Facebook has passed the 500 million user mark, and if ranked as a country, would now be larger than the U.S.! 

Internet marketing pro Jeff Bullas recently made 5 predictions about the future of Facebook, including this observation:

#2. Portals and Websites for Businesses

I have seen companies that have actually started using Facebook instead of their website as the first digital online Gateway for customers and online visitors. This has been facilitated by vanity and user URL’s that provide a more search engine and user friendly web address. This is dangerous because you don’t own the channel, you are only renting on Facebook’s terms but this will not deter some companies and I think that this may continue to grow and you may find Facebook encouraging this by adding more features and functionality that are business focused.

Jeff is right – you are only renting space when you create a portal on Facebook. If this enables companies to engage more with their customers, however, I believe this is a good thing. More and more people are gravitating to Facebook rather than to company websites and using Facebook as a one-stop platform in which to engage. 

Yes, you run the risk of depending on Facebook and being left high and dry if anything goes wrong with the service. But there is great value in engaging with customers where they want to be. It’s similar to the number of Arizonans who have property in Mexico, where they can only lease the land for 99 years – they can never own it.  

If you’d like to engage with me on Facebook, check out the Press Releases are not a PR Strategy page.  I post updates on how press releases are being used and abused in PR 2.0, and seek feedback from fans in order to gather info for the next edition of the book.  I’ll also be sponsoring a press release contest and book giveaway soon.

Photo credit:   Ross2085, Creative Commons License

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:

1. Take a breather.  Bring the party together instead of letting all the junkyard dogs diffuse the focus with their separate nips and bites. 
2. Step away from the positioning that doom is imminent.   A more sound PR strategy is to emphasize your own strengths, rather than tearing down your competitors.  
3. Gather the non-emotional facts, not opinions, and use those facts as part of your fall campaign.  Leverage independent survey gathering and data analysis resources for the best credibility.

It’s human nature to scream like a wounded animal when you see your plans destroyed.  As a PR strategy, however, not such a good idea.

Can anyone argue that the buzzwords for 2009 and 2010 aren’t “search engine marketing,” “search engine optimization,” and “content, content, content”? 

Frank Strong has written a nice post on writing for search engines and optimizing your client’s online presence.   Adding links and using key words are some of the tips he offers to help you be more “findable” on the web.

Have we forgotten the other critical aspects of PR, however?  I wrote my book, “Press Releases are not a PR Strategy,” to counteract the prevailing thought that issuing press releases at periodic intervals was all there is to a PR strategy.  In that vein, I would like to see equal emphasis on the other components of a successful PR campaign that often get little mention.  They involve research (studying up on an individual blogger’s style, reading books and articles on a particular industry) and outreach (meeting with reporters and bloggers for coffee or as part of a press tour or trade show).  We immerse ourselves in content, and forgot to surface every now and then to focus on other strategies.

PR is such a complex field.  It’s not just content, and it’s not just press releases.  

Photo courtesy of dyoz

It will inevitably arise, that sense of profound irritation when you see a competitor beating you at your own game.   You see them mentioned EVERYWHERE – on blogs, in magazines, on twitter, on the news…Their product is inferior to yours, they’ve stolen your messaging and made it their own, and they have managed to steal your thunder.   What to do?

You need to protect your cave without being a baby about it.  Your goal, therefore, is not to resort to the old “My dad is bigger than your dad” kind of bluster.  You need to move the battle to your own turf, where the competition can’t compete.

What does that mean?  You need to create an environment in which your company’s natural strengths are obvious.  You position the company as strong, credible, fair-minded, and nimble.  You’re above the fray and antics of the competition.  Your ego is not invested, and therefore the company appears stronger.  

First, spend time isolating what your product or service’s top 2 strengths are.  Maybe it’s your small, nimble size and your top customer service. 

Let’s say, for example, that you’re up against a product that has been in the industry for much longer, a behemoth of longevity.   But your company was formed because the behemoth was falling behind the times, reacting slowly to change, a virtual Titanic that was impossible to turn around quickly.

Your CEO is bright and engaging, not a semi-retired executive looking for the nearest golf course.   You haven’t been in the industry as long (past), but you are more in tune with where the industry is headed (future).   And once someone has bought your product, you’re there to help them every step of the way with superior customer service.

Now that you’ve identified your key differentiators, create a strategy of integrated marketing communications to promote those differentiators consistently.   From a PR standpoint, your goal with bloggers, analyst, reporters, editors and consumers is to educate them about your accurate differentiators in a fair, ethical, and practical manner.  You will incorporate:

• surveys using real-world data
• interactive website content
• blog posts with customer content
• webcasts
• meetings one on one
• analyst data
• speaking appearances
• tweets to relevant links about the industry

These tactics are much more successful (and much more sophisticated) than trying to take on the competition in chest-beating wordplay.   You’re creating your own fight based on reality, not merely reacting to what the competition is doing.   By reacting, you only accomplish unworthy goals:  you add credence to the competition’s claims, and you create a negative impression of your company as a bit player in the behemoth’s industry.   Don’t fall into your competitor’s trap.  

Your brand, your cave, may not be the same as your competitor’s cave, but hey look, you’re Cro-Magnon Man, and you’re the better artist.    Remember that from junior high social studies?    Protect your brand by focusing on your strengths, not the competition’s.

This is especially important if you deal frequently with industry analysts.   According to Andy Chatha, president and CEO of ARC Advisory Group:  “Too many companies forget to focus on their unique strengths, and instead try to issue press releases that are specifically geared towards competing vendors.   As an industry analyst group, we prize companies who can articulate their differences without bashing the competition.” 

For more information on this topic, see Chapter 9 in my book, “Press Releases are not a PR Strategy”

Seth Godin, who writes about all things marketing (as well as very philosophical observations), has a post today that reminds me of why CEOs suck at PR. 

Check out “How to lose an argument online.”   Point number 1 reflects the attitude of a lot of executives with whom I’ve worked:

Have an argument. Once you start an argument, not a discussion, you’ve already lost. Think about it: have you ever changed your mind because someone online started yelling at you? They might get you to shut up, but it’s unlikely they’ve actually changed your opinion.

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Chapter 9 in my book deals with this phenomenon – “the natural human reaction is to fight back to reclaim your territory.  You instinctively want the media to know and understand that YOUR company was first in the market.  YOUR product and customer service are the best.   If you could only convince them of the plain truth of your claims.  You tell yourself that you must launch a direct attack!”

This is why the testosterone that makes many CEOs successful also makes them extremely poor at public relations concepts and execution.   The way to win an argument is not to resort to primitive instincts that are more applicable to Cro-Magnon Man.  It just makes you look plaintive and whiny.   You need to move the battle to your own turf, where your adversary can’t compete.

The ability to create an environment in which your company’s natural strengths are obvious is intuitive to public relations professionals, not to CEOs.   They don’t know how to create a fight based on reality instead of reacting to what the competition is doing.

There’s a strategy to competing and arguing, and I’ll talk about that in my next post.

With all this talk about branding yourself online, it’s easy to forget that you can go too far.   You can brand yourself right into such a tight corner that your friends and colleagues can’t see you as anything else but that one little niche. 

If you’ve worked in the same industry all your life, what are you, besides that image of you your co-workers have?  Yes, I was in high-tech PR for more than 25 years, but I am so much more than that.    I love books, old books, new books.  I like to go to northern California on wine-tasting tours.   Heaven on earth to me is spending time on Martha’s Vineyard and soaking up the “ocean life.”  I like badminton and volleyball.   Do my former co-workers know this?  Probably not.   Does my family?   Probably not.   

In the mid 90s, I worked for a software company that saw the market opportunity in Y2K, and positioned itself as the Y2K Company.   Bad move.   The stock bump from that period of time was short-lived.   Who wants to work with a company that has unintentionally pegged itself as an entity that wouldn’t live past the year 2000?   They should have kept their branding more expansive.

What are you doing today to brand yourself that just might come back to haunt you?

Great graphic from the original post by Tom Foremski

When I published the first edition of my book in 2005, I wrote that there seems to be a powerful misconception in the business world that public relations is composed simply of press releases — that a so-called “PR Strategy” is sending out announcements as often as possible.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of businessmen and women, from neophyte to seasoned executive, equate PR with press releases. The terms are interchangeable in their minds. No wonder the media want to barricade their virtual doors from press releases, which are as fast and misguided as attacking zombies.

Here it is four years later, and I was glad to see Adam Singer of The Future Buzz comment on the same topic in his August 17th post, “If you want press, don’t send a press release.”  Here is an excerpt from it:

• Press releases are not dead and still serve a function, but that function is for wire service distribution, not email or one-to-one.
• I’m happy to write on companies and do so frequently – I fully embrace the PR-blogger relationship, (go ask Shutterstock, one of the few companies to approach me intelligently) but a press release as an introduction probably won’t make it very far.

With that said, I invite businesses, PR pros and marketers to send press releases directly.  I do read all of them.  But if you actually want me to spend time writing about your product, service or company don’t send me a press release.  Not once have I written a story based off an unsolicited press release that was emailed.

So if press releases aren’t a PR strategy, what is?   I’ll cover that in a future post.