ARTICULATED

A friend of mine is opening an urgent-care center, and I’ve been talking with him about the right way to allocate his very limited upstart marketing dollars. I’ve had a lot of fun with the topic – it’s good exercise. What would YOU do, Dr. So-and-So, to market your brand new urgent care facility?

I would spend a few bucks to have a smart, hungry graphic designer develop a logo. I’d have that same designer develop interior and exterior signage, and spend a few thousand dollars to get those produced in a high-quality fashion.

I’d spend a few more thousand dollars to have a professional, user-friendly, inviting website built. That website would provide critical info such as hours, services, directions, and staff bios. It would list insurance accepted and how the facility charges. It would allow patients to fill out registration forms before they ever enter the front door.

Importantly, it also would be set up to cultivate a bit of community conversation via the social web.  To complement and support, I’d establish staff incentives to be sure my healthcare pros participated online with members of the local community, listening, answering questions, engaging in issues of concern to the neighborhood, and the like.

But where I’d really spend money is on a fantastic front-office staff, fantastic nurses and P.A.s, and solid training on cleanliness and administrative efficiency. You see, I view urgent care centers as similar to restaurants and drug stores. If they’re convenient and their storefront is inviting, people will come in. That’s when patient experience takes over; people have got to have got to have a great experience. If they do, they’ll tell people. If they don’t, they’ll really tell people. There are gadgets and tactics (Twitter coupons, discounts for referrals, etc.) that can help word of mouth. But people need to walk out of the place thinking,“That was really great.”

Said another way, no amount of fancy marketing materials, public relations, or painstakingly selected signage colors will compensate for mediocre customer experience. This is 2010. It doesn’t work that way any more.

But I’ve never marketed an urgent care facility. What do I really know? If you know more, I’d like to hear it.

This post is by Scott Warner, principal of Warner Strategies, a friend and regular partner to Kinkennon Communications. Follow him at @scottpall on Twitter.

In the past two weeks, two separate studies were released that should be duly noted by all practicing public relations professionals wondering what the future holds.

The first study, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, found that “much of the news people receive contains no original reporting. Many of the stories simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.” The study importantly pointed out that traditional media made wide use of new platforms and of news makers breaking news directly to the public rather than through the press.

The second study, by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations, found that an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories. “Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia.”

What does this sea change mean for the public relations industry and what can we do to adjust?

1. The 89% number should be a wake up call. If your company/organization/CEO is not blogging, what are you waiting for you?
2. It’s not a lost cause. If traditional media is embracing new platforms, (i.e. online video) we have new channels to tell our stories. The important distinction is to educate clients/stakeholders and manage expectations.
3. Don’t forget the basics. Yes, the landscape and tools have changed, but public relations is still a fundamental business. Tell your story in a compelling fashion to a targeted audience and it will get communicated correctly.

A number of months ago, the nice woman who cleans my house surprised me with homemade spring rolls. I was overcome at the sight of the deep-fried Vietnamese treats, and I was in a good mood, so I did a little jig. She liked that very much.

But the over-expression of gratitude sparked something unintended. Now every time Ngoi comes to clean, she brings enough spring rolls to feed an entire family, along with her biweekly question, “Why do you live here alone?”  If I don’t eat them right away, she looks disappointed.

I like the spring rolls … sort of. But I don’t really eat fried food during the week. And I don’t really like reheated fried food at all.  So they go uneaten.

What has ensued is textbook codependency. About 15 minutes before Ngoi is to arrive, no matter what sort of deadline I’m on, I jump up from my desk and hurriedly dig the two-week-old spring rolls out of the refrigerator. I can’t simply put them in the trash, because she might find them. So I place them in a separate bag and carry them to the dumpster in the alley.

This routine would be easier if Ngoi arrived at the same time every time. But there’s about an hour variance. Obviously, I could throw out the spring rolls sometime other than the moment before she walks in the door. But because I feel bad about the whole thing, I procrastinate.

Once the uneaten spring rolls are safely disposed of, I throw her money on the counter, grab my things, and bolt out the door. I hate working at coffee shops.   And I love her. But in this situation, it’s worth it.

Public relations is a peculiar field in that encompasses lots of stuff – marketing, advertising, research, writing, social media, selling, lobbying, mailing, talking to reporters, planning, presenting, Powerpointing, interneting, dispensing B.S., etc.

Early in my career, I discovered a tendency toward bouncing from one of those competencies to the next. It wasn’t long before I discovered that, in a room full of smart PR people, I was never the best at any of those single areas (save maybe writing). But chances were, I was decent at more of them.

In time, this characteristic would cause me bouts of gastrointestinal distress. While my PR-firm colleagues increasingly “specialized,” and as a result got all sorts of new responsibilities and cool projects, my rear-end seemed to stay firmly crammed into the jack-of-all-trades bucket.  I was even warned by a few higher-ups that I should probably choose to get really good at SOMETHING. But because of short attention span or whatever else, it never really happened. In time, I simply owned it.

Then last year, I read the wonderful New York Times bestseller The World Without Us. In it, Alan Weisman explores the rhetorical question, “If every human being died tomorrow, what would become of the works of man?” Amid the vivid, detailed scenarios of how the human race might expire (macabre, I know), he argues for the profound merits of generalization. He asserts that city people such as dentists and DMV customer-service managers will be the first to check out when the proverbial s@%t hits the fan. They’re specialized for urban life. But that specialization, the very reason for their success, will be their undoing.

By contrast, he asserts, rural people will last the longest because they know how to collect water, grow food, and do other little things that matter when you want to stay alive.

Of course, I hardly fall into the rural category. But, somewhat comically, the book made me feel better about the fact that I’ve never really specialized within my little field.  I still can do about 12 different kinds of PR things, more than most, and do them pretty well. It’s not going to feed me come apocalypse, but it’ll keep me entertained in the meantime.

I learned this week that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has published draft standards for measuring public relations. I don’t follow PRSA. But this strikes me as sort of an interesting development.

Early in my career I learned that “In the PR biz, we don’t promise a certain number of clips or an increase in sales because there’s too much out of our control.” As the years ensued, I would find myself taking that position time and again. The position felt justified because no matter how hard we PR people work, or how creative we are, or how close we come to crossing the “stalker” threshold in pursuing reporters, we can’t guarantee that the media will write the story. That’s truer than ever today because there are fewer reporters spread more thinly.

Yet I recognized the unfairness inherent in being held to a lower standard than my cohorts in, say, sales or fundraising or direct marketing. All of those people are required to specify beforehand the response rates or revenue that they will generate, yet they have no more control of the results than we PR people do. It’s not that we PR pros haven’t been expected to perform.  It’s that we typically have permission to utilize more nebulous indicators of success, and those indicators vary all over the place. It looks like the industry is finally starting to say, “We gotta do better.”

I like these proposed standards. They’re about tasking ourselves to set aside money and time to measure our impact on sales, investments, donations, or new members. They’re about measuring whether or not we’ve delivered a credible message to more people for less money. And the sample tactics are smart, such as mapping conversation and tone to web analytics such as traffic, registrations, and sales leads.

It’s PRSA’s public-input phase for these things.  I like them. And it’s a way for our industry to show the ways we earn our keep.

I find this blog post by PR and social media expert / blogger Arik Hanson very instructive. He interviews a friend of his who’s a communications person at a large accounting firm, RSM McGladrey.   The firm really has the “right” kind of online presence for a B2B business in this day and age.  She lays out some of the details.

We all love our accountants, of course.  But let’s be candid — gatherings of them typically are not the places from which we look for breaking waves of innovation.  That’s part of what makes this so interesting.  What RSM McGladrey is doing is pretty basic when it comes to social media strategy.  It’s a good example of workaday social-media competency.  But for accounting firms, and B2B companies generally, I’m telling you it’s advanced!

Lucky for this woman, she has an executive team that gets it.  So she’s getting a lot of latitude to do the kind of thought-leadership things that are so good for B2B outfits.  And the social web is a great place to build thought leadership.

Arik Hanson also offers some suggestions for what the firm might do even better.  Check out the post.

I’ve been very focused the past couple of years on the concept of “transformation.”   Looking out on a new decade, it’s sparked me to reflect on what have been the most “transformative” moments of my life thus far.  I thought I’d list them and see if the process illuminates anything for me.  I will report back to the blog if it does.

1. Coming out of the closet (1995). This was a biggie, no surprise. With it I gave myself permission to be real and be happy. From comfort in one’s own skin, just about everything else flows.

2. Joining the PR firm world (1998). “The Dittus Group,” as it was called at the time, was my fourth job out of college but the first one where I actually fit.  Gloria Dittus was the first person who gave me a little room to stretch my legs. Her timing for lending trust and latitude was in lock step with my needs as a young and cocky hard-charger.

3. North Carolina to Washington, DC, AIDS Ride (1996). This first whet my appetite for big physical challenges and the amazing self-discovery that comes from them.

4. Outward Bound expedition (1997). The description for #2 above could fit this as well. But this was even more poignant. I learned that we discover how to be good people when we go into the wilderness and strip it down.

5. Getting on the telecom bubble (1999). I left my secure job in the midst of the telecom bubble to get rich. I didn’t, of course. But I got exponentially smarter; I learned how business really works. I have to thank my friend Dave Bornmann for that.

6. Going to work for Mike McCurry (2001). This was a brief and chance encounter. But that relationship continues to net the coolest and most rewarding projects I’ve had the good fortune of being involved with.

7. Starting Kinkennon Communications (2006). Of the whopping eight full-time jobs I’ve held in my career, I really only liked a couple of them. But I’ve been doing my own thing for more than four years now.  It feels something like a calling.

8. Sneaking off to Colorado (2006). I did it in the dead of night, terrified that pursuing the dream might do harm to my company or career. It didn’t. Colorado is the greatest place on earth, and I’ve never been happier. Of course, I continue to spend lots of time in DC, which likely is where my career will always be centered.

9. Sparking the formation of the Denver Gay & Lesbian Flag Football League (2007). I didn’t do this alone. But through it I had affirmed an ability to make about anything happen that I set my mind to. And I discovered the kind of people I’ve craved being around for so many years.

10. Adopting a dog (2007). I’d wanted a sidekick ever since I left my parents’ dog-filled house for college, but I thought the life wasn’t right for me. Despite all the inconvenience and annoyance, it’s taught me selflessness.  It’s brought me a curious peace.

This post is the second in a series for trade-association communicators who are trying to figure out what on earth, if anything, you should be doing with social media.  In this series I hope to make the point that while social media can be difficult to form into something that’s perfectly suited to the unique corporate trade-association environment, it can be a logical component of what you do.

Challenge 2:  Keeping tabs on what’s being said about the industry.

If you do communications for a trade association, whether internally or for a PR firm, you once collected and monitored media clips (and maybe still do).  You generate Lexis/Nexis searches.  These days you may even manually monitor a handful of blogs written by well-known industry watchers.  But incredibly beneficial or incredibly damaging things could be being be being said about your industry that would be entirely missed by those tried-and-true techniques.

What you need, particularly if your association represents companies marketing major consumer brands, or products that have safety implications, is to be able to collect real-time snapshots of mood about your industry’s products.

If a national evening-news anchor were to crack a joke tonight about the possibility of carcinogens in baby food, the comment could spread like wildfire on the Internet.  The industry could take a serious hit with nary the appearance of a negative print article.  Is the Global Baby Food Consortium situated to accurately monitor the viral spread and gauge the impact of such a comment?

In a well-known 2009 example, Domino’s Pizza employees did disgusting things for all of YouTube to see. Dominos was ultimately credited for handling the situation pretty well.  But did the National Federation for the Advancement of Pepperoni Pizza Delivery ferret out the inflammatory video first?  Did the association have mechanisms in place to provide real-time snapshots to its member companies of potential damage being done, particularly those member companies that have no such monitoring mechanisms in place? Who knows?  But imagine if it did.  It would be worth its weight in gold to the industry.

Addressing Challenge 2 through Social Media.

Corporate trade associations should adopt social-media monitoring – the creation of a platform to listen, measure and engage across the ENTIRE social web – as a strategic imperative.  Lots of companies in many industries are doing this well these days.  Many, many more are not.  Social media monitoring is a modern, cost-effective way for trade-associations communicators to deliver serious value to the industries they serve.

Here are three great and random resources, a mere drop in the bucket of what’s out there, to get you thinking:

• Check out this great little video sponsored by UPS on how to use social media to monitor your industry.
• Take a look at this comparison of two different and well-known social media monitoring software tools.  It’s a bit technical, but it does a great job of explaining how to actually use some of the tools available and what they will do for you.
• Here’s a list of free social media monitoring techniques that any communications pro can incorporate into their work: