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A review of Bill Baker’s latest book

At AM:PM PR we like to keep a pulse on trends and thought leadership related to the public relations industry, especially in subjects that we find interesting. To this end we hold weekly meetings we call “PR 3.0” where we invite PR professionals, job seekers and business executives to join us to talk about the latest developments in social media technologies.

However, we take this interest to all aspects of our work and last week I purchased a book by local Portland author Bill Baker titled “Destination Branding for Small Cities.” In this book Mr. Baker draws upon over 30 years experience working in over 25 countries helping communities with their branding and marketing. His book illustrates the case for the destination branding and marketing of small cities and towns.

Interestingly, the book arrived into my possession around the same time The Oregonian published an article saying Bicycling contributes $400 million to Oregon tourism. Do you think this isn’t destination branding? If anything, it’s a warning shot to all bike-related businesses in the region, telling them that they’d better rope themselves into the branding language if they want to take advantage of this large portion of the local economy.

The bike piece comes after a piece from CNN that says Portland is America’s top beer town. Then in the Huffington Post, Portland was cited in a study by Intuit as a top city for female entrepreneurs.

This could all be crazy coincidence, but in reality it’s the result of a successful destination branding campaign that has consciously (and sometimes, subconsciously) been part of the collective marketing efforts of cities and businesses in the region during the past decade. Bike lanes, pet friendly hotels, famous bands, beer tours, distillery row and words like “artisan”, “craft”, “eco” and even our food carts are all under the umbrella of a successful destination branding campaign. It’s successful because the campaign comes from the top down and is adopted by other businesses and organizations looking to take advantage of the media limelight. Further, our regional campaign is based upon an authenticity that builds when families move to the area seeking a quality of life that we foster and encourage in Portland.

I found the book to be thought-provoking and a must read for anyone sitting on the board of a chamber of commerce or related tourism organization – even if you aren’t directly involved in the marketing, public relations or branding committee. It’s important for people to have a better understanding of the principles presented in this book so they act as a resource, team player, or in the case of small businesses – identify the greater destination branding at play, and use it to their advantage.

For more: “Destination Branding for Small Cities.”

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In honor of Bike to Work Week, our colleague Mike has been a real bike vigilante about pedal power. His credentials include buying a bike last Sunday and lording over the rest of the team how efficient and eco-friendly his very new daily ride has become. (Editors note: in three days he has already saved 1/3 of a gallon of gas and prevented 6.4 pounds of CO2 from entering earth’s atmosphere, which is currently being erased by the man using the leaf blower in the rain outside our office).

This is all to say that we’re inviting our social media-loving friends to bike to this week’s PR 3.0 where we’ll be discussing the latest developments in social media. Join us on Thursday at 4 p.m. at 2006 SE Clinton.

If you have any questions or topics of interest, please join us and share.

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It’s no secret the AM:PM PR crew loves its neighborhood. While we typically talk up the local bars and eateries, there are other less calorically detrimental businesses that we think are equally neat. Just up Clinton St. from our offices, perfectly positioned just off one of SE Portland’s main bike boulevards on 23rd and SE Clinton, is the factory showroom of North St. – a really cool bike bag and accessory company.

A well-made bike bag could come in handy for some of us, Pat: I’m looking at you. Others of us just drink coffee delivered by bike. If any of you saddle up frequently, just know that North St. is producing some solid bike gear. The company’s website makes it easy to choose your own custom bag color combos, including the base color, trim and lining. It’s these kind of details that I’m a real sucker for. A handful of bike shops in town carry the bags, but ordering online allows you to be the architect of your perfect pack.

While the waterproof designs are ideal for serious all-weather cyclists (ie. not me), I’m contemplating picking one up for use on hikes, and other upcoming summer adventures. Check ‘em out, and let us know what you think.

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At PR 3.0 on Thursday, May 9th we’ll discuss some of the latest developments including the new Facebook-style mention feature, visual portfolio feature – and discuss how they’re trying to corner the market for both job-hunters and established professionals.

For a primer, check out the following links. Feel free to share any additional links or comments that may facilitate further conversation.

LinkedIn Now Lets You Add a Visual Portfolio to Your Profile

LinkedIn Adds Facebook-Style Mentions Of People And Companies In Status Updates And Home-Page Comments

LinkedIn’s New Recruiter Homepage Gives Headhunters Better Search, Status And News

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Last Week Warren Buffett joined Twitter.

This must come as a shock to many small business owners who’d gobble up his investment advice, but would just as soon do everything in their power to avoid using Twitter. (This must also come as a disappointment to self-proclaimed social media gurus who spend hundreds of hours trying to gain followers, whereas Warren Baby {as I call him} already has 390,000+.)

A late bloomer, perhaps, but when an investment tycoon joins up with a web platform that is currently overlooked from many in the small business community, maybe it’s time to give it another look?

If you’re ready, here are 6 uses for Twitter (compliments of AM:PM PR) that may help you on your way:

1.  Demonstrating thought leadership. You’re an expert on your brand and in your field and your target audience is already looking for you.

2. Demonstrating your brand. You can demonstrate your brand image with tweets related to your expertise or related to your business or products. You can also share related industry news to show you are a source for news and related information.

3. Search Engine Optimization. We’re guessing that you established your other social media profiles because you recognize that different people use different technologies. Further, Twitter has its own search engine independent of Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Myspace, etc., etc., etc. Therefore, when people search for information using Twitter, they are potentially discovering information unique from those other search engines. How can you brand your Tweets so that your target audience can find you more easily on Twitter?

4. Research. We’ve worked with businesses and non-profits who’ve been “discovered” by journalists researching a given topic for a story. Conversely, you can use Twitter to research targeted bloggers, podcasts or publications that may not be so apparent when searching with Google.

5. Social Interaction. The “social” in social media insinuates that you use the media to interact with others, and not to simply trumpet your ego to the world. If you’re not interacting with others, you’re not doing it right. Find Twitter users who are sharing information relevant to your brand, and build rapport with them.

6. Promotion of your brand. I made this last, just because it should be your last priority. It’s cool to share exciting news, achievements or great interviews – but if you’re constantly sending off self-aggrandizing tweets, you’re doing it wrong.

In conclusion, you’ll notice that Warren has only posted two tweets since he joined up last Thursday. This is not a technique or strategy that we recommend, unless you are already incredibly famous. We’d recommend that you carve out a minimum of 15 minutes per day for regular social media upkeep.

The post The other Buffett Rule: If Warren Buffett joins Twitter, you should too appeared first on AM:PM PR.

Truth be told, after several days of exploration I’ve come to the conclusion that Medium is my kind of platform. It’s for the 1% of us that like to write opinionated quasi-intellectual notes on Facebook that unintentionally alienate half of your friends. The best part is that your parents, employers and colleagues haven’t discovered Medium yet, so it’s like Facebook circa 2006 when you could still get away pouring your heart out over the course of an evening (and a bottle of Chianti) with no repercussions.

Medium is currently in über beta start-up mode, but I thought it might be fun to poke and prod around their website with the proverbial stick. The following is what I’ve discovered.

Blogging Reimagined

When I went to explore Medium, I did it from the perspective of their motto, ie, someone trying to move humanity forward, and I was immediately drawn to this post: Stop working (so hard).

You don’t have to worry about that, Medium.

But in all seriousness, from what I understand, Medium is trying to reimagine the concept of a blog by making it more socially interactive than current designs allow and by facilitating longer conversations and extraneous dialogue in the process.

It became immediately apparent that this platform is geared towards a certain type of person. You know the Facebook friend who posts cute kitty photos and gets all twisted whenever someone talks about politics, science or demonstrates critical thinking? Yeah, this site is not for them. Medium is more accurately for people who like to write, or those who like to critique what other people write.

Comment Makeover

In a typical blog format (Tumblr, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress) all of the comments on a given post are archived at the bottom of each post. With Medium, the comments are displayed to the right side of the post, which results in a more fluid interaction. When you comment on a given post you can highlight the exact word or phrase you want to comment on, and subsequent users can comment further. This feature makes for more functional interactions with a post, and I like it.

Check this out:

Formatting blogs

Do you remember how crazy Myspace got when people could add pink backgrounds and floating sparkles and snowflakes to their landing pages causing your Pentium III computer to freeze up? Do you hate it when you arrive at a blog with an orange background with white typeface? Medium has simplified the way people format their blogs by eliminating choice, essentially subtracting a lot of the functional ability and formatting options that you may be used to with other platforms. They also allow only a single headline image for each post. I think this works because it makes their blog system cleaner and easier to read.

Here is an example of what I mean:

This is what the blogging tool looks lik

You’ll notice the following:

1. You can only add one image
2. Your title is large and bold
3. The body of your writing is in smaller font

That’s it. You cannot change the font, add italics, underline things, create orange backgrounds or add snowflakes to accentuate a wintry theme. This is blogging simplified.

Categorizing Blogs

In the following image you can see that Medium allows you to review posts, and collections of posts (demonstrated below).

You can customize your own collection of posts under the heading “Collections” or if you don’t want to go with the ones that they select for you, you can create your own, which could be a fun way to stimulate conversations about topics that are relevant to you personally. My favorite category is “Armchair Economics” because the topics flatter my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and/or ego.

Who should use Medium?

I’m answering this question wearing my PR professional hat as clients are often asking for the return on investment (ROI) on social media platforms. I haven’t done enough digging around to fully understand Medium’s policies, but if you have a business or a brand that relies on the dissemination of ideas and information to relevant communities, Medium may be a good platform to keep your eyes on.

I’m a little conservative when investing too much time in new platforms – I like to watch others jump in to see how they may be benefiting before I invest my most precious commodity, time. It is unclear to me if writing a blog-like post in Medium will create any less or any more SEO for your brand.

Medium challenges the notion that attention spans are getting shorter or that people require all information to come in 140 characters or less. Medium is embracing the idea that everyone can write long, drawn-out prose, and that there are people out there that want to read your meanderings.

Go ahead, check it out and explore for yourself.  http://medium.com

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Have you found yourself censoring images, ideas or other posts on social media platforms because you feel they might cause negative feedback from certain members of your online community? This is an example of managing your brand identity, whether you’re conscious of it or not, and many people and businesses have been struggling with the act of branding ever since the first adorable baby animal images started circulating on the Internet.

Make no mistake, managing brand identity on social networks is a difficult task. Additional considerations include when to post, what to post, how to post, where to post, how to respond to criticism or a communication crisis. With all this pressure, some folks are on a personal quest to determine a special formula or to instill a set of rules to follow that will ensure social media success. I don’t know that there really is a secret formula, but I suspect it comes down to one of the first social lessons that most of us learn at an early age: you’ll be far more successful being authentic and empathetic to others, versus a self-aggrandizing type-A loudmouth. In other words, just be real and be aware of your audience.

There have been some pretty atrocious examples of brands and business leaders failing to “be real” on social media and it’s had disastrous (if not amusing) effects on their brand identity. Curiously, many of these missteps have occurred after national or international tragedy, in some ill-advised effort to capitalize on a hot topic of media intrigue. Other missteps have occurred when brands have taken a stance on social issues, temporarily unaware of the people that inhabit their target audience that they’ve spent building over a period of years.

In recent days we’ve seen the following PR disasters:

*  Epicuroius advertising some scones and breakfast treats, tying the promotion into the Boston marathon bombing

*  Eden Foods opposing the contraceptive measure imposed in the new healthcare law (do they NOT know who their target consumer is?)

For a list of more social blunders, check out this article from Mashable. These examples offer a teachable moment for AM:PM PR friends and clients.

We’ve drummed up a list of five additional suggestions to ensure your brand doesn’t follow in these footsteps.

1. Don’t try to attach your brand to a crisis. I would argue that you shouldn’t do it at all, but some folks have big hearts and feel the need to express their sympathy for a tragic event. If you must, let your audience know that the employees of your business have their hearts and minds in the right place. That is real human emotion and it’s fine to express. Once. But trying to tie a product promotion or sale into a disaster is just gross, and above all, not what a real person would do. Several brands including Kenneth Cole and The Gap have had their brand images tarnished by thoughtless Tweets.
2. Share information that interests real people.  I like kitty posts as much as the next person, but for brand integrity I try to limit myself. As challenging as it is, I do so because sharing kitty images and related social media memes does nothing for my brand. If I do ten kitty-like posts and then one post related to something business-related, my target audience may have already tuned out (or worse, hidden ALL of my posts).
3. Don’t oversell yourself. When I was a kid, this guy Jack Roberts was famous in Seattle-area TV commercials for his many, many commercials saying “I wont be undersold.” While his marketing message has stuck with me for 25 years, it’s not an effective strategy for social media. People will get annoyed and tune you out. However, if you get a windfall and want to buy a bunch of TV advertising, give it a shot. Also check out Chuck Curcio for inspiration.
4. Don’t create alter egos to bash your critics or competitors. Falling under the “be real” requirement, the founder of Dilbert and CEO of Whole Foods have something in common. Both created fake alter egos to praise and defend themselves online, generating some negative publicity for their brand as a result. Here’s a feature in the NY Times for John Mackey, which is usually a good thing, but this time it wasn’t.
5. Make sure you know your customers before sharing your beliefs. In the case of Eden Foods, CEO Michael Potter (no relation to Harry) obviously had temporary amnesia of his customers when he sued against having contraception covered for his employees. Then he kept digging that hole deeper, as shown in this piece from Salon. You have to be careful when taking political postures that represent your public brand or image.

This is a snapshot of some considerations to keep in mind when branding your online business or persona, based on our observations from recent events. While the platforms are always changing, the same general rules always remain. Be authentic, be real, and in the immortal words of George Carlin’s character Rufus, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “be excellent to each other.”

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Technology and the rise of social networks over the past decade have put practices used by communications professionals in a constant state of flux. It’s admittedly difficult for organizations to determine which tactics will elicit the greatest return on their marketing investment and it’s common for many small business owners to overlook opportunities that are actually within their budget.

Video is often overlooked due to what is perceived or imagined to be extraordinary costs. However, due to recent improvements and cost reductions in camera and software technology, you can now produce a slick video for a fraction of the price. When coupled with developments in e-newsletter and social media technology, your return on investment with video starts looking pretty good.

Benefits of Video

Brand Personality

Video offers a way to put a personality or personal face on your business, which in turn allows you or your business to connect with prospective customers on a “real” level, if that makes sense.

Demonstration

You can use video to communicate directly to your target audience or to demonstrate: how to use a product, new ideas, your areas of expertise, or the practicality or application of a new product or idea.

Virality

When coupled with social media, a thoughtful and creative video can be shared among audiences through various social media channels – which can actually make it it one of the most measurable marketing tactics too. In Software Advice‘s recent B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey for 2012 video was shown to be one of the most successful ways to generate engagement through content.

Video is Popular

Some crazy facts:

• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.
• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 25% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices

Speed and Simplicity

Finally, video is easy for your end user: your target audience. Unlike a well-written essay that requires your target audience to spend 5-10 minutes of brain power to read and digest, a thoughtful video can get your messaging across in less than a minute.

Video doesn’t have to be expensive or take a lot of time to produce, but it does have to be well planned and shot as thoughtfully as possible. Hiring a video producer will help to amplify online campaigns and may share insight and personal connections to your audience in a manner that is hard to reproduce otherwise.

Mikee Shattuck is a Portland, Oregon native with over 10 years of marketing and advertising experience. He offers quality and efficient video production service for an insanely affordable value. Mikee can be reached at: http://www.mikeeshattuck.com

Check out examples of Mikee’s work:

BioLite CampStove from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

Dick Hannah Service Xpress from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

MapleXO Vulture Couture Fashion Show from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

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A more practical guest-worker program would ensure a dependable supply of labor for Hillsboro’s agricultural industry, which now struggles with a costly and unwieldy federal program allowing foreign nationals in for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.

It’s not just farmers and nursery operators who would benefit from an overhaul of the immigration system. Revision of federal laws that unnecessarily restrain the hiring of foreign nationals would also aid Hillsboro’s cluster of technology companies.

Local tech companies use what’s called the H-1B visa program to employ foreign nationals in specialty occupations — such as scientists, engineers or computer programmers — that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields.

Lisa Malloy, an Intel spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., says H-1B workers have consistently represented about 6 percent of the U.S. work force at Intel, which has regularly been one of the top U.S.-based companies using the visas.

Typically, Malloy says, Intel’s H1-B visa holders have graduated from a U.S. university with an advanced degree in science, engineering or math, and many work as component designers, process engineers and software engineers. Comprehensive federal legislation that would remove the arbitrary cap on the number of H-1B visas each year and allow visas to reflect the U.S. economy and what businesses need would be welcomed by Intel and Hillsboro’s other tech companies.

Allowing talented foreign nationals who get advanced degrees at U.S. universities to stay in the United States, rather than sending them (and their talents) packing after graduation, would also make sense.

The same holds true for foreign-born founders of U.S. start-up companies in the U.S. It would be far better for these economy-boosters to have the option of becoming U.S. citizens, and potentially building a business here, rather than pulling up stakes and nurturing their dreams elsewhere. President Obama had it right when he said in January, “Right now, in (an American classroom) there’s a student wrestling with how to turn their big idea — their Intel or Instagram — into a big business. We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs in China or India or Mexico or someplace else. That’s not how you grow new industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors.”

These immigrants are already boosting Hillsboro’s healthy economy and stand to strengthen it even more if they are brought out of the shadows. They’re working in farmers’ fields, nurseries, restaurants, hotels and other businesses, large and small.

They’re starting new companies. They’re buying and renting homes. In addition to supplying labor, they’re adding to the local demand for products and services.

Making it so the undocumented immigrants already here can live and work here legally would bring an even bigger economic payoff.

Comprehensive immigration reform that allowed all of Hillsboro’s immigrants to come out into the open would pull them out of the underground economy, make it much less likely they will be paid off the books, generate more taxes and allow them to play a more vigorous role in Hillsboro’s economy.

It is also in our best interest to educate the children of undocumented immigrants so they can contribute more to the city’s economy. As Edward Glaeser of Harvard has amply illustrated, cities with educated and skilled populations will achieve more. On the flip side, cities burdened with ill-educated, low-skill populations will struggle.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in 2011 that the United States is the only country where education attainment levels of people entering the labor market (25-34 year-olds) don’t exceed the levels of those about to leave the labor market (55-64 year-olds).

The same holds true for Oregon, where the older generation is more educated than the young. In a globally competitive economic environment, Hillsboro’s economy, and Oregon’s, will pay a heavy price if we fail to educate the children of all immigrants to their maximum potential.

Bill MacKenzie is a former congressional staff member, reporter and communications manager for a Hillsboro company.

*First appeared in the Hillsboro Tribune.

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