New Opportunities for PR

With the decline of traditional media outlets – newspaper circulation fell 4.8 percent in the past year and an estimated 5,000 reporters lost their jobs – PR practitioners are looking for new ways to get their messages out. Traditional public relations involves sending a press release to the major newspapers, TV and radio stations in a market, making follow-up calls and waiting for the clips to come in. Now, decreasing numbers of newspaper jobs mean that there may no longer be a contact dedicated to your company’s or client’s beat, and you have to cut through even more clutter to generate interest in your company’s news.

While print coverage may be increasingly difficult to come by, opportunities for online coverage are ever-increasing. More than 60 million people are blogging; reporters are contacting people through Facebook and Twitter to obtain information; you can post your own content on blogtalkradio.com and YouTube, in addition to opportunities to live-stream content through Kyte, UStream and other online applications. It’s simply a matter of finding these outlets, providing quality content and using them to your benefit.

c21i – c21’s interactive marketing team – recently helped the Atlanta Botanical Garden enhance its online presence and secured outstanding traditional media coverage for the Moore in America exhibition as well. Through the Garden’s Facebook page and online media portal, we provided robust content, including press releases and media alerts to bloggers and online editors, as well as traditional print editors. The result was more than 19 million online media impressions for the exhibit.

Facebook Announces Vanity URLs

Ready, set, go! On Saturday, June 13, Facebook pages with more than 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009, will be able to create a vanity URL. What's this mean? You can protect your brand and better identify your business page, making it easier for fans to find you. Instead of a long string of letters and numbers, your URL can reflect your company (www.facebook.com/name). Check out this Ad Age article for details, or read Facebook's note.



This brings up the point that if you have a well known brand or your company has a common name, it's a good idea to reserve a spot now on social networking channels like Twitter and YouTube, even if you don't currently have a presence. You want to keep your options open for future outreach - and claim your brand name before others do.

Three Questions to Ask Before Launching a Social Marketing Campaign

I have a confession to make. I’m a slacker blogger. That’s right, c21’s VP of Interactive Services has a three-year-old personal blog about a topic I’m quite passionate about, yet I can go for months at a time without uploading a single post. This fact was formerly my shameful secret, but when I work with clients who want to launch innovate social media marketing initiatives that impact the bottom line, it’s my very public example of the importance of proper planning before diving into the deep end of social media marketing. Yes, anybody can start a blog or Twitter feed, but without a strategic approach, a schedule and measurable goals, the effort and expense are unlikely to achieve the desired results.

Below are what I consider the top three key questions to ask on the front-end of any social media marketing effort:
1. What’s the primary objective?
Sometimes our clients don’t know what their objective is for social media marketing –and that’s ok. We figure that as the marketing experts, it’s our job to help them uncover those objectives and determine the best course of action to meet and exceed them. Your needs will impact the mix of social media tools best suited for you – whether you need to drive sales, build brand awareness or change public perceptions.

2. How will effectiveness be measured?
This can’t be over-stated: measurement in social media is KEY. Of course, what you measure may run the gamut from engagement, to site traffic to direct sales, but the point is the marketing team must establish the key metrics on the front-end. Check out Jeremiah Owyang’s article about measuring ROI.

3. What are your available staff and budget resources?
Ok, here’s the deal: Social media is not 100% free. Sure, there are tons of awesome free tools available that allow you to participate and monitor the social media space, but there are time costs associated with that participation and monitoring. You must have an estimate of the people and hours can you devote. Comcast and Zappos are prime examples of the human capital required for true social media interaction.

And the list goes on. Actually, there are at least 10 more questions we work through with our clients looking for social media marketing solutions. Click here if you’d like a copy of the complete list. And leave a comment here to let us know what you think are the top three questions.

Catching a Bzz

c21 recently moderated an American Marketing Association panel focusing on viral marketing and social media. Experts from Bzz Agent, a word of mouth marketing company, Facebook and CNN’s interactive marketing division offered numerous takeaways for companies that are planning or executing a social media strategy. Download the tips and resources here.

Social Media Mistakes Hall of Fame

If you're new to the world of social media marketing, you may be concerned about making missteps and faux-pas on the Web. Don't let those fears stop you! Blogger and tech journalist David Spark recently penned a great piece about some of the bigger mistakes social media gurus have admitted to making. So if you're just jumping into this brave new world - take a look, take a deep breath and go forth! And if you're an old pro at social media, let us know what mistakes you've made and what you learned in the process.