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Category: Branding

How to Write a Professional Speaker Recommendation

Posted on February 3, 2009

Groups give speakers get all kinds of gifts: flowers, chocolate, gift certificates. One of the best “gifts” you can give a speaker is a recommendation. Although I use critique sheets for reviews, it’s not often that a get a group review like this one from West Suburban Women Entrepreneurs.

What I like about this format:

  • includes group comments
  • talks about usable ideas
  • gives ideas on how to expand the presentation

Professional Speaker Recommendation for Barbara Rozgonyi’s How to Build Your Business with Online Networking for Women Entrepreneurs

Thanks so much to everyone in the group who wrote the following recommendation:

West Suburban Woman Entrepreneurs would like to acknowledge Barbara Rozgonyi from CoryWest Media. She joined us January 15, 2009, at William Tell in Countryside to share her wisdom and insight about “How To Build Your Business With Online Networking.”

The WSWE Speaker-Evaluation opinions about her presentation were all in agreement: Barbara definitely met our expectations! Her program gave insight on the timely topic of online networking. Her material was useful to our current business needs. Her presentation style was interactive, engaging, and thorough. She was friendly, focused, exceptionally knowledgeable, and relaxed. She inspired and motivated members and their guests, many of whom reported they plan to sign up for or update their listings in online networking communities like “LinkedIn.”

Some comments that WSWE members shared include:

  • Great information for those not familiar with the topic

· The handout allowed audience to focus on the speaker. (Many) liked the size and content of handout.

  • “Great speaker and great topic for today’s techno savvy consumers!”
  • Speaker presented ideas for every level of experience

The most usable ideas gained from his presentation were:

  • Taking small steps to implement this way of networking
  • How to set up for a new user
  • Reserving individual domain names
  • Forming accountability groups
  • Suggested action steps and accountability groups

If we had more time or if we could have added something more, our members would have appreciated:

  • Walk through a sample “LinkedIn” setup
  • How to specifically use sites to stimulate business

We recommend Barbara to any professional group seeking to educate and inspire its members.

Sincerely,

Members of WSWE ~ West Suburban Woman Entrepreneurs ~ www.wswe.org

Are you an event planner? How do you recognize your speakers?

3 Comments - Posted in PR, Publicity, Speaking Tagged with: ,

Online PR Site Makeover |20+ Ways to Attract Traffic

Posted on January 31, 2009

Does your website need refreshing?

Are you attracting all the traffic you want?

Does your intent match your results?

Every website needs a review now and then. In this article by Barbara Rozgonyi, you’ll discover 20 tactics you can use to revitalize your website.

Originally published in October 2007, this post suggests 20 ways to attract more targeted traffic by refreshing your site. I wrote it while I was updating my company’s site. Now that I’m considering consolidating this blog with that site, I’m rethinking what I wrote. What would you add? Do you agree with these suggestions?

Online PR Web Blog Redesign Checklist

1. Study your current results to find out where visitors come from and how they find you

2. Weed out pages that don’t draw traffic – why list them if they don’t work

3. Slim down to the basics of who, what, when, where and why and answer all of the important questions right away

4. Write for your reader, not yourself, to draw them in and warm them up

5. Print out the pages, then highlight all the references to we and us and circle all the references from the customer’s perspective that say you [Hint: you want mostly all circles and very few highlights]. Talk more about “you” than “we” or “us.”

6. Add an opt-in form to gather customer data with a box for name and email address and then communicate on a consistent

7. Set up each page to be a mini-site that promotes one thing and one thing only, but integrates seamlessly within the whole

8. Page titles: pick up on keywords and title every page differently; think of the title as a browser headline

9. File names: separate words with an underscore when you save and be sure to list every keyword or phrase that’s relevant to your reader

10. Navigation: be consistent with links to every major page in the site from the central navigation bar

11. Review: ask clients, friends and colleagues for their feedback from a variety of browsers – what looks good on Internet Explorer may be mushed on Mozilla

12. Audio/Video: consider recording either audio or video to upload onto your home page so that your prospects can get to know you right away

13. Testimonials: add comments from customers about their experience with you – let them tell your story – video and audio testimonials are the best

14. Ecommerce: position credit card and approved logos where the reader can find them easily to let them know they can make a secure purchase and not worry about credit card fraud

15. Privacy: link to your privacy policy to assure your readers that you value their privacy and will not share their customer information with anyone, ever

16. Photo: place a professional photo on your site to show your prospects that there is a real person who cares about doing business with them

17. Bio: write a personal bio that talks about how you serve your customers and include a few personal notes to give it personality

18. Contact: set up a contact form to give prospects a way to reach you without calling

19. Phone Number: listing your phone number, in addition to or in place of email, gives customers and prospects confidence that they can contact your right away if they need to

20. Redirect: buy URLs that relate to each mini-site within your main site and then redirect the domain to that site to brand the page and identify the service or product in more depth for your prospects and customers

21. and beyond . . . thanks for adding your suggestions in the comment box

1 Comment - Posted in Branding, Online PR

PR Strategies: using acronyms as short-hand messaging

Posted on January 27, 2009

Want to help people remember something? Forming your message into an acronym catches attention and gets you noticed.

Possibilities for S-O-C-I-A-L:

S

subject, space, story, super

O

organize, open, opus, ostrich

C

content, create, cool, classic

I

intelligent, insight, investment, innuendo

A

act, action, American, all, art

L

learn, laugh, love, lamp chop

How have you used acronyms in your marketing and public relations?

 

0 Comments - Posted in Branding, Marketing

Branding a Village: Identity Beyond Logos : Reader Q&A

Posted on December 16, 2008

A reader writes “Would love to have your thoughts on our new village logo.” Attached to the message, I found a file with over 30 different logo options. Do you have a question you’d like to ask? Leave your reply in the comment box.

Answer:
Branding a village – ah yes – a project we’ve contributed to before. Make that “Branding a village as a shopping district.”

And therein lies my first question back to my reader: What – within the village – are you branding, specifically?

If you’re like most villages, you have government, departments, corporations and more towns/districts within your town.

Branding a Village Projects – Taking the Identity Beyond Logos

One thing you can be sure of – everyone will have an opinion. Unless, you make your identity so bland that no one will notice. In the project I referenced above, the key decision makers were village business people. People that had a vision of what their village should look like to the world. Ten concepts got presented. The final look blended a few together. An artist drew up people and backdrops to illustrate a feeling. Words conveyed a mood.

To be successful, you need to sustain a brand campaign. It’s not just about imagery, it’s about extending the experience beyond the graphic identity. But, since we got started talking about logos, here are some . . .

Identity Branding Guidelines We Give Our Clients

  • Branding – anything – is not one size fits all. But, for villages sometimes you need to come up with a look that works for lots of people, departments and purposes.
  • Make sure whatever you go with looks good in one color and in black – if you’ll be using for print
  • Consider using the name, in this case the village, as an anchor with no add-on graphics if the brand will be used for more than one department – think HOLLYWOOD
  • Change out for taglines for village, police, parks, etc.
  • Make sure you get a design guide with standards and CDs you can give to departments and vendors [like printers] who will be using the image
  • Ask the designer to narrow concepts down to their top three. Why do they like the ones they do? What’s the story behind the concept?

and a few . . .

Questions for a Village Government Branding Committee

Why are we doing this?

What do we want to be known for?

Who is our competition? What do they look like?

Who do we want to look like?

How will it look on the water towers and residential trash cans? – consider all the out there, yet common, places where municipal logos end up

Is the village government’s branding campaign a good use of taxpayer’s money?

Have we considered the cost savings from consolidating government branch branding into one common government branded typeface?

What are our plans for village [or federal] government branding 2.0?

How will we get buy in and comments from residents, business owners and community groups?

What do you think?

How do you think logos tie into public relations?

0 Comments - Posted in Branding, Marketing

Online PR Resources | How to Manage-Monitor Your Reputation

Posted on December 4, 2008

It’s priceless. And it’s yours. However . . .

The way people see you online is not all up to you. Your reputation is in the eye of your reader.

While you have some control over where you show up and how you position yourself, [trust me on this] you really want people to have an opinion about who you are and what you do. Hopefully, a good opinion, but even constructive criticism is welcome when it leads to a higher level of service. In fact, it’s essential.

But, so is being responsive. If people are out there talking about you and what you could do better, you better be there to run and go do it. Hiding out and being oblivious only serves to keep the counter-culture spreading. That’s why you have to listen, be vigilant and responsive.

And, it’s not just people you have to watch out for. Try this one on: search engines. This may be a no-brainer for some, but for others it’s a revelation.

To see what others had to say about online reputation management, I sent out this twitter update:

working on a blog post about managing online pr – reputation, any links, tips, ideas welcome :)

Barbararozgonyi-speaker_bigger

wiredprworks

Thanks to Dave Taylor [check out Dave’s blogs Ask Dave Taylor – Free Tech Support, Intuitive – Strategic Leadership for the 21st Century and Attachment Parenting] for sending this reply:

@wiredprworks my tip: give up the illusion of control and think about leading through cookie crumbs and rewards for good behavior.

Icon-100kb_bigger

DaveTaylor

Give up the illusion of control

Let’s talk about losing control. Because you don’t have it. Not anymore. There is absolutely no way you can close off commentary about anything. If people want to talk about it/you, they will. And, they’ll help you out like Dave helped me when I live-tweeted the wrong twitter ID for @skydiver. Or, when he checked in to question a stat a speaker quoted. You are your community and they are you. Got it?

Glenn Raines suggested that people read B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next blog, a suggestion I second.

Finally, someone asked that I let them know when I would launch a reputation management blog. Well, I don’t have any plans to do that, but I did enjoy rounding up this list and would like to explore the topic in more depth. What would you like to know about online reputation management?

12 Online PR, Search Engine, Social Media and Reputation Management Resources

  1. MarketingProfs says trust is the most important measurement of all
  2. Brendan Cooper tells you how to own your google page
  3. Compare reputations of the 60 most visible companies using the Harris Reputation Quotient[sm]
  4. Brands and Reputation says the answer about how to best measure reputation is this: use a measure of reputation that designed to best assess your reputation with the stakeholder in question.
  5. Three fundamental concepts to master when dealing with search engine reputation management: Monitor, Optimize and Engage from Top Rank Blog.
  6. Ducttape Marketing supplies an online reputation management toolbox.
  7. Marketing Pilgrim suggests using the best web content to fill up the first page of Google results, including getting a website with your name and starting a blog.
  8. Business Week answers the question: Do reputation management services work and how much do they cost?
  9. Top Rank Blog’s online reputation pr seo guide suggests you buy “yourbrandsucks.com” before somebody else does and give guidance on how to monitor and listen to dissenters.
  10. Marketing Pilgrim’s online reputation monitoring beginners’ guide includes helpful shortcuts for online reputation management.
  11. Lifehacker offers tips on how to get the most search juice from your Flickr (photo sharing), YouTube (video sharing), Digg (social news), Wikipedia (collaborative encyclopedia), Facebook (community) and Twitter (micro-blogging) profiles.
  12. Wired PR Works online reputation management category houses a collection of articles

What do you think?

How do you manage your online reputation? Do you have goals in place?

 

 

2 Comments - Posted in Online PR, Publicity, Social Media Tagged with: