Mixed Media

If you have a problem either staying awake or getting to sleep, you know how quickly presentations can induce that foggy haze akin to taking Ambien.  Considered a must-use tool, PowerPoint presos conjure hellish feelings of having to endure a yawnfest of slides packed with far too much detail -- those dull paragraph-long bullets that are repeated verbatim in monotone by the speaker, along with caricature-like clip art and animation.  But let’s not kill the messenger. PowerPoint is merely the medium. It’s all about throwing out bad, shop-worn cliche habits to build strong, compelling presentations.

A book that I ran across a couple weeks ago in Kramer Books, Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte, sets out the true art AND science behind constructing and delivering  presentations.  I thencoincidently, ran across a live webcast with Duarte, interviewed by Chris Brogan, the writer/blogger of all things marketing and communications ( co-author of bestselling Trust Agents), which revealed some great truths for today's audiences with shorter attention spans.

You can watch their 29 minute video discussion here, or read the key highlights I jotted down below.   Duarte also published a subsequent companion book, Resonate, which explains and dissects the power of storytelling in today’s communications.

Heraclitus, Greek philosopher, 500 BC, knew a little something about the future of communications and email, with his maxim “You never step into the same river, as new waters flow on to you.”  Nothing truer given the unending flow of messages that cascade through our inboxes today.

So, when it comes to an email campaign, or pitching a reporter, does one surmise that if they didn’t reply, then they never saw it?  That your missive continued on, out of your target’s active window, pushed deeper and deeper away as if perhaps it never existed.  Or that the no response was the deliberate response?  Perhaps in the torrent of messages, while partially distracted by other thoughts, they only focused on those emails whose sender’s name rang familiar, or took action on the subject lines that addressed their immediate conscious/subconscious concerns.

Do you dare send the email again, unchanged?

Advertising conventions say it takes at least 7 repetitions to make an impression.

But then you’d be considered a certified spammer, blacklisted by their server.

Or do you tinker? Perhaps changing the subject line and trying again?

For PR practitioners and marketers concerned with divining how to reach and get a reply, Marketing Sherpa cites a recently published a study citing a double-send strategy, with the subject line changed for non-respondents. In their case study, a non-profit boosted donations 55%.  Their summary…

It happens all the time. A person goes through their inbox, reads a subject line and deletes the message. Had the subject line been different, would the person have opened, clicked and converted?

See how one nonprofit garnered 55 percent more donations by sending an email twice -- first to all subscribers, and then with a new subject line to subscribers who did not open. Check out the results metrics from both messages.

MailChimp, the email marketing company (free email campaigns up to a limit) also has a Study of Best and Worst Open Rates based on subject lines.   While a provocative headline would seem to be more enticing and effective, their stats show the fairly mundane headers with telling vs selling -- Acme Spring Newsletter vs Best Ideas for Spring Savings – being far more effective in being opened.

That YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google, and that humans are always interested in a good visual story, makes a strong case for companies to use video.  But it’s the little things like concept, creation and execution that can stand in the way of the reality of engaging viewers.

Jesse Buckley, Video Director of Daily Grommet, an online retailer that uses video to share the stories behind the products for sale and the people who create them, and Pixability CEO Bettina Hein, which offers video production services, offered a webinar today on how to create interesting, inexpensive videos, making them search engine friendly, and using social media to engage a community to spread your message.

Below are some points from the webinar:

-- Be simple, focus on one key message, and emotionalize it. Talking heads don’t do the trick.

-- For product marketing include a wide angle shot, one to humanize and scale it (showing a hand holding the product, etc.), and additional close-ups on special details.

--Keep in mind the dwindling attention spans of viewers.  Although there are always exceptions, 90 seconds to 2 minutes should be max. Anything over 3 minutes and you can expect a huge drop off akin to asking someone to read War & Peace.

When it comes to scripting and storyboarding, use whatever method best helps you outline the video.

-- Always keep in mind “what’s most meaningful, who you’re making it for, and why?”

-- For the production, jot down the 5 things (no more than 10) you want people to see, the pictures, stills, etc.

-- The structure should always have a Beginning (make me care), Middle (tell me more) and the End (the wrap up and call to action).

Don’t worry about creating the perfect story, you can always delete and redo. People are also very forgiving of video quality, as long as they’re interested in the topic.

Jesse said the Daily Grommet uses Brightcove to hosts the videos on their site.  They don’t pursue YouTube as they “want to keep people in their own house,” so they have better control over the environment.  To this point, YouTube exposes viewers to too many distractions.  Bettina mentioned that while YouTube is free, Brightcove is a paid hosting service.

Make sure all the sharing tools are embedded/included on the video.

-- And certainly make sure you include your company’s URL in the text of the video description.

In addition, Pixability offers this short“Online Videos Made Easy Cheat Sheet.”

While any PR firm could recite and opine about the value they bring to early stage companies and start-ups, how credible would that be?  Who better to listen to than an entrepreneur and now VC?  Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned VC and General Partner at GRP Partners wrote the following, which was featured on Business Insider: 

One of the most frequent questions entrepreneurs ask about when they raise a little bit of money or are getting close to launching their first product is whether they should hire a PR firm.

There is obviously no black-or-white answer, but I’ve tried everything from working a large international agency, to hiring in-house people to doing it myself.  This post is a short guide to what I’ve learned:

1. PR is a process, not an event - For starters let me say that you shouldn’t do PR around milestones.  It’s a continual process.  You need to take months & years to build relationships with journalists.  You help them on stories, act as a source, develop real relationships, read their stories and eventually when you have news they’re more willing to have a conversation. They get pitched by so many blowhards that more genuine people who aren’t in it for just a story stand out from the crowd.  I wrote about how to build relationships with journalists in this post.

2. PR isn’t something that can be delegated – The other thing that tech execs often want to do is to delegate the PR to their marketing person. Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent.  But some CEOs then try to have more junior people in the company take the interview.  In a startup this is a mistake.  Heck, even in a big, successful company like Salesforce.com the CEO, Marc Benioff, still takes many of the interviews himself.

The reality is that a journalist who’s writing a story about you – a relatively unknown entity – wants to hear directly from the founders and/or the CEO.  You have to learn how to interact with journalists, understand how to do interviews, understand how to frame a story and get comfortable with the fact that if you want PR coverage you’re going to have to dedicate a non-trivial amount of time to it.

I was talking a month ago with a founding team who was lamenting the fact that their competitors got way better coverage than they did when they felt that their traffic numbers were > 2x the competition.  I pointed out the fact that they only ever talked to the press when the had an announcement and that it was a continual process.  They seemed to understand what I was saying but not be interested in putting in the effort.  Their competitors took it seriously.  And as a result their competitors were able to raise a considerable VC round from well-known firms.

3. PR on a limited budget – So, should you use an external firm?  Let’s say you’ve raised only a modest sum of money (sub $2 million) yet you still want to get coverage.  In this instance I typically recommend that startups NOT hire a big, well-known PR firm.  My rationale is that you won’t have enough budget to be able to get enough of the senior team’s focus.

All too often I’ve seen senior PR people from big firms come in and pitch for new business to startups while having 22 year-olds who do all the work once it’s won.  And even then this newly minted college graduate will be working on multiple clients at the same time.  They don’t have enough billable hours to be able to really understand what you do or effectively pitch it.  Plus, with so many other clients they will likely be pitching a journalist several stories.

If you feel you need outside help I recommend either going with a small firm local to you or an individual who is working as their own agency.  You need somebody for whom your business is important enough for them to care about the results (and they’re obviously hoping you’ll grow and become more successful).  Actually, this is usually the same advice I give people about recruiters, accountants, lawyers and similar trade professionals.