5 Ways to Storify Your PR and Marketing Efforts

Though I just received my invite to Storify, I am very impressed with the power that this content curation tool can provide for marketing and public relations. It’s simple and easy to use, a must for today’s busy professional. And a single story can have multiple contributors.

Still in beta with invites given out occasionally, Storify has great potential for marketing and public relations. Here are five ways Storify can help your efforts:

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Getting Noticed by Industry Analysts

By Litandmore via Flickr

There was a recent discussion on Focus regarding how start-up companies can get noticed by Gartner analysts. One misconception is that you have to be a paid customer of the top analyst firms – Gartner, Forrester, Altimeter, etc. – in order to meet and brief analysts about your company. In addition to my response to the question, I’m including an overview of what you should do before, during and after a briefing.

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Rise of the Infographic

The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”underscores how a single image can communicate complex ideas. In my RSS feed, I’ve noticed an increase in infographics used for a variety of topics from mobile usage to social media stats. And in the work I’ve been doing for Virtual Edge Institute, we’ve created a couple of infographics as well.

While I envision more and more PR/marketing practitioners to use infographics, I would recommend limiting their use to summarizing key figures or information of interest to your audience. Here are a few of my favorite infographics:

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PRMM Interview #16: Chris Abraham on PR and Social Media

I met Chris Abraham, President of Abraham Harrison, while he was in a San Francisco late last year. While we were unable to record an interview at the time, I sent Chris some questions via email. Here are Chris’ video responses, as he shares his thoughts about his company, why they don’t consider themselves a PR agency, and what he would like to see in 2011.

Briefly, Chris is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. He can be reached on Twitter @chrisabraham.

If you are interested in submitting suggestions for future blog posts or would like to be a guest blogger, please contact me.

The B2B Worldcom Practice Group Offers Insight for B2B Companies in 2011

Guest Post by Cortney Rhoads Stapleton, SVP and head of the Professional Servies Practice at BlissPR New York & Aven L. James, Account Supervisor at BlissPR in New York City

While most people have made their resolutions and predictions, there is still snow on the ground in NYC, so we feel that is our free pass to add our contribution. This is a synthesis of the thoughts from members of the B2B Practice Group of the Worldcom Public Relations Group, the world’s largest network of independent PR firms. In conversations with Worldcom partners in North and South America, a few trends emerged about the direction of our profession in 2011: Continue reading »

Getting Beyond the Quora Hype

Over the past few weeks, there has been a wave of publicity about Quora, a service seeking to rival LinkedIn’s popular answers service. After reading some of the coverage, I decided to check it out and was a little bit disappointed. I’ve actually been an active participant of an alternative service called Focus.com.  While I see the value that services like Quora can bring, I believe that most of Quora’s current hype is due to it’s founder and funding to date. 

Right now, I’m keeping an eye on the service and seeing if Quora delivers on it’s hype.

Initial Thoughts About Quora

1. Faster Service: The last few times I’ve accessed the Quora site, the service was slow to load. This made finding questions, responding to them and posting quite laborious. I assume that these kinks will be figured out shortly. In the meantime, this will most likely slow the site’s adoption rate.

2. Registration Required: Since Quora is fairly new, businesses are still evaluating the value of participating on Quora. Unfortunately, you have to register in order to review the content. This puts a barrier not only to businesses but also to the very individuals you’re seeking to attract as subject matter experts. Furthermore, this requirement may drive the initial membership numbers; yet, the statistics will bear out how many are truly active on the site.

3. Quiz Before Asking: Before any member can post a question, there is a quiz on Quora’s recommended way of asking questions. This helps create a standard expectation about what is acceptable and unacceptable; though some may be put off by the approach.

4. Social Community: An interesting aspect about Quora is how the service brings in your social graph, instantly identifying members to follow who you’ve previously vetted.  The community can also vote up or down topics, helping to filter out quality questions/discussions.

5. Perceived or Real Influence: Since signing up for the service last week, I already have 30 followers without much work on my side. I wonder if Quora will fall into the “more followers you have, the more ‘influence’ you have” issue that surrounds Twitter and subsequent “influence” ranks.

6. Technology Elite are Present: In discussing Quora to my friend, Dennis Shiao, he highlighted how questions are being answered by some of the industry’s technology elite. I agree with him that this presents an interesting opportunity for members to get a glimpse into the thinking behind some of the industry’s top venture capitalists, technologists and entrepreneurs.

Conclusions: Don’t Put All Eggs into the Quora Basket

Quora is an interesting model where individuals can establish expertise and drive conversations around topics, brands and products. While Quora has received all the “buzz” recently, I would closely evaluate services like Quora to determine which works best for your company based on your audience, objectives and staffing resources. Once such service is Focus.com, which I’ve been an active user of.

Previously started as a lead generation service, the company morphed into its current incarnation in May 2010.  I’ll provide my insights about Focus in my next PR/marketing/social media post.

Do you agree – is Quora a case of the PR “buzz” machine getting ahead of the promise?

Other Articles on Quora:

1. Jeremiah Owyang, Quora for Business Not Allowed, But You Should Still Monitor and Respond

2. Mario Sundar, Should I Care about Quora?

3. David Armano, Quora Underscores Need for Corporate Ambassadors

Updates from PR Meets Marketing

For nearly 3 years, I’ve been writing about PR, marketing, social media, and most recently virtual events. At times, I’ve been very prolific and other times I’ve gone weeks without a post. As a commitment to myself and to you, my readers, I wanted to share some updates for the site in a short video message that I hope will make the blog more useful for you.

Briefly, I am enacting an editorial calendar to help develop a schedule of posts and expectations. My writing schedule will be Mondays (virtual events), Wednesdays (pr, marketing, social media), and Fridays (PRMM interviews with industry experts).

I also want to invite you to submit your ideas for potential blog topics and interview subjects (email or video). Here are some high-level bullet points on what I’m looking for in guest posts, interviewees and/or blog ideas, such as surveys highlighting key trends, case studies that demonstrate ROI, interesting case uses of technology, someone who is truly visionary, etc. 

But, most importantly, read my past posts first before connecting with me.

If you’re interested, please drop me a note either in the comments or via email. I look forward to hearing from you and watch here for future announcements.