Sony generates over £1m in sales through Twitter
March 2, 2010 · → Add Comments
Sony Vaio’s Twitter account has generated over £1m in sales, the technology giant has revealed.
Speaking at Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building event yesterday, Sony head of corporate communications Nick Sharples said the company sees Twitter as a viable sales platform as well as a tool to amplify PR activity.
Speakers from brands including Diageo and MyDeco at the event agreed that social media delivers results but insisted it must always be used alongside more traditional channels.
Sharples said, “The marketing budget is now skewed to wards integrated campaigns and includes PR and social media at the inception of a marketing campaign. Even if we decide to run a big above-the-line campaign or focus on TV, we’ll apply social media amplification.
Sony launched a campaign for a special edition of its Cyber-shot camera range last year and used social media to extend PR coverage over nine months, resulting in over £12.5m in revenue.
Interior website My deco, which is boosting its social media activity ahead of its full launch (nma 25 February 2010) said a brand being able to harness social relationships online was the holy grail.
Nicole Vanderbilt, CEO of My deco, said, “If you can find a way to harness what family and friends are saying to each other, it’s really powerful.”
Original report found on newmediaage
Creativity brainstorming techniques
March 1, 2010 · → Add Comments
In PR, or any business for that matter, we are constantly looking for new ideas, new angles and new products and new ways to service clients because creativity gives businesses an edge. It keeps things innovative, interesting and drives business forward. Without it we’d be seeing and hearing the same old thing.
Our clients find our brainstorming sessions for PR strategy and social media strategy very enlightening. So what can we do to expand our creative thinking? There are a number of different techniques and the most common approach is brainstorming.
The idea of brainstorming is to write down ideas and solutions in a structured or unstructured way to find out some possible options. It’s a way for people to stimulate each other’s creativity and produce an array of ideas. If a brainstorming session is in a group make sure you have a leader and a scribe.
Here are some rules to guide you through a brainstorming session:
Do not criticise
This is important if you want your team to speak up. A team member will not share anymore ideas if their first idea is ridiculed in front of the others. Take on each idea and discuss the more practical ones later. Encourage a positive and uncritical attitude among the group members.
Quantity is needed
The more ideas you have, the more you can work from and the broader your imagination can span.
Build on ideas presented
The ideas being shared in the brainstorming session can arouse more ideas. Modifying, combining or elaborating ideas will lead to more specific solutions. This can take the idea into a new direction or simply make the original idea better.
Here are some simple techniques or variations of brainstorming:
Wildest-Idea technique
Encourage participants to come up with wild ideas, although you may not use these ideas it might inspire a more practical idea. For example, the problem you were solving was to do with decreasing the paperwork in the office, the wild idea would be to get rid of paperwork altogether (wouldn’t that be nice?) and the more practical idea would be to use electronic means to email documents (and only use paperwork when absolutely essential).
Round Robin Brainstorming
Instead of group members shouting out random ideas, each person will get a turn to contribute something using a ‘round robin’ system. Who knows, maybe someone will blurt out a great idea under pressure.
Brain writing
Get the members of the group to write down their idea on a sheet of paper. After 10 minutes rotate the sheets to a different person and build on what the others have written on their sheet. Continue to rotate until everyone has written on each sheet and discuss.
Anonymous method
Get each person to write down their ideas on a piece of paper, pop it in a hat (or bowl) and read each one out loud. This will give participants anonymity to protect against criticism and a chance to share something they might not have contributed to the group.
Mind Map
Commonly used in brainstorming, mind mapping is a great tool to organise ideas. You begin by putting your goal in the centre of the page, then start branching out into major sub-topics. Then you continue to branch and link all the ideas. This will give you a network of ideas to work from that are connected by their arbitrary relationships and allows you to explore paths of thought that may not have been obvious.
Brainstorming is a great way to discover new ideas, they’re out there, go get them.
Up for a shotgun wedding?
February 10, 2010 · → Add Comments
As a single girl Valentine’s Day doesn’t apply to me.*
Obviously it does apply to the millions of Australians that are in relationships, or not…but want to be.
I was just standing in line at the newsagents and looked at the entire wall of Valentine’s Day cards. (Really do people send Hallmark cards still?) We have got our client Starlight Cinema coverage in the Daily Telegraph on Sunday for “Things to do on Valentine’s Day”.
As I was walking back from the newsagents past the Crows Nest Hotel on Saturday night they doing “Crowie Shotgun Weddings”. They are having a mini wedding chapel and couples get an official “partners in life” certificate.
What a great idea! (I hope they have a publicist who got them media coverage for it!)
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to think laterally to reach your target audience and tie in a promotion. Here are a couple of ideas:
• Share the love – give away a heart shaped chocolate to ever customer on the day.
• Run a competition on the day to “win a romantic dinner for two”.
• Establish a partnership with another business ie with a local florist and do a joint promotion.
• Run a direct mail piece about “We love our customer all year round” with a discount coupon.
• Hold an “I hate Valentine’s Day” singles event.
From a PR perspective have you noticed that New Year’s resolution articles fill newspapers and magazines every January and tax tips abound in March? Editors always have a need for evergreen stories, but need fresh twists and hooks that are relevant to their audiences.
I have seen a lot of requests from journalists for Valentine’s Day related stores this week.
Why not think of some articles ideas and pitch them to publications. For example, for Valentine’s Day you could write an article on the “top ten” list of tips to make your customers love you all year round, or even a personal story about why you hate Valentine’s Day.
For the cynical, you could say Valentine’s Day is all marketing hype – but take advantage of it! Use it to promote your business….and maybe even pop into the Crowie’s for a shotgun wedding!
* I am one of the cynics so am totally fine with not getting any roses this Valentine’s Day…..but will happily accept chocolates, a free dinner, romantic weekend away…. and if you accidentally over order roses for your partner I will, I suppose, take them off your hands.
Sprouter- the next big thing?
February 5, 2010 · → 1 Comment
What are you working on? Sticking to the idea that Sprouter is the entrepreneur’s new Twitter, ‘What are you Working on?’ Replaces Twitter’s famous ‘What’s Happening?’. Sprouter’s question differs to Twitter because instead of asking for posts with general comments covering any and all categories and you then having to filter through all of them, Sprouter offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to post, to their sprouter affiliates, business projects that they’re currently working on.
30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business
February 2, 2010 · → 1 Comment
Inc.’s has put together a comprehensive social media cheat sheet for the time-strapped entrepreneur. Here are the first 10 tips:
1. Offer a peek behind the scenes. Offering a sneak preview of new products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide critical feedback to help smooth the launch. For instance, John Doyle, founder of chocolate company John and Kira’s in Philadelphia, posts photos of new products on Flickr and invites comments from customers.
2. Harness your expertise. Chances are your company’s white paper won’t go viral. But sharing knowledge you’ve gathered through your trade can go a long way toward boosting your brand. Ford Models, for instance, became a YouTube sensation through a series of videos that featured its models giving beauty and fashion tips.
3. Demonstrate what your company does. Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you to express your company’s value proposition beyond words. To show just how powerful his company’s blenders were, Blendtec’s head of marketing, George Wright, created a series of videos showing the appliances churning up such diverse items as a rotisserie chicken, a Rubik’s Cube, and an iPhone. The series’ 100 million combined views helped boost Blendtec’s sales by 700 percent.
4. Put your website’s content to work. Want to draw more traffic to your website? Help spread the word by encouraging visitors to share content they enjoy. GotCast, a website that connects television casting directors with aspiring actors, draws new visitors by posting audition videos on Digg and allowing others to share video links on the site. One way to promote the sharing of your site’s content is to install a widget, such as AddThis, that automates linking to popular sites.
5. Be candid. In unsure economic times, transparency goes a long way toward retaining and attracting customers. Giving readers the scoop on your company blog is an easy way to keep the lines of communication open. Giacomo Guilizzoni, the founder of San Francisco software company Balsamiq, even posts sales and profit figures to show that his company is on solid financial footing.
6. But be careful what you say about others. When Leslie Richard, owner of a North Carolina clothing company, described Vision Media Television as a “scam,” she was slapped with a $20 million lawsuit. While recounting negative experiences with others won’t necessarily lead to a court battle, it’s best to steer clear of name-calling.
7. Interact with visitors—really. Just putting up a blog or a Facebook fan page won’t do much good if visitors sense the flow of conversation only goes one way. In fact, Matt Mullenweg, founder of blogging platform Wordpress, lists not participating in comments as a surefire way to kill a community. Mullenweg and his team field the many suggestions users have for Wordpress through his blog.
8. Don’t try to create a stand-in for yourself. With all the other tasks required within your company, it’s tempting to outsource managing your social media or even to try automating the process. That can easily backfire, as Joe Pulizzi, founder of Cleveland marketing firm Junta42, learned when he tried sending automated welcome messages to new followers on Twitter. His online contacts quickly called him out for sending out what they perceived to be spam.
9. Don’t pretend to be someone else. Thanks to IP address tracking, observers can also quickly tell when company figureheads adopt fake identities for the sake of fluffing up their reputation. Not only can the practice hurt your company’s reputation, it could also land you in legal trouble. The plastic surgery Lifestyle Lift had to pay $300,000 in settlement costs to the state of New York for having its employees post flattering reviews of the company without disclosing their affiliation.
10. Help employees bond. Corporations such as IBM have built in-house networks—even virtual worlds reminiscent of Second Life—to link employees working in different locations. Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of readily available tools to facilitate collaboration. The Hoffman Agency, a public relations firm, uses Ning, which enables users to build custom social networks, to connect its U.S. staff with employees in Europe and Asia.
Web 2.0 technologies boost NSW tourism
January 28, 2010 · → Add Comments
Government News (Angela Dorizas) has reported that the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the NSW tourism industry has increased website traffic and opened up new market segments.
A report commissioned by NSW Tourism, Adoption of Web 2.0 by Tourism Businesses in NSW found that the use of user-generated content and social networking resources, such as Twitter and YouTube, resulted in increased visitors, higher search engine rankings and greater feedback from consumers.
Included in the report was a case study of the Australian Museum’s website.
The Australian Museum was an early adopter of Web 2.0 technologies, including social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
In June 2009, Web 2.0 tools were integrated into the museum’s own website, with comments, tags, blogs and multimedia file sharing added to the site.
“Web 2.0 to the website provided the Australian Museum with valuable, in-depth insight into their audience,” the report stated.
“The comments contributed by users provided information about who the museum’s audience was, why they were engaging with the museum and what information their audience was interested in.
“Through the adoption of Web 2.0, the Australian Museum was finally able to create a snapshot of its audience.”
The report also found that the Australian Museum also benefited from savings in financial and time resources, access to new markets and increased community engagement.
To download the full report click here.
Schmap.it
January 22, 2010 · → Add Comments
Schmap.it is a great little application on Twitter that can be really useful to broadcast events to your followers.
Scmaps cleverly allows you to broadcast the time and location of your event whether it be a party or, if you’re a restaurant owner, the details of a night you have specials or happy hour etc.
By using schmaps your tweet can have a map attached to it that has cute little icons directing your followers where to go. Furthermore it creates a section for your followers to leave comments about the event. You can also apply Twitter backgrounds and add Schmap.it urls that will direct you to the homepage of the event.
With Schmaps you can also have a guest list to show other followers who will be attending you’re event. Scmap it is unique to merely twittering the details, as it creates an ambience to the event you’re holding. By adding a scmap it to your tweet you are much more likely to catch the attention of your followers. Which means more people are more likely to see your event and hopefully attend!
We created a Schmap for our client, Starlight Cinema and tweeted it.
And the tweet:
Create buzz with social media competitions
January 18, 2010 · → 3 Comments
Last year we saw Twitter go mainstream and despite reports that it might not remain popular, it appears to be stronger than ever. People (and businesses) realised it was so much more than updating your followers with what you had for lunch.
Take your Twitter and Facebook strategy one step further by including competitions to engage and reward your followers. CP Communications has been exploring and implementing social media competitions for clients and gaining remarkable results.
Why you should run a competition
1. To find new fans – The hope is that the lure of prizes will draw followers in and those that like what they see will stick around in the future. To claim a prize an individual needs to either follow you (on Twitter) or become a fan (on Facebook) to be able to claim their prize – meaning they have to sign up!
2. To reward loyal fans – Most social media sites have fans or followers that have been around from the start. I know that on our @CPCPR and @CatrionaPollard Twitter accounts there are a number of long term followers that make an effort to specifically read our tweets. A competition is a great way of giving something back to these fans and provides them with a reason to keep supporting you.
3. To increase participation – When you first start out in social media it is often difficult to get people to visit your site/fan page/or follow you. It is even more difficult to get them to interact with you. A competition gives them something to talk about with you and your community. It gives them something to get involved in, to comment on and to ask questions about. It makes it more exciting and gives people an incentive to become involved.
4. Create a buzz – Everybody loves free stuff and a competition gives people something to talk about. People will start talking about what is being given away and others that see this will be attracted to your site to check out what all the fuss is about – and get in on the action too. A competition creates a positive buzz around your competition, generates a positive vibe to anyone that visits your site and also sheds a positive light on your brand and your community.
Stuck for ideas?
1. We have seen celebrities running successful twitter competitions for huge prizes, including new cars, large sums of money, and the chance to go on holidays with them. One of these competitions offered a donation of $100,000 to a charity of a fans choice. The competition called for fans to convince the celebrity why it should be their chosen charity in 140 words or less.
2. Similarly, CopyBlogger.com ran a short story competition on Twitter. To enter, fans were called to tell a story in 140 characters or less. The winning entry was:
“Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.
3. Intellectual twitter competitions can also be implemented such as the one run by @stephenfry: Stephen Fry, British actor and comedian. His tweet was:
“L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF”
4. More simply you can include a 140 character tweet with important information that you want passed around. You need to include the incentive (the prize) and a time frame for the competition. If any of the winners are not followers all you need to do is request them to direct message you their address so you can send their prize – this makes sure they are following you. Such as:
“Starlight Cinema opens this wed 13 Jan with In the Loop at Nth Syd Oval. 1st 20 people to RT this win tickets to opening night”
5. If your objective is to drive people to your website, you can simply ask a quiz question that requires fans to visit your website for their answer. Such as:
“What’s the name of the movie showing tonight at Starlight Cinema? The 1st 10 ppl to answer win a double pass”
Remember to keep these tweets to about 120 characters giving people enough room to retweet them.
6. If you already have enough followers on twitter and want to increase your Facebook fans you can use your Twitter account to direct people to your fan page. Once directed to Facebook, they will need to become a fan to view your site. In your tweet you need to give them directions of what to do once they are there, such as:
“The first 20 people to write Starlight Cinema is awesome on our Facebook page win a double pass” (It is a good idea to include a tiny url to direct them there).
7. Finally, if you are aiming to increase participation on your Facebook fan page you can ask people to upload photos of themselves or their friends attending your event, using your product etc to your site – and give them an incentive to do this. You can publicise this through social media channels as well as in store, at the event etc.
Social media competitions are all about creativity, getting people interested and keeping true to what social media is all about – relationships and communication. They are not limited to Facebook and Twitter but can be used across all types of social media. They are however, limited by your imagination!
Top 5 PR Resolutions for 2010
January 18, 2010 · → Add Comments
2. Network
The start of a new year has always been a time for looking back to the year gone and more importantly, forward to the year ahead. It’s a time to reflect on the changes you want to make and make promises to yourself to actually do something about them this year.
So what are your business New Year resolutions? This year (and even this decade) why not introduce or revamp your public relations strategy for your business. Here is our suggestion for your New Year PR resolutions for 2010.
1. Embrace Social Media
There is nothing to be scared about; social media is just another form of communication. Social media allows any business to engage, listen, share and exchange ideas with consumers in ways that have never been done before. Most importantly – it’s free!
When it comes to social media you need to act just like you would at a New Year’s party; you need to listen, respond, provide interesting conversation, monitor what people like, provide what people like and most importantly be yourself and inject a personality.
To embrace social media in 2010 we suggest you start by creating a Facebook page for your business (read tips on creating a Facebook page), creating a Twitter account for your business, creating a LinkedIn account (read recommendations for LinkedIn) and creating a business blog (read tips on blogging).
2. Network
Networking is an important factor that should be implemented to help you progress in your business or your career in 2010.
According to statistics approximately 75 percent of new business is acquired through referrals or relationship building. There is a similar figure for getting that perfect job. Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know. There is an extensive amount of networking opportunities out there just waiting for you to join.
3. Write an Article
Writing and distributing media releases is just one way of getting media coverage. You can also write an article and pitch it to a publication.
Many publications are stretched for resources and welcome well written articles. You can write an article that positions you as an industry expert and offers topical, helpful information. Ensure it is written in an objective, informative and entertaining manner.
Make sure your article is free from blatant advertisement or advertorial. Research which publications your potential clients read, or simply pitch to your major industry publications. This will put you on the path to expert status in your industry in 2010.
Read more on writing an article.
4. Update your website
Search engines like Google, like new, valuable content on websites. These newly updated sites are seen to be providing more timely and relevant information to their visitors. Therefore you should make a resolution to update your website regularly in 2010. The more content you add, the fresher your site is and the more chance your site will rank highly in search results.
If you are stuck for ideas on what to add to your website to keep it fresh, think about what has been happening in your business recently. Did you have any great achievements? Write about them! Readers love to read positive things about your business.
5. Get customer testimonials
Including positive customer testimonials on your website or marketing collateral is a very powerful way to portray your business as an expert and often helps to win new business. Potential customers are much more likely to believe a customer testimonial that praises your product or service then they are to believe your self- written sales text.
Set aside some time in 2010 to either ring or email your customers to ask if they would mind writing a brief testimonial. If they are short for time, ask them quickly to explain what they most like about your service or product and offer to write it up for them.
Remember resolutions are only powerful if you make them happen! CP Communications wishes you a very happy and successful 2010.
Raising money for cancer research in 2010
December 11, 2009 · → Add Comments
Get a team of 10-15 people together and help in the fight against cancer at a Relay For Life event near you. The fundraising event organised by the Cancer Council helps raise much needed funds for cancer and is an opportunity to celebrate the life of loved ones who have survived and remember those who have lost their life to the disease.
Relay For Life is happening across the state on the 27 March 2010. It is not a race, rather teams of 10-15 people take turns to walk or run around a track.
The Northen Harbour Relay for Life is organised by Tony Adamo and team and will be held at Gore Hill Oval, Pacific Highway, St Leonards. Log on to Relay For Life to find the closest relay near you and sign up your team.
