Category Archives: PR Clients

Does your pr client need a “tagline”?

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I’m sure all of you know what a “tagline” is, right? Well, if you are not sure, then visit Wikipedia for their true definition.

A good tagline is one that is used with a company name, or logo. PR Clients are constantly searching for the right tagline that meets their philosophy, or helps set them apart from the competition. Companiestaglines for publicity clients that succeed in finding the right tagline are usually copied. For example the Nike tagline, or slogan as it is sometimes referred to, is “Just Do It”. What about the milk tagline, know what that one is? Right, “Got Milk“. But is seems that pr clients get tired of these and feel a need to change it every few years. That is something all advertising agencies and publicity professionals need to consider. If your pr client feels it is time to change, be sure you do your homework. Do they really need to do this? Are their customers thinking of them as an old company, or stale in their products/service because of the tagline? If so then maybe it is time to change.

An article in marketing pros discussed this in brief. The article mentioned Tate Linden, author of Stokefire blog, said many companies are not quite sure what a tagline is supposed to do. If that is the case, then maybe they don’t need or shouldn’t have one.

Just like those successful taglines, Just Do It, and Got Milk. Everyone was placing their logo, or name with these tags. Another person, Spike Jones says “never pick a tagline that just anyone can use” He goes on to say if you can easily place the tagline with another company logo, then it isn’t a good tagline.

I agree in most cases, but if you are able to conquer the market with a generic tagline like Just Do It, everyone knows you stole that from Nike.

Taglines are not just for pr clients and their companies. Look at TV shows, like The X-Files. Their tagline was “The truth is out there”. The shorter the tagline, the easier it is to remember.

So does your pr client need a tagline? Or do they already have one but are not using it wisely, or are they not including it in all their pr marketing strategies? If that is the case, maybe you need to promote the tagline with their name. As publicity professionals, and marketing agencies, it is up to you to guide yourr pr clients in making the right decision. If not, then someone else might take away that business from you. Need help, give me, George Carson a call. I’ll make sure you keep that pr client with taglines that work for them.

How Many Press Releases Do You Send Out Per Month?

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Your pr marketing strategy should include a series of press releases each month. So what is the total number of press releases to send per month? We recommend at least three per month. You don’t want to issue the same release every other week, but rather find a new angle, or create new releases each week.

publicity press releasesWe do not recommend flooding the media with dozens of press releases, especially if they are not newsworthy. That will get you negative publicity and probably be recognized as a pest to the media.

Your pr marketing strategies should outline for your pr clients a series of releases to meet the objectives of your publicity campaign. For example, if a pr client is introducing a new product, that warrants a press release. When the product has an impact, or makes an improvement to something, this can be another press release. Basically, follow through with the first press release to see how you can continue to get media attention. Reporters and publishers need good content and stories for their readers, so when writing your pr clients press releases, give them solid information that will want readers to learn more.

Keep away from “sales writing”. Press releases need to be informative, give features as to why the product or service was developed. Tell how it will affect the market, or industry. That is what reporters are looking for in their publications.

If you need help in getting your pr marketing strategy, or publicity campaign in gear, give us a call. We have the contact and expertise to get you noticed. Make the call; it can be the step you take that advances you ahead of the competition.

Do You Have A Blogger On Staff?

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More and more major corporations are hiring staff bloggers, now being titled Chief Bloggers. This is proof that blogging is making a serious impact on corporations as well as small to mid-size companies.

No longer considered a trend but now part of the business daily activity, business blogging is a mainstay for pr clients as well as any company that has a pr marketing strategy. Publicity professionals have seen the positive results that blogging has and are finally asking pr clients to add daily business blogging to their pr marketing campaign. Several high profile corporations see the need to blog. A few of these corporations are Coca-Cola, Kodak, and Marriott to mention a few. According to a recent article in Advertising Age, over 11% of the Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs. Smart publicity professionals know how critical a publicity campaign with blogging can have on a company’s branded image. It is now more important than before to get the word out and the best way to do this is having your own business blog site.

More aggressive business blogs are from Kodak. An article in Blog Herald, dated April 3, 2008, describes that Kodak has two business blog sites and hired chief bloggers to maintain them. Blogging should be part of your pr client’s business tools. No longer can it be taken as a part-time or as a pass-time project. Just ask CEO-President Jonathan Schwartz on Sun Microsystems. He has helped direct the company and improved the image with his business blogging. This doesn’t mean that the CEO, or owner needs to do the blogging. But many of the top executives direct their chief bloggers on the topics or give approval before a blog is posted. This may seem staged in some ways, but as I said before, it is a pr marketing strategy that is making a strong impact on business. Make sure your pr client, or company is using their blog site to keep that branded name in front of customers.

Useful Web Sites

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If you are like a lot of media research people, or a publicity professional who is always trying to find useful web sites for your pr marketing strategy project, I have something of great value. First, realize the Internet is pack full of information that makes it difficult to find what you are looking for. Google has done an excellent job in allowing more than keywords, butlooking for web sites allows you to use key phrases for a finer method of narrowing your search. Ever feel lost in the Internet? Im sure you have.

Publicity professionals, pr clients and all advertising companies use the web to gather information for creating marketing plans, or developing a pr marketing strategy. Knowing where to start can be a great help. But how do you do that? Is there a place that actually has grouped, or categorized sites for all us web surfers to find “stuff”?. The answer is yes. Ok, your saying, get to the point…here is a useful web site that has a good listing of subjects: PINAKES, A Subject Launchpad. The site has an array of topics to find most anything from Music, to high tech to arts and humanities to biotech and many more categories.

It may not be the super list of all lists, but as I said, you need a place to start and this is just one of the many useful sites that can get you pointed in the right direction. So the next time your pr client, or publicity professional has a research project, or you need more information to make that next presentation, check out PINAKES.

If you are really ambitious and want to dig deeper for information on a specific topic, then consider sites like DMOZ, the Open Directory, or About.com, or intute. Each has resources that will get you surfing. But beware, this can get habit forming. You might just find yourself spending hours looking and not doing the research project your had started out to do. Put a time limit on your research, and bookmark sites that could be of value. Then go back and make notes on those sites that can help complete your project. For more information on web site listings, call Carson Marketing, Inc. Ask for George Carson.

What is a Business Blog?

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People are asking me to help define or give them examples of what is a business blog. When I wrote the previous “Business Blogging is Great PR” blog, I figured by now most pr clients and publicity professionals as well as advertising agencies know the difference between a personal blog site and a company or business blog site.

First, you do know what a blog is, right? Ok, let’s move. There are basically two types of blog sites: “personal blogs” and “business blogs”. The personal blog is where anybusiness blogging, blog sites individual can write about any topic, such as the weather, their favorite pet, their life experiences, or whatever they wish. Yes, sometimes it is a gripe about their job, or a problem they had with a manufacturer’s product. But that is one person voicing their thoughts. These personal blogs are set up by the individual.

A Business Blog can be similar, meaning it is one person’s opinion, or thoughts, but it relates to an actual product, or a company. You need to know that there are two types of business blogs. One is on the Internet that anyone can read and see. The other is internal blog sites set up at companies. Usually these are created by large corporations. The blogs are usually intended for employees to voice their comments internally, within a company, not readable to the outside world.

To help illustrate a business blog, look at these site. I saw them referenced at About.com:

• Gizmodo

• Google Blog

• Jupiter Research

• Loosetooth.com Shop Blog

You will see that each is different but they are all business related. One may do a review on a product, while another tells people about their store and what it offers. Sometimes a blog is written by the company for anyone to read to attract employees or make people feel good about the company. A couple of examples of these blog sites would be Google Blog, and GM’s FastLane Blog.

Learn how to start using a business blog. PR Clients and all publicity professionals need to get ahold of this powerful media and make it work for them. For additional tips, visit the site “to improve your blog“. It has a few more helpful suggestions. If you need help to build a company blog, or want to learn more, call George Carson at 949-477-9400, or visit our Carson marketing, Inc. web site.

Business Blogging Makes Great PR

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If you are still wondering how to get your company, or pr client noticed, then look at Business Blogging. It is one of the strongest pr marketingbusiness blogging, blog sites strategies you can implement. It takes some work, but the rewards are great. First you need to realize that just having a blog site isn’t going to make things happen overnight. You need a plan, you need to understand how the blog world works, and then your business blogging will all come together.

There are dozens of companies claiming to do blog marketing sites. Only a few truly understand how this mysterious cyberworld can get you noticed. We are one of those companies who have surrounded ourselves with many of the top developers and marketers that know how a pr clients web site can become listed or ranked very high on Google and Yahoo, as well as MSN. There isn’t any top-secret formula, just a lot of planning, consistency and hard work. Like any other web site, a business blog site may take a few weeks to get indexed with the search engines.

To make your blog site more business provide the visitors opportunities to make comments on the site. Have an area that they can signup for your company newsletter, or download and article that relates to your industry. If you need assistance in getting a solid blog site that gets noticed, call George Carson. He can help with the development and the web marketing.

If you want to do other publicity activity to get noticed, then consider these other tried and true efforts. Many of them I have spoken about, but sometimes when you read it by other publicity professionals, you might listen more. These are just a few suggestions I saw that was written in an article called “How to Get killer PR“.

• Attend Events. Introduce yourself to other business people, check to see if there is a special area for networking at these events, or if they have guest speakers.

• Find something that makes you unique, a compelling theme (as the writer states). Find the strengths and uniqueness and talk to reporters about those qualifications

• Be accessible. When anyone form the press calls, or sends you an email, you need to respond in a timely manner. That doesn’t mean when you are ready, it usually means within a couple of hours or sooner.

These few tips are common sense, but often not used. Make your publicity part of your overall business plan. It should include the blogging as well as the many other campaign elements I have spoken about in the past. Look at topics on my blog like “How to write a Marketing Plan“, or “Write a Press Release for the Media Not Your Company”; another good article is “Where to send your press release”.

If you are serious about developing a blog campaign, check out “Social Media Keeps Growing…” and “Internet Marketing Tips“.

Now get back to your business blogging.

What Advertising Marketing Strategies Are You Using?

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Advertising agencies and publicity professionals use different advertising marketingPR Marketing Strategy strategies to promote a pr clients products or services. Do you know what marketing strategies are being developed for your company? If you are not sure, then use this information as a guide to get a better understanding of what marketing strategies are about.

First, if you Google the term “advertising marketing strategies“, you will see that Wikipedia defines it into three main areas. They are:

1-Weak Strategies

2-Middle Strength Strategies

3-Strong Strategies

I want to concentrate on the strong strategies in this blog. When you see an ad campaign, or even a publicity campaign, and you feel good about it. That’s what strong strategies are about. It gets to the inner feelings of someone. An example would be, in wikipedia, the Geico commercial. Although it does have the qualities of a strong marketing strategy, I do not feel it is the best example. Not everyone feels good about or relates favorably to that the little Geico character.

Think of yourself when buying something that you really liked, such as a new car, or when you booked that vacation to Hawaii. It made you feel good. And why did you buy that specific car, or plan that special location for your trip? It is because you felt good about it when you were first exposed to the campaign. It was the creative marketing, or pr marketing strategy, or the special publicity surrounding the product that started to give you these great feelings.

As the definition says, creative strategies promote great publicity campaigns and sales promotions. So now that you, as a pr client, or even a publicity professional, know what the advertising marketing strategies are, start using them to improve your campaign. It can only make it better.

Newsletter Writing For Business

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It seems like everyone is writing something. Either in a blog, or a social media site, personal web sites, and of course business newsletters. Does this mean that companies, or businesses should not have a newsletter because there is too much to read? Simple answer-NO. Whether you are a pr client, a local publicity agency in Orange County, or a national food manufacturer, you need to have a company newsletter. Not just a newsletter, but one that your clients, customers, or prospects can read because it has value.

That is the keyword. Your business newsletter (sometimes referred to as a companywriting a newsletter newsletter) should become a must-read publication. Using the Internet, this is a cost effective and affordable way to promote your company. PR Clients as well as professional publicity people know that writing to their industry can be rewarding. Your newsletter needs to have rich content. Make the newsletter entertaining. Possibly consider having a questionnaire, or take a poll about a topic that relates to your industry. This gets clients and customers involved. And it is one of the best publicity programs that any pr client can produce in-house.

If you are a pr client, or a publicity professional and are not comfortable in writing newsletters, just Google the words “how to write a newsletter’ and see all the resources. One site in particular is called right-writing. You can start with any of these sites as a guide to get the process going for your company. Having a newsletter available for download is much easier than writing a blog everyday. It may not be as strong of a marketing tool for pr clients as a blog site, but it is better to have one rather than nothing.

For those publicity professionals who are creating pr marketing strategies for pr clients, then consider writing a monthly business newsletter for your pr clients. I also recommend that all clients begin with a business newsletter, and then develop a blog site. This can be an internal, or external site. Remember, if you are unable to produce your own in-house publicity newsletter campaign, then give us a call. We will get you noticed.

Are Media Buyers Spending More On Internet?

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With all the hype and interest of the Internet, you would think it has the lion share of media dollars. Instead it seems that pr clients, media buyers, and pr marketing strategies are still embracing old habits of media—broadcast (TV and radio).

It surprised me a little since I see a lot of pr clients, as well as ad agencies placing millions of dollars into the Internet with ads, keywords, social media money, etc. But I think you need to evaluate what is really happening. First, we are in an election year. And actually last year had many legislative issues that the people voted on which fuels the media in the strongest markets through TV and radio. That could be why these past 18 months have shown a surge in traditional broadcast media buying. There is a great article in iMedia Connection that has a graph and explains further, by the author, his viewpoint on this topic. The title of his article is “Get more relevant with niche media”

If you are seeking different ways to grow your business, then maybe this is the time to get noticed. Start developing a social network, a company blog site, or begin using your web site to attract more customers. When one segment of an industry such as TV or radio are scarce with ads of your competitors, then switch back. But keep in mind that timing is everything. If you are a B2B company, or a retailer, or a manufacturer, then check to make sure you are not promoting, advertising your company in a down time. Such as Christmas, unless you are selling hi-tech stuff, or toys.

We are now entering a heavy media buying season for political campaign advertising, re-think where you spend your marketing and advertising dollars. I would recommend that you look into establishing an online campaign. These are much less costly than a TV campaign. And it will generate a lot of customers, as well as create a branding position for your company or products. PR Clients need to be more sensitive to this as do media buying agencies, media buyers and advertising agencies. This goes for publicity professionals as well. PR Agencies need to better understand how to use online publicity as a means to be visible for pr clients. While the broadcast media gets hammered with political campaigns, then immediately following is the holiday season, promotions now can be the best time to develop that needed online campaign.

Take advantage of the next six months by establishing your company to be positioned on the first page of all the major search engines. Even at the top, maybe the top three positions. And it is possible to do this without purchasing a lot of keywords. I can’t go into how to do that in this short blog, but I will be more than happy to explain how to do this effectively and get results. Just call me, George Carson, at 949-477-9400.

George Carson presents Power Listening soft skills to colleges

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It is hard to believe that a year ago I made a presentation to the California Community Colleges on  “Job Behavior” as the first soft skills lesson. This year our company produced another lesson onpresnetation on soft skills Power Listening. Although many people, including pr clients, ad agencies, even many publicity professionals think this isn’t that important, or a soft skill. Well it is. In fact listening is the most important soft skill a person can learn.

Check out these facts:

Over 75% of what we learn is from listening. And get this, a person can only speak about 180 words per minute, but we hear over 500 words per minute. That means we get bored when people are talking, and therefore loose interest and miss what is said. So if you are a pr client, publicity professional, start listening, not hearing, but listen to what is being said.

It was a great presentation and many of the professors and other administrators at this conference for the community colleges were very pleased with the presentation. Several people commented that they learned a lot and will begin using this Power Listening lesson in their classes immediately.

My other point why I am telling you about this, it is an excellent publicity vehicle. Our company was well received by the 109 community colleges throughout California. This is one of the many ways a pr client can gain exposure for their company, or themselves. Give lectures; speak on topics that you know, or about trends in your industry. A few helpful hints:

• Contact your local Chamber Of Commerce to give a lecture

• Contact any local, or regional associations in your industry and give a talk

• Send an article to your local newspaper to the business editor and ask them to publish your article. Make sure the article is newsworthy and talks about a specific topic in your industry

These are just a few suggestions. To learn more about making presentations, or “how to listen”, give George Carson a call. He knows how to listen, and can show you how to gain favorable publicity when using this soft skill. Contact George at 949-477-9400.