These days most businesses are handling a considerable number of their operations online. Many companies are finding that many of their commercial transactions are being handled online, much of their marketing campaigns are being waged online, and even many in-house operations are being pursued online. For instance, a good number of companies conduct seminars for leadership training online.

Many companies are also storing their data online, in the cloud, in order to save money on hardware and energy costs. One of the newest online trends for businesses is reputation management services, all of which seek to shape a company’s brand by developing positive web content and SEO. Where once a company might have focused their Public Relations budget entirely on events and publicity, the rise of the Internet and social media has forced all industries to keep track of brand awareness online. Here are a few of the ways this is being done:

Bring in the bloggers

Many prominent bloggers will write sponsored reviews and if their blogs receive considerable traffic a link to your company’s site can accomplish a number of tasks at once. One, it is a great source of link-building, which helps your SEO. Two, it (hopefully) creates positive content about your brand name. And three) with the help of social media you can get the post shared, tweeted, dug, stumbled upon, etc. Your company should have it’s own blog too, which is necessary for any kind of meaningful SEO.

Engage with consumers directly

One of the most beneficial aspects of social media for businesses is the ability to easily engage with consumers through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In and dozens of other sites. Where branding used to be limited to television and print advertising, the Internet presents an entirely new niche for brand management. Use Twitter to monitor what people are saying about you, build networks, index conversations, integrate third party tools into your company’s blog (again, your company should definitely have a blog). In 2010, Pepsi spent their entire Super Bowl advertising budget on social media promotions—20 million dollars. So, yes, it works.

Keep track of negative reviews

Bad Yelp reviews can badly harm your business. In addition to releasing positive content to counteract the negative, you should engage with the reviewers. Offer them incentives to return to your service. Address their concerns and grievances. In many ways, reputation management is the new PR, or at least the newest incarnation of it. If your company is looking to get an advantage over the competition, optimize yourself for the web and invest in online reputation management.

Guest post by Dave Mathews

Since startups and small businesses have limited financial budget, their reliance on a well thought-out marketing plan is a rarity. But the point that a marketing plan makes or breaks a business cannot be emphasized enough.

It has been reported by Forrester Research in their research that from all over the world, more than $200 billion were spent online in 2011 by the Americans alone, with an estimation of the total jacking up to $327 billion in 2016. This proves Bill Gates statement that, “the Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”

It is a reported practice by some of the companies that they stress on sales before actually coming up with, or implementing, a marketing plan. This usually turns disadvantageous because, understandably, a potential client will be hesitant to buy a product/service he is not familiar with.

But this can be avoided by taking advantage of mediums that allow for a business to create its online presence. A startup can spread its word to a targeted audience by using social media, and resultantly creating a reliable and strong clientage and customer relationship. This article aims to get you acquainted with ways you can market your startup online.

The first step to creating a successful marketing strategy is to have a logo that gives your startup or small business a distinctively idiosyncratic edge.  A logo of your business is like a receptionist. It is be the first thing about your business that potential customers see, and as they say, first impression is the last impression. So put up your best face!

Social media is being increasingly used by businesses because of the advantages it carries and adopting   a few smart social media marketing strategies will have your business on its way to success.

LinkedIn has consistently proved itself as a network of professionals that helps in gaining business leads for your startup and expanding your professional circle. Read more.

Twitter has proved itself as a force to reckon with as far as allowing businesses to market themselves is concerned. (Learn how)

PInterest is, albeit new, but has seen success in the statistical count of people joining it. It allows businesses to share pictures of their products and services. (Learn how)

Create a blog to share useful content related to your business with the readers. This helps in diverting traffic on your website, besides acting as a marketing tool for your startup. Here’s how you can set up a blog on WordPress, but make sure it is then listed in web directories like the one of Google (learn how) because millions of people search blogs through them.

Initiate a video blog because it is reported by comScore that users watch approximately 186 videos a month, testifying for their success in reaching millions of viewers across the globe. Amongst the mediums used for video blogging, Youtube has seen tremendous success and playbacks reaching as much as 700 billion in 2011.

Co-market your business with other businesses that share their products/services with you. This is a great way for startups to save money that would otherwise be spent on implementing solo marketing plans.

Build credibility by joining Step by Step and writing on topics that relate to your target market.  Whether it is a retail outlet in London or a business providing services in Montreal, the titles can be endless to get your name in the list of experts.

A marketing plan should have all the ingredients to morph your business from a startup into a success story, and applying all of these techniques for online marketing is sure to give your business the push it needs towards the road of triumph.

About the author

This post is contributed by Dave Mathews, looking after PR activities of Stepbystep.com. Public Relations and Social Media Marketing are Dave’s areas of expertise.

The rise of Twitter as a powerful social media tool as seen its deployment in a wide variety of marketing, journalism, and propaganda campaigns. Recently many companies have also begun to use Twitter as a Public Relations tool. From real time communication to brand reputation, Twitter can be used for public relations, but only if your PR team is wise and careful. Here are three factors to keep in mind:

Twitter creates a real-time dialogue without taking on dangerous newscasts

Almost like having your own global LP Chat software, Twitter creates a running dialogue with the world that can be updated so rapidly it begins to take on characteristics of real time communication. This can be extremely beneficial for time-sensitive events related to product releases, political campaigns, and even international stock market tips. With the world more connected than ever, the ability to spread information efficiently and instantaneously allows companies and public entities to address issues concurrently with network news cycles.

You should Tweet informative links that show that your company is working on the problem

Because Twitter allows you to share links with thousands, even millions of followers, what you say has added importance. Especially given the truncated nature of the message, when using Twitter for PR it’s important to remember to use your tweets wisely. After the 2010 oil spill, BP used their Twitter account to keep people updated about the efforts they were making to contain the leak and protect the coastal inhabitants and ecosystems. Links to reports on their efforts were probably far more effective at conveying information and reducing anger than a press conference full of lawyer-written canned responses.

Be careful not to add fuel to the fire

A recent McDonald’s campaign about new efforts to make their fast food menu healthy backfired when Twitter subscribers began to lampoon the global icon about the quality of its ingredients and health benefits. The campaign quickly became a joke and likely caused damage to the brand. If your company is perceived a certain way, don’t use Twitter to try and reverse that image. You’re setting yourself up for disaster. Twitter is for subtle branding adjustments, not a complete reputation overhaul. Tweets are composed of only 140 characters, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful as satirical weapons.

As you can see, it’s not just marketers who are using Twitter as an online tool. Corporate executives also use it as a PR strategy, and for good reason. Twitter can be a powerful vessel for information, but it must be used wisely and carefully.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

When introducing potential customers to a product or service, PR professionals know they need to focus on benefits. Features are there to create some sort of gain for those who purchase whatever a company or individual is selling. Ideally, when a new product or service is launched, those behind it think in terms of benefits, be it real ones or just apparent ones – making people feel cool when they need to is just as much of a benefit as helping them grow their business.

We do consider benefits, and those clearly stated, to be a way to help sell more, increase brand awareness and get all the recognition a company deserves. Simply put, benefits return benefits – monetary gain, image boosts, new opportunities. Therefore, to become successful, you need to help your customers become successful. 

A happy customer  makes for a good review and a few recommendations. A successful customer, recognized as such by the industry or the entire world, that makes for a successful company, plenty of reviews and plenty more buying customers.

A big success that is directly linked to your product or service is quite the stroke of luck, the gold mine every company and their PR team dreams of. But it’s not really something you can focus on, is it? You cannot just review your customers and think about who has the biggest chances of becoming successful. So what can you do?

First of all, make sure you think in terms of success when you launch something – product or service. A useful product that helps reduce costs and saves time means more of a client’s resources invested in making themselves a hit. More so if your product is instrumental to their success.

It happens – a piece of software helps create another one that becomes world renown. This 14 year old that took a startup to stardom is not a unique case.

The second thing you need to consider is that you must be able to identify success related to your products. You have to keep an eye on your customers and their achievements and determine which were given a helping hand by your product and services. Taking their spotlight is not your best move, but pointing out you got them there is a great tactic. The caveat is that you must be tactful about it and not try to make it all about you. In the end, it is really about that customer that was smart enough to turn your product or service into something awesome!

Success stories are convincing. The fame associated with someone quickly becoming known to the world can be easily turned into future benefits, simply because we all like to think we could be a great success, if only we had the right tools and the right state of mind. Potential buyers need to know you’ll help them solve their problems, but they also love to know you could change their lives in certain circumstances, help them achieve everything they wanted.

The truth is, with the right product or service, targeting the right customers, you actually can! The right technology can help a struggling business get ahead of their competition and make it big. The right advice can help another position themselves better, identify opportunities and run a profitable business. The right equipment can certainly make the differece at times!

Success is something every business should desire for their customers. It leads to the provider’s own success. It is not so much a dream to catch naive potential buyers with, it’s a desireable possibility we all hope for and work towards.

Now, over to you – what products or services helped you succeed? Who are those brilliant people that showed you the way to your dream? Who did you help achieve greatness? Let’s talk!

Guest post by Susan Daniels

Social media is an integral part of any PR efforts. We all know the importance of having multiple social media accounts, and why we should be Tweeting and posting everyday to maintain good online standing.

But what do you do when Tweeting or posting to Facebook fails? How do you manage the masses and save your business when an inappropriate Tweet or post hits the web? A social media PR fail can ruin a business, but that doesn’t mean it has to ruin yours. By integrating the following 10-Step program you can be on the positive road to recovery in no time:

1. Admit You Are Powerless

Once you click submit, there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of frantically trying to devise some mastermind way to crash the internet or trying to buy the best SEO software to bury your FAIL deep, simply accept the social media PR FAIL you have just created.

2. Admit Your Fault

Once you realize that you have done something wrong, you need to figure out what type of social media disaster you have created.

3. Accept Your Shortcomings

After your failure, you need to immediately act. This is not the time to dwell on you or your business’ shortcomings that brought you to this disaster. Simply accept your shortcomings and start being proactive.

4. Realize that There is a Solution

While a social media failure can cause serious harm to a business, it doesn’t mean that the business is ruined forever. Realize that there is a solution, and that it must be actively sought.

5. Create a Plan

Trying to recover from a social media PR Fail can quickly become overwhelming – especially when the angry masses are coming after you. To prevent yourself from further panicking or abandoning hope altogether, it is wise to create a plan for recovery you can actively stick to.

6. Consider all You Have Potentially Harmed

Noting all the damaged parties is a great way for you to prepare yourself for the onslaught of remarks that will come your way. People will be upset, hurt, and/or angry. If you know who you have potentially hurt, it will make apologizing in advance easier too.

7. Apologize to All You Have Harmed

Now comes the hard part – apologizing. Even if you believe that your post or Tweet was taken out of context, you must swallow your pride and apologize. Refusing to do so will only incite the angered masses even more.

8. Continue to Lay Low

Although you have apologized, people will still be upset. Be prepared to continue to deal with this by simply laying low and continuing to apologize. You should currently be in damage control mode.

9. Seek Further Insight

The calm after the storm can leave you wondering how you or your business will ever recover. Don’t be afraid of the debris left behind. Seek insight from other companies that have experience similar events, and also ask yourself what caused the social media outburst to begin with. This insight will not only help you rebuild, but it will keep you from repeating the same mistakes.

10. Redeem Yourself

Now it is time to continue on as the good business you were before – but a little more wisely this time. Be the business you want to be, and give your once loyal customers a reason to trust you again.

The road to recovery after a social media PR fail is by no means easy. But if you actively seek recovery, you and your business will be able to eventually recover. Just know that it will be an uphill battle and it will require both time and energy.

About the author
Susan Daniels is an internet marketer for 43a.com. In her spare times she likes to write guest posts for marketing related blogs.

Public relations is not always an easy-peasy walk through the bark. A lot of times getting results from a PR campaign involves a lot of effort: thinking it through, brainstorming, drafting and then reviewing everything you need, choosing the right channels to communicate, reaching out to the media, bloggers, fans, evangelists, friends and partners, monitoring and measuring your progress, fine-tuning and starting again, right from the beginning.

It takes time and resources to make PR efforts work for a certain company, person, non profit or cause. But there are also times when an opportunity to make your story known just lands on your lap. An interview request , an invitation to speak at a conference, a friendly request to take part in a high profile online debate. Everyone would smile and cheer just thinking of such a possibility. But the reality is, a lot of companies just don’t find the time to make the most out of these opportunities. 

I know both from the stories of others and personal experience that companies, especially small ones, often ignore such requests due to lack of time or lack of resources (a person able to properly respond to such invitations). Some of you might be surprised, but it happens. Money is not the only resource that’s often lacking in the business world. Bare in mind I am not referring to companies that get media requests 10 times a day, but those where such events are not frequent at all and they could use the publicity.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, what can you do? Here are a few ideas:

• Try harder to find the time. Offer overtime payments to your employees, free up a few hours in your own schedule, even if it messes up your weekend, but don’t ignore an opportunity to get some awareness for your brand and possibly reach some potential customers.
• Find someone to do it for you. An agency, a PR freelancer, they are not that hard to find and for such a small project it won’t cost you a fortune. It would definitely cost you less than advertising in the same publication and also would be cheaper than paying someone to generate such an opportunity for your company.
• If you just need more time, contact the journalist or conference organizer, or site owner and ask them for a few more days. It works a lot better than ignoring them. Even if they don’t have enough time, you can start a conversation with them and maybe convince them to keep you in mind the next time they cover your industry or an issue where your expertise is an asset.

Actually finding a solution for a problem is sometimes easier than it seems at first. Opportunities are not something to take for granted or ignore, they are something you need to spot and make work in your favor.

Have you ever been in such a situation? Do you regret missing an opportunity to get your business known?

Guest post by Susan Daniels

New research out in the PR space seems to favor the use of theory-based PR relations techniques. But by thinking inversely, like a person using a search engine’s reverse phone number lookup to stop businesses from doing solicitations, people can build great stories to capture any audience and build better brand recognition.

Catherine Sweet is one that disagrees with those perpetuating the theory-based PR. She says that “my teaching has made me realize the power of ‘story telling’ as being the best form of PR and communication there is. As humans, we are hardwired to listen and learn; it’s how we acquire language in the first place.” To her, storytelling is a much more effective communication technique for PR, and gives those in PR some creative expression to think directly or indirectly.

Whether good PR using storytelling helps promote a product, business, brand, person, cure, or country, it has to take inconsideration different aspects of building a story: structure, them, plot, characters, perspective, and overall message conveyed. PR storytelling is all about listening more and talking less, informing less and entertaining more to an audience ready to here a good story.

The top four points you need to consider when using storytelling versus theory-based PR techniques to build brand recognition or company appeal include:

1. Think about how media has changed over time

When the internet was first circulating, people trusted the web much like their local news—to inform and educate. In today’s time, for the majority of people using the web, they turn to internet to entertain them more than to inform or educate. The more tech-reliant a person is the more storytelling PR will capture them. This is the time to think of all the components of good story telling like setting, plot, conflict, climax, dialogue, and theme.

2. Try to add drama to the story

Journalists, bloggers, and writers cannot succeed unless they use storytelling and PR professionals need to think that way. Dramatic content always appeals to individuals and businesses more than purely informative. The best way establish dramatic content in PR storytelling is to compare contrast time and/or technology. By this, I mean to create as much distance between two time periods or when something new was created, which makes any brand, company, etc. seem that much more innovative and progressive.

3. The Human Brain Craves stories

Children and adults alike are conditioned from a young age to become dependent on stories. Stories are how people inform their lives, build memory about situations, and store knowledge for later use. PR professionals must realize that people use stories to interpret events and make sense out of anything their looking to consume and/or purchase. A good story creates a sign to buy.

4. Use storytelling to create personality

By having fun with different ways of thinking, inverse or traditional and direct or indirect, good PR storytelling needs has eliminated unnecessary jargon, lingo, or traditional terminology from the matrix of the particular business or brand.

PR professionals should turn to storytelling or theory-based techniques to make a brand and/or business grow and sustain a positive image (creative indirect thinking works better).

About the author
Susan Daniels is an internet marketer for 43a.com. In her spare times she likes to write guest posts for marketing related blogs.

Photo source

This year’s edition of The Business Growth Summit, an online event bringing together leading experts to share their strategies on how to grow a business, leverage opportunities, and increase profits starts today and will continue until September 23rd. What the summit actually offers is free, on demand access to videos by well known experts in the social media, marketing, PR and business development fields to help small businesses promote themselves more effectively and sell more.

Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Dan Schawbel, Amy Cosper, Carrie Wilkerson are only a few of the people you must learn from through the Business Growth Summit. If you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, work-from-home professional or thinking of making a career switch to become either one, you should register for this online event and start watching the 5 to 20 minute videos the best and brightest of today’s business minds have to offer.

Yours truly, on behalf of the Mirror Communications agency, is also part of The Business Growth Summit. The video I have contributed is titles “How to Get More Business from the Social Media Clutter” and will help you decide what’s worthwhile and efficient from the huge social media world, what will help your business achieve better results.

After attending this business online event, please share your experience, your questions or your feedback either here, in the comment section, on Twitter, Facebook or via email.

Wish you all a great week and enjoy the summit!

Languages evolve. New words appear, we start using them, they eventually make their way into the dictionaries, and are thus vouched for. Until that point, new words are o sort of mambo jumbo for a lot of people. We all remember when the very common verb ‘to google’ first appeared in the dictionary. It then continued with blog, blogger, tweet, woot, sexting, bromance, and other words that have recently made their way into our every day chats.

PR professionals and communication experts have an interesting position when it comes to these new words, especially when they focus on the online part of their profession. On one hand, we have netizens who expect us to address them in their own manner of speaking and writing, on the other we have serious business people that expect the utmost professionalism when being reached out to, which includes correct use of language and grammar. Officially, until they are introduced in the dictionaries and accepted as real words, what we’re using is not clean English (or what ever other language you address them in). 

So what is there to do? Use quotation marks or italics when using an unconventional word? Promote new words and lobby to get them accepted faster? Go the way the media and journalists go? They are easier to handle as they do adopt new words soon after their audience starts using them.

The truth is there is no right choice. A PR professional will always have to adapt their speech to the audience they are addressing at one point or another. You won’t be strict about choice of dictionary approved terminology when addressing a group of online youngsters that expect you to translate everything to include the specifics of their always connected virtual lives, with all the smiley faces that entails. You won’t put a ton of the same smiley faces in an email to a General Manager of a company you want to land as a client. When addressing teachers and professors who are particular about word usage, you might be careful about your own linguistic choices.

But no matter what, a PR pro needs to quickly and constantly adapt to new words and trends. Because you will ‘plus one’ something, you will tweet and skype and google and that’s not all that you will do!

Guest post by Susan Daniels

Due to the slow economy, businesses and professionals alike are looking for ways to save money on day-to-day operations. One of the highest expenses of any professional is that of the office. With a traditional office, businesses and professionals have to worry about rent, utilities, office supplies, and generally a staff. To reduce these costs, many are turning to the virtual office.

However, if you find yourself not wanting to relinquish your traditional office just yet, ask yourself the following questions. Your answers may just sway your opinion:

Do You Need All the Staff?

Having a traditional office generally requires you to have a small staff – even if it is just a cleaning lady or maintenance guy. However, with a virtual office you don’t necessarily need some of the staffers that you have. Keep your personal assistant, but do you really need a receptionist if you don’t have a front desk? Better yet, with a virtual office, you can hire a receptionist to be on-call so that you don’t have to pay anyone’s salary. You simply pay a minimal hourly fee.

Do You Need All the Equipment?

Social media and the internet have become increasingly important in PR work. We have to be connected at all times; however, being connected doesn’t mean that you need to have every type of hardware known to man. Traditional offices generally use multiple electronics including copy machines, desktops, and intricate phone lines which all require frequent check-ups and maintenance. With a virtual office, all you need is your phone and your laptop, and you are able to stay connected and conduct business from where ever necessary.

Do You Need to Be Tied Down?

In PR, we are frequently on the go. We have to show up at events and make appearances all over town to keep up our images. If we aren’t making appearances for the sake of appearances, then we are in meetings with other professionals or in offices strategizing marketing campaigns. We are rarely in our offices, so why be tied down to one? No one wants to feel like they need to go to their office simply because they are paying monthly for it.

If you are a PR professional, there is no need to have a traditional office space. The cost of keeping one simply isn’t worth it. If you have a larger firm, a traditional office may be necessary, but generally PR professionals can save a substantial amount of money by forgoing the traditional office. Even better, they can still keep up professional appearances by signing up with a virtual office firm that will not only give them a high end business address but allow them to use meeting and conference rooms whenever necessary. So what have you got to lose besides a monthly rent and utility bill?

About the author
Susan Daniels is an internet marketer for 43a.com. In her spare times she likes to write guest posts for marketing related blogs.