A recent McKinsey & Company survey found that 55% of marketing executives planned to cut spending on traditional media.  In lockstep, Marketing and Public Relations departments at companies are moving their dollars online.  Startups and large companies are increasing spending for email campaigns, online advertising and social media, as well as online search analytics.  Mashable recently reported that even while some are slashing budgets, dollars are still being thrown at social media. 

Despite the economic woes, it’s still essential for companies to find ways to create and maintain brand awareness and mindshare.  This blog post points out that Marketing and PR efforts during a down economy extends awareness with customers and drives sales, and suggests this can be done by using a small, lean and mean outside agency.  One key point from a recent survey by Aberdeen Group notes that in previous downturns, the firms that learned to market smarter fared better than those that decreased their marketing budgets. Further, after the economy bounced back, those firms that marketed during the downturn also yielded better profits.

Here’s a relevant and timely article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about how startups and board members are clashing over whether to save or spend in down times. One insightful quote from the article comes from a board member of a startup noting, “”Companies can’t just save their way to success.”

For tech startups, in particular, or for any company comfortable navigating the social web, there are a plethora of online vehicles to meld with your company’s Marketing and Public Relations efforts that won’t break the bank.  At Ignite PR, we are helping our clients,which range from startups to established public tech companies, undertake various social media activities to stretch their marketing dollars more effectively. 

Which camp does your company fall into on this debate: the save or spend camp?  Equally important, what are your competitors currently doing to expand their business amid this lingering recession?

 
Click Here to take survey

Steve Reubel recently podered whether Twitter may one day replace public relations professionals’ traditional method of pitching press via email.  It reminded us to earlier this year when we asked professionals in public relations to self-police how they interact with press and bloggers via Twitter.  We had our suspicions on whether press and bloggers might be receptive to this approach, so we decided to ask a handful and get their two cents on the matter.  What follows is an aggregation of their perspective, as well as that of ours here at Ignite PR. 
 

Twitter’s greatest value is that it is a place for conversations.  Where brevity rules, a pitch in 140 characters is just too limiting and cannot typically provide enough context. Clearly, there might be an exception here – perhaps with a breaking news announcement and the public relations rep reaching out to targeted press and bloggers that are visibly available on Twitter.  The norm, however, is more likely to be a simple tweet to a journalist that could potentially spur interest, but for the idea to become anything bigger, then the conversation would eventually have to transition over to email or phone. Additionally, most workflow productivity occurs around email, and Twitter is nowhere near supplanting email as the preferred communication tool to drive business.  Lastly, while conversations on Twitter can suggest sentiment around a topic, the signal to noise ratio on Twitter is so high it is difficult to sift through.  The odds are just much greater for a pitch to get lost in the heavy volume of tweet streams than via email.

There are, however, appropriate ways public relations people can use Twitter to interact with press and bloggers.  Here a few examples.  Follow key influencers who cover your clients’ industries (i.e.: mobile, cloud computing, online search, etc.).  Monitor their tweets and read the articles they link to.  Share links or participate in discussions they’re tweeting about from a market-centric standpoint and not a vendor-centric one.  If a bi-directional relationship is established, send the reporter that specifically covers your client’s space a heads up on a pending news announcement.  Show reciprocity and retweet (RT) a journalist’s article or blogger’s post that you found insightful or provocative.  

However, using Twitter to blindly spam journalists with off-target tweet pitches will kill PR people’s opportunity to engage with media and bloggers in a meaningful way.  Twitter’s novelty has opened up new opportunities for key influencers and public relations folks to connect.  If poor pitching practices carry over to Twitter, media will quickly find a way to disconnect PR from this channel.  We remain hopeful that Twitter doesn’t become a hotspot for unsolicited, endless public relations pitches polluting the micro-blogging channel.  Leave that dirty work to the spammers who push seedy content and get-rich overnight schemes.

A special shout-out and thank you to Kristen Nicole (@KristenNicole2), Nick Hoover (@iweeknick) and Anthony Ha (@anthonyha) for sharing their thoughts with us on this topic. If you’re not following these bloggers and reporters on Twitter, we highly recommend that you do.

We pointed out in an earlier post why it is important for clients to be upfront with their PR teams about internal issues and product deficiencies.  In that same vein, we want to discuss why it is important for Marketing to communicate with their public relations teams about marketing activities that they are planning to participate in as early as possible.  Marketing and public relations already work closely together, yet sometimes those seemingly unimportant details  just doesn’t get conveyed. We’ve worked with both high tech startups and large tech companies that have at times failed to mention to us their upcoming marketing plans or ongoing initiatives that we could have significantly leveraged on their behalf—-had we known about it in advance.

For example, if a client’s CEO is participating in a panel along with a number of highly regarded industry experts, it is a good idea to inform the public relations team and not keep them in the dark until the day the panel is taking place.  Another example might be having advance knowledge about a significant partner’s plans to do a major initiative in which the company can ride the cocktails of the announcement either by offering perspective or invaluable insight. Marketing needs to be highly attuned to all of the various activities planned and understand that they might also be solid opportunities that the public relations team could tap, so it’s important to at least run it by PR early on.  No harm done with good planning.  At worst, PR will tell you that there is not enough substantive “meat on the bone” so to speak.  The art of being sensitive, opportunistic and agile to potential news opportunities and working closely with your public relations team can a) beat your competitor to the punch when media seek additional or insightful perspective and b) enable the company to exploit an unfolding opportunity before it happens and successfully wire itself into the subsequent news and blog posts that unfold.

Staying highly attuned to market-centric opportunities can payoff handsomely in building greater awareness for the spokesperson as a thought-leader or keeping the company top-of-mind with media and bloggers that cover certain beats, be it security, social networking, online paid search, etc.  That’s why you want to have your PR fully aware of even the most mundane of upcoming corporate and marketing activities, because they are the most attuned to recognize strong news potential; if there’s nothing there-there, they will tell you that it’s too fluffy, but at least they can easily inform you early on and not after the opportunity has been largely missed.  Certainly not all marketing activities are going to be newsworthy, but your public relations team should know about it in advance and will be able to counsel the company on whether it merits doing any proactive outbound activity or guerilla marketing to successfully leverage the opportunity.

Cision, an online database provider of media contacts aimed at PR professionals, is planning to add journalists’ Twitter handles.  Many members of media have joined the ranks of bloggers who are actively leveraging Twitter for its ability to amplify their reach, so the move by this contacts vendor isn’t all that surprising.  In fact, analyst firms, with the exception of Jeremiah Owyang and Forrester, are just starting to awake to this new powerful and growing channel. At Ignite PR, we use Twitter to communicate internally and externally with peers, follow breaking news, discover interesting data, spot emerging trends and meet or follow interesting people. Twitter’s most important value is its inherent nature around organic participation and the meaning and connection behind one’s network.  On Twitter, one can engage with other interesting individuals who have similar interests, share great content, and are just interesting people in general. Twitter along with other social media channels, such as Facebook, Digg, YouTube, FriendFeed, etc., provide a simple and interactive way for people to engage in conversations with a wide array of individuals and expand or build a new network of interesting contacts.

Cision’s move raises a red flag however.  When other database vendors start selling off Twitter names/handles, they stand to benefit at the expense of others.  So far, PR folks actively using Twitter early on seem to be using it in a way that is not causing friction and we wholeheartedly applaud their practice-to-date.  Yet there is still cause for concern when PR folks are using Facebook to actively pitch reporters and bloggers. One can easily see novice PR people blasting press release links or pitches aimed at Twitter users, namely press and bloggers, because they aren’t investing the time in understanding the do’s and don’ts of using Twitter.  Thankfully Twitter’s management does a good job of shutting down spammers, but if database vendors are going to be selling lists of Twitter users to willing buyers such as PR agencies, then they both need to be responsible for understanding and underscoring acceptable practices for using this growing new channel.   It’s critical that PR people embark on a real effort of self-policing how they use new social media channels to reach members of media or the blogsphere.  Just as social media tools and channels are ushering in a new way to reach and communicate with one another, PR should seize the opportunity and turn a new page in how they use this new channel in an acceptable way. 

President Obama promises to usher in a new era of openness based around three priorities: communication, transparency and participation.  President Obama’s theme of open communication and transparency was carried out through Facebook, SMS and Twitter updates on his campaign trail; YouTube video addresses during his transition to the Whitehouse; and user engagement post-inauguration via the new makeover of the Whitehouse.gov website.  By continuing to apply a wide range of social media tools, President Obama is bypassing mainstream media channels and opting instead to reach out directly to his ardent supporters to continue engaging with them. 

There’s a big takeaway in all of this for big companies and startups alike looking to build their own communities and leverage social media tools: start incorporating a digital social media strategy to accompany traditional PR efforts. For a great example, take a look at how successful Zappos.com has been with their company-wide embracement and use of Twitter as a new communication channel with their customers.

Twitter, SMS, YouTube, Facebook, blogging, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, etc. are cost-effective communication channels that are quickly becoming mainstream, enabling companies and people to reach out to their constituents and network of friends faster and farther than ever before.  Social media initiatives enable companies to quickly communicate with existing customers or prospects, enhances a company’s transparency with customers, and encourages user feedback, ultimately building trust, loyalty, and goodwill. 

Today’s economic downturn is affecting not just banking, housing and automotive, but all industries. As businesses adjust to weather this severe economic storm through reduced spending and layoffs, expensive advertising budgets are among the first to get slashed and the media industry is being hit hard.  Print advertising at newspapers was down 16 percent in Q2 and it is steadily contracting.  While more ad dollars are still being spent online versus print, Q3 experienced for the first time a slight decline in online ad spending.  Print media in particular is being impacted; Time Inc. is undergoing significant layoffs across its multiple titles such as People, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.  Condé Nast was recently forced to let go of staff from its newly launched Portfolio, and Forbes underwent a restructuring to combine its web and print operations. 

Given the climate, print media has had to make tough decisions.  With the bleak outlook, some are testing out new approaches and introducing innovative changes.  The Christian Science Monitor and more recently PC Magazine, the bellwether of tech journalism, announced plans to start publishing in a 100% online-only format.  There is a small silver lining for online ad revenues; the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers recently reported that internet advertising rose slightly in the third quarter, up 2% from the second quarter, an 11% rise from the same period last year.  Yankee Group predicts that the online ad market will reach more than $50 billion by 2011.

Traditional publications are also realizing the benefits of delivering content online to supplement print issues.  The New York Times’s Pogue O’Matic and Time’s Channel Podcasts are great examples that continue to operate and produce print issues but have started to post supplementary angles to their print stories in their online outlets.  The online sections are giving journalists additional space, where they can write a follow-on piece, include new perspectives, mention other players in the space, incorporate product information, post a video interview, etc.

With more ad dollars moving to the web, news outlets still have to carefully balance the mix of interactive features within their news content so that readers’ overall experience is kept in check.  Incorporating various interactive, multimedia formats and social media tools (podcasts, video chats, streaming video, photo slides) enables media outlets to engage readers and push their content out to a broader audience of readers.  Increasingly, online news sites are catering to a growing number of readers who want to share, vote, comment on or blog about the article; thus new social media buttons increasingly accompany the articles to support readers’ needs. As print publications expand their news coverage online and include new ways of engaging readers, high tech PR agencies will be afforded extended opportunities to collaborate with their clients on how they too need to leverage these expanding channels of communication, information sharing and reader engagement. 

I attended the Girls in Tech / Horn Group event that examined the notion of whether social media tools are killing PR.  The event was in part to address the ongoing backchannel blogger chatter, which is essentially asserting that PR is dying on the vine.  Kudos to the Horn Group and Girls in Tech for taking the opportunity to move beyond the negative bickering and look forward to the role that social media tools are having and how PR must harness them.  I agree with the stand that Sabrina Horn took in noting that, no, PR is far from dying and the industry is, in fact, on the cusp of being reborn. In other words, there is opportunity on the horizon for those agencies that choose to transform for the future.  The panelists were fantastic, each bringing a different and highly relevant perspective: Sam Whitmore of Media Survey served as the moderator and did an excellent job of prodding the audience for feedback while trying to cover a number of areas and keep all participants on track.  Susan Etlinger, from the agency-side, Jeremiah Owyang, provided the analyst and blogger perspective, and BoomTown’s Kara Swisher lent perspective from her traditional media experience.  Unfortunately, the 90 minutes didn’t afford the time to really dig down into how different social tools are enhancing PR or could be integrated more successfully.  Nevertheless, the exchange was positive and fruitful, providing some good take-aways.  Kara Swisher was vastly entertaining and provided a dose of reality related to the drama and antics some bloggers are exhibiting.

A few folks from the crowd provided a client perspective, noting that they want their agencies to be more expert at product marketing and SEO and web analytics.  Jeremiah was spot on in his assessment that today the PR industry has to build out core competencies in SEO, web analytics, product marketing, viral marketing and beyond in order to be able to offer a new brand of PR services and expertise to clients; This new brand of PR is one that will blend core practices of traditional PR with online marketing — while harnessing existing and future tools that disseminate information faster and farther. There are indeed new revenue streams to be realized here for PR firms.  PR is at a crossroads in its need to evolve and become savvy in online advertising and other marketing competencies so that we can help clients navigate how they can most effectively apply their marketing efforts and dollars to drive company revenues. 

Like the auto industry’s need to retool their manufacturing plants, now is the time for the PR industry to also retool.  Future core services that we begin to offer clients need to be creative and closely align with how to leverage the expanding communication channels and the different avenues in which content and services and conversations are being disseminated, shared, and consumed.

Here are a few cool new web 2.0 tools that we’ve been recently using and wanted to share with you.

Snurl: used for shortening unnecessary (and annoying), ultra-long url addresses. You just paste the cumbersome ulr address in snurl & voila! Snurl gives you an easy-to-use compact url that you can share with bloggers or the media. http://www.snurl.com

Twhirl: was recently bought up by Seesmic, an up & coming online video streaming site. Twhirl is a great Twitter client. What makes Twhirl even more powerful is that it can be used with competing Twitter services like Pownce and Jaiku. Twirl also embeds snurl, which is extremely helpful because Twittering services max out at 140 characters.
http://twhirl.org

Perl: Okay, we really don’t use this and it’s not a cool web service. Just our attempts to be witty here. Perl is actually a dynamic programming language derived mostly from C language and predominantly used for Unix-based operating systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl

We always counsel our clients to be careful and conscientious about what they say to the press and when they say it. We believe it is never a good idea to share sensitive information with media and then hastily use “off the record” lingo–as if that is going to somehow keep the information from being shared. What we do counsel our clients about here is the following: always assume that with a reporter “off the record” means “ON the record.” Juicy tidbits of information are exactly what press seek in order to break a news story.

Today, Samantha Power, a professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a now-former scenior advisor to the Obama campaign, made deriding comments during an interview in London with The Scotsman, a Scottish newspaper. Prior to the press interview she had actually agreed that everything said during the interview could be printed.

In our opinion, it is unwise to divulge sensitive, confidential or questionable information and then quickly interject “oh that was off the record” during any interview. The use of this popular phrase hardly means that the reporter is under any obligation to agree to your unexpected request. In the case with Samantha Powers, the reporter did his job and ran with his piece and this started off a chain reaction leading to a big political bruhaha.

We recommend a simple rule of thumb to follow: if you do not want to see it in writing, then don’t share “off the record” comments with the press.

Valleywag, one of our favorite reads here at Ignite, had an interesting post today titled, “Wired editor in Snit over unsolicited emails.” The post points to Chris Anderson’s “outing” of 329 PR people who took aim at the Editor-in-chief, pitching him on their clients’ products or services. Boy, did his own blog post set off a firestorm of great debate, as evidenced by the comments too numerous for yours truly to finish reading. (I feel bad for any non-PR person who got accidentally ensnared in this public flogging.)

Whenever I see the title ‘editor-in-chief’ or ‘publisher’ on ANY of our lists that we are building, I immediately cross them out and remind our staff that those titles should not be there. (period)!! (Actually, there are a few exceptions here but these are typically with smaller publications or newsletters that are usually focused in vertical market sectors.  In these cases, the editor-in-chief is indeed the go-to-guy or go-to-gal.   I, for one, would welcome PR folk applying the basics here. Among the two camps, I fall on the side of supporting Chris for getting fed up with the hundreds of PR people and PR firms that do not bother to do the basic quality control when it comes to promoting or trying to interest reporters. Herein, lays the key — the operative word being “reporter” not editor-in-chief. There is a big difference and if a PR person doesn’t know this, doesn’t get it, or doesn’t care, well then I guess they continue to face public lambasting.

Is it, as Chris is suggesting, laziness by lots of PR folks? I know that, like reporters, PR people are also typically under the gun but, quite frankly, it takes a minimal amount of time to prune out any odd titles (copy editor, publisher, and editor-in-chief). I can understand why, in this age of email overload, there is an even bigger backlash at this type of spamming practice. I guess this quality (and perhaps basic training) or lack thereof is essentially up to each agency to either put in place or disregard.

The NYT’s weighs in on this today as well.