Ruiz McPherson Communications (RMC), a boutique digital PR, social business and interactive marketing located in the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor, has launched a series of free, timely reports covering nine specific topics in new media including:

• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• Marketing Budgets
• Search Engine Optimization
• Mobile & Web
• PR
• WordPress & Blogging
• Reputation Management  … and …
• Social Media Jobs

Here’s a sample of the Reputation Management edition for March 2012:

eMarketing Insider – Reputation Management – March 2012

Each free report has been formatted into an easy-to-read, one-page PDF layout design and highlights news briefs, tips or trends within each of the nine new media topics cited. “These reports have been a long time coming,” says RMC founder and senior PR strategist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson. “The idea of the reports has been intended for more than two years but we delayed in launching them for some time because initially, we weren’t sure of how to best present and disseminate the information. For many months, we pondered how best to format the reports as well as how often to publish them. Additionally, we were rather unsure as to how to sift through literally infinite piles of information on these topics. Many of these topics are extremely popular and often get written about multiple times daily.”

Despite the challenges, Ruiz-McPherson knew there was a strong and real need for reports like the ones she envisioned, which were inspired by a previous employer more than 15 years ago. ”I once worked for a CEO who subscribed to a similarly styled report,” she recalls. “I was his Executive Administrator at the time and was, therefore, privy to the mountains of information mailed, sent and emailed to him daily. And while the CEO would do his best to scan countless of headlines and email subject lines on a regular basis, the one piece of news and information he consistently read and looked forward to receiving was a one-paged, double-sided report typed in a monospaced slab font typeface known as Courier. The report contained no graphics or photos and was extremely plain in appearance. Yet this report was one of the CEO’s most favorites. He would often say that this minimal-bones report was easy to read and follow; it allowed him to get a quick, top-level overview of the most salient industry news per month.”

After numerous years working with business owners, proprietors and the marketing staff of many an organization assisting them with all facets of their digital PR, marketing and web technology needs, Ruiz-McPherson felt her intentions for publishing a news bulletin of some kind which could cater to small localized business was validated. “Most of the companies and organizations who hire my firm for services fall into three main categories:

• those who are essentially and admittedly clueless about digital-social and need help
• those who are for the most part aware and informed but need leadership and guidance,
  and …
• those who are very keen in the interactive arena but just need extra help and support beyond their capability.

What I found is that within each of these groups, the need for help in sorting through the massive volumes of headlines in this ever-changing arena was and remains very clear.”

At the local business level, shares Ruiz-McPherson, many of the top news items in the digital-social space are usually more relevant to enterprise organizations. And while there is endless information tailored for small business digital marketing on the Internet, it is usually fragmented and often not written by someone actually in the trenches of it all on a regular basis for their clients.

Moreover, hyper-local businesses don’t tend to have the vast marketing budgets or resources of big brands or national organizations so many of the headlines in this space can be too expensive to consider. Last but far from least, headlines in this space can also be overly technical or too abstruse for the bakery, winery, bed and breakfast or magazine publisher in one’s back yard to follow. “Small businesses in our immediate area and beyond seek practical advice, tips and news from a trusted authority. They long for someone to cut through the noise and clutter and point out select news items that will resonate with their operations and have the most impact or relevance to their niche or line of work.”

The eMarketing Insider Reports published monthly by RMC, and which can each be found at http://www.ruizmcpherson.com/emarketing-insider, have been born from a real need, says Ruiz-McPherson. “A good portion of the information being shared is exclusive, original content I’ve personally authored. This information is often coupled with curated content which I’ve added extra context to for improved relevance to small business.”

To view the latest editions of the eMarketing Insider Reports, use the following links:

• On Scribd.com
• Ruiz McPherson Communications web site

To subscribe for news alerts when the newer editions have been published, please subscribe here:
Click here to subscribe!

Volume 1: Work samples from ICCFA

If you’d like to see the individual items in the slideshow above with complete caption descriptions, you may do so here.

Volume 2: Advertisement makeovers and more

If you’d like to see the individual items in the slideshow above with complete caption descriptions, you may do so here.

The top five, key benefits cited by the study include:

• Better communication with customers, cited by 61 percent of responding companies
• Cost savings (51 percent)
• Brand positioning (49 percent)
• Real-time customer satisfaction (48 percent)
• Potential lead generation (43 percent)

Additional study findings include:

• A full 82 percent of responding organizations have a Facebook presence, 68 percent have a Twitter profile and 68 percent, a LinkedIn page
• Less than one in five companies are currently using social enterprise tools
• Confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt consumer-driven outreach make the social landscape one that still requires definition and justification for many companies
• While the marketing staff has been the primary owner of social activity to this point, IT departments will play a critical role in the further development of the social enterprise

Our .02 cents:

While the CompTIA study examined the social media activity of  very large, enterprise businesses with multiple departments, many of the study’s findings are relevant to small business, especially the finding about “confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt consumer-driven outreach” are sentiments we run into from time to time.

And of the top 5 benefits cited, we found one particularly exciting revelation from this study: companies who engage in social do find that the conversational nature of social media allows them to “carry on discussions with their customers, strengthening the relationship and gleaning insights on products, services and satisfaction.” That is one of the core benefits social brings to the table and usually a key benefit most often overlooked or dismissed by organizations who still feel as the study describes as hesitation and reluctance with the social media landscape.

Hoopla aside …

Yep, despite the hoopla about Pinterest, recent findings indicate its not really impacting consumer purchasing decisions. Does the pinning activity on the network generating lots of traffic to sites and blogs? Yes! This is clear in many of the reporting we have seen as of late.

That said, we guess the word is still out about influencing whether or not someone will spend $$$ on a given product or service. The study from Prosper Mobile Insights validates reports of the network’s “slower” impact on purchasing decisions: only 13 percent of survey respondents either somewhat or strongly agree that Pinterest influences their purchasing decisions.

Will Pinterest’s new iPad app and redesigned profiles spike consumer’s interest in browsing pinboards for product purchases?? The jury seems to be out on that one but what businesses should know is that Pinterest has, despite its being around since 2009, really only just recently started to generate some mainstream attention from media and users alike. Right now, in our view, Pinterest is still that “shiny new object” or “new kid on the social block” for many people, let alone organizations and companies.

Once the flurry dies down a bit, we’re pretty sure we’ll see a more ubiquitous use of the “Pin this” icon and capability as we now see with the Facebook “Like” button and Google “+1.”

It will be interesting to see the evolution of Pinterest for business use and whether consumers and prospective customers will be enticed to make purchase decisions inspired by a pin that’s been shared on this trendy social network …

In BlogHer‘s Fifth Annual Women and Social Media study, active blog users surveyed say they trust blogs (81 percent) as a source of information or advice, but an equal number say they trust the advice they get from Pinterest. Why is this significant? Well, for starters, the findings indicate that Pinterest and blogs are being trusted more than older social-media siblings Facebook (67 percent) and Twitter (73 percent).

Similarly, the study finds 61 percent of those surveyed made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blog, and 47 percent bought something based on a recommendation from Pinterest.

One of the reasons the survey points to for the ongoing popularity of blogs is that blogs contain substantive comments featuring details and expertise that make bloggers more trustworthy than Facebook friends, who tend to write short comments, or celebrity endorsers.

San Jose, California-based BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page comments on the Pinterest and blogger trust issues with an interesting footnote: “Pinterest’s active users are showing an intensity of trust and action that approaches that of blog readers, but its adoption rate is still less than half that of blog reading (as is Twitter’s) amongst the general population. So, we have definitely identified Pinterest as an app to watch (and for our community, adoption is much higher) but its relative impact is still going to be significantly lower.”

Our comments

We find these comments about blogs generating trust to be of high interest, especially during a time when the act of blogging in general (according to various reports we have seen come across our inboxes as of late) is on a gradual decline and/or continues to be challenged by the ongoing needs for content, time and resources. Knowing that consistent, good blogging DOES indeed still foster trust and build credibility is just really good news to hear, in our geeky blogging point of view

Today’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) includes an interview with Procter & Gamble’s marketing chief, Marc Pritchard, about the company’s plans for the future. According to WSJ, Pritchard is looking to “go digital” as the company attempts to cut $1 billion from its ad budget.

How are brands responding to the “smaller, digital budgets,” he’s asked. Pritchard responds: “Some brands that have very little money get very innovative. Aussie [Hair Care] is 100% digital. Secret [deodorant] is 100% digital. Old Spice [deodorant] didn’t have that much money. They didn’t advertise “Smell Like a Man, Man” at the Super Bowl; it was before the Super Bowl. Then they got this huge lift on YouTube, then they amplified it in PR, amplified it on Twitter,” Pritchard replies.

While the article highlights the digital branding and advertising efforts of a big brand rather than a small or medium-sized business, it is of interest that even the big guns are strongly re-purposing their marketing dollars more and more towards digital. The trend for digital spend has been around for the last five years but the intensity in which how organizations large and small are trying to do more with less and expand further into digital is fascinating to those who care about such geeky marketing subjects … (hint, hint)

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Dear Mayra,

My boss thinks that content marketing is a complete waste of time. He says we are not publishers and “publishing a blog post” or sending out email newsletters does not translate to “X” number of sales. Plus it’s too time consuming and we shouldn’t invest the time for what he perceives as little return. This kind of attitude makes it hard to really get content-buy in across the organization. What can I do to help my superiors better understand the value of content marketing and why we need to have such a practice in place?

Sincerely,

Severely Pressured to Prove Content Works

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Dear Severely,

First, good for you that you recognize the value of content in today’s digital marketing and outbound outreach. While there are countless of resources available online that can explain in vast detail the benefits of content marketing, it won’t mean much to your supervisors if you don’t “translate” those benefits into internal language that makes more of an impact to your C-Suite.

What often happens in the arena of content marketing is that folks tend to limit their view of it to a mere string of singular blog posts or a handful of email newsletters vs. seeing those individual content efforts as key aspects of a much, much bigger combined picture where content plays a mission-critical role in the customer or consumer purchase process.

I just presented on this very topic during February’s New Media Conference in Frederick, Maryland (if you want to view my slide deck for this presentation, please visit http://slidesha.re/wLlTLa). There were a few business owners in the midst of the attendees who really can identify with the “So what?” concerns when it comes to content.

If I were you, as I advised my content marketing session attendees, I’d go to slide nine of my presentation and view the high-level breakdown of a typical purchasing process a consumer or prospect goes through and how content supports EVERY aspect of that process (please note my diagram is very high level and leaves out micro-details such as the content needed during a free-trial or after a prospect transitions into becoming an actual paying customer).

Next, take the information on slide nine and re-purpose it to fit your organization’s purchase or buying cycle as it applies to their own prospects. Identify any and all existing content efforts in place that presently support this process and I can guarantee you will identify pockets where content is lacking or may need severe updating and added attention.

I am confident if you take the time to break down the role content currently plays (or needs to play a larger role) in the purchasing cycle for your company’s own prospects and then revisit the topic with your supervisor incorporating this much more relevant approach, you will surely receive a different response. Yes, there may still be concerns or questions or even some continued resistance. Yet, I’m highly certain you will successfully make much more headway and push the conversation as it pertains to content marketing into a more meaningful direction where new opportunities may become possible or reveal themselves.

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Has there been a digital PR, social, marketing or web-related question on your mind? Want Mayra to answer it? Please send it to mayra[@]ruizmcpherson.com.

The specific OTPR segment shared above, which aired this past Sunday, March 4, 2012, highlighted OTPR’s pet boarding business and the recent expansion of its second location into Loudoun County, Virginia amidst a challenging economic climate. “The decision to expand our pet resort into the Loudoun community was easy to make,” shares Steve B. Jones, President of OTPR’s parent company, Fried Companies, Inc. during the interview. “The county’s overall strong demographics and its proximity to Washington DC were key in selecting Loudoun as the new home for our second location.”

The popular MSNBC show, which regularly airs on Sundays at 7:30 am and Saturdays at 5:30 am eastern and is hosted by Today Show small business contributor JJ Ramberg, also highlighted OTPR’s pet boarding site at its first and original Springfield, Virginia location. Additional spotlights as to how the two OTPR facilities in Springfield and Dulles collaborate and support each other’s operations is also part of the upcoming segment.

“We are very excited to have this highly visible, national opportunity to share our passion and love for dogs with MSNBC’s Your Business viewers. Any chance we are afforded where we can share our story and convey just how much effort we put into elevating pet boarding service levels in the Northern Virginia region is one we will rise to happily,” shares OTPR’s President and founder, Ms. Leah Fried Sedwick.

“Ms. Sedwick and her family are long-time dog and animal lovers. During the Katrina hurricane that hit the Mississippi Gulf coast back in 2005, Ms. Sedwick and her family provided temporary boarding for many of the dogs caught up in the aftermath of the storm,” recounts OTPR marketing coordinator Sadaf Atashbarghi. “The Fried family has many such a story like the Katrina one. We are so proud their tradition of compassion and support for pets far and wide is one MSNBC finds is one worth sharing.”

On the RMC side of things

RMC, a local PR and marketing ingenuity practice based in the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor, set out late last year to develop a series of micro-pitches for targeted media outlets. “Naturally, most PR clients really want to focus any and all publicity exposure on their specific products or service offerings but sometimes, pitching ‘secondary story’ angles works better in attracting the media,” says long-time digital publicist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson who founded RMC in 2007. “In the case of OTPR, we felt that while the pet boarding and pet care angle are key, secondary angles such as ‘family owned business’ or ‘women in business’ (for starters) were really strong story twists worth pursuing.”

The RMC team worked over a period 3-6 months performing extensive research on the pet care industry first at the local level and then worked their way outwards specifically identifying key audiences at regional and national levels. “We did a very deep dive and identified countless publications, authors, editors, bloggers, community leaders — both online and off — that would find specific angles of the OTPR story to be of interest for their readership, audiences and subscribers.”

Once key PR targets were selected, RMC began to reach out to everyone in a very personalized way, one by one. “Sending a ‘one-size-fits-all press release’ to each identified contact as a blast email no longer has positive PR impact. The outreach we perform must be relevant and highly personalized and this takes time,” shares Ruiz-McPherson who led the initiative. “We have to read whatever content the target is publishing first to understand what matters most to that target’s audience. It is from that specific starting point where we then re-craft and re-purpose our story sharing efforts, one individual at a time.”

With regard to the MSNBC show Your Business, RMC had selected the program and its producers as key targets at the national media level. Explains Ruiz-McPherson: “We strongly felt this program would be interested in the OTPR story from numerous high-value angles. We outlined various talking points and story ideas to the producers … and the positive outcome of our efforts have clearly been realized.”

About Olde Towne Pet Resort

For almost 10 years, the Olde Towne Pet Resort (OTPR) has provided quality boarding and spa services for dogs and cats in Northern Virginia. With locations in both Springfield and Dulles, Virginia, OTPR is known to spare no detail to ensure the utmost of comfort, safety and joy for its customers’ pets. For more information about boarding or day camp services, please visit http://www.oldetownepetresort.com.

About MSNBC Your Business

JJ Ramberg is the host of MSNBC’s Your Business, the only television show dedicated to issues affecting small business owners. Now in its fourth season, the program has profiled hundreds of small business owners and offered advice from countless business experts and investors. Ramberg is a regular contributor to The TODAY Show about small business and financial issues. To learn more about the show, which regularly airs on Sundays at 7:30am and Saturdays at 5:30am EST, please visit them online at http://openforum.com/yourbusiness  or their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/MSNBC-Your-Business/62499551911.

Do you want access to mini-news “nuggets” such as these on your Twitter feed?

If so, please follow us on Twitter at @ruizmcpherson. We provide these as regular mini-infographics tailored to a tweet-specific environment. The goal is to sift through countless news about social and select the top details worth noting and sharing on Twitter and beyond.

This internal project began in April 2011 as a mere simple concept. By August of the same year, we began development activities, which have been very extensive and have required the development of over 90 customized interface screens for starters, not to mention branding, extensive database design, content creation, social media integration and all the other key elements any professional online presence requires.

We are now in late February 2012 … almost a year later and we are happy to report we anticipate finally launching the first version of our new social media career community some time in April; our actual launch date is still pending.

Presently, we are knee deep in the final rounds of quality checks, browser testing and feature verifications. This is an intensive pre-launch process that will last for the next 4-6 weeks or so. In between client projects and deliverable work, we squeeze in as much as we can into this internal project so that we may conclude it successfully and finally launch it so we can share with everyone who cares about employment trends and best practices in the arena of the professional social media career path.

We’ll share more updates soon … stay tuned!