Pinterest board

From a business perspective, consumer brands can benefit from Pinterest because they can target their fans and ambassadors directly through fresh and relevant content. Such successful examples are Whole Foods and Nordstrom.

If you like staying on top of the social media game and have a visual consumer product, you probably should start “pinning”! One sticking point is that unlike other social media platforms, you need an invitation to join Pinterest. If you need an invitation, why not ask Clearpoint Agency and make your life easier? Don’t wait for weeks or even months to get on this hot social media site if you’re ready to start “pinning” and promoting your brand on Pinterest.com.

Here are some tips to freshen up your brand:

1. Research : Study your competition – take a close look at your closest competitors in your field. What are they doing well? What are they communicating that you aren’t?  What are their key messages? How do they market themselves? How can you better compete?  Take notes and keep track in an excel spreadsheet so you can compare easily.
2. Question: Create a questionnaire for your clients and partners – Ask your clients and past clients what they think of your business, services, products and customer support? What do vendors and partners think of you and your business? What do your employees think? What may be the most telling and hardest to hear – what do prospects that didn’t chose your business think? *Tip: Use Survey Monkey to create a free questionnaire that can be easily emailed out  to recipients.  Follow up with phone calls to get more detail.
3. Identify: Define your audiences and key messages. Take a close look at what your company is saying to its audiences. Look critically at your website and all collateral materials. Are you speaking with one, clear voice or sending mixed messages? It might be time to update your messaging or re-fresh it if new services or target markets have been added. *Tip: Have several key employees review it and compare findings. If you don’t have enough personnel, ask friends or relatives to review.
4. Clarify: Define what your key services are. If you set the net too wide you could be confusing clients. Focusing in on your strengths and proven track record in key areas will provide a clear, concise explanation of your services.
5. Announce: The public won’t know about your brand refresh if you don’t tell them. Submit press releases, conduct media relations, update your blog and email clients to announce your new site, messaging and direction.

The best part of your brand makeover?

Current clients will affirm they made the right choice choosing you and past clients could take a second look at your refreshed company. Your business will undoubtedly benefit from increased awareness among prospective customers and opinion leaders. A brand that tightly communicates your unique offerings and conveys your company’s personality in an honest and appealing way will help you to land the business with the right types of customers.

This year put a refreshed brand at the top of your New Year’s resolutions.  It might just be easier to stick to than that new diet or savings plan.

Leave us a comment about your plans for refreshing your brand in 2012.

We had three new additions to the Clearpoint family this year: babies Davey, Cameron and Philip! Counting these “newbies,” we had seven children at the party. They all received a special gift from Clearpoint Agency to entertain them while the adults played “White Elephant.” After much debate over East versus West Coast rules, the game got underway and there was plenty of gift stealing. The game was great fun, even for those who ended up with less than stellar gifts! We are already looking forward to revenge, ahem, we mean, a repeat game next year.

Between happy children, fun games, and delicious food, we were very grateful to celebrate another great year with the Clearpoint team. We’d like to wish all of our friends and clients a wonderful holiday filled with love and laughter!

The Clearpoint staff and Valerie Chereskin pose with their food donations for the holidays.

It’s that time of year, when business people everywhere start thumbing through catalogues to select the gifts for their clients. We’d like to suggest you use corporate giving as an opportunity to share your business values and culture. By thinking creatively, you can give gifts to your clients in ways that make a much bigger impact than goodie baskets.

Creative corporate gifts can come in all forms, but we’d like to focus on charitable giving. There are many reasons to incorporate charitable support into your corporate gift giving program:

• Help nonprofit organizations and people in need within the community you do business in
• Improve the reputation and perception of your company
• Get greater exposure for your company, products or services
• Share corporate messaging, values and culture
• Increase networking or leads opportunities
• Receive tax benefits

Clearpoint is a great example. Several years ago, we decided a better use of Clearpoint’s resources would be to support the community while showing appreciation to our clients during the holidays. Instead of giving large and expensive treat baskets to clients, we opt for cards and small boxes of candy as gifts, and use the rest of our gift-giving budget to donate to a charity in all of our clients’ names. We feel good about the change, and clients appreciate it too. Oftentimes, we buy the candy from a local small business or, as is the case this year, from local high school band students. This year, Clearpoint’s holiday giving is: 1) giving delicious treats to our clients, 2) donating to a charity, and 3) supporting a local high school – it’s the trifecta of gift giving!

Charitable giving is such a great opportunity to demonstrate your company’s dedication to a cause or community, and can be a powerful way to create awareness and good will for your organization with external audiences. Your internal audiences will appreciate it too. Supporting a charity is much more motivating for employees than boxes of client gifts that don’t relate to them.

Charitable giving also has its benefits to your tax return. Whether you donate money, products, or services, there is a good chance that a charitable gift can be a corporate write off. Just remember to check with your tax advisor if a gift will qualify as a deduction. A good rule of thumb is to work with nonprofits with the 501(c)(3) designation.

When choosing a charity, look for a cause that matches your corporate culture. If your employees really care about the environment, support an environmentally-conscious charity (Like Clearpoint’s lagoon support). Or match your services to your cause. If you sell sporting equipment, support your local little league team. These small steps go a long way toward expressing who you are as a company.

To get you started, check out our examples: in years past, Clearpoint has supported the San Diego Food Bank, the American Heart Association (AHA), CARE, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). In addition, Charity Navigator is a good website to find a charity, and Wikipedia has a very inclusive list. Good luck, we look forward to seeing more businesses support charitable causes this season and throughout the year!

Hi friends, first, an overview: Social Boom! covers just about everything social. Ok, not everything, but the biggies: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and even tips on writing. It’s a thorough review of the social media landscape and what you should do as a business person on each of the top platforms.

I thought it was a great book, definitely worth a read. If you’re a novice in business social media it might be a bit overwhelming, but just remember, small steps are better than no steps at all.

I’d call Social Boom! fairly high level, with helpful tactics. It was full of relevant and usual
information, including both precise “how-to” as well as “why-to” information. The book has several chapters written by guest authors including some favorites of mine such as Mark Schaefer and Mitch Joel. It was refreshing to hear tips from multiple industry leaders.

Here are a few key points I found especially truthful and useful, as well as some nuggets to pique your interest:

• “Business social media requires an investment: your time.” At least an hour a day. Thank you Gitomer for being open and honest about this! It is so true.
• “…with business social media, I can personalize it, and humanize it…” Be human, and be real. This is one point we often have to remind our clients – while it is business, it’s still social media. No one is going to like your Facebook page or share your information if you’re cold, boring and fact-laden. People like people.
• “Start (or restart) your business social media outreach with purpose, plan and design. And start (or restart) it with an understanding of what you want to achieve.” I find this especially insightful. Too many people start social media without a real vision of what they want to achieve…those are the profiles with
  meaningless fluff that give social media a bad name. Take Gitomer’s advice and
  have a plan.
• “Start with information, and then add insight.” Yes! Don’t just forward
  information, provide your personal take on it and make it more useful to your
  audience. Don’t just be a content aggregator, be a content creator.
• A 5.5-part process for starting your own Facebook business page
• The 15 imperatives of LinkedIn
• 7 ways to add value to your Twitter conversations
• How to build an audience on YouTube

Social Boom! was full of useful quotes and lists like these. A caveat on expectations: While I was expecting a book about social media for brands, the book really focuses on tools and techniques an individual can use. I still found it useful, but more for my personal use than for managing our clients’ social media. So, keep that in mind.

Jeffrey Gitomer’s Social Boom! was a quick, fun read, and inspired me to get my butt in gear for my own business social media. While I do it every day for clients, I’d been using
social media primarily for my personal life, I believe to my detriment. I was missing out on adding my professional insight as a PR and social media manager to the world of business social media. If you have smart things to say, I recommend you jump in, share your insight and personality, and get social! See www.gitomer.com for tips and how to get Social Boom!

How about you? Do you do business social media? What social media platforms are your favorites?

Getting into a print or online publication can be tricky, from writing an enticing pitch to trying to distinguish your press release from the hundreds of others sitting in the editor’s inbox. We drew from our own experiences with media relations to compile this list of tips to help you get published.

1. Be honest – Put your news to the test. Is it really newsworthy? Assess the entertainment value, proximity, prominence, timeliness, uniqueness and impact for the audience.
2. Read your target publications– It is crucial that you know what these publications and broadcast stations care about and how they address their audiences, that way you can tailor your pitch to make it more appealing.
3. Target the appropriate editors– And producers too. You will have a better shot at success if you send the tech piece to the tech editor, rather than to the lifestyles or calendar editor.
4. Write a good release– Keep it factual and interesting to get your point across clearly and concisely. Associated Press Style is never going out of style so learn it and use it! Answer these questions within the first three paragraphs: “who, what, where, when and why?” Put opinions in quotations only and never make outrageous claims you cannot back up.
5. Distribute the news through a reliable wire service– Make sure it gets to the appropriate audience, but don’t expect the wire service to do all the work for you! Send your news release with an individualized pitch to top editors/producers at your key 10-20 media outlets.
6. Master the art of a good pitch– Keep it short but compelling. No more than three paragraphs. Give information that is not included in the release. If you can capture his/her attention in the first seven seconds, you will also capture his/her audience.
7. If you really have a coup to announce, offer an exclusive angle to your number one media target– Or, embargo the news to the top three outlets that are likely to cover your announcement. Give them an early heads-up but ask them to hold the new until you are ready to release it widely.
8. Include relevant visuals– A photo of a prominent person, interesting art, charts and graphs help to make a release more interesting. They’ll also get you more space.
9. Don’t play hard to get! – After you’ve sent your pitch, follow-up by phone and make yourself available on a moment’s notice for an interview if the editor/producer is interested. Remember they are running on tight time schedules.
10. Remember that a good PR agency just might be your best tool – We know the editors, the audiences and the pitch process that will land a story and gain success. A Good PR Agency will help get you the recognition that you deserve.

As contradictory as it may sound, sometimes the best way to strengthen business relationships is to stop doing business! Invite your clients to a party, or out to dinner; spend time relaxing and chatting about anything other than work. Go to a sporting event, eat or enjoy some music…just have fun with them. People do business with people so it’s good to inject your individual personality and remind clients why they work with you.

A few weeks ago, we did just that. We hosted an Open House to thank our clients and partners for their continued support and to celebrate our new offices just blocks from Moonlight Beach in Encinitas.

In typical Clearpoint fashion, the party was beach themed with sunset-colored flowers, tiki torches, and a mellow, world-beat band setting the mood for the evening. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, we LOVE the beach!

We really wanted to focus on our new location, so guests enjoyed Mediterranean food from local caterers, local brews and fine wines, great music and each other’s company.  We also had the entire conference room filled with delicious bite-sized desserts from a local bakery. It quickly became one of the more popular stops on the office tour.

Special guest Denise Stillinger of the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy.

We were also proud to make a special announcement.  In honor of our new community, combined with our fondness for marine life and proximity to the San Elijo Lagoon, team Clearpoint was inspired to donate money and PR services to the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy. Clearpoint will help promote its 25th anniversary of protecting and preserving the natural resources of the lagoon.

Special thanks to Denise Stillinger, president of the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy, who was able to join us to talk about the lagoon and current conservation efforts, in addition to accepting our donation. We can’t wait to get the word out about all of the great work the Conservancy does.

Clearpoint staff and guests all had fun while strengthening existing relationships, celebrating our new location and reconnecting with clients and colleagues in an inviting atmosphere. In fact, we received such positive feedback from party guests that we are hoping to make it an annual event. We are so appreciative of everyone who showed up to celebrate with us and we hope you enjoyed your chocolate lollipop party favors.

Kool & the Gang’s 1980s smash hit said it best: “Celebrate
good times, come on! Let’s celebrate!”

Check out the slide show below for more pictures from our Open House!

Beth Walsh of Clearpoint Agency was part of a stimulating discussion for the San Diego New Pros chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) on April  19. The topics: how to get started in the public relations (PR) industry, what  it’s like to work at an agency versus in-house, and what educational opportunities  are most valuable to young PR professionals. The event was organized by PRSA  New Pros and held at Roppongi restaurant in La Jolla.

Walsh discussed what led her to a career in PR, her work in large agencies, and how she eventually founded her own agency. She recounted her time as senior vice president of public relations at one of the largest PR/Advertising agencies in San Diego in the 1990’s, McQuerter Group, where she managed client services and public relations operations.

She provided these tips to young PR pros:

• Read everything  you can get your hands on! Be well versed in the world around you and be able  to handle a conversation on a variety of topics.
• Improve your  writing skills and know AP style as if it were your bible.
• Attend networking  functions and join groups such as PRSA, New Pros, North County Communicators,  and the Ad Club.
• Seek out a mentor  who will not only commit to your success, but will invest time and attention to  helping you excel in the competitive PR industry – and don’t be afraid to ask  questions!

Allison Altdoerffer, intern at Fleishman Hillard, was inspired by Walsh’s journey.

“As a new pro, the opportunity to hear from a more experienced professional is such a
valuable opportunity. Beth’s candid discussion of her own career – the ups, the downs and the motivation that propelled her to create her own agency – illustrated not only the need for education, but also the power of innovation and taking a risk. She inspired me to soak up and learn from those around me, and to never back away from contributing my own personal insight and ideas.”

Walsh is an honors graduate of Marquette University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. She is past co-chair of the PR committee for the San Diego chapter of National Association of Women Business Owners. Walsh has won eleven Bernays Awards from the PRSA for excellence in public relations. In addition, she has twice been named a finalist in the individual service category of the UCSD Athena Pinnacle Awards, twice a finalist in the
“Women Who Mean Business Awards,” sponsored by the San Diego Business Journal, and in 2001 was named to Wireless Week’s Top 25 listing of “Influential Women in Wireless.”

PRSA New Pros is a group of public relations professionals in San Diego with less than five years of experience. The group is led by committee members Rachel Hutman, Katie Rowland, Michelle Lew, and Amber Lingle. For more information about PRSA New Pros visit http://www.prsasdic.org/content.asp?itemid=15

This seems like great advice for any professional – is it? Does this hold true for YOUR industry? What advice would you give a young professional just starting out in their career?

Welcome to the Now Revolution! You may not know what the Now Revolution is, but you are a part of it every day. Essentially the Now Revolution is the fast paced, never-ending news river world that we are finding ourselves swamped in. I attended the Now Revolution seminar recently, hosted by San Diego’s PRSA and Ad Club, and it re-invigorated my passion for all things social. The lecturers and authors, Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, did a nice job of summarizing how to be more active on social media, so I thought I would pass on the highlights and add some social media tips of our own.

In today’s environment everyone is a reporter. When you visit a restaurant and comment about it on Yelp, you’re taking power into your own hands. This is empowering for all of us but poses a tricky situation for companies. They have little time to verify comments, even less time to coordinate a response, and even less time to actually react. So how are companies supposed to deal with the fast-paced world and never-ending news cycle that social media has created?

Here’s what Baer and Naslund suggest:

Have a Social Media Policy Companies must have a social media policy in place. Everyone should be on the same page and understand the companies’ stance on issues. This is a simple thing to create but overlooked by many companies.

Turn Negatives into Positives Negative comments are your chance to learn and find out what your company needs to improve on. Make negative comments your opportunity to learn and grow as a company.

LISTEN Understand how social media integrates with your company. Make sure the person who is speaking on social media platforms for your company is also listening. Search ‘Anybody Know’ on Twitter, give out free coupons on Four Square, monitor client brands on Yahoo Answers.

ROI There is no magic measurement tool, it depends on what you are looking for and measure that. Spread social media results around. Companies aren’t sure they’re measuring correctly and all too often don’t spread social media results. What would happen if only coaches knew the score of the game?

Turn Customer Success Stories into Blog Posts Humanity is the story. Attract a following with people not logos. Remember Subway’s Jared? Of course you do! We all do!

We agree and employ these tactics on behalf of our clients and ourselves.  Now for a few Clearpoint Agency social media tips . . .

Hire Employees with Passion Would you want a doctor that wasn’t passionate about medicine?  In today’s world it’s important to not only hire people who know their stuff, but who love their stuff. Employees will be representing your organization – everyone is a marketer- so it’s important that they believe in the company and the work they are doing every day.

Know Thy Self All employees must be on the same page. Everyone in your business has to understand the company’s culture and how to respond. All employees must have the power to communicate and speak quickly without the need for approvals.  If you wait to run every Twitter response through a weekly meeting, it’s too late.

Take it Offline Some conversations need to go offline. If a customer is upset, your best response is to apologize for the situation online, then offer to resolve it offline and provide your contact information. No one can fault you for trying to resolve the issue but the last thing you want is a boxing match online for the world to see.

A Thank You Goes a Long Way Thanking someone for retweeting a story or content you tweeted, or for commenting on your Facebook or LinkedIn posts goes a long way to forming  valuable relationships in the fast paced world of the social media.

Add a little something extra Just simply retweeting or giving a post thumbs up takes a little effort and it shows. When you retweet or like a post or video, provide your spin on it. Give your opinion and tell your friends and followers why they should care too. Yes, it takes a little extra time, but the little time it takes speaks volumes to your approach to being a part of the conversation and not just an observer.

Audiences & tactics to remember when communicating a major company change

Having just went through our office move here at Clearpoint, we became very cognizant of something we always remind our clients – the importance of communicating your message to key audiences. When a company goes through a major change such as an office move, rebranding effort, merger, acquisition, or anything that affects the company “image” or message, its executives need to consider all of the different audiences that need to get the message and all the various ways to communicate it.

Clear and straightforward communication with your audiences eliminates confusion and fear, and gets everyone on board with your message. When you (or your PR firm) craft the message, you have more control over what people think, say and do. Of course, the risk of not doing so is that someone else could create your message and run with it – in an undesirable direction. Don’t leave your key audiences in the dark. How would a team function if only the coach knew the score?

Lucky for you, the Clearpoint team has provided a list of important audiences to consider and some example messaging methods to use for an office relocation:  

• Internal staff – Your team is numero uno! Once the decision is made for your move (or other major change), your internal staff should be the first audience to get the message. Consider a formal internal letter with the good news, reasoning and what they should expect. Give them answers to questions they may get from clients or the media. Then, consider a less formal meeting where you unveil details (pictures!) and have an open discussion with employees. As your brand ambassadors, it’s important that your team is especially clear on your message.

• Existing and previous clients – Use your move as an opportunity to give good news about your company to clients, in a fun and exciting way. Consider celebrating with your clients by throwing an “unveiling party” to show the new location. Send emails and newsletter updates announcing the change and reminding clients of new capabilities and what’s in it for them. For Clearpoint, we now have more room and better tech tools to host our popular messaging workshops. So we’re highlighting that – and encouraging clients take advantage of it.
• Potential clients – This audience is similar to your existing clients, but once removed, so there is less familiarity and more formality with this group. You want to position your move similarly, as a sign of good news, but you want to include a little more about who you are and what you do. Consider the PR work horse: the press release. Announce the move, your new capabilities and a general background on the company. On the less formal side, consider blog posts and social media updates, including video. This adds personality and a greater understanding about who your company is.

With so much going on around your company change, it’s important to craft your message and your plan for communicating it to your key audiences. As we say at Clearpoint, the conversation happens with or without you, so make sure YOU are directing the conversation about your company.

Questions? Comments? Post them here or hit us up on Twitter and Facebook!