Universal Information Services

Posts for Universal Thoughts

On the eve of a new marketing campaign, I find myself reflecting on what our objectives are for this campaign. With message points like, "Are you sure your news monitor is tracking all your news?" and "How much news are you missing?", it seems we're trying to appeal to a person's sense of doubt.

Doubt is something that seems to be innate, a primary function of our rational being. For this blog, I would say this falls into that category of #samerules for people. Ironically, doubt has become a positive force for compelling buyers to make a change from their existing vendor. Sales teams use this doubt in order to get you to simply consider their pitch. The #newtools of social media let marketing and sales greatly amplify doubt across many buying channels.

Doubt can take many forms. Marketing professionals try and get you to doubt the price you pay for service, doubt the features you get for a price, and most commonly doubt the results of the product or service you are receiving. The hope, if you will, in using doubt is that you will stop what you are using and switch to the new vendor.

My feeling is that doubt is nearly related to skepticism. With skepticism you get cautiousness, and from cautiousness you hopefully arrive at a point where you fairly evaluate your options. It is in evaluating your options that one finds the truth...but that truth is not always easy to see. In our marketing campaign we hope that prospective clients will only question who they are using for news monitoring and media analysis, asking themselves if they are truly getting what they need.

If it sounds like I'm talking in circles, that's because I probably am. The circular nature of moving from doubt to decision seems to ultimately bring you back to doubt. Even if and when you decide to change your vendor, that choice eventually falls victim to that doubt once again. This recurring doubt is most often introduced by the next vendor in line.

At Universal Information Services one of our Core Values is Honest and Direct Communication. If we do nothing more than help educate the PR professionals and corporate communicators we serve, we have done a good job. If these prospects have doubts about their current vendors, maybe we can help either confirm they are using a good service, or maybe compel them to look elsewhere. We, of course, hope these prospects look at Universal, but most importantly, they look at the best service to fulfill their needs. Personally, I have no problem naming services like Cision and BurrellesLuce, in addition to Universal Information Services, as complete news monitoring services that do a great job.

If you doubt my opinion, leave a comment. Cheers!

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!

Gina Svendsen serves as Media Analysis Director for Universal Information Services.

This blog entry is my rant—my opinion. In writing this post, I am putting myself “out there” for a discussion –because without discussion, it’s just me on my soap-box. As the Director of Media Analysis for Universal Information Services, it's also a great diversion from analytics.

I have a slew of nieces and nephews from college-age all the way down to elementary school age, so I’m always wondering, “What can I learn from these great kids and apply that to my life?” As I was brainstorming over this blog post, it donned on me. Transparency. I learned about transparency in a media relations class in college. This old rule has changed over time and, I believe, is MORE important today and will begin to change even more over the next five years.

Today’s younger generation knows way more about this than we do because of Facebook and mobile devices. I just read that the web is older than today’s incoming college freshmen—their posts on Facebook are transparent, with the person behind the post showing their authentic self. They post the good, the bad and the ugly. (I am amused by the number of people on Facebook who air their own dirty laundry! But this is another blog subject for the future.) But seriously, I think we can learn something about transparency from the younger generation and apply it to our industry. I’m talking about being MORE authentic and transparent, more than you are right now.

When I think about transparency in PR, I instantly think of the Toyota gas pedal problem. Toyota didn’t own up to the problem right away and the end result was they lost customers. Toyota forgot the second part of the old rule. If you own up right away, we will be incredibly forgiving. The younger generation has a real problem with this because their transparent, digital lives are chronicled on Facebook. Their meaning of transparency is much different—much more stripped away. More transparent than the transparency we learned about. To them, even privacy is different. It is also stripped away, and private is not ‘as private’ as it once was. The younger generations are consumers and soon to be our peers and they have different ideas on being transparent and private.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go overboard with this idea and post the bad and the ugly, but sit with this a few minutes and think about it: how can you, your brand, your company be more genuine and transparent? More than you already are? Research has shown that by doing so, you will show your friends, your consumers, your employees a true self, and this will gain trust. Trust gains more followers, fans and customers. Trust gains the word of mouth advocate, the most desired customer out there.

Stop hiding your personality, the younger generation doesn’t! You have one, don’t you? Put some personality into your announcements, press releases, or blog. Do you “put on” a corporate façade –if this is you, pull up! The younger generation can already see through your front and they don’t appreciate the legalese. And of course, this will all come full circle when there’s a big screw up and you have to quickly admit your fault (and what you plan to do to fix it) because then everyone will forgive you. If you don’t the opposite will happen.

Comments (2)

Many books have been written and many speakers have spoken on this topic. I happen to prefer the way the guys behind 37signals lay it out in their book REWORK. Basically, you need to have a purpose behind your business. If you don't know why you are providing your service or product, and your staff doesn't believe or understand the purpose, you'll never reach your true potential.

This doesn't mean you have to have some lofty, philosophical purpose to save the world. Rather, it can be as simple as, "We just make really comfortable shoes". With almost every product and service a commodity, being different is not easy. Knowing what or how you should be different, relative to your competition, is a good start.

At Universal Information Services, we know there are only about four companies that compete in the "complete news monitoring and analysis" space, and we're one of them. Two of the four use a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, where your interaction with those companies is primarily through a portal...you serve yourself, you support yourself. Universal also offers most of our news monitoring through our SmartView and Print Portals, but we know what makes us different is our hyper focus on customer service and support. Yes, that mission can often sound hollow, but when your company has a rhythm that includes a service and support focus, your clients will feel it.

We do lose lose clients when the grass looks greener to them, and sometimes that other vendor is a good fit for them. Still, I'm always enthused at the number of clients that come back to us after a year with another news monitoring company because, "they just didn't take care of us like Universal did". For me, that's the ultimate compliment. Taking care of clients is what every company should be doing, that should be your purpose.

I'd like to think we only gain and never lose a client, but that would be naive for any business to expect. Regaining clients, or rather reclaiming clients because of the service and support of your team, that is the most powerful key differentiator out there. The #samerules of making your customer happy has not changed, you simply have #newtools to serve them with...and serve them better you should.

Comments (2)

Coming off the third year of the Big Omaha Conference, an event that promotes itself as "The Nation's Most Ambitious Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship", I can attest that this event is like no other in the World. Yes, there are the high powered speakers who have "made it" with an idea PLUS luck, timing, venture capital and/or bootstrapping. Yes, there are great parties that punctuate each day's events. Yes, there are even visits from politicians.

What makes Big Omaha different is the atmosphere that is baked into the DNA of the event. It comes from a crazy recipe that is one part the attendees, one part the speakers, and a large part the organizers. What Jeff Slobotski and Dusty Davidson, of Silicon Prairie News, have accomplished with their team is an event that can trigger that spontaneous emotion that inspires people. Like that one concert you attended that almost seemed spiritual, Big Omaha takes a planned and orchestrated event into the ether where only those who have attended can truly appreciate.

From my perspective, I'm looking for inspiration to help fuel the continued growth of our 103 year old company. Yes, I've started and sold two other companies. Yes, I've purchased three companies and worked through the integration issues related to that strategy. But each week I'm faced with how I can continue to improve the customer experience for our clients and deliver the innovative news monitoring and media analysis services our clients expect.

Truthfully, my path to innovation resembles that of a serial entrepreneur. Each one of our service innovations is like giving birth to a new startup company. Yes, we have the administrative and accounting platforms in place, but from vision through execution the same problems can derail an innovative service at any time. Worse yet, a competitor could beat us to the punch (maybe that's not the worst thing, but it is possible and not desired).

For me, one of the greatest take-aways came from Gary Vaynerchuk, yes, that wine guy and author of Crush It and The Thank You Economy. Gary reminds us it is "all about the customer experience". Customer service is like playing defense only. But, providing a great customer experience is where the game is won. Innovation must focus on the customer, it must answer the question of, "But Why?"

If your innovation, startup or new service doesn't provide an obvious solution to the user, and a great user experience, keep looking. I'll write more on answering the "But Why" question at a later date, but this is another example of my #samerules #newtools philosophy.

If you made it to BigOmaha 2011, let us know what your top take-away was. If you missed it, well, don't make that mistake again. Inspiration on innovation is not easy to capture on a calendar.

Over the last few months Universal Information Services has had the opportunity to acquire two outstanding news monitoring companies. On December 31st we acquired Worldwide News Monitor out of Wisconsin and on February 28th we acquired Quality Services of Alaska.

For some, including myself, I always viewed acquisitions as points in time when companies felt expansion was important to their bottom line. After completing three of these acquisitions over the past two years, I have found that buying a going concern, someone's business, has very little to do with expansion and almost everything to do with adding new relationships.

In this economy, the companies that succeed have found a way to maintain relationships with their customers and users. Relationships, whether with your product or your service, is all that you have to sell. I'm sure there are atypical scenarios contrary to this statement, but they would be the extreme exception to the rule.

A good relationship with your customer is worth far more than the dollars they spend with you. Your happy clients become your greatest advocates and most credible evangelists. Sure, one can engage the #newtools of social media or hire a PR firm to bolster their brand in the business segment of their choice, but that all pales when compared to organically expanding your base of happy customers.

In our recent acquisitions we looked at two things before moving forward: Our relationship with the selling party and the relationships they've established with their clients. A relationship based on mutual respect and shared values can ensure a positive process during what can be an emotional time...selling someone's well built business. If the seller has focused on building relationships with their customers, then the buyer will be gaining loyal customers.

When Universal acquires a news monitoring company the care of their existing customers is our primary focus. We keep it simple. Only after we have begun the process of building our relationship with them do we discuss new services that are now available to them through Universal Information Services.

In this way we've found growth through expanding relationships is the best way for us to expand our client base. I'm sure there are other ways to grow, but if you aspire to be the best in your industry I don't think there's a better way. Whether you acquire new relationships through an acquisition, or you let your existing clients help you grow your business, it still comes down to the power of that relationship. See our video welcome to our new clients in Alaska.

Tell me what you think. I welcome any thoughts or illustrations that underscore or take exception with the power of the client relationship.

Comments (1)

Welcome to 2011! Many organizations are settling down to tackle the new year after a much needed break from 2010. I wanted to illuminate what Universal Information Services is seeing and hearing as a trend for public relations and the marketing industry.

As many of you know, if you work in public relations, graphic design, media strategy, or web development, there has always been two camps. Those who work under the umbrella of a large agency, and those who focus on a single discipline. Agency vs. boutique is the question at hand, and how users of those groups now choose who they will award business to. This brings me to the trend we're spotting. As of the 4th quarter of 2010, we've heard from and noticed more of our news monitoring and media analysis clients moving away from the large agency who managed all aspects of strategy, design and development, and moving towards smaller boutiques that specialize in a specific area.

Rather than have an account executive manage all the media and marketing needs, many companies are pulling that role in-house and choosing smaller, cutting edge companies to create their website, their social media strategy, or even to recreate their brand. At the same time we've also noticed more hiring at the agency level to add these specialized people, presumably to retain their clients in the face of a trend away from agencies. Is the agency dead, not at all. In fact, as of the new year we've seen many of the larger agencies realize that there are great creative resources that reside outside of their walls, so even the agency can benefit from an outsourced solution from a boutique.

It seems 2011 may be a great year for the design and development boutiques who represent #newtools, yet can work within the fundamental #samerules of corporate industry and the large agency model. The boutiques that capitalize on this trend will only do well if they excel within their discipline. This does not appear to be the time to attempt to be a "jack of all trades", but to stay focused on what you do best. What has attracted corporations to working directly with boutiques? According to what I've been told, it is the closer contact and conveyance of ideas this affords them. One complaint about the large agency model has been by the time an account executive relayed the needs of the client to the right department within the agency, and that department drafted ideas, and then they all met with the client, the original idea would have mutated beyond what the client wanted. We'll call this problem "concept drift". But, go direct to a boutique for your web design, and another for your graphic design, and you can directly convey what it is you want...then in many cases have those two, or more, boutiques work together to make it happen.

Yes, coordination of separate vendors can be a problem, but it seems that "fast" companies are overcoming this issue. Two years ago I would have agreed that this is the reason that most smaller boutiques remain small. But with the new collaborative tools that the web and social media affords all of us, the problem of coordination has been reduced (see 37signals for ideas). Universal Information Services has re-branded with new graphics, printed collateral, a website, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin...just to name a few of our tools. Below is a list of a few boutiques we've chosen for their quality of work and accuracy in bringing our concepts to life...more accurately and more quickly.

What-Cheer for web design
Emspace Group for graphic design
Contemporary Analysis for SEO/SEM
Elman & Company for printed materials
T3DDYstudios for Youtube Channel design (pending project)

What's really cool is that those who are truly creative now have access to the types of clients they deserve. The same benefit is also available to agencies in that they can outsource to these uber-creative boutiques, or offer them the money they are worth to come work in-house at the agency. But all buyers must beware. As Scott Bishop discussed in a recent blog, 6 Social Media Marketing Lies You Keep Telling Yourself, just because you have the #newtools checked off and in place, doesn't mean you'll be successful. Human nature, compelling content, a real strategy and definitive goals are necessary no matter who you choose to do your work...yes, many of the #samerules will always apply.

Cheers!

Comments (3)

For years Universal Information Services prepared a "Top News Stories of the Year" list based on our media analysis methodology. It was a great, unique approach to quantifying which news stories had the greatest impact. We measured viewership, circulation, audience and other metrics that went beyond that of most lists.

Most Top News Stories of the Year lists arbitrarily decide what they feel are most important...according to some criteria they set. Well the #newtools of the web, and especially social media, have made culling together lists very simple and powerful. This is great for those who curate this information themselves, thereby imparting true meaning via their personality. On the other side of the coin you have an explosion of automated applications that harvest data to compile lists. Sometimes these automated lists are magical in how well they hit the mark, but often times these lists are perplexing in how they managed to bring together such disparate topics.

Since the space for Top News Story lists has grown so crowded, Universal Information Services will use our news monitoring expertise to "WOW" you in other ways. This year you will not see a list from us detailing the top news stories. What you will see in 2011 are more tweets, blogs, Facebook posts and participation on Linkedin where we deliver statistics, insight, and reports on media exposure.

We are a news monitoring and media analysis service. We lead in comprehensive tracking of our client's media exposure and the detailed analysis of that content. From this vast array of information sprouts a wealth of data we can share with you. Great things are coming in 2011. You might as well subscribe to this blog now so you don't miss out on any great revelations in the coming year.

Happy "News" Year!

Comments (1)

At Universal Information Services our national news monitoring and media analysis efforts have evolved to a point where our client prospects are mostly found through inbound systems. In other words, with the growing use of #newtools from social media platforms, the need for us to interrupt/disrupt our prospective clients is greatly reduced.

Many resources have illuminated this shift away from outbound marketing, but essentially the #newtools (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, Groupon, etc.) now let any organization that must routinely generate new clients, attract those clients to them rather than hunt them down and interrupt them with a marketing pitch. Mix in Google Analytics, and you have an amazing way to analyze your effectiveness for inbound marketing. Whether you call it "interruption marketing" or "disruption selling", it is a much harder sell than allowing prospects to find you when they are looking for what you have.

If you look at the economics of maintaining a staff of national sales people, how many calls and follow-ups do they have to make in order to bring one new customer to you? We both know the answer here, and that number is somewhere around a "boat-load". Figure in salaries, support staff, CRM costs, other consumables, and the expense in finding a new client is very high. But, if you can decrease the number of outbound marketers you employ, and convert those people devoted customer service representatives, you'll find that your ROI is much greater when focused on retention of clients and in selling additional services to those happy clients.

Allowing low, fixed-cost social media tools to funnel leads to your inbound marketing staff means your team is working with those who are already predisposed to want what you are selling. Equally important to this inverse marketing path, is the #samerules concept that clients want to have an enjoyable experience when working with their vendors. From the beginning of the sales cycle you now have a pleasant relationship instead of one that starts with disrupting your client's day.

Outbound marketing (interruption/disruption) has become a mostly adversarial encounter as we are all trained to initially say, "No!", when approached by a salesperson. In some cases the salesperson gets lucky and can warm the prospect up to what they are selling. But this conversion is the rare occasion for any service. The excessive abuse by the bad apples of telemarketing and direct marketing has inoculated everyone against the cold call. But if that cold call is now a warm call, and is initiated by the end user and not the marketer, you have a very potent sales mechanism.

Here are several resources that can help you make the jump from disruption marketing...the #newtools of social media.
Rick Burnes, Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web
Brian Halligan, Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
Lee Odden, 22 Social Media Marketing Management Tools

I love the idea that I don't have to deploy a force of clever sales people charged with penetrating the natural defenses of our future clients. It's much more enjoyable to be viewed as a solution to a prospects need when THEY contact us. We do still identify and proactively approach organizations that clearly need our services, but now we can be much more selective and increase our probability of winning that business.

The costly, shotgun approach of disruption marketing is dieing, but certainly is not dead. We'd love to hear your opinion on inbound vs. outbound marketing. What #newtools have you found that increase your ROI for marketing and sales?

Todd Murphy
Vice President
Universal Information Services
http://universal-info.com

Comments (2)

…for Public Relations, News Monitoring, Design, or Services of Any Kind

You have heard it almost everywhere over the past few years. If you haven’t, you’re not getting out enough. For this post I decided to discuss the blue ocean strategy of being different from your competitors. It can also be explored as “being remarkable” as described in Seth Godin’s Purple Cow book. This post is “different” in that I’m writing only with subtitles (actually, about half in subtitles). What can I say, it’s something different. I like subtitles because they often tell what the author really wants to say, but couldn’t in the official title.

“Yes, Different Is Good”
Subtitled-
Separate Yourself from Your Competition
Clients Quit Services When the Service Grows Stale
Clients Find New Vendors When They Don’t Get Strong Support
Clients Like Innovation that Works
New Communication Tools Can Help Amplify Most Efforts (but not all)
The Media Amplifies Your PR Effort
Let Social Media Drive a Greater Audience In Traditional Media
Are You Exploring How to Differentiate Yourself from “The Same Old”?
Are Your Points of Difference What Your Client Truly Cares About?
Are You Monitoring the News You Need?
Are You Analyzing Media that Is Truly Important?
Are You Using A Service You Have Real Faith In?
Are You Tired of These Questions?

In the end, being different, or making a change for change sake, is a waste of time and resources without practical goals in mind (#samerules). Evaluate what you are doing for your clients, how you are doing it, and how they view the value you provide them.

For Universal Information Services, http://universal-info.com , this exercise has brought us to where we are today. We are different. Clients find us when they need something more in terms of service, support, or cost savings. We don’t compete on the same old parameters for news monitoring and media analysis defined many years ago. We do provide real customer service, real client support, honest solutions, and prices that are really tied to our cost to serve the client. Our press clipping, TV monitoring, or web monitoring services are truly remarkable. Most importantly, we provide innovation that our clients really need.

It’s ironic, but the #newtools concept of “being different” is almost a result of common sense others have lost (#samerules). Develop, design, or deliver what you do in a way that separates your from your competitors. My suggestion is you do it now before your competition does it first.

Visit Seth Godin's blog for more insight on this topic and let us know what you think. Leave a comment, we enjoy the dialogue.