Very often, we and other public relations firms get asked to “go big” and “hit the home run.”  We’re asked to miraculously get placements in Oprah and Good Morning America but as you may know, this caliber of public relations success takes time.

This is why it’s so important to make sure your public relations campaign is complete, including not only the big time goal publications, but filling it in with the little guys as well.  Here’s an example:

Bailey Gardiner has been thrilled to begin running the public relations for the creator of gummy vitamins, Hero Nutritionals, over the past few months.  If you aren’t already familiar with Hero Nutritionals’ Yummi Bears, Yummi Bears Organics or Slice of Life, the gummy vitamin for grownups, you must give them a try.  And if you’re wondering why the ladies of BG have shinier hair, an unfathomable amount of energy and glowing skin, you can attribute that to the all-too-tasty Slice of Life!

Our goal for Hero, of course, is to go big.  We’re talking Everyday with Rachael Ray, Oprah Magazine, Shape, Good Housekeeping and the likes. So the Hero Nutritionals team has been fervently sending samples across the country to win over the writers and editors of these major publications.  Just last week Carrie and Maya spent a week in New York where they met desk side with countless editors including those at Woman’s Day, the Today Show, Family Circle, Parents and Health Magazine to share with them, face to face, information and samples of Hero Nutritionals’ products.

So in the meantime, we put forth our efforts in creating a complete public relations campaign by targeting bloggers and websites with niche audiences.  Our best luck thus far has been with the ever-popular mommy bloggers and healthy living bloggers.  Within the latter category falls the even more specialized gluten-free blogs, nut-free, vegetarian and other specialty dietary needs blogs.  With more than 14 placements over the past two months garnered by working within these niche categories, a few stand out:

On January 21st, Stephanie secured inclusion for Slice of Life in a Health.com article on vitamins you’re not getting enough of.  The following week, this article had boosted Hero’s website visitors bringing 159 visits to the site on its own, making health.com the 6th top referring site for the month of January and the 1st top referring site behind search and other Hero Nutritionals’ websites.

A giveaway in FabulousFunFinds.com led to three other postings on blogs that blog strictly about giveaways.  This placement alone, though, brought 47 visits to the site, making it the 14th top referring site for the month of January in just a matter of days.

With both of these placements hitting after January 15th, they make great examples of an often-overlooked part of a PR plan – the very short-term, long tail placements that complete a public relations campaign. We’ll waste no time while Oprah snacks on her gummy vitamin samples.  We believe that placements such as these are imperative in completing a successful public relations plan by finding those purchasers who know exactly what they’re looking for.

When working with your public relations firm of choice, I hope you’ll take these tips into consideration:

• Be sure that your timeline not only fills the team’s or consultant’s retainer fee, but results in placements when you want them (all the time or surrounding one major announcement).

• Make sure your team or consultant is reaching not only the most people they can but the most people that will convert as well.

• Allot room in your budget for social media.  This can boost the buzz surrounding your PR and fill in some of those quiet holes.

• Consider the “outdated” means of publicity as well.  Not all products’ customers are online.  Consider radio, newspaper and even….books.

• Consider more than just your primary product to get you in the news.  Is your spokesperson an expert in his/her field for bylined articles or speaking opportunities?  Do you have such passionate fans that they’ll start social media pages for you?

Do you have more suggestions to add?

Yesterday, when Jay Baer stopped by our office to give us a full run down of the latest in SM, one particular discussion stuck out to me.  While we constantly remind our clients of this as we pass the SM torch over to them, it really is essential that companies utilize Facebook and Twitter accounts as an added component to a customer service team.

Jay noted that when  a woman calls a company to reach customer service, she almost expects to basically get no where.  When she emails, she may expect a response within a few days.  But, when an individual hops on Twitter and Facebook and posts to a brand that has so openly requested her to interact, she wants a response/solution to her issues RIGHT NOW.

Below are some simple strategies to implement customer service into your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Using Social Media for Customer Service

1)  Monitor your social media accounts daily.  Engaging posts are important, but know that you can’t always plan for what a fan/follower may post.

2)  When a fan complains about your product, don’t delete the post.  Let it be an open dialogue where you assure your fan that the problem is going to be addressed.

3)  Respond to questions, concerns, and even positive feedback immediately.  And by immediately, I mean within an hour!  If you don’t generate a response quickly enough, that may be a lost follower forever.

4)  If the issue requires tech support or help from a separate department within your company, respond within the hour to tell them that you are sorry for the frustration, the issue is being addressed and you will respond with an answer/solution within the next three hours.  (And follow up with that guarantee.)

It’s probably a good idea to have some simple responses to questions that tend to pop up regularly on your fan pages and Twitter feeds, but know that you can’t plan the day to day.  Just be confident in your brand and remember that these fans/followers trust your social media involvement as a part of your customer service initiatives.

What brands do you think utilize social media for customer service best?

If you turned on a television, radio, or computer this morning you probably noticed that Tiger Woods was making  his highly anticipated first public statement since, well, all chaos broke out in his personal life and his reputation was tarnished – majorly.  This very public first appearance was calculated, thought out, and had specific goals, but was Tiger successful?

His thorough apology to just about everyone was expected, but the task for him was to do more than just read an apology. He needed to start winning fans back. While, yes, his family is more important and he did talk about them, they weren’t who he was speaking to today and he doesn’t need a live CNN feed to reach them. Given the severity of his actions and the length of time that has elapsed since Thanksgiving, he wasn’t going to convince everyone that he is really, truly sorry and that he’s definitely on the road to recovery in 14 minutes. Very similar to regaining trust, today needed to be the start to a long road of recovery. In order for Tiger to successfully start winning people back he needed to:

- Not say anything anyone could question

- Show emotion that people could sympathize with

- Give enough information about the past so people can start forgetting about it

- Make concrete statements about the future

Was Tiger successful in beginning to regain some respectability? I think so. He touched on and apologized to every group of people that would care: fans, his foundation, children, etc. He spoke emotionally about his family and gave concrete examples of how this has impacted their lives. He took complete

responsibility for his actions and provided insight into why they happened. He also talked about the future and what he thinks will lead to change.

Was Tiger sincere? Is he really going to “regain his balance and be centered?” Only time will tell.

Why Toyota Is Missing the Social Media Mark

Tiger Woods. Toyota. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. The list goes on and on, doesn’t it? The list of people (brands, really) and companies (brands for sure) that have lost their reputation.

Last week, I heard a terrific presentation by Peter Morrissey, President and CEO of Morrissey & Company, professor at Boston College and author of the respected Mount Vernon Report, on reputation. He defined reputation with words such as character, integrity and authenticity. He further postulated that reputation is one of the most valuable assets a corporation can have. And while protecting the asset of corporate reputation is the primary goal of public relations, it is not a goal always shared with corporate marketing, which can have shorter term sales objectives depending on revenues, time of year and inventories.

What builds a reputation? Peter says its a combination of people, products, conduct of business and financial performance. Ultimately, he says, it is simple acts that build the content of character over time.

As I read the latest Associated Press story this morning about Toyota’s recall debacle, I was struck by the news that Toyota has beefed up its public relations support. Of course they have. Once again, public relations is brought in to clean up a mess, rather than being at the table prior to a crisis to provide strategy. (I’m guessing that’s the case, because if PR has been legitimately involved all along, they should be fired).

Public relations is continually sidelined by marketing and lawyers who have the ear of the C-suite and usually the bigger budgets. But that formula is wrong. The advent of online news and the 24/7 cycle, combined with the velocity of social media, has created a situation where public relations must be involved in communications planning at the highest levels of decision making.

Toyota’s engagement in social media gets a grade of C+ at best. While the outpouring of support on Facebook has been huge, there has been nominal posting in response. Toyota doesn’t even have a Twitter account, so their engagement there is a big fat zero. Yet the conversation on Twitter about Toyota is endless. Interestingly, Jim Lentz, President and COO of Toyota Motor Sales, USA, is going on a Live Digg Dialogg today to answer the public’s questions. Digg? Really? They are playing it safe by testing the waters on a relatively small social network to see how it plays before going big time on the mainstream sites. When you have a big global problem, playing it safe is not a winning strategy. There should be teams working around the clock, actively engaging on social networks. Toyota’s message should be clear by this point and those teams should be supporting it every day, every hour. It’s going to take a lot of work, in every media and social channel on the planet to rebuild Toyota’s reputation. These are mistakes that cannot be undone and each day the hole gets deeper. Or in Toyota’s case, several million dollars bigger. Tiger, are you listening?

When pitching a natural living product, there are specific green publications that will be instrumental in your public relations efforts. While editors at major lifestyle publications may not ask the tough questions, green publications that pride themselves on providing the most current and accurate information will. Below are four tips every public relations representative must know before venturing into the world of green.

1. Differentiate between Healthy Living and Natural Living: While there is a lot of overlap between healthy living and natural living, there are also a lot of differences. Items that are good for you, may not be good for the environment and items that are natural may not be healthy. Understand which category your product fits in and then research the appropriate green publications, healthy living outlets, or both. It’s easy to categorize them together, you know how everyone in Oregon grows their own vegetables, wears Keens, and drives a Prius? But the reality is caring about your health and caring about the environment are two different things. Just because your product is organic, it doesn’t mean the packaging it comes in is recyclable or the company that produces it is sustainable. Which brings me to my next point.

2. Know Key Terminology and Definitions: What does “green” mean? Since when were there 7 types of recycling? CFL’s or LEDs? Is this product sustainable? Am I sustainable? And now the gas pedal on my Prius might stick? All the labels for healthy and natural living can make your head spin. Doing your part to help the environment is quickly becoming a lot more complicated. Before you write a pitch, fact sheet, or release (let alone call a green publication) know which terminologies apply to your product and which don’t. Know if the bottle is recyclable, if whatever is inside is organic, the difference between vegan and vegetarian, or whatever else could differentiate your product from another. Sometimes this means getting to know the product AND the company. While it’s great if the company subscribes to the same ideals as it’s consumers, that may not always be the case.

3. Understand Your Clients Strengths (and Weaknesses): If you get lucky and your client is organic, completely recyclable, sustainable, donates to CoastKeeper, and practically has a negative carbon footprint,  then skip to number four. Otherwise, you need to know what makes your client special and what doesn’t. If your client donates to a green charity, play that up. If they are going to make the change to solar energy,  note that. But also know that with all the green buzz, green publications are going to want the facts. Any good public relations professional can pinpoint the not so glamorous aspects of there clients and this is going to come in especially useful when dealing with green publications.

4. Prepare for Different Knowledge Levels: All journalists have different knowledge levels about any given subject and, as a public relations person, you need to be able to talk about your product to the most beginner green writer or the most experienced green editor. Knowing how to explain the new process your client just created in layman’s terms will help when calling a green publication. Especially when you only have 15 seconds.

*This post is part of Bailey Gardiner’s Public Relations Tactics series, which highlights tools and best practices to ensure a successful public relations campaign. The series will run weekly.

If you work for a public relations firm, why wouldn’t you do your own PR and practice what you preach?

A while back, Jennifer from our advertising team blogged about Bailey Gardiner’s ad in USA Today. But like she mentioned in her post, advertising is only part of the strategy in branding yourself and working with the types of clients you want to represent. Creating an integrated strategy by adding public relations and social media to the mix is like the one-two punch. Ready? And go.

Here are just a few ways to PR your agency’s work:

Share Agency News

You’re proud of the work you do, right? Announce new hires and share your agency wins with PR trades like PRWeek and Bulldog Reporter as well as local business publications and online. PitchEngine is great service that makes it easy to create a social media news release and your own social media newsroom.

Utilize Social Media Platforms

Whether it’s creating mobile video or doing industry-specific public relations,  showcase your agency’s brilliant thinking on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or make it easy for people to find you with a Twitter handle or Twitter hashtag.

Position Key Staff as Experts

Another way you can use PR to promote your agency. Pitch senior staff as experts available for interview and for speaking opportunities.

I’m hearing a lot of rumbling about Foursqaure being just another social media thing that no one has time for. Everyone wants to know why they should care where people are, or who just became the Mayor of Subway in Hillcrest… Well if you are running a business, or you are in charge of the marketing for a business, it’s my opinion that you should care, and here’s why.

First off, what is Foursquare?

Well, it’s a location-based, social networking game. In the most basic sense, it allows you to use your phone to alert your friends, in real-time, of your exact whereabouts. You can build a friend network on Foursquare and simply elect to alert those people, or you can connect your Foursquare account to your Facebook and Twitter, in order to update your already existing friends of your whereabouts.

When you check-in places you are given the opportunity to leave a little tip about the venue (eg Try the portobello mushroom sandwich, it’s fantastic). Those tips are then shown to anyone when they check-in to a nearby location. If they like your tip, they can then save it as a “to-do” for themselves. Foursquare also lets you tag a location with descriptive words to let other users know what to expect.

As you begin to use Foursquare you can earn yourself badges (remember this is a game) which tell fellow Foursquarers exactly what kind of Foursquare user you are. Then if you go to a venue enough times, you become the Mayor of that venue. This is a very prestigious honor (ok not so much) but it is super fun to say you are the Mayor of places. Just ask Jason, the current Mayor of Bailey Gardiner…

You’ll earn points every time you check-in somewhere, and you get more points for being adventuresome and checking into different parts of the city, or for going more than once place in a night. You also get points when someone else takes one of your tips or when you complete one of your To-Do’s. The best part of the game is that the stats get reset to zero every Sunday, which gives everyone a fair chance at playing the game – no matter how long you’ve been a Foursquare player.

So why should you care about Foursquare?

If you own a business, work at a marketing agency or are a marketing director for a company, there are five main reasons you should care about Foursquare.

1. Monitoring – As more and more people begin using Foursquare, it’s imperative that your business knows what is being said about you on the platform. Between tips and tags, people have a lot of opportunity to talk about you, and like any social media platform, we recommend you are monitoring what they are saying.

2. Rewards programs – Many companies have already started integrating Foursquare into their customer loyalty/rewards programs. Take Tasti D-lite in NY. They’ve created a comprehensive social media rewards program that utilizes Foursqaure (and therefore Facebook and Twitter) to reward their regular customers for their social media involvement. On a smaller scale, some companies simply put a sign out in front of their venue, offering a free drink, sandwich, whatever, to the Mayor of their place. This inspires people to check in regularly to compete for Mayorship, while rewarding the venue’s most loyal patron.

3. Events - Word on the street (and by street I mean Mashable) is that there is possibly an events layer coming soon that will reward Foursqaure users for attending events. As a public relations professional, I can only imagine how helpful this might be when trying to throw a big event for a client, to have yet another way to give people an incentive to attend.

4. This is just the beginning – Foursquare has some smart developers, who are on their A-game, to say the least. They’ve got some big plans and are in no way done creating Foursquare. Think how much Facebook has evolved since it began (anyone out there remember when it was just your profile picture and some information about your interests?) Foursquare is growing fast. Hop on now so you can be along for the ride.

5. And finally, Foursquare is the next big thing – not to sound trite, but this is getting a LOT of buzz from the higher ups in the social media world. These people know a good thing when they see it, and with so many companies already beginning to adopt Foursquare, I think they may be right. These are the same people that were telling you to pay attention to Twitter back in 2007, when most of us were going “Tweet what?” or “That sounds ridiculously lame.”

In addition to getting involved as a business or as a marketing/PR representative, there are some benefits to using Foursquare as a user:

1. Foursquare answers the question, “I’m here, so now what?” – Foursquare can do everything from help you choose what to order, to seeing what other great places are nearby, to learning about drink specials and deals. The developers told Mashable in an interview that they want to be more than any other location based service by focusing on the “So what”.

2. It will help you connect offline - You spend all this time making connections with people on Twitter that you have never met, which, to me, is kind of a bummer. In fact, it was one of the reasons I so enjoyed going to Blog World this year, because it was fascinating to sit next to some of the people I’ve been communicating with for the past two years. Foursquare helps make this process even easier because you are able to see where you Twitter friends are even if you aren’t all at a conference.

3. It’s fun - There’s a reason people like games. Everyone loves a good competition and what’s better than being rewarded for places you are already going and things you are already doing.

So, what do you think? Are you convinced? Want to be my friend on Foursquare?

We are entering our fifth year of working with Seaport Village, a favorite seaside destination for San Diego locals and visitors, and Bailey Gardiner is lucky to manage all of Seaport’s marketing efforts – public relations, advertising, special events and social media.

In preparation for a presentation to the tenants of Seaport, we wanted to compile a highlight reel of all the great work that went on throughout 2009. It’s a fun way to bring to life the advertisements, collateral pieces, events, public relations hits, social media, and onsite signage the Bailey Gardiner teams created. And it’s definitely more entertaining than me standing at the front of the room rattling them all off! So we gathered all the necessary pieces and enlisted Rich, our fantastic copywriter and jack of many trades, to put together our video (some of you may recall his great work on the BG Holiday Video and outtakes). Our client and the tenants enjoyed it and we hope you do to.

When the green movement first started garnering major awareness a few years ago, it seemed that any eco-friendly product or service was able to capitalize on the attention and get positive press and accolades.  As the movement continues to grow and green products flood the market, however, it has become harder for new brands to infiltrate the cluttered marketplace of  green marketing. As consumers continue to get inundated with green messaging, new products and services are under much more scrutiny and must do more to differentiate themselves from the pack. Having handled the public relations for a few green brands, I have a few tips for how eco-friendly products can distinguish themselves in the green market.

Provide value

The down economy affected the green market considerably. Just being green isn’t enough anymore, and consumers are much less likely to pay a premium for green products and services. Consumers have to see green products as providing value to their lives, especially if the products cost more than a non-green alternative.

Implement a corporate culture of sustainability

These days, just having an eco-friendly product or service is not enough. Companies have to practice what they preach and embody a corporate culture of sustainability. Has your green company implemented sustainable business practices, such as recycling, using renewable energy, consuming less and conserving water, as well? Is your company involved with green charities and organizations? Green initiatives should be implemented across all sectors of the company.

Provide a unique product or service

Provide something new and different to the market. It is much harder to gain recognition if there are 20 other brands that offer a very similar product or service to yours.  Do we really need another basic, organic cotton t-shirt company?

Be committed and authentic

So many brands are trying to capitalize on the green movement by making small tweaks and throwing an eco-friendly label on their product. The public is getting much more savvy and is no longer buying it. If a company is not fully committed to the cause, and is just trying to jump on the bandwagon, it can backfire. If, for example, you are using organic cotton, but are also using toxic dyes, you might face scrutiny and a backlash from the media and the public.  Don’t claim to be eco-friendly unless you can really back it up.  And as with any brand, authenticity is key.

Do you have other tips for green brands? Which green brands do you think are doing a good job?

Anyone who has logged into Google Analytics knows that it’s a beast. With so much information, how are you supposed to know what’s important? Below are the two things that I like to look at when I am trying to measure the blog’s success and look for things to improve.

The two most important areas to look at in Google Analytics:

1. Traffic sources - This section will tell you how people are coming to your blog, which gives you feedback on how well you are doing promoting your content. You can check what your top traffic sources are (likely your website, Google or Twitter) and the top keywords that people are using to find your blog in search.

• The referring traffic portion of the pie chart will show you all the traffic that comes from other websites (eg. your company’s site, Facebook, Twitter and any of your other social media endeavors). You can see exactly which referring source is driving the most traffic by clicking on “View Report” and then on “Referring Sites.” Spend the majority of your time promoting your blog content on the sites that are working the best already. You may also want to choose one of your social media platforms that is under-performing and work on increasing traffic from that site as well.

• The search traffic portion of the Google Analytics graph refers to all the visitors who found your blog organically on Google, Yahoo or Bing. If your blog is just starting out, it is likely that this will be a very small percentage of your traffic sources. As you implement SEO tactics and establish credibility with the search bots, you’ll watch that percentage grow.

2. Top content – This will tell you what blog posts are getting the most traffic and give you insight into what resonates with your readers. If you click on “Content Overview” you can see the top posts for any given time period. Make sure you set it to the time period that you want to measure. I usually check top content by month as well as for the overall in the history of the blog.

Once you have the list, I’d recommend taking a closer look at the ones that got the most traffic to figure out why. If you click on the title of the post, it will pull a report on just that post. Click on “Content Detail“ and then check “Entrance Sources.” This will tell you where people are coming from to find this particular post. If the number one source is Google you can then see which keywords people are using to find this post by going to “Entrance Keywords.”

You can then capitalize on your top posts by going back in and updating them.  For instance, I wrote a post in August about Facebook contests for companies that continues to get traffic daily. It’s likely that a lot of this traffic is coming from people looking for info about the new regulations to Facebook contests, rather than a case study on how to run a successful contest. So, in order to capitalize on the traffic AND ensure our readers are getting the info they need, Katy wrote a post about the new rules for Facebook contests which I then linked to in an “update” to the original post.

With Google Analytics there are a whole lot of other fun things you can look at, but I have found the above two areas to be the most telling in shaping the way I measure success. How about you? Anything you find more useful to look at?