How much is too much?

Thomas Whitehead

As seen in The Memphis Daily News...

Show of hands – how many of us have those friends on Facebook who are over-sharers? Whether they are talking about that last taco they regret eating, their string of continuous bad dates, that very last beer they indulged in or other information that maaaybe we don’t really know them well enough to absorb. I think we all have those people in our newsfeed.

This might surprise you but I have begun to see examples of organizations that are becoming over-sharers as well, and this could be at the cost of their main reason to interact with their customers: sales.

A few years ago, there were so many blog posts written to encourage business leaders to blog, share more information and discuss business interactions to some degree. As a consumer, I personally loved to see this. I could now have more understanding as to what decisions were made about the brands and products that I liked.

However, recently, I have noticed two different trends that I hope are not going to continue in terms of sharing company information. I will preface this by saying that these two trends have been exclusively with private and small companies, not large or public corporations.

The first trend is sharing with customers on social media that your sales figures are down. I have noticed this with several retail stores and restaurants. Although I can appreciate hearing the perils of a small business owner, I feel that the bigger issue is the risk of customers perceiving that your business is in financial trouble.

The second trend is similar, but I have begun to see retail outlets and restaurants/bars practically beg people to come to their places. And, I don’t mean a simple, “Come to our store today!” requests. Rather, I have seen some comments similar to “we really need your business” or “we have had a slow month, please help us out” pleas.

Just like no relationship is perfect, we also know no company is perfect and each comes with their own struggles. However, just because I like to eat your burritos does not mean I am entitled to see your profit margins or quarterly forecasts. And, you shouldn’t want me to know that information.

Instead, your interaction with me should be focused on how my experience with your company will be one-of-a-kind and special through customer service, incredible products and attention to detail. If your messages are positive, then I will be more inclined to consider supporting your business.

There is a huge difference between shareholder and stockholder. As a customer, I have an interest in your success, but it won’t impact me financially if your business fails. As a stockholder, it definitely impacts my financial viability.

However, it is very important to identify which audiences you are speaking with through different channels. But, I can explore that topic later. Until then, I am going to go grab another burrito.

Step One: Plan

Kelli Eason

I used to think life was all about spontaneity. I still do, on some level. It always seems like the great stories are the ones that result from that time you intended to have a lazy movie night with friends in college, but on a whim, drove to New Orleans and had a powdered sugar fight at Café du Monde at 1 a.m. Is that just me?

OK, spontaneity is not a bad thing. But I’ve come to appreciate a good plan too. Since I’ve been working in PR, my friends and family have become almost annoyed with my need to map things out, know what’s going on and to answer the “news advisory questions” of who, what, when and where. It’s such a common theme that my fiancé now won’t even tell me where we’re going on our honeymoon – and it’s slowly driving me crazy.

Sometimes spontaneity looks like this. 

At Obsidian, planning is a great thing. Preparation for anything is even better. When we begin a relationship with a new client, we spend a lot of time on the front end getting to know them so that we can properly plan.  Our planning is extensive, but it also leads to preparation. Here are the steps I usually take with new clients:

Communication analysis

The communication analysis is sometimes fondly known as the “information transfer” around here. It consists of two to three hours of getting to know the new client. This includes learning things about their business that may be helpful for reporters to know, any news items they have coming up or how their business works. It also includes learning what they’re happy to talk about or not and leads back to the preparation. For example, some companies are willing to talk about how legislation could affect their business, but others prefer to shy away from anything of the sort. Knowing this on the front end allows us to properly communicate with reporters and be more efficient with our retainer hours.

PR timeline

The PR timeline is a process. You start out really excited about a new client and all the information you’ve just gathered from the communication analysis. Then you lay out the spreadsheet, identifying ideas for every month in what is generally a yearlong relationship. After you lay out what seems like a million of them…it turns into “Hello, my name is brick wall. I’m here to hold up your process.” That’s when the rest of the team comes in for a brainstorm. I love brainstorms because it always seems to turn the brick wall into a floodgate for new and creative ideas. At the end, the timeline is fantastic and pretty useful when you’re thinking about several clients.

Brand and message development

After building a PR timeline, you generally feel like you know the client inside and out. That is very helpful for the next step: identifying key messages and the company’s brand. When we’re lucky, a new client comes in with a pretty solid marketing arsenal. They may have internal communications support, a functional website and decent brand recognition. Of course, if they don’t have those things, it can also be lucky – because that allows us to be even more creative in helping them develop it. Regardless, having the brand ready to share with the public is an integral part of the planning process. In some cases, this step – including the research often associated with it – needs to come before the timeline.

All the plans change

It’s inevitable. It usually doesn’t even take six months for a timeline to completely change. But that’s the beauty of a complete plan. If you’ve planned well, your messages are in order and your work is solid, you’re ready for anything. Oftentimes, the best opportunities to present your company as an expert or as a solution come with the unexpected. For example, a hospital, pharmacy or other health care business can’t plan for an outbreak of a certain virus. But they can be prepared to talk about treatment and prevention if it does happen.

It took me a few years to learn to use and love the plan. If I’d loved the plan back in college, I might not have taken a weeklong road trip to seven cities in four states that involved four people and a two-door sports car. (We switched cars with my friend’s dad two cities in…or we surely would have died of being cramped on a back road in Arkansas.) Now that I do love the plan, life seems much less stressful and yet, oddly spontaneous and always enjoyable. 

How may I help you? My pleasure! Thanks for stopping by.

Lauren Hannaford

There are about a million different things one could “preach” in regard to customer service. There have been books written, lectures given and training customized for all different types of customer service scenarios. From an account manager perspective, our PR efforts don’t usually pan out well for clients who consistently provide poor customer service on their end. Thankfully, we haven’t encountered very many of those client situations, and for that we are glad!

For some reason, I’ve been running into more bad customer service experiences than usual. Two of these took place at a drugstore near my house. It wasn’t that the employees were being purposefully rude; they just weren’t providing good customer service. They were doing the bare minimum, leaving me to figure out my requests on my own. This is point No. 1. If you are doing the bare minimum, you aren’t providing good customer service. I hate when people say, “I don’t know.” You should be saying, “I don’t know, but let me find out for you.”

What happened next gave me this very idea for a blog post. Let me preface this next paragraph with a little honesty -- I am not a patient person. My blood probably starts to boil at least three minutes before someone else with at least a smidgeon of patience. So, at my most recent experience, I was standing there witnessing bad customer service firsthand. Blood starting to boil, attitude shifting, dirty look starting to form, I decided to give the employee “good customer service” from my end instead. 

This is point No. 2. Practicing good customer service in your everyday life is the best practice for providing great customer service at your job and vice versa. Even if you are supposed to be the one receiving good customer service, practicing patient and polite communication will go far in your own workplace. After all, being rude sucks!

Navigating the waters of PR isn’t as difficult as it may look

Erinn Figg

A friend of mine called me the other day seeking PR advice. (Yep – if you’re my friend and you need PR counsel, I can be bought with a white chocolate mocha. Or even better, a glass of pinot noir.)

I agreed to meet this friend over a couple of adult beverages. When I got there, he was drowning – not in vodka, but in industry terminology.

He had just gotten out of a meeting with a PR consultant and was floundering around in acronyms such as SEO, SMT, MCM and ROI. He was treading through buzzwords like crowdsourcing, digital ecosystem, tablet marketing, vertical media and – my personal all-time favorite (not really) – “low-hanging fruit.”

This friend, a doctor who specializes in cosmetic procedures, had been loading up on so much information from so many PR “how-to” articles and consultants that his brain finally blared “DOES NOT COMPUTE!” and refused to process any of it anymore.

He told me he was trying to think outside the box. I told him to forget the box. Stash it away somewhere. That box is probably exhausted anyway from being in a phrase that’s used about 90 million times a day. In fact, I’m sure that box is longing for a vacation. Maybe we could pack some low-hanging fruit in it and ship it to Cancun.

I asked my friend the same thing I ask anyone who tells me they feel adrift in a sea of PR and marketing decisions: When was the last time you took a break from thinking like a business owner and tried thinking like your customer?

So I gave my friend a checklist of questions to help him think like a patient who’s trying to choose a doctor. Here are a few of them. Although some of these questions apply to his business, they all have a universal theme: What is your target customer looking for, and does your public persona reflect your unparalleled ability to meet that need?

1.    WEBSITE: Take a good hard look at your website. I’m sure it’s packed with confident and enthusiastic language. That’s fine – copywriters need love, too. But what’s the ratio of marketing dialogue to useful information? Do visitors leave your website feeling educated? Do you have a gazillion – YES, a gazillion! – quality photos that showcase your work, particularly before and after shots? Do you have detailed descriptions of your procedures? (If so, you’re providing authoritative information to counter the misinformation, horror stories and scary photos your potential client will most likely find in a Google search.) Do you have a Frequently Asked Questions page? Does your website offer several ways for visitors to contact you with questions? Are you frequently sharing your knowledge and industry news with your website visitors? Actually, that question leads to the next topic.

2.    EXPERTISE: You’re the next best thing to the Fountain of Youth, and you’ve got a wealth of information to help people look and feel more attractive. Are you giving away that info on a regular basis? Oh yes! I said, “giving it away”! Sharing valuable tips and advice demonstrates your expertise as well as your genuine desire to help others. Does your website have a blog that addresses relative topics? Is its tone informative or does it read like a sales pitch? (If it’s the latter, please hold out your hand so I can smack it with a ruler.) Are you also sharing useful information through Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets? There are some great forums out there for consumers seeking advice and answers about products and services. Are you occasionally chiming in on those forums with advice and answers to their questions? DON’T FORGET: Getting your brain out there is just as important as getting your name out there. (Somebody put that phrase on a T-shirt!)

3.    CUSTOMERS: You’ve got consultation patients that are a little jittery in your waiting room. They’re wondering if they’re making the right decision. They’re dealing with the reality that they’re about to let someone alter their faces and bodies. So what are you doing to nurture these people? Is your office a comforting environment? Is your receptionist warm and welcoming? Are you offering them a beverage while they wait or using small, meaningful gestures to give them the royal treatment? Do you have a binder of your media coverage accessible so patients can flip through it and recognize you as an expert in your field? From the moment your customers/clients/patients walk through your door, your place of business should speak to them: “You are welcome here. You are safe here. We care about you. We want you to be happy – even if you ultimately choose to go somewhere else.” Word of mouth is one of the most powerful PR tools we can use. Make a fabulous impression on your customers and they’ll tell people about it.

For small business owners who don’t have an agency to navigate them through a sea of PR strategies and initiatives, the process can get a little overwhelming. If it happens to you, just shift your perspective. Think about your own buying habits and the factors that influenced those decisions. Think about the brands you love and the reasons you love them. Then think about why you love your own business and how you can convey that passion to others. Sometimes, we have to get back to our roots in order to keep growing. I think Yoda said that. Or Mr. Rogers. Either way, I like it.

The Cost of Being Nice - $11.50

Thomas Whitehead

You may have seen some of the morning news segments back in December about how several bars and restaurants across the country have used negative describers to identify their patrons. The ridiculous part is that once closing their tabs, the customers have the opportunity to see the negative words used to describe them.

So, imagine the breath of fresh air I felt when I read about what Red Robin did for a customer in North Carolina recently. A pregnant woman came to the restaurant with her family, and the manager not only comped her meal, but used a promo code wishing her well, “MOM 2 BEE Good LUC.”
 
This story could have just been another feel-good tale. In reading the interview with the manager, his response about being attentive to a customer caught my eye. He said that the key to having a happy customer is to "listen to them, and make sure they leave feeling appreciated and valued. If our guests know we welcome their feedback, I think they'll talk with us and speak up … to say they had a positive and satisfying experience with us, and hopefully also to say they'll be back again soon."
 
Simple enough, right? Yet so many of us forget this too often. With all the strategies, tactics and action plans we develop for our businesses and organizations, it is the day-to-day activities that we can do that can have the most impact on a customer relationship.
 
And it all begins with what the manager said: listen to them. And listening is not always something done with just the ears. Sometimes, we can listen with our eyes and see things that we can adjust or enhance.
 
That feeling of being valued and appreciated is not something that will most likely encourage a customer to use your services in the first place. But that feeling of being valued and appreciated is something that will have a customer coming back for your services time and again.

Hissssssssssssssssssssssss. Are you paying attention to body language?

Courtney Liebenrood Ellett

From top: Friday Cat and Sid

Meet Sid (also known as Work Cat) and Friday Cat (who likes to show his cute little face mostly on Fridays, thus his namesake).

These two furry guys are our adoptive kitty cats at Obsidian. In an effort to make them more comfortable being around people, our colleagues have been taking shifts to work on our laptops on our office back patio when the cats are around.

A team member and I were meeting out there recently, and Sid came out first. He nervously paced and made attempts to come near us, where the food was sitting. And he finally did eat. A few minutes later, we heard a deep meow that didn’t come from Sid.

Enter Friday Cat. He was perched on the ledge above and made his way down to us. Friday Cat is friendlier and kept meowing deeply to say hello as he approached us. We encouraged him to take part in the food as Sid did. As Friday Cat came closer to us, Sid starting hissing wildly from the corner of the patio, where he was ducking behind a plant.

Translation: Don’t come any closer, man, or you’re going to find a heap of trouble.

We tried to avert a bitter clash by continuing to coax Friday Cat toward us instead of Sid. Well, Friday Cat wasn’t paying attention to body language and what Sid was “saying.” He just waltzed right over to Sid behind that plant. A quick confrontation passed, and it was done.

The signs were all there. Sid was hiding himself to feel more comfortable. He then hissed to verbalize his warning. And finally, he pounced on Friday Cat. But it should never have gone so far. If Friday Cat would have paid attention the signs, trouble would have been averted and he wouldn’t have felt the sting of Sid’s paws.

This lesson can be easily applied to our role in PR and even in our daily lives. There are a million tiny clues in human interaction that help us better understand mood, relationships, expectations, what people care about, what they don’t care about, what they need, etc. Mostly importantly, these clues help us know how to respond appropriately. If we don’t pay attention to positioning, body language, tone and the actual message, communication breaks down. And a cat fight might be the result.

Happy 7th Anniversary, Obsidian Public Relations!

Katie Pemberton

Today marks a milestone for Obsidian Public Relations—our seventh anniversary! 2012 was a whirlwind year for our firm, with an expansion into another market, new clients and our first full year in our new office in South Main. Let’s recap:

We moved into our digs at 493 S. Main in late 2011, and by this time last year, we were all settled in and loving the South Main life! For a cup of coffee or a bite of lunch, we just walk right next door to Bluff City Coffee or down the street and across the trolley tracks to Arcade. We can just about see the National Civil Rights Museum from our front window. We’re walking distance to great spots like Frank’s Deli, South of Beale, Muse and Hoot + Louise. We love it here, and we’d love you to come visit us sometime! 

We also kicked off serving our very first pro-bono clients from our PR 180° Project initiative—On Our Own for the first half of the year and Memphis Roller Derby in the second half. Our account reps had an amazing time getting to know these organizations and helping them meet their communications needs.

Early in 2012, we announced plans to expand the Obsidian PR name into another market—Dallas, Texas! Our managing director, Crissy Lintner, left the Bluff City and headed west with her family to put down roots in Dallas. She spent 2012 building our Dallas presence, networking and gaining clients, like the Humane Society of North Texas, TopMD Skin Care, Coquerel Family Wine Estates and Cockerell Dermatopathology. She was joined in the summer by another of our Memphis folks, Kerri Guyton, whose family moved to Tyler. Kerri expanded the Obsidian reach outside of Dallas into Smith County, where she completed some great communications projects for various clients, like the Renovation Conference and Holt Creative.

Here in Memphis, we landed some terrific new clients, as well. They included The Cupboard, Kroger’s Delta Division, Calvary Episcopal Church, Advanced Dermatology and Next Day Access.

Another big event from the past year was the completion and announcement of our 2012 social media survey. As in 2011, we partnered with Research Dynamics Inc. to conduct a quantitative survey on Mid-Southerners’ use of social media platforms. The findings showed a 15 percent increase in social media usage among Shelby County residents from last year.

We continued our tradition of monthly professional development initiatives, with each account rep organizing a different month’s training, including topics such as AP style, analysis of local television programming changes and the overhaul of our local media list. But don’t worry—we balanced all that and our client workloads with some fun team outings, like when we took a cooking class at the Church Health Center, chowed down at a Court Square Food Truck Rodeo and got our local shopping on at MemShop. We even let our four-legged friends get in on the fun when we invited our pets to the office for Take Your Dog to Work Day benefiting the Humane Society of Memphis & Shelby County in June!

Before we knew it, it was time again to open up nominations and voting for our 2013 PR 180° Project competition in Memphis. With more than 6,200 Facebook votes for 25 different local nonprofit organizations, The Blues Foundation and the Fire Museum of Memphis emerged as our winners, and they will each receive six months of pro-bono PR services in 2013.

All of us at Obsidian PR are thankful for a wonderful 2012 and look forward to many more years of meeting our clients’ communications needs and enjoying everything that Memphis and Dallas has to offer!