The Latest From the Schwartz Blogs

As we close the book on RSA 2010, let’s take a look back at five strategic aims that, with proper planning and tactical execution, can yield significant PR successes from the security industry’s marquee event.

Today we will cover two of the five: 1) Building a rapport, and 2) Supporting social media initiatives.

• Building a rapport

Developing strong press and analyst relationships takes time, but face-to-face meetings certainly help to expedite the process. The RSA Conference provides a unique opportunity for security vendors to gain exposure to the most influential media, analysts and bloggers that matter to their business—all under one roof over the course of four days.

The simplest of RSA PR strategies is this: Introduce your company to as many key contacts as possible. For those who made media face time a priority at RSA 2010, we at Schwartz spent the preceding months working diligently behind the scenes to arrange show floor meetings.

From a press perspective, the payoff often includes both immediate and long-term benefits. In some cases, instant visibility for vendors comes from meeting with reporters who publish articles during the event that summarize key trends, hot companies and interesting news.

Take, for example, the botnet security company and Schwartz client, Damballa. An in-person RSA meeting secured by Schwartz for Damballa with veteran security analyst and Forbes.com blogger Richard Stiennon led to the company’s recognition as one of only six security vendors on Stiennon’s Forbes Online Best of Show RSA Conference 2010 list.  

Then there’s the lasting effect. It takes only a few minutes at RSA to shake hands with a reporter and run through your company’s areas of expertise and value proposition. The resulting increase in name recognition will help to catapult you towards the front of the reporter’s rolodex. The long-term goal is to get writers to turn to you for expert opinions when soliciting story comments from people they consider to be thought leaders on the topic at hand.   

• Supporting social media initiatives

Social and traditional media strategies go hand-in-hand. In tandem with RSA press meetings, companies can use the event as a strategic platform to expand their influence using social media channels.

On a case by case basis, we at Schwartz advise our clients on the level of social media engagement that makes sense for them. Many of our B2B security client companies focus primarily on blogs and Twitter.

A well-managed corporate blog provides a great forum for demonstrating your thought leadership and innovation to customers, prospects, partners and press members alike. In and around RSA, blog content would likely include write-ups on your company’s own news, as well as commentary on, and analysis of, industry news and trends cropping up during the conference. With many of our clients, Schwartz is regularly involved in offering counsel related to content creation, as necessary. 

To maximize corporate blogging efforts, the Schwartz team shares posts with targeted media contacts. By encouraging online writers to include a link to your company’s blog and reference its content within their RSA coverage, this in turn, drives traffic—including prospects—back to your company’s Web site.

Tweeting from RSA adds merit to your media strategy as well. As outlined in the Schwartz RSA PR tip sheet, Twitter can be used to make short observations about RSA and drive people to your blog posts. Busy reporters, in particular, benefit from Twitter updates as many of them are tied up covering keynote sessions and may not be able to allocate time for booth meetings with vendors.

Case in point: AppRiver. Leading up to RSA, Schwartz encouraged relevant media and analysts to follow secure messaging solutions provider AppRiver on Twitter. Impressed by the quality of AppRiver’s RSA-related tweets, an influential security journalist, Forbes’ @taylorbuley, recommended to his sizable follower base that they tune in to @AppRiver on Twitter. As few as 140 characters can have a big impact on cutting through the RSA clutter and landing you serious street cred too. 

Okay, two down and three to go! Stay tuned for my next post on lead generation, leveraging research for media homeruns, and highlighting real-world implementations and benefits.

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
SxSW Day 4: How Tweet It Is
03-15-2010 10:40:55 PM EST

There was a lot that went on today at SxSW, but it all seemed to revolve around Twitter. From @Ev’s keynote introducing @anywhere to panels, hallway discussions and hordes of techies tweeting while dancing and singing at TechKaraoke.

Twitter does a good job of explaining the new service, but basically it allows any site to tag content to Twitter that let’ people follow feeds from the site (or people mentioned on the site) without leaving the site. It looks cool, but it did not blow the audience away. I see any savvy consumer technology or B2B public relations professional who is creating content making use of it eventually in the content they create for their brands.

The panel after the keynote was moderated by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) and had a number of opinionated, passionate and interesting social media personalities, including @scobleizer and @pistachio.

They basically highlighted their favorite Twitter tools. I thought some of them might be of interest to our readers, so I wanted to highlight a few.

Oneforty.com – Basically, @pistachio’s Twitter App Store, complete with rankings and reviews. Spend time there if you haven’t already.

Listorious –  helps you discover twitter lists.

Friend or Follow – Lets you see who you are following who isn’t following you (TwitterKarma)

For corporate PR folks working to manager a Twitter stream (and have analytics) there are CoTweet. Hootsuite or Tweetriver

The most interesting panel of the entire show (for me at least) happened at 5:00 p.m. in a remote hotel. During the 90 minutes, Citibank revealed the process and procedures they used to secure approval for social media engagement in a heavily regulated environment. I will write more on it later, for it is worth a blog post on its own.

Today was my last day at SxSW. It lived up to the promise. Great sessions, good people and thought provoking ideas. The dominant themes of the conference were mobility, connectivity and crowdsourcing (with a very focused financial services minor). Over the next few weeks I will share additional insights on this blog. There is a lot that I didn’t cover, but hopefully the snapshots over the past few days will give our readers some useful insight. I will be digesting what I learned at the show in the weeks to come.
 

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
SxSW Day 3: Creating A Connection
03-15-2010 00:17:55 AM EST

The day started off with a great Social Media Breakfast Austin/SxSW where I had a chance to hang out with a few hundred other social media professionals. I saw some old friends and met a few new people with some really interesting companies. I ended up reconnecting with many of them at the Microsoft party later in the evening.

Compared to the first two days of the SxSW, the panels were interesting, but not as strong.

The first panel I attended took a look at the use of applications for extending the brand. The main takeaways were the iPhone is now the dominant brand platform, eclipsing Facebook (for the company has more control). The general consensus from the audience and panel ties into the theme I raised yesterday in my banking recap: The future is mobile. They also emphasized the brand needs to take a backseat in the application or consumers won’t stay engaged.

One if the most interesting points in the session was the debate over the use of apps for engaging consumers. The general consensus is one most consumer technology marketing people have heard for years “The days of brands doing traditional marketing are gone.  They need to engage customers in social dialogue and provide utility, or they won’t have lasting relationship.”

A strong counterargument that was advanced speaks for itself “I like toothpaste, but don’t want to have a two way conversation with it.”

That being said, what Charmin has done with mothers rating bathrooms shows the type of discussions one can have for common household items.

The second panel I attended was hosted by Scott Kirsner and dealt with effective ways to build a cult (or Facebook and Twitter followers…your choice). While there was little earth-shattering about the discussion, it reinforced that building a community usually takes time, it requires constantly refreshed new content and it has to *be* a community. Talking to customers does not draw a crowd. Talking *with* customers draws a crowd. The filmmaker he interviewed advocated letting fans be part of the process. Engage them. They them use your content, have fun with it and create new things. They will help promote your movie (or software) much more if they feel a sense of some ownership. The final important point was that if your content isn’t embeddable, it’s like you are leaving on a roadtrip without any gas.

Finally I attended a session with Peter Molyneux, one of the most influential game designers of the past 30 years. I went both because I have worked with many game companies and because the topic intrigued me – How can videogames speak to the heart? I thought there are lessons that could be applied to public relations and marketing. To my surprise, I think I was the only non-filmmaker or game designer in the room.

The first thing Molyneux said tied back to the first panel on mobile apps and the theme that emerged today. Movies can never engage like games. Movies want flaccid robots. Think about that in terms of traditional public relations or marketing, and now how PR has evolved. By making consumers’ voices heard, knowing they have a stake in your brand, companies can create an emotional connection they could never create through shouting.

So the question is, how are we as public relations professionals working to create that connection every day?

Were there other panels I missed? Let me know what you think about SxSW.

 

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
SxSW Day 2 - Financial Services in the Spotlight
03-13-2010 11:49:20 PM EST

SxSW today for me was all about something near and dear to my heart (and many of my clients) banking and payments. I managed to carve out enough time to attend three banking sessions. The sessions ran the gamut from tips for personal finance to the future of banking and the role of geeks in finance.

There a few lessons any financial services technology company should carve in stone, but these rules also apply to consumer technology and other markets.
 

1. Consumers are dead. (or at least dying). They are evolving into active participants. They don’t want to pick from a menu, or be given one choice, they want to be empowered. Smart banks and financial technology companies are empowering consumers and giving them actionable advice and data.
2. Financial services UI (user interfaces) need a revamp. I know Mint.com has done it, as has my client Fiserv. Both are putting great emphasis on this. I see it as another variation on death by PowerPoint. Having tons of data can be great, but you need quick, actionable intelligence to make the right decision.

At first the second session was being bit too anti-bank. Banks serve a role, and all agree banks are essential. The challenge is many FIs are risking being disintermediated by third-party developers that don’t work with the bank. That’s what all the panelists in the second session we championing, so banks should pay attention and work on innovation within their services and offerings.

Mint.com has been very successful to date, and its executives were featured on two panels. There were a few key points I thought were of interest:

Mint.com built its following by hanging out where the consumers are, rather than creating their own community. They find it more effective. I believe both have their place, but it ties back into the fundamental premise of successful social media engagement – strategy before social.

Mint also does not buy PPC, they have found creating short videos and making them widely available to be most effective. Their consumers prefer that type of activity, and it lets them provide a richer (no pun intended), more detailed experience.

The consensus in multiple panels was the future of banking is mobile. But mobile information is just the first step, financial institutions need to focus on transactional capabilities, as well as advice and counsel. Getting tailored advice on your cell phone is much more valuable. That’s a message every good marketer knows – tailored, relevant and useful information engenders more loyalty.

Consumers need to pay attention as well. According to the speaker in the first session, Ramit Sethi, consumers are fundamentally delusional when it comes to money: 20% of people polled think they will get rich via the lottery and  3% though an insurance settlement.

While yesterday was all about the human network, Day 2 of SxSW was about the evolving financial network. There are a lot of interesting things on the horizon. As a final note, if you haven’t checked out CreditKarma yet, you should. A very interesting site that brings a lot of value to helping consumers improve their credit score.

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
SxSW - Day 1: It's the Human Network
03-13-2010 00:41:01 AM EST

SxSW

It’s a good thing I am a morning person and registered early, as this line demonstrates. Many of the folks in the line missed the first sessions. (This is the line to get into the exhibit hall to register)

The first session at SxSW dealt with social media marketing, and while it covered many thing I already knew, there were a number of interesting insights to take from it. One of the points the speakers (Chris Winfield and Tony Adam) made is one I have been making for years – Web 1.0 (forums) still matter. The power of niche social media sites and networks can trump the power of Digg, Facebook and others. You eliminate much of the chaff and keep just the wheat.

Two key things I was reminded of in the session that I thought might be of interest to technology public relations pros:

1. When trying to find the most popular niche boards, http://rankings.big-boards.com/ is a good place to start.
2. Being engaged (without spamming) on Yahoo! Answers can also advance thought leadership campaigns.

The second session, with Brian Solis talking about the themes in his new book, Engage, was a great session packed with good advice. A lot of it was a positive reaffirmation of what many companies engaging in social media are already doing, but there were some new ways of thinking about things that he drove home. He seems to have taken the Tipping Point categories and expanded on them to identify the types of people that you tend to interact with on social networks, and how you can impact their hearts and minds. This has some intriguing implications and is with thinking about much more than most people do.

He also reinforced a point from the first session. The networks don’t matter, the channels will change, it’s the human network that we are all a part of that is truly driving and advancing the social media change and the impact it is having on business. Companies that enter the network in the right way can have a significant impact. Those that do not, may do OK, but will never excel.

He also drove home a point Schwartz’s president, Bryan Scanlon, has been making quite a bit recently  - listening and talking aren’t enough. You need content to drive the discussion. Every company is now its own CNN, and they need to promote what they do, listen, and interact. They can’t rely on the media to give them pre-made programs (articles) anymore. There is much more to the channel than their ever was and technology, consumer, green, and healthcare PR pros need to pay attention.

Some other elements on which I will expound in more detail in later posts include:

1. Most social networks are matriarchies
2. The social compass is a good guide to developing a coherent and effective social media strategy
3. Social media engagement fails if there is not a human in some way associated with the brand
4. B2B Tech companies were the first to adopt social media with developer forums. There are benefits many B2B tech companies are overlooking.
5. Banks and other location based venues should look at foursquare. Now 1500 venues are giving rewards to their mayors and driving traffic and deeper relationships.

Check back tomorrow for more highlights from SxSW.

If you are reading this and at the conference, what were some of the best lessons you learned today?
 

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
PR at CTIA 2010
03-12-2010 3:22:00 PM EST

CTIA is only 11 days away. Is your PR campaign up to speed? Here at the agency, we started discussing CTIA with clients several months ago and submitted executives to speak on CTIA panels. Our outreach to pre-registered media began in late February. By now, meetings between our clients and press or analysts have been confirmed. In fact, the schedules of many preregistered media are full.

We're putting finishing touches on press releases that will be issued at or immediately before the show. In every case, the release is written to optimize for SEO, and will also be published on sites that optimize for social media like Pitch Engine.

There are still opportunities to get into CTIA coverage. Reporters from trade publications are currently lining up video interviews to post on their sites during the show. The agency has been approached by top IT and wireless media with invitations to submit experts who can discuss trends or news.

The show daily published by Wireless Week has closed its planned editorial. We conducted those show daily interviews earlier this week. For instance, Alex Brisbourne, the president and COO of KORE Telematics, was interviewed for his views about smart grids.

If you plan to issue significant news at the show, you still have the opportunity to reach out to the reporters who are at CTIA looking for news, filing online, blogging and Tweeting. Also, think about posting your releases on CTIA's press room. Reporters are sure to check it during the show.

Schwartz PRx Blog
Healthcare PR: BioImagene's Build to USCAP
03-12-2010 1:03:06 PM EST

Say what you will about the effectiveness of conferences in the marketing mix--there are still a lot of shows that companies feel they have to attend in order to see and be seen. In the case of Schwartz client BioImagene, that conference is the annual meeting of the U.S. & Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP).

BioImagene is one of the companies that dominate USCAP and their PR team is working overtime to support the show presence. So it was nice for everyone to see a blog entry, "BioImagene PR Doing It The Apple Way," from New York-based pathology resident Karl Robstad, M.D.

Dr. Robstad offers, "In an industry that, at least in my opinion, lacks some of the excitement in spreading the word about their newest and best products/services, BioImagene is a real stand-out taking a page out of Apple’s handbook, by creating mystique and hype around product releases, and then following the hype up with grand spectacle unveilings."

He continues, "You can look at stuff like this and call them 'PR stunts' or whatever, but I think there is a certain amount of merit behind a good PR campaign."

We'd agree, Dr. Robstad, and thank you for noticing. It's all about generating the sort of visibility that makes the BioImagene sales team happy and that underscores how a company that was founded a few years ago is altering a century-old industry. 

The BioImagene booth was hopping at USCAP last year. Here's to an even more successful 2010 event later this month.

This photo from euthman is covered by a Creative Commons license.

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
The Digerati Have Descended on Austin
03-12-2010 11:37:29 AM EST

SxSW starts today, and there will be five days full of panels, discussions and debates of interest to technology and consumer technology companies, social media and public relations professionals. I checked in this morning, and found out SxSW is not really a morning crowd...

 I will be live tweeting and blogging regularly from some of the most interesting panels and sessions. What struck me as I was perusing the program is the amount of attention being given to online banking and the future of finance. There are about a half dozen programs on the topic.

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
The Push for HITECH is On: Marketers Can Make a Difference
03-11-2010 2:55:30 PM EST

Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium’s "HIT 2010: HIT at a Crossroads" event. Why is health IT (HIT) at a crossroads? We’re at a critical juncture in the history of the healthcare industry. The industry and the government must figure out how to progress from the enactment of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009 to making billions of dollars available to providers to use healthcare IT in meaningful ways. We need to move from the ideas to the action.

One topic that I found to be interesting was the Regional Extension Center, which will offer providers in Massachusetts technical assistance, guidance and information to update their medical record systems and train workers on new technologies. The US Department of Health and Human Services awarded $375 million to 32 nonprofits for Regional Extension Centers around the country.

Rick Shoup, Ph.D., director of the Massachusetts eHealth Institute (a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative) and Massachusetts State HIT Coordinator, said that the state has appropriated $15M for 2009. The Regional Extension Center will not only create jobs, but should also help hospitals and providers figure out what they need to do to comply with meaningful use and implement EHRs.

Ray Campbell, MHDC’s executive director and CEO, said that the key to disseminating knowledge and experience will be through the Regional Exchange Centers. The MHDC is working on a mentor program to do just this, as well as a private online community.

John Glaser, senior advisor, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and CIO of Partners HealthCare, also spoke at the conference. He is a major advocate for electronic health records and said that that interoperable electronic health records are a critical contributor to efforts to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care. Requirements for meaningful use include maintaining an up-to-date list of current and active diagnoses, sending reminders as needed to patients and providing summaries of care.

One thing I found during the show is that although the industry is honing in on the definition of meaningful use, it’s still not entirely clear how they are going to check off all of the boxes. A healthcare IT marketer’s challenge is to take what’s there and develop a vision for how you can add value. If we know that e-prescribing, certification, interoperability, test result management, patient safety and quality reporting are pieces of information available, the HIT marketer will speak with decision-makers about how their products meet these requirements now and in the future. HIT marketers should also find out how they can partner with the Regional Extension Centers.

In the absence of certainty, the HIT marketers and the Regional Extension Centers might be the ones to ensure that providers will approach meaningful use appropriately for their organizations, and implement the right processes and technologies to comply with the requirements.

Schwartz Crossroads Blog
Mobile Madness
03-10-2010 4:54:12 PM EST

Yesterday I attended Xconomy’s Mobile Madness event. The afternoon ended with a “Mobile Smackdown” moderated by John Landry, a member of CommonAngels. Each of the various mobile platforms was represented on the panel: Apple, Blackberry, Google/Android, Microsoft and RIM.

The smackdown was all about the relative merits of each platform for developers. Cimarron Buser of Apperian ably represented the Apple camp, reminding us that the iPhone is the game-changing innovation in the mobile marketplace.

John Landry went right to the heart of the conundrum for developers, though, when he asked whether anyone is making any money. The Apple walled garden has generated hundreds of applications for the iPhone that are sold through the iStore. With most apps offered for free or just a few dollars, “Is this a cottage industry?” he asked. Turns out that long tail markets are great for consumers, not so great for developers who’d like to build a real business with significant revenues.

At the end of the panel, Landry asked for a show of hands on which platform offers the most promise. Android won, by a big margin. Google just announced its app store for business, Google Apps Marketplace. Since application developers can charge real money in the business market, this was good news for the Android fans at Mobile Madness.
 

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