Business Cards Do Not Equal Permission

A business card is meant to develop a relationship between people, not a person and a company. However, the first tendency is to take all business cards back to the office, dump them into a sales database and automatically subscribe them to all the company emails. Come on, you know you’ve done it!

From my perspective, this is the quickest path to 1) decrease people’s interest to work with your company and 2) for future emails to be blocked. In the end, this is about permission marketing (as eloquently written by Seth Godin in the book with the same name). Here are my three tips to gaining permission and starting your marketing relationship on the right foot.

Selling Social Media to Your Organization

In the PR Group on LinkedIn (must be a member to view the discussion), some asked, “How do you justify fees to clients in an era of social media?” I believe many PR and marketing consultants have faced this as potential clients believe that social media is “free.”

I think there are two parts to this equation that we need to consider before answering the question, assuming that we’ve done the background work of evaluating target audience, prospect personas, and the channels where these individuals congregate.

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Five Tips for Launching a Memorable Start-Up Company

So you’re launching your company in a few weeks. You’re focused on getting the product to work. If you’re one of the lucky ones who was selected to launch and can afford to go to DEMO or Disrupt, you want to make sure that nothing fails. But whether or not it’s debuting at a conference or getting noticed, there are several things that start-up companies can do to prep for a successful launch.
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Social Media for Health Care Professionals

Social media has become increasingly popular for business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. I recently did some research on social media by healthcare professionals and wanted to share some of the articles and stats I found in the form of Storify. There are interesting implications in how, as PR and marketing professionals, one would reach and engage with this audience. What are your experiences?

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Top Five Social Media Mistakes

Over the past few years, it’s struck me how often people ask me the best way to participate on social media. While we are becoming more mature in how we leverage social media for public relations and marketing, there are still some common mistakes I see peopel make. Here are the top five mistakes that I think you or a company should avoid when you begin any social media activity: Continue reading »

PRMM Interview #19: Scott Albro of Focus

Last month, I had an opportunity to speak with Scott Albro, Founder and CEO of Focus (note: I am listed as an expert on the Focus network). I previously wrote about the company here and was interested in learning more about the company.

Here is a quick overview of our discussion:

1:10: Where is this space heading and trends? Albro highlights his thoughts on the knowledge marketplace and how human participation will help create and distribute knowledge.

2:50: How does Focus maintain the level of engagement, quality and experience for members? Albro discusses how Focus incorporates human capital for quality control while incorporating up and down voting features.

4:35: Where is Focus headed in 12 months? 5 years? Focus is looking to disrupt the industry on business expertise. With more than 30 million businesses in the US alone, the company is seeking to help these businesses make better business decisions and to open up the world of business expertise.

7:35: How does PR and marketing fit in to the success of Focus and his advice as a CEO? Albro provides an interesting appraoch to PR and marketing with three lessons: focus on product development before marketing; build a community to be your advocate; and focus efforts on a few, high-quality campaigns

PRMM Interview #18: Heidi Cohen of Actionable Marketing

Heidi Cohen, president of Riverside Marketing Strategies, has 20+ years experience in direct and digital marketing across diverse product categories encompassing soft goods (such as clothes and uniforms), highly regulated financials services, entertainment-related products, and craft-oriented offerings. Her blog provides marketing related insights grounded in digital and direct marketing. In this installment, Heidi answered some questions via email. You can follow Heidi on Twitter @HeidiCohen. Continue reading »