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Talking ‘bout a Trust Evolution

This morning I attended the Trust Summit breakfast briefing at the Harvard Club in New York.  The event consisted of a panel moderated by Robin Carey, CEO of SocialMediaToday, and included “Trust Agents” authors and social media gurus Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, along with David Maister and Charles Green, authors of the original book on trust, “The Trusted Advisor.”

Whether it’s with services, software or something else entirely, today’s speakers talked about how we can move the needle.  As the panel pointed out, the idea of trust isn’t anything new; however, the ways in which we can engender that trust are evolving.  The questions become not only about what to say and where and how you say it, but also what value you bring to others.  It’s often immeasurable.

So how do we become a “trust agent” or trusted advisor?  Challenge the status quo with social media.  Be helpful and interested.  Deviate from the script.  In other words, be ready to take some chances and for the mistakes that come along the way.  The bottom line:  if you stick with what you say you believe and actually do it consistently, you’re on the right track. 

I never would have dreamed that I’d say this, but I think Vanilla Ice was onto something.  Chris Brogan quoted him, giving one of the best pieces of advice about how to get involved in social media:  “Trust, collaborate and listen.”  The rest, and valued relationships, will come along the way.

By Katy Zack

A Lesson from “The Boss” … Keep it Fresh

A few weeks ago, I saw my fifth Bruce Springsteen concert with a coworker (@markvh80) and, as usual, it was amazing.  It was so good that I bought tickets to see him again next month too.  For a guy who’s been around since before I was even born (I won’t reveal the year, but let’s just say the man’s been around the block a few times), he certainly knows how to keep it fresh – making his shows consistently exciting and different for veteran fans, but edgy and appealing for new fans as well.

In a moment of dorkiness (there are many), I couldn’t help but see a parallel between Bruce keeping his material fresh and the fact that Articulate has such long-term clients, which is a rarity in the PR industry.  Hear me out here.  The PR industry is notorious for high client turnover.  It is rare to see a firm and a client together for more than a year or two.  But that’s not the case here at all.  In fact, most of our clients have been with us for many years – and take us with them when they leave one job for another.  Why is this?  We keep it fresh. 

With long-term relationships, it’s so easy for things to get stale.  We go out of our way to switch up the PR program before it gets to that “blah” stage.  The technology industry is constantly evolving – and that means PR has to as well.  If you’re not trying new things, thinking outside the box (even though I hate that term) and taking risks, you don’t stand a chance.  From a PR perspective, you might have a nice six-month project under your belt, but no long-term relationship.  It’s our responsibility to push clients to think differently and take chances.  How can you blame them if they dump you after a year of the same-old thing?   

Before you get snarky about it, I am not saying that I’m the Bruce Springsteen of PR (although if you want to call me that, I’d be totally OK with it!).  But there is definitely something to learn from a person who’s been around for that long – and inspires such loyalty in people.  

Now, if he’ll just sing “Rosalita” at the next concert I’m at, I can die in peace!   

By Megan Garnett

Who Owns Social Media?

A very interesting article in AdWeek this week caught my eye:   Who “owns” social media programs within a company?  Is it marketing?  Corporate communications?  Customer service?  HR? 

Social media still means – and should mean – different things depending on your target audience.  Consumer marketing is very different from B2B marketing for a reason:  The person you’re selling to and your target market.  A customer-service initiative on Twitter makes perfect sense for the makers of Tylenol, who are communicating directly with a wide swath of the general public on critical issues near and dear to their hearts.  But for a software maker who sells to an IT buyer in a vertical market, airing grievances or addressing complaints in a public forum could have a deleterious impact.  After all, does everyone buy software for the same reason (to cure an ache or fever?) or implement it the same way (take two every six hours?)?

A few ways to consider how social media supports some critical business initiatives:
• Hiring:  Tools like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and Twitter can be invaluable as a way of quickly targeting and conveying the firm’s attributes and business needs.  Owners?  HR and Corporate Communications.
• Customer Relationship Building:  Social media is a great way to build public and limited-access venues for furthering and improving relationships with your current customer base.  As user conferences wax and wane in viability, social media puts your customers in direct contact with you, and if you want, each other.  Owners?  Sales, Marketing and Corporate Communications all carry the weight.
• Publicity:  Owners?  Corporate communications and Marketing work hand-in-hand in broadcasting company news.
• Thought Leadership:  Owners?  Corporate communications and Marketing again.
• Brand Enhancement and Management:  Owner?  Marketing, with Corporate Communications in a support role.

For businesses that sell to other businesses, keep your end goals in mind, and apply social media accordingly.

By Laura Grimmer

Higher Education vs. Real-World Experience: A Happy Medium?

I read a blog post today on Journalistics where the writer discussed his feelings on the APR (Accreditation in Public Relations).  There has been an ongoing debate in the public relations (PR) industry about the value of the APR program, and it made me think about the value of a PR education as a whole.

I must preface this by telling you that I am currently working toward a master’s degree in PR and corporate communication at NYU – so I definitely see value in higher education.  I chose to pursue this because my undergraduate degree is not in PR, and I assumed that further education would be the best way for me to understand my new profession.  While I’ve been lucky enough to have a full-time job in PR while attending classes, I now realize that my education would not have been nearly as helpful without on-the-job experience to supplement it.

Listening to a professor tell you how to interact with the media or compile a strategic communications plan is one thing, but it’s not as relatable as doing it yourself.  I find that it’s just as valuable to learn on the job from your coworkers as it is to learn in a classroom.  At Articulate, Laura Grimmer has developed “The Articulate Way” program, which encourages employees to work together and rely on one another to expand their knowledge base and grow their careers.

I learn new things from my coworkers every day and I believe that this knowledge can’t be learned through a classroom or accreditation alone.  While I can’t say that I’m for or against the APR program, I think that whatever higher degrees or accreditation we pursue in PR has to be supplemented with daily interaction on the job.

By Ashleigh Egan

Why Do I LIke Fall?

When you’re a kid, the change of seasons marks large events like back to school, Christmas or summer vacation.  As you grow into adulthood, it starts to have very different meanings. 

October rolls around and I start thinking about things like planning for the next year, tradeshow season and cleaning out my closet.  Whatever the case, the fall has us reflecting on the past nine months and recalibrating to ensure we close out the year stronger than ever. 

This year, much like last, has been very different though.  I think many are still looking at the past nine months and just hoping to come out alive.  I’ve gathered that sentiment from a lot of people, but, thankfully, I don’t feel it here.  Instead, we’re doing what we usually do in the fall – taking a look at the past three quarters, learning what we can from business trends and “lessons learned” and focusing on coming out on top.  In fact, Articulate announced that it added six new clients to the family just last week.  Talk about finishing up the year on top! 

So, why do I really like the fall?  (Beside my birthday!)  It is a time to realign priorities; it’s when we see the light at the end of the tunnel, the last leg of the race.  Happy fall!

By Kate Corcoran

Never Underestimate the Power of Relationships

In an industry as networking-heavy as PR, it’s easy to meet a lot of people, swap business cards and never come away with any valuable connections for your business.  It’s even easier to see clients come and go and relationship fade along the way.  While for some, it might be easier to forget people and move on, I’ve definitely learned that maintaining relationships is probably the single most important thing you can do in business.

Earlier this week, we announced that Articulate signed six new clients.  While they are companies we’ve never worked with before, they aren’t all “new” – and none of them came out of thin air.  A whopping 90 percent of those companies were clients we’d worked with previously, who changed companies, started new ones or were direct referrals from current Articulate clients and partners. 

The best part is that it’s not an anomaly.  It’s our business.  We have an 80 percent client retention rate and we get more than 70 percent of our new business from referrals or standing relationships. 

It’s well known that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one.  So pick up the phone.  Send out an e-mail.  Follow up with people you’ve worked with before.  It goes beyond networking – it’s about smart business.  I got an e-mail yesterday from someone who used to be a spokesperson for one of our clients.  I stayed in touch with her while she was in between jobs, helped her network with folks, etc.  Yesterday, she had her first day at a new company – and I was the first person she reached out to.  Never underestimate the importance of relationships.

By Meghan Attreed

Standardizing PR Measurement – A Long Time Coming

Earlier this week, the PRSA announced that it would be releasing a “set of recommended metrics and approaches for evaluating public relations’ influence on key business outcomes.”  For many in the PR community, this is the often-dreaded “M” word:  measurement.

Clients, especially those in the technology industry, like to see hard numbers – and in this economy (or any economy, for that matter), rightfully so.  They know how well their salespeople are performing based on numbers, so why not also evaluate how well their PR agency is performing based on metrics?

One of our goals at Articulate is to tie all PR activities back to the business goals of our clients.  We do this by creating awareness.  The obvious question is:  how can you accurately measure awareness?

I am not a proponent of measuring PR performance based on publication circulation rates.  I know this is a popular method, but in reality I don’t believe it is accurate.  For example, I read this week’s New York, but skipped some articles, so should I be measured as one of the 427,770 readers of the publication?  I’m sure I was by more than one company who received coverage in this week’s issue.

We in PR have to prove our worth and success in creative ways.  Are journalists coming to us proactively, saying that our client would be a great fit for their story?  Are our clients getting included in more analyst reports than they did before we started working with them?  Does Web-site traffic soar on days when press releases are put on the wire?  If so, we’ve started creating awareness.  Did your new customer mention that he/she read about your company in a particular publication?  Did a sales person say how great it was to leverage a recent editorial mention with a new business lead?  Do you hear rumors that the CEO of your biggest competitor is “losing it” over the amount of coverage you’re receiving?  Now we are closer to our goal.

I applaud the PRSA for taking on the task of creating these recommended metrics, and I’m excited to see what develops in the coming months.  If you’re interested in learning more or participating in the process, the PRSA is welcoming industry comments via its comPRehension blog.  We’d also like to hear your thoughts on this measurement debate, and welcome you to send through your opinions to blog@articulatepr.com

By Ashleigh Egan
 

Reporter Requests with a Side of Humor

Among some of the useful tools PR professionals use to identify media opportunities for clients are services such as ProfNet and Help a Reporter Out (HARO).  For those who aren’t familiar with these services, they are online resources that connect reporters quickly and easily with expert sources.  Throughout the day they send us alerts on articles that reporters are working on and what type of experts they are looking to speak with.  We sift through these to see if there are any opportunities for our clients to gain exposure on a particular topic.

One of Articulate’s trademarks is our ability to think creatively in terms of how to get clients included in articles that may not be directly relevant to their areas of focus, but are still great ways to raise awareness for them.  This approach often leads us to some odd requests from reporters that always give us a good laugh. 

For the past month, we’ve had an ongoing contest in the office to see who can find the strangest request each week.  We’ve decided to share a few of these requests every so often on this blog so our readers can share in the entertainment (and just to note, none of our clients were pitched for these stories!): 

• Aug. 3:  “A popular youth-oriented male magazine wishes to find out if it would be possible for a human being to survive inside a whale for a significant amount of time.  Experts needed.”
• Aug. 5:  “A daily New York paper is working on an article about the ongoing saga of Jon and Kate Gosselin, and Jon’s penchant for acquiring new girlfriends with ease.  I am writing a piece on how is it that Jon is such a lothario.  His demeanor?  His looks?  This piece is not so much on why, but how he’s a lothario.  I would love to speak with psychologists or any other expert who could address this with me.”
• Aug. 20:  “A national magazine for luxury-minded pet parents, seeks recipes for dogs from notable chefs around the country – people who usually do not cater to dogs.  With each recipe we’d also like a professional-quality, hi-resolution shot of the chef with his or her own dog, a brief chef bio and a one-sentence summary of the recipe.”

By Jonathan Klein

Articulate’s Long-Time Client Goes Public!

In 2004, Articulate began working with Ross Systems, an enterprise resource planning and supply chain management provider.  Per Articulate’s standards, the team hit the ground running and immediately showcased its value.  The following year, Ross was acquired by CDC Software and it was a given that Articulate would lead CDC’s PR program.  In the years to come, CDC made another 20 strategic acquisitions – with Articulate along for the ride as an integral part of communicating its corporate strategy.

In 2009, CDC decided to become a public company.  Last week, it was listed on NASDAQ and CEO Peter Yip was invited to ring the opening bell.  On Friday, Aug. 7,  Meghan Attreed and I were invited to ring the opening bell along with the company.  We had an absolute blast!  Our faces appeared several times on the side of the NASDAQ building.  Take a look at some of the photos!

By Kate Corcoran

Are Media Ethics Changing?

With Twitter becoming a media darling as of late, it has been the target of countless questions about its financial stability.  Journalists from the mainstream media to blogs have been discussing and speculating on its viability for months.  Obviously, any chance to satisfy one’s curiosity and see the actual numbers would be a dream come true for many reporters.  But where is the line drawn on methods used to obtain information?

TechCrunch actually got its hands on these numbers.  The influential blog obtained Twitter’s private financial documents via a hacker who targeted a company employee and broke into her Google Enterprise Apps account where the documents were stored.  As news spread throughout the industry, experts began to focus less on how the documents were obtained and more on the implications to Twitter, Google and enterprise cloud adoption.

If we ignore how this story came to light, are we slowly inching our way toward the edge of a very steep cliff?  By obtaining these documents through illegal means, TechCrunch is dangerously close to setting a new standard for information-gathering practices in the media.  And with the industry not united in criticizing the methodology, it will be interesting to see if more private company data ends up on the front page in months to come.

By Kate Reed