Everyone you speak with has a vacation planned.  A week on the Cape or one of the Islands.  A summer home in New Hampshire or Maine.  A yearly family vacation at their favorite spot in Vermont (a  little plug there for my friends at Tyler Place.)  Or maybe something more exotic.

Could be the extended weekend model.  Cluster all your days off around various weekends, Mondays and Fridays, and suddenly you have a season of mini-vacations.  Four days off, three working.  If you are lucky you can keep it going all summer.

If you are in business development, invariably, one of the decision-makers is out just when you are inches away from closing the deal.  Yes, yes.  Fishing.  Clear mountain streams. No cell coverage.  You understand.

But, if you are trying to get something done which requires no interaction with others, say, writing a white paper, suddenly that stretch of quiet time starts to look pretty good.  The phone isn’t going to ring and the email isn’t coming in at such a furious pace.  You can get coding done.  Or write that business plan.

Planning events is another interesting area.  Yes, that week does look tough for x% of people.  But, there is also little in the way of competition for their time and attention.  You might get your best turnout.

Do you run that email campaign now or wait for the fall?  (You may have watched your website traffic dive like you lost your best referral link but time-on-site has risen dramatically.)

Without time off to rest and recharge, we all end up a little wacky and bleary-eyed.  What do you think?  Summertime — business boon or bane? (No teachers…we don’t want to hear it, thank you very much.)

Included in our pile o’ paper was the past week’s Time magazine.  In it I discovered a “Milestone” appreciation of Manute Bol by Spud Webb, one of his US Basketball League buddies and former roommate.  While away, I had missed the sad news of Manute’s death and by the time of my return, the humanitarian, father and basketball star’s demise was no longer running on the top of the different news sites I visit.

As I considered his friend’s words, I realized what wasn’t in the article.  No cause of death, no standard obituary and no funeral arrangements and information — those things had been left to the fast breaking news writers.  This was a truly personal statement by someone who knew the man and who was able to provide a glimpse into his psyche.  Time’s editorial team has again done a wonderful job of pairing writer with subject for their Milestones page.  And, again, provided another reason for me to continue to renew our family’s subscription.

The IBM campaign takes a big problem – world population growth – and has turned it into a multi-faceted program, PR and community relations, ad campaign, sales and partnering fiesta, and product and solution wrapper.  The growth coming in the percentage of the world’s population living in cities – something that will make everything from traffic to delivery of healthcare, energy and government services a challenge – is a special focus of the campaign and IBM talks about Smart and Smarter Cities.  (Let’s face it, traffic isn’t ever going to get better unless something really changes.)

IBM has been investing in this campaign – a lot.  Their spokesperson has been traveling all over the world, helping to bring awareness to the depth of the problem… and the solutions that exist and issues and problems that still need to be addressed.  This campaign is a wonderful way to marry various diverse products and services into a solution for a huge, global problem.

It’s also a genius marketing campaign.  It takes a huge global issue, gives its sales and marketing team a singular goal – one that no one can argue with (“let’s make the world a better place”) – and brands it by tying it all together with a word everyone knows (“Smart”).  It marries its customers’ goals and its goals.

It’s a program that partners well too – IBM Business Partners, with their vertical industry expertise, are well integrated into the campaign.  We got a great presentation from VirtualAgility, a company that provides solutions for public safety.  VirtualAgility was also able to speak to the value of the IBM Innovation Centers, 37 centers around the world, created with the express purpose of helping partners drive business.  (More proof of a well-done corporate strategy, one that uses existing resources.)

I wish IBM well on their way to their goal of doubling their earnings per share goals.  (Luis Rodriguez, Director, IBM Innovation Center started off the morning by connecting the event back to the recent senior management team’s promise to move toward $20/per share earnings.)

That’s right. This is business — even if it sounds all altruistic and “save the whales.”  This whole campaign is designed to make IBM more successful and more profitable.   That’s a good thing — that’s what sales and marketing should do.  Profit is good.  Revenue is good – it helps companies stay in business and continue to employ people like you and me. And when we’re all employed, the world is indeed a better place, and we have the resources to throw at big glaring world issues.

There’s been plenty written on maintaining a professional image online.  Dozens, probably hundreds, of articles urge young people to think about how their social media profile stacks up when a potential employer looks at what’s available online.  But what if you are hiring people to represent your company online through social media?

When marketing departments start thinking about using social media, I like to tell the story of one company’s first day tradition which involves taking the new employee out for lunch and asking them to tell the assembled small group their “most embarrassing story.”  When confronted with this little custom, most professionals quickly flip through their mental notes and pull out a humorous and not too embarrassing anecdote.  Preferably one that shows that they can laugh at themselves and casts them in a good, self-deprecating light.

Nothing that involves drunkenness, nudity, illegal drugs or even exercising  poor judgment.

Then there are other people…they pull out some doozies.  These are the people I worry about.  These are the people you shouldn’t entrust with your company’s public image.  If they are willing to share all the sordid details with their co-workers, what are they going to post on the company Facebook page?  And do you really want to chance finding out?

(Not the Internet — the Web. I keep hearing people who should know better talk about “the Internet being only a teenager.” This is wrong.  The Internet is actually in its 40s.  The generally accepted “birth” of the Internet is in 1969 when two computers first “talked” to each other.  The first emails were sent in 1971 and the TCP/IP standard, the underpinnings of all communication between computers, was adopted in 1983.  Berners-Lee invented the language that would become the basis of the World wide Web in 1989 and in 1993 Mosaic, the first web browser was released.  Ok, history lesson over, moving on.)

I saw the Web as a massive change in the PR landscape, one that changed my job and made me rethink my PR bigotry.  And then rethink it again.

Before the Web gave us all the power to BE the media, to publish our own thoughts quickly and easily, to amass an audience, PR people were  heavily focused on media relations.  Probably too heavily and some still are.  We measured our success in clips and were weak when it came to measuring true results — the education and influencing of our publics.  We gave clients clip books and rewarded our teams for their success in getting coverage for our clients.

This is because publications measured their audiences and were able to give us numbers.  We “knew” the circulation numbers of major publications and could throw them around proving our worth.  We knew what kind of audiences read what kind of publications.  We knew that the high circulation publications and the targeted audiences together could influence actions but we had a hard time connecting the dots unless we were willing to invest in audience surveys and other imperfect measurement tools.  (And few clients were willing to take money from their program budgets and put them toward measurement.  The few that did reaped the benefits, getting a better idea of what worked and what didn’t.)

But when everyone became a publisher, we had to change our way of thinking.  Many of us saw what the future would be — a decentralized communications infrastructure where the mass media would lose some of its chokehold on our collective consciousness.  (It actually didn’t happen as fast as I personally thought it would.)

I immediately started to look at marketing as more of a whole.  (At the time, PR was considered a sub-set of marketing, often the poor stepchild and budgets reflected this.)  But, with my PR background, I didn’t want to see PR as a subset, I saw it as the driver.  PR is where messaging happens, where strategies are formed.  Why couldn’t PR be the primary function and marketing the subset?  Don’t we have to relate to our audience before we can market to it?

Today, more than ever before, we have the online tools to measure the impact of our programs and the success of the communication of our messages.  We can easily measure clicks and time on site and see which messages resonate and where these messages lead to sales.  And, sometimes these messages are communicated through mass media channels, and sometimes they aren’t.

Understand that a Twitter following isn’t all about the numbers.  It is about building a community of like-minded individuals – or individuals you find interesting and who might find you interesting.  Quality over quantity any day.

1. When you are just getting started, make sure you have a picture and the bio portion of your profile includes the key words people might search under.  Make sure you are also appealing to prospective customers.  Try to not lose your personality but understand there is a character limit.
2. As you are setting up your bio, think about whether you want to use the large city nearby or your “actual” location – if it is a suburb or small town.  Both approaches have benefits — big pond/little pond.
3. Make sure you have a “stream” of tweets before you go looking for friends.  People want to see what you are offering before they follow you — NO ONE follows an empty stream except spammers.
4. Spend some time with Search.Twitter and search for people tweeting your key words or key terms. (I like the advanced search function because I am often looking for people in a specific place/geography.)  If you friend them, they will often friend back — you can tell the likelihood of this based on the proportion of followers to following.  Don’t worry about your “numbers” too much right now in terms of follow/follower percentage — you can fix that later.  Don’t use this tactic for more than a few people at a time.  One of the easiest ways to identify spammers is to look for accounts following 1500 people who only have a dozen followers.
5. Look for “Follow us on Twitter” buttons on associations you belong to, or want to belong to.
6. Use  the function on your Twitter client (whatever you are using) to alert you to tweets with your key words — think of Google Alerts for Twitter. Respond or retweet them.
7. Want someone in particular to follow you? Most effective is a thoughtful response to one of their tweets.  Twitter is a dialogue, not a harangue or a rant.
8. Put your Twitter I.D. on your website, in your email signature, on your blog, on LinkedIn. This is also the time to really think about what area of expertise you want to focus on.  On your website, instead of a generic “Follow me on Twitter” button, how about a “Follow me on Twitter for the latest ’social media marketing’ tips”?  (You can offer up far more than just that one topic but specialization may be beneficial, especially at first.) Think about what your audience wants to hear.  Offer value in your tweets.
9. Set up Google Alerts (use quotes around the specific terms to cut down on the random stuff) to arrange a stream of info that you can use to help fuel your tweets, and make sure you are up-to-date on hot topics of the day.
10. I use http://go2.vg as a URL shortener when I am linking to articles I want to share with my audience. (Note you can create custom short URLs too.)  There are also some great services which will track your click-thrus.  Add “sharethis” to your toolbar to make article sharing easy.
11. Use something like Twitseeker to search on specific topics (either by profile or by tweets.)  There is an advanced function if you want to focus on a specific geographic. Looking for local friends?  Go to Twitter Grader and get your rank, then click through to your town and check out the lists of locals who are active on Twitter.
12. Use Twellow to search for specific people — start with people you know — customers, friends, co-workers, and partners are a good place to start.  Consider also:  industry publications, analysts and reporters for your industry publications.  Use the categories and sub-categories to zero in on groups.
13. Consider upcoming industry events and find the hashtags for them so you can find an existing community of like-minded individuals — also look historically.  Examples — #journchat, #gno. Follow or check out @hashtags for ideas.  Once you get a decent-sized following, you can consider creating your own event.  (Use Tweetchat or Tweetgrid to see #journchat on Monday nights as an example.) You may want to start your own regular tweetchat.  Be patient, it takes time to get it going.
14. RT the good stuff.  RT= retweet, copy and give attribution for good stuff.  Thank people for RTing you.

I’ve always been an advocate of using the available tools to reach your audience - and today, social media tools are extending our reach beyond what we ever thoughts possible. Remember, Twitter is just that, a single tool in your arsenal.  Happy follower hunting.

The editorial calendar should be found for most publications right in the Media Kit.  This is what the sales people use when they are selling ads. (“Hey, June is our special printer edition!  If you sell printers, you should buy an advertisement.”)

PR people use the editorial calendar to plan out when we need to contact a reporter because they are working on a relevant topic.  News publications will not have an editorial calendar – i.e. the Wall Street Journal – for their regular coverage because they follow the news, not drive it but they still usually have a features section calendar.

The editorial calendar spreadsheet should contain:

• •    Publication name
• •    Reporter name
• Reporter or publication contact information
• Print date or issue date (when the article is scheduled to appear
• Publication frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or blog, i.e. any time)
• Any deadline information we can get (sometimes we just work backwards from our knowledge of the publication’s frequency)
• Topic or title of the article
• A notes section about their coverage.  (I.e. only cover public companies with more than $250 million in revenue; only cover members of our organization; only cover news on the local restaurant scene.)

Each publication’s editorial calendar may generate more than one editorial opportunity, or just one, or none.

I usually print out the editorial calendars and highlight the relevant articles.  Entering them into a database or spreadsheet makes them searchable and sortable.  Want to see all the articles targeted for April?  Push the button.  Want to see all of Computerworld’s 2010 schedule? Push a button.  Want to see what Joe Smith, reporter, has on his docket? Push that button.

I see it as an interesting public relations story.

In the movie, an Englishman living and working in the Paris wine industry arranged a blind taste test, pitting US and French wines.  In true underdog fashion, the California wines won the contest and an article in Time magazine led to success for the region, and a more open minded attitude to other regions producing great wines.  In the words of the film, “If one of us (California vintners) wins, we all win.”  Sounds like a great victory to lay at the feet of a PR program, doesn’t it?  Maybe.

Since I am a believer in taking your lessons where you find them, how about a quick look at the success or failure of the PR in Bottle Shock?

1) Success or failure? As presented in the movie, the blind taste test was actually conceived of as a PR stunt for the organizer’s wine shop and wine classes.  At the end of movie, he and his establishment are shunned.  He embarrassed the French industry.  He describes himself as the “pariah” of the French wine industry.  He and his friend are shown sitting in an empty shop.  You could say he won the battle and lost the war, or you could look at his shop and business as a casualty of war.  The big victory was for the US wine industry, never the intended “client”.  Either way, the goal set up at the beginning for the PR strategy wasn’t fulfilled.

Things to consider:

• What’s your ultimate PR and Marketing goal?
• Does your strategy connect to your business goals?
• Just because there is a positive outcome for one organization doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone wins.

2) Exclusives: The taste test was covered by a single journalist.  More in-house and agency hours have been wasted on the “exclusive versus broad-based coverage” argument than many other discussions  I can think of.  In the words of one of the Bottle Shock characters, “One great journalist is worth a thousand hacks.”  Or is he?  Again, let’s look at your goals.  In the movie, the son of the CA vintner is aghast learning that the single journalist covering the event is someone he’s never heard of — he was obviously expecting a group of journalists or at least someone who wrote regularly on wine, the topic at hand.  There is no right answer.

Things to consider

• Will you get bigger play for a story by offering one publication an exclusive story?
• Will any publication care enough about the story to want to give it bigger coverage?
• Does the single journalist have the knowledge to adequately interpret the occurrence?
• Does the single journalist’s audience represent your goal audience?  (1976’s Time magazine audience was certainly different from today’s Time magazine.)
• What are you losing by giving access to only a single journalist?

Goal: Reach a specific target market through the major media, reach a specific demographic — job title, industry, etc.  What do the people in this industry read?

A media list and the editorial calendar project are two separate but related projects and I will post the instructions for  hand building an editorial calendar next week.  (It is easier to work on them at the same time since you are usually on their website for both.) I usually use different worksheets (or tabs) inside the same spreadsheet. If it is going to be a large media list, you may want to have different tabs for different types of media.  Here are examples:

• Broadcast
• Local business press
• Industry/Trade press
• Newsletters
• Blogs

You may even need to break down the publications by frequency: dailies, monthlies, weeklies, quarterlies and give each its own worksheet.

Each worksheet in a media list will have columns for:

• The reporter’s name
• Title
• Beat (what they cover.  Can be as broad as an industry or as narrow as a single company.)
• Publication name
• Contact info – email and phone.  Today my media lists also contain Twitter user names
• Website (publication and individual blog, if there is one)
• Address (useful for knowing time zone even if you never actually mail anything.) You should also know location as you may be able to snag a 1-on-1 meeting with your favorite reporters if you are ever nearby.
• Include a notes column with specifics on the publication itself and what it covers.
• You may also want a column for contact notes:  LM (left message), TW (talked with) and the dates as well as actions.  Some people work in their media lists, some use other tools to track actions.

Start off by looking in Google News or other online news sources for similar topics and stories to the ones you want to eventually see.  Note the publication’s name for each, click through, explore the website, look for the contact us page, the listing of the editorial staff, or even the “media kit.”  These are the places you expect to see listings of the editorial staff and their beats.  If there isn’t any contact information, you can explore the articles themselves; again look for articles such as the one you want and find out who wrote it and how to get in touch with them.  Read the articles.  Note the publication’s stated mission and target market.

Follow any leads from industry blogs and websites.  Look for industry associations and see if they have newsletters.  Ask your client what they read.  What do their customers read?

Go to websites for the major press release distribution services: PR Newswire and Businesswire. They have distribution circuits for geographies and industries.  Look at their lists for your industry.  Again, each publication needs to be researched to make sure it is really relevant.

Sometimes reporters blog about their contact and story preferences — for example Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe has a great blog post about what stories he wants to write.) Insert any relevant contact info for the specific beat reporter, the editorial assistant and the managing editor into the spreadsheet.  You may also want to know the editor-in-chief’s name and if there is a mechanism for submitting press releases (a standard PR@magazinename.com for example.  Sometimes there is a form on the website for this purpose.  Add the location of this important form to the spreadsheet.

There is no shortcut for “knowing” a publication and a reporter’s work.  You must read a publication to be able to pitch it accurately.  Read what a reporter has previously written, in the publication and perhaps on their own blog or others.  Have they recently spoken at an industry event?  Did people tweet about it or blog about it?  What did they say?  You can get all kinds of insights into what a reporter wants to cover that way.

I also bought Seth Godin’s book, “All Marketers are Liars.“  I’ve been doing branding and messaging for various companies for several years but with a number of messaging projects on my plate right now, a little inspiration never hurts.  The book now has a number of “stickies” stuck to it with various random thoughts and in one case, a breakthrough thought.  (At least I think it is and the company I am doing it for is going to love it too!)

I’m not sure why I prefer book reading for inspiration over my online ramblings.  Maybe it is the sense that I might not ever find my way back to my source of inspiration.  (I have used Webnotes to track my wanderings and I love the tool for allowing me to show clients what I am talking about and point out different things online.)  Or maybe I feel compelled to write something down and can rarely locate later the little scraps of people I write on.  (I tend to tuck the stickie notes into the book and I try to leave the books in the same place at home so I know where they are.  Have you ever noticed that when you live in a two story house, whatever you are reading tends to be on the wrong floor when you want it?)

How do books inspire?

• It might be the organization imposed upon the writer by a good editor.  I am pretty sure that the pieces in Social Media 101 aren’t in the order they appeared online.  And while the Contents make it clear the book is comprised of 87 different little stories, they all fall in a logical order.  And that logical order starts to lead my brain down a path.  I might choose to take a left turn while the author goes straight but the sequencing helps.

• Tell me a story. Give me an example.  My favorite marketing books tell stories, lots of them.  Lots of examples — some I am familiar with and some I am not.  (I tend to be disappointed in the books that tell stories I already know.  I lived through the Tylenol scare myself, please don’t make me read another PR book mentioning it.  Or dig out some little known insider information.  Give me the behind the scenes story.)

• Make me think. Ask me a question.  I like putting questions at the ends of my blog posts.  A lot of bloggers do.  (Although I have noticed that today more people put comments and responses in Twitter and on LinkedIn or Facebook, where my blog posts also appear, than on my actual blog.)

• Provide additional content.  Once I am done with reading the actual book, give me somewhere else to go.  A blog, a website, a video, a Twitter account.  Let’s extend the conversation.   Once I have had time to mull it over,  I might have more questions or more insight.

What books have inspired you?