According to U.S News, Public Relations as a profession might just be a growth industry:
Employment of public-relations specialists is expected to increase by more than 66,000 jobs, or 24 percent, between 2008 and 2018, according to the Labor Department.
Almost condescendingly, they report that it’s not too tough to get into, education-wise:
There’s a lot of upside to this job, given that it requires only a bachelor’s degree.
Only!
And you can also earn a decent living:
Median annual earnings for PR specialists last year were about $51,960, while the lowest-paid 10 percent made less than $30,520 and the highest-paid 10 percent made upwards of $96,000.
Check out the rest of the article for their take on stress level, type of activity and the effect of social media on the profession.
Of course, if you want my opinion about PR as a profession…just ask. All you PR vets out there, feel free to weigh in on the profession, too. And finally–all you newbies and students thinking of PR as a career–what do you think–or what do you want to know?
Prior to his show at RecordBar in Kansas City in November 2010, singer/songwriter Dan Coyle chats about his new album You Linger Your Little Hour and Are Gone, which is available in wide release today.
Learn more about Dan, read his blog and buy his albums at www.DanCoyle.com.
Prior to his show at RecordBar in Kansas City in November 2010, singer/songwriter Dan Coyle talks about marketing his music. Dan’s not a household name-0-and he makes that work for him. Dan is an interesting guy with good thoughts on getting your product to market without a big budget. Learn more about Dan at www.DanCoyle.com.
I needed a new computer–my MacBook was fading after three years of constant service.
So, I bought an iMac. You may know that Apple offers a great service: they’ll clone your hard drive from the old puter and transplant it to the new machine, thus saving you hours of torture when you get home.
Okay, that alone is great service. But what’s better is they told me it would take about one business day to do this. I could come back the next day at 5 p.m. to pick up my old machine and the new one– fully-loaded with all my files, programs, music and stuff.
Well, why not? One business day is a small price to pay for the time and effort it would’ve taken for me to do it myself.
That’s not the lesson, though. Here’s the lesson: they called me less than three hours later to tell me my computers were ready for pickup. Not a day later, but a mere three hours later. Do I have to tell you how thrilled I was when they called? When I first picked up the phone I was sure they were going to tell me something was wrong. Nope. They were just finished being highly efficient. I’ve had other good experiences with Apple–and this just reinforced my brand loyalty big time.
Under-promise, over-deliver. Simple concept. Works every time.
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I published an ebook and recently premiered a book trailer. Pete Dulin of Present Magazine of Kansas City interviewed me about the book and the trailer. Here’s an excerpt:
PresentMagazine.com: How long did it take to write the book?
Greenwood: “I wrote the first draft in three months – six days a week, three to four hours a day. Yes, I will cop to the cliche’: I wrote that first draft on a laptop in the Starbucks at Country Club Plaza.
The finished book people are reading today on their iPads and Kindles took about eighteen months and six drafts. I did about four “polishes” on top of that.”
PresentMagazine.com: How did the idea for a book trailer come about?
“Readers have told me they thought they could easily see Pilate’s Cross as a movie. That’s why I’m so excited I got the chance to work with the talented crew at T2 + Back Alley Films of Kansas City.
This never would have happened without the vision of T2 + Back Alley Films CEO Teri Rogers. She’s a courageous innovator, always looking ahead to that next undiscovered country. When I told her about my book, she immediately suggested a trailer. Not many firms of T2’s stature are doing trailers. I had given a trailer some thought, but never dreamed a nationally recognized digital media agency like T2 would work with me.
The trailer really transports you right into the world of Cross Township – like a movie. I wrote a treatment and a script, and then T2’s team created a concept that I think just blows away most book trailers. Their concept and screen execution was teamed with Wheeler Audio of Kansas City to record actors and mix sound.
I will also join T2’s Paul Miles Schneider (besides being a gifted graphics producer at T2 he has written the acclaimed novel Silver Shoes) on KCUR Radio’s “Central Standard” show Monday, October 25 at 10 a.m. CST. (You can stream it on the internet if you’re not in the KC area.) We will be talking about book marketing, ebooks, trailers and of course, our books!
In recent years, publishers, authors, teachers and students have been using the book trailer, a promotional video, to develop buzz and cultivate readers for a book. Some book trailers are similar to the familiar movie preview while others look like something you will see on MTV.
Some trailers focus on the story (many even tell you the whole story, like an overwrought PowerPoint book report!) some interview the author, and many more just confound me with their incomprehensibility. Of course, like anything, there’s a lot of DIY going on in book trailer production; with predictably dreary (dare I say crappy) results. For every compelling, well-produced trailer, you get about one hundred trailers slapped together with bad clip art, stock photos, bland music and cheesy graphics. Yeah, that makes me want to read the book. Not.
I don’t mean to be nasty, but if you’re going to represent your product–especially one I presume you spent years writing–do it right.
That said, I wrote a mystery thriller novel. Long story short, after a couple of near-misses with being signed by an agent over a two-year period I decided I could stick the book in a drawer forever or publish it as an independent ebook with Smashwords. I’m glad I did. Pilate’s Cross has sold more than a few copies (on iBooks, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobo and Smashwords), and hundreds more have sampled it. I still believe in the book and feel it could reach a broader audience if it could just rise above the crowd a bit.
Thinking along those lines, many of my readers told me they thought it was a book they could easily see as a movie. Well, I certainly couldn’t make a movie out of an indie novel, but a book trailer was in the cards. That’s why I’m so excited I got the chance to work with the celebrated digital media design company T2 + Back Alley Films of Kansas City.
Lead by CEO Teri Rogers, T2 + Back Alley Films is a nationally recognized digital media agency that creates all forms of new media content. Their specialties include motion graphics design, experiential design, augmented reality and other forms of new media, as well as original films and documentaries, digital production and postproduction.
The book’s cinematic structure made it an ideal project for T2, and I’m over the moon at their interpretation of the book. We agreed that it should be a book trailer that could easily pass as a movie trailer.We had some fun with the voice-over, though we resisted the urge to say “In a world…”
The trailer was truly a collaborative effort between T2, Wheeler and me. I just hope that the book lives up to the high expectations set by the trailer.
So, since the premiere on October 13, 2010 at PilatesCross.com I’ve received many nice comments about the trailer and renewed interest in the book. The trailer is now out there on several trailer sites, YouTube and Smashwords. It’s my hope that the crossover will aid in raising the book’s profile.
Book trailers are here to stay, I’d say, especially in our multimedia world. What do you think–are they here to stay or just a flash in the pan?
As much as we like to think that the internet is the great leveler for the tiny consumer versus the faceless corporation, it’s better not to think your product reviews on a company website are a given.
Reading SmartMoney magazine I came across a story by Anne Kadet about PowerReviews, “a little-known outfit processes reviews for online stores.” She adds that “Since the company’s 2005 launch, it has screened 9 million reviews.”
Kadet’s feature describes PowerReviews as the filter that many online stores use to screen out profanity, obviously false (inauthentic!) or off-topic reviews.
It’s an interesting story if you’ve ever wondered why your complaint about bad customer service at ACME Co. went missing:
“They also erase complaints about customer service; if it’s not relevant to the product. They even wipe out inflammatory passages that claim a product causes death or injury–no need to help the lawyers.”
So, retailers scrub the reviews on a regular basis. Oh well, even so if you have a gripe you can always blog, Tweet or Facebook about it on your own. And you should.
I just received a call asking me to join a national PR consultancy cooperative. They found me through Google search while looking for a PR firm in this area. After a couple of phone calls and some vetting on both sides, I got the offer and accepted.
They found me on Google–and I think mostly because of this blog. Blogs are good for search engine optimization, or SEO. (More on that in a minute.)
I have a client who hates blogging–thinks it’s a chore even though she’s a very good writer with a real knack for blogging. She was telling me today her business had fallen off and I said one very inexpensive marketing activity was to update her blog daily.
“I know,” she said wearily. “But–”
I told her about the consultancy call–one I received purely by virtue of blogging (and having a cool website, many thanks Shelly!). My client thought it over and agreed to blog every day for a few weeks to see what effect it would have.
But new evidence strongly demonstrates the SEO and traffic-building benefits of regular daily posting — that’s every day daily — are very compelling. In fact, when social media blogger Justin Kownacki reasoned that fewer, longer, more carefully written posts might be a better strategy for him than shorter, daily posts, he kept careful track of the results.
It wasn’t pretty. His page views declined 36% in a matter of four months. His Alexa traffic ranking, relative to other websites, slipped from about 162,000 to over 245,000.
What Kownacki’s data doesn’t show is whether the fall-off was related primarily to declines in organic search visits, but that’s the conclusion drawn by Bruce Clay in a related post.
The lesson here: Google and the other search engines are on a constant, minute-by-minute scouring of the web for fresh, high-quality content. Google treats blog posts and news posts as a special type of content, often rewarding them with high rankings right out of the gate, then (unless external links argue otherwise) usually letting them sink in the rankings as they age.
Heck, I don’t consistently blog every day, but I’m going to.
Let me use a baseball metaphor:
You don’t get on base unless you swing the bat, wait for the pitcher to walk you or you step in front of the damn ball. If you want to guarantee you get on base, you know what you have to do. Sure, it stings a little, but it gets you there.
Of course, it can also kill you. But I digress…
Share what you know, what you care about and what drives you–share it with the world on your company or personal blog. Get in the game. You may even hit a homer.
The internet can be either a boon or boondoggle to companies when it comes to the monitoring of their online brand presence.
For companies that pay little attention to their online storefronts, the rewards are continual brand hijacking, abusive pay-per-click tactics and outright attacks on brands.
MarkMonitor, an enterprise brand protection firm, offers solutions and services to safeguard brands, reputation and revenue from online risks. In their white paper “Online Brand Protection: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Proactive Strategy” MarkMonitor recommends a series of protective measures, including:
Identifying all domain names in your portfolio
Manage your portfolio proactively
Monitor for potential abuse
Respond to abuse
Great paper–in particular, we recommend you take a look at the section on monitoring for potential abuse. You can do this inside your company, or there are several online services that offer affordable methods to do this for you. No matter how you do it, the key is never-ending vigilance.
Creating an ideal domain portfolio is a good start to establishing and protecting your corporate brands online. However, it is just the beginning. While defensive registrations enable you to own and control the domain names that may be abused by third parties, it is simply impossible for any corporation to register every potentially harmful domain name. Therefore, the next critical step for defending your brands online is to establish a strategic monitoring program that constantly searches the internet for potential abuses, including:
Cybersquatting
Domain kiting/tasting
Trademark infringement
Traffic diversion schemes
False associations with unrelated third parties
Pay-per-click abuse
Sponsored in abuse
Logo/image abuse
Offensive content
Channel non-compliance with brand guidelines and/or pricing
Many small–and even larger–companies cannot afford to hire a person devoted to these critical tasks. This is what the bad guys count on. Again, a monitoring service is worth the price if it can save you the damage of brand equity loss, not to mention real money gone forever due to internet banditry. (They can also help you identify new customers–but that’s another post).
Brand managers should assess the degree to which website traffic is diverted to sites that abuse its brand and the amount of lost advertising revenue that is diverted to fraudulent pay-per-click sites, You should look at quantitative and qualitative indicators, including:
Degree of fewer “negative impressions” due to successfully shutting down web site which degrade your brand
Improvement in website traffic due to successfully shutting down traffic diversion tactics (Cybersquatting, pat-per-click sites, paid search ads)
Better quality response rate to online advertising due to successfully shutting down fraudulent pay-per-click sites
Productivity gains and/or hours saved per week in detecting and responding to infringement by leveraging available technologies and solutions
From the public relations perspective, monitoring is critical in protecting your brand’s reputation and credibility. One of the services we provide at AlexanderG Public Relations includes online brand monitoring and image management. This helps us head off potentially bad PR by identifying and addressing problems before they become full-blown crises; it also helps our clients determine where best to apply their messaging and online resources–often increasing market share in the process.
Nasty stuff outlined in this post is happening to oblivious companies everyday. The message is simple: if you don’t know what’s going in your online storefront, it’s the same as someone setting up a fake store just around the corner from yours in real-life –selling low quality goods and ruining your good name.
Filtered for Your Pleasure
Posted by Alex on September 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Reading SmartMoney magazine I came across a story by Anne Kadet about PowerReviews, “a little-known outfit processes reviews for online stores.” She adds that “Since the company’s 2005 launch, it has screened 9 million reviews.”
Kadet’s feature describes PowerReviews as the filter that many online stores use to screen out profanity, obviously false (inauthentic!) or off-topic reviews.
It’s an interesting story if you’ve ever wondered why your complaint about bad customer service at ACME Co. went missing:
So, retailers scrub the reviews on a regular basis. Oh well, even so if you have a gripe you can always blog, Tweet or Facebook about it on your own. And you should.
Filed under G Whiz, Message & Strategy, Public Relations, Tips & Tricks · Tagged with AlexanderG Public Relations, Anne Kadet, Bad pr, Brand identity, Branding, comment filter, Kansas City, Kansas City Public Relations, online complaints, PowerReviews, PR, PR tips, product reviews, profanity, public relations blog, review comments filter, reviews, SmartMoney, strategic public relations, trust agents