Blog
Value of a Good Media List
If any of you have ever had to put together a list of friends and family so you can send your holiday cards, you know the agony. You merrily go to your address book and address the envelopes and mail them out. You’re happy to have the task off your hands until several cards come back to you…. and that’s when you realize you should have captured everyone’s addresses last year when you got their holiday cards!
It is always frustrating to send out a mailer or an email to customers or the media to find several returned or bounce backs. Let’s face it, the media is a revolving door when it comes to reporters, editors and news directors. It is unrealistic to think the list you built six months ago is still relevant. And, the time to find out isn’t when you’re getting ready to deliver an important press release or invitation to an event.
So, it is very important to do your due diligence and keep up with it regularly. As a public relations professional, I advise clients to review their lists at least every quarter. You cannot expect good results out of your media relations program if you’re working with a crippled list.
If you do not have a database system like HRB, it can be daunting. We pay for a fabulous service that allows us to create media lists on demand and we never have to worry about it being inaccurate. The service has hundreds of people checking and updating daily. We can also distribute and track the releases with this software, giving our clients the information and follow up needed. Good lists get results.
So take a lesson from life and avoid the holiday card pitfall, it will be the difference between a well-covered event or not.
Shelby Kraus
Vice President, Public Relations
Account Manager
Henry Russell Bruce is a strategic marketing and Internet marketing firm that uses research, brand-building, advertising, media buying and planning, design, public relations, Web design and strategies to help clients grow market share, generate new business, create brand loyalty and measure marketing results to build and support its clients' brands. HRB, founded in 1973, has offices in Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa. For more information, contact HRB.
Feed Your Audience With RSS Feeds
"Times" is an RSS reader for Mac by Acrylic Software
RSS feeds haven’t actively gained mainstream adoption, but have provided a great service to the people that don’t want to have the potential of missing something that they wanted to see. Essentially, an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a file on a Web site that only contains the content, and separates each update into an individual post with a timestamp of when the update was made. The website design completely removed from the content if the user is really only interested in the content. People can then subscribe to that one URL using an RSS reader (I will go into more detail about this below) and they will be notified when there’s been an update made to your site and how many updates that have yet to read.
If a user stumbles across an RSS feed, it might be something that they haven’t used before and don’t really understand the benefits of subscribing to it. There’s a few things that are making this adoption process easier for the user. Most modern web browsers are including RSS readers so that the content is displayed the way a user can understand when you visit an RSS feed. For the publishers out there, you might look into using a service like Feedburner to enhance your feed. The services that Feedburner include a user-friendly interface, analytics, sharing functionality, promoting your feed to news hubs, email subscriptions, and more. You can visit our feed that’s been sent through feedburner at http://feeds.feedburner.com/HRB and check out what would show up without feedburner here. The next post I’ll write will address the concerns you may have of possible lost traffic to your website resulting in lower ad revenue or leads, because people are using RSS feeds to bypass directly visiting your site.
The beauty of the RSS feed isn’t the fact that it’s once place to go for all of your content, but rather the nearly endless options of how you want to go about reading it. The RSS readers out there allow you to put all of your RSS feeds in one place. At that point you can choose how you want to be notified when there’s a new post on any of the feeds you’re subscribed to so you never need to visit a website just to find out that they haven’t updated anything on it. The range of RSS readers offer a variety of ways to interact with your feeds. Google Reader is a powerful feed reader that is simple to use, has unique community features with other people who use it, and keeps track of your reading patterns to show you the stuff you’re more interested first based on your past behaviors. There’s also applications for both Mac and Windows that you might choose to use also. There’s one that caught my eye, called Times (Mac only), that styled your feeds as if you were reading a newspaper, and when you click on the headline it shows the full article either as a new page in the “newspaper” or as the actual site where the article is located. This might be an interesting way to go if people start using tablet computers (such as the iPad) where this is provides a newspaper-like experience that shows you what you want to read and nothing that you don’t while also including high-resolution photos and videos.
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RSS is a very basic and universal capability that sites can take advantage of. In fact, podcasts became popular once people started utilizing RSS feeds to take care of distributing the new episodes to the subscribers as soon as it’s available. If you’ve never tried using RSS feeds to go about reading the blogs or news sites that you frequent, I recommend that you first find an RSS reader that appeals to you (considering that’s what you’re going to be using to read everything), add the feeds of a few websites, and give it a try for a short while. You might find it’s not for you, but you might also find it a great time-saver or a nicer way to go about staying up-to-date with the sites you frequent.
Kurt Zenisek
Web Developer
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kzeni
Henry Russell Bruce is a strategic marketing and Internet marketing firm that uses research, brand-building, advertising, media buying and planning, design, public relations, Web design and strategies to help clients grow market share, generate new business, create brand loyalty and measure marketing results to build and support its clients' brands. HRB, founded in 1973, has offices in Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa. For more information, contact HRB.
Building an Effective Online Marketing Approach – Part One
This is the first of a series of blog articles where I’ll write about what needs to be done to effectively market your business online using a systematic approach based on fundamentals we all know. My goal is to package this approach in a way that helps you build an effective online marketing approach that delivers results.
There has been so much written about social media marketing. It seems so many people think it’s the silver bullet that will take your business to the next level. It’s not. In order for social media marketing or any other online marketing to work effectively, it’s critical to think of the entire structure of your online marketing efforts. As with every structure, you need a strong foundation in order to be successful.
The foundation of your online marketing, is your Web site. More specifically, your Web site design. Is your Web site designed and built as an online brochure where you talk AT your customers and clients, or is it built in a way that will educate them and entice them to contact you? Take the HRB Web site for example. Our site isn’t overly flashy, and it doesn’t have a lot of text on most pages. People simply won’t read a Web page that is text heavy and image light.
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Instead of using a lot of text, we briefly explain most of our services and rely heavily on our portfolio section to show examples of our work. We rely on the HRB Blog as a means to educate our audience and provide insight into our expertise. Both of these serve to begin building a relationship with potential clients and hopefully building trust in our ability to help them. If people like our work and trust in our expertise, then we remain top of mind and are included in the conversation when they are in need of the services we offer.
If you look at our site, you’ll notice we have icons to our social media sites and an icon where people can subscribe to our blog. Another thing you’ll notice is the ability to subscribe to the HRB newsletter. In all of these cases, we are simply providing a way for our audience to receive information from us using the media of their choice. We’re not pushing our articles on people, but rather providing them with choices on how they prefer to receive our message.
On some of our blog articles, we provide an opportunity for people to download white papers that provide in-depth information on a topic. One example is our white paper titled “Learn how to avoid the 15 biggest marketing mistakes in 2010.” You can see an example of how we worked this white paper into our content in this article:
How to Work With a Marketing Agency
Finally, you’ll notice each page of our site has a link to Contact HRB. In the footer of the site, you see the addresses and phone numbers (mobile device compatible) for our locations in the Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids. Those are two items that virtually every Internet user has grown accustomed to. If you don’t deliver these elements, then you’ll quickly lose the user.
Hopefully it goes without saying that the HRB site is programmed to meet the very strict standards of the World Wide Web Consortium with search engine optimization built into the foundation and added to each new blog post and page built.
In summary, your Web site is your foundation. Be sure to offer multiple ways for your audience to engage you. Offer promotions and information that prompts the user to engage you further, or at least keeps you top of mind. Once this foundation is strong, you can begin some marketing efforts to test the effectiveness of your Web site design.
Jeff McEachron
Senior Vice President
Director, Internet Operations
Follow me on Twitter @Jeff_McEachron
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmceachron
Related Services:
- Website Design Quad Cities
- Website Design Cedar Rapids
- Email Marketing
- Internet Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media Marketing
Henry Russell Bruce is a full-service advertising agency and Internet marketing firm that focuses on branding, developing and executing marketing roadmaps, and growing companies.
Are You Practicing the Art of Filling Holes?
Well, it’s that time of year again … when we’re blessed with countless potholes left behind on our roads by winter’s many freezes and thaws. Playing “dodge-the-pothole” can make driving a real adventure. Soon the road crews will be out with their trucks and shovels, dutifully filling those tire and suspension-killing craters with steaming asphalt.
I’m convinced their task is not unlike how some companies approach their advertising efforts. At least, that’s how it so often looks. On their “to do” list is an ad schedule, probably a few brochures, a monthly calendar of direct mailers, maybe even a Web site design their sales department has been begging for. Those are the “holes” they have to fill. Important holes, yes … still holes none-the-less.
But what happens when that road crew fills a pothole? People drive right over it and never notice it. They keep on their merry way with their eyes open, watching for the road signs, traffic signals and looming landmarks which tell them they’re near their destination. Those filled potholes are now totally invisible in the rear view mirror.
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Thomas Edison once said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it looks like work.” Those words ring true to me when I see some of the work that looks like yet another advertising “hole” has been filled. An ad that’s crowded with more copy than anyone would ever read. A brochure with lame photographs that fill every millimeter of white space. A web site with a huge “don’t forget who brought you this boring message” logo put on every page. They’ve totally missed the opportunity to build a bridge to their audience.
Why? Because it takes work to actually build something. Thinking, planning and understanding how their brand really resonates with their audience. It’s work that’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.
Take the opportunities you have to build something your audience can see from a distance. Something that steers them in the right direction and tells them they’re closer to their destination. Something they remember later. Your brand.
In the meantime, look out for those nasty potholes!
Henry Russell Bruce is a full-service advertising agency and Internet marketing firm that focuses on branding, developing and executing marketing roadmaps, and growing companies.
This Week at HRB: March 12, 2010
What a busy and uplifting week it has been at HRB as we finalize trade show booth plans for a Connecticut client preparing to attend the National Agri-Marketing Association convention in Kansas City, April 21-23.
We’ve published the schedule of our 2010 seminar series for Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities on our Web site so you can see what’s coming and sign up at any time. The subject matter includes topics on Web and social media, public relations, branding, media buying, strategic planning and more.
A large media outlet client is getting plans together to launch its new brand internally and externally, so we hosted an office brainstorming session to generate ideas.
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Much PR work being done for several clients – generating media lists and researching editorial calendar opportunities on our Web-based Cision PR software.
Three new TV spots for our Mexican restaurant client were wrapped up and distributed to all stores nationally and will begin airing locally next week.
For our rugged tablet PC client, we finalized banner ads targeting applications and product features.
A save the date email went out for an April seminar being planned for our subsoil stabilization client in Iowa City. Invitations are being printed and will drop early next week. Brand identity package (letterhead, biz cards, envelopes) are being finalized. Brochure is in client review. Web site design is in the works – design is approved. They are very happy with their new look.
No, we’re not in trouble with the law. But we’ve been interviewing and meeting with law enforcement training officers for the past two weeks in order to develop a strategic marketing plan for a training client in the Corridor. Also researching trade pubs, trade shows and associations to prepare for our upcoming client presentation.
We’ve almost got final approval for a new animated video for a medical devices client.
For our large engineering/architectural client, we are finishing the templates for the new brand look. Working on a corporate brochure and presentation folder as the next step in the re-brand process.
Want help with a marketing project or campaign, please contact HRB.
Jim Thebeau
Partner/CEO
Follow me on Twitter @JimThebeau
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jimthebeau
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