YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com
PR 2.0 43  |  Add Yours

Panic in the Aisles – Airborne Social Media Lessons

I was on a flight home from Kansas City last week when a bit of condensation apparently emitted from the air conditioning as we were preparing for take-off. A passenger shouted “there’s smoke in the plane” followed by a second passenger, then a third, etc. The flight attendants were a bit stunned and immediately got [...]

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PR 2.0 68  |  Add Yours

Why You Never Had Control

Do you have control issues? Even now, with social media being hotter than the brow of a teppanyaki chef, companies of all sizes and descriptions are still using “loss of control” as a reason to not get involved. Sure, there’s a possibility that your brand will have to use your social media crisis plan eventually. [...]

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Integrated Marketing and Media 277  |  Add Yours

Get Shorty – The Elevator Pitch is Dead

For all the talk about Moore’s Law and the notion that computing power increases unabated, there’s not enough talk about another law that has equal importance in marketing and public relations. I’m going to call it the Law of Boundless Brevity. It dictates that over time, all communication becomes steadily truncated. We’ve gone from looong [...]

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PR 2.0 106  |  Add Yours

A Social Media Gun to the Head

I’ll admit it. I fish on Twitter. Sometimes, I’ll talk about a brand just to see if they’re listening. Too often, they’re not. Or, maybe they’re listening, but not responding. Some companies seem to have a policy of responding to positive comments, but not responding to negative comments. I think this falls into the “we [...]

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PR 2.0 133  |  Add Yours

4 Brand-Saving Recommendations for Social Media Crisis Management

Is today your Domino’s? Social media can both create and solve crises, and the incredibly fluid nature of social conversations requires brands to be on a constant state of readiness. In April, two Domino’s employees created a foolish and disgusting video, and posted it to YouTube, setting off a firestorm of coverage on Twitter. It [...]

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PR 2.0 67  |  Add Yours

Back Up the Bus – The Changing PR Timeline

Before I got involved in online marketing in 1994, I helped manage political campaigns. In those days, the formula was pretty consistent. You targeted different voter groups with direct mail, radio and TV. Then, with about two weeks left in the campaign, you brought out the big guns and dropped a big TV and direct [...]

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Integrated Marketing and Media 84  |  Add Yours

Let’s Stop Swooning Over Social Media

Are you overdoing it on social media? Just a little? I’m a proponent of social media. In fact, I’m a proponent that gets paid to convince others that social media is valuable. But, like in the early days of Web design, SEO, PPC, email, and banners before it, there’s too much swooning and not enough [...]

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PR 2.0 116  |  Add Yours

Delegation Equals Death in Social Media

Are you just a social media cheerleader? Almost every time I work with a public relations firm or corporation on social media, I hear a version of this statement: “Us old dogs don’t really understand all this new social media stuff, but we’ve got this brilliant young guy right out of school, and he’s getting [...]

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Conferences and Events 50  |  Add Yours

Why Can’t PR Do Digital?

Why aren’t PR firms offering digital marketing services to their clients? On Sunday, David Anderson from Off Madison Ave and I presented this roundtable at the PRSA Counselor’s Academy conference in Palm Desert. The title is: Revenue.com: Launching Digital Marketing Services to Grow Retainers. Note we only had ~30 minutes, so this isn’t as comprehensive [...]

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PR 2.0 76  |  Add Yours

A New Formula for Measuring PR Success

Isn’t there a better way to measure PR effectiveness? Experienced digital marketers know that “conversion rate” is the holy grail of online success metrics. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a Web site that accomplish an objective. If 100 people visit your Web site, and 7 of them fill out your lead form, [...]

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