Global Brands Try to Sway Opinions Online

Business Week published an interesting article earlier this month about international companies that hire PR firms to promote their brands in online forums.

Check out Inside the War Against China's Blogs.

Although balancing negative comments isn't a new practice, the article offers a good reminder for companies of all sizes:

"Even one negative consumer comment online can end up influencing many customers."

Whether you own a restaurant or run a technology company, customer satisfaction should be your top priority. But, don't assume that no news is good news. Angry customers may not take their concerns to you directly. Instead, many will post their negative experiences online.

If you haven't done so lately, try a Google search on your company or brand name(s). If you find that disgruntled customers are lashing out at you, do your best to address their complaints and negative feedback quickly and effectively.

And, make sure you're promoting honest, positive coverage of your company as well. You may be great at advertising and branding in print, TV, radio, or other media, but if your prospective customers find negative information about you online, it can hurt your brand and your bottom line.

Try Craigslist for Small Business Advertising

If you're a small service provider - whether a real estate brokerage or law firm, landscape design company or web development team - you may not have a large marketing budget to invest in advertising. But, you can still be creative. One option? Try free advertising in Craigslist's services section.

Check out these 10 Tips for Promoting Yourself on Craigslist.

Is your audience hyperconnected?

Information week reports that a recent IDC survey of 2,400 people found some interesting trends among today's professionals:

"Almost two in 10 workers in 17 industrialized countries use a minimum of seven devices for work and personal access to communication networks... [plus] at least nine applications, such as instant messaging, text messaging, Web conferencing, and social networks.

[N]early four in 10 of the respondents said they would chose their mobile phones over wallets, keys, laptops, and MP3 players, if they had to leave the house for 24 hours."

Both of these points are worth considering if you're developing a website or communications campaign.

For starters, you could miss your target market if you avoid media that appeal to them or you're unfamiliar with the technologies they use every day.

Second, your audience may have a very short attention span while moving between multiple applications and devices.

Finally, if you build a website full of impressive-looking Flash animation (instead of well-written content that translates well to mobile phone browsing), you may be out of luck holding your prospective clients' attention.

So, here are 3 quick lessons for a Tuesday:

• Consider new technologies and non-traditional media to help you reach your audience
• Use clear, concise, and compelling messages
  
• Make sure that your communications are accessible in the way your users will reach them, not just how you prefer to publish them
  

4 Reasons Starbucks Has the Right Idea

Last month, Starbucks launched a new website called "My Starbucks Idea," positioned as a way for loyal Starbucks fans to make their voice heard.

While Starbucks is not unique in their approach (Dell has a similar site called IdeaStorm), My Starbucks Idea has the potential to help the company quickly identify problem areas and opportunities that are well-known to their audience worldwide.

As we might expect, the experiment began with a flood of feedback from customers and a few bright ideas. Of course, the true measure of success will be whether the knowledge they gain -- combined with other changes already underway -- will actually improve Starbucks' financial picture.

That said, Starbucks seems to be doing a few things right so far:

1. Assign Qualified Staff to "Own" it. Most companies start blogs, communities, newsletters, and other communication tools with the best intentions, not realizing the amount of work that goes into maintaining them day-to-day. To succeed with a project like this, you must have team members who are accountable for monitoring, maintaining, and adding value to your site. In addition to senior staff driving the initiative, Starbucks made the right choice by assigning 41 "idea partners" to gather information and facilitate discussions on the site.
   
   
2. Open a dialogue. Striking the right balance on a site like this means sharing information, asking for honest feedback, and setting clear expectations (through terms of use and company communications) about appropriate content. It also means accepting valid criticism while removing posts that are blatantly offensive or off topic. So far, Starbucks has done reasonably well by encouraging and contributing to discussions and minimizing posts from overly hostile users.
   
   
3. Act on feedback. Don't ask your customers for feedback if you're not going to do something with it. Anyone trying out a new community or taking the time to post comments on your blog won't stick around long if they know you're not listening. Starbucks has shown that its team members are paying attention by highlighting particular ideas that are "Under Review" or "Coming Soon." The company has also spoken up and set clear expectations about ideas they've listened to but chosen not to act on.
   
   
4. Share results. Whether you're surveying employees on your company intranet or asking customers for feedback on your blog, it's important to "close the loop" with your audience by showing the outcome of your discussions. This means not just applying user feedback behind the scenes, but also telling your audience how their contributions have made a difference. In addition to noting the ideas under consideration, Starbucks has posted follow up info about the outcome of specific ideas, and some of the changes have already shown up in stores.
   

We'll have to wait and see whether this project will prove to be a worthwhile investment for Starbucks, but these areas are certainly a step in the right direction. If you're thinking about launching your own communication tools, these tips are definitely worth keeping in mind.

Close Every Prospect

One of the most important lessons any sales person must learn is to "close every prospect."

You can develop a relationship with a prospective customer, identify their needs, and demonstrate the value of your product or service, but if you don't ask them to buy it, you've wasted your time.

The same is true in marketing.

As a writer and editor, I frequently see marketing materials and web copy that provide a wealth of information about a company and its products, services, people, philosophy, and everything else you might possibly want to know.

Yet, the most common mistake these companies make is never asking prospective clients to do something once they review the information. Companies hire web designers, graphic designers, printers, and a host of other people to create communications with no purpose. Why bother?

If you're going to invest in producing a communication of any type - from a marketing brochure to a website, newsletter, direct mail, or email, you must have a clear objective. If you ask someone to read information, define exactly what you want them to do when they finish reading it; this is your "close". In marketing, it's known as a "Call to Action."

Just as sales people close by asking prospective customers to buy, marketers, writers, and any business people responsible for communications should call on prospective customers to act. Not sure how? Here are some examples:

• "Call today to take advantage of this special offer."
  
• "Click here for more information about how our software can save you time and money."
  
• "Share your views about this article in our comments section."
  
• "Visit our website to order your copy today."
  
• "Call today to schedule a viewing of this property."
  

It's easy, and it will immediately make your communications more effective. Whatever you do, close every prospect!

VizzVox Makes Multimedia Ads Easy

One of the biggest challenges about being a writer and marketer is telling a story that gets buyers to act without the benefit of sensory information they'd have if they could actually see the product.

For example, nothing compares to allowing a prospective homebuyer to see, touch, smell, and imagine themselves in a new home.

When buyers stand with arms outstretched in a closet to see how big it is, or run their fingers across a cool granite countertop, they create memory links that will stay with them long after they leave, offering you a competitive advantage when they compare your home to the list of others they saw that day.

No MLS listing, individual photo, or written description can accomplish the same thing.

Of course, before getting buyers to visit a home, you'd need to reach them and get them interested in seeing it. With detailed information, a compelling message, and great photos, you could promote the home in a print advertisement.

By posting the photos on your website, you could also try to capture prospects searching for homes online.

Further, big builders or real estate agencies with large budgets and teams of producers, photographers, editors, and developers could create impressive multimedia or video presentations to promote the home on TV or online.

But your average small company or individual sales person is often out of luck. Until now.

While you'll still need detailed information and a clear, compelling message, a company called Vizzvox is making the production step in the process a bit easier. Their web-based service allows users to create online presentations called "Vizzies".

You can upload photos and video clips, record a voiceover, put it all together, and email to prospects or post it on your website. From Real Estate agents to power sellers on eBay, the service enables users to quickly create an online presentation to promote their product or service.

If you're ready to create a Vizzie and need help writing an outline or script, give us a call. And check back later. I'll post a review of my experience producing my own first Vizzie.

Online media to take lion's share of advertising

As I scan the news on my computer every morning, I sometimes wonder who still reads the newspaper -- the actual printed-and-
delivered-to-your-door-by-a-paper-boy kind.

Having spent my career in a fast-paced, technology-centric field, most newspapers are simply too slow for me. By the time I've had my morning coffee and read the front page, I can find more current, detailed information and analysis at any online source worth reading.

So, while I still look forward to sitting down in the living room on crisp November mornings with the Sunday paper laid out in front of me - fire crackling and the football game on TV - it's primarily for the experience and not the news.

Much like choosing to listen to music on old LPs instead of my iPod, there's a time and place for it, but it's rare and mostly for sentimental reasons.

When it comes to the search for real news or entertainment, more and more people are forgoing print in favor of online media. And it seems that advertisers are beginning to follow.

According to a report by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, current trends show that by 2011, Internet advertising is expected to pass up newspaper as the largest advertising medium.

Check out a summary of the report by Information Week's Thomas Claburn here.