Are you sharing your successes through case studies?
July 29, 2008
We just had a call from a client’s client asking if we could do a phone interview for a case study we are writing for our client. It started me thinking, how many businesses tell their stories through the experiences their clients have?
Have you thought about writing success stories to put on your website, sales material or even to pitch to relevant media?
Case studies provide ideal opportunities to leverage business successes and can be used to reinforce your core messages through “story telling”. They provide audiences, including journalists, a picture of the benefits your business provides its clients.
Market research consistently shows managers refer to the experiences of their peers when making purchase decisions. You most likely have many “stories” and it would be a shame if you didn’t tell your audiences about the successes you have.
Here are some questions to ask your clients to build a case study:
What business is the company in?
What value does the business provide to the customer?
What are the most important issues facing the business?
What are the apparent problems?
Are the apparent problems the real problems or only symptoms of the real problems?
On first reading what do you think the company should do?
What are the possible problems with your suggested recommendations?
What are the characteristics of the environment that the company operates in?
What are the characteristics of the industry that the company is in?
How does the company compare with other similar companies?
Australian Anthill Cool Company Awards on again!
July 19, 2008
Cool companies award
Even though entering business awards can be time consuming, they are a worthwhile activity. Even if you don’t win, just the experience of writing down all of your achievements can be inspirational. As business owners we often just keep moving forward, and awards time force us to sit down and review how far we have come.
When we do PR strategies for our clients we always build in potential awards they can enter – both industry specific as well as general business. One of the business awards worth taking a look at is the Australian Anthill Cool Company Awards.
If you believe your company a step ahead of the rest? An organisation of rule-making and rule-breaking leaders? To put it simply, is your company ‘cool’ in 2008?
Applications are now open! Click here to nominate.
Lorem Ipsum on your website, I don't think so
July 18, 2008
We all know that having a website is essential in the marketing mix. I often write websites for clients and the larger the website, the more vigilant you need to be to ensure all copy makes sense and sells your product and service professionally.
Jetstar needs to learn this lesson. Quickly I think. I was looking through Jetstar’s website for flights trying to figure out what locations the airports are and clicked on this link about the airport on the Fraser Coast.
ATTRACTIONS / EVENTS
WEATHER AIRPORT INFORMATION TRANSPORT Attractions / Events
There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.
We are looking for a great PR account manager
July 17, 2008
Looking to expand your horizons? Want the opportunity to shine? Want to be mentored to achieve brilliance? This a great opportunity to do some really interesting work within a small team so you can take on new challenges and grow your PR experience.
We are looking for a talented PR Consultant to work full time in our dynamic boutique agency based in North Sydney. You will never get bored working on a range of interesting clients mostly in the IT and business-to-business sectors.
You will manage all aspects of client accounts. You have great writing and verbal skills, be highly motivated and organised, the ability to juggle multiple tasks, to take initiative and meet strict deadlines.
This position suits PR Consultant with 2+ years experience preferably with PR agency experience. The salary will be dependent on skill and experience.
Please send your resume with a covering application letter. Only applicants selected for an interview will be contacted.
Information on CP Communications at www.cpcommunications.com.au
Position description at http://tinyurl.com/CPC4550
Businesses – Get with the social networking program
July 15, 2008
It seems that social networking sites are still the domain of consumers who are motivated by personal needs and a desire for entertainment, although businesses need to start paying attention.
Gartner’s report, Consumer social networks: a fact-based reality check shows that that Australians mainly access social networking sites for personal use and widespread adoption of social networking tools in the business is inevitable.
As reported in the AustralianIT, Business yet to scratch social networking surface:
“Social networking software holds enormous potential for improving the management of large enterprises,” Gartner research director and report author Nick Ingelbrecht says.
“However, work in this area is still immature, and in the meantime enterprises should be aware of what is happening in consumer social networking,” he says.
Ingelbrecht says Australians spend about 1.4 hours a week accessing social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. “One of the problems with social networking is that it is a consumer phenomenon that has spread into the enterprise,” he says.
“It is only now that people are beginning to realise policies governing its use need to be considered.” Ingelbrecht says social networking in the enterprise is a double-edged sword.
It can be disruptive to business, especially when people spend work hours accessing Facebook, but there are many social networking software tools that can be used to enhance business productivity, including collaboration tools, and even using Facebook to validate a hiring decision.
“The feedback we are getting from CIOs and IT managers is that you don’t want to ban these sites, but you need to set business policies to manage them.”
Sydney Writers Centre on Facebook
July 8, 2008
Congratulations to our friends at the Sydney Writers’ Centre. Their use of web 2.0 tactics within their marketing/PR program has been described by the PR Warrior as:
a great example of an entrepreneurial business utilising Facebook as a means of interacting with consumers, building a community and promoting itself.
Check out the Sydney Writers Centre Facebook page. Yesterday they launched their first podcast which you can listen to here. Its an iTunes URL so you need that installed for it to work or just search the Itunes store for “Sydney Writers Centre” or “Valerie Khoo”.
Our friends at Shine Sales Solutions also have a great Facebook page.
Don't ignore twitter for media
July 2, 2008
A few posts ago I wrote about what the fuss was with twitter. It is official.
I am a convert.
I have been twittering away, following interesting people, getting some great tips, and today I realised what I was beginning to suspect. Journalists are using it to source spokespeople. The Scoop journalist, Mark Jones posted a tweet:
markhjones ack. two CIOs that I had lined up for The Scoop this Friday have pulled out. Got a CIO in yr back pocket who can talk Windows XP vs Vista?
markhjones In less than 3 hrs I’ve received one phone call, and two emails re my Twitter request for a CIO to join us on The Scoop. Gotta love it.
