by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 6, 2014 | Marketing Tips, Public Relations
By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Engineer, Sonnhalter
I spend about 90% of my time in the office writing something – news releases, feature articles, testimonial stories, ad copy, social media updates, blog posts, emails, etc.
When you’re writing anything from a formal proposal to a memo or a social media posting, the best advice to keep in mind is: Choose Your Words.
When choosing your words, make sure that your message is clear and concise. Why would you write 50 words when you could write 5?
Keep it short and clear. Make your point and let your busy audience move on.
by tradespeopleinsights | Jan 28, 2014 | Public Relations
By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Engineer, Sonnhalter
Today is Fun At Work Day! Is your work fun? Do you have fun on the job?
Too often, we hear that work isn’t supposed to be fun, but a valuable part of internal communication is to help your staff enjoy their jobs and working environments.
One way to infuse a little fun into work is with internal events. Whether you do something semi-annually, quarterly or monthly, I recommend looking beyond a yearly holiday party.
Here are some ideas of employee events:
- Have a picnic or barbeque during lunch. Who wouldn’t want to have their bosses grill them a burger or serve them baked beans?
Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect, grilling up goodies
- Host internal competitions. Whether it’s a health initiative that includes counting steps or a simple tree decorating or pumpkin carving competition that lets your crew get creative. Every year, Sonnhalter has a summer photo contest and we submit photos from our summers that are judged by our Idea Builder for their composition and adherence to the theme. (You can see some of the winning photos in our Facebook album.)
- Celebrate strange holidays. At Sonnhalter, we celebrate National Tradesmen Day, World Toilet Day, Fire Prevention Day and many other trade holidays. Other companies celebrate the more obscure holidays like National Pi Day or Squirrel Appreciation Day.
- Go to sporting events. Build your team by cheering on a baseball, football, soccer, hockey, basketball or other sports team.
- Make something together. We like to get our hands dirty at Sonnhalter, so most of our events follow that theme including making our own pasta, painting pottery and glass blowing.
- Serve your community together. 2014 is the 5th year that Sonnhalter will hold an August Tool Drive to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Our team comes together for a good cause and we have a lot of fun doing it too. Even if a month-long event isn’t a good fit for your company, you can serve your community in other ways including having a volunteer day or having a charity walk team.
In ’13, Sonnhalter filled two trucks with community donations
Whether you do something as an entire company or by department, adding a little fun to work can actually make your people more productive.
How do you infuse some fun into your work environment?
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 21, 2013 | Public Relations
Today we have a guest blog post from Rosemarie Ascherl, PR Foreman at Sonnhalter, who recently attended the International PRSA Conference in Philadelphia to learn the latest trends in public relations.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend a motivational week of education and networking at the 2013 PRSA International Conference. The entire three days of the conference I was bombarded with incredible amounts of expertise and thought-provoking ideas, but several of the impressions stood out.
We are in an era of change. It is time to think differently and recognize that to be successful we must discover new ways of reaching our audiences. We need to be open to change and figure out how to tell our stories, our experiences, to influence and change behavior. We need to evolve.
Measurement is important. While there are many schools of thought on PR measurement, one point is clear: measurement is important. If you aren’t measuring anything, you need to start. Measuring can get very complex, but if you start simple, and add additional metrics as you move forward, the value of your PR efforts can be better understood.
Traditional metrics of assigning advertising value equivalency (AVE), now better termed advertising cost equivalent (ACE), can be a good place to start, but there are many additional metrics that can be examined such as sentiment, social media engagement and search rank. Employing metrics to directly tie the results to business performance or sales is ideal and helps to build the case for PR delivering great efficiency.
The press release is not dead. Press releases are very much alive. They just need to adapt to the changing media models to generate results. One of the ways we can do that is to make the press release more compelling for today’s incredibly visual audiences using graphics, from high quality photos, videos and interesting infographics. With traditional media on the decline, we have to find other ways to get our information to our audiences and consider alternate uses for the press release—such as social media, websites and blogs. Our messages need to be effective for today’s environment.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 14, 2013 | Public Relations, Social Marketing
Today we have a guest post from Rachel Kerstetter, our PR Engineer, about the evolution of social media and SEO.
In our B2T niche, as well as in the general B2B market, we use the word “relevant” frequently.
When it comes to B2T social media, quantity does not equal quality. Quality social media engagement can’t be measured in simple number of followers or likes. The relevance of those follows and likes is where we find the quality.
It can be hard to keep up with current SEO tactics that will land you on the first page of Google search results since the algorithms change every day, but as social media continues to grow, SEO is getting easier because it’s no longer optimizing for search engines that will land you on page one of Google.
Social engagement is becoming the new SEO. One of the many benefits of being involved in social media that I explain when we create social strategies is improving search visibility.
I was reading, “6 Reasons Social Media is Critical to Your SEO” on Social Media Today and Stephanie Frasco explained the concept so well when she wrote about the old SEO strategy of link building,
“Think about it – why did Google ever allow links to determine which websites ranked above all the others? The answer is simple: links were like “votes” for your website. The more votes you get, the better off you are. So SEO companies started building links (aka “votes”) manually[…]The idea behind links as a ranking factor is a very good idea, but since it’s become so easy to manipulate, Google has been forced to turn to social media channels which do the same thing but are much harder to manipulate. Link building was always about social proofing.”
The shift toward social search is an excellent opportunity to market more efficiently. Connecting with people (even in business-to-business social media, the decision-makers are still people) won’t have constantly changing algorithms because people have been communicating in similar ways basically forever. Social media is simply taking the natural, conversational form of communication that history shows taking place in the gathering places (think the Greek agora or the city coffee shop) and put it online, where it’s easier to be involved with the conversations that are relevant to you.
You can read the rest of Stephanie’s article here.
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 31, 2013 | Public Relations
Today Rosemarie and Rachel from our PR department are sharing some of the aspects of public relations that can be the scariest to clients.
We find the realm of public relations to be fun, exciting and consistently fresh, but some areas of our field can be scary to our clients.
Here are the top five fears people have about public relations, and why you shouldn’t be spooked by them.
1. You can’t control what the media does with a story once you’ve given it to them.
“Earned media” is highly credible because readers know that you didn’t purchase the space to promote your company. Public relations and media relations professionals cultivate positive relationships with media, we work with these folks on behalf of multiple clients most of the time so we’ve built the foundation for positive coverage before they even get your story. In B2T public relations, we’re working with trade publications primarily and their goal is to be a source of helpful information for their readers.
It can be scary not to see the actual article before it’s published, but with long lead times of trade media, it can be a sweet surprise to see your words in print.
2. Negative comments on blogs and social media.
Your responses to negative comments offer an excellent opportunity to show off your wonderful customer service. Negative comments happen, and if they happen on your social media, you can control the outcome with your response and the community response from your other fans. It’s actually scarier to hide your head in the sand or cover your ears when it comes to social media.
3. Giving interviews is intimidating.
When we set up interviews with trade publications, they often send some sample questions ahead of time to help you prepare. Knowing how you would answer those questions provides a foundation of confidence. Media people are not out to get you, and by providing an interview you’re helping them educate their readers and they’re helping you get your name and expertise out there.
Think of interviews as a conversation rather than an interrogation. Sometimes our clients are even given the opportunity to review and approve their quotes! And they’re often surprised by how articulate their quotes sound.
4. Am I missing out on all of the new things that pop up overnight?
There is actually a name for this condition, it’s a condition called FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. Your company can’t, and shouldn’t, join every new platform or use every new tool that is introduced. If you’re suffering from a severe case of FOMO, work with your public relations people to set your goals and evaluate which platforms and tools are the best for us to get our hands dirty with and which ones would be a waste of time and resources.
5. I want to use the excellent testimonial from my customers, but I’m afraid to share customer information that my competitors will find.
When you’re confident with a customer relationship and know that you’re giving that customer the best quality and service, there’s no need to be afraid of telling their story. Testimonials are an excellent tool for building your credibility, when others read about what your company made possible for that customer, they’ll wonder what your company can do for them too.
When you feature a customer in a testimonial, you’re also helping them get their name out there and gain more visibility. And they’ll love you for that!
