Business Wire Los Angeles Co-Sponsors PR Panel, “Leveraging Storytelling to Transform Prospects into Clients”

By Warner Boutin and Fred Godlash

Business Wire recently co-sponsored a PR panel discussion hosted by Media Leaders at co-working space Cross Campus LA.

Media Leaders’ host Josh Ochs fielded questions to a panel of agency experts including:

• Kim Koury, Owner, Spin Public Relations
• Kyra Reed, Digital Strategy & Social Branding, Adler Integrated
• Chris Baccus, Executive Director of Digital, Golin Harris
• Chad Bennett, Founder and CEO, Populus Brands
• Apryl DeLancey, Director of Marketing & Social Media, Blaze PR

The PR gurus discussed client acquisition strategies, content marketing tactics, digital technology, managing competition and lessons learned along the way.

On embracing digital technology & the integrated communications approach, Chris Baccus touched on Golin Harris’s “G4” model, which merges four expertise areas into one entity.

Apryl DeLancey discussed ways in which her agency, Blaze PR, tackles a collaborative approach when handling clients. First and foremost, “Get over yourself, and focus on helping the team/client project,” said DeLancey.

On leveraging new media, Kim Koury’s crew at Spin PR Group harnessed news buzz surrounding the 405 freeway closure, known as “Carmageddon,” housing a live tweeting event/ party.  Their publicity efforts turned a potentially disastrous PR project into a positive experience,  garnering global media attention.

Adler Integrated’s Kyra Reed tapped social media to maximize local marketing efforts  surrounding  their client, iconic music venue The Roxy, setting the table for the Sunset Strip Music Festival ,  now in its 6^th year .

Chad Bennett with Populus Brands focused on consumer brand building. “[You have to] leverage the story across TV, digital, film platforms to really build the brand, not just content,” said Bennett.

On amplifying their clients’ earned media messaging consistent with paid and owned media silos, the panelists agreed on crafting the messaging early and being authentic.

Business Wire’s Warner Boutin shared a few press release SEO headline tips. “Lose the prepositions and adverbs.  Turns out search bots also value active AP style  voice, ” said Boutin.

Sponsors led a live twitter contest, awarding winners with travel discount cards (Uber) and Google Analytic s promo cards (Business Wire).

Additional sponsors included Chipotle Mexican Grill, who provided a much appreciated couple of boxes full of burritos.

See a video recap of the panel and a Storify collection of tweets here.

Thanks also to event hosts Minling Chuang, Chief JOYCoach, {the JOY depot}; and Brian MacMahon, Founder , Your Office Agent.

Business Wire at IABC & PRSA Digital Impact

The 2013 IABC World Conference begins this Sunday, June 23 in NYC and Business Wire will be there, showing you our latest innovations in press release delivery and demonstrating our online newsroom platform with simultaneous delivery, integrated multimedia, superior social media capabilities and more. Visit us at booth #101.

Then, on June 27-28 is the PRSA 2013 Digital Impact Conference and, as always, Business Wire will be there. Come visit us in the exhibitor area in between sessions.

We look forward to seeing you in NYC!

Is Content Marketing + Social Media the New PR?

by Pilar Portela, Media Relations Supervisor, Business Wire/Florida

Pilar Portela, West Media Relations Supervisor, Ethnic Media Circuits

Content marketing and social media marketing are on the minds of everyone in PR, marketing and connected industries these days. They’ve changed the rules for everyone, including public and media relations practitioners.

Beginning June 27, Webdirexion will be hosting a series of live panels where you can listen to industry experts discuss social media strategies and ask them questions. The first session, “Content Marketing + Social Media Marketing = The New PR?” will cover how PR tactics are changing and how reaching journalists has become a whole new ballgame. The panelists for this session are:

• Carri Bugby, Founder – Big Deal PR, and Social Media Consultant
• Lori Weaver, Owner – Lexington Business Media
• Pilar Portela,  Media Relations Supervisor for Business Wire

Each panelist will share their content and social media marketing tips, and discuss tactics to reach and influence the media. This free session will be live streamed . For more information and to register go to: http://webdirexion.com/webdxsocial

The other free Webdirexion “Social Strategies” sessions will be held on the last Thursdays in July and August, 2013 at 10am PST/1pm PST. The sessions will be available via a streamed Google+ Hangout; and Webdirexion will award prizes to participants who ask the best questions of each panel.

The Four Reasons Why We Love Attending IR Conferences

by Michael Becker, Senior Vice President, Financial Product Strategy

Michael Becker, SVP Financial Product Strategy

It’s our favorite time of the year at Business Wire: North American IR conference season. For non-IR community folks reading this post, you are assuredly thinking this guy (two thumbs pointed squarely at me) needs a life. And maybe I do, but allow me to briefly share why we love attending the CIRI and NIRI National conferences.

1) Keen Interest: Clients and prospects alike proactively seek us out and ask, “What new solutions has Business Wire launched this year?” It’s a great question and as a product strategist, one I relish greatly. We know and respect how busy IROs are throughout the year, so we appreciate the proactive nature of conference attendees. Additionally, not only do we get to share what’s new with you, we get to hear your thoughts on innovation, market trends, and product enhancements. A true win-win.

2) Intelligent Attendees: I attended my first NIRI National event in 1999 and I remember thinking, “These are some very sharp folks.” Full disclaimer: I was also very excited by the copious amounts of free sushi. (I was much younger . . .) Fourteen annual conferences later and I still feel the same way (about the attendees, not so much the sushi), which leads to my next point.

3) Sophisticated Products for a Sophisticated Community: This year at NIRI we’ll have experts on hand to discuss Business Wire’s cutting-edge InvestorHQ IR sites, social media monitoring, sentiment and visualization, and next-generation video production services. All new product lines that embody Business Wire’s core tenet to satisfy the distribution and measurement needs of a sophisticated user community.

4) The Intersection of Personal and Professional: As a local NIRI chapter board member and past-president, I am uber-fortunate to see local IR community members fairly frequently. However, as we all get older and invariably busier, the national conferences provide adequate time to learn together, smile and laugh with old and new friends alike, catch-up personally and professionally, share novel ideas and create new memories.

If you are attending the NIRI National conference, please do come by to say hello (Booth #403), take The Warren Buffett IR Trivia Challenge, attend our IR site Lunch and Learn on Tuesday and, of course, remember to ask Business Wire, “What’s new?”

Travel safely!

Take the Warren Buffett IR Trivia Challenge at NIRI 2013 and be entered to win an Apple iPad 3!

Say “Cheeese!” at the IR Magazine Europe 2013 Awards

by Chen-Lee Tsui, Manager, European Marketing/Business Wire London

Memorialize yourself at the IR Magazine Europe Awards with a picture from our photo booth!

With less than a month to go, the IR Magazine Europe 2013 awards are due to take place on Thursday 20 June. Now in its 23rd year in London, this event celebrates the best Investor Relations achievements across various industry sectors and acknowledges the contributions made by individuals as well as by teams. For both winners and runners-up an IR Magazine Award means that those selected have demonstrated they have created results that deliver real business benefits.

The short list for the awards came out recently and – not for the first time – German companies have performed well. Across the 17 main award categories, the German contingent picks up 19 nominations, more than any other country. UK companies come second, with 13 nominations, followed by those from Spain, with eight. You can find the full list of nominees here.

Business Wire has been supporting this glittery awards bash for more than ten years. This year without fail, we will be present . . . with a branded photo booth! Attendees will have the opportunity to get their pictures taken for free at the photo booth, providing a great “take-away” lasting memory of the event. We hope to see many of you there “strike a pose”. See you in London on the 20th June!

What does “Think Like a Publisher” Mean?

guest post by Bill Flitter, Founder/CEO, dlvr.it

Bill Flitter

As every company is now a media company, we are told to think like publishers. What does that really mean? Come find out at Dlvr.it’s third annual Content Marketing Strategies Conference,  May 7-9, 2013 at The Claremont Hotel Club & Spa in Berkeley, CA.  New this year is the collaboration between dlvr.it and Business Wire as co-hosts.

This boutique conference will bring together thought leaders for three days of intense discussion, strategy workshops and case studies. Participants will gain practical “how to” advice on content marketing SEO, content distribution optimization, content ROI, and learn from case studies by brands including Red Hat, New Belgium Brewing, FOX’s hit show Glee and much more.

Dlvr.it and Business Wire guarantee that you will walk away with an action plan to kick-start or enhance any content marketing program no matter how large or small.

At the conference you will learn:

• How Cisco Systems measures content marketing ROI
• How to create viral content people will talk about
• How to effectively engage users across multiple channels with limited content
• How to effectively use Google+, LinkedIn and the visual web to drive reader engagement and sales with content marketing

Here’s a sample of some insights and tips from the expert speakers at the 2013 Content Marketing Strategies Conference:

From Arnie Keunn, President of Vertical Measures, SEO expert, frequent speaker and author on content marketing:

What we’ve concluded from all the changes in the past 2-3 years in the world of content marketing is that Google really wants to convince you of one thing: creating great content is the way to go. That being said, SEO is still just as important. You must optimize, optimize, optimize: your content, image tags, videos . . . everything! Then you need to promote it. Distribute it. Get backlinks to it. Professional SEOs understand this and are implementing these tactics better than anyone out there right now.

From Maria Ross, Founder of Red Slice, brand strategist, author and speaker on brand strategy:

Being consistent means identifying and articulating the key things for which you want your brand to be known, and ensuring you deliver that promise through everything that you do. Brands get into trouble when they promise one thing but fail to consistently deliver it through every single customer touchpoint. You can’t possibly be all things to all people so choose wisely and focus on those messages.

From Scott Frangos, Founder & President of WebDirexion, chief optimizer and speaker on Google+:

Even as more features are added to Google+, marketers have yet to wrap their strategic and tactical minds around ways to take full advantage of the existing G+ system.  Here are four initial brainstorms:

 — Use a community(s) to build interest for a Google hangout on a business topic, then stream the hangout live and save it on your YouTube channel.

 — Build your circles wisely, then use the post to circle emails and calendar scheduling to invite the right people to an online or offline event.  Be careful here — all the SPAM cautions apply.

 — Authors and thought leaders — brand your Google+ location with a personal URL — mine is ScottGooglePlus.info

 — Have a smart surf of “Google “Ripples” to see what people are buzzing about and listen to prospects, competitors and colleagues about a particular post, topic and website.

From Lindy Roux, Principal Content Strategist at Siteworx on content strategy:

Businesses often don’t fully realize the amount of content they actually need to create, review and ultimately map for their website. With the investment your company is making in redesigning your website, why risk your site’s success by not properly addressing the content? To prevent this, I highly recommend that content be considered a managed risk, just as any other component of website development.

From James Citron, CEO & co-Founder of Mogreet and mobile marketing expert on B2C mobile distribution:

When content is shared to consumers by MMS, brands have the option to include prompts to share the received information across social channels.  And there are major benefits to the brand for including social sharing in messages. First, it empowers the customer to share the amazing, exclusive branded content with their friends and family.  Secondly, it activates word of mouth marketing, increasing the trust factor dramatically. Content shared by friends is much more likely to convert into higher database opt-ins than content shared by a brand, alone.

From Marilyn Cox, Director of Marketing Communications at Cincom on content development:

Oftentimes content is created by marketing, with very little input from sales.  Sales is left without an understanding of what content is available, why it was developed, and how to properly position the information. The work of content creators can be incorrectly used, or left dormant.  Very little activity and engagement results from the hard work of many. Both camps are left frustrated and rendered ineffective. Marketing must learn to align and collaboratively develop content with their sales organization. Content should educate and empower sales.

From Kerala Taylor, Digital Engagement & Marketing at KaBOOM!, writer and publisher on content creation:

You can write blog posts daily, load them with all the perfect keywords, and rush to cover trending topics, but at the end of the day, your efforts will be in vain if no one is visiting, sharing, or talking about them. When creating content, one of the simplest but most effective questions you can ask yourself is: Would I share this with my friends?

From Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO of Zuberance, brand advocacy expert and author on content marketing:

Are you leveraging your highly-satisfied customers (AKA “Brand Advocates”) to generate product reviews, videos, testimonials, and more? If not, you’re missing a major content marketing opportunity. Content created by Advocates is highly trusted and influential. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 53% trust content that you create and post on your website.

From Carla Johnson, Principal of Type A Communications, brand engagement expert, speaker and author on creating content:

Take time to identify the people with whom you want to connect and understand them intimately. By creating personas, both sales and marketing will identify and understand common characteristics of a group of people with whom you want to connect. It outlines their perspectives, fears, drivers, and content needs.

From Josh Turner, Founder of LinkedSelling and B2B marketing expert on LinkedIn content marketing:

LinkedIn status updates can be an effective way to stay top of mind with prospects, clients, referral partners, and centers of influence. Yet most people are completely missing the boat on how to execute an effective content marketing program on LinkedIn. Using tools like dlvr.it you can automate a substantial portion of your updates.  If you’re trying to reach prospects all around the country or even globe, then it’s impossible to hit them with manual updates at all the necessary times of the day.

To learn, hear more from and engage with the above speakers register now for the 2013 Content Marketing Strategies Conference.  There a few tickets still available and we are pleased to be able to offer them to you at a 50% discount. At only $347, this is a fantastic deal for a 3-day conference. Simply register today and use the discount code BWIRE.

Hispanicize 2013 Conference Recap

by Pilar Portela, Media Relations Supervisor and LatinoWire Media Representative

Business Wire’s LatinoWire was a proud sponsor of Hispanicize 2013 in Miami — a yearly conference where hundreds of journalists, bloggers, film and music artists and communications professionals gather to hear from top Latino trendsetters. This year the conference was five days long, with more than 100 sessions and featured 260 speakers.

Danny Selnick & Pilar Portela

LatinoWire Vice President Danny Selnick and I were on-site offering our press release expertise to attendees and participated in all the conference events. I also had the opportunity to moderate three incredible media panels:

1)         Hispanic Media Relations Evolves: Best Practices on What Remains the Same and What’s Changed in 2013 (sponsored by Getty Images)

2)         Managing Your Social Personas

3)         Finding Your Voice as a Commentator

All three panels were a mix of media relations, social media and television, and covered the challenges of pitching the Hispanic media, finding the right balance between your professional and personal social media accounts and what is the key to having a strong voice as a commentator, just to name a few.

Charlie Garcia, Garcia Trujillo, LLC and Latino Rebels; Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “Enrique’s Journey”; Fernando Espuelas, Host of “El Show de Fernando Espuelas”, Univision America; Pilar Portela, Business Wire; and Ruben Navarrette, Nationally Syndicated Columnist

The New Target Market: Hispanic Millennials

Hispanicize also featured a social media Hispanic news platforms session with panelists from Fox News Latino, Fusion (the new ABC/Univision joint venture), Huffpost Voces, NBC Latino and Voxxi. The discussion focused on the new target market for these media platforms, which are Hispanic Millennials — U.S. born Hispanics who speak English and are between the ages of 18 to 49. Fox News Latino, NBC Latino and Voxxi offer their online news sites in English. The new Fusion news site is planning to do the same. All speakers agreed in order for the Latino market to continue to grow, the focus is going to be the younger generation Latinos.

In addition, the conference featured almost round the clock activity with:

–     Daytime industry workshops and sessions for journalists, bloggers, communications (PR and Marketing) professionals and film and music artists.

–     Latinovator Luncheons featuring Actor and Singer Carlos Ponce, Zumba’s Beto Perez, Movie Director Nicolás López and Journalist Soledad O’Brien.

–     Evening red carpet movie premieres and music concerts featuring Latino artists.

More information on the conference can be found here.

Adrian Carrasquillo, NBC Latino; Pilar Portela, Business Wire; and Daniel Rivero, WLRN/Miami Herald News

LatinoWire reaches influential Hispanic bloggers, decision-makers and more than 1,200 US-Hispanic newsrooms in both Spanish and English. Click here for more information on LatinoWire and media reach.

Business Wire Events April 2013

Tuesday April 2

Business Wire presents a FREE webinar, Meet the Hispanic Market’s Most Influential Bloggers. As the US Hispanic population is growing so is their adaptation of technology. A recent Pew report shows how they are embracing technology faster than any other group. A new effective way to reach this powerful group is via social media. Danny Selnick, our vice president of public policy services and Pilar Portela, our media relations supervisor, moderate a panel of speakers including Viviana Hurtado, Ph.D, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Wise Latina Club, Jeannette Kaplun, Founder and Blogger, HispanaGlobal.com, Lorraine C. Ladish, Editor-in-Chief, Mamiverse.com and Manny Ruiz, Founder and Creative Director, Hispanicize 2013.

Wednesday, April 3 – Los Angeles

Thursday, April 4 – Newport

Friday, April 5 – San Diego

Business Wire hosts a series of three social events in southern California, The Value of Social Media Monitoring. Join us for cocktails and food and the opportunity to learn about Business Wire’s new partnership with social media analytics and engagement platform, NUVI. Dave Oldham and Stuart Dean from NUVI will share some of their experiences and insights to help you improve your organization’s ability to understand, master, and leverage social media conversations for your organization.

Thursday, April 11

The NIRI Twin Cities chapter and Business Wire’s Minneapolis office present What’s New with the Stock Exchanges. Strange price movements raise concerns about the high-frequency trading, technical glitches, fat finger errors and algorithms in today’s computer-driven marketplace. Steve Chalmers, who spent a decade trading equities at a large brokerage firm and five years on NASDAQ’s market intelligence desk as trading analyst, will explain what’s currently happening in the stock markets, what’s down the road, and how it impacts investor relations.

Be sure to check our Events Calendar for other upcoming local events and webinars, and to follow @businesswire and #bwchat on Twitter for live tweets from our events!

How Mariska Hargitay’s Mission Made News at the National Press Club

by Danny Selnick, Vice President, Public Policy Services/Business Wire, Washington, DC

Mariska Hargitay and Danny Selnick

Volunteering on the Speakers Committee at the National Press Club in Washington, DC has its rewards.  You get to meet many famous and interesting people, including heads of state, business leaders, politicians (with whose POV you might or might not agree), entertainers, and even sports figures.  But it’s especially gratifying when you host someone who has a real mission — one that no one can disagree with.  Such was the luncheon that I put together for Law & Order SVU’s Mariska Hargitay.  It was only after my daughter, Alina, suggested Mariska, not just because she’s a big fan of the show, but also because she knew of the organization she founded — The Joyful Heart Foundation – whose mission it is to heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, and to shed light into the darkness that surrounds these issues.

After months of back and forth emails and phone calls with the Foundation’s staff about getting Mariska to speak at the National Press Club, I was finally able to get the okay. Finding a date that would accommodate both Mariska’s schedule and room availability at the National Press Club would also be a challenge.  Remember, the Club is a place where news happens and their conference rooms are sometime booked months out.  But it finally worked out that we’d hold her event in the stately Holeman Lounge on March 13, 2013.

Panel at the National Press Club Luncheon with Mariska Hargitay

I wrote a brief news flash for the Press Club’s “The Wire” notifying members of the upcoming Mariska Hargitay luncheon and then a longer news advisory that would be sent to the media to cover the event.  I also began looking to fill the head table with NPC journalist members, who I knew would be interested in Mariska, but more so, about her work as advocate.  After weeks of emails and phone calls, I stacked the dais with bureau chiefs, reporters and producers from The Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Univision, Hearst Newspapers, The Hill, USA Today and even Kathleen Parker a syndicated columnist representing The Washington Post Writers Group.

Mariska Hargitay and Danny Selnick

The easy part of this luncheon was to provide NPC President (and Bloomberg reporter) Angela Greiling Keene with remarks for her to open up the luncheon and introduce Mariska.  But what I also included were the staggering statistics on violent and sexual assaults on women and children, and a backlog of tens of thousands of untested rape kits, meaning some prosecutions might not take place for a decade or more.

Mariskay Hargitay and Alina Selnick

The day of the event arrived and my daughter and I planned to greet Mariska at the entrance of the National Press Club, then escort her to the 13th floor of the building.  She drove up in a large four-by-four and was then accosted by several paparazzi — who I had to push away in order to get Mariska and her team into the safety of the National Press Building.

After intros were finished, Mariska addressed the members of the National Press Club and the Washington press corps.  As beautiful as she is, she was equally gracious and was very “on message” — in launching a new campaign, “NO MORE”  Q&A followed her 20+ minute opening statement as would any other news conference . . .  and she handled well one of the more difficult questions, concerning what she thought about convicted rapist Mike Tyson having appeared on a recent SVU episode.

This was a luncheon news conference that had a real story to tell and a cause to stand up for; was written up in The Detroit News, in Kathleen Parker’s column, covered on ABCnews.com and more.  I’m happy to have played a part in making this event happen.  I’m proud of my daughter, Alina, for suggesting Mariska Hargitay as a speaker and I’m also grateful to Business Wire for supporting my efforts as a volunteer at the National Press Club.

Cleveland AMA Ranks the Super Bowl Ads

On Feb. 4, more than 100 marketing and PR professionals from the Greater Cleveland area gathered at a luncheon hosted by the Cleveland chapter of the American Marketing Association for their annual Super Bowl Advertising Review.

The assembled group acted as voters in an 8-bracket, single-elimination look at the best of the ads from Super Bowl 47. A panel comprised of Paul Roetzer, founder/CEO of PR 20/20; Lisa Zone, senior vice president at Dix & Eaton; and Jason Therrien, president of thunder::tech, had earlier submitted their favorite ads of the game to moderator Christopher Schmitt, and from those the 16 ads for the brackets were assembled. The only rules: No ads/promos for CBS or the NFL, who didn’t have to pay the $3.8 million 30-second rate, and no ads for movies, which have outsized advertising budgets compared to consumer brands. (Roetzer added that he asked himself whether the ads were entertaining, had an unexpected outcome or twist, and achieved a clear branding/marketing goal.)

That left such top brands and perennial Super Bowl advertisers as Audi, Mercedes, Dodge, Kia, Hyundai, M&M, Oreo, Doritos, Taco Bell, Volkswagen, Jeep, GoDaddy, Samsung, Tide, and Budweiser to be evaluated, judged and advanced by the panel and the audience until only one winner remained.

Much has already been written about who “won” the night – whether measured by viewer voting, advertiser web traffic, TV/video analytics, effective use of social, or quickly reacting to the night’s power outage. Reaction at this event differed from already-established conventional wisdom in some surprising ways; as moderator Schmitt noted, “Our ‘marketer’ left brains are often in conflict with our ‘consumer’ right brains.”

And the ads that were originally bracketed together led to some interesting contrasts in approach and effectiveness, such as Dodge’s Paul Harvey-voiced ad against Jeep’s Oprah-voiced ad, both trading on nostalgia and tradition but engendering very different reactions from the audience. Or the Mercedes ad starring Willem Dafoe as Satan vs. Kia’s “Space Babies” spot, targeting very different audiences for very different reasons.

In the end, though, there could only be one winner. Who did the Cleveland AMA honor as the big game’s best ad? Check below the jump!