The New Rules of Marketing and PR: Book Review (Part 2)

[By Sarah Faglio]

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, written by David Meerman Scott, a Businessweek bestseller, provides people with valuable insight into how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.  Meerman talks about all the hottest insider tips on the latest tools and techniques so readers could confidently market any product, service or idea.  After reading this book, I have provided an outline of the main ideas that Scott touches upon.  However, I encourage every marketer, company or anyone else looking to learn about the evolving marketing industry and strategies to read this book.  Scott goes through every one of these strategies with details and examples that makes it very easy for anyone, those with or without a marketing background, to understand and implement in their own endeavors.   

This is a continuation of the previous posting.

  
Thought Leadership Content 
White papers are written for a business audience, defines a problem, and offers a solution, but does not pitch a particular company or product.  E-books are PDF formatted documents of a little intrigue that solves a problem for your buyer personas.  Podcasts consists of flip videos that allow marketers to be ready to interview customers, employees and industry analysts.  It is also easy to quickly post videos, such as short clips showing how your products are made or used onto your website or blog.  Other examples of leadership content include: e-mail newsletters, webinars, wikis, research and survey reports,  photos, images, graphs, charts, blogs, audio and video.  Gobbledygook consists of overused phrases, industry jargon and overused language that has becoming meaningless.  Instead, it is important to write content for your buyers by providing information to Internet browsers when they need it, which can lead to a long and profitable relationship with your company.  Psychologists have shown that people learn better with different forms of media, therefore it is necessary to have messages in as many formats as possible.

Social Networking Sites
People join Facebook groups because they want to stay informed, but on their own time.  The best way to maintain a Facebook group is to make valuable information available.  People can post information to these group themselves, actively taking a part in the brand, as well as easily recommend the posts to others.  When it comes Twitter, you have to put yourself out there as an interested member of the community.  It takes time to build a following, but the best way to get people to pay attention to you is to participate by following others and responding to them as you would in a blogosphere.  To make the most out of social networking sites for marketing, it is important to keep these suggestions in mind:

• Target a specific audience.
• Be a thought leader.
• Be authentic and transparent.
• Create lots of links.
• Encourage people to contact you.
• Participate.
• Make it easy to find you.
• Experiment.

Blogging Tips

• Easy to use blogging software.
• Custom graphical image as your masthead.
• Turn on comments feature.
• Use captcha to prevent spamming.
• RSS capability.
• About page.
• Participate in online community,
• Do not write excessively about your company and products or services.

Blogging Ethics

• Transparency.  Do not pretend to be someone you aren't.
• Privacy.  Do not blog about something that was disclosed to you.
• Disclosure.  Disclose anything that is a conflict of interest.
• Truthfulness.  Do not lie.
• Credit.  Give credit to other bloggers. 

News Releases
Do not just send news releases when big news is happening, instead find good reasons to send them all the time.  Instead of just targeting a handful of journalists, create news releases that appeal directly to your buyers and drive them into the sales process.  Include offers that compel consumers to respond to your release in some way.  Place links in releases to deliver potential customers to landing pages on your website.  Optimize news release delivery for search and browsing, such as writing releases that are replete with keyword-rich copy.  Add social media tags for Technorati, Digg and Del.icio.us so your release will be found by users as well. 


News release distribution services make it possible to spread to online news services such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing.  It is important to create content for your buyers by thinking, speaking and writing like your customers do and focus on words and phrases that your buyers use.  As a search engine marketing tool, news releases are only as valuable as the keywords and phrases that are contained in them.  Post releases on your website, since high-quality news release content brands a company or a non-profit as a busy market player, an active expert in the industry and a trusted resource to turn to.   

Online Media Room
News release pages on your website update more often than most other parts of a typical website.  Search engine algorithms tend to rank news release pages among the highest on your website, driving traffic there first.  Newsroom sections are should always be updated with fresh content, not only with stories about your company, but about your industry, customers and the community in which your company does business.  This content should also include videos and photos to enhance the appeal of the news release.  It is important to write for the needs of the buyers and journalists (or bloggers) instead of the needs of those who own the other parts of your organization's website.  Be sure to take bloggers seriously by granting interviews and acquiesce requests made by these strong online influences.  Consider potential users of the online media room and what content will be valuable to them.  Press kits contain background materials about your company, which helps journalists write stories.  Calendar events list the conferences, executive appearances and tradeshow events that your company participates in.  This shows that your company is active in your industry and helps to build your corporate credibility.  RSS subscription pages are used as part of the online media room as a primary way to deliver news release content.