Marketing Vengeance, Part 2

I’m doing this series because at least half the people I’ve met in my life are either writers or want to be writers.   Everybody has a book in them and someday wants to write it.

The problem is, after the slow process of watching blood pop  through your pores to write your masterpiece, you’re faced with either the 19th century pace of trying to find an agent in the Old Boy Network of the slowly dying publishing world, or marketing the book yourself.  I chose the latter.

I’m fortunate to have friends in the media.   Anthony Cardno writes a respected arts blog,  interviewed with me and yes, sales spiked for days after it appeared.
Another writer friend, whom I had interviewed for my Conversations show, Bill Robertson, interviewed me for the show. Again, sales jumped, then sank. Robyn Bradley, author of the beautifully written and intriguing novel What Happened at Granite Creek has been incredibly generous in sharing what she’s learned promoting through social media.
But I learned again that reading about how to do things and actually doing them are two different worlds. I’ve been immersed in social media for years and I knew that you have to seek out websites and blogs of people with similar interests and through engagement become a part of that community and then quietly promote your book.
This, I found, is really time-consuming.
I was also amazed all over again at the nearly infinite world of social media sites. One Woman’s Vengeance is a western. I found — and joined — sites on everything from the American Cowboy to Tombstone to Doc Holliday and I engage. I haven’t had the courage to introduce my book yet. I still have that feeling of a new kid in town coming to a  school and not wanting to be ridiculed or banished from the circles.
I have found that reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble don’t do that much except boost the author’s ego if they’re good.

A couple radio interviews — one was 15 minutes by a host who loved the book and the genre — shot blanks.  But it was fun.

The reviews, from people I know and complete strangers, are almost consistently 5 stars and passionate in their love of the main character, Nora Hawks. But passion, so far, has not translated into sales.
(I will say that I have learned a lot about my own book and characters through the reviews but that’s the subject for another post).
What I find most annoying is that, after work,  I’m a writer. I just want to write.  I made the choice to self-publish because I dislike the System and I really don’t have years to waste with rejection slips.  I did that in my 20′s.
I wonder, though, how most writers succeed in this social media world. Marketing and self-promotion is tough. I’m familiar with marketing. I do it everyday at Mansfield University and I’m finding it hard, with a couple hours each night, to do it for myself.

And yet, I wouldn’t do it any other way.

I’m learning, and if you’re interested, I’ll keep sharing my successes and my stumbles.   Pretty interesting journey.

 

Marketing One Woman’s Vengeance

I’ve slowed down with my higher ed marketing posts because marketing my second novel, One Woman’s Vengeance has been so all-consuming.
I made a decision 10 years ago that I would not go with the  tiresome, good-old-boy 19th century rejection slip model of trying to find an agent who would then try to find a publisher while watching your life pass in this anachronistic,  dying game.
So I talked to writer friends,  did my own research and finally decided upon Lulu. I had published The Perfect Song (pseudonym Damon) with iUniverse in 2004 and was  happy with their process, with the exception of the cover, and that’s a whole post in itself.
Lulu offered more freedom (again, maybe another post for those interested in publishing).
I found a cover artist  and it was worth every penny of his price (another post!)
We had a couple technical glitches and I give Lulu high marks for helping work through them, though all communications had to be through chat.  Once Vengeance was published I found myself standing in the world of social media marketing, surprised that it seemed so vast and new.
Understand that when I published The Perfect Song, Facebook was barely a DNA sample and such sites as Goodreads did not exist. Amazon was the 800-pound gorilla but it wasn’t yet the ubiquitous force that it is now. Social media marketing was barely out of diapers.
And (most importantly) the  e-books industry was just inching onto  the radar with the general reading public.
I paid a designer to create a website for The Perfect Song and did all the things the experts at the time said you should do. I look at it now as a creaky structure whose owner had good intentions.  With Vengeance, I created my own site with WordPress, which I use for all four of my blogs.
I should note that as the PR director at Mansfield University I have worked hard over the years to stay, if not ahead of the curve, at least on it, as far as social media and marketing.
We were among the first  to use podcasting in recruiting and other areas of promotion.  I jumped on Animoto and other forms of social media promotion.
But now, with One Woman’s Vengeance, I was on my own, confused and naive.

I took a step forward, feeling like Frodo, moving into a strange, vast land where the shifting mists constantly keep you off balance and just a little directionless.

***

Next:  Nora Hawks watched her husband get murdered, and lived through an ultra-violent  near fatal gang rape.  Can she now survive the grueling gauntlet social media?

The local store that made our Christmas

Shop local.
I experienced the importance of this a few weeks ago. Dunham’s Department Store in Wellsboro is a family-owned  store founded in 1905.
They’re also one of my wife’s clients. She came home from a meeting with owners John and Nancy Dunham after Thanksgiving and over supper talked about the meeting.

“After the meeting, when I was looking around, I saw the most beautiful coat,” she said.  I was half listening but remembered something about “soft” and  “rust color.”
It was so beautiful, she said, and there was only one in her size. She was sure it would be gone in a few days.
A couple weeks later, I did a book signing at From My Shelf Books, another locally owned, indie business. I walked up to Dunham’s, hoping they might still have the coat and could identify it with my meager two clues.
I ran into John and Nancy in the snack shop, sat down and had a bowl of soup and coffee.
“Linda saw a coat,” I said. I don’t know anything about it except it’s soft and rust colored.”
Nancy thought it over. “Well, I think I saw her looking at a coat in the display window.” She thought some more. “Based on what she’s bought in the past — like that white jacket a couple years ago. . . I think. . . let me go look.”
She returned with a coat. I had no idea if it was it. “I think it is,” Nancy said. John nodded in agreement. “That looks like her.”
For the first time in my life I said, ‘I’ll take it” without even asking the price.
“Do you want it wrapped?” Yes.
I was pretty nervous Christmas morning. If it wasn’t the right one my wife would be very disappointed. If it was the right one, it would make her whole Christmas.
It was the right one.
Imagine this.  Go to Bon Ton or Sears, or Macy’s . Can you sit down with the owners and have a coffee? Can you say your wife saw a coat two weeks before, give a couple vague clues and have them bring it out and hand it to you gift wrapped?
Not a chance.
The Dunhams know  all their regular clientele so well that on buying trips they pick out clothes based on their customers’ tastes!
Yes, I also like the idea that I’m supporting local business and keeping money circulating in the community, contributing to it health.
But I’m also grateful to John and Nancy for making my wife’s Christmas special.  (It’s nearly impossible for a man to buy a woman clothes she actually likes.)
Dunham’s has been around for 112 years, succeeding on the premise that knowing and caring about your customers is the best kind of marketing.

Corporate Loyalty & Real PR

Dick Jones is one of the most respected professionals in the PR consulting field.  Over the years, his company, Dick Jones Communications, has assisted more than 60 colleges and universities in the areas of public relations, story placement, media relations and  crisis communications.  I asked Dick to do a guest post on the role of the PR professional.

Arthur W. Page was a very smart man. He was the first corporate vice president of what today is known as public relations, taking that post in the 1920s for American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Page “got it” from the start. He knew that sending the company’s messages to key publics was only half the job. The other half—and the more important part—was to inform AT&T and to provide counsel on what the public was thinking and feeling about any topic that could impact the firm.
The PR Department, said Page, “…ought to bring to the management at all times what it thinks the public is going to feel about a thing.”
Public relations scholars agree. Think how much heartache could be avoided if this occurred routinely. This mandate, however, is ignored more often than observed and that is not because PR professionals don’t believe in it or understand it. It is ignored because senior management does not believe in it or understand it.
Unfortunately, PR pros who sense trouble ahead and alert management to it are often running risks, especially if the trouble they spot is headed their way because of some action proposed by the organization they serve. This is particularly true within organizations that value loyalty—or rather a misplaced definition of loyalty—above all else. In such circumstances, the PR practitioner is liable to be considered disloyal or, at the very least, not a team player, if he or she has the temerity to point out problems that may arise from a particular course of action.
Of course it is not disloyal at all to point out potential public relations troubles arising from an organization’s decisions; quite the opposite, in fact. But if senior management doesn’t see it that way, it can derail a career and often has.
You can get a sense of the value an organization places on honest, reasoned feedback by whether or not the public relations function is included in senior management. If PR pros are present at the creation of policy, that’s a good sign. If, however, PR is “represented” in the councils of top management by some other staff function which then “interprets” management policy to the PR staff, that’s not such a good sign.
PR people who find themselves in the latter position will want to:

(1) see if they can find a “seat at the table” where they can provide feedback to senior management;

(2) resign themselves to doing only half of the job they are supposed to do;

(3) update their resume and look for a place that values the full public relations function.

Crisis PR Management Made Simple

This post is for PR people and anyone in a leadership position.
Most of your organizations, at some point, will have a crisis.
Predicting that is easy because  organizations are composed of humans  and we’re all fallible.
In the coming months we’ll continue to see lying, cheating, stealing and  some very weird fetishes.
And, as we’ve noticed over the past few years, it’s getting really hard to hide things.

As  an FBI official in Ali Soufan’s The Black Banners says, there are no secrets, only “delayed disclosures.”   If you made a mistake, admit it.  If you’ve done bad, come clean quickly.

Crisis moments are multiplying fast in our social media world.    Two people come to mind in just the past few weeks.  Penn State President Graham Spanier, gave one of the worst first responses in the history of higher ed during the debut of the Sandusky scandal.    Chancellor Robert Birgeneau apologized for his police force who beat students and faculty during Occupy Cal.  The problem was that the weak apology was recorded on his way to spend Thanksgiving with his family, nearly two weeks after the incident.

Spanier got the boot and Birgeneau is facing a faculty vote of no confidence.

Listen to your PR people and come clean with as much grace as you can.

If you can’t come clean, resign.

And if your PR people tell you they can spin it, fire them and find PR pros who’ll help you with the truth.

Misbehavior has been part of mankind’s story since the Old Testament.  The misuse of sex, money,  and power have been constants in our continuing story.

Which means  there are more of you out there.  You’re going to have sex in ways not acceptable to society.  You’re going to acquire money in ways you’re not supposed to.  You’ll abuse power a little or a lot.   Some ambitious folks will do all three.

In today’s media savvy society, chances are good that you’ll be caught.  When you do, don’t try to spin it, downplay it, lie about it or ignore it.

Deal with it up front and immediately and accept the consequences.

There really isn’t any other option these days.  A tiny list of the fallen:  Bernie Madoff, Tiger Woods, Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno,  Anthony Weiner and a whole boatload of priests.

There are no secrets in this world anymore.  Bad acts, when caught — by anyone– can spread worldwide with a vengeance that amazes even seasoned PR folks like myself.

Now, I know one other thing:  if you’ve committed any of these acts, you’re probably too arrogant or insulated to think you’re going to suffer any consequences.  You may think you’re above the law.

So I’ll turn my attention back to PR people:  if your boss asks you to hide, twist or lie about an incident that might cause the boss or your organization pain, refuse.

In the worst case, resign.

Your integrity is hard to retrieve once you’ve abandoned it.

Penn State, PR, Media & Chaos

I’ve been following the Penn State story with the same sorts of feelings nearly every other human being has had. But from a professional’s point of view I’ve concluded that both the public relations and news professions have failed miserably.
I have known the Penn State university relations VP for decades. He is the consummate PR professional, as are his staff members. So I have to assume that the PR staff was told to sit on the sidelines during unfolding debacle.
Why do I think that? Because no PR professional would have let his or her college president meet the media and support, by name, two employees who would surrender to police the next day.

I’ve been in crisis PR situations on a much smaller scale. In every crisis situation, the prevailing force is chaos. The president relies on the PR staff for guidance and knowledge of how the media works. It is a time when cool heads, logic, and especially truth as far as it is known, is needed.

I doubt if a PR person would have waited until the last minute to cancel Paterno’s weekly press conference. By now there were reporters on hand from around the world. A university spokesperson should have stepped in and held the conference because when there is a void, someone will fill it. And when someone else fills the void, it’s probably with content you’d rather not see.

The story would not have turned out any differently, but PR professionals would have helped set a tone of civility and helped the media as much as possible to smooth out chaos’ rough edges.

The media were allowed to run wild, and the media today are, in good part, a batch of barbarians sniffing for blood and egging each other and the public into an unholy frenzy when the bleeder is found.

Granted this is the perfect storm of scandals with:

- an alleged crime so heinous most of us cannot imagine it;

-an American icon;

-football, which is as much about self-identification and emotion as it is about tactical ways to move a ball to and fro.

Sit enough monkeys down with computers and they’ll eventually get a good take on Shakespeare. Our monkeys are thousands of bloggers with opinions, some sincere, some just hit mongers. We have news analysts screaming empty-headed opinions and unchecked “facts” because they have to fill time and race in the ratings.

We have news sites like Huffington Post coloring our view before we even read the story with headline words like “Legendary Football Coach FIRED Among Horrific Scandal!” and “HORROR: Ex-Assistant Rumored to have “Pimped Out” Young Boys.” They’re spinning stories out of rumors.

Facts were allowed to be muddled. Chaos reigns. The victims, for God’s sake, have been smothered in the dust of the stampede for the Next Big Thing.

I know there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes that we’ll probably ever know. But I also know that there was no visible PR staff to act as a conduit between university and media.

And the media, for the most part, have acted like undisciplined, irresponsible, screaming children.

Keep College President Searches Quiet

Social media has forced upon us two things:  transparency and immediacy.

This is not always good.  Especially in the area of college/university presidential searches.  I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve seen a couple presidential searches over the past few years.  One  was accepted as president at a larger university.  We all knew it before he returned to campus.

Another president went through the final interview process and we knew about it as the interview took place.

This is not fair to anyone.  Trying to better one’s self is a natural flow in the career world.  If the campus knows your president is interviewing somewhere, it compromises him or her in a lot of ways.

Some would argue that at public institutions, total transparency is needed for taxpayers.

I disagree.   There are no hard figures but I have a feeling a lot of presidents do not apply for other jobs  because of this justified fear of being outed.  That’s not fair to the current institution where the fit may not be right or fair to the interviewing institution where the match might be perfect.

If it’s a public institution it’s not fair to the taxpayer — the parent — who may not be getting a president who is best for the university and its unique needs.

I don’t think this is as big a problem for provosts, deans and even development professionals.  They’re expected to search for positions at larger institution or a college presidency.

It is a problem for a sitting president searching elsewhere.  It says, for whatever reason, the president is not happy with his or her position at your university.  Morale goes down among students, faculty, staff and alumni.  Fairly or not, the president, who has been a cheerleader/fundraiser/parent/leader figure, is instantly deflated to lame duck status.

Higher education has a lot of creaky spots in its body.  This is one area that could be brought into the 21st century.  Let searches for college presidents be discrete.  Students, faculty, staff and alumni can and should be represented.

But a presidential search can be done quietly, discretely and with some class.

Public searches have no place in our instant message age.

Everyone loses.