I always had this fantasy about one day writing a post and saying I AM NO LONGER A PR and flouncing off out of the industry once and for all (probably with some choice words attacking the PR industry and making me look very clever and controversial for about 5 seconds). Even though I haven’t really done PR for any clients for over 2 years, I still worked with PROs and PR agencies, and never wanted to burn my bridges there or forget my PR roots. An understanding of influence, content, editorial, and earning media has given me marketing knowledge which is infinitely valuable in the modern media world.

But now it’s time for me to say that I have really jumped a fence and landed somewhere else which was a bit of an industry fantasy for me – Forrester Research.

This January I joined Forrester Research as an Analyst serving Interactive Marketing Professionals (that’s anyone doing Digital Marketing to you and me). You can read more about my role and how to work with me.

I’m crazy excited about the new role and can’t believe I survived the notoriously gruesome interview process (think The Hunger Games but with a presentation to a group of analysts and researchers as The Reaping.)

In the mean time what of Grapevine Consulting? Well apart from my resolution that I WILL update my hideously outdated site, Grapevine will go on the back burner for now apart from the few related products & services kept in the pipeline.

I just wanted to highlight that it’s been 4 years since I struck out on my own. Thank you to all the wonderful people and clients who have and continue to support me. I still *love* the marketing and media industries and I’m really looking forward to stretching my legs at a company which attracted the likes of Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Nate Elliott, Shar VanBoskirk and many other smart folk I am meeting every day.

[Image Credit: colours and colours]

3 years ago I despaired of ENO‘s facility to submit reviews for a performance of Candide.

So last week, after being invited to see a performance of film-turned-musical Legally Blonde, I checked out their website to see if the West End was doing anything different.

To my surprise, the News & Reviews section of the site has a Your Reviews section powered by the brilliant plug-in Disqus. I’m a bigger fan of Disqus than most musicals and think this is a great way to easily integrate some audience reviews into a show website.

With over 400 comments/reviews on the site this is also a relatively well used feature. In fact the comments left there seemed bordering on fanatical with many repeat visitors and what seemed to be people posting multiple reviews.

Anyway, if I had any further thoughts around nurturing the fan community around this popular show it would be why doesn’t the Disqus plug-in also use the Twitter and Facebook etc features of Disqus to enable people to publicise their ‘Likes’ and reviews across their social profiles? The Facebook fan page for London has over 50k members alone (which was also muddled with multiple other Legally Blonde pages both official in other countries and unofficially set up by fans. Urgh, I hate multiple Facebook presences like these) – but I couldn’t see what was happening on that page as I couldn’t get it to load for some reason.

Anyways, all in all, gave me some simple ideas for when I’m next asked by anyone in the event/entertainment space how to quickly bring a bit of interactivity to their web presence.

Just a reminder, and I’m not saying this is the case here as the LB reviews seem to be 100% fanatical fan written, but it is ‘unfair commercial practice’ and regulated by the Office of Fair Trading if you moderate and remove negative feedback without a clear disclaimer letting readers know you’ve removed the bad stuff and will only feature the positive stuff.

But in the words of Elle Woods, snaps for Legally Blonde!

I’ve trained Marketers and Sales Teams, as well as Board Members and CEOs, and out of working with these different groups I’ve created two unique Social Media courses covering the biggest problems I get asked to help out with.

August is usually known as a quiet month so it’s a great time to take a day out of the office and brush up on some skills. Details on the courses are below. If you know me, or have trained with me in the past, please pass on the details to anyone you know who might be interested.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CEOS & BUSINESS OWNERS

Tuesday August 23^rd 9am – 4.30pm

Central London

 Your marketing department is asking for extra budget for Social Media, and every week the Sunday Times has an article saying how important it will be for business. Your Customer Services team are worrying about complaints on your company’s Facebook page – which is being run by some 18 year old in West Wales  – and your employees are tweeting every day and probably wasting valuable time (saying goodness knows what).

Social Media for CEOs & Business Owners is a one-day event exploring the four areas of:

• Why Social Media?
• Social Media Basics (what exactly is Twitter & Google+?)
• How to measure and find the ROI of Social Media
• Managing Social Media in your organisation: Best Practice

This event is for CEOs & Business Owners of both B2C and B2B businesses. They can be at the stage where they’re questioning whether they even need to be using Social Media, and how, or are already using Social Media but uncertain they’re getting results.

For more information and to book a place visit http://social4ceos.eventbrite.com/

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: How to Do It

Thursday August 25^th 9am – 5.30pm

Central London

You’re under pressure to be using Social Media but don’t have the time or resources to do it. You’re sick of hearing case studies about Social Media but often they’re not relevant to what you do. Even worse, there’s no guidance on how to do it. The agency that works for you (or competes against you) seems to control the digital strategy but you’re not sure it’s right.

 Social Media Strategy is a practical ‘How to Do It’ day for Senior Marketers exploring:

• Social Media Fundamentals: What works (and what doesn’t)
• Creating Content
• Measurement & ROI
• How to do it: Best Practice & Practical Steps

 This event is for in-house marketers or agency staff who need to develop and lead Social Media strategy. The course finishes with a working session where attendees will begin to flesh out their own Social Media strategy to take back to their organisations.

For more information and to book a place visit http://socialmarketingstrategy.eventbrite.com/

A few weeks back I published ‘How to get leads from Social Media‘ over on the Tempero blog. It listed 5 ways to turn your online communities into actual business.

It was a really satisfying post to write because it challenged me to turn all we’ve learned with the online marketing at Tempero into tried and tested practical steps you can take.

Why is this important? Well, I have a worry at the moment that with all the mistakes and old fashioned, badly executed ‘hard selling’ that’s happening on Social Media we’ve gone too far towards the idea that you can’t sell with social media. Of course you can.

I think we need to get more realistic about why we are doing Social Marketing. I too often see briefs that say company X wants to invest Y dollars to’ grow community’ and ‘brand fans’. That’s fantastic. But why? Surely the reason anyone invests money into marketing is to make money in return - the elusive ROI.

ROI can be elusive in Social Media because the reasons for investing are often not stated in advance.

For example, having brand fans isn’t a bad thing of course but it couldn’t hurt to get a little more realistic and say that we want brand fans because they:

• Buy more product, more often
• Promote products and services to other potential customers

Once you break it down like this you realise what metrics you need to put in place to measure success and value in dollars and cents.

The bigger challenge? Working across the business to get the data you need. Lead Generation isn’t just a sales & marketing function anymore. It might take the help of Retail Staff, Customer Service and Product Managers to establish just how the selling part of Social Media is going.

[Image Credit: Images_of_Money]

Last week I picked up on Daniel Stein‘s original article on DigiDay to write  a response on Tempero to the question ‘Are PR Agencies ruining Facebook‘.

My thoughts? Stein was bang on the money that advertising agencies create content and then try to work out  how to socialise it afterwards, while many PRs are boring fans to death with branded small talk.

Why? My belief is that most PRs are so used to talking to 3rd party media (newspapers, magazines, TV producers) who are in charge of creating the final content read by the audience, that PR has forgotten how to talk to directly to consumers*.

Paul Armstrong amplified the debate over on PR Week by re-posting both articles and conversation kicked off.

“To me, this is a rather dim and short-sighted view of what public relations has been doing for decades. The fact remains that at the heart of our jobs, we are storytellers. And good storytellers are able to speak with, empathize and understand a variety of audiences, whether that’s customers, stakeholders, clients or the media.” Keith Trivitt

“This question is a bit like asking if technology-inept parents are ruining Facebook. Think about it: they’re perpetually confused, they clog up our News Feeds with pictures of cats, and are not quite sure why they’re on Facebook besides the fact that someone told them they should be. In short, it’s not that they are particularly bad at communicating, but they’re not using the platform the right way.” Faith Chihil

“I’m going to say no. Some PR agencies have got a bad rap for attempting to jump on the social media bandwagon without understanding the platforms or establishing objectives and a strategy. But some are also doing a spectacular job, having dedicated specific resources to recruiting expertise and leading best practice.”  Beth Carroll

“I wonder if:
Agencies are having to do far more with less. Less visibility to big plans, less money, less time, less resources. Less gusto and passion for their work after one too many knock backs. Or are they doing less because they run an agency more like a factory than a consultancy“. Shannon Boudjema

“Can’t we all just get along? People speak of the media like it’s this great machine that you need to know how to communicate with. The person reading the news is a person, the editor is a person, the journalist is a person. And they are all consumers.” Samson Adepoju **

So, a mix of opinion then. Despite the fact that I think PR does a lot of good work and is too easily attacked for failing it still surprises me when a debate like this crops up how many people are prepared to say the majority of agencies are doing it well when evidence (or lack of) suggests the contrary.

For example I hear PR agencies talk a lot about how they are ‘masters of storytelling’ but the reality is that in many cases that supposed storytelling is just putting the audience to sleep.

Overall I don’t really care if people agree with my opinion or not. The fact so many people are happy to debate the ins and outs of this only serves to drive the industry forward – or keep it in it’s top spot, based on how well you think PR is performing in Social Media

*PS Just because I think it’s broken doesn’t mean I think it can’t be fixed. Often with only the smallest amount of education.

** This was the most confusing response to me. Samson – you’re a PR Manager. If there’s no skill in communications is there no such thing as a communications professional then? i.e. Anyone can hold the PR role?

[Image credit: markhillary]

Here’s what I’ve written recently:

• The Ultimate Social Media Calendar is here: I finally used my powers to sniff out a meetup from 100 paces and set up this public Google Calendar showcasing all the digital goodness going on in the UK & London

• Are QR Codes finally going mainstream?: Since  2008 I’ve been waiting for this mobile tech to go mainstream. A small boutique New Zealand winery revived my hopes that the QR Code’s time has finally arrived

• Paid, Owned, Earned Media; your new vocabulary: If you never quite understood why marketing was converging here are the words you need to be using to make sense of it all

Favourite thing I’ve read:

The Turdis was a winner

www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz is a site set up in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake in February. Showcasing the types of  make shift toilets (or long drops as we say in NZ) people have built to deal with the city’s damaged waste and water system the site is light relief in a sea of high profile natural disaster appeals which have been launched online – all those appeals are essential of course but support like this helps connect people to stories in a totally different way.

Marie Claire UK Jan 2011

I know slagging off Twitter has pretty much been low-hanging fruit in 2010 and Twitter *can* seem a little weird at first but Marie Claire’s recent article ‘Should I be sucking up to my boss on Twitter?’ was the worst angle I’ve seen yet.

In it, the article declared a lesser know rule of Twitter is…

…if your boss is a user, you must be too.

They’ve even managed to dredge up an occupational psychologist to claim that employees are under extreme amounts of pressure to engage on social networking sites (I did PR, I know how these quotes from experts work). They then trot out some case-studies of hard done by employees including:

• A 30yr old marketing executive in publishing who’s boss uses it (seemingly successfully) for networking with industry big wigs
• A 31 yr old TV producer who says that “anyone who tries to pretend [Twitter is] this lovely, free and easy conversation is lying“
• And a 32 yr old lawyer who forgot all her colleagues were following her on Twitter before tweeting about drunkeness, recreational drug use and a fling during a holiday

To the employees in marketing and TV production I would suggest their problems at getting ahead at work are greater than their inability to ‘suck up to their boss on Twitter’. What about their complete lack of interest or capability in the current media landscape?

I felt a bit of sympathy for the lawyer who had to go through a formal disciplinary procedure back at work but surely the article isn’t implying the technology was to blame?

The article didn’t even remotely deliver on the headline I think they were trying to go for. They threw in some dross about celebrities on Twitter (yawn) and people who’d gotten into trouble for using Twitter at work (lame).

With articles like this why even bother to follow http://twitter.com/MARIECLAIREUK

[Image: Senor Zorro]

Founded in 2000, online greeting card company moonpig has 90% of the online greeting card market, and has expanded into both Australia and the US.

They are also responsible for THAT Moonpig TV advert which, when the jingle gets stuck in your head, is pretty hard to shake.

Could a business which grew brand awareness so successfully via television ever really recommend the digital marketing route? Managing Director Iain Martin answers my questions.

1. Moonpig is famous for growing brand awareness with that catchy TV jingle. Is TV still the best marketing medium?

We had a brand new product that nobody had offered before.  Awareness was therefore almost zero and TV has been good for us because it has allowed us to explain the product, the ordering process and the fact that a moonpig card is a real card and not an e-card.   TV is also great for showing how people react to the cards when they receive them.

However, the best marketing medium we have is the cards themselves.  People that join moonpig.com after having been sent a card makes up a large % of the overall number of new customers.  The product is truly viral  and we’re now sending out in excess of 10 million cards each year.

2. How important is digital marketing to Moonpig?

Digital marketing is important to us but the trick is to identify the things that make a genuine contribution and provide a decent return on investment.   We recently stopped one of our affiliate programs and now just work with a select few affiliates.  We found that running a big program was taking up a huge amount of resource for relatively little return.  In our case we ended up chasing the long tail rather than actually benefiting from it!

Our emails play an important role in maintaining contact with our customers.  We work very hard to get the balance right and are always told by third parties we should be sending more emails.  But then, who really wants 4 emails a month from a personalised greeting card supplier? We really don’t want to be intrusive.   We do all the usual splits when we send emails and we try to ensure that our newsletters are interesting, enjoyable and relevant.   We are constantly adding card ranges to the site so the emails are the best way for us to keep the customers informed about all of the latest products.

3.  One reason the name Moonpig was selected was due to the potential to dominate in Search Engines as the name is so unique. Is this something more new businesses should consider?

The name is a bit of a hot topic at the moment!  It was very useful in the early days when you typed in moonpig to a search engine and just got the moonpig website returned.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case as Google now allows anybody to bid on our trade name and recent European court cases have failed to protect brand owners from this type of paid search bidding.  The result is that lots of people try and piggyback on our traffic using paid for search on the term Moonpig.  This isn’t in itself a problem, we can see that all of the people searching for “moonpig” do come through to us despite other advertisers so we don’t actually lose the traffic.  What is more of an issue is that because more people are bidding on it the cost of bidding on your own trade name increases considerably.  The result is that everyone in our sector now pays considerably more for search to advertise their own brand names.   It seems to me that the only real beneficiary from this is Google who must be seeing increases in revenues at the expense of brand owners who are now forced to pay extra to advertise their own brand names.

So, answering the question, unique names are great but the way that search engines now operate means there is considerably less benefit in terms of search.

4. Moonpig is a successful example of a lean, profitable, e-tail business. Should every traditional retailer be considering an e-tail part to their business?

Yes , I think it is hard to see how any retailer could ignore the online opportunity and not miss out in the longer term.

Our experience has been that some traditional retailers find it difficult to make the transition.  We are lucky, on-line is all we do.  Our entire team is 100% focused on providing personalised greeting cards from a website.   I think that traditional retailers with an online presence face far more complex operational and marketing issues.     Of course some have done a brilliant job of e-tailing,  notably the businesses who had some involvement with mail order previously.   I think these businesses have lived with a multi-channel culture and so were faster to solve the issues.

Why?

The simple answer is that there are times when the customers want to be able to shop on-line.   A simple example, on-line shopping goes up when it rains!  However, I think it’s more than that.  How many times have you thought about going to a store and checked out the product online before you make the trip?  I know I have.   For bricks and mortar retailers I think the on-line store is much more than just a retail outlet.  I think its also a part of marketing the brand and the hook to get you to visit the store.

5. All the buzz/hype that businesses need to sort out their social media strategy – how important is it?

The Social Media phenomena has amazed everyone and left marketers drooling at the mouth and wondering how they can get a piece of the action.  Without a doubt the sheer number of people engaged and the hours of engagement present a big opportunity.  The problem is that it is a semi-private space and if companies take the wrong approach it can feel like someone’s just walked up to you and your mates in a pub wearing a sandwich board, interrupted your conversation and tried to sell you something!  I think the clue is in the name “Social Media”……………marketers beware!

So yes, we do need strategies to interact with social media but at moonpig we are treading carefully and respecting how the space is used.

Learnings from moonpig:

• TV still works but having a product people love receiving really creates word-of-mouth
• Email marketing is important to maintain customer contact
• Unique names are a good Search Engine consideration but the current way Google allows competitors to bid on trademarks is a hot topic
• Every retailer should examine their options online
• Online could be a complement to getting customers to your bricks and mortar store

Big thank you to Iain for taking the time to share his thoughts.

Related articles

• UK’s largest online greetings card company Moonpig launches its iPhone app (intomobile.com)
• Choose the right name for your business – Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins (businesslink.gov.uk)
• What’s it like to work at Moonpig (retail-week.com)

How do I market my produce in these recessionary times?

That’s the question being addressed in Pembrokeshire this week at the National Direct Food Sales Conference.

The conference is part of the Fork2Fork campaign (directed by the seriously slick agency FBA) and is for food producers to meet and listen to presentations on how to market their produce, farmers’ market, farm shop or box scheme in these recessionary times.

Speakers include local food champion Henrietta Green whose weekend food fairs are credited with paving the way for Borough Market‘s comeback AND one little ol’ social media nerd (yours truly) talking about online promotion.

The Fork2Fork campaign is ongoing so just a shout out that if you’re looking for Farmers Markets or Farm shops in Wales, FBA have created this fantastic Google map.

I’ve embedded the conference flyer below and can’t wait to stock up my suitcase with tasty treats.

Fork2Fork Conference Nov 2010

Related articles

• New York’s Fresh Bodegas Program Brings Farmers’ Market Produce to Inner City Food Desert (treehugger.com)
• Urban Root Cellars: The Next Trend in Food Preservation? The Globe and Mail (thekitchn.com)
• Conscious Shopper Challenge: Buy Local (greenphonebooth.com)

Diane Shipley is a self-described “pop culture-obsessed, slightly solipsistic, feminist freelance writer” who writes prolifically online for sites like The Guardian, books blog Memoir Armoire, and currently the My So-Called Life Re-watched Project.

As both blogger and journalist Diane recognises the writer/PR debate can get very heated so here shares some of her pet hates and tips on getting it right – recognising that a great PR can be a great resource when it works.

Diane Shipley

1. Do PRs contact you regarding your site?

PRs contact me on a daily basis regarding sites I write for, sites I once wrote for, and print publications I contribute to.

2. Should they?

I’m happy for PRs to contact me if they have relevant info. For my books blog Memoir Armoire (www.memoirarmoire.co.uk) that’s pretty obvious: news about memoirs.

For my personal blog (http://blog.dianeshipley.com) it’s a bit more complicated — I don’t yet run advertising as WordPress.com doesn’t allow it, but I’m planning to move to a self-hosted site soon, and I’m definitely open to all kinds of commercial opportunities, but they would have to be really tailored to the mood of the blog. If you’re not sure whether something will fit, better to err on the side of caution. (There’s nothing worse than those PR emails that start “I know you never write about X, but I’ve got this product…”)

I’m also a freelance blogger, writing for sites including The Guardian’s TV blog, and I love receiving news regarding US television. (Whether or not I use it, it’s just fun to read…)

What I really don’t want is info on US technology news, especially anything about iPhone apps. Most of the press releases I get are on this topic, but although I used to write for American tech blog Popgadget.net, I haven’t for over a year.

3. How do you prefer to be contacted?

Always email — and only once. If I’m interested, I’ll get back to you. (Please don’t ever do what one PR did and track down my home phone number to bug me about coverage. That was scary.)

4. What’s the worst “outreach” you’ve ever received?

As well as blogging, I’m a journalist, and write a short tech column for Woman’s Weekly every couple of weeks. I once had an email which assumed that because my readership is largely women over 50, they can barely turn on a computer. It went on in a really condescending manner about older people and how they might not know about [a commonplace gadget] and how I could explain it to them. Their foot-in-mouth approach was made worse by the fact that I’d covered that topic two years previously. (Never assume!)

The second worst was when I was asked if I wanted to review a product. Within a couple of days, before I’d had time to respond, I was chased up twice, asking when I could send the review unit back. When I replied to say I’d never even looked at one, the PR’s response was just: “Oh. Sorry, thought you had.”

5. 3 things you HATE about being contacted by PRs

• Them not knowing which publications I write for or what topics I cover. I know you’re in a hurry and checking someone still works somewhere takes time, but it’s worth the effort
• The generic salutation. Starting an email “Hey there,” is better than the messages I get addressed to “Diana” or “Dianne”, but just barely
• Being sent loads of attachments, or conversely, not having the relevant info when I need more details. I’d really love it if all press releases were on a web page with loads of good quality images and all the additional info and contact details I need. Sometimes I want to write about something at short notice, and a PR can’t get back to me (with tricky little details like price) quickly enough. That means I can’t cover it and we’re both frustrated

6.  3 bits of advice if a PR is going to contact a blogger generally

• Don’t be over familiar. It’s a massive turn-off. The fact that blogging is more intimate and casual than other types of published writing (and thus you may know some very personal things about someone) doesn’t mean you should treat a blogger with any less respect than you would a features editor. Don’t be overly cosy, or too casual, and save the kisses in your sign off for people you’ve at least had some contact with before
• Understand that while a lot of bloggers are journalists, many aren’t. That means they might not understand that you’re contacting a lot of other bloggers with the same offers and info. That’s just one reason I think you can get better results by getting to know a handful of bloggers well and tailoring individual pitches to each one than by email-bombing 100 bloggers with a standard press release
• Think long term. Use social media to actually get to know bloggers as people, be pleasant to people even if they’ve left an influential job (you never know where they’ll end up, also it doesn’t hurt to be nice), and understand that a blogger’s responsibility is not to you, but to their audience (and if they have one, their boss). There will be times they say or hint that they can give you coverage, but it won’t come off. They may agree to review a product, get one for free, and then be really negative about it. Don’t sulk, “name and shame” them, or send them an accusatory email. If you’re gracious, they’re much more likely to work with you (and give your clients positive feedback where they can) in future

7. Complete this sentence: PR/Blogger relations could be improved by…

…more transparency. If companies knew more about what their PR reps or agencies were sending out on their behalf, I doubt bloggers would ever see emails like the one I once got, in pink text, all in lower case. (Ah well, it made me laugh.)

Bloggers also need to be clear on what PR companies are asking of them and whether they’re willing to deliver. (It’s not always worth doing so, if the brand doesn’t suit your site, or isn’t paying you enough.) And bloggers really need to be open with their readers about what they got for free, and what they were asked to do in response. (E.g. Are they only allowed to write a positive review?)

In the UK, it’s not the law to disclose that, but it is good practice, and some bloggers are still not very clear on the topic — which leaves their integrity open to question.

8.  Anything else you’re dying to get off your chest about PR? Good or Bad [We like good things too!]

I’ve had a lot of terrible PR experiences, and that makes me appreciate the good ones even more. I had an experience with a PR last year, when I was looking for an interviewee for a difficult topic. They found me someone fabulous who fit my brief perfectly, and I was so busy (I was moving a few days later) that I forgot to thank them as I should have done, or even to tell them I’d done the interview. They were completely lovely about it, just grateful for the mention, and I’d work with them again in a second. If a PR delivers what a writer is looking for, especially on short notice, they’ve made a friend for life.

Crib notes:

• Small is beautiful. Aim to know a handful of blog contacts really well, over a prolonged period of time
• Be clear: who you are, what you can offer, what your (or your clients’) expectations are
• A PR rep who does their job will is always appreciated – even if you never hardly ever get to hear it

Can’t get enough? Read the full set of Blogger Outreach interviews.