That’s the reason I should hire this guy instead of the other ten thousand realtors who want my business? Because he’s up all night, ever night, singing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Faith of the Heart”?

Yes, I know; the point was to get across that he’s available for his clients when they need him… in which case, how about this slogan? “I’m here for you.”

That way, he gets across that he’s available and will probably have to take fewer drunk-dialing home-selling clients at 3 am.

Well, it’s mostly enjoyable. Until I come across the sad case of media liaisons who don’t know how to do their job.

As an in-house communications director, I also worked that media liaison role, so I know how it’s supposed to work from both sides.

The job is to put out press releases and other marketing materials in the hopes of snagging a reporter’s interest. When calls come in from journalists, other skills come into play; the media liaison now has to talk to the reporter to get an idea of what the story is about to direct the call to the best in-house expert. There may also be a chance to tweak the focus of the reporter’s questions to highlight your company’s features.

It’s important to remember that even if the reporter isn’t looking for information directly related to your business offerings, just getting your name into a big magazine is advantageous.

Let me give you an example. We’ll say you run a clothing chain store named Harry’s Suits. A reporter calls and says he’s doing a story for Business News magazine that has a circulation of 1 million. The topic of the story is “in-store music that gets people to buy stuff”. Which do you think is the better response (below) from your media liaison, A or B?
—
A) “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can comment. It’s true that we do use in-store music in our stores to try to get our customers to buy things. But I can’t really say we’re in-store music experts. It’s certainly not part of my job. Anyway, our business is selling suits.

“Really, we can’t really speak as experts about in-store music because we don’t make the music. We’re not composers. In-store music isn’t really what we’re known for and it’s not what we want to be known for. But we’d be happy to give you quotes and information about our new line of suits that we have available. Otherwise, I don’t think we can help you.”

B) “Absolutely! We use music in our stores to try to get our customers to buy things. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. But I think Joe Mavis in marketing knows the guy who selects the music for our stores. He can tell you who does that and what goes into the decision.

“I’ll get you his information. He might also have some good data on what kind of response we’ve had from in-store music as well, and which suits are our best sellers for different kinds of songs. Feel free to ask him about that.”
—
For the first response, the reporter will hang up and move on. And he’ll never call them back for another story because the media liaison was being obtuse.

For answer “B”, the reporter will get forwarded along to Joe Mavis or whoever and collect some quotes. Even though the story really isn’t focused on men’s suits, the story will probably include a quote like the following:

“We’ve definitely had better sales of our blue navy suits when we play jazz in the store,” says Director of Marketing Joe Mavis, with the Harry’s Suits clothing chain based out of New York City.

You’ve now got 1 million potential readers of the fact that Harry’s Suits sells blue navy suits and you can find their store in NYC and maybe even your own city. If the article goes online, that sentence might now come up in a search for clothing stores that sell suits. And if the writer was feeling particularly Web-2.0ish, he might even have inserted a hyperlink to the store website. And of course, the marketing people at Harry’s Suits would be free to blog, tweet, email and Facebook the hell out of the story.

That’s how a single line in a news article like this brings in leads for businesses all the time.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, while researching a story for a large-circulation business magazine, I got stonewalled for no good reason by a dumb media liaison because the story I was writing was not directly dealing with their particular service offering.

No big deal on my part — I have plenty of other sources who were only too happy to provide me with quotes. And maybe no big deal on their part, either. Maybe none of their potential customers were going to read that article — even though I suspect a good number would have (either in the original magazine, or perhaps excerpted on the company’s press page).

For the vast majority of companies (and I’m guessing this one, too), reporters are not banging down their doors everyday. If this is the way that this media liaison deals with all media requests — “either write about specifically about our awesome products and service offerings, or we can’t be bothered” — then they’re not doing their job. Instead of creating promotional opportunities, they’re wasting them.

That’s why someone needs to fire their media liaison.

The ad is an utter failure.

The advertisement is for a course that will get students thinking about God, spirituality and the meaning of life.

The problem is that the photo in the advertisement doesn’t match the content. I look at the image of the guy embracing the awe-inspiring sight of nature unbound.

Based on that, my immediate answer to the question in the ad is “No. There’s nothing more to life than this. Clearly, this beautiful material world is what it’s all about. I have nothing to learn from a course on spirituality or religion because the meaning of life is all around me.”

Just to clarify, that answer above is not my usual view of religion and spirituality. The ad persuaded me to respond in this way. So, how to fix it so that it will actually work?

The fix is simple, actually. Change the line from “Is there more to life than this?” to “Is there more to life?”, cutting out the last two words. The person looking at the ad suddenly conflates spirituality and religion with the wonders of the world.

On the other hand, you could make the ad way better by changing it to something like this:

I took the liberty of checking out the speaker bios and realized I also had the chance to provide a bit of a teaching moment. To wit, How To (And How Not To) Promote Yourself In A Bio On A Website:

First, showing how not to do it, we have Dave McClure of 500 Startups. Dave decided to take the quick attention-getting route of making himself out to be kind of a weirdo. I’m not sure it paid off for him, unless you subscribe to the idea that all publicity is good publicity — which hasn’t really worked out that well for BP, Conrad Black or the junta in Burma.

(And before any of Dave’s friends start talking about stones and glass houses, I know very well that I’ve crossed the line on a number of occasions using this very strategy [examples here and here]. So yes, I’m a hypocrite. Such is life.)

I’ve highlighted the, uh, best bits:

Dave McClure is a greedy, blood-sucking venture capitalist & founding general partner at 500 Startups, an internet startup seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, CA. He likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and occasionally help or invest in their startups if they are foolish enough to let him. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. Years ago he used to do real work like coding or marketing or running conferences, but these days he mostly does useless stuff like sending lots of email, blogging, and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.  Dave also likes to play ultimate frisbee when his knees don’t hurt

As I said, I’m not too fond of the above. But what do I know? I just put words together for a living.

Next, to show what I think is a good example. To compare, I’ll use Clarity Digital President Leonard Brody’s bio. It’s a bit long, but it works. Again, I’ve highlighted the parts I like — phrases that focus not so much on who he is as what he does and why he appears to rock the flock:

Leonard has been called “a controversial leader of the new world order”. He is a highly respected entrepreneur, venture capitalist, best-selling author and a 2 time Emmy nominated media visionary. He has helped in raising millions of dollars for startup companies, been through one of the largest internet IPOs in history and has been involved in the building, financing and/or sale of five companies to date. In 2004, Leonard co-founded, and was CEO of, NowPublic.comnamed by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites in the world, was inducted into the Newseum in Washington and was recently acquired by the Anschutz Corporation. Currently Leonard sits as the President of the Clarity Digital Group responsible for overseeing one of the largest online news conglomerates in the world including Examiner.com and NowPublic, which between them, share over 20 million unique visitors a month and over 200,000 contributors. which is a pioneer in the field of citizen journalism. The company was

I see the difference. Can you see the difference?

Take care of the little things and the big things take care of themselves. When you can’t get the basics right, your customers start wondering about your credibility.

On a related note, I would also recommend staying out of the village of Crestwood if you can avoid it.

Inspired by the enthusiasm of the local non-profit participants, WRITEIMAGE is offering a FREE communications and copywriting consultation for any non-profit in British Columbia, valid until the end of September 2010.

That’s right. This isn’t just for Netsquared Camp participants (though I would certainly like to work with many of them on their worthy causes). If you’re in BC, you get a free consultation of up to one hour on a topic of your choosing related to communications strategy and copywriting for non-profits.

Want to know more about:

• Communications strategy?
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) through your written content?
• Best practices for sending out email newsletters?
• Strategy for press releases and media management?
• How to build web traffic through a blog?
• How to get more leads or donations through strong calls to action?

Contact us to schedule a consultation on communications and content strategies and tactics for your non-profit. Email info [AT] writeimage [DOT] ca or call (604.230.2638).

Now, what precisely happened at N2Camp this weekend? I’ll be giving an overview a bit later, but here I will shamelessly promote my own involvement. Priorities, you understand.

I gave two presentations. One was a case study on how an organization I work with, the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, used social media and more traditional marketing methods to help change public opinion in Canada.

The second event was a facilitated discussion about the Cost of Social Media. We took input from social media consultants and related contractors as well as from the managers (or people role-playing managers) of various types of organizations. While we did float around some costs for various social media tasks and positions, it’s clear that the compensation for these sorts of jobs will vary widely. That said, I stressed the importance for contractors of at least being able to provide a ballpark figure — simply responding, “that depends” may be realistic and pragmatic, but it’s going to turn off the people willing to buy services.

Overview of N2Camp coming in a bit. Check in later!

Quick shout out to my fellow Vancouver Entrepreneurs. Peace out, y’all.

It’s been a while since my university days, so I rely on the input of dozens of other experts and cool people to keep me informed of communications best practices, case studies, relevant business news and local events. I don’t always get the chance to highlight these people in this blog (or one of the other many blogs to which I contribute). In a brief roundup today, I will pay homage to some of these smart people who allow me to steal their ideas benefit from their inspiration.

In no particular order:

Rob Cottingham of Social Signal. What can I say? I’m addicted to Noise to Signal cartoons. And I’ve been watching a heck of a lot of his videos explaining trends in social media. I particularly liked this cynical send-up on tweaking Facebook. And if you’re a social media consultant who hasn’t yet checked out the Social Signal consulting practice open-source intellectual property vault — boy, are you in for a treat.

Lorraine Murphy AKA Raincoaster’s Operation Global Media Domination has achieved some significant milestones this week. Congratulations, Red Queen of Social Media. I would advise anyone in Vancouver who is interested in how to use social media for business to attend the rapidly-growing Social Media Club Vancouver.

All of the Fine Speakers at New Ventures BC. I’ve been blown away by the business seminars happening every week in the heart of Vancouver’s downtown. From refining your business plan and marketing to dealing with copyright and trademark and how to present to investors, I’ve learned a tremendous amount. There are still a few seminars left, so check ‘em out. The last topic was on getting financing for your start-up; if you’re interested, check it out here.

Jen De Tracey of Lift Strategies. Jen’s Marketing Tips are always good food for thought. I particularly liked this two-parter on being consistent with your customers. By the way, if you happen to need a new comprehensive marketing plan for your company, Jen does that — and the government will pay for it. Check it out.

And finally, some timeless yet hilarious copywriting tips from the Fail Blog, compiled by fellow copywriter Dean Rieck.

Are You Feeling Inspired?

I’d certainly be happy to have readers of this blog listen in to Murray Langdon’s radio show on CFAX 1070 out of Victoria on Wednesday, May 12 at about 11:50 am. But I’m not really mentioning this media appearance to plug my opinions on economics. I’m not an economist or finance guy and this blog is certainly not about those topics, either.

But I did want to illustrate a simple point: if you want your organization to get noticed by the media, then it helps to publish something. Get some blog posts up. Hire someone to get you some press releases. Throw some case studies on your site. Create content and if you’re lucky, this will generate serious interest from the media. Keep plugging away and eventually, content pays off with better PR.

It’s not just content on the web that works, either. Print marketing campaigns have been around forever. You never know 100 per cent for sure where your name will get noticed.

Hmmmm. On this topic, I’m reminded of one of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest movies of all time, The Jerk:

Navin
The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

Navin
Nothing? Are you kidding?! Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, you’re name in print, that makes people. I’m impressed! Things are going to start happening to me now.

And he was right. Good things started happening to Navin R. Johnson