Repositioning Your Business for the New Normal
My business partner and I attended an Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) meeting in early November with some pretty savvy marketing and public relations professionals who own small agencies across the country. These entrepreneurs meet semi-annually to share best practices designed to improve the performance of their businesses.
After two days of swapping new ideas and advice about their agencies and doing business in a recession, it became clear that most of these agency owners face many of the same business challenges I do. Our discussion also reaffirmed that we need to plan for what likely will be the new “normal” way of doing business, even long after an economic recovery.
Here are a few of what we marketing types call the BGOs, or “Blinding, Glaring, Obvious” takeaways from my AMR experience. Many of these BGOs are not new concepts. But all are worth revisiting as we adjust our business plans for 2010:
Join the Conversation Early, Not After the Damage Is Done
I
f a conversation happens in a forest and you’re not there to be a part of it, did it really happen?
In the online world of social media – you bet your bottom dollar it did. And an entire network of friends, fans and followers heard it, participated in it and repeated it to their friends, fans and followers.
When I worked for a small town newspaper right out of college, we often joked the biggest threat to being scooped was the gossip that took place at a quaint diner downtown. There’s no message tool more effective than word of mouth – especially when the topic is heated, controversial or sensational. That’s how I like to think of social media. It’s not really all that new to those of us who understand how gossip works – it’s fast, can often be misleading (think the children’s game of telephone – the more you repeat something, the more inaccurate the message becomes) and sometimes damages someone’s reputation. Read more »
Nice Chalkbot!
Cool post at SlipperyBrick.com! According to the blog, Cyclist Lance Armstrong has returned to the 2009 Tour de France to raise awareness of his Livestrong Campaign.
And to cheer him on, Livestrong and Nike teamed up with DeepLocal and StandardRobot to create this robot that paints messages on the Tour de France path.
The best part? You can send your own message of encouragement! Read more »
Google: No More “You Already Wrote a Story on That?”
Google has recently added the ability to search news by a journalist’s byline, which could help the savvy PR practitioner improve on his/her message strategy and media relations.
It can be embarrassing to call a reporter about your client’s great new service and find out they covered a similar story in the past week. Not to mention the eye roll you can feel coming over the phone connection as the reporter tells you, “been there, done that.”
Rather than getting caught for not having done your research, you now can search a month’s worth of any journalist’s articles. Doing so enables a savvy PR executive to craft a story pitch to his/her target reporter – the way it’s supposed to be done. Read more »
Searching Social Media for Your Message
As social media continues to dominate marketing, media and PR conversations, I keep getting the same question. It’s a fun tool, but what’s it really have to do with business? In a nutshell: There are conversations taking place about your company/business. Whether those conversations take place in the men’s room, at the watercooler, at the customer service counter or online, shouldn’t you know what people are saying about you? Read more »
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