Here a few tips to help you maneuver around an awkward conversation while essentially telling your client…it’s a bad idea.

1. Forward-thinking. This may seem obvious, but resist the urge to tell your client NO without stating your case. Why is the a bad idea? Short term effects, long term effects, help your client project the situation to see the future outcome. Yes, this may seem like a good idea at the moment to promote a certain event or product, but could it hurt your client’s credibility in the future? Our clients tend to get carried away with big ideas, before they get too excited help them take a forward-thinking approach to see what the right actions are.. today. It may seem simple, but explain your case, and be able to back it up with solid reasons that are in place to position your client for a successful future.

2. Brand Consistency. Encourage your client to think about whether or not this  move/decision is “in-line” with their branding and reputation. This is always a strong stance to take, stressing the importance of a strong brand consistency will be a persuasive angle when talking your client out of potentially bad decision. Remind them that you don’t want to disrupt both of your efforts to create a reliable company brand.

3. First-things-first: Some of our clients can be big dreamers or visionaries… if you will, which in many cases is what makes many of them successful. However, having an over-sized dream or goal can be a set back if it’s not handled correctly. These types of clients sometime need us to pull them back down to earth and make them a first-things-first list. Take care of #1-3 before you rattle off what #26-30 will entail. I have experienced clients that don’t make progress because they obsess over the end point. Encourage them to focus on how to make things happen now. Help them take it step by step, often times this will avoid decisions that don’t make sense for your client at the current time. Remember, we are here to give them a plan/campaign for a reason, and those steps should be followed and clearly understood in order to achieve measurable success.

4. Be direct, without being direct. Choice of words is a huge factor in this situation, you can likely find a way to tell your client, “don’t do it”, without using that exact phrase. Encouraging your client to take action with A, B or C… is different than telling them, don’t do D. Push your client towards positive action/movement, rather than pushing them away from a bad idea. Simply re-direct them. Maybe you will be successful in distracting the client from an un-wise release or announcement by suggesting a difference course of action be taken.

I have found myself in the position numerous times to want to argue with corporate professionals about why social media is worth the time and effort it takes to learn to utilize these new mediums. I’ve even given a presentation to introduce how each site/application could possibly used for different types of clients. This post made me realize that the first step is looking more closely at what is is holding our bosses back.   Then we can more strategically plan our rebuttals! Here’s why the boss is scared of that little blue bird….

Here is a summary of Ochman’s post along with some thoughts of my own.

1- Companies think that employees will waste time with social media.

Many large corporations block their employees from accessing the Internet altogether. Others try to block employees from accessing personal email or social networks like Facebook during work hours.  In May, 2009, according to emarketer, there were 29 million smartphones in the United States. That’s a lot of Internet access available to workers everywhere – and employers can’t stop us from accessing the Internet – on breaks, at lunch, in the bathroom, you name it.  The value to workers of having Internet access – in terms of research, communication, and speed – is far greater than the threat of lost productivity. Companies have a right to make policies and rules about personal use of the Internet, but blocking it during work is just stupid.

This is great one. Your employees are already tweeting in the bathroom.. so you may as well them allow them to at their desk, then maybe they’ll learn enough about twitter/foursquare/facebook or whatever it may be to help you implement it into your overall marketing strategy!

2- Haters will damage our brand.

“What about the haters?” is the first question that comes up at my corporate and conference social media workshops. “What if people say bad, mean, nasty things about our brand?”  Well, there may be things you need to change about your brand, and in that case, you should thank them for letting you know what they are. Then you should make changes.  If you have built an online community that includes people who don’t hate you, that community will rise to your defense and they will handle the problem for you.

I completely agree with this one.  Criticism can make your brand stronger if you counteract it, you will learn where your brand needs to improve. You’re getting free and easy feedback through interactive sites!

3- We’ll lose control of the brand.

Listen up: every person with a computer and even a tiny skill level has the tools to make their opinion about your brand heard by other people. They’re already talking about you. Message control is an illusion. Give it up.= Your workers are talking about you in closed Facebook groups designed to keep you out so they can talk about you in peace. Your customers are emailing, Tweeting, Facebooking, and that old standby – calling – their friends about their experience with your brand. You don’t have control. You might as well join the conversation. At least that way you can influence what is being said.

Simply put… since they are already talking about you… joining in gives your brand the change to first listen, then TALK BACK and be pro-active and re-active instead of just observing.

4- Social media requires a real budget! It’s not really cheap, or free.

While many social media tools are free, knowing how to use them takes experience and perspective.  The boss’ friend’s high school or college kid can’t integrate social media into the company’s overall marketing. That requires experience and perspective. Having a large social network and a stellar online reputation helps too.

5- They’re scared they’ll be sued.

Oh puh-lese. Next!

Again, agreed.. you could be sued a number of other ways too. Crawl out from underneath that rock you’re living under… and welcome to the 21st century.

6- They’re scared of giving away corporate secrets or that information on social networks will affect the stock price.

If you don’t already have a social media policy, you need to create one.

I have come to the conclusion that this is why people who find themselves in the PR industry are different – they are, always happy, always willing to help (even when it means lugging heavy boxes or working a booth somewhere random like the Poway Rodeo for your client, or answering phones for your clients company, or making protest signs for 3 days straight for a big city hall meeting….) The type of people who are really great at PR, are humble and willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved. THIS is why I love PR, for the most part – we aren’t above it, we’re ready and willing to jump at the request to get involved anyway that we are needed… the job is always different, the smile is always genuine, and we’re always willing to do what it takes to keep everyone happy.

YOUR CLIENTS: You have to know everything about your client and keep them happy at all times.

THE MEDIA:  You also have to serve reporters, and appear that you are catering to their exact needs in order for them to bite. You have to be there to help and serve them – to do their job better, in addition to accomplishing your own goals.

YOUR BOSS: Don’t forget your boss – whether you work in house or “out” in an agency. You’re boss is someone who must always be pleased by your performance, drive, effort and abilities. He must always be impressed for you to have value where you are.

YOUR COMPANY: Yes, it’s always about the bottom line. Especially in this economy. Are you adding value? Maybe, are you adding ROI though? This is a very different question.

You really have to keep pretty much everyone you interact with at work happy,  as everyone is a connection/networking opportunity even if they aren’t tied directly into your overall working goal.  ( I realize this can be true of any industry, but I feel that it is exemplified in the everyday juggle of a PR pro.)

Reflecting a little bit on PR, and my job, and my experience – brings me back to not just the heart of PR, but the aspects of public relations that I truly enjoy, and the aspects that honestly – I really DON’T enjoy, maybe even dread. There’s parts we all love about our jobs that we’ll work till 10 PM for, and parts that make us want to cut out early on a Friday afternoon around 2:30 right? (Hey, this blog is about honesty in case you weren’t aware). Anyway in reflecting on all of this I realize that this aspect of PR, helping where you’re needed and getting involved regardless of to the degree… is one of my favorite things. The attitude, the willingness, it’s requires you to be in touch with the service side of the industry. We are in place to be public facing sometimes, serving our clients, or serving the public/customers of behalf of our clients – it requires us to put on a smile and BE that public facing postive brand, and having the opportunity to do that… makes me truly love PR.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.” – This is a pretty straightforward and accurate description, but let’s break it down a little more…

A successful brand will seek to accomplish the following:

• Deliver their message clearly
• Confirm credibility
• Connect target prospects emotionally
• Motivate the buyer
• Create and maintain user loyalty

Branding is an essential component of Marketing Communications. You can’t (successfully) market anything with out a clear brand vision for your company or product. The AMA also says that a brand is the sum total of  a consumer/client/consumer’s experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.  This is my personal favorite way to explain a brand. Your complete experience with a product and/or company is what that brand is to you.

If you went to an In N Out Burger and the guy threw your animal style double double at you across the counter then you’re probably not going to have the same perception of the In N Out brand – that most people have. That’s just the way it is. It’s all about experiences and perception. The job of a good brand manager is to have the majority of consumers who deal w/ your company and/or product have a consistently positive experience and perception.

Today, it is important to remember that the world of social media – where transparency is become a key to this branding component of PR and Marketing – we HAVE to do this! We have to be transparent, authentic, and real with our consumers. This means that while yes -  it is important to influence consumers and present your brand in a certain light, it’s just as important today to make sure that brand you are presenting is a genuine and authentic one, and you aren’t just “putting on a front” for your company or product that will fall apart if a consumer sees past the surface. It’s harder than you would imagine to convince the corporate world that it is worthwhile to let a little bit of criticism or complaints show – for the sake of being an authentic company or brand that seeks to become more and more successful through improvement and working on weaknesses.

When consumers can see you’ve let them see the bad with the good – they know your honest – and when they know your honest, it is then they can begin to trust you – and you can start to build a solid brand from their trust, confidence and respect.

To see the difference between advertising and public relations it’s important to understand that one thing that advertising doesn’t deliver as well as PR is consumer trust. I think that branding is a huge part of this, and I’ll talk more later about how branding is important to create consumer confident in your company/brand/service….

For now, back to advertising – in a recent PR newsletter I read that TNS (a leading marketing information group) surveyed 1,000 US households on the subject of consumer trust late last year.  In that survey, only 35% showed any level of trust at all in advertising. Also, in a Nielsen Online Global Consumer survey, when asked what sort of advertising they trust more, 78% said they trust customer referrals over any type of advertising.

That is exactly what PR aims to deliver: trust, credibility and word of mouth promotion. The third-party endorsement that comes with appearing as a guest on TV show or the morning news, or to have a story written about you in newspapers and magazines, or even your words and advice quoted is absolutely priceless.  Somethings you can’t put a price tag on. This is what can be achieved with PR and at about one-half to one-fifth of the price of an advertising campaign.

This backs up my personal belief that public relations professionals should focus on branding, positioning and placement as a means for communication with your publics and audience, rather than pushing and selling (advertising).  Depending on what kind of PR environment you work  in – I think in some cases in can be easy to be pushed in with marketing/advertising/media relations. And while there is always an overlap to some extent… it’s important to decipher, and recognize the differences – in results, in effectiveness, in value and level of results etc.  And for PR pro’s it’s important to realize also – what it is that you are doing, what category it falls under, what effect you are having with it, and what you need to learn more about!

Next post will focus on branding, and where that fits into the PR spectrum…

I decided to take a minute to highlight my latest endeavor, joining the team at SocialDreamium. SocialDreamium is a privately-held Milwaukee-based company committed to building strong web-based communities centered around a companies products and services.  Started in October of last year by my brother Ryan Graves, and quickly expanding. I jumped on board a little over a month ago to help author the blog, (Get Audience, Get Going, where you will often see my posts from this site as well), assist with client writing (as we start to build a client base), and editorial assistance to what eventually will be a SocialDreamium book entitled,”The Dream in Action”. (I’ll keep you posted!)

At SocialDreamium, we believe in the power of the collective social web. It’s what we love and have a passion for, and want to help others understand.. and then utilize for their brand.  We also love people and we see the internet as a way to meet more people and create value for these businesses. We work to create two way relationships and conversation between our clients and their customers.  I hav posted before about online communities, and what that means. SocialDreamium dives into this concept and works to first create and then managing these communities. It is so much about listening and contributing to the networks that exist, and we help our companies to do this. We also help companies to develop a successful blog for their brand and build a social web presence that they can stand on.  Through these outlets we allow our clients to grow a relationship with their customers.  We also now have a larger team that allows us to build web based software to help you manage your community.  Currently, the SocialDreamium team is made up of Ryan (in Milwaukee), David Abrahams and Dien Nguyen in Sydney, Australia and myself in San Diego. We’re still growing and looking for great writers and developers to join our ranks…(e-mail taylor@socialdreamium.com)

SocialDreamium currently has a working relationship with SOHO Magazine (out of Milwauke), and our clientel includes of SOHObiztube.com and budgetpulse.com — check ‘em out! It’s all very exciting I know… just wanted to keep you all in the know, and I will keep you posted as this exciting new start up gains speed!

While watching the chargers game a few weeks back (the last game of the regular season that led us to the play offs, woo-hoo!) we started talking about the simple things in life that.. simply.. can’t be beat. Apple products  are often centered around “touch” — very simple, the In-N-Out Burger Menu (the simple and few choices are a beautiful thing!), Google products are centered around the “find” theme, and again, very simple – very successful. See these illustrations taken from Eric Burke’s blog post about simplicity.

I think that in today’s world customers are over the over-complicated. They want something simple that they can figure out how to use.  A product has to have a certain amount of worth in order for us to find time in our busy lives to sit down and take the time to learn a new tool – the easier it is to use, the more committed a consumer will become to incorportaing the products use into their daily lives. We want simple, easy to understand and efficient.  While some may associate simplicity with easy on the creator side — this is simply wrong.  Simplicity often requires much more work on the production side. A lot of thought and planning must go into what will be MOST efficient for the average user and then easiest to translate into product form. The genius of simplistic products is what amazes me. For every brand, application, software product, and customer facing product — this truth can be applied. Though it may be a specific industry related tool – there is always a level of simplistic, user-friendliness that can be applied, and I would encourage creators to focus on the importantance of the aspect of simplicity for customers today.

Google is my favorite example – because they really keep it simple, and understand the value of “less is more”.  Google’s homepage stays pure and simple, and other tech companies are starting to get it as well. It’s innovations biggest paradox: We demand more stuff in our lives, with more features, function adn power, and we also demand it remain as easy as 1,2,3 to use! As I said before – the technology that is the simpliest to use is often the most difficult to create.  Fast Company says, “the technology that powers Google’s search engine is, of course, anything but simple. In a fraction of a second, the software solves an equation of more than 500 million variables to rank 8 billion Web pages by importance. But the actual experience of those fancy algorithms is something that would satisfy a Shaker: a clean, white home page, typically featuring no more than 30 lean words; a cheery, six-character, primary-colored logo; and a capacious search box. It couldn’t be friendlier or easier to use.” As a creator, remember that no matter how much complexity you are able to fit into your product, at the end of the day, the consumer doesn’t care — they just want it to be easy and they want it to work!!

How can you cut out complexity from your product on the customer facing side? How can you make your brand, product, creation less complicated, and more simple? How can your creation be more like the In-N-Out Burger menu? hmmm

I have heard arguments both for and against blogging or twittering on behalf of a corporation. According to MediaWeek for the last several years, new marketing experts have implored corporations to “join the conversation,” namely through blogging. The problem being is that currently, several years into the blogging phenomenon, not many consumers trust these corporate blogs.  Personally, there are many corporate blogs I read, trust and enjoy. One of them is the Google Reader blog. I find it informative, personal and easy to relate to in the first person plural tone in which it is written. I think it’s possible to have a successful corporate blogging experience.  AdAge reported that 20% of the Fortune 500 have blogs.   Chris Baggott says, that “almost every one of those blogs are the traditional C-level, Thought Leadership kind of blather.” He claims that people don’t trust the C-level. The only successful corporate blogging approach is one that includes employees, because that’s where the trust factor comes in. Employees are the credible source. Does that mean that we can twitter or blog with a company/brand name if we first explain (in our profiles) that we are (name) blogging on behalf of (company) ??  Is that simple acknowledgement, of an individual actually typing the posts or sending the tweets, enough to earn a consumers trust?

I liked these Five Steps to a Successful Corporate Twitter Presence on how best to use corporate twitter accounts, when you do want to use a brand/company name for your twitter.

1. Listen. It’s easy to set up and subscribe to a search of your brand or company name.
2. Add value. Provide useful content for those that choose to follow you.
3. Only follow when followed or mentioned. Having an anonymous entity follow you is a bit like receiving spam – you don’t know who it is or why you’re getting it. If your following:followers ratio is more than 2:1 then you are probably being a bit desperate.
4. Reply. Respond to every tweet directed at you.
5. Use replies rather than direct messages. Be transparent about what you’re saying to others on Twitter.

Is it a good move to introduce a blog for a personal brand or company if it’s the behind the scenes employees that do the posting and tweeting and own up to it?? Or is this still a risk for consumer mis-trust? What do you think?

Senior level marketers surveyed in 2005 by the Council of Public Relations Firms and Advertising Age said they perceive public relations to be most valuable in supporting product marketing and product launches.

Marketing executives surveyed that same year by PR Week were asked to compare the effectiveness of public relations to that of advertising and direct marketing for specific tasks. From the perspective of these executives, public relations is the most effective marketing discipline for launching a new product or service, building awareness, generating word of mouth, and building brand reputation.

Another important factor in explaining the value of our industry, is continually going BACK TO THE BASICS. (And let’s be honest, it’s always good to brush up on our ABC’s of PR so we don’t loose track in all the advertising/media/social web/etc, am I right?)  New comers to public relations need to understand that it is much more than a publicity or advertising effort alone.  So, the answer is to go back to the basics. In Glen Broom‘s “Effective Public Relations” he highlights the following areas to be implemented (not including research and other areas of preparation) as points of focus for a successful Public Relations effort.

• Publicity: This is the most visible part of public relations. PR people must make judgments to providing the media with the information that they deem to be newsworthy.

• Advertising: Provides a more control over content and placement than publicity does. PR can sometimes join forces with advertising department to promote through multiple mediums including but not limited to print, radio, TV, and internet.

• Press Agentry: Public notice and attention (not necessarily public understanding). To a certain extent, any press is good press, and part of a successful PR plan would be to focus on press agentry.

• Social Media: Creating a social web presence is now key to almost any successful public relations effort. Gaining and online recognizable brand will allow you to connect to your more common or average customers. It will also provide the unique opportunity to engage in true 2 way communication with you audiences while learning the industry trends and consumer habits.

• Internal Relations:Keeping employees informed and motivated and promoting the culture and style of the company/brand. Internal newsletters are a good example of how to promote positive communication within an organization so that everyone is participating in effective communication.

• Public Affairs:Building and maintaining relationship with target publics who influence public policy. Relationships could be built through endorsements/interviews/etc with the appropriate political figures.

• Issues Management: Identifying issues early on with potential impact on your brand and forming a strategic response designed to capitalize on the consequences. The PR responsibility is to coach your company/brand spokesperson to respond to these potential problems before they become issues.

• Business Development: Focusing on working to locate new development opportunities for the company/brand.