Dear Potential New Client:

Recharging yourself and understanding where your brand fits into your overall communications is one step towards clearly envisioning your goals and deciding just how PR will fit into your marketing plan.  Here are 5 steps towards making your strategy a success.

1. LEARN from your consumer. By using your social media vehicles to gather information about your consumer, you can fast track the evolution of your brand, keeping it current and top-of-mind.  Make sure you have a dedicated team working social media.

2. PARTICIPATE in the conversation.  The communications mix has shifted from static to participatory.  By engaging with your consumers on all levels in an authentic and transparent manner, you seamlessly integrate your brand into their lifestyle.  Be real – engage, ask for help, opinions, these are your best brand ambassadors.

3.  RETURN to your roots.  Take a look at your original mission and vision statements and see if you are on track.  Sometimes reinventing yourself is less important than taking your brand essence and framing it in a modern fresh way that resonates with consumers today.

4.  SHOWCASE your brand where your consumer can see it.  While traditional advertising previously was the mainstay of reaching your consumer, brands now need to be innovative to drive their message.  Using creative delivery systems such as product integration and viral guerrilla marketing can breathe new life into your brand and engage the consumer in new ways.  Product publicity and public relations strategies are more valuable and important than ever before. Layer activities to meet each specific audience.

5.  REVIEW current chatter.  Instead of being a silo, stay aware of trends and inflection points so that your brand can adapt to the changing landscape.  By identifying emerging shifts, competitor positioning  and consumer variations, you can have your brand fluidly respond the market, while remaining true to its core.

Whether it is in business someone looking for a job, trying to sell you their services, asking for advice or in your personal life – asking for a date, a friend wanting to meet for lunch… there’s nothing more annoying and rude than giving someone hope by stringing them along with an “I’m so busy, call me next month” response or even worst yet – setting up a date or meeting and canceling at the last minute!   I don’t care how important you think you are, no one is so busy they can’t respond even if they don’t know the current status. It could be as simple as “I have no information for you now, and it’s not looking promising, but you’re welcome to follow up in a month if you want.”  Or even – we don’t have the budget to implement that service or hire you now –  providing useful information and opening the opportunity to create a win-win option.  Just saying…

We launched a new website two years ago and this week we hired someone to come in and do some tweaking.  One of the things we need immediately are tabs linking visitors to our site to our social media pages (Facebook & Twitter).  Why?   Because those destinations are where we daily update Agency and Client news and can share up to the minute successes with our audiences.  Here is a great article – the one that motivated me to get moving and get an expert to implement these changes – stay tuned – we are in the design process and should be finished within the month…

9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website

By Mallory Woodrow
Published January 25, 2012 

Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site?

Together, social media channels and your website should work seamlessly to promote your online brand.

However, if you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales.

In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.

I’ve included examples from small- to medium-sized businesses that specialize in a whole host of fields to illustrate that you don’t have to be one of the big players to take advantage of these simple tips.

#1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons

This seems like a no-brainer, but double-check. Best practices suggest that social media buttons be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are optimal.

To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you may want to create the buttons or links so that they open your social media pages in new windows.

Also, do not feel obligated to link out to all social media channels you’ve created or dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.

There are several ways in which to display your buttons or links and none of them are wrong. In this case, it is more of a design preference focused on how the user will be interacting with the site.

Below are some examples of ways in which websites have successfully displayed their social media outlet(s).

Big and bold button catches your eye.

This eCommerce site specializing in alternatives to dog and horse supplements only links out to Facebook and chooses to do so in a big and bold manner.

Subtle buttons suit some sites well.

This farm credit services business subtly displays their social media buttons at the bottom of their page.

Front-and-center buttons ensure visibility.

This artist decides to feature his along the top.

#2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense

If you use social media to keep your customers or clients apprised of your recent happenings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.

Linking out or displaying inactive social media channels will only cripple your online efforts. If you choose to go this route, it is important that you maintain your presence.

Below are two examples of how vastly different businesses (a web design firmand an online gift card site) have integrated their social media feeds into their websites.

On this site, tweets are visible along the right-hand side throughout the website. Tweets vary from deals and contests to interactions with followers and customer service responses.

On this B2B site, recent tweets are found at the bottom of the homepage and are mostly comprised of industry-related blogs, recent events and projects in which they’ve participated.

These businesses vary significantly in what they do and the way they make use of social media, but both have found a logical method of incorporating social media into their sites.

#3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons

Social media changes fast—dare we say in real time? So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably palling around with the dinosaurs. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”

Social Media Examiner stays up to date.

In order to maintain credibility within this ever-changing realm, it is important to stay with the times. However, staying up to date with your terminology does not mean that you need to jump on every platform that springs up. It is important to be tactful with your social media choices and do your research before blindly forging into unknown territory.

#4: Include Share Buttons

If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions.

Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product.

If you find yourself hard up for a broad solution for this, check out AddThis orShareThis. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.

As illustrated below, these buttons are easy to see.

The easier you make it for customers to share your product, the better.

Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others. Social media share buttons should be displayed somewhere easy to see. Nicholas Creative does a decent job with this, as seen on their blog below.

If you enjoy an article, you won’t want to keep it to yourself.

#5: Use Analytics

Pay attention to the way in which individuals are using your social media buttons by tapping into Google Analytics. How many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links?

An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. If you’re unfamiliar with Event Tracking, Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site.

Google Analytics allows you to track the number of individuals who click on outbound links by setting up Event Tracking.

If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location. It’s always best to have actual numbers to back up your choices.

#6: Pay Attention to Terms and Conditions

This goes hand in hand with staying up to date and knowledgeable, but I continue to see major brands using social media in ways that violate platforms’ terms and conditions.

You cannot use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook.

The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.

I’m not sure what Pita Pit is doing with this personal Facebook page or if it was created by an unaffiliated party. Whatever the case may be, steer clear of using a personal page as a brand page.

#7: Don’t Over-Do It

You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”

If you find yourself on your “About Us” page and don’t see any added value to website-goers being able to share your administrative assistant’s contact information, then forgoing buttons in this instance is totally acceptable.

#8: Stay Knowledgeable

Don’t get it twisted. With the changing social media landscape and array of rollouts these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:

• You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific website page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
• Similarly, directing individuals to your Google+ brand page is different than adding a +1 button to a page. At this time, there is no correlation between the two.

As illustrated below on this pool supplies website, social media pages and social media share buttons can be found on the same page. Verbs such as “Tweet” and “Share” often help distinguish between share buttons and social media pages.

Be sure you know the difference.

#9: Use Social Media Insights Alongside Google Analytics

Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns.

SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.

Here’s an example of the correlation between website traffic and a social media campaign via a SproutSocial report.

There you have it—a quick-and-dirty guide on immediate steps you can take to make your social media an

Women have a  passion for sharing life experiences and the growing trend of turning those experiences into blogs is a powerful force in shaping beauty product opinions and consumer buying habits. Can you believe that more than 27 percent of women have posted a comment about a beauty brand on a message board, social networking site or blog, and 67 percent of women who participate in these sites are more likely to buy a beauty product if they read a good comment or review about it from their fellow consumers.  That a lot of power beauty bloggers possess and I just love this medium for sharing the message of our clients with these trend-setting women – even if sometimes their comments and reviews aren’t always positive – they are insightful and real!

In a recent Pink report from The Benchmarking Company which scanned  500,000 message boards and 50 million blogs, and obtained detailed quantitative data from thousands of women across the United States beauty blogs especially are where the action is – with the latest research showing that 39 percent of the American online population reads blogs,  22 percent of women visit beauty blogs and on average, women who used the Internet for beauty purposes have visited six blogs, joined three and posted comments on two of them!  There is major opportunity for the beauty industry to reach and educate female consumers by concentrating their marketing dollars and pr product campaigns on the bogging community.  Women are talking about the beauty brands they are most frustrated with and those they adore with millions of other women and beauty addicts online. The Internet has truly become the world’s largest and most influential water cooler. Providing consumers a place to create and share thoughts and opinions online has the potential to dramatically change how beauty brands do business.  At C.I. Visions we treat our blogger contacts like gold and value their commitment to providing their readers with the best “hands-on” test drives and opinions.  We never pay or endorse bloggers who solicit for ads or banners on their sites – this is not where we feel the real power of the blogger lies – we are confident that our client partners deliver great new technologies and product development that our blog contacts what to hear about and try for themselves – the instant postings are amazing and clients use bloggers input in fine-tuning their product development plans.  Another bright idea for enlightening your marketing program….

Google is an important search engine and has replaced the Yellow Pages for most people when looking for information via their smartphone or computer.  When was the last time you used a phone book?  Or called 411?   We use Google all day long at C.I. Visions in accessing a myriad of information. Its perfect for all of my blonde moments!  When I am searching for the perfect word for a press release, need to know if a celebrity wore one of our clients on the red carpet last night, or what more information about a potential client’s product category…  It is essential that information about your business is available to anyone using Google.  An important way to do this is to make sure that your website is up to snuff in terms of SEO.  What’s SEO?  Simply –  Search Engine Optimization which makes the content and HTML code of your site search engine friendly.  Google also offers ADWords Express – locally targeted paid advertising on google you can utilize to build your brand.  (those sidebars you see when you open Google.  These ads ensure that you site appears in the box at the top of side of the computer screen when someone types in a key word. For example, when someone  is searching in your area for something you sell or a service you provide (“pr agencies in NYC”), or if they are already in NYC just (“pr agencies”)the listing for your business will appear above or beside the regular search results.  Your located will be marked with a blue pin on Google Maps.

A great article filled with insight what it takes to secure great business press with the leading media insiders… http://blog.prnewswire.com/2012/01/04/pitching-business-editors/

Blah, blah, blah, this blonde has not had much to say recently (hard to believe) and to establish your voice in the blog-o-spere…well you must communicate more often.  So, here on the 11th day of the New Year – I set a new intention (forget those over emphasized and broken new year resolutions) to reach out and touch you more with my musings, business savvy, agency news, trends and other written words to inspire each of you and most importantly myself – to be the change we want to see in the world!