Navigation

The Wax Blog

PR, marketing and social media for entrepreneurs, authors and anyone with a great idea!

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Five reasons why ‘Great Customer Service’ is not a ‘Great Selling Point’

shutterstock_57189268Almost half the clients I have worked with over the years believe that their strongest selling point is their great customer service. When you are deciding what your market position is going to be, when you are seeking out that all important unique selling point (point of difference), look beyond customer service – here’s why: (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

Never Stop Monitoring: Managing Your Online Reputation

After such strong comments on my post about corporate digital footprints, I got a REAL expert to weigh in on monitoring your online reputation. Here are Kevin Kaiser’s thoughts – Kevin is the founder of Startup Biz Blog an up and coming small business blog with some really smart advice. Stay tuned as I kick off my new series on writing an actionable social media plan next Monday.

After all of the energy you’ve put into creating your company, don’t let it get lost in the giant tangle of the world wide web. Managing your online reputation so that people get the correct picture of your company right off the bat is more important now than ever. (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

Would YOU use this wire service?

I got this email from a service provider claiming to be the ‘best online newswire from small business” I know what I think is wrong…let’s see how many things we can point out. Would YOU use this service? What can we learn about email marketing from this example?

(FYI, I’ve NEVER used this one)

Grettings Bonnie,

Recently we have been receiving an increasing number of comments from SBWire members like yourself regarding issues they are having with the press release submission process on SBWire.  Please know that we are fully dedicated to making SBWire easy-to-use and customer feedback is one of the most important parts of our development process.

We would like to know if you have had any issues with the press release submission and order process?

If so, please let us know what the issues were and how we can improve.  You can do so by replying to this email.

Additionally, you may be aware that we are working on adding many new search engine optimization features to SBWire.  Below is a list of many of these new features.  Are there any features you feel we are missing?

New Features:
- HTML links with customer anchor text
- Definable HTML titles, meta keywords and meta descriptions
- Title Based SEO friendly URLs (Already Live)
- Keyword based SEO friendly URLs
- Keyword density reporting
- Site embedding – add your web page to your press release

New Analytics Reports
- Press release views by date, browser, country, etc
- Press release XML/RSS feed views by date, syndication system, etc
- Press release search engine views by date, search engine, etc
- Links In report showing who is linking to your press release
- Links out report showing what links are clicked on in your press release based on url or anchor text

Thank you for your time and help in making SBWire the best online newswire from small businesses.

Thank you for choosing SBWire!

Daniel R. Jones
Managing Editor, SBWire
http://www.sbwire.com

PS – Let’s be fair too. If someone uses this service and really likes it, let us know!

Your email:

 

  • Share/Bookmark

How to pitch your local TV station

First of all thanks to the adorable @dlarson15 for suggesting this week’s ‘How to Pitch’. Honestly you can ask me how to pitch any show and if I don’t know, I’ll find out for you. SO ASK!shutterstock_10213681

Local TV is probably one of the most desired media for small businesses. Like so much of PR, local TV works primarily through relationships. Get a reporter or producer interested in you or your business and eventually, something should happen. It’s important to understand the different ways you can get TV coverage. I covered pitching events, your breaking news or getting included as an expert source in the How To Pitch Assignment Editors post. The other ways you can get coverage are through feature stories (sometimes called “packages”) and as guests on the morning shows. (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

The basics for finding time to tweet, post, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn…..

We might be operating in a new technological paradigm, but the basics still apply when you’re trying to find time to make use of social media. In this post, Dana Larson provides a refresher on some easy ways to make time for online marketing. On Monday, I will share with you the specific tools I use to automate as much of my own social media platform (and my clients) as I can. But first, here’s Dana…

We want to be able to “do it all”, but let’s face it – we don’t have time. You probably don’t even have time to read this blog post, right?  Staying up to date on all the new hair-out-714605advances in online marketing is a full-time job in itself. Below I’m listing my top 5 ways to manage my workload. (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

Make your blog come alive with photos

By Beth Graddon- Hodgson

You might think that it’s only your actual blog content that is going to get people to stop by and read, but images play a big role, too. They can help make your blog posts appear more professional and attractive, but that’s really only a small portion of their benefits.


Photo from fOTOGLIF

For one thing, the images can drive traffic to your blog. People search for usable photos just about as often as they search for information online. When you post a photo and use your blogging tool to upload it with a title, relevant keywords and a caption, you’re creating another way for people to find you on search engines. This can encourage them to either read your blog content while they’re already found themselves on your site, or give you a link back if they decide to use your image on their own blog or site.

(Quick note – I thought this was a great time to try out the Wordpress free photo plugin from Crestock. Works GREAT just search “free photo” in your directory or download it here. BH)

Of course, photo usage needs to be done carefully, or you might find yourself at the losing end of a lawsuit. Not all of the pictures you upload on your blog need to be yours, but these are the guidelines to follow before you put a picture on your post: (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

Offline marketing is just a new name for PR

reading-the-newspaper

Oh my god we can market in a NEWSPAPER

I’ve been hopping into the internet marketing forums to learn more about SEO for blogs lately. Suddenly I started seeing all these online gurus touting the benefits of making loads of money in “offline marketing”. Huh? (more…)

  • Share/Bookmark

How to tell if your PR person is ‘doin da dance’

I  had coffee with a fairly new client today. We had a great talk that included his experiences with a previous PR firm. Although he spent thousands of dollars he didn’t get his expectations met. And so at the end of the contract he was discouraged and the PR firm had a dent in their reputation. Now it’s up to me to redeem his belief in our industry. You know what? I may not do that much differently from the old firm except that I refuse to ‘do the dance.’ Here’s what I mean.

PR is a squishy, unpredictable business. You can make a quick phone call one day and land a huge fish or you can spend three months sending elegant pitches, following up on time, and get nothing. Most business owners know that but you can’t help worrying when those placements aren’t coming in…after all it’s your money. Here’s where the problem starts. Many PR firms decide what they need to do at this point is make you feel good. They come in with some great charts, reports on the flurry of activity that’s going on, hints at big things that may happen….you know…it’s THE DANCE. You feel really good after the meeting but then a week later nothing’s changed and you worry again. And worse, you start to feel like a nag for asking all the time.

I’m telling you, trust your gut. This isn’t rocket science and it’s really easy to see if things aren’t going well. If your PR person is good, they’ll be knocking at your door looking for new angles or trying to expand the media list, or even trying new channels. If things aren’t working, they’ll tell you and ask for your help to find more interesting hooks.

If they’re not so good, or a traditional firm that’s just interested in adding up retainers each month they’ll do the dance. So when your meetings start to look something like this…

it’s probably time to look elsewhere.

  • Share/Bookmark

Subscribe to the Wax Blog

© 2010 Wax Marketing, All Rights Reserved. | Sitemap | Search | Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

site by Dan Moriarty, Minneapolis Web Design