However, when an executive committee says do it, there is no choice.  The proposed event keynote speaker just said yes.  It was a major “Get” and the committee didn’t want to wait.

What to do?

The press was barely at work. The public was occupied with other things – office parties, family gatherings, holiday shopping and preparations.

There was no point in sending out a news release.  Email was useless.  Who was going to read their email on that Friday night or over the weekend before a holiday week?

The only choice was our website and social media.  So that’s what I did.  Did it work?

Read on to find out how success happened, and who I had the pleasure of announcing.

Let’s take a short step back.  Your website and social media won’t work without being prepared beforehand for success.  Your traffic level on your site must be high to begin with.  You must have a lot of the right followers on social networks BEFORE expecting a positive response to anything you will announce.

Both are required.  Without it, you could announce the most important event on earth and nobody would hear about your important news.

To build website traffic and your social network, it takes a fair amount of humility, understanding your potential audience, and passion.

Humility, because at first you won’t have any traffic, friends, or followers.  Time to get to work.

Understanding, because if you don’t know who your audience is, you won’t be able to attract them.  Go find them where they hang out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, or wherever their Internet homes happen to be, and start humbly interacting with them thinking of ways to help.  Remember add value to them, not you.  Your goal should be to help them.  Followers, friends, and email addresses will start to build.

And finally passion: you have to add value to your audience – a lot of it.  That means thoughtful content development. That work is not free.  It takes time [I assume your time is not free of charge], resources, and talented partners.  Without passion for the subject matter and helping others, you will never be successful, because you won’t make the decision to spend the time developing the content and relationships you need to make great media.

Now back to the announcement.  In our situation, all three have been fulfilled.  It took over two years because this audience is hidden behind a wall of assistants, gatekeepers, and technophobic users whose average age is in their 70’s.

Impossible?  So are most of your marketing situations in this economy.  Find a strategy that will work for yours using the three principles I’ve outlined.

When Monday rolled around, the analytics report showed we had pretty decent traffic on our website and in social media channels considering the circumstances.  I decided to go ahead and send the announcement out to our email list, rather than wait until after New Years.

The marketing mix was primed with social media and our website. It was time to see who was listening during a holiday.  I announced our event speaker, Tom Brokaw, using our strong email list to residents, influencers, and gatekeepers in the Town of Palm Beach.  This exclusive list took over two years to build.

Click to see the announcement here.

The results: By end-of-day Tuesday, we had over $48,000 in ticket sales and commitments.

I continued to work social networks about the event, especially Twitter and Facebook.  Our “This Week in Palm Beach” e-news aggregation followed up the announcement to add more value to followers on our list.  The news announcement on our website has had more viewers than any other news item – ever.

Within a week the momentum continued with increasing traffic and sales.  I still had not sent out a news release and a major local magazine saw our announcement and asked to do a feature story about Mr. Brokaw a month before our event, promising to mention the event.  You can’t have better earned media.

The answer to the question, “Does Email and Social Media Marketing Work?” is yes.  The situation could only have been worse if a major news story had taken over everyone’s attention.  But, baring that, with the proper preparation for success this announcement has convinced me that on it’s own, email and social networks can work.  But consider your timing for even MORE success!

The next steps in the marketing mix are direct mail, news releases and pitches to the media, and much more. In the current economic environment, I would NEVER rely solely on email and social media marketing; but, as an initial effort, it works!

If the number of views are any indication, their “news” site is working.  Examples:

The article titled: “HP and Cisco Deliver Cisco Nexus Fabric Extenders for HP BladeSystem” has received 2,278 views so far. It was published on October 14, two days prior to me posting this item.  Over 2,000 views in 2 days about a subject that I define mere mortals to know what they are talking about from the title.

Another titled: “Incheon Nam-Gu Office Collaborates with Cisco to Realize ‘Smart Nam-Gu’ Vision” has received 847 views, again, the total within 2 days of publishing.

Their most popular article: “A Silicon Valley in the Heart of London?” has over 2,668 views. It was published October 11.

The brand journalism site includes video, links to product and blogs, and all the social media and RSS sites.  Cisco has clearly learned that being a publisher is a solid strategy for marketing and public relations.

In the 1500’s through the 1800’s, Ben Franklin, Samuel Sewell, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, and many others published what were called pamphlets – short small booklets with their news, ideas, and opinions (their content) about contemporary affairs.

Sounds like a blog doesn’t it?

There were thousands of these printed. In one reference they have more than 15,000 titles: Pamphlets in American History

How did a reader comment on another person’s pamphlet? They published their own as James Chalmers, a loyalist, did within weeks after Thomas Paine printed Common Sense.

The topics varied from war to women, civil liberties to labor, tariffs to free trade, taxes to finance, capitalism to socialism, religion to atheism, and many more.

Hmm, sounds like 2011, not 1711, doesn’t it?

A few examples are shown below:

The Rights of Man
Thomas Paine, 1791

Common Sense
Thomas Paine, 1776

Plain Truth
James Chalmers, 1776 (an answer within weeks of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense) – The first blog comment?

A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
Benjamin Franklin, 1722

The Selling of Joseph (Is Slavery Christian?)
Samuel Sewell, 1700

Is the Governor Corrupt? – A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New-England
Henry Ashurst, 1707

How Does God Cause Earthquakes?
Thomas Prince, 1755

The Loyal Convert – A royalist pamphlet
Francis Quarles, 1644

Why is this important you ask?  Publishing content is an American tradition.  Anyone that could afford it, published – not just newspaper and book publishers.

The cost has come down and the form has changed (print = newsletter postcards), e-mail newsletters, and various types of Internet channels. But publish we do.

We publish on politics, economics, history, current events, religion, and of course marketing – after all at our core, Americans are merchants.

I was the first multimedia producer at the IBM PC Division. One of my roles was managing editor of one of the first professional blogging groups – 15 full-time freelance journalists that wrote about our products, services, and customers – in 1987.  The first brand journalism group that I know of.

We published on Internet Newsgroups, Forums, and Weblogs. Some of the content was used in an old medium: print [something called press releases... plus brochures, magazines, newsletters, and product packaging.]

Hey, who is that guy? One of the first bloggers? Maybe the first brand journalist.

So the next time you’re thinking about getting into blogging, remember, it’s not new – you’re just late in getting started.

If you need some help, contact me. My name is Mike – and I’m your publishing friend. MikeBrown (at) BrownLtd (dot) com

Real Estate Brand Journalism via Email

You can call me anything you want as long as I get paid and you don’t call me late for dinner.

I’ve been doing “brand journalism” and content marketing since the 1980′s at IBM. Before that I was a national magazine and newspaper reporter, contributing editor, stringer, feature writer, managing editor, etc… Lots of titles.

It’s all semantics.

The lines between a classical journalist and a content maker are blurred almost beyond recognition.

I’ve had magazines ask me to write puff pieces for advertisers for their news section. I’ve produced videos for companies that ended up as segments on Discovery or a local affiliate, I’ve produced “News Minutes” for radio that focused on an advertiser’s product or service, and on and on.

Media company journalists are content makers. So are brand journalists.

The media company will say they are objective and don’t take a position on a story. The brand journalist clearly takes a position. Do you believe the media company?

I’ve learned since sitting in media company editorial meetings pitching stories: There is little, if any, objectivity.

The fact that an editor or editorial staff would choose to run a story on a celebrity divorce, instead of a story on the Marines that were killed this week in a war zone, automatically demonstrates bias. They are biased based on what their audience wants and their business model vs. what really is important news.

The act of choosing a particular story, one quote over another, who to quote, one fact over another fact, is an act of bias. There’s very little that’s “objective” about it.

And that doesn’t include purposefully spinning a story the way media companies do. They have their “editorial positions” on issues and as a reporter, you better follow them, or out you go.

Each writer and editor brings all their experience and baggage to the party. You can try to fake objectivity, but using judgment about a story is an act of subjectivity.

The news business is a business first. The “code of journalism ethics” is a fairy tale [Oh, there I’ve gone and said it – let the hate email begin]. Nice thing to aspire too but not followed or in most cases not practical. The code is to sell eyeballs and ears, as many as you can, so you can increase ad revenue, not some lofty goal of news nirvana.

Newsletter Postcard

The only reason there is evening news from a local affiliate TV station is to put content around the advertising – not the other way around. Do you really care about the car wrecks, burglaries somewhere else, weather emergencies outside your neighborhood, etc? What is the journalism “code” for that?

It’s great to tell all sides of a story. That’s what hard news and feature journalists are supposed to do. But it’s rare when it happens for a lot of reasons: time, space, budget, knowledge…

Most Americans trust journalists less than lawyers or car and real estate salespeople. Why? Because they know objectivity is a myth. They would rather that the writer/producer just be honest about it… like brand journalists are.

Brand Journalism (or whatever you want to call it) – helpful information that customers and prospects care about, usually told as a story – has driven more press to my employers and clients than thousands of press releases.

In fact, I have publishers from newspapers, magazines, and GMs from TV stations contact me to get in on the action. They figure it’s better to find a way to work together than compete. It’s all about the quality of the content and the analytics. Get more eyeballs than the press, and the press will come running.

How about this for a title: I’m a for-profit content maker. No? Better yet, just call me paid.

We give Google+ a B+ because it’s a project, not a finished app.  Definitely not a killer app.  Not yet.  Remember MySpace, OS/2 (what you never heard of it? – my point exactly), etc?

Google+ will be a strong player in marketing and PR.  Much better than Google Buzz.  We’ll have to wait and see what develops and how innovative marketing and PR pros develop its use in the integrated marketing mix.  I have some initial Ning like ideas, especially with the Circles feature, but that will be a later post.

Take a look at these reviews, see it for yourself, and let me know what you think:

“TechCrunch had one of the first and best explanations of what Google+ is all about, and Wired’s Steven Levy wrote the most comprehensive account of the thinking at Google behind Plus: It’s the product of a fundamental philosophical shift from the web as information to the web as people.”
Mark Coddington
, Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard: What Google+ could do for news
http://bit.ly/oV3j71

“Google, the world’s largest search company, is formally making its pitch to become a major force in social networking. The product it announced Tuesday is called Google+, and observers might wonder whether it’s simply one more social effort by a company that’s had a lousy track record in that field to date.”
Steven Levy
, Wired: Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/all/1

“Google+ is a bold and dramatic attempt at social. There’s a reason why Google calls this a “project” rather than a “product” — they don’t want people to think of this as the final product, but as a constantly-evolving entity that permeates every corner of the Google empire. Overall, Google+ is solid. But I’m not going to call it a Facebook killer or a game-changer.”
Ben Parr, Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-review/

“This is the way Google always wanted social networking to work, and this time the company may have pulled it off.”
Jason Hiner, ZDNet: Is Google+ about to transform the Web?:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/is-google-about-to-transform-the-web/52004

It was a great group and it gave me the chance to explain:

• The current state of marketing and public relations
• How to integrate traditional and new media marketing and public relations
• How to use content marketing to get more leads, prospects, and sales
• Using Brand Journalism to reach customers, stakeholders, influencers, and the press
• The new Marketing Mix 2.1
• The importance of measurement and analytics
• Customer Relationship Management and systems

Click below to see the presentation.  Let me know what you think!  Did I miss something?  Anything to add?

A recent example is one I just launched for one of my clients in the Town of Palm Beach: The French Wine Merchant.

Maurice Amiel, the owner, decided to promote a “Wine of the Week” to help launch his new business.

Newspaper advertising wasn’t working.  Free events were barely getting him business.  So I suggested a brand blog.

It’s a way to quickly offer promotions, publish stories about his high-profile events in this exclusive luxury town, and get customers and others to comment.

Launching it with the right social media mix (see my social network sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ActiveRain) got him #3 on the first page of Google in the first week.  Check the site here:

The French Wine Merchant

If you want some help creating a site, it takes me about 6-10 hours, contact me today!

MikeBrown@BrownLtd.com

I’ve always found that the cost of an in-house agency is about 1/3 of the cost of using an outside agency. I operate exactly like an outside agency, having a core group of hands-on managers and creatives and using the top freelancers and sub-contractors just like an outside agency does.

Cost is Important – And Other Reasons Too

Speed
In an in-house agency, our time to produce and roll out content and campaigns is much shorter.  We know the customers and their hot-buttons, subject matter, the benefits of our products and services, have the internal and customer contacts, can get teams together faster, get approvals quicker, etc.

We don’t have to constantly get an agency(s) up to speed and arrange formal approval sessions.  Often, we just quickly, and many times informally, meet the division president or principle that needs the content for a quick one-on-one, and approval is done.  No outside agency has that kind of access or speed.

Cost
I built an in-house TV & Multimedia Studio at Motorola (Business & Government Division) and the cost to run that became 10% of what it costs to go outside.  In fact, we spent $5 million to build the studio and equip it and paid it off with savings in less than 2 years.  It would be shorter now because of the lower cost and higher quality of broadcast quality equipment and software.  I’ve replaced a post-production system with less than $1,000 in software on my laptop.

See the Quick Case Study below for an integrated in-house agency example.

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
As a CEO or marketing executive, you may like those lunches and perks that the outside agencies provide; but, you’re the one paying for them with your own budget.

Bottom line, in-house agency cost per customer acquisition is much smaller than using outside agencies.  Our cycle time is shorter.  And our brand awareness and equity expands much faster.

I understand that not everyone can afford a full-blown agency or a TV studio for his or her business.  However, hiring 2-3 key hands-on marketing and PR folks, with agency experience – and that also produce content for you in-house – will help you get the benefits for about 1/3 the cost of using a strictly external agency.

Strategy
In-house works especially well when you use an integrated marketing strategy that includes brand journalism, social media, and measurement systems.

Brand journalism is one of the best methods for getting believable content to stakeholders, prospects, and customers.  Producing that content from the inside makes more sense. There are so many moving parts and interactions, it’s hard to get a great story from multiple sources using an external agency.

Measurement
When you concept, create, distribute, and measure in-house, your results are more believable.  I’m not saying every external agency is like this, but they have a financial interest in getting you to buy more media.  They make more money.  I’ve seen campaign measurement results from outside agencies that were spun to recommend a larger media buy.  The goal of an in-house agency is to CUT cost.  The goal of an outside agency is to MAKE MORE MONEY for the outside agency.

Quick Case Study

As an example:  When I took over DiVosta Homes and then eventually Pulte Homes and Del Webb in Florida, we had 80 actively selling communities in the state.  We needed to sell over 4,000 homes a year for over a billion dollars in sales.

The annual marketing and PR budget for Florida, broken up in 7 divisions around the state, was over $20 million.  There were a dozen external agencies involved with the local divisions. I moved all the marketing and PR in-house and had 7 people total: graphic designers, writers (including me), traffic manager, and media buyer (me) to produce and place content.

We did web, email marketing, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, outdoor, pitched stories to the press, events, etc., all in-house with some outside freelancers.  We produced hundreds of ads and stories every week… placed thousands every month.

The first year we cut $9.8 million from the marketing and PR budget, almost half.  We went from $3,000-$7,000 in marketing expense per home sale to less than $1,200 per home sale.  Our cycle time was much shorter to concept, produce, approve, and place.  All done with 7 great in-house people – and sales continued without skipping a beat.

In fact, when I took over they had 70,000 qualified contacts in their prospect system.  After the first year, we had over 300,000.  That’s results.

Think about it… those 7 people replaced a dozen expensive agencies.

In today’s world, it’s all about content marketing.  Getting out your honest and clear message by creating once, and publishing everywhere – and doing it for the lowest cost is the formula for success.

Contact me if you want to learn more:  MikeBrown@BrownLtd.com

Trinidad Carnival: See Brand Journalism about Motorola with the Police in Trinidad

Brand journalism works for corporate brands, non-profits, products, services, etc.

People want information, both good and bad, and they remember it if it’s told to them as a story. News organizations focus on conflict and bad news.

There is a lot more information that is relevant and interesting than just bad news.

Tell the good news using a journalistic style, add a bit of conflict or potential bad news, and you have a winner.

What do you think?  Do you have examples you can share?

Motorola
Click here to see the example of Motorola Brand Journalism with the Police in Trinidad

Ford
Ford has one of the top Brand Journalism sites I’ve seen.  It includes an easy to use “Submit Your Stories” area with easy sharing, a “Featured Story”, “Your Ideas” section, plus Ford on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and In The News.  Anytime you can get people to write and publish good stories about you, that’s the ultimate in Brand Journalism.  Check it out: www.TheFordStory.com

Johnson & Johnson
Great examples in their “Our Stories” section: http://www.jnj.com/connect/caring/patient-stories

Imperial Sugar
Another great site that “owns” sugar news, the Imperial Sugar Company Online Newsroom: http://www.ISCNewsroom.com

Subscribe or check back often to see more great Brand Journalism examples.

Mike Means Business

You need a pro. Someone that can see today, and the future, and act on it before it happens.

I’ve been a writer, managing editor, the first multimedia producer at IBM, and I started the first professional corporate blogging group at IBM in 1988 with 15 full-time writers.  That’s right, it’s not a typo – 1988.

“That kind of future-vision experience will get results for your business.  My recession-proof marketing writing will get more traffic, leads, qualified prospects, and sales for you – for the lowest cost per customer – in today’s market.”

From there I went on to win a NY Film Festival Award in 1989 for showing the world what the Web would become 6 years before the Web went live in 1995. My 1989 production was featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Discovery Channel, magazine covers, and local TV affiliates all over North America.

Editors at the NY Times looked baffled when I showed it to them in 1990. They still haven’t caught up.

“How did I know?  I’m plugged in. I have 1,478 real contacts in my smart-phone including thought leaders, teammates, future visionists, media pros, and entrepreneurs. Together we see the flow, the trends, and select strategy wisely. I’m an early adopter. I learn new technologies, channels, and techniques before most others and implement at the right time – not too early, never too late.”

Then Motorola stole me away from IBM and I used the Internet to launch a little company called Nextel. I got them Business Week Magazine’s Product of the Decade in the 1990′s.

“Do you need these kinds of results?  Hire a pro. Someone that is plugged into the markets, knows how to research for now and the future, uses cutting-edge information strategy, and can drive traffic to you.”

Since then I’ve been helping organizations take advantage of the Internet. I cut $9.8 million from the Pulte Homes Florida annual advertising budget by moving them out of traditional media to the Web. In that same year, I increased their lead-bank from 70,000 leads to over 300,000 qualified leads for 80 communities. Their sales went to 4,200 homes per year – over a $Billion. In 2009, they had 3,200 home sales. Down, but not out, still using my methods and systems.

During the worst real estate crisis since WWII, I helped a boutique new homebuilder grow from 24 home sales in all of 2007 to 204 home sales [in 6 months] in 2008 – for $84 million in sales. What real estate bubble bust? Not when I use my methods.

“I’ve specialized in tech, science, healthcare, real estate, non-profit, and public policy. Call me right now to get a free quote!”

If you are looking for a REAL pro, that has the strategic vision, background and skill, and hands-on writing experience to increase traffic, leads, qualified prospects, and sales, see my portfolio:

www.RMichaelBrown.Wordpress.com

“You won’t get the same winning results from part-time bloggers, students, interns, or all the posers working from home out there. Getting $million results is not like writing a letter to home or an email to the boss. It takes strategic thinking, creative talent, and a track record of big wins to give you the confidence in the decisions you make.”

Hire a pro.  Get results.  Call me today: 561-756-1674

Mike