Universal Information Services

Posts from December 2011

This year a friend of mine was featured on Food Network's Cupcake Wars. About a week before the airing I sat down with him, while dining with my wife. and suggested he engage a PR professional to help harness the publicity of that show. A few days before airing, Bill contacted me to pursue the use of PR. Within 10 minutes I had him connected with a real PR professional. As a news monitoring service it is very apparent to us that if an organization wants to reach the largest audience quickly, local TV, Radio, and Print are the best bets. Now of course this depends on the audience and the service or product, but generally speaking the largest audiences for a single story are found in traditional media. However, as everyone knows, magnifying placements in traditional media through the social networks is a key component of most PR efforts.

Public Relations was the perfect tool for this promotional need as the event, a Cupcake Wars episode, could easily be promoted as a "local company done good" story. But, it would require someone with real media relationships in order to rally the TV, radio, and print media quickly. With the trending power of solo PR professionals, almost any event or PR push can be managed by a single PR pro. Through the use of now more affordable tools for news monitoring and earned media measurement, these one person shops can compete on a broader stage. Such was the case for this Cupcake Ware effort. This effort utilized traditional media relations outreach, event planning, and social media engagement to promote the show.

One of the trends for 2012 is how solo PR professionals will continue to grow their ranks. Whether because of downsized agencies, or the trimming of corporate PR departments, or even news media personalities entering the public relations industry, this does seem to be more than a trend...maybe the new normal. But I digress.

Back to the cupcakes. The overall statistics were amazing.

ROI is evident by the lines now forming at Jones Bros. Cupcakes. They did a good business before, but now it is booming over there. The TV and radio coverage generated through PR was, as expected from a well formed effort, great. And even some mentions in print were earned.

This short post illustrates a classic #samerules approach was needed here, but amplified by the #newtools of social media. One of our points for the last two years, not as just a trend for 2012, is that public relations and marketing must get away from thinking in terms of traditional and social media as separate mediums. We have only media, understanding and using each medium within the greater media takes a real pro. Whether you're an agency pro or a solo PR pro, being an expert in media relations is a primary function if you expect results. There is no faking real public relations.

Let me know if we can help you understand the impact of your PR efforts through measurement or tracking. Or better yet, give us your thoughts on how to best generate PR for an event, service, or product. Sharing the knowledge makes us all better.

Cheers!

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This time of the year brings forth hundreds, if not more, of opinions on what trends or tricks you need to use for the coming year. For the public relations and media relations industry, many of these top X lists speak to utilizing the latest tools for social media, or embracing internal content to drive your communication efforts. These ideas are all good ideas as content is truly king, and the social media tools are great for amplifying your messages. For a great example of a "Top Trends List", check out Liz O'Donnell's post. In the end, this short post focuses on the #1 thing you can do to enhance your public relations and media relations.

This is a core fundamental, the epitome of #samerules for #newtools, it is the art of the "Thank You". Yes, providing a real "thank you" is just good business. Whether serving clients, or working with the media across any channel, showing your appreciation reinforces a relationship and helps ensure that relationship can grow.

At Universal Information Services we provided a bit of a tongue-in-cheek play on saying thank you with a cup of coffee or hot cocoa.

Our news monitoring and media analysis clients are attracted to Universal because of our culture, the fact we enjoy what we do, but most of all, because we appreciate working for them. Oddly enough, the aforementioned qualities are the most often heard reasons our new clients cite for leaving their prior vendors. So if you're going to do one thing in 2012, or even here at the end of 2011, tell those you appreciate, "Thank you". I thank you for taking time to read my posts this year and look forward to presenting #newtools of 2012 and emphasizing how your fundamentals, or #samerules, are key in the coming year. Cheers...and Thank you!

...well sort of. I was able to capture part of an industry using my WordPress dashboard for creating time sensitive blogs and tracking comments. If content is king, engagement is queen.

In August of this year the broadcast monitoring industry's largest vendor declared bankruptcy. VMS, Video Monitoring Services, filed Chapter 7 and spilled thousands of clients onto the open market. A year ago this would have been of great interest, but of little consequence, to Universal Information Services. With the help of What-Cheer we completely renovated our web presence back in the fall of 2010. This gave us a custom themed WordPress website and a complete content management system for blogging and managing comments. What I would also find is that with the provided plug-ins of WordPress, my posts were being optimized for Search Engines and growing my brand presence with my industry. Here's where the story begins...

I was in Scottsdale, Arizona on a work related retreat when I learned that in 18 short hours VMS would be closing their doors. My associates quickly helped me brainstorm how I could best help the soon to be orphaned VMS clients find a home with Universal Information Services. Rather than exploit the misfortune of a friendly competitor, I simply created a higher profile for Universal Information Services, a profile that would help these clients find my company. Below is a timeline of what I did, what transpired as a result of my actions, and how that translated into growth for my company.

• 6pm August 25: A rumor of the impending bankruptcy hit my cell phone and six business friends helped me formulate a strategy using the #newtools of social media to help pull new prospects to Universal.
• 12:01am August 26: Seeing an industry email related to the bankruptcy, a second source confirming the rumor, I turned to my iPad to begin blogging about the bankruptcy and how it may impact VMS employees and clients. I accessed the CMS dashboard of Universal's website, a simple but powerful WordPress interface. There I quickly tapped out my thoughts on the matter. That original blog can be found here.
• 5am (in Arizona), 7am ET August 26: I moved my first blog on VMS with a single click of the Publish button.
• 6am August 26: Began commenting on other blogs and web sites, using my blog url on the comments to drive traffic back to the Universal Website.
• 7am August 26: Had breakfast and waited.
• Noon ET, August 26: VMS officially announces their bankruptcy...industry email, blogs, newsletters explode with confirmation and questions.
• Afternoon of August 26: Emails start hitting my smartphone with people commenting on my blog post. I respond to these comments quickly.
• 6am August 27: Update my original VMS related blog, citing some comments from over the past 18 hours.
• 7am August 27: Answer more comments on my blog post. I also realize that this blog has drawn more comments than any other in the prior year.
• 8am August 29: Post a related blog on my other company's website, The NewsTracks.
• September 2: Write a follow up blog reflecting back on the week since the VMS bankruptcy. Again, drawing a high volume of comments and links to our site.

The net effect:
My efforts, through our WordPress blog, effectively boosted our search rankings, with my sites capturing most, if not all, of the first page of organic results. Additionally, our Google AdWords campaigns went through the roof as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube related postings all pointed back to the Universal website. Similarly, my Utah News Clips company saw a huge jump in google hits due to the SEO effect from that WordPress blog. All the comments, links, and links back to our site helped elevate our exposure in the industry by an amazing rate. So much so that our broadcast monitoring business, the part most similar to what VMS provided, saw a jump in sales of 36% for the month following the VMS bankruptcy.

Can I trace our September growth solely to the fact that we were able to quickly facilitate online interaction through our WordPress site, probably not. Having a coordinated plan to Tweet, Blog and comment all contributed to the growth. Most importantly, we didn't wait to take action and our WordPress blogs let us capitalize on the best #newtools of the web. The #samerules of time sensitive marketing is all we did, but in a much different way than would have been possible in years past.

Do you have a similar experience from blogging? Any tips you care to add to the strategy I used? Please contribute to the knowledge base (community) who views this site and leave your comments. I appreciate the engagement.

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