It’s true – email is a very effective and efficient way to communicate and is certainly the preferred method of communication these days for most, but I also think it has put a stigma on picking up the phone. Many people dread talking to people they don’t know. But as PR people, we pitch. We pitch reporters every day to share ideas for coverage. While we always believe our idea is the perfect fit for a certain reporter, the reality is that reporters get hundreds of email pitches a day and they often have specific assignments they are working on. We all know this, but how can we get our ideas covered if we don’t pitch?

Most reporters are pretty clear they only prefer to be contacted via email but I have to imagine they like to use the phone sometimes as well. It’s just like receiving a hand-written letter in the mail vs. an email – it’s personal and flattering. One of my colleagues sent around an email today saying that she had spoken with a reporter ON THE PHONE and he said “it’s nice you wanted to have a conversation with me.” It was so great to read this email and be reminded that it is ok to pick up the phone and call someone. What is the worst that can happen? Your idea is rejected – so you tried, you got feedback and you learned. Once you do decide to pick up the phone, just be prepared with your 30 seconds and don’t waste a reporter’s time. Just as you are short and sweet in email, the same goes for the phone.

So what do you think? How often do you call reporters? Should more reporters be open to phone pitching? I know that I will be picking up the phone more often…go on, challenge yourself!

So how does this post end up here, on our agency’s blog? Because it has occurred to me that it’s the details that matter in business, too. The big events are certainly the most memorable – winning new clients, watching the first sale come through, unveiling your new brand or opening a new store. But it’s the little details in between all these larger situations that really matter – and the little details that help you not only to keep your business up and running, but to beat the competition.

Are you thinking about the little details? Once you win a customer or a client, are you welcoming them and thanking them for their business? Does your website make an interaction with your company pleasant and easy, or are you making prospects work too hard to become a customer? Can they easily find what they are looking for? Do you have a waiting room that’s comfortable or stark? Do you think about simple yet “nice touches” that would make a prospect want to do business with you over a similar competitor?

Once you win a customer or a client, are you communicating with them regularly – but not more than they want? Do you know how your customers prefer to be contacted and how often? Have you asked? When you’re following up with a prospect, do you make them feel personally wanted as a customer? Just this week, a company followed up with me based on an interaction at a trade show (good) but I was turned off by the method (bad) of follow up and it made me not want to do business with them. I understand that companies need to maximize time – that sales leads have to be captured and plopped into databases (we’ve worked with enough sales and marketing software clients – Landslide, Salesnet, RightNow, Genius, etc. – to understand how it works and why). And maybe I’m naive, or expecting too much – but as technology gets better, it seems to me it could also help companies to at least appear to be more personable in sales. When I receive a sales email that’s claiming to understand my business, and want my business, but is clearly a generated “next step” email from a sales automation software solution, I feel insulted – not really wanted as a customer. When they use my login name as the lead – which appears as “christine” because I rarely capitalize when I’m signing up for something online – it’s obvious. It’s a little, tiny detail, right? But to me – it’s a detail that turned me off from doing business with this company. A little detail that turned into a lost sale.

On the flip side, we’ve got a client who – even as they’ve grown from startup to public company – calls each prospect when they trial a product. I remember the first time I tried Constant Contact – the call startled me – it literally happened within minutes of me entering my information online. I didn’t need help but you know what? Knowing that if I did – especially in this day and age of electronic communication – I could get a human on the phone, was a nice touch. It stood out – the call was brief, to the point and not intrusive. I was impressed – and that was before they were a client.

An experience that falls somewhere in between these two is a recent interaction with our bank. They recently upgraded some services for us and assigned a personal Account Manager (great!). He emailed and called me to introduce himself, which was good, but the little details that were missing, some that I felt could have made me a happier customer (and not feeling like a call was wasting my time), were some suggestions or thoughtful interaction. The introduction, in my opinion, could have included something more along the lines of, “We noticed you often do this, and we think this change will make your life easier – do you want to learn more?” It didn’t need to be anything complicated, but just something that showed a personal touch about my business and my banking habits that demonstrate you care about me specifically as a customer.

In PR, one of the biggest complaints reporters have always had is that they receive off-topic, automated emails from PR executives. PR teams do this – using software to automate email blasts – because time is money in our business, literally. Not only can you move faster and thus work on more clients and charge more hours, but the more pitches you get out, the longer a “We Pitched” list you can give to a client, right? Well, I guess that may be true – but the little details, taking the time to pitch a reporter with a custom email or call, mentioning personal details that remind them you know them or you at least know their work and read what they write – are more likely to yield big results. Would a client rather have a long list of “We pitched 100 reporters” – but no coverage results – or a shorter list of “We pitched 10 key publications and here’s the result – 10 quality feature articles”? I’m guessing the latter.

So take time to think about the details today. Whether it’s how you sell, how you service or how you build your business – branding, HR, promotion, etc. – caring about the little details can make a big difference.

How do you incorporate the little details in your daily business?

What do you think? How do you use social media in your promotions? We’d love to hear your stories and anecdotes as well via comment, links, etc. We’ve embedded the BlogTalkRadio player for easy access to the show – Enjoy!

My favorite answer, however, was from @tgruber. She said:

It’s my favorite answer because for me, if I’m interacting with a company’s brand online, it seems obvious that the marketing team would be behind it unless otherwise noted (as in the case of @zappos which is clearly identified as the CEO, Tony Hsieh; or in our case @PerkettPR – where we identify who is behind the Twittering of the brand right in our bio).

But I’m in marketing and PR – so I wanted other viewpoints. If you are interacting with @Lotame (client), for example, do you assume you are talking to the CEO or a marketing executive, or someone else? If a PR firm maintains the account should they say in their bio, for example, “We’re PerkettPR Twittering on behalf of Client.”? If you follow @TJMaxx, @Starbucks, @JetBlue, @LuckyShops or others, does it matter to you who’s behind the social media curtain – as long as they aren’t claiming to be the CEO when they are not?

We’re excited to announce several new clients today and as we continue planning and launching many social media campaigns for them in the coming months, we continue to value and learn from the collective communities and their opinions. That includes you – so what do you think?

Create a “People I want to meet list”
After Podcamp Boston 2 ended last year, I realized there were a bunch of people in attendance that I never got a chance to meet. In fact, so many people attended that I never even knew the people I missed were even there. Plan ahead by scanning the attendee list (Podcamp Boston’s list is on the Eventbrite page) and don’t miss out on the opportunity to connect with specific people while you can. Many folks come from out of state, which can make meet-ups like this a rare opportunity.

Don’t forget your business cards
Podcamp is a prime time for networking, so don’t forget your business cards and be sure to bring plenty of them. Depending on the city, Podcamp weekends can draw hundreds of participants, and all the new people you meet won’t be able to connect with you later on if you aren’t handing out cards. Its not uncommon to see people handing out more than one card as well. It’s also wise to have special cards made up for that blog, podcast or online video show you’d like to promote!

Maximize your hallway time
Podcamp weekends are always packed full of great sessions, but as many experienced Podcampers will agree, much of the magic happens in the hallways. Spontaneous sessions and unplanned gatherings can yield great information and can be incredibly valuable. If you’re not getting what you want out of a session, envoke the Pocamp “Law of Two Feet” and venture out into the hallway to see what’s going on. You might just be surprised at what you find!

Bring snacks
Be sure to throw a few snacks in your backpack to keep your energy up throughout the day. Podcamp offers a lot of information to absorb in 48 hours, and you’ll need to rely on those little bursts of energy that a healthy snack can give you after the coffee crash begins to settle in. Quick and portable items like a banana, trail mix, and a bottle of water will stay fresh during the weekend and the money you save bringing your own snack will pay for that extra pint at the pub on Saturday night.

Check your shyness at the door
Podcamp weekend is a time to meet new people as well as shake hands with some of the people with whom, until now, you might only have had a virtual relationship. If you tend to lean towards the shy side in social situations, then you’ll take comfort in the fact that everyone who attends Podcamp is there to meet other people. Don’t hesitate to approach groups of people who you may not know yet. Looking for groups of people that have one or two people you already know can also make breaking the ice easier. Just remember, everyone is there to meet you!

Bonus Tip! – Additional “gear” to bring
Here are some additional items to bring along that tend to come in handy: a powerstrip, extension cord, battery chargers, cellphone charger (especially for the iPhone 3G folks!), laptop charger, extra memory cards, USB thumb drive and a sharpie.

See you at Podcamp Boston 3 and be sure to DM me on Twitter if you’d like to connect!

Photo courtesy of Nico

• Amanda Watlington, Owner of Searching for Profit
• Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR
• Sherwood Stranieri, Director of SEO at SMG Search
• Thom Brodeur, Senior VP, Global Strategy and Development for Marketwire
• Andrew Komack, Founder and President of KoMarketing Associates, LLC

Amanda led the panel through several SEO related topics including SEO’s importance in social media marketing strategies, as well as some of the tools and techniques that SEOs use for optimization. The panel discussed different points of view on the topics and strengthened their message with interesting case-study stories.

Towards the end of the evening, the panel separated and joined the audience for small breakout sessions on more specific topics. The session I joined was led by Greg Jarboe and was geared towards SEO and press releases. The primary take-away from Greg’s talk was a 5-part formula for success with online press releases using SEO. The formula was laid out as follows:

Step 1: Do your keyword research.

The importance of keyword research was stressed several times during the event. Your keywords should always be nouns or adjectives. People never search for verbs. Its also important to craft “keyword phrases” rather than using a single keyword. If you can construct a keyword phrase that can be broken up into multiple phrases, your release will have a lot more impact with the search engines.

Step 2: Actually USE the keywords!

This step raised a chuckle when mentioned because it seems so obvious. You’d be surprised to learn how many people go through the process selecting keywords and then don’t use them or use them properly. Always be sure to include your keywords in the title of your release as well as in the lead paragraph.

Step 3: Add a link to the client site in the release.

Online releases need to be written for bloggers and regular readers in addition to the traditional media folks. Adding a link to the client’s site gives the reader the ability to seek out additional information about the topic in the release. Be sure that the link points to a relevant page on the client’s website and not just to the homepage where the reader is left to hunt for the proper page themselves. Those who are familiar with the concept of the social media release will already have this step down and have taken it even farther.

Step 4: Use a search engine friendly wire service.

Not all news wire services are search engine friendly. In addition, those that are search engine friendly not might format their releases in a way that makes all the major engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, etc.) happy. Take time to discover which services are set up to give you the best results in each search engine. Greg recommended the NASDAQ owned PrimeNewsWire outside of Marketwire, PRWeb, BusinessWire and the others we are most familiar with.

Step 5: Measure the results.

Measurement is definitely a hot topic and a tough nut to crack on the social media side of things, but there are several things that are immediately measurable on the PR side of the house. As always, count your clips. Enough said. Beyond that you should start counting the blog results from your release. Have people started writing about your client on their own as a result of your efforts? One really valuable exercise that might not be easy to pull off is gaining access to your client’s analytics program. You might need to bribe your way into the IT department, but the data being collected about your client’s site can contain a wealth of measurement data as a result of your press release efforts!

Overall it was a good session that yielded several great nuggets to take away. As a PR professional, you owe it to your clients to stay up to date with the ins and outs of basic SEO techniques. Attending Social Media Club events are just one of the many ways to keep up with with the flow.

What tips do you have that could be added to formula?

Aaron used Ustream to broadcast the presentation live during the event itself and the recording is available below. If you currently write a blog or have been contemplating starting one, this is an engaging “must-view” presentation packed full of great tips to take-away and implement.

Note: This is a long presentation that clocks in at over an hour, so be sure to set aside some time! Once the video player caches enough, you might also want to skip ahead a minute or two into the video as the live feed captured some footage before the actual presentation begins.

Several of us at PerkettPR have personal Twitter accounts and we also have a corporate entity where we share news, poll the community, post blog entries, track events and more. Twitter has become a fantastic resource for our firm professionally and for many of us, personally. So what have we gleamed from Twitter? Everything from tips on restaurants, travel services, books, technology and more, to new relationships across the globe – including many with like-minded PR professionals – who we’ll call “Frenemies.”

Although we continue to compete for business with many of our Frenemies, we have also united with them in a way we never would have before Twitter. It has provided us the opportunity to see each other beyond the walls of the firms we work for – to appreciate our industry colleagues’ writing, strategies and accomplishments, and even to commiserate over similar struggles.

Through Twitter, we’ve had the opportunity to build relationships like never before – not only with other PR and social media professionals, but reporters, bloggers, analysts and others in relevant – and sometimes not-at-all-relevant – industries. Without Twitter, Jeremiah Owyang and Guy Kawasaki might never have chatted with us about various topics – professional and personal – much less visited and mentioned our blog and our website.

Participating in debates about the debates, rallying around a community member fighting breast cancer, supporting the case of a missing child, and even an unexpected death in the community have all been part of our various experiences on Twitter in the last few months alone. We share lively business-related discussions within the community that often extend to each other’s blogs – sharing ideas, “joining together” on issues such as “the death of PR,” the value of social media or something more personal such as parenting woes.

Twitter has not only helped us to extend our network and knowledge significantly, but provided us with a new avenue to prove that PR executives do have substance and can participate in industry conversations. We have also learned that we have more in common with our competitors than we ever thought possible. They are human, they are smart and we can learn from them. We embrace them as our “frenemies” because we still need to compete – which makes for another interesting future blog post …

The relationships may begin on Twitter – but they don’t end there. We have followed up and met face-to-face with “Followers” from “Twitterverse” at various industry events. Twitter is a great opportunity to expand not only your contacts database but your view of the world. Log on, join the community – we bet you’ll learn something new immediately.

The Globe pulls a few gems from the recent Marketing Daily study, “America Suffering Customer-Service Meltdown,” indicating, “that about 62 percent of Americans say companies “don’t
care much” about their needs. That’s up from 52 percent in 2004.”

Looks like we were on the money last week when we mentioned that it’s nice to experience some human interaction in the day and age of “do-it-yourself” online services – the report states that “92 percent [of survey respondents] say they have tried to circumvent an automated phone tree
to find a real person, futilely jabbing at the zero and pound sign,” and that it’s one of their biggest frustrations.

Marketing Should Focus on Existing Customers as well as New Ones
“67% of the survey participants say marketers care more about selling existing products than really helping the customer, an increase from 58% in 2004.”

Marketing is often solely viewed as a lead generation function. But this report, and the loud frustrations echoed by today’s customers, indicates that it must wrap current customers into the mix as well. How does your marketing department work with customer service and relations? Should marketing focus on customer retention in addition to customer acquisition? Perhaps if more marketers worked closely with their existing customers they could build more honest, compelling and effective campaigns.

Your customer base is one of the best mouthpieces for your business – treat them well and they will naturally become a key part of your customer acquisition and marketing strategy – nothing speaks louder than a referral from a happy customer. Except maybe an unhappy one.

One of our clients, Constant Contact, has always recognized this – their entire culture is built around taking care of the customer. Personally, we’ve experienced some great customer service this month from other vendors – and as a small business, it’s great to be treated with the care, respect and importance that is often only reserved for large customers.

Two examples:

Promopeddler

We had to order a rather large supply of light up glasses for the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp. We called a vendor we had used before and when we were negotiating some timing/pricing issues, the approach was a threatening “we may be more expensive, but you’ll regret it if you don’t use us” attitude. That doesn’t play well with us, so we tried a new vendor, Promopeddler. Promopeddler won our business due to their sales rep, Laurie. Laurie’s approach was not only that she was grateful for our business but she went above and beyond with her customer service. She was truly the reason they won our business.

Laurie was proactive, persistent and consistent – all the way past the point of the glasses being delivered. She provided extensive contact information, contacted us daily to let us know the status of the rushed order, called us when she thought a color aspect could be better – and provided a recommendation – and even followed up to ask us how our event was and if the glasses worked out. Our customer experience was so outstanding due to this woman that as long as she’s there, we’ll be a customer. We noticed they made the Inc. 500 “because we give personal service with every order.” Yes – they really do.

Verizon Wireless

We had a unique situation to solve with some BlackBerry purchase from Verizon. It required getting on the phone with some customer service representatives, which is not always a very positive experience. However, one customer service representative, Anthony in New York, made all the difference today. He was very clear every step of the way through the process and he was so personable we ended up chatting about baseball and football – and even though he was a dreaded Yankees fan and we are diehard Red Sox fans (most of us, anyway), we felt like a customer that mattered. Anthony made a time consuming process not only bearable but even entertaining – and experiences like that stick with your customers, so they stick with you.

The point here is that yes, the Internet provides a mostly do-it-yourself marketplace and opportunities to communicate without ever saying a word. But positive, helpful and verbal human connections are still important ways to make your brand memorable – and your customers loyal.

1) Facebook/Microsoft – While the market was abuzz with a battle between Microsoft and Google over Facebook on Wednesday, a PR representative from Facebook “leaked” the deal by posting a new “friend” on her Facebook page. That friend just so happened to be Adam Sohn, who heads up global sales and marketing PR at Microsoft. ValleyWag – always the innovative thinkers – used this as enough confirmation of the rumors.

2) Your written PR pitches are on display – make sure they are quality! Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at Read/WriteWeb (and a consultant in new online software and marketing), highlights in a late Wednesday blog five PR pitches he’s recently received that not only had the opposite effect of grabbing his interest but, collectively, impassioned him to post them for critique on his blog – with names. Yikes.

The lessons here? Social media is by its very nature transparent – what you put out there can be reposted, repurposed and on display for anyone to research critique, link to and comment on – forever. Make sure you are sending quality communications that you can stand behind. Learn and abide by unspoken etiquettes of the communities, engage in using social media intelligently, and moreover, give reporters more than just “stuff” regardless of the vehicle in which you choose to communicate.

You’re busy, right? Imagine how busy they are – and how many pitches they have to read through in a day. If you want to connect, do it only when you know you’ve got something good – or maybe when you don’t want anything at all (old fashioned relationship building) – and give them quality, concise and personally relevant information (no one blasts generic email pitches these days…right??).

Scott Raynovich,

Editorial Director of Light Reading, let us know they are welcoming sponsors and speakers for their upcoming event,

Key speakers from the service provider, technology, entertainment, and investment markets will explore the future of mobile digital media and identify the types of opportunities it offers. Do you fit the bill? Do you have an opinion on how mobile devices have driven the digital entertainment market forward? Want to gather insight on important new standards and learn how business approaches are being formed to dictate how the industry will move forward for many years? Then this is the event for you.

The event will be hosted by Raynovich and another mobile content analyst, Gabriel Brown, Chief Analyst at Unstrung Insider.

For more information on speaking or sponsorship opportunities, email us here or contact sales@contentinople.com.

<< Hmmm… interesting cover story…hopefully you didn’t take the advice to heart.

I can’t imagine that the printed word will forever be depleted but clearly the Internet continues to shape and define our daily lives and business. The Editor of Business 2.0, Joshua Quittner, stated “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being heartbroken,” in a New York Times report on the story. Joshua, we are too. Business 2.0 was witty, informative, selective and insightful. It had a unique knack for providing comedic relief on even the most esoteric of technologies.

Hopefully this is not the first in a series of “road kill,” but we’ll be watching – along with the rest of the tech community – carefully.

Now, onto Fortune!