PR Lesson From Relay for Life

One of the sponsors for this year’s Relay for Life was a small local courier company. I say small because although he has a client base of 3000, his competitors are more than likely Fed-Ex, UPS, and (if you live in Canada) Purolator. These larger companies can be stiff competition. They spend millions on their advertising and marketing campaigns and their worldwide coverage makes it hard for smaller courier companies to break into the market with speedy delivery and affordable rates.

As a person who used to work for an established international distribution company, I know that there are a ton of small local courier companies out there who fight to match services and prices with these big names. I’ve used both big and small with mixed results, but the bad days stand out the most in my memory.

More than Just a Sponsor

More to the point, this is the only event that I have attended where I was shocked by the level of commitment from a sponsor. Not only did his company sponsor the new Caregiver Lap at our event, but he also sponsored the Survivor and Caregiver Laps at 6 other locations. On top of that, he sponsored the tribute Luminaries as well.

When I say sponsor, I don’t just mean that he donated money, candles and sand. I mean he collected and walked these luminaries to their designated spots around the track.

For an entire 1 1/2 before the luminary ceremony, he brought the candles down to the track and organized them in the appropriate order. At first he looked lost and frazzled, but eventually he started to find his groove. As the ceremony grew closer, he picked up his pace and started jogging back and forth between the walkers and the Luminary kiosk.

Dedication to the Cause

On every lap, we watched him tirelessly support all of the participants by helping them find the right place to stand and light their tributes while the bag pipes played a haunting hymn.

As one of the participants, I’ve seen first hand the dedication and commitment this business owner has to his community and the people in it. I’ve seen him labour tirelessly for the benefit of others. This was more than a sponsorship to him. That was obvious.

I’ve seen him walk the track as one of us. As someone who has more than likely lost a friend or family member to the disease we can’t seem to obliterate.

Finding a New Courier Service

Like many people there, and at the 6 other events, I’m a business owner. As much as I like the “guaranteed” service of the big three (who’ve all had their share of putting me in a tough spot by losing my packages), I now have a new company to consider in my business decisions.

I had never met him before this event, but because of his simple charitable act, I feel like I already know him and the values of his company. Before I send my next important package, I’ll call his company for a quote because I want him to be able to support the cause again next year.

We all will. He’s one of us now. Someone who was lost at first, but then gathered strength through the support of those around us.

My Own Writing Journey – The Dream Meme

Early last week, I had the pleasure of being included in Bob Younce ’s Dream Meme Finale. Bob’s site has been extremely helpful to me since I began my own journey. His blog offers not only valuable information for freelancers, but also inspiration to keep working towards attaining our dreams.

For those who aren’t familiar, a meme is:

The term may refer to the content that spreads from user to user, the idea behind the content, or the phenomenon of its spread. Internet memes have been seen as a form of art. (Wikipedia)

Instead of the usual meme form of tagging only a select few bloggers, he tagged all of his subscribers. I have been reluctant to participate because I’ve noticed my blog content straying from my original purpose. But, I’m going to do it anyway.

Bob’s rules are simple:

• Write a short paragraph describing your dream. What is it that you want to accomplish? Your dream doesn’t have to be related to your blog, though it can be. It can be anything – what you dream for your family, your career or anything else you want out of life.
• Identify three tangible goals you can accomplish in the next year that will bring you closer to fulfilling that goal.
• Describe one action – just one – that you will take, today, to work toward your goals.
• Link back to this post , if you please.
• Feel free to post a link in the comments back to your post.
• Tag specific folks or all of your readers – however you prefer.

So here goes:

My Dream:

I would like to be a successful short story and fiction author. I’d like to hone and perfect my writing skills and establish a clear writing style and voice. I’m a talented writer, but I’d also like to be a successful novelist. With that success, I would like to be able to live comfortably, further my academic pursuits, and travel to Ireland so I can drink a pint of beer in a genuine Irish Pub.

My Goals:

• Increase my writing output by 50% and my own marketing efforts by 70%.
• Apply to a University Graduate Studies Program and work towards earning a Master’s Degree in Psychology.
• Edit and submit my novel for publication.

Today:

I’m placing my manuscript on the shelf above my monitor as a constant reminder of where I was, and where I want to be.

Thank you Bob, for allowing me to participate. I hope by announcing my dream to everyone I’ll be more motivated to see it through to the end. Whatever that may be.

If you read this: Tag! You’re it!

Pamela

Delcuttering My Life with Marcia Francois

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marcia Francois, the Organisation Queen of Take Charge Solutions.

Marcia is a Time & Organising Coach who specializes in helping people realize how they are cluttering up their lives. She creates easy methods to assist you in organising your time, space and business.

Marcia really helped me identify the obstacles that are preventing me from accelerating my business. As we spoke, I fiddled with the piles of paper and endless number of sentimental items and geek toys on my desk. I’m a pack rat by nature, so it was tough hearing that it was going to stand in the way of getting things done on a daily basis.

Throughout our call, I learned:

1. To identify my clutter personality,
2. To release my mental clutter,
3. The DREAM Method of organising any space,
4. The one thing I must do so I don’t go crazy (or so I stay sane).

We had originally discussed speaking for about 30 minutes, but my questions extended the interview to about 60 minutes. Once you start chatting with someone, you realize that 30 minutes is just not enough to tackle the topic in a way that creates results.

I’m not a professional interviewer, far from it. Actually, my clients often tell me I sound about 15 years old. And I giggle. A lot.

So, take a chance. Go to her site and sign-up for Organise It! . She’s offering the same deal to her own subscribers. So either way, you’re getting a free newsletter, an interview chock-full of great tips, and a discount on some exceptional organisation tools.

(P.S. Organisation without the z is the correct UK spelling.)

Email Marketing, The Right Way…

For far too long, I worked for a corporation whose entire newsletter philosophy was all about spamming strangers.

Their email program didn’t have an opt-in, they barely sent notice that it was coming and they didn’t really care if their message was important. Basically, it was a quarterly advertisement that they sent to people who had unwittingly given their business cards to our sales representatives. Through email, they offered nothing of added value. If you had ever read one of the company’s brochures, you were already up to date with the company’s idea of “news”.

I didn’t agree with this policy. For a long time I fought for an opt-in page, a change of topic, an unsubscribe method, an email distribution application or service that stopped spamming, but none of seemed valuable to the sales department. If they asked for people to sign-up on their own, they may never have a distribution list.

What then?

I knew that the company could really have benefited from an email that took a recent industry problem and showed their “list” how our products solved that problem better than anyone else could. Their business double-speak was unbearable. A nice “you” thrown in occasionally could have really helped their bland copy as well.

In an age of permission marketing and relating to your customer’s needs, I just didn’t see how an unsolicited email detailing our many years in business and name-dropping customer list was really all that helpful, or inviting.

Seth Godin wrote about this recently in his email checklist.
Item number 8 sums up the the ways they could have improved their customer communications:

The definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel).

This is certainly not new information.

I left the company because the majority of their marketing methods were similar to their newsletter policy.

How many of these email no-no’s have happened to you personally, or as a business owner?

Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.

6 Tips for Conquering Writer’s Block

I am a writer.

And as a writer, I frequently suffer from Writer’s Block.

Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to writing for my clients, I have no problem finding the words, image or emotion that will drive their copy and get results.

When it comes to writing for myself, I sometimes have a hard time establishing a flow. Running your own business can consume your thoughts. It’s often difficult to focus on your own goals when you find it so much easier to focus on someone else’s.

Writer’s Block is debilitating.

One of the techniques I use to get ‘unstuck’ is writing backwards. Not in a ‘zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba‘ way, but in a way that establishes the conclusion first and then works backwards to make each sentence more vague as you reach the end of the piece.

I know, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to.

While trying to find inspiration, I stumbled on some great techniques for overcoming Writer’s Block.

Here are a few of the techniques that I thought would be most useful:

1. Create a list of the wrong ways to approach or write the project.
2. Sit back and think, what would your favorite writer/hero do?
3. Determine if there is something you can research or learn to help you find your flow.
4. Write from the perspective of someone who believes the opposite of what you want to write.
5. Break the task into smaller pieces. What can you accomplish right now?

By the way, all of these techniques can also be applied to your marketing plan.

If you happen to be stuck and you aren’t really sure what your next move should be, associate some of these techniques with your business marketing plans.

Using these ‘unblocking’ methods might help you gain a fresh perspective of your goals, and drive your marketing energy in a direction you hadn’t anticipated.

What do you do to to energize your flow when you get stuck?