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Business briefs: Turning around bad word-of-mouth

August 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Don't get screwed by word-of-mouth

If you ever get caught with your pants down, you’d better have a good story.

That’s my takeaway from a little online dust-up with Waiters In Boxers, a California company that provides … well, just what the name says.

Last week, reporter Chad Brooks profiled Waiters In Boxers as part of his “Funny Business” series for Business News Daily. After reading the story, I had to tweet my two cents’ worth, and several others quickly joined in the conversation, raising questions about the viability of this particular business model.

I figured that was the end of it until a few days later, when I received the following reply to my tweet:

@PenPointer @JeanetteBND maybe look at the actual concept not how it was re-written in bnd from chad brooks perspective :) much love!

Fair enough. Maybe this business model was more sophisticated than it seemed at first glance. I probably should take a closer look at their story, so I clicked through to the WIB site and found … not much of anything. I mean, lots of pecs, lots of abs, and lots of underwear, but nothing to change my mind or reverse a negative first impression.

Talk about a missed opportunity. Even negative word-of-mouth is a good thing, if you can turn the attention to your advantage. If Waiters In Boxers were my client, I’d urge them to do a quick A-B-C analysis of their site:

  • Anticipate customer objections. If there’s an issue you need to address, then hit it head-on, or risk raising more red flags in customers’ minds. For instance, WIB wants to assure visitors that their service won’t be “as tacky and tasteless as what others have done.” Huh? Now I’m really uncertain about this. More details, please.
  • Be yourself. Don’t hide behind the corporate “we.” Put a face on your company, make it personal. With WIB, I imagine a creepy, Hugh Hefner type behind the scenes. But maybe that’s all wrong. Maybe the company was started by a young woman who couldn’t find what she wanted for her bachelorette party. Maybe it was a hard-working waiter who was looking to create new opportunities for himself and his friends. When you personalize your story, you make it easier for customers to identify with you — and harder for critics to stereotype you.
  • Choose your content carefully. Words and pictures matter. WIB wants to convey a sort of fun, wholesome image, but the content often communicates just the opposite. Beefcake photos and constant repetition of the word ‘sexy’? That just says “objectify me.” Instead of pecs, I’d recommend personality: Show the waiters in T-shirts and include a brief bio that turns them into living, breathing human beings. Not only would it change the whole tone of the site, but it might also encourage potential clients to get in touch for additional photos.

Here’s the naked truth: You can’t stop the critics from talking about you, but you can change the conversation by telling your side of the story more effectively.

Photo credit: Thomas van Ardenne via flickr CC

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How to get publicity of biblical proportions

July 28, 2011 By 2 Comments

What does this story remind you of:

A burned-out Internet entrepreneur decides he wants to spend more time with his family, so he opens a small retail shop that sells and services Apple products. He makes a decent living, eats lunch and dinner at home every day, and life is generally good — until Apple announces plans to open one of its sleek corporate stores in the same sleepy Georgia town.

Rather than run away, the entrepreneur fights back. He adds more services, more workshops and five times the number of accessories carried by the typical Apple store. Lo and behold, the giant fails to crush the little guy. In fact, PeachMac grows to a mini-chain with five locations.

Even if you weren’t brought up in Sunday School, the words “David and Goliath” might spring to mind. I couldn’t help but think of the analogy this morning as I read the story of scrappy little PeachMac and its improbable battle with the retail giant. That got me thinking about other stories that resonate far beyond the church pew — and the lessons they might hold for business communicators.

David-vs-Goliath is one of those universal stories that everyone can relate to. We’ve all felt like “the little guy,” so we love it when the giants fall. Customers aren’t immune to that feeling, and neither are reporters. Everyone wants to see the little guy win, which means you can’t lose by emphasizing the David-and-Goliath aspect of your story.

Here are three more biblical phrases that have found their way into common usage, along with suggestions for applying the universal themes to your own business story:

  • The patience of Job. Sounds vaguely familiar, right? In case it’s been a while, Job was the one who lost everything through no fault of his own. Even in poverty, sickness and personal tragedy, he never lost his faith — and in the end he was vindicated with more than he ever had before. How it applies to you: Everyone loves a comeback story. Rather than hiding your hardships, make them part of your narrative. If customers can identify with your struggles, they’ll be more eager to contribute to your success.
  • Walking on water. This phrase comes from the story of Jesus walking across the waves to save his followers who seemed certain to perish in a storm. How it applies to you: Everyone wants to believe in miracles. Sometimes success can be so fast or so improbable that it boggles the mind. That makes for a great story — provided you handle it with care. Walking on water should be slightly bewildering, even for those who have done it. If you appear to take it for granted or take full credit, you’ll just come across as arrogant, and your reputation will sink like a stone.
  • A good Samaritan. The biblical good Samaritan took pity on a robbery victim who had been ignored by previous passersby. He interrupted his own journey and spent his own funds nursing the man back to health. How it applies to you: Everyone loves a “good guy.” We identify with people and organizations that help others and make the world a better place. Find tactful ways of establishing your Samaritan credentials and letting others know what you’re doing. Just make sure it’s sincere — no one likes somebody who exploits the less fortunate.

I’m sure there are plenty more examples I’ve overlooked, plus similar stories from other faiths. Feel free to contribute below.

Photo credit: humancarbine via flickr CC

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5 ways to get a reporter’s attention

July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Note: For part 1 in this series, please click here.) press, media, media relations

It’s not yet 9:00 on a Tuesday morning, and I already have more than 150 requests this week from reporters seeking input on stories they are writing. I’d say 100 requests per day is pretty average, and the emails from HARO and Reporter Connection come five days a week. So the math is simple: If just 1/2 of 1% of those queries are applicable to you and your business, that’s more than a dozen chances every month to share your story with a much bigger audience.

How big, you ask? So far this week I’ve seen requests from USA Today, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, NBC News and TheStreet.com, just to name a few. That, as they say, is the kind of publicity that money just can’t buy.

Naturally, plenty of other business owners have caught on to this little secret, so you’ll have to work hard to ensure that your reply stands out from the rest. Based on 20 years of writing for the small-business press, I have a few suggestions for doing just that:

  1. Wait for the right opportunity. Reporters are usually very specific about what they’re looking for, so there’s no point in responding if your story doesn’t fit their criteria. You’ll only waste your time, get discouraged and quit too soon, before the perfect opportunity comes along.
  2. Be specific. Every time I post a query as a reporter, I get multiple replies along the lines of: “I have a great story to tell you; please contact me for more information.” Uh, thanks but no. I’m getting dozens and dozens of replies, and I can’t possibly follow up with every one. The ones I do follow up with are the ones that show they understand my angle, and they have the kind of information I’m looking for.
  3. Offer anecdotes. The No. 1 rule of good writing is, “Show, don’t tell.” That means reporters are looking for anecdotes rather than sermons or platitudes. If you want to catch a writer’s attention, give a concrete example from your experience as a business owner. Leave the sermonizing up to the consultants and B-school professors.
  4. Offer additional resources. Most journalists — aside from Larry King — like to do their homework before conducting an interview. If you give me details about your website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter stream and so forth, I’ll probably be more comfortable about contacting you.
  5. Start small. The best-known media outlets always get the most responses to their queries. You’ll stand a better chance of getting noticed if you reply to posts from lesser-known blogs, regional magazines, industry journals and so forth. Bonus: The audience may be smaller, but they’re usually better targeted and more engaged.

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, then give yourself a pat on the back — you’re a very discerning reader. Keeping up with queries and sending well-crafted replies can be a time-consuming task. Yes, the payoff can be huge, but it probably won’t come right away, and you may run out of steam before you start seeing results. At the outset, try limiting yourself to just one story per week. That should help you get the hang of the process without risking burnout.

Can you hire a professional to take care of all this for you? Sure, marketing and PR firms can monitor daily feeds, alert you to the best opportunities and approach reporters on your behalf. Just remember: The higher the retainer fee, the less pressure there is on the agency to actually produce. The best arrangement is a nominal monthly retainer, plus an additional fee each time a media outlet picks up your story.

At PenPoint Group, we’re not actively taking on new clients at the moment, but I’d be happy to share our fee structure with any business owner who’s trying to collect some baseline pricing data. Just contact us here for more information.

(Photo by flickr user Simone Ramella)

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When disaster strikes, tell your story

June 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

fire extinguisherPsychologists say talking through your feelings is a good way to recover emotionally following a disaster — and maybe economically too, as it turns out.

In case you missed it, Bruce Buschel has a heart-rending account of the Memorial Weekend fire that shut down his new restaurant, Southfork Kitchen, just when things were starting to look good for the summer season. Buschel is careful to count his blessings — no injuries, quick firefighters, good insurance and the like — but his pain is apparent in every sentence. Take these, for instance:

Behind the stainless steel wall, in the cavity behind the ovens, inside the fire-rated dry wall, spreading to the two-by-six wooden studs, something was smoldering. Behind the steely façade, in the fatalistic part of the psyche, somewhere between my heart and my wallet, something was smoldering all right.

For any small-business owner who’s endured a tornado, flood, fire or some other disaster, that smoldering anguish is something you can surely attest to. But the shock of recognition isn’t limited just to entrepreneurs. In the days after Buschel’s blog post, dozens and dozens of ordinary readers reached out with condolences, advice and support. When Southfork reopens — and we can only hope that day will come soon — the restaurant will no doubt enjoy new reservoirs of goodwill.

The irony is that Buschel may have squandered some goodwill earlier this year with a series of earlier posts that seemed to attack the PR industry. I noted at the time that he had lost control of his narrative, veering into an ugly and very public shouting match that did nothing to advance his business.

Through it all, Buschel kept blogging, got back to his original narrative and rebuilt his brand. Now that he’s opened a vein and shared the pain of his restaurant fire, only the most jaded cynic would continue to bear him any ill will over the earlier dust-up.

Thanks to his candor, transparency and eloquence, Buschel has more than regained the love he might have lost earlier — proof that good storytelling is not only therapeutic, but also redemptive.

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Whose story is it, anyway?

March 4, 2011 By 1 Comment
Don't let critics drive you off-course

Don't let critics drive you off-course

A wealthy seaside resort town. A prominent local businessman. A mysterious stranger. Drama, intrigue, and murder.

Sounds like a Hollywood script, doesn’t it? Well, there’s no murder involved — thank goodness — but all the other ingredients are part of a potboiler going on over at nytimes.com.

Last week I wrote about Bruce Buschel, a first-time restaurateur in the Hamptons who got zero media placements out of his $4,500-a-month PR firm. When Buschel blogged about his frustrations, his post generated nearly 80 responses — many of them angry missives from PR practitioners who accused him of being an ignorant, impossible client.

Buschel ended his original post hinting that his next entry would explain how Twitter turned around his PR woes. Well, he posted again yesterday, but it wasn’t the Twitter story his followers were looking forward to. Instead, Buschel reprinted an entire comment from a single, unknown critic, then proceeded to pick it apart line by line, justifying his own role in the PR fiasco and damning the industry that had let him down.

It was such a rambling, angry, self-destructive rant that I half expected him to mention his “tiger blood” or “Adonis DNA.”

I’ve been a longtime fan of Buschel and his blog, but this particular post could go down as a textbook case of the dangers of  social media. If you’re an entrepreneur active with blogging, Twitter or Facebook, there are several important lessons here:

  1. Stay in control of your story. Buschel is a great blogger because his story is an adventure, a quest, an autobiography of a man taking a leap into the unknown. As readers, we can’t help hoping that he will overcome the odds and write a happy ending for his entrepreneurial story. But when he veers off-course for an ongoing debate with the PR industry, that storyline gets lost in all the back-and-forth sniping.
  2. Ignore the critics. When you open yourself up to comments, inevitably there will be some people who take pot-shots at you. Ignore them. They don’t matter. Your audience is emotionally invested in you, so they are predisposed to take your side. Their sympathy can even work in your favor, as long as you avoid getting down in the mud. Remember: The only critics that matter are your customers (and even then, a debate is almost always counter-productive).
  3. Proving a point doesn’t improve your business. Buschel just might be right in this debate, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. The state of the PR profession has absolutely nothing to do with the bottom line at Southfork Kitchen, and alienation is a high price to pay for vindication.

This whole saga proves again that the potential of social media is matched only by its pitfalls. As Uncle Ben told Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Use the power of social media wisely … or risk getting caught in a web of your own making.

Filed Under: Communications, Social media Tagged With: , , ,

When everyone’s a storyteller, who needs PR?

February 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you have a great story and you still can’t get any good PR … maybe you need to reconsider your definition of PR. No PR gatekeepers

That’s my takeaway from this week’s New York Times blog post by Bruce Buschel, who hired a $4,500-a-month PR firm to publicize the opening of his new seafood restaurant in the Hamptons. Buschel had no lack of good stories to tell:

  • He was pioneering sustainable seafood in the Hamptons
  • He was sourcing wine and produce locally
  • He had snagged a chef with a Michelin star

As if that weren’t enough, Buschel himself is a great story, with a background in filmmaking and Off Broadway musicals.

So many stories, so little time. And yet, according to Buschel, with just a few weeks left before opening day, his high-priced PR firm had failed to line up a single article about Southfork Kitchen. Needless to say, there was finger-pointing, soul-searching, and eventually a parting of the ways. Here’s what Buschel learned from the experience:

What I have finally come to understand is that P.R. people are paid to twist reality into pretzels and convince you that they are fine croissants. At some point, they actually believe their own concoctions.

Harsh? You bet. But Buschel is hardly the first entrepreneur to feel betrayed by a PR campaign gone awry, and he certainly won’t be the last. In fact, disappointment with professional PR will probably only grow, and the reason is simple:

As gates disappear, gatekeepers are increasingly irrelevant

Think about it: Traditional media outlets used to serve as gatekeepers to the public consciousness, and PR professionals used to serve as gatekeepers to reporters and editors. You had to pay one gatekeeper to put you in touch with another gatekeeper who listened to your story and decided if it was worthy of a public telling.

But media doesn’t work that way anymore. The Internet is like one big bonfire where the whole world gathers to be informed and entertained. If you have an interesting story that you tell consistently and well, the Web grants you unfiltered access to a whole world of listeners.

Buschel thought he needed a paid PR campaign to create buzz for his restaurant, but with a blog and a Facebook page and other social media channels, Southfork Kitchen was already as buzzy as a soccer stadium full of vuvuzelas. Why pay $4,500 to add a kazoo?

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