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Online Tools - Are They User-Friendly? Not so
much.
We are experts at using
Survey Monkey,
WordPress and Constant Contact
and making them work for you.
Facebook and
YouTube should be an integral part of
your marketing-communications plan.
By Jonathan Lehrer
It’s easy to set up free accounts with the
popular template-based online tools. But it takes seasoned pros to
integrate them into a well-planned public relations program. We can
help.
Constant Contact
You can't tune in to your local all-news radio
station without hearing an ad for Constant
Contact. According to its
Web site, 185,000 small businesses use Constant Contact to
connect with their customers. Setting up an account is free and
dozens of templates are offered at no extra charge; you can have
your first email newsletter out on the Internet in a few minutes.
Or can you?
The fact is, to use Constant Contact effectively
for email marketing, you need to know your way around a
sophisticated content management system. What's more, only the most
basic approaches can get by without modifying the supplied
templates.
You need a Constant Contact expert with a public
relations background to design an effective Constant Contact
experience.
Contact
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers for
advice and help with email newsletters and tools like Constant
Contact.
Samples of enewsletters / Typical blast emails /
Email newsletter formats
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| Example of Survey
Monkey project. |
Survey Monkey
Let the computer do the math. That's the basic
idea behind Survey Monkey, the online survey tool. Survey Monkey can
be indispensable for the public relations practitioner who needs to
know what the clients' constituents or customers think.
Type your questions into Survey Monkey's online
interface, upload your email addresses and click SEND. A few minutes
later, responses will magically appear on the screen in front of
you, fully tabulated and ready to be reported to your client. Easy.
Well, not so much.
It takes a seasoned public relations pro to plan
the survey, write the questions and understand how to use the survey
results in a comprehensive PR program.
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers has the
technical knowledge and the public relations expertise to have your
survey online and collecting data in just a few hours.
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| The Message Engineers
created this Web site using WordPress. |
WordPress
In the "old days" (a year ago!), to update the
content of your Web site required zipping an email to your paid Web
consultant to make the change.
Not anymore.
Originally designed for blogs, such tools as
WordPress and Typepad are being used to create Web sites that don't
look anything like a blog. These tools are free and you don't need
to be a Web designer to make them work.
But you do need a message expert to be sure the
Web site says what you really want it to say.
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers can
customize a WordPress site to deliver the right message to the right
audience. Plus, after years of having clients ask how to edit their
own site, we finally have an answer. We'll show you how to use
WordPress or another online content management system to keep your
site fresh at virtually no cost.
One of our recently WordPress sites:
http://www.nlrailsense.net/
YouTube
More than a hundred gazillion videos are
uploaded to YouTube every nanosecond. But the vast majority of those
videos aren't properly described or tagged. Why is it sometimes
impossible to find the video you want?
It's because the person uploading the video
didn't write a keyword-rich description.
Your organization may have video footage hidden
in the bottom drawer of someone's desk. Put it to work for you on
YouTube.
You could do it yourself, of course, or you
could have
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers sort
through video content that you've already created and post it to
YouTube for maximum effect. Who knows? Maybe your CEO will become as
famous as the
blender guy in the labcoat.
YouTube may simply be the best and cheapest
online PR tool you've discovered lately.
Facebook
Facebook isn't just another Web application.
It's a completely new way to communicate.
The under-25 audience spends more time on
Facebook than your parents spend watching TV.
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers will come
to your office with a portable Internet connection and an LCD
projector to demonstrate Facebook, MySpace (and why not add
Wikipedia, too?). We'll brainstorm with you about how to best use
these sites in your marketing program.
For an expert approach to Constant Contact,
WordPress, Survey Monkey and other online tools, contact
Jonathan Lehrer Communications / The Message Engineers.
[Posted May 2008]
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