We’re frequently asked, “What should my business do, from a PR perspective?”

Most of the  time, they’re not asking for a full consultation, but are asking, “What do the successful companies know?”

For months, the PilmerPR team has been working behind-the-scenes to compile the most useful information together, and in terms for the layman. The result is “PR 101: The Basics.”

Beginning this month, PilmerPR will host the webinars to introduce basic public relations strategies to entrepreneurs, CXOs and emerging company owners, within an hour.

This is not just a sales presentation. You will come away seeing your business from a PR perspective, which may inspire you to rethink current practices.

Topics include the following:

• Social Media - Money Maker or Energy Leak
• Press Releases - Not Just for Reporters Anymore
• Online Media Revolution - A Conceptual and Monetary Shift
• Measurement - Turning PR into Money
• Watering Holes - Finding Prospects in 2010
• Avoiding Potholes - Common Errors of Entrepreneurs
• What’s News? - Making News Newsworthy
• And More!

“PR 101: The Basics” is only $149. For this first webinar, if you sign up for the PilmerPR newsletter, we will give you a code to attend for just $49.

Sign up for the PilmerPR Newsletter:

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US Govt Lost Record

In our PilmerPR public relations firm, words communicate a message like “trust us, we’ve got your back.” But, what’s the message behind the words? What does the attached letter communicate.

The US Government wants to “protect” and run our healthcare system. Do they really have a track record we can count on? They lost my father’s 25 year US Navy service record.

“We have been unable to find the record needed…”

Can you imagine how you would feel if they lost your family’s medical records? What’s your recourse against the US Government if they mess up your healthcare records.

No thank you to Nationalized Healthcare - Just Say No to ObamaCare.

Notice the cute security marketing logo in the lower right corner of the letter. Did it make you feel more comfy about the government losing your records? Not me!

The message here behind the words is, “we could lose your records and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

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Alan Ashton & Lt. Gov Gary Herbert address UVEF

Fox News: UVEF Top 25 Under 5

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Today, Lt Gov Gary Herbert keynoted a terrific awards program by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF). 160 attendees. 25 top companies under five years of age were honored. Representing $80 million in combined 2008 revenue, the winners created 840 jobs last year. ZAGG, Imagination Learning, and OrangeSoda came in 1, 2, & 3.  Emcee, Rick White, co-founder of rising startup Fusion-io kept the event light with ample humor and insights into the healthy state of entrepreneurism in Utah.

According to soon to be Governor Herbert, 50% of jobs in Utah come from small business.  The Wall Street Journal reported this past month that more than half of the Fortune 500 in 2009 launched in recessions or bear markets. Speakers at the event credited Utah’s relatively resilient economy is due to great startup companies like those honored today.

The Daily Herald honored Alan Ashton, founder of WordPerfect, with a special “Founding Fathers” award for his quarter century of contributing to Utah business and the community.

Media for the event:

YouTube highlights video

Business Wire coverage

Daily Herald coverage

Daily Herald special section on Utah entrepreneurs

Deseret News coverage

Utah Pulse coverage

Wasatch Digital IQ coverage

Fox TV News coverage

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Only ten years ago, press releases used to be one of the only ways to get your company’s name mentioned by the media. A painfully slow fax to newsrooms was the preferred way to get your press release to the media. Thanks to technology, today things are a little different and the value of press releases has significantly increased.

New services like PR Newswire and Business Wire allow companies to put their news release “on the wire” and broadcast their release to thousands of news outlets and influential blogs. Companies now enjoy more than just news clippings from papers and magazines.

A press release is a small investment that not only brings results while in print, but long after. Similar to a press release, advertising can provide a great response while an advertisement is active; however, when the ad is no longer active, the results drop. Press releases have a different life cycle. Similar to advertising, positive coverage provides valuable results, yet, long after the print or broadcast coverage; press releases continue to provide results with great SEO benefits

Continue Reading at Utah Business Magazine

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How the heck does Wall Street react so fast to the Obama Stimulus Plan? Thumbs down was the ruling as stocks tumbled once again.  The answer, the Internet. It has changed everything. When FDR passed his massive social programs in the 1930’s,  radio, newsreels, and newspapers spent days,  months and years getting the details of those plans to “the end of the row” to the average Joe.

Today, the average Joe is connected to the Internet and gets news almost instantaneously. The Wall Street experts and the media know more about the Stimulus Plan than the average congressional representative - scary. This morning while on the treadmill at Golds Gym,  Fox News interviewed two congressmen who knew fewer details of the Plan than the reporter did. Wow!

Ramification for corporate public relations: Get fast or get dead!

What do you think?

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The Pew Research Center released a study last month, about the use of Internet news outlets.

The Internet, which emerged last year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news.

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

For young people, however, the Internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the Internet (68% vs. 34%).

The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently. This mirrors a trend seen earlier this year in campaign news consumption.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults, finds there has been little change in the individual TV news outlets that people rely on for national and international news.

Contact us to discuss the implications of this massive change for your public relations strategy.

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Demand for online news is exploding. Social Media is a major cause and beneficiary of this trend. Traditional daily newspapers have scrambled to stay relevant with new interactive online editions. PR News reports that that 30% of blog readers spend most of their time reading news/current affairs blogs, one form of the “new media.”  A couple of years back the Boston Herald reported potentially cancelling its print edition if current trends to online subscribers continued.

Well, the Chrisitan Science Monitor beat them to it. In 2009, the Monitor will become the first nationally circulated newspaper to replace its daily print edition with its website. This is hugely significant for PR campaigns everywhere. To remain relevant business public relations plans must transition to web based news focus and the two way social media expectations of consumers. 

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Blogs, Wikis, social networking, online forums, podcasts – social media all. How do you make sense of these PR tools? A little confusing perhaps?  

Wikipedia describes Social Media as:“Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.” 

The secret to making good use of these is…drum roll please…getting started. We have to get past the “paralysis of the analysis” and get in the game. Large companies with big budgets are hiring full time staff to manage nothing but social media. Small companies, where executives wear many hats, are starting small and growing. Time and resources are the main barriers that scale down grand plans in these new Web 2.0 public relations media.  

Tip: Let’s take one element common across most social media – it is 2 way communications. We can join the conversation; we don’t have to start it. We can comment on other’s blogs, respond to online articles in daily newspapers, post listings on others online directories, post articles on other’s wikis. Put a link back to your website in the comment and you have just created another way for someone to find you on the Internet.  

When you know an article mentioning your company is about to go live online, make sure your fans (suppliers, channel partners, top customers) know about it and suggest they comment online to the writer. Most major publications now allow for such comments. In this way you can further assure that the article is caste in the most positive light possible. Encourage good comment content and suggest areas they may comment on without putting the words in their mouth. That’s good public relations and can have positive SEO benefits. 

Here’s a good article about social media recently published in Utah Business.  

Let us know what you think.

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This week, PilmerPR’s public relations work for ElectraTherm was submitted for a possible award from a major PR association. We think our chances are good, but are humble enough to know that there is a lot of great PR work going on out there by our peers and competitors.  

We like our chances because PilmerPR has done a two year deep dive into the world of Green PR, Corporate Social Responsibility, Cleantech, and Environmental Sustainability. We know how to avoid greenwashing and have turned down offers to represent companies who appear to be more “show than go”, more marketing hype than Green. ElectraTherm is the real deal. Their award winning product converts waste heat from industrial sources into electricity without any other fuel and without any emissions. Cool! This is not some “Back to the Future” Flux Capacitor thing coming in fifty years. The ElectraTherm Green Machine is in commercial power production at SMU, home of one of countries leading Geothermal Labs in the U.S., and that’s not a coincidence. 

So far, and we’re just getting started, PilmerPR has garnered 26 feature articles and a feature on Free to Be Green on Dallas Channel 33 , reaching more than 36.8 million individuals, and accumulating approximately $1,127,700 in alternative advertising value. The SEO portion of our public relations plan yielded 10,000 website hits in a two week period. Here’s what the client says about our work: 

“ElectraTherm’s requirements for driving awareness about our new products to key publics have been exceeded by PilmerPR. The press relations campaign driven by PilmerPR around the launch of our new ElectraTherm Green Machine has brought new top tier investors and customers to our door. It has created a foundation for building major press momentum going forward. PilmerPR has assisted greatly in driving publicity that has moved the needle for our strategic objectives.” Bill Olson – Vice President, Business Development at ElectraTherm 

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Back in November 1970, Oregon’s Highway Division tried to dispose of a 45-foot-long whale carcass by blowing it up using a half-ton of dynamite. Since all area beaches are under the jurisdiction of the state Parks and Recreation Department, responsibility for disposing of the carcass fell upon the Oregon Department of Transportation. Needless to say, the plan went amiss when pieces went soaring through the air toward curious onlookers and created one of the most memorable stories ever reported in area newspapers, radio and television.

Although this would be one incident ODOT would love to have put behind them, the more than 30-year-old story was recently brought back into existence by video of the event flung into cyberspace and appearing on subscriber electronic bulletin boards nationwide. The quick dissemination of information over the Internet triggered an influx of calls to ODOT’s public affairs department from curious reporters in Oregon, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and even from The Wall Street Journal. It was amazing that people were calling about a story that was nearly a half century old.

It’s a challenging juxtaposition for any company to take on, trying to effectively communicate what they do and not just what they say. With the globalization of the Internet and the growing domination of online news over print and broadcast media, these new forms of content delivery are driving infinite possibilities of how public relations professionals can deliver messaging to specific audiences.

We all need to keep in mind that over 57% of Internet users report they watch video online and share what they find with others. Considering that these are not only direct customers and prospects, but also journalists, it is now our job as professionals to stay ahead of these technological innovations by combining social media and public relations. It’s time to join with peers from all age groups in order to improve our communications strategies for tackling these issues and become proactive, rather than reactive to the changes brought about by advances in 21^st Century technology.

Looking back years later, Oregon’s “exploding whale” story is now the #5 web video of all time with over 350 million views. Paul Linnman, the 1970’s feature reporter noted, “It might be concluded that should a whale ever be washed ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do, they’ll certainly remember what not to do.”

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