K Street Cafe

One of the most overlooked opportunities for online marketing also happens to be one of the most ubiquitous: the e-mail “signature”

One of the first things new employees do is create a “signature block” for their e-mails. These half a dozen lines or so, consisting of your contact info, plop themselves at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Yet few people put any thought into their e-signature, let alone alter it after it’s typed.

This modus operandi reflects a 1.0 mindset. Let’s upgrade it.

First, think of the e-signature the same way you think of business cards: they reflect upon your organization’s brand. This is why every employee’s card looks the same and contains the same basic information: because each flows from a uniform design template. (more…)

Cross-posted from the Adfero Group blog

By Sean Wagman of Adfero Group

It appears that in social advertising these days, too much web space has been dedicated to writing eye-catching ad copy. That is all well and good, but ad copy will not make or break your social ad campaign. Most people will not take the time to read your copy. Instead, they will look at the picture, the headline, and a few keywords.

Instead, a savvy marketer will spend most of their time thinking through their targets and how they will reach them.

Look, I used to be like you. I spent most of my time pouring over the copy, making sure the 135 characters were maximized to their fullest extent. And on Facebook, targeting can be a bit overwhelming, with options ranging to geo-targeting (all the way down to the city) to gender to marital status to other Facebook pages. (more…)

Our headline would make a great name if the Institute of Makers of Explosives ever decides to rebrand. (Isn’t everyone these days?) Alas, it’s taken, by a very worthy non-profit. KaBOOM! is devoted to promoting play and giving kids access to great playgrounds. The name is just the beginning of CEO and founder Darell Hammond’screative organizational approach.

Darell published a book called KaBOOM! How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play last month, coinciding with the organization’s 15th anniversary. it has reached the #4 spot on The New York Times Best Sellers list. Darell says the book is a platform to excite the organization’s base, open itself up to new audiences, and convince them that play is not a luxury but a necessity. He hopes to turn people into advocates for play, so that if recess is being eliminated in their schools, they will show up at school board or city council meetings and write op-eds. KaBOOM! has also created an online tool that allows people to input and find information about local parks and playgrounds and organize events there. The tool will become available on a mobile app in three weeks. By mapping out parks, KaBOOM! can also overlay race, health, and crime statistics and get a better understanding of where the deficit really exists.

To read the entire article on BisNow, click here.

Social Media Ad Spending to Hit $8.3B in 2015 (Mashable)
Organizations will look to harness the power of social media even more over the next few years, increasing ad sales from $2.1B last year to $8.3B by 2015.

Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S. (NY Times)
As more consumers go online to fulfill their entertainment needs, television ownership drops for the first time in twenty years.

Organizations talk about social media with the same obsession and confusion as Donald Trump’s hair. But to what extent are they using it and how effectively? A new survey asks 11,000 non-profits and professional associations just that.

The study, conducted by the Nonprofit Technology Network, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, looked at organizations of all types and sizes. Nonprofit Technology Network executive director Holly Ross tells us one of the most common questions she gets is “Can I raise money with social media?” The survey found that 46% of organizations are raising $1 to $10K through social networks—up from 38% the year before. Only 0.4% of organizations raise more than $100K per year on social networks. But not all of these “Master Social Fundraisers” have giant budgets. In fact, nearly a third have budgets of less than $5 million. What they do have in common are massive followings. The average Facebook following of a “Master Social Fundraiser” is nearly 100,000—more than 15 times the average non-profit. In addition, 30% have at least two staff dedicated to social media, compared to 2% of the sector as a whole.

Holly tells us a new breed of non-profit is emerging that exists almost exclusively in the social media space. These groups sometimes don’t have traditional websites, but rely on Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. She recalls meeting a guy from one such organization who was talking about e-mail as the “traditional” form of fundraising. She had to correct him to say that traditional fundraising was actually done with direct mail. Holly says it’s all tied up in a larger trend of what it means to be a non-profit. Social entrepreneurs and mixed models of business and charity are changing what it means to do good.

To read the entire article on BisNow, click here.

We’ve all heard the complaint before: Why doesn’t my Web page appear when I Google [fill in the blank]? To paraphrase George Berkeley: If a Web page is published but can’t be indexed, is it still published?

Let’s face it: If you don’t show up in a search engine’s first 10 results, you don’t exist. Indeed, that Google has made predictive search the default setting only hardens this race to the top. (According to the latest report from comScore, Google continues to process two out of every three queries in the U.S.)

Fortunately, this is a solvable problem—especially if your content contains a unique word or phrase.

Consider this article from S&T Snapshots, an e-zine I once edited. Its subject is something called SportEvac. As the below screen shots show, simply by adding this word to (1) the Web page’s title (“DHS | SportEvac: Choreographing a Stadium Stampede”) and (2) its in-body header (“SportEvac: Choreographing a Stadium Stampede”), we ensured that Google would find it and rank it highly—in fact, first.

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Earlier in the week, AdWeek published a piece I wrote about the impending death of the newspaper. I was responding to an earlier article, in which Ross Dawson predicts the global demise of the newspaper industry in a country-by-country timeline. But while Dawson believes that the news industry will survive in a transformed state, it’s my opinion that the newspaper business model is simply unsustainable. Let me know what you think.

Cross-posted from Ad Week

Newspaper Business Model: Unsustainable in Any Form
The ‘newspapers are dying’ story line is hardly novel

U.S. newspapers as we know them will be extinct by 2017.

So says Ross Dawson, a self-proclaimed “futurist” from Australia who released a global newspaper extinction time line in October. Dawson’s latest time line makes country-by-country predictions based on factors including a nation’s demographics, consumer behaviors and technological capacities. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. newspaper empire is predicted to crumble first, given Americans’ widespread adoption of handheld technology and the declining state of the nation’s newspaper industry. The newspaper will apparently endure a slow and painful death around the globe, spanning from 2017 to 2040—and, perhaps, beyond. (He predicted that Australian newspapers would meet their demise by 2022.)

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For most PR professionals, continuing education means learning about the latest communications tactics.

Over the past year, Adfero Group and the National Press Club have sponsored the Get PR Smart series to focus on exactly these sorts of tactics: how to use the latest social media tools, how to connect more directly with a target audience, and how to effectively engage in media monitoring.

The next event – scheduled for Friday, December 10  –  will take a different approach.  The seminar will address one of the most important, but often overlooked, subjects for both PR professionals and clients: Establishing a Meaningful Client/Agency Relationship.

An effective communications strategy requires a healthy, productive collaboration between a client and its agency.  Yet, too often, critical mistakes are made early in the formation of the agency-client relationship.

For clients, the approach used to select an agency can be problematic down the road.  It is natural to choose a PR firm based on its past experience, its expertise in a particular issue, and its general reputation.  But if the criteria end there, clients never evaluate a firm on traits like responsiveness and thoughtfulness – two keys to a successful relationship and a successful campaign.

Particularly here in D.C., where the need for communications support can come up unexpectedly, a client’s chemistry with a prospective agency is often a nonfactor.  But fit matters – no matter how good an end product may be, an agency should be enjoyable to work with.  Clients should take the time to evaluate a potential firm from all angles.

Agencies also make early missteps by overpromising to win a client’s business.  Optimism is great, but an agency must be realistic about its own capabilities and what is actually possible to achieve with a given campaign.  In the professional services industry, it is widely accepted that client satisfaction is equal to the perceived results minus the client’s original expectations.  Overly lofty predictions by the agency will ultimately lead to a dissatisfied client (and probably the end of the relationship).

To avoid disappointment on both ends, it is crucial for clients and agencies to set reasonable expectations at the beginning of a relationship or project.

At the Get PR Smart event in December, my colleague Shellie Edge and I will focus on what sorts of expectations should be set for a client-agency relationship to be productive.  Here is a preview:

- Communicating: The agency needs to receive clear expectations about how to communicate with the client.  For example, are standing meetings necessary?  Is email or phone preferable?  Establishing these protocols at the outset will prevent conflict down the road.
- Tracking Progress: The agency should establish how to update the client on a project’s progress.  For example, depending on the nature of a project, it might be appropriate to give the client access to a collaborative account management tool.  In other cases, clients may not want or need that level of access.
- Measuring Results: Any communications campaign should have measurable metrics for success.  The agency needs to establish corresponding reporting protocols that allow a client to see how those metrics are being met.

To learn more about how to establish and nurture a productive and health client-agency relationship, register today for the next Get PR Smart event.

Three of Washington’s most tech-savvy think tanks unveiled iPhone apps in the past few weeks — a noteworthy development that caught the attention of Nancy Scola at techPresident. Scola’s review of the apps — from The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and Brookings Institution — raised an important question: Does anyone actually use this stuff?

Early results for Heritage indicate the answer is yes. After only a week on iTunes, the Heritage app had 2,500 downloads as of Monday. Not bad considering we spent less than $1,500 to build the app, a modest investment considering the potential upside of the product.

Scola’s review is mostly upbeat and positive about each of the three apps, but she’s also skeptical about their broader appeal. She concludes by asking this question: “Is anyone seeking out these apps as they seek out research, news and points of view?”

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Jeff is right on the mark in his post “Your Social Media Strategy May Not Be A Strategy.” But it may even be worse than he reports. Some companies and organizations don’t even have clear tactics when it comes to social media, but still think they have a strategy.

I often remind people that knowing how to use social media is not the same thing as knowing how to use it strategically and tactically.

I have trained many college students (in my classes and interns at work) who claim to know how to use social media at the start of the training. By the end of the training the invariable comment that they never thought it through strategically or tactically before.

Our strategy at the Center for American Progress and Center for American Progress Action Fund is to use social media to influence influencers so they will share our ideas with their audiences. Sometimes that is simply to get our policy reports, videos, and interactive graphics out to an influential audience. Sometimes our goal is to mobilize people to take action to influence policymakers.

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