Marketing Tips and News

You may be noticing some subtle additions to our home page. In an effort to promote one of our growing specialties, we’re adding links so our visitors can join our e-newsletter list, visit our archives or link quickly to Constant Contact.

We’ve chosen Email Marketing by Constant Contact® and have been working with this industry-leading program for more than a year now. It’s an easy, effective, and highly affordable way to get your message out to your customers, clients or members.

We have created high-impact, professional-quality emails for ourselves and our clients. These have helped all of us to build strong connections with our audiences, leading to referrals, repeat business and loyalty. We offer our clients every conceivable level of assistance with their email marketing program. So far, our full-service approach, in which we design, write, edit and distribute your e-news while you tend to your core operations, has proven most popular. This plan includes maintaining your e-mail list and reporting on opens, click-throughs and other statistics.

Discover how the power of Email Marketing by Constant Contact can help you better connect with your customers, strengthen your relationships with them, and grow your organization.

Join Our Email List Email:

Recycle, reuse, reduce.  Doing your part to protect the environment is easier than ever before: turning off the lights, turning off the tap, using a refillable water bottle.  There are many ways people are going green in their personal lives. But how can you make your marketing efforts green? Write Result has a few “great green” suggestions.

• Stop printing and mailing that newsletter! Use an e-newsletter instead and save paper, time and money.

• Don’t print and pass out fliers for your special events and promotions. Post your event information and special offers on your business or organization’s Facebook Fan Page or Twitter account. Reward your “followers” with special online-only offers.

• If you do have to print a brochure, annual report or shopping bag, talk to your local printer about using recycled paper, soy or vegetable based inks and reduce your paper footprint!

As a resident of this area since 1995, I’ve come to really appreciate all that Volusia County has to offer.

In working with non-profits, we’ve made a commitment to:

• Keep our overhead low so that we can provide high-quality services to budget-challenged organizations
• Leverage our experience and relationships with advertisers, printers and designers to get the best rates for our clients
• Only work with clients whose mission or product we believe in and support those organizations with our personal purchasing power and philanthropy

After all, isn’t that what living your passion is all about?

Social media is the new word of mouth marketing, an important component of any strategic marketing and communications plan. But if you think social media is all about “talking” and “posting” you’re wrong. It’s mostly about listening.   The #9 conversation you should be listening for through your social media engagement is The Problem.

If something isn't working properly, wouldn't you want to know?

More than ever before, consumers are using social media to find help with a problem. Consider this example, which is a post I placed on my Facebook page recently.

“Does anyone know how to change the privacy settings on Facebook so that I can pick and choose who can see certain information on my page? I’ve looked at Facebook’s FAQ and made what I think are the right changes to my profile, but Facebook won’t let me save the changes. I think there’s something wrong with Facebook’s settings. Help!”

Now if you are Facebook, and your system is encountering a problem that is preventing people from changing and saving their privacy settings, you’d want to know about that and fix it as soon as possible. Monitoring what people are saying about your organization, your industry, your service or product when they talk about a problem is one of your biggest opportunities to clarify information or correct misinformation. Don’t be afraid to help tackle a “problem” using the social media platform as it helps to manage the expectations of your audience.

A public complaint can be useful, even though it seems embarrassing.

Social media. It seems like that’s all anyone is talking about lately, and for good reason. Social media is the new word of mouth. We all know how important word of mouth or person-to-person marketing is to businesses and organizations. If you’re not using social media to engage your clients, customers, donors and constituents, it’s like not picking up the phone when they call.

At Write Result, we know which conversations you should be listening for through social media and how and when to engage your audience.  We’ll identify some of the top 10 conversations to listen for on our blog in the coming weeks. Let’s start with conversation #10 – The Complaint.

Complaining about a company, product or service was one of the most common initial experiences of social media.  But why should someone’s complaint on a blog post, a twitter feed or their Facebook page about your organization be looked at any differently than a complaint letter sent to your customer service center? The public nature of social media makes it different.

Receiving a complaint from a client or customer is not a new experience for businesses and organizations. But responding to a complaint in social media requires a much more immediate action.

The culture of social media is one that values transparency, immediacy and validation. While you may not be able to solve the problem right away, just letting the complainer know that you are listening and that you want to do something about it right away can make a significant difference.  You might be surprised at the positive reaction you will get just by letting people know that you’re listening, that you took the time to notice and reach out. Timeliness is key in social media. And timeliness is also one of the benefits of engaging your audiences through social media.

So don’t be afraid of complaints delivered through social media. Realize the opportunity you have to quickly and efficiently turn a negative into a positive and showcase your organization’s customer relations skills in a public way. This type of engagement will engender trust and loyalty, the ultimate return on investment!

It’s hard to believe that January is already halfway over. Kathy and I already got to attend a highly anticipated Easter Seals event at the Mori Hosseini Center on Daytona State College’s campus, and it proved to be everything we promised in our publicity efforts!

I particularly enjoyed guest speaker Jane Conner-ziser and felt inspired by her to get a little more creative with my computer. If you ever have an opportunity to see a presentation with Jane, I highly recommend it!

Easter Seals’ young clients and their families who were on hand also made the evening especially uplifting. The children and their sisters and brothers were all dressed up and looked beautiful/handsome. Consider this a blog-hug from both of us. (What would that be? A blug? Not a hog, I think.) We are proud to be associated with you. If you’d like to see some photos that

Susan Moor, Vice President – Gift Planning for Easter Seals Volusia and Flagler Counties, took, check out the new Facebook page she’s just set up: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Easter-Seals-Volusia-and-Flagler/195124067611

I promise to get back on the stick this year in keeping the blog updated. I enjoy posting so it won’t be a burden. By the way, in case I haven’t said, have the happiest new year!

It’s New Year’s Eve, and that prompts a few more backward glances before we get too deeply into 2010. For me, this year has been one of profound professional development, thanks to my new association with Write Result and Kathy, its president and founder. In late summer, we attended the Florida Public Relations Association’s conference in Boca Raton, and I’ve already written several entries about lessons from that gathering. But there was so much more.

I’m going to take a mid-afternoon break with a glass of eggnog and jot down just a bit.

One thing that challenged my beliefs was the assertion that volunteering your expertise to a good cause can have a monetary as well as a karmic payoff. I had firmly believed, as a writer and editor, that one should never offer to do that work for free, that it only softens your position as a professional and makes even more people think of your career as a hobby. Not wanting to devalue my skills even further, I never did volunteer that sort of work, although I did walk in charity walks, conduct silent auctions and contribute money to charitable causes.

However, Caron Sjoberg, president of IdeaWorks (both her name and the company name have an umlaut over the “o”), firmly believes in the good pro bono work can do for a marketing communications firm. Her Pensacola company has donated $900,000 worth of work to nonprofits and has been repaid for it in positive notice and good will.

That was a surprise to me but probably not to Kathy, who has parlayed several volunteering situations into actual paying clients. And for those who don’t convert, oh, well, there’s the karmic payoff.  At least someone gets something from the effort.

And now, a toast: To all your good efforts in 2010!

Remember, an effective news release should:

• Be relevant to prospective readers and explain how they will be affected by the news you convey.
• Tell the number of people affected.
• Be timely. Write about an upcoming event or recent event, or relate the story to a current issue.
• Be focused. Don’t talk about too many issues in one release. Have a clear goal, such as getting people to attend your event or telling them about a new service.
• Include visual images or the prospect of visual images. Editors value high-resolution photos on disks or from a Web site, and they increase the chances your story will be picked up.  At least, offer some ideas for photographs or video the media outlet can produce on its own.

When writing: Be accurate, be brief (one or two pages), put the most important facts in the lead paragraph, and use correct grammar and spelling. Have someone else proof your writing to be sure

The press release has evolved from “just the facts, ma’am,” known by journalists as the Five W’s— who, what, where, when, and why — to a more creative format. You still need those Five Ws, but surround them with seductive text that grabs the readers’ attention and draws them in. More often now, as newspapers and other media outlets are limiting staffing, you’ll find your releases running without any edits.

If you’d like to get your organization’s “spin” into the piece, avoid fluffy adjectives and back up stated positions by citing references that reporters can use.

You’ll see examples of some of Write Result’s press releases on their Web site, but, meanwhile, we’ll go a little deeper in the next two posts …

Working with the media has much in common with grassroots marketing in that it is an exercise in building relationships. The first step is often to prepare and send a press release, so let’s cover the basics there.

You might write a news release about:

• Special events
• Your involvement in local, regional, or national issues
• Research projects
• Awards and grants

BEFORE WRITING: Building a relationship with a reporter requires preparation and consideration. If you contact a newspaper, magazine or TV or radio station, be ready to be interviewed and asked questions. Have something newsworthy to say in your release and don’t go on a fishing expedition for free publicity. That’s a sure way to wreck your credibility as a source.

Keep in mind the release is not an advertisement or a letter to reporters or editors. When a reporter receives a press release, he or she asks one question: Is this of interest or value to my readers? Well, maybe two questions. The second is: Would my editor want me to spend time writing a story about this?

Next post: More about the mechanics of writing a good release.