Is anything possible – are you holding back your business?

I watched a program last night called The World’s Richest Teenagers and Me, a documentary by Mark Dolan surrounding his visits to a number of the world’s wealthiest teens.

It made me think about the possibilities for success and wealth as many of these fortunes were made directly by their parents, rather than being handed down for generations.  Yes these are highly successful, entrepreneurial business people, but do we all have the capacity for great things?

These are people who have taken a risk, many of them larger than we may ever face, however the same principles apply.  If we are limited by ourselves, then what opportunities are we missing?

It prompted me to put together the following list of questions to ask yourself if you want to get your business ready for media attention, or are trying to raise your business profile.

1. Size doesn’t matter. Do you say things like ‘we’re too small, they wouldn’t be interested in us’?  If so, stop.  It’s often the smallest companies which are the most dynamic and innovative, and also have something interesting to say – whether it’s a different approach, perspective or opinion, have confidence that your news is just as important as a business ten times your size.

Don’t be put off because you don’t have a dedicated PR or marketing team, there is a great deal you can do to open the channels of communication with the media yourself.    For more information on getting your business ready for the spot light, or ways you can start to engage with the press get in touch!

2. Play with the big boys. Different types of media coverage suit different situations.  If you’re trying to build your business within the local community then regional press titles are going to bring the most benefit.  However if you’re marketing yourself nationally, then don’t be scared to go and play with the big boys.  Yes it can seem more daunting but with careful planning and the right contacts, if you have an exciting story to tell, go ahead and dip a toe in.

Remember though, you need to be prepared.  If you are potentially causing a media frenzy around your brand, then make sure you’re ready – the professional appearance at all corners (web, social media, premises, customer service), and that your business can actually cope with an increase in demand.

3. Plan for the future. If you have aspirations of growth and expansion for the future, make sure you have it mapped out.  If you want to be in a position to take advantage of that golden opportunity, whether it’s a big interview, product placement, an award or exposure at a big event, then make sure that you are always ready to hit the ground running.  Last minute plans are always going to trip you up.

4. Identify the barriers. What is it that’s actually holding your business back?  If you’re the person at the top, what can you pin down about you personally that is stopping the business from moving forwards?  Melanie Greene of Grovelands, a people development and coaching consultancy talks about mastering your inner critic:

“These blocks are often internal in terms of your thoughts and beliefs about yourself, your staff, your business, your competitors and the environment you are operating in. What you think and believe affects how you feel, which in turn impacts on your behaviour, performance and ultimately your success. So, write down all the beliefs you have, some will be positive and support you in your role, others might be negative or  limiting and hinder you from moving forward. For the latter think through what might be a more empowering belief to have which will enable you to be more effective, creative and productive in your role” says Melanie.

5. Is less more? A few things recently prompted me to re-evaluate Publicity Oxford’s core offering.  What is it we’re really good at and how do we streamline our marketing and positioning to showcase this and ensure that people ‘get it’ and identify with us?  This included a point made by Karen Chapple of irun Newbury about picking keywords and areas to focus on when using Twitter, and a guest blog post by Lesley Everett on the Morgan PR blog about the visibility of your branding, which lead me to draw out a quick pyramid to review the layers of our services and how those are reflected in how we communicate.

There are so many different ways to reach people on and offline now, be sure that your messaging doesn’t get muddled and diluted.  Get back to what your unique selling points are.  Establish what you’re brilliant at, not just what you are good at and put your efforts into getting that across to people.  There is such a thing as a D list client someone told me recently  – the type of business that may well see you out of pocket, working all hours, and your blood pressure at boiling point.  If you could avoid having more of those, it’s got to be a good thing, right?

So have a think about where you want to be, and what’s stopping you from getting there.  There is no reason why good shouldn’t become great, and a little seed of an idea shouldn’t develop and becoming something amazing.

Hopefully that’s a little food for thought.  All comments are very welcome, we want to hear your ideas!

The ‘leaked’ confidential memo – marketing fail?

Sometimes it can pay for a marketing strategy to be clever, witty, unique, quirky or just plain different.

Above all those things though, any PR or marketing activity must be well thought out.

Sometimes they are not.

Yesterday with our post we received a confidential internal memo from The Fear Course.  How did a private memo from a company on the other side of Oxford come to drop through our letter box we wondered?

It’s a high risk approach to using door drops as part of your marketing strategy – sending a letter made to look like a private document, with the aim of leaving the reader with a feeling that they have been privy to important news.

My questions about the perceptions this strategy could give, and I’m being quite critical because I think there are clever and innovative ways to reach people, are:

- What does ‘accidentally posting’ a confidential memo through someone’s door say about the organisation and overall admin process of The Fear Course?

- Does it give a good impression to try and almost dupe someone into believing this is a real confidential memo?

- If they continue to support people after the course as they say, do they do this by post also, and is there a risk of course participants details being delivered ‘by accident’ through someone’s door?

- What is their call to action?  Are they hoping for people to call and say I found your misplaced memo?  What will their response be?  Or are they really hoping that people will say ‘brilliant I’ve been lucky enough to get this memo by accident and these courses sound great, especially with £30 not just £20 discount’.

I called Justine at The Fear Course and told the receptionist that I thought someone may have put a letter of hers through our door by mistake and she may be missing it.

We’re yet to hear back but will keep you informed.

What are your views on this type of approach?  Clever? Deceiving?  Confusing?

These are some of the avenues we’d explore as alternatives.

- Sponsor or help to support a networking event.

- Write 10 handy tips on giving great presentations and submit it to the local business papers.

- Give a talk at a local college to students about to take exams or graduate – conquering exam nerves or tips on job interviews, and tell the local papers how you are helping students to do well in their studies, or to secure new jobs.

- Do a city centre street stunt with a mock up driving school car and give out information (or even branded car air fresheners) on overcoming driving test fears.

- Partner with a recruitment agency to offer support to job seekers; a free tips & tricks card when you complete the application form with ideas to help you give a polished interview.

- Use Twitter to help people with any fears including the above, as well as promote course participant testimonials, industry news and other related events.

Finally you can find The Fear Course Twitter stream here.

12 key Twitter buzz words you need to know

Following on from our last post about the do’s and don’ts of Twitter, we promised to come back to you with a list of useful Twitter words and explain them.

When we gave our workshops last week on Twitter at the Building a Better Business Event near Oxford, there were lots of raised eyebrows as we talked through these.  And it can make Twitter sound quite clicky.

Rest assured it’s not.  Twitter is open networking.  You’re promoting yourself to the world – well, if you use it well, you’ll be promoting yourself to a targeted group of potential customers, valuable resources, and informative, interesting people.  But it’s for everyone, not the in crowd, no invites needed.

We talk a lot about Twitter because it has become a huge opportunity for businesses to communicate, grow and promote themselves. We think it’s a great tool, although not quite enough to want one of these….

Image Courtesy of Zazzle.com

Anyway, onto the slang….

1. @reply The @ symbol is placed in front of a username.  So add @publicityoxford to send me a message.  Anytime you send a message to someone like this it is visible to everyone who is following you.

2. Tweet is the word given to the 140 character update you post.  This appears in the feed of anyone following you.  It’s like your Facebook status update.  Use it to give informative advice, ask a question, post a useful link or recommend someone to another Twitterer.

3. Your timeline is the ‘feed’ of updates you see in the middle of your screen at Twitter.com or on the left in an application like Hootsuite.  This is a constantly updating feed of all the tweets from the people you follow.  Browse and scan through, but don’t try to read everything, you’ll end up frustrated and with a mounting pile of ‘real’ work to do.

4. A Re-Tweet (RT) is a way of re-publishing something that someone else has Tweeted.  You may do this and include another person in your RT if you think it’s interesting to them, or simply RT it for all of your followers.

Here’s an example.  @traceyjefferies has re-tweeted a link that myself and @Thirlwall_Assoc tweeted.

traceyjefferies
9:11am, Apr 08 from Web

RT @publicityoxford @Thirlwall_Assoc Great post and will definitely be checking out Evernote, sounds good! http://post.ly/V7Sv // Like!

5. Direct Message (DM) is a way of sending a private message to someone.  It may be that you start a conversation and then want to discuss a part of it privately. Add D and a space, then the username to send a direct message.  Or click on the direct message icon in applications like Hootsuite.

6. #Hashtags are placed in front of a word or phrase to categorise them.  This makes it easy for people to search for conversations on given topics.  At the moment there are lots surrounding the election for example #ukelection.  This then becomes a link which you can click on and see all conversations on Twitter using that hashtag.

7. #FridayFollow is an extension on the use of hashtags.  It occurs on a Friday (surprise!), and is a way of recommending other Twitterers who you find interesting, helpful or entertaining.  Start your Tweet with #FridayFollow or #FF and list the names of the people you follow who you want to promote.  It’s a way of networking, and again you can click the link to see everyone who has been recommended.

8. Favourites are a way of bookmarking Tweets you want to read (usually with a link to an article, website or blog), that you want to save for later.  Click on the star icon in Twitter to save the Tweet to come back to.

9. Short URLs are a way of conserving your 140 characters for more of you and your opinion.  If you want to share a link to a fascinating article but the URL is way too long, choose to shrink it in applications like Hootsuite or use a website like Tiny URL to shorten it for you.  Then go ahead and paste it into your Tweet.

10. Bio is your short biography which you write when you set up a Twitter account.  Make sure to include keywords such as your industry sector and geographical location to help people find you when using search sites like Twellow.  Here’s mine:

Head of Oxford based PR agency Publicity Oxford.  There is a better way to do it, we like to find it.  Love salt & vinegar chipsticks.

Location, profession, motto, and personality….!

11. Following/Followers are the numbers of people you follow, and the numbers of people that follow you.  Don’t panic when people start following you, that’s good – that’s what you’re here for!  Don’t be tempted to follow thousands of people, go for a small quantity of really useful and interesting people.  Only block people who are wearing too few clothes or spam you with Viagra messages.

12. Finally, mistweet – a Tweet that could be taken the wrong way or offend.  You can delete a Tweet, but the damage may already be done if people have seen it.  Never tweet in anger, try not to name and shame unless you’re saving people from a huge scam or something, and never ever drink and tweet!  You have been warned!

And, if you haven’t already got one of our ‘my little Twitter hints’ cards get in touch and we’ll post you one when the new batch arrive!

Do’s & Don’ts – Twitter for Business – Getting Started

Last week I gave a number of workshops on Twitter for business at the Late Breakfast Building a Better Business Event.

The next weekly event is tomorrow April 7th, so if you want more, come along to Abingdon Four Pillars at 9am – no crazy 7am start, plus nice pastries, good non-referral based networking, and a chance to meet other local business people who also dislike 6am starts – especially just after Easter.

The workshops were a real success.  Yes lots of newbies with slightly concerned, maybe even overwhelmed expressions, but by the end of the day we hopefully managed to unravel the confusing world of Twitter, and all of the jargon and etiquette that goes with it.

A little Twitter sugar injection to keep people going

So, by request, here are some do’s, don’ts, and tips to get you started if you are just venturing out into the big wide Twitter world – just after Easter is a good time – lots of people have been eating too many eggs to be bothered with Tweeting, and are busy catching up on four days of news.

Here we go….

1. When you set up your Twitter account, spend a little time getting it right:

- Choose a relevant username – name_company name works well

- Upload a profile picture, don’t keep the Twitter bird icon

- Spend some time writing the short biography, choose keywords that will help people to find you when using sites such as Twellow.  Include your business type and geographical location.

2. Don’t protect your tweets – this is open networking and defeats the object (protecting Tweets means that new followers have to request access to you).

3. Do go for quality and not quality – don’t be tempted to follow hundreds of people (same good advice from Fifty Digital).  You’ll quickly feel frazzled by the trawling through hundreds of Tweets in your timeline.  Start by following people in your industry sector, other businesses who interest you, and potential clients.

4. Sit back, watch and learn – like any new networking opportunity, take some time to get to know your surroundings, see what people are talking about, and then start joining in the conversation.

5. Don’t recycle your Tweets - platforms such as Hootsuite make Twitter an even more manageable task – see the updates from all those you follow, replies to you, direct messages and sent Tweets laid out next to each other, as well as stats to show you how you’re doing – plus, you can schedule Tweets – really handy if you want to be consistent.  However, don’t use these to schedule the same tip or offer to go out at the same time every day, people will get bored…

- Use our Twitter handy hints card to keep you focussed.

- Think about what you’re working on currently and how information based on that can add value to your followers.

- Promote your business and services but avoid the hard sell.

6. Don’t shout, be political, swear or drink and tweet – just because you’re safely hidden behind your PC, doesn’t mean you can be rude or difficult!  You’re here to make new business relationships, or build on existing ones – don’t scare people away!

7. Don’t think of Twitter like Facebook – Facebook is a huge window into your world, hence you approve fans before they can see your profile.  Twitter is different, you’re allowing people access to 140 little characters of you at a time – don’t panic if you suddenly have an influx of followers, that’s what it’s all about.  However…

- Do feel free to block anyone who is wearing a less than appropriate amount of clothes in their profile picture.

- Likewise for anyone who spams you with cheap viagra offers

- Do follow interesting people back

8. Do come back and read our blog about Twitter jargon next week – to get you started…

- RT – a ReTweet – a way of sharing useful information posted by others, and highlighting the Twitterer as a valuable person to follow.

9.  Use Twitter in more than one way.  Twitter is becoming increasingly useful for businesses who just need information right now…

- Use Twitter as a news feed – keep up to date with local/national/industry news by following publications, websites and blogs with content relevant to you.

- Use Twitter as a search engine – post questions, use for market research and to gauge opinion – it’s far quicker than Google.

- Hunt for suppliers, staff, resources, technical support, you name it, someone will be able to help.

10. Finally, don’t just be a business - be you as well.  It’s great to post interesting information, links to articles, news and so on.  But add a bit of you into your Tweets – your opinions, views, predictions.  Give people an indication of the personality behind the business – remain professional yes, but people buy people, so show followers who they could potentially be working with.

If it all just sounds too much and you want a little help, come along to the TweetUp at Fallowfields just outside Oxford on April 12th, with a great talk on social media for Business from Karen Chapple, or find out more about our Social Media Toolkits.