’s a snapshot of just a few of the Q&A, and check out her post for a wonderful analysis of audits, including reference to my friend Katie Paine, the “Queen of Measurement.”
Is PR auditing right for every organization? Why is PR auditing important to an organization when you can simply measure impressions from a monitoring tool?
The problem with a monitoring tool is that you can’t always dig down into the whys and wherefores of a particular impression. To supplement automated tools, it’s useful to have conversations in real time with the various audience segments to better understand how they are thinking, as well as to probe for Read More→
Do you need an MBA?
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Wistful about not having an MBA? Not so fast. It may not be the best investment of time and money for you. This excellent article by Steve Blank puts it into clear perspective.
Steve’s advice is to think hard about what part of the company’s lifecycle you think you want to spend the rest of your career in. Do you like the startup phase, which is relatively free of structure? Or do you prefer larger, more corporate environments where you are managing a staff? And if you like more formalized companies, do you like managing projects or do you envision yourself in general management positions? All these questions help determine whether the MBA route is best for you. Read More→
Setting schedules to write your book
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Got a book in you? How do you set a writing schedule and stick to it? Here’s how three authors are doing it, and it seems everyone is following her own muse.
Patricia Brooks – http://www.brooksgoldmanpublishing.com
I get up early – write a couple hours in the morning – most days if no conflict to get out the door – I have a home office. Or at the end of the day or middle – as choices 2 or 3 – but write each day on laptop or with a pen on revisions.
I carry something with me, if not the laptop, a book bag and notebook – always have my writing on my brain no matter what I am doing. That is the only way to do it.
I write goals each year and revise each quarter and make sure they address time factors, research, organization, revisions, reading just to name a few. I have my home office set up in two parts, writing and publishing and there are overlaps, but try to have a designated writing area, plus books separated by research, pleasure and publishing, marketing – organization is the key.
Want to get in the paper? Do something interesting
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If you happen to subscribe to the Arizona Sunday edition, or visit the travel section at www.azcentral.com, you may have read about the father/daughter team, Mike Hayes and Maureen Nowland, who have hiked the complete Arizona Trail from Mexico to Utah.
That’s one way to get into the newspaper - when you or one of your clients accomplishes an unusual feat. [Side note - that's also the theme of an excellent post on Techipedia about how to get the attention of influencers - 'be epic,' says one]
It all started in April 2004 when Mike and Maureen saw an article in the travel section about a father-son team who had hiked the Arizona Trail. Growing up, Maureen and her family often went car camping for vacation. She continued this tradition with her husband Steve, and on a Labor Day camping trip with her dad in 2004, they started talking about the article. Mike threw down the gauntlet by saying, “If you’re serious, let’s put something together.” Read More→
How to get your press release into Google News
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Google News is an automated news aggregator, and many companies view it as a benefit to have their press release included on the site.
Writing a press release that gets into Google News is not as straightforward as it seems, however, as I learned from a recent post on Business Wire. Google has a list of 18 rejection reasons, but Business Wire feels there are only a few that occur repeatedly, and based on the number of releases that they send out daily on behalf of clients, they ought to know:
- If your release contains fewer than 125 words, Google News may reject it
- Any page larger than 256 KB may be deemed too large, and rejected
- If the title is too short or too long, it will be flagged so it’s best to keep headlines brief – between 2-22 words
- If your press release contains only a one-sentence paragraph or a large number of bulleted items, Google News may view this as “fragmented” and reject it
As if we didn’t have enough to remember already when it comes to writing press releases! Key words, search engine optimization, Google News optimization…
Wounded animal screams not a good PR strategy for Republicans
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It’s hard to watch the reaction of the Republicans to the signing of the health care reform bill without comparing them to a comment I heard on NPR today — schoolyard kids taking their ball and going home out of spite. They have many PR challenges ahead of them, not the least of which is the lack of a single coherent spokesperson for the party. Who is representing the “true” party – is it the Republican National Chairman? Is it the tea partiers? Is it Rush Limbaugh? Is it Fox news? And where do the moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chaffee fit in?
This isn’t a partisan rant, but more a concerned assessment of the chaos going on with their messaging. The Democrats have their own challenges, but right now the Republicans have thrust themselves into a strange spotlight by virtue of their violent, vitriolic reaction to the bill.
If I were advising the party, here’s what I would recommend: Read More→
Social media use by age group
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You can find helpful social media analysis at www.briansolis.com
Conventional wisdom in social media these days is that you should:
1) Know which demographic you’re going after
2) Know which problem you are solving for them, and
3) Know where to reach them
Brian Solis, who writes about all things PR 2.0, has compiled some useful charts and statistics that can help you with #3 – determining which social media vehicle to use, based on the age demographic you are trying to reach.
Here are a few statistics from his latest post: Read More→
