PR Workbench

Social Media tools are improving marketing and sales efforts for small businesses every day. Nowhere is the impact greater than within franchise systems.
 
Not only are smart franchisors driving traffic into outlets’ locations and onto websites, but they are also driving recruitment of new franchisees using social media channels.
 
Here are two simple ways we can engage prospective franchisees: sharing our story in order to attract new interest and exploring the social web for new leads with whom we should connect.    

 
As one client recently stated, “I want potential franchisees to experience what my current franchisees are experiencing.”  

Prospective franchisees are searching for information well before they pick up the phone or take your call. Be found! More blogs, Fan Pages, and other platforms populated with your content means more candidates will find your brand and your story.  Showhomes has had an amazing increasing in franchise sales this year partially due aggressive social media efforts.

In the below example, I am marketing and developing new business for the “Java121” Coffee Franchise Company. I’m using the Engage121 app to share these stories across all platforms (Facebook Fan Page, our blog, Twitter, and any other platforms I choose). As the same time, I’m cross-pollenating that same content for all of my current franchisees’ platforms as well!

I compose a bit of content and perhaps share a link to an article. Note that with Engage121’s merge fields, the content will be customized for each franchisee.  

 

Next I choose all or any franchisees on whose behalf this message will be sent. Also, I choose all or any platforms to which I’m posting:Done! We have just shared that content, with a link to more information about our coffee to all of my corporate brand pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts as well as all of those pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts belonging to every franchisee in the system. This message about our product, brand, and system is out there! If I had 250 franchisees, this content would have posted to over 1,000 individual sites instantly. 

Smart marketers and franchise development pro’s are not limiting these stories to only focus on products and services. They are sharing the success stories about franchisees’ booming businesses to attract candidates who wish to be a part of that opportunity.  

You must seek out discussions held by potential candidates. This is something impossible to do just a couple of years ago! Using Engage121, I am searching not only Twitter, but also virtually all social media platforms, hundreds of thousands of blogs and traditional media (newspapers, TV, magazine, etc.). 

I ran a quick search of the phrase “start my own business” and found 34 people tweeting that phrase just the past 24 hours! These are leads I need to engage! Note, you may also filter your results by state, county, or city for targeted exploration. I can engage this person in conversation immediately. Introduce yourself and start the conversation!  

       

 
I can “tag” anyone if find, so here I’m tagging someone as “candidate”. This is useful for keeping up with large groups of individuals and listening to what they’re saying later on. 

I have updated a past post with more upcoming conferences, panel discussions, conventions, and events for professionals working in Public Relations, Marketing, and Social Media.
  
Instead of adding this just as a new post, I’m making this an easy to find page – see upper right corner of this blog or click here for the full schedule:
http://jackmonson.com/social-media-pr-conferences-calendar/
 
 If you are organizing, sponsoring, or attending a PR or Social Media conference not listed, please let me know via comment here or send me an email at jmonson@enr-corp.com. I would love to add any event of interest. Thanks!

A challenge that arises after starting your own Facebook Fan Page is creating a continuous stream of content to drive traffic to your page. Many organizations have plenty of good info to share with current fans and customers, but struggle to regularly provide a reason for new consumers go to a new Fan Page.
 
One fast and easy solution is to create a poll. There are two good reasons why the social web is filled with polls: a poll’s topic can attract targeted users and the act of voting creates an instant sense of participation in a community.
 
Polls and surveys may be used as much more than a magnet to a site. Many use the power of consumers’ instant opinions as a fast and low-cost alternative to focus groups for product development. That’s a fantastic use of polls when you’re comfortable with the sample size, validity of questions, etc. But for now, I want to focus on a quick traffic-driver without having to consider the valid research methodologies needed to make sound business decisions about products.
 
For this exercise, let’s create a very simple poll that will drive potential fans, friends, and customers directly to your Facebook Fan Page. You can do this using Facebook poll widgets. I’m using the FANlet app developed by my firm, Engage121. I use the FANlet for four simple reasons:
 
1. It is the easiest thing in the world to use!
2. The creation and results are instant.
3. During creation, it automatically creates a tweet that goes out through your Twitter account with a link directly to the poll.
4. Clicks on that link are automatically tracked on your FANlet evaluation for instant and ongoing measurement.

 
From Engage121′s “Speak” page, I choose FANlet.

 
 
Begin writing a question and multiple-choice answers. My poll asks parents what’s the most enjoyable cartoon for them to watch with their kids.

 

After choosing POST, FANlet asks if you would like to Tweet this link to the poll via your Twitter account. Choose YES!

 
 
A check of my Fan Page shows the poll is up and already drawing readers.

 

 
On the Evaluate page of Engage121, notice that this poll can be added to our FANlet tracking. Not only can we track votes, but we will be able compare these votes with your website traffic or any other metric you pipe into Engage121.  

If you are a managing Social Media marketing or PR and would like me to further walk through the above steps, reach me here:

@jackmonson

jmonson@enr-corp.com

312-658-0600

 
Here are the results from last week’s FANlet poll asking who within any organization should drive social media engagement.
 

 
The clear winner: Marketing. I had anticipated a better showing for Public Relations / Communications, but clearly the majority of voters chose Marketing.  Also, I’m glad to see many votes for Customer Service, which is so important to have involved in the conversation and is an excellent social media entry point for organizations looking to solve immediate business issues.

• Public Relations / Communications
   
• Marketing
   
• Advertising
   
• Customer Service
   
• Other
   

http://bit.ly/cHHEf0

Traditional customer loyalty programs can be expensive, complicated, and difficult to measure immediate results.

Recently I’ve been working with several companies to create such programs using mobile/local check-in apps Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s quick, easy, instantly measurable, and cost is incurred only if you choose to give away prizes or offer discounts.

It’s also perfect for any retailer, restaurant, car dealer, or other multi-unit company to which it’s important to continue to give the best customers a reason to return to the store, shop, or showroom.

Many retailers and other local businesses are jumping on board Foursquare and offering a special deal for their Foursquare Mayors. These businesses are moving in the right direction as far as an easy and cheap very basic loyalty program. BUT there are a couple of problems with relying only on Mayorships:
•There’s only one Mayor; why limit a program to one customer?
•Who is the Mayor at most shops or stores? Yes, it’s usually a barrister, bartender, clerk, or other employee.

 
For this exercise, we will be Java121 Coffee, and we’ll give away a free cup o’ Java to our top two customers checking in this week. 

1. Listen to what your customers are already doing. Are they checking in on Foursquare already? Whether you already have lots of check-ins or not, let’s go get some more! Speak out, Shout, Tweet and post to your blog and Fan Page about the fact that you will be giving away a free cup of coffee to the two most frequently-checked-in customers this week. Here I’m doing this for 3 locations simultaneously and across many platforms via my Engage121 application:

 
2. At the end of the week, evaluate the activity and find your top customers via Foursquare or Engage121:

 
3. Send out a message naming your winners (let’s leave out last names for now!) plus perhaps a direct message to those winners:

  
Remember the 3 basic steps of any promotion:

Tell ‘em what you’re going to do

Do it

And tell ‘em what you did!

Extra value: Imagine the potential customer who has not (yet!) been to your store. Or, the customer who is on Facebook or Twitter, or perhaps sees your blog, but is not on Foursquare or Gowalla. You still have conveyed a message to those folks that something fun and valuable is happening at your store(s).
 

If you are a managing Social Media marketing or PR for a single location or a multi-unit company and would like me to further walk through the above steps, reach me here:

@jackmonson

jmonson@enr-corp.com

312-658-0600

I’ve participated in, spoken at, and attended several social media and public relations conferences and roundtables in the past year and the same question comes up to each speaker at every session: What’s the future of social media?

The answer lately has always been MOBILE. I think we can all agree on this.

I continue to add, though, that the second question should be: what else? And the answer is LOCAL.

 
What do I mean by local? Well, you are always local. And if I’m near you, I’m local too, right? To quote Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

The mobile users of social media are growing daily. They are not sitting at home or in the office thinking about your brand anymore. Those users are at your locations and want to connect, shout, check in, and tell stories about your brand. Even more, they want to tell stories about your brand specifically at the 123 Main Street location in Anytown USA.

PR Pro’s have a short window of opportunity to take advantage of mobile meeting local. Without proper promotion of what’s happening at your (or your client’s) local outlets, stores, offices, franchisees, or dealers, you are missing the intersection of Social, Mobile, and Local.

 
So, you’ve already set up Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and a blog for your brand. Now you must do three things:

1. Set up individual fan pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs for each location.

2. Engage customers (or potential customers) at the local level via any platforms on which they are conversing.

3. Share their content with the rest of your community! A bit of content from a customer regarding the 123 Main Street location of your brand is much more powerful than anything else you can create!
 

The true power of local PR is delivering results and achieving business goals not by just Tweeting about the brand on a global or national level, but also by keeping friends, fans, and customers informed about events happening at each outlet, store, location, or community.

 
After attending a business conference and speaking engagement in Nashville, I luckily got out of town on Saturday, May 1, just as the storms and flooding started.
 
The next morning, I was shocked to see how little attention the TV networks and cable channels as well as newspapers were paying to this disaster!
 
Here are search results of traditional media from Saturday May 1 through Monday May 3 courtesy of MediaQ, an application that monitors and measures both Traditional Media and Social Media:
 
Story                        Traditional Media Hits   
 
Oil Spill in Gulf             19,208 
 
Times Square Bomb    11,808
 
Nashville Floods           5,762

 
Why did Traditional Media pay so little attention to this story? The oil spill story had been around for several days without any real new developments. No one (thankfully!) was hurt in the failed Times Square bombing attempt. Yet over a dozen had already lost their lives in Tennessee and the story was a far third in the eyes of the editors and writers at traditional news outlets.  
 
Newsweek’s Andrew Romano wrote an excellent post explaining the media’s monomaniacal nature and poor judgment call that flooding in Nashville just doesn’t sizzle enough. Here are my additional thoughts.

 
1. The Traditional Media is New York-centric. This is especially true when it comes to anything regarding weather. Does the New York Times even have reporters west of the Hudson anymore?

 
2. The Traditional Media has a faux global concern. The Hollywood crowd won’t be hosting any telethons or concerts for a red heartland state like Tennessee. Fortunately, I’m guessing there’s a very kind-hearted entertainment genre based in Nashville that will take care of that!

 
3. And Romano is right. A natural disaster in the heartland just isn’t dramatic enough for the sensational cable channels, TV networks, and national papers. No villain, no connection to global warming, terrorism, healthcare bills, or Obama.
 
 
Fortunately for those of us who were interested in how people were doing in Nashville, we can bypass the old media and connect via social media. I saw pictures posted from inside the decimated Gaylord hotel and read blog posts from locals updating friends and colleagues on their status.  

Inside Gaylord Hotel 5/2/10 - Photo Courtesy of Thomas Scott

Let’s take a look again at MediaQ over May 1 -3, this time looking at Social Media hits:

Story                        Social Media Mentions
 
Oil Spill in Gulf            13,623
 
Times Square Bomb    5,685
 
Nashville Floods          8,597

We can see that the Nashville flood story was a much more important topic of conversation than the newspapers and TV outlets who blew the call would have thought.

For more info on using MediaQ, please contact Jeff Tidyman

Thanks to Stephanie Krol and PRSA Chicago for inviting me to participate in the discussion “Making Communications More Effective with Social Media Tools” along with these all-star panelists: 

MJ Tam, Chicagonista
Rick Wion, McDonald’s
Reid Lappin, VOKAL Interactive
Adam Keats, Weber Shandwick
Gini Dietrich, Arment Dietrich
 
For anyone who couldn’t make it to the event, here are a few of my points regarding social media tools for use specifically by PR professionals:
 

1. As PR practitioners, it is your duty to learn how existing and new tools can help your clients. No more saying “I just don’t have time to keep up!”
 

2. Use and learn new Social Media tools before your clients or executives do. What is an expert? Frequently, it’s someone who just has a jump on the information. 
 

3. As you learn about a new social media platform or tool, sign up and try for a minimum of 30 days. You may find that it has little use for you personally but it may be a useful channel for your brand or clients to engage stakeholders and customers. In any case, 30 days will give you enough of a history to be able to intelligently advise clients about including this new tool in their tool box.
 

4. Take some time to reevaluate your personal usage of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and any other platforms. I’ve spoken with many PR pros who still think they should a) trust privacy settings and 2) not connect with clients or bosses. I find that to be extremely narrow-minded and misses opportunities.
 
If posting personal material that your clients should not see is more important than making a deeper business connection, than perhaps you’re in the wrong business. Stop worrying about privacy settings – which need to be changed on Facebook constantly – and be transparent!
 

5. What’s the Future of Social Media? All of the panelists agree that the future is mobile. I add that the future is mobile and local. Users are flocking to mobile app versions and it’s time for your brand to engage customers at the local level.
 
Think about how PR can deliver results not by just Tweeting about the brand on a global or national level, but also by keeping friends, fans, and customers informed about events happening at each outlet, store, location, or community.

 
 
In Chicago? Near Chicago? Want a good excuse to come to Chicago???
 
Please join us on Tuesday, April 27, when the Chicago Chapter of PRSA presents: “Making Communications More Effective with Social Media Tools.” Register here!
 

I am excited about being a panelist discussing how social media tools can help you engage all audiences along with these fine folks:
 
Adam Keats
@akeats
Senior Vice President, Weber Shandwick
 
Reid Lappin
Partner and founder, VOKAL Interactive
 
Jack Monson
@jackmonson
Vice President, eNR Services
 
MJ Tam
@mjtam
Editor, Chicagonista
 
Rick Wion
@rdublife (personal) and @mcdonalds (McDonald’s)
Director of Social Media, McDonald’s
 
Gini Dietrich (moderator)
@ginidietrich
CEO,  Arment Dietrich, Inc