This morning I had the pleasure of giving a presentation to an engaged group of people involved with early childhood education and family services at the Augusta Civic Center. Called “Engaged Communities, Growing Small Children,” the conference focused around a book called “The Charismatic Organization, 8 Ways to Grow a Nonprofit,” by Shirley Sagawa. I tied my presentation in to Shirley’s book by talking about how organizations can engage themselves better with their communities through effective communications if they share their stories and newsworthy events on an ongoing basis. Continue Reading »

I met with a client recently who was struggling with ways to come up with ideas for their company’s blog and Facebook pages. They felt that every blog post had to be about something new and newsworthy happening at their company and every Facebook post had to have something worthy of front page news coverage.

I told them that one of the beauties of social media is that it allows public relations people like me or organizations’ representatives to show the human side of the company. I said, “don’t be afraid to share your personality, talk about what you’re doing, what you’re reading and what you find interesting.”

Of course you should post news about new hires, awards, new clients, new projects or other ‘hard’ news items. But your blog readers, or friends and fans on Facebook will also be interested in what books you are reading, what articles you find interesting, and random things happening at your company, like a visitor from out of state or a moose walking through your driveway. Social media is an act of socializing, which includes some ‘chit chat’ about yourself that helps others get to know you better.

How do you think creatively when it comes to brainstorming ideas for content on your blog, tweets on Twittter, or posts on your Facebook page? I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this topic.

If you are looking to consistently write high quality content and optimize your web pages, then Website Magazine has a guide to help you achieve high rankings in the search engines. I encourage you to read this article.  These recommendations from author John Alexander,  include first researching your key words, writing down the bulleted points you want to make in your article, and then allowing at least 48 hours for your content to ’settle’ before you publish (just as your English teacher in high school encoruaged you to do!). Continue Reading »

Through the PR social media communities I participate in, I have ‘met’ Ayelet Noff, who owns a social media consultancy called Blonde 2.0.  I love the way she writes and thinks abot social media. She kindly gave me permission to share her  blog post with my readers.

I’ve been in the social media space now for quite a few years and I meet with at least 5 com­pa­nies each week who have under­stood the impor­tance of uti­liz­ing social media for their busi­nesses but are still afraid of enter­ing their brands into the new media age.

What are they wor­ried about? Here are the top five con­cerns that I’ve heard from exec­u­tives and my response to them:

1) They’re afraid they’ll lose con­trol of their brand and open them­selves up to neg­a­tive feed­back — When you open a busi­ness and start mar­ket­ing your ser­vices and expos­ing your brand to oth­ers, peo­ple will start talk­ing about your brand. And this is why you exposed them to your brand in the first place.
Peo­ple are going to be talk­ing about your brand no mat­ter what. The ques­tion is: Do you want to be a part of the dia­logue or do you want to just play ostrich and ignore what peo­ple are say­ing? If a per­son is dis­sat­is­fied with your ser­vices, do you pre­fer he opens up this dis­cus­sion in a “I hate ” group opened up by another hater or do you pre­fer that he come to your page and post the com­plaint there allow­ing you to respond appro­pri­ately and even per­haps win him back as a client? Continue Reading »

How often have you spent time adding contacts on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, all the time wondering if the investment of your precious time would actually lead to something (other than creative procrastination from what you should really be doing at any given moment?) Continue Reading »

We publish a monthly e-newsletter called The NMC Report that focuses on the intersection between public relations and the Web. Since my agency was founded in 1991 purely as a public relations firm, and has grown from there into a full-service Web site development, Marketing Communications and Internet Marketing agency, we use our e-newsletter to share our knowledge and expertise with our readers. Continue Reading »

One of the things I love the most about having an agency where we work with lots of different clients  is the opportunity to get to know some really nice people. We had that opportunity recently when the owners of Northeast Merchandising in Skowhegan asked us to come in and talk with them about a new logo and a new Web site. We actually ended up renaming their company as well, from Northeast Merchandising to Northeast Coffee Company. Jen Libby,one of my great graphic designers, came up with the cool new logo design and she also did the design for the new site through our Marshall Interactive Division. We did a press release about the new logo and site that you can see on Mainetoday.com. Continue Reading »

When I first learned about Search Engine Optimization(SEO), I was working with a Maine whitewater rafting company that had their accountant optimizing their site for them in his spare time. He was able to easily baffle me by talking about the logarithms for each of the search engines. This was at least 10 years ago, back around the time that we were spending a lot of time worrying about how all our computers were going to crash with the onset of Y2K.  Back then, we didn’t think about Google as much as we did Yahoo, Alta Vista, and even AskJeeves. Today, Google rules the roost when it comes to SEO.

Being a typical PR person, I have always thought more about words and images than about numbers. So when I even heard the word “logarithm,” I was immediately convinced that I would never be able to “do” SEO. The accountant easily convinced me that I needed to pay him to do it for my own site and my clients’ sites. Continue Reading »

At our Web Development division, Marshall Interactive, we publish a monthly e-newsletter called The Internet Entrepreneur. Later today we will release the July edition.

I wrote the introduction letter last week about how I believe that people who enjoy socializing in person are also the most likely to enjoy online socializing. Conversely, those people who prefer to keep to themselves are more likely to stay away from online social networking sites.  I wrote about the eight summers I spent at summer camp in New Hampshire where I was able to socialize with friends 24/7, and I loved every minute of it! That’s because I tend to be a real-world socializer as well as an online socializer. Continue Reading »

Here’s another good article  from “Destination CRM” about the trend toward online advertising and the shift from traditional PR to online marketing techniques.  The great thing about marketing on the web is that you can measure and analyze everything you do. You can tell what people like and what they don’t. You can change your course quickly and efficiently.

It’s really quite amazing how the web can teach us about the preferences of the public and of our targeted publics specifically. And with the kind of comments and feedback that people give you on the web, it’s easy to solicit opinions from visitors to your site. I believe that’s why, in these tough times, marketers are turning to the web for results and ongoing feedback from their customers and prospective customers.