Mulley Communications

So you may or may not have seen the study we did with the National College of Ireland on Facebook usage. Check it out. It’s good! The main science bits are:

• 71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page (homepage).
• Users pay more attention (53% vs. 31%) to page updates in their News Feed Wall rather than adverts to the right-hand side of the Wall.

So we might have banner ad blindness going on around the web and maybe Google Ads on the right side of results don’t get much love but it seems for Facebook so far, ads work and people pay attention to them.

More importantly in my view is that people are naturally paying attention to information that shows up in their News Feed and a business is allowed to send their updates to this News Feed when someone Likes/Becomes a fan of the Business Page. So set up your Facebook Business Page and update on a regular basis. Tie it into a Marketing Calendar. The only cost is your time.

In this new phase of communications where earned media is the game then you need to not throw about “We’re great, buy our shit now will ya?” messages but instead become a publisher and advertiser. Creating something of use that can perhaps be reused or resent to people. We live in an age where content creation is a democratic idea but so is distribution of it. If you create good content then maybe the community you’re in online will spread it much further and it has more power as it comes from a person they know.

What do you want to get out of this?
If you’re going to invest time and resources creating content you need to be very certain what your endgame is. You need to figure out that if you are going to change the copy of your website, write some blog posts, work on status updates on Facebook or Twitter, that you are doing it for a purpose. For your business. What is that purpose? With your content, is it a way of showing off your authority, is it a case study of how you helped someone out, is it a direct way of making sales, is it a discount on goods, is it information that shows you care about the wider community? Lots of questions. Look at all the ones the communications bible brings up!

Who are those you want to energise?
Forget demographics, ask yourself who are the people you want to create good content for and as a result of good content, they interact with you and even help spread the word? Who exactly is the market for your products and services and what do they like online, on blogs, on Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums etc.? Use the likes of the Facebook Ad system to figure out the volume of the people you are interested in interacting with and increase that by perhaps 30% for overall Internet numbers.

Themes
After figuring out what you want from working in an online media and who the people you want to work with are then you need a properly considered plan on when and what to send out. You can’t be doing anything adhoc or randomly. Unstructured might be more fun but a plan keeps you on message, allows you to measure how well you’re doing and makes people more comfortable and familiar by the fact you are interacting them on a regular basis. Themes could be a week long education initiative, a week of special offers/discounts, a week of tips on how to use your products more efficiently etc. Themes allow you to be repetitive with your overall message without using the same enforcing updates again and again.

Tweak their bits, get reactions
Interactions here are key. They might be weak emotional engagements but you every comment on a blog, every reply or ReTweet on Twitter, every comment or the weak but effective “Like” on Facebook is someone taking time out to react to your content. Not job done but certainly a recognition of sorts to what you’ve done. So figure out what people like by past experience or see how they presently interact with their friends on Twitter and Facebook, what content gets them going and see can you provide content like that. Getting interactions too might be as simple as asking for them. Solicit opinions with your content, go away from the broadcast type telling of news and lecturing. Ask on Facebook, blogs, Twitter: “What do you think?” “What do you think should be done?”

Update daily, measure weekly
On a weekly basis, evaluate how your content plan is going. Comments on the blog posts, links to the post. Interactions on Facebook using the Insights option. Views on your YouTube video, links to the video on YouTube. To start with you’ll be in prospecting mode, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. From that you’ll become more experienced with this, making it easier to gear up and plan well in advance and having much better knowledge what will work based on what worked before. The Insights tool especially will tell you what age groups and genders are being responsive and which are not which should give you crucial data on what to change and what to keep.

Content Curation
Knowing what people like, you can be the one that acts like a mini-newsfeed for them. Summarising industry news, interesting blog posts, showing videos they might like etc. Think of the daily papers they have on Newstalk or Morning Ireland, can you do the same with websites that apply to your area? The Fluffy Links blog posts I write are one such example of content curation.

Zeitgeists
Budgets, breaking news, elections, Apple products, volcanoes – They all impact people and all give us the opportunity to share our take and our authority on issues. Also, when you think about it, the marketing for these events has been done by the media already so it’s a nice opportunity to tie in to something relevant if you also have something relevant to add to the mix.

This is another section of the Online PR Course. So why work with bloggers at all? Well it can be difficult to get your message across in some media nowadays unless you can offer something that contains money or jobs and just a product launch might not cut it unless it has mass appeal. While a print publication might not be able to cater for a niche audience, take that niche online and it can be massive.

Connecting and working with bloggers who passionately write about subjects they’re interested in and who energise an audience can be very beneficial. Good quality feedback of your products, a potential large pool of customers and people focused on your subject area. A lot of people online now get their news and facts from non professional media sources. There are many ways you can work with bloggers but you need to respect and understand what they do.

Research Bloggers in Advance
Sites like Irishblogs.ie and FoodFight.ie aggregate content from Irish Bloggers. These can be good places to start. You can also use the blogger ligger list from Mulley Communications (contact Damien to get access) which is a list of bloggers in Ireland who put their names down to get contacted from companies/agencies who want to offer them promotional material/trials etc. Look at longlisted/shortlisted bloggers that were nominated for the Irish Blog Awards and are broken down by categories such as Food, Music, Business, Arts and Culture etc.

Read them, don’t fake it:
Subscribe to a cross-section of these bloggers using Google Reader so you’re not in the dark as to what they regularly blog about. If you don’t use Google Reader or don’t know how to then bookmark them and put them all in a folder called Irish Bloggers or something like that. Leave comments on their blog if there is a post of theirs you genuinely like so they’ll see you’re paying attention to them.

Evaluating a blog:
Do they write well on the blog, are they engaging? Probably the best metric, if a bit fluffy is quality and engaging writing. There are more sterile mechanical metrics though:
Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to measure inbound links.
Use Google Reader to get a rough estimate of readership.
Evaluate the last 10 blog posts for style and number of comments left under each post.

When emailing bloggers:
Be aware that the bloggers are probably connected to each other via Instant Messaging or Twitter and may discuss your email that you sent.
With that in mind, line up all the emails to go around the same time so they’ll all get them at the same time. This can actually be of benefit as if they are discussed on Twitter there can be a burst of chatter about the emails instead of start/stop mails. It also doesn’t make it seem that you are playing favourites.

Don’t send a purely generic email. Counter to that, don’t try and dress up the email to make it seem you are sending a nice compliment to them “love your blog, latest blog post made me think, you’re my favourite blogger”. Create the generic section of the email that contains details of the offering/event/product and then do an individual intro with each email.

Just like journalists, some bloggers like exclusives, so do not send an email making it appear that you are giving them something exclusively when you are not. Go niche when you can. It’s pointless plugging a new band to those who blog about sports or blog about news and current affairs. Twenty Major won’t be interested in your press release about a new single from a singer songwriter.

Mailing Lists:
Do not add bloggers to mailing lists, point out when contacting them that you do have a press release mailing list if they want to be added but just because their email is on their blog does not mean you can add them to a mail database.

Exclusive content/tailored content:
Give something of value to the blogger. Value = can be new content for their blog such as survey results, a funny video that they get to blog about first, an interview (email Q&A) with your client etc.

Recycle content – Your press release to print media might have gotten coverage but maybe not all the point were covered or all questions of the survey were mentioned. Why not take what wasn’t covered and point it out to a blogger if you think it was of interest?

Consider when doing surveys to have bloggers tipped in advance and have them contribute questions to ask, then give them the answers as exclusive content

Competitions:
If you have the resources, run competitions with the bloggers for their readers. You are far better on giving them something to give away on their blog than giving them something to use for themselves. Why not give them cinema tickets and have them give some of them away on their blog to their readers? There are a lot of things you can do competitions-wise. Cookbook giveaways, cinema tickets etc. Try and run competitions that reward interactivity and creativity – instead of “leave a comment” type entries, have criteria where entrants they have to leave a comment and point to a youtube video or a photo online of something or link to their favourite clip from another movie Al Pacino was in.

Spread the love
There are plenty of bloggers out there. While one blog might have gotten you some great coverage, spread your wings and work with other blogs too, move around the blogging community. The bloggers you worked with previously should be happy to link to the blogger running the current competition

Embargoes are honoured
Bloggers will honour embargoes, if they don’t, they’ll know they won’t be trusted again.

Disclosures:
To ensure fair game, strongly encourage bloggers to disclose in any review that they got a device from you, you gave them a review copy of a book etc. In terms of payola, hopefully bloggers in Ireland will not ask you for money to blog or tweet about them. If they charge to write what they and you class as an advertorial then that should be disclosed too. Not doing so will end up with being found out eventually and damaging your rep.

After getting some feedback from folks (thank you) I’ve rejigged the Online PR Course I gave back in January and will now be doing a premium course based on it. It will be on May 4th in the Camden Court Hotel, start at 9.30am. 210 euros for a day, inc lunch. Max places = 14. If interested email damien mulley.ie with subjectline: May Online PR

Online PR course breakdown

• 0. Basics of Online Comms
• 1. Developing a Communications Bible
• 2. Developing a Comms Philosophy
• 3. Working with: Bloggers, Running blogger events, Forums, Twitter etc.
• 4. Finding Tools – Who is talking about you online?
• 5. Crisis Communications

  Update: More details
  * 0. Basics of Online Comms

  How people are communicating online. The numbers, the tools and sites they use and the language they use

  * 1. Developing a Communications Bible

  Using techniques used by TV show writers to create a working document on how a company communicates with itself and the outside world and the prescribed methods and content to be used when communicating.

  * 2. Developing a Comms Philosophy

  Working with your staff to create guidelines on communicating with the outside world both when as an official representative of the company as well as when in a personal capacity.

  * 3. Working with: Blogs, Forums, Twitter etc.

  How to use online media to spread your company message and how working with bloggers, Twitterers and Facebook users can create digital word of mouth campaigns

  * 4. Finding Tools – Who is talking about you online?

  We go through a list of tools you can use (both free and premium) to see what people are saying about you and your competitors and where they’re saying it

  * 5. Crisis Communications

  With the best of intentions, things can go wrong and go wrong quite quickly. We go through how best to respond to a crsis and how to turn any negative fallout into neutral or positive sentiment. We’ll use Irish and UK examples of good ways to address a crisis online.

As part of the Online PR course today we covered guidelines for online communications. So here’s this part of the course.

Communications guidelines or a comms philosophy is better than a set of rules in my view because the wannbe lawyers will try and argue every word of a ruleset. It’s much hard to argue with a cloud or something as fluffy as “please don’t do anything that makes people unhappy”. These guidelines that are created by a company should be a group activity, not written by one person and enforced. The group (generally) will be more switched on than one person. If your staff contribute to this it also means they know what this is about and don’t get surprised with a new memo dictating what this is.

If there is only one thing to remember:
Everything that can be copied or pasted or photographed with a mobile is one step from being seen by the whole world. This goes for internal and external communications.

Companies that take part in a conversation (even when they get dragged in) will be far better than companies that refuse to take part. With online being a core part of every life, both business and personal, every mention of you in a conversation can be found and can be added to. Both positive and negative opinions can spread and build more.

A few truths:

• People will talk about you online.
• People will talk about you online and sometimes this will be negative. This is ok.
• No matter who you are and no matter if you are a living saint, someone will say a negative thing about you or your company.
• Conversations cannot be stopped and should not be. Those who try to stop them will actually end up adding the wrong type of energy to the conversations and create further ones.
• Everyone, including you, has a right of reply. Sometimes it might not be where you want to place it but you still ought to exercise that right.
• A staff that are schooled in communicating is better than a staff that are told they can’t communicate.
• Good external communications can only happen with good internal communications.

Communications Guidelines for online interactions:

When either representing the company or when in a personal capacity and talking about the business area:

0. Don’t be alone
Point out the conversation to others in the company if you are at work. They may also be looking at the same content and about to respond. Others may also have a different and reaction to the piece. Other opinions from within your organisation should be welcomed.

1. When interacting, be upfront.
State who you are from the start. Use your real name in full or at least first name. State you are from your organisation. State what area you work in or what your role is if this is needed. Making up names, pretending to not be from your organisation can be seen as dishonest (it is!) and even when you think you are doing good and your intentions are good it can be used against you and your organisation. Also, your IP address is probably going to be logged and can be traced back.

2. Respect the right to give an opinion.
Some people might be over-the-top hostile to your company and even you. Respect their right to have an opinion and to share it. You might not like their viewpoint and disagree with it but having an open mind when it comes to opinions makes you a better communicator. You can disagree and still be respectful. Always remember you are not just reply to someone but replying to someone in front of potential dozens or hundreds of others.

3. Be helpful.
Try and provide as much information as you and the organisation are able to give. If there is information you can’t provide, say so. Support all points by linking to information sources, both your organisation’s sources and others.

4. Be positive.
Joing discussions about competitors or adding to a thread that is not constructive doesn’t help your organisation and the community in general. Try and make every interaction one that provides value. Standing on its own, does this blog post, blog comment, forum thread, Twitter reply represent your organisation well? Does it typify your organisation’s Spirit? Positivity is also infectious and is reciprocated. If people add an opinion to a blog post, Twitter message or forum thread you started, thank them since they’ve taken time out to contribute and help.

5. Be concise
This might sound like the opposite to providing as much information as you can (No. 3) but it is not. Depending on the interaction, it might be a case of correcting incorrect information or giving the take of your organisation. In hostile environments, nitpickers will examine every word you use. Get to the point quickly, provide the information in the first few sentences to ensure clarity. In a world of speed reading and scanning, if you can provide information in the first 3 lines compared to the first 30, the scanners and those who take their time will read you more.

6. Be playful
These are guidelines, not rules, not laws. Over time as you interact your language and style may change. Find what works for you.

7. Give feedback
Make these guidelines ones that adapt to the world. Give internal and external feedback. Revisit them on a regular basis.

An email will be sent out in the next few minutes (check your spam filters) to all those who put their name down for the first Online PR Course on January 23rd and who reached the cutoff. We are massively oversubscribed with about 80 requests and spaces for just 30 people. It was first come first served so apologies to all those that wanted to attend and were not offered a place. There may be another course in the future and if it’s a free event you will be invited along. Those names after the cutoff for course one will get first refusal for the next one.

The documentation for the course will be put on this site for everyone to download and share.

Here’s what the breakdown of the course is looking like now. This may change before the course starts though.

Online PR course breakdown

• 0. Basics of Online Comms
• 1. Developing a Communications Bible
• 2. Developing a Comms Philosophy
• 3. Working with: Bloggers, Running blogger events, Forums, Twitter etc.
• 4. Finding Tools – Who is talking about you online?
• 5. Crisis Communications

I’ve been asked to put a Business Blogging course on in Cork City in the new few weeks. So I’ve set aside January 25th for it. Venue confirmation is on way. Fee for the course is 90 euros ex VAT. 12 places only. Email damien (at) Mulley.ie to book.
Update: Venue is Cork Airport International Hotel.

Course is broken into theory in the morning and workshop in the afternoon.
Please bring a laptop as we’ll be logging into a test blog environment for the workshop section.

Theory:
Blogging as a communications tool, as a marketing tool and as a way of building reputation.
How a blog can boost quality traffic to your website.
How engaging writing and good information increases engagement and recommendations.

Workshop:
A blog will be created for you.
You will learn how the Wordpress blogging environment works.
How to compose, edit and publish blog posts.
How to customise blog posts by setting publish dates, categorising content, formatting with images and video, referencing external sites

End of day
We’ll help you put together a communications and marketing plan and help you come up with future blog posts.

Tea/Coffee provided. Bring your own recessiontastic packed lunch or get food on Hotel bar.

So finally a venue has been booked and a new date for this Online PR Course I’ve been promising for too long.

Details: It’s now Saturday January 23rd in The Radisson Blue Golden Lane in Dublin. Swift Suite No. 2.
Go right and up the stairs as you walk in. We’ll start around 1030am, break for lunch and see can we finish around 4pm.

Please note this course is not free, as such. Those that take part in the course will have to make public some of what they learned on it. Or pay a fee of a billion dollars! Be it via a post on a blog, a few takeaways on Twitter, Facebook Note, a powerpoint presentation they upload to Slideshare etc. This course is going to be used by me naturally to bugfix sections in order for me to launch a commercial Online PR course but I want to spread good information as far as possible so I’d like those taking part to inform as many people as possible about best practices.

There are about 30 spaces on this course. Those from this initial list have first refusal. If they leave their name in the comment here as a confirm I’ll add them to the list. Those who left comments on this other post (in order of timing) will have second refusal of the remaining places. For those that don’t make the cutoff, the notes will be available to everyone.

I’ll do another post in a bit on what the course will cover. Feel free to blog and tweet and telegram this to your friends.

We did nothing. No email saying so, no stock photography e-card, no donation to a charity, no buying of a goat, no viral video enewslettercastpodogram. Lazy or busy, you decided. We did buy selection boxes at half price today though and if you’re really lucky we’ll send you one, once we explode from too much chocolate.

2009 was a fantastic year for Mulley Comms. We’re more of a we now than when we started and 2010 should be a good year for us and you, client or not. There’s some fun things on the cards and some mischievous things too. This isn’t the last blog post of the year though so check in now and then if you want if you get sick of turkey and ham.

The over-quoted but underviewed scene in Glengarry Glen Ross where Alex Baldwin rips into the staff has a bit where he talks about the ABCs: Always Be Closing, when it comes to any kind of web presence for a business it should be: Always Be Converting. If your website is not designed to get custom and make contact with potential clients then it’s a vanity exercise.

It’s very interesting to read how Obama’s decision to announce his VP selection via text message came about: They needed more subscribers to their mobile phone database. Simple really. A few 100k were on their list, announcing it via text message ensured that number would jump a magnitude. Getting people to contact you or opt in to updates from you from one of your channels (Email, text, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.) should be a focus for your web work.

So on the front of your site, have contact details, credible ones (not just a mobile number), don’t have just a form on the Contact page. A real postal address and landline helps a lot for that contact page. See this business communications checklist. List your content channels if people look at the site, make a positive (but not buying) decision about trusting you and want to get updates from Twitter or Facebook. Tell them why they get rewarded for doing so. Bargains, discounts, first for new content etc.

And don’t forget to use language that appeals to the person. Conversational, not formal and removed.

And now the same idea with more expletives and a bit of insanity: