When answering a customer support enquiry, when replying a reporter’s email or a fan’s request, when simply sending out a sales offer, anticipating the next move you need to make to help the customer is the secret to your impressive success.  You need to be able to predict what their next question will be and reply to it before they actually ask it.

Let’s consider a few examples to better support my statement: anticipating questions is a PR superpower and by extension a business superpower. Continue reading

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

There is no better way to start the week then reading last week’s best business, marketing and PR pieces! So let’s kick this week off with a few reading recommendations!

Guest blogger Lena West explores The Unfortunate Burden of Poor Social Media Examples on LipSticking, discussing how bad examples seem to weigh a lot more than the overwhelmingly numerous good examples of businesses using social media.

Do you know what the difference between reach, outreach and reaching out is? Liz Strauss explains it in a great piece, stressing the importance of reaching out and connecting with someone, building a valuable relationship.

Once again proving there are things to be learned and to be successfully applied to your business virtually anywhere, Karen Swim shares 5 Sweet Business Lessons from the Cake Boss. Continue reading

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I have always had an interest in HR PR, that is the pr effort you put in to help out your Human Resources department to find the best employees and to communicate with existing staff in an effective way. When it comes to HR campaigns, it’s hard to see new stuff being pulled off. Most companies go to their overly tested job posting sites, wait for resumes to come in, then start reviewing and setting up interviews. Even the ads they post are somewhat standard and you rarely see a different approach.

That is why I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by Avira’s latest recruiting campaign. First, they have found a great way to reach potential employees. Not through job sites, but through their own product. After the update, there usually is a pop-up window letting users know what’s new at Avira – products, news, etc. The pop-up I noticed contained a job ad, and this happen a few times during several days. I thought it smart as it reached out to people who already liked the brand and if they had the required skills, would want to be part of the team that develops the product they love. Continue reading

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At a first and quick glance, Prova.fm does not seem to offer much more than other crowdsourced design sites. You basically are promised agency level designs for your logo, website, ads and more which also fit in your budget. The procedure is not new. You create a design contest for which you fill out a brief, set the amount you want to pay and wait for designers to submit their work. Just like in other cases of design contest sites following a similar pattern, you get more proposals than with any other agencies, you can interact with the designers and ask them to make the changes you need to pick the perfect fit.

Designers on the other hand get to showcase their work and if they are the lucky winners, they also get paid for their work. If they don’t win the contest, they can still submit their templates to a dedicated section of Prova.fm and get paid if someone else than the original company requesting the design work purchases them.

Pretty much a basic model, even if done perfectly, up to here. After spending some more time on the Prova.fm website and reading more about them on the Internet, I finally got to pinpoint what sets them apart. All contests can be promoted on various social media websites and combined with the voting system for submitted designes, companies looking for brands that work get to test them against their target audiences. Continue reading

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People have the habit of complaining about products and services online. When the complaints are relevant and an apology is needed, company representatives often post them on the blog where the initial problem was revealed. While some are great and solve the problem while both gaining the support and admiration of the blogger in question, others fail. After looking into a few of these apologies and trying to understand where people most commonly go wrong, I have rediscovered the art of writing effective replies to people’s problems.

But before I start, if you’re wondering why you should apologize in the first place, it’s because news travels fast online, if the problem is significant, there are great chances more people will complain and all that negativity will pop up when potential customers look you up online. You shouldn’t apologize for nonsense and give credibility to shady bloggers and nonexistant issues, but when the problem is real, you need to solve it, apologize for the inconvenience and let people know it has all been taken care of.

Here are a few tips for writing apologies that will help your company and not worsen the situation instead:

1. Recognize the problem and give it due consideration

Some apologies fail because while they say the “I’m sorry”, they fail to focus on the problem and the discomfort experienced by the customer. Instead, they rush through the apology and the unpleasant situation and focus on what the customer should have done, the proper channels to report the problem and how they can solve future problems. This is all wrong because if you’re replying, it’s clear the online piece of posting has reached its goal of making the issue known. Writing an apology that says this is not the right way and you won’t do much about it makes you look bad! Continue reading

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