The Wax Blog

Food writers and bloggers are a persnickety lot. On the newspaper side, many food writers are being blended into the lifestyle sections. Or if they have survived, at times they can be prickly due to the circumstances.

On the blogger side, the fact that there really isn’t any need for impartiality in most cases lands you with a group that can have some very strong personal biases. (Of course this is true of many bloggers, not just foodies.) Even though chef TV shows are some of the most popular reality series on air, print cuisine magazines are still struggling both nationally and locally. Even Rachael Ray’s magazine lost circulation this year! That means editorial guidelines are tighter than ever and cross-promotions with advertising take precedence.

Add to that in most markets there is a very clear pecking order in terms of who to pitch first, and you’ve got a complicated pitching situation. That’s why so many PR agencies like Sauce Communications focus strictly on food and drink. It’s hard! Read the rest of this entry »

Companies are using social media tools to build brands for their products and services, capture new knowledge and best practices for company processes, collaborate across the organization, increase innovation, recruit new workers, and train employees, but they are also using them to recruit top talent and onboard new employees. By reframing the use of social networking technology, companies can increase communication, collaboration, problem solving, and competitive advantage with little cost. – From The Changing Learning Landscape, by Paula Ketter, American Society for Training and Development (read the entire post here)

Social media is not just changing how companies are marketing to their customers – it’s changing how they train their workers as well. Today’s demand for real-time information has changed the training landscape nearly as much as the Internet did. New buzzwords are emerging on the training landscape that is actually driving more business for training companies, while making the training experience for workers much more engaging. Nano learning, for example, means short stints of learning that last from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. Often it’s delivered via a mobile device to an salesperson in the field, or a remote worker at home.

Companies that deliver a wide variety of training services like Carlton Training may benefit the most from this kind of training deployment. Instead of developing day to week-long programs, many training companies will be developing modules that could be as short as five minutes. As information changes, the ability to change one module without having to rehaul the entire program will be a huge cost savings. Read the rest of this entry »

Includes Joe Namath in pantyhose.

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

Je ne peux pas vous entendre!

When you blog, do you put much thought into the language that you’re using? I don’t just mean whether you’re writing in English, French or Spanish; I also mean your use of grammar and word choice. Most people don’t think about it, they simply write in the language they’re accustomed to. But speaking the right language can truly help attract your target audience to your business blog, so it’s about time you start!

Here’s the thing – the language you use, specifically when incorporating your keywords can make a big difference on the type of traffic your draw to your blog. While all traffic is good traffic, you really want readers that could turn into clients on day so you get your ROI.

Speak their language and you’ve got a much better chance of gaining exposure with the right people. Read the rest of this entry »

“Kaizen” is Japanese for improvement – a common definition according to Wikipedia is “the philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management”.   Kaizen became very important to me after experiencing utter failure in my first job as a manager – granted, I was making a very hard transition from being a top salesperson (where it’s all about me) to management (where it’s all about them) but still, I was awful.  Instead of trying to get from Point A (bad manager) to Point B (great manager) my wonderful business coach taught me that it was all about continuous improvement. I may not be where I want to be right now, but I’m better than I was yesterday and I should still be better tomorrow…if I work on improving my skills on a continuous basis.

Training has changed as our learning styles have changed as well. I don’t think anyone goes by the old rule  they need only get “one great thing” from a training class, the whole experience needs to be worth. These days, training companies like Phoenix Training do an excellent job of combining pre-training consulting, one-on-one coaching and classroom training to provide a holistic experience that addresses needs for management coaching, team building and skills training. (Read some of their case studies to see how companies around the world are implementing training these days)

In a way, I’m really glad that I struggled so much because it instilled in me a love of training, and of gaining new knowledge. I see so many companies find a recipe for marketing or PR that works at that time, and they act as though they never have to address it again.  In our world today of social media, blogging and digital influence, this can be a brand killer.  Our customers are moving quickly from the hottest app to to the next big thing, and we have to continually find them…and continually improve how we engage with them.

In a challenging economy, it’s sometimes hard to justify spending money on training. I would argue that those people and companies who spend money on it now, are the ones who will survive into the next round of economic growth. What’s your attitude toward training right now? Where has continuous improvement served you well?

I was emailing with a virtual colleague of mine about a young media consultant who is known for having thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers. In fact, that’s her primary presence online. We were wondering whether this person’s Twitter stardom would turn into lucrative consulting deals. After all, how much of you intellectual capital can you display in 140 characters? (Those of you who follow me on Twitter during American Idol season might think it actually does the opposite.)

It’s a question that demonstrates how great success in one social media network may not translate to more business for you. And that’s why it’s so important to find the right social media tools to work your campaign, not necessarily the most popular ones.  (If you’d like to know how I feel about many company Facebook pages, you can read my post on that subject here.)

So for the fourth post in this series on writing an actionable social media plan,  instead of thinking about “should we do twitter and facebook” ask yourself, where are my customers engaged in social media? If you’re B2B, it’s probably not on Facebook. If you’re launching a book, what better place to be than Facebook, where you can set up a fan page and tell all your friends about it? Think about your customers, or readers, or whomever you are trying to reach. What are they using right now? Restaurants, bars and other social types of places better get have a presence on  geo-based social media like Yelp and Foursquare. Consultants, I’d suggest having an informative blog that really demonstrates your knowledge of your industry. Whatever you choose, don’t try to be everywhere. Pick a couple of networks that you think you can easily manage and go from there. Just as a quick primer, here is the social media that seems to work well for my clients in different industries: Read the rest of this entry »

I ran this post early last year and thought I’d update it with a few more ways to be a ‘good nag’.

The biggest pet peeve I hear from the media is when people ask them “hey did you get my email?” Granted that is a pretty stupid question – but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called a journalist because I KNOW he or she would want the story only to hear “yeah, send it again it must have gone in my spam file” Or – “Oh I was on vacation and had too many messages so I just deleted them all.” So how do we make sure the journalist or producer got what we sent without appearing like a needy, nagging spouse? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a little tired of hearing about the wonders of social media and the stunning achievements of the PR 2.0 world. Anybody who’s ever done the hard work of promoting in online video knows that for every thousand views, you’ve got a ton of leg work. Those “Susan Boyle” moments just don’t come around that often.

I may get called a Luddite for this, but there simply isn’t a better public relations tactic than the good old-fashioned STUNT. Jay Conrad Levinson may have coined the term ‘guerilla marketing’ to try to make it seem like a fresh concept, but ever since the first beauty pageant to find Miss Dove soap, creative stunts and promotions have made the difference for brands. And by combining those stunts with the power of online promotion, you’ve got a wicked good strategy.  What better example than the Old Spice campaign…many would say this was a red hot viral campaign but really, it was a clever promotional idea launched with an ad campaign, but fueled by strategic use of Twitter and YouTube to make it seem current and new. That’s the beauty of integrated marketing.

Most people think big promotions have to cost quite a bit of money, but really it just takes a creative idea. London-based Taylor Herring Public Relations is arguably one of the best agencies in the world at truly creative, unusual promotions. Taylor Herring provides public relations for events like movie premiers and television shows, as well as  PR for major brands like Honda and Google. But what they, and their online division also do very well, is create unusual experiences for their audiences that might be eyebrow-raising, but still fit the image of the brand. And although they are the people that created the world’s first ‘live’ TV commercial, the campaign that got my attention was one they did for a comedy channel’s stand-up season on UK television. Instead of something huge, they thought up the idea of simply finding the world’s oldest jokes and created a “Historical Humour Study” including the oldest jokes and one liners. Complete with a resident professorial expert, the idea was contained in a simple press release. Yet it was so unique, the agency garnered millions of impressions for its client. (You can read the entire case study on the Taylor Herring site here)

Here are a few simple tips that you should follow when planning your own ’stunt’: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in the PR world and we use a lot of interns. For the most part, my experience has been a bit strange since I started Wax Marketing. At first, I thought maybe I had lost my touch…I used to manage a fairly large number of people and was known for spotting the best and brightest of the entry-level candidates. Maybe communications majors were just, well not as bright? (Sorry,  I come from the technology industry. They think everyone is dumber, no offense!) Or maybe I’d lost some of my interviewing skills? Whatever it was, I was going through interns and new hires faster than cherry pie at a pie-eating contest.

I started to realize a few things had changed. For example, a pro bike race I worked on had a kids’ fun race. The race promoter insisted that everyone get a medal…a practice I had never heard of. A job candidate’s father accompanied him to his interview. Again, this blew me away. However, not as much as the intern who could not stop emailing her mother…127 emails in two days to be exact. Or the intern who locked herself in the office for two hours because I told her that her work had to be re-done. Worse of all probably, I had a client  who was late to an incredibly important meeting because her son wasn’t happy with what he was wearing to school that day. He was 15 at the time.

These occurrences and others like them have happened on a regular basis lately, and it helped me realize…maybe  it’s not just about me. There is something going on with the education system and with parents that has changed in the last ten years. I found Dr. Jean Twenge’s book Generation Me and others like it that explained our society’s determination to help kids know they’re truly “special” has turned them into a group ill-prepared to take on the competitiveness and, I have to say, at times unfair culture, of business today. Read the rest of this entry »

I love it when experts like Chris Brogan says there’s no such thing as a ’social media expert’ because I’ve always said there’s no such thing as a ‘marketing expert’ either. Or a “public relations expert” for that matter. You might be the most educated, the most experienced ‘expert’ but there’s no way to predict the exact combination of competitive, online, media, and economic environments facing a particular brand, company or author. So when you go about setting your goals, remember that you are probably the best ‘expert’ when it comes to your company and it’s virtually impossible to compare your own results to others…especially where social media is concerned. What other medium is changing as rapidly as this one?

When I help companies set goals for social media I try to get them to identify three different types of goals: 1) quantitative, 2) qualitative, and 3) a special set of goals that you might consider the equivalent of winning the social media lottery. Let’s start with quantitative goals, since those are sometimes the easiest. It would be great if you could comment with examples of some of your goals as well, just to give us an idea of what everyone is shooting for.
Read the rest of this entry »