Servant of Chaos

What Marketing Students Need To Know - in 140 Characters

One of the powerful aspects of Twitter is that, with the right connections, it creates a powerful, live, expert network. Within hours you can reach well outside the walls of your own business to tap into the experience and insight of others who may well have the knowledge you need to solve a current business problem.

Darryl Ohrt explains that a friend was preparing for a class on PR and decided to tap the collective wisdom of his Twitter network.Brad Ward went ahead and asked the question:

HEY!!!! If you had 133 characters to tell a class of PR college students something, what would it be? Tag it #jr342. Thanks!! And retweet.

The replies that came back apply not just to students of PR (let’s face it, that is all of us), but can be readily applied to any form of marketing.

I like Douglas Karr’s take on reputation and focus on outcomes.

  And I think Allie Osmar’s focus on continuous learning is also important. 

But perhaps the most insightful response was this from Jason Kintzler who acknowledged the changing focus and shape of our industry and the growing influence of non-traditional media. 

Take a look at the full range of responses here.

Free Marketing Strategy eBook

Earlier this week I received a LinkedIn question from Jay Ehret, wondering whether I knew of any good, free eBooks on marketing. Unfortunately, most of the eBooks that I knew of were not free. But then, yesterday, Andrea Vascellari, sent a message on Twitter advising on the availability of a free marketing strategy eBook.

From a quick scan, "Strategic Communications Planning" by Dave Fleet is a great introduction to the steps required to develop a corporate communications plan. It covers context, audience, messaging, tactics, budget and even evaluation. For those wanting to go into further detail on the planning process, I would advise you to join the Plannersphere and begin reading the blogs of various members. AND don't forget to visit the Staufenberger Repository to download this valuable (and rare) PDF of Stephen King's Planning Guide.

But remember, while this material is available free of charge, putting the recommendations and suggestions in place in either a client or in-house setting is a challenge. The ideas are out there, but the devil is in the execution, in how you actually turn these ideas into frameworks, notes, analysis documents and creative briefs -- and that is where professional planners can add real value. Good luck!

Strategic Communications Planning - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Strategic Communications Planning

Creating Key Themes and Messages

My brother is starting out in business for himself, and as we have begun talking through what he needs to do to begin marketing himself, I realised that there is much that I know that I have not shared with him. For example, he doesn't know much about my work and the way that I go about my business ... he reads my blog but confesses that he understands very little ... and even when I try to explain concepts I can see him nodding while glazing over.

I have been fortunate enough in my various careers to have been given opportunities that have expanded my knowledge and skills. Often I have taken an approach from one discipline (say organisational design) and applied it to another with great success (say branding). And always, I have tried to break down processes so that the clear next step can be discerned.

So when I read Russell Davies' recent call for propositions on maple syrup for his Account Planning School of the Web, I was reminded of how easy it is to forget the basics. And after coming up with a proposition or two ... where do you go? For me ... I go to key themes and messages. From there I go to in-depth audience analysis and segmentation. And then to a fuller campaign or comms plan. I also have a rather groovy individual initiative plan that helps plan each piece of communication in a modular way ... but woah -- I am getting way ahead of myself.

In order to help my brother out, I decided to put together a little template that tries to explain how to build your key themes and messages. It is only a template ... so you still have to do the hard creative work yourself -- but it is a structure that you can work with. It is free for you all to take and use as you see fit -- and if you have additions or things that I have missed, please let me know.

Oh yeah ... and if you find this useful let me know and I will do up some others that help make sense of the way that we communicate.

S.