IN THIS ISSUE: January 23, 2002 To Archive Index Hey! Who's In Charge Here? Report: SECRETS OF EFFECTIVE PRESS RELEASES The Difference Between Advertising and Publicity

HEY! WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE!

by B.L. Ochman

I don't know about you, but I hate dealing with nobody.

Want to get in touch with someone at a web site to find out more about the business? Chances are "Contact Us" leads to an e-mail addressed to "info@" or "webmaster@" but not to "human@." Nobody, it seems, is minding the online store.

Not only that, when you send emails to these Wizards of Oz, nine out of 10 replies from info@ or webmaster@ are not signed by a human.

Recently, I e-mailed one of the people who bought my report, "Secrets of Effective Press Release Distribution" to make sure he was able to download the PDF file without a problem. He replied Thank you for checking. I wasn't expecting a follow up note. Nice touch. Automated?...:-{) Poor guy! He's not used to dealing with humans online.

I like a good AutoResponder as much as anyone, but I far prefer to hear from a person who clearly read my e-mail, understood my comment or questions, and has the authority and knowledge to give a response.

Web site must-haves
People who come to your Web Site will have much greater confidence in your business if they can find:

• The name of a person to contact
• A phone number
• An e-mail address for a human

It's not just tiny businesses that make this gaffe. Go to Microsoft and look for a place to "Contact Us." It's all the way at the bottom of the home page and it takes you through two more screens before you get a choice of who you want to contact. Depending on what you want, you will then need to go through between two and eight more screens to get to a place where you can actually ask a question, and you will never find the name of a human being.

Microsoft investors fare no better. They can see Bill Gates' web site (yawn,) get a Fact Sheet about the company or read the company press releases and annual report. But, to save their lives, they can't find the email address of a human.

Journalists, on the other hand, can get a list of Microsoft PR contacts with phone numbers. They also can e-mail the rapid response team at rrt@wagged.com or call them 503-443-7000. If they have a technical question, however, they are thrown back with the rest of us peasants to navigate through screen after anonymous screen.

Customers deserve better whether you dealing with Microsoft or Joe's Software Company. Nobody wants to deal with nobody.

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY

An old adage says: Advertising you pay for, publicity you pray for. Publicity, roundly misunderstood, has at least ten times the credibility of advertising.

Some experts, like Al Reis, author of the classic marketing book, "Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind," believe that most companies shouldn't waste their money on advertising until they have established name recognition and credibility with PR. Others say both advertising and PR are necessary. One thing is certain: you can't just put up your web site, open your store or manufacture your product and do nothing to attract customers.

Advertising is a content you pay to present. Publicity refers to free content about you that appears in the media - what others say about you. Publicity can result when an article you write is published, or when information you give to an editor convinces him/her to feature a story about you. Over time, these stories help create a favorable impression of your product or services.

Play "Who Cares?" With Your Message
The average person has no real idea of how the media find their stories, but the prevailing view seems to be that reporters go out and discover all of their news. Idealistic? Yes. Realistic? No way! There aren't enough reporters on the planet to find every bit of news worth covering. So if you can present your information convincingly, you have a chance to gain media interest. How do you do that? Read on.

The Internet has its own rules about commercialism, and woe to those who break them. If your press releases, postings to newsgroups, mail lists and forums or your articles are blatant self-promotion or a sales pitch instead of truly useful information they won't be used. Worse, you risk the negative publicity of being flamed.

Before you put out a public message, play "Who Cares?" and ask yourself "Why would other people be interested in what I have to say? Can they benefit in any way from this information?" If you haven't got good answers to these questions, keep working on your message until you do.

Repetition is Key
Search engines are an important way to find opportunities for publicizing your site. You will find a wealth of newsletters, discussion groups, mailing lists and forums that can help promote your business.

If you go the advertising route, you can pay to sponsor or run ads in online media. You can pay to have a banner about your company or product pop up every time certain keywords are searched or you can pay per click. To have real impact, your advertising and your publicity need to be repeated many times.

You'd better have a huge ad budget if you want people to see your ads enough times to remember them. And publicity has to appear on a regular enough basis so people start to say to themselves "I read about this company all the time!"

PR vs Advertising
Here are some ways publicity for your site stacks up against advertising in comparable situations:

Online Conferences

• Publicity - Offer to host a tele-conference for a heavily trafficked forum on a topic in which you or someone in your firm is an expert. Concentrate on providing helpful and useful information to participants. The host of the forum will explain how qualified you are when introducing you and promoting the event. Impact: If you've offered quality information, you will have established yourself as an authority.
• Advertising - You could pay to sponsor the same tele-conference. People would notice your name, if only peripherally, but they'd be there for the expert's information, not the sponsor's message. Of course if you could afford to sponsor nine out of ten online tele-conferences, your name might stick.

News Releases

• Publicity - For $250 and up, services like Internet News Bureau distribute news, feature stories and Media Alerts to some 2,000 online journalists, including reporters for the web sites of traditional media. Some will write your press releases for a reasonable fee. (My new report, "Secrets of Effective Press Release Distribution," explains how to distribute your news to the media.)
  
  Your story may be printed as is (if it was well written) or a reporter may interview you and write her own story. Either way, if the medium running your story has a big audience you could get hundreds or even thousands of hits as a result.
• Advertising - You'd easily spend 10 times as much to run the same information as an ad, and people would rush by your message - unless it was really revolutionary - to get the information they came for.
  
  However, if you know the media in which you are advertising hits your target markets, you can have an impact with the right kind of advertising. This type of advertising offers something the audience really wants in a format to which they can relate. Post-Sept. 11, hype is out, real is in.

Online mailing lists and discussion groups

• Publicity - Become active in online mailing lists and discussion groups relating to your customers. If, for example, you sell office furniture, consider giving advice about how to plan a home office to a small business association. Do not include self-serving trumpetry.
  
  Over time, you'll establish yourself as an authority and attract customers. If your message is clever and factual, and your signature is effective, people may begin to think of you when they need to service you provide.
• Advertising - If you posted a message that was essentially an ad in a mailing list or discussion group it would be eliminated by the moderator, ignored, or possibly flamed by subscribers.
  
  If you sponsor a list or group, be sure to keep your message fluff-free, without dancing monkeys and annoying popups, overs and unders.

Submitting articles to other sites

• Publicity - Write articles with information that could be helpful to the readers of online newsletters and other online media. Advice, how-tos, and Top 10 lists are the best formats. Ask permission before sending your article to the list moderator, editor or webmaster, each of whom will identify you as the author and tell visitors how to reach you.
• Advertising - Sponsor online newsletters and advertise in other online media. This is effective with frequent and long-term repetition.

Signatures

• Publicity - Use a three to five-line signature to promote your site and services when you post to lists and forums. Be sure to include your name and the name of your business, your site's URL, e-mail address, phone number and fax in the signature, which should not exceed four or five short lines.
  
  When you use e-mail to participate in a discussion or post to a mailing list, everyone will know from your signature what your business does and how to reach you.
  
• Advertising - Put a blatant ad in your signature and risk having it left out of your message. A blatantly commercial signature message such as "Earn a million dollars online in your spare time. Call NOW!" is not acceptable to the online community.
  
  However it would be acceptable to say in your signature, "We provide affordable marketing services to help online enterprises increase traffic to their sites," or "We create revenue-building opportunities for online storefronts."

Surveys

• Publicity - Run regular surveys on your site of consumer attitudes toward various issues of online business and offer the results to the media and to other webmasters. Every article has to say "according to a survey published today by X," your executives are likely to be quoted in coverage of the survey.
• Reporters love surveys because the responses of real people provide news value and not just on company hype. Therefore, you are likely to get prominent editorial coverage of your survey results, particularly as you become known for providing good information.
  
  

Survey sources include:

SurveyMonkey

E-Dialog

SurveySite

Zoomerang

AlxNet


Advertising - Sponsoring regular surveys on heavily visited sites can be costly but can produce excellent name recognition.

The Long Haul
The most important rule of advertising is that your message must be repeated many times to be noticed, and many more to produce consumer action.

Results come from publicizing your site steadily over a long period of time. Publicity is an ongoing process with a cumulative result. When people start saying "I just read another article about them," or "That guy said something very interesting in an online conference," you'll be developing credibility that no amount of advertising can buy.

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