Don’t Be a Fred Flintstone When Promoting Your Company

Remember Fred Flintstone? He was every kid’s favorite caveman curmudgeon back in the 70’s. I guess I’m showing my age, here. But it’s all good. You see, at least I’m no Fred Flintstone when it comes to promoting my company.

So what’s Fred Flintstone got to do with promoting a company? If you’ll permit me a little creative license, you’ll see how Fred, and his unflappable pal, Barney Rubble, are the wrong examples to follow when trying to promote your company in the era of social networking.

Fred works in a rock quarry: Even if you own a rock quarry, it doesn’t preclude you from using new forms of communication to tell the world about your accomplishments, new offerings, latest promotions, and more. While press releases still are central to notifying the media and customers of your news, using multiple distribution options is more effective at getting the word out to a wider audience. Here are some examples to consider:

• Company blog: Write about your latest and greatest on a blog. Make sure you remind your customers from time to time to check out the blog lest they forget it’s out there.
• LinkedIn: Post a discussion about your news and link it back to either the blog or a press release you have on your website. This will help drive website traffic and reach new readers. You can also post a one sentence update to your status to let people know what’s happening.
• Pitchengine.com: Use Pitchengine.com to post your press release along with lots of other interesting facts about the news and your company; a modest monthly fee allows you to keep the press release live indefinitely and is a great place to point journalists and customers seeking additional media-friendly information. For more advanced media management, the website also allows you to create a virtual press room where journalists and bloggers can get lots of relevant information at their convenience.

Fred slides down the back of brontosaurus when the whistle blows: Fred’s a company guy through and through, but when 5 o’clock rolls around he’s in his car before the whistle’s done blowing! Just like the wooly mammoth and saber tooth tiger, the old approach to marketing a business is giving way to the Internet and its myriad social media tools. Promoting your company on social networks requires constant attention. Some suggestions:

• Twitter: Twitter is beloved by some, reviled by others for its continuous, 24/7/365 stream of information, opinions, quotes, links to websites, inane blathering, etc. It has its fair share of time-wasting nonsense, to be sure, but if you’re careful about who you follow and how you engage your network it can be a good way to spread news of your company and drive real traffic to your website.
• YouTube: I’m not the biggest fan of video for video’s sake. (Check out my latest blog post on that topic.) Call me old fashioned, but before you start posting vids to YouTube you may want to make sure they look and sound professional, even if it’s supposed to be funny or campy. No need to look over produced, just make sure the final product works well and is consistent with your company message. The thing about YouTube, long after Fred has left for a night of bowling and “STEE-RIKESâ€�, your company videos are hard at work as people surf for fun or interesting stuff to watch. Even if you’re not sure if YouTube is right for your company, you should still make sure videos are easy to find on your website. You’ll be surprised to learn how many people will stop and watch a video of you or about a customer when it’s made available.
• Social Media Monitoring Tools: Have you ever wanted to know what people are saying about your company? Social networking has ushered in a whole new era of water-cooler talk that you can now monitor. Reasons to monitor are many but the main one is that if there is a dissatisfied customer or brand-bashing crank spreading bad information then you can counter the negative spin with your facts. The problem is that so many tools now exist you can’t possibly monitor them all individually for what people are saying about you 24/7. That’s where these cool apps come real in handy: radian6, Scoutlabs, Buzzlogic, and Reputation Defender.

Cro-Magnons are much hipper than Neanderthals: Fred is quintessential old-school, a Neanderthal if there ever was one. He’s a bit out of touch with the newer generation, and that’s putting it mildly. Pebbles and Bam-Bam are so into new trends and ways of communicating that Fred just can’t keep up or pretend to care.

Guess what? A whole new generation raised in viral videos on YouTube, social games like Farmville and tweeting has invented a whole new way to keep in contact, share discoveries and generally socialize. If you want to market to this new species of consumer, and get them talking about your brand, then you need to learn a few new tricks. Here are some hints that might shake you from your pre-historic slumber and get you right with the new kids in the cave:

• Use Twitter to Spread Your News: A great way to promote your company – its strengths, its specializations, and its successes – is to tweet about it to like-minded followers. Trust me, there’s no need to tweet 20-50 times a day like some do. But a few a day that engage your industry in a way that provides value-added insight (not overt product pitches) will help you gain a larger following and drive traffic to your website. Oh, and a word to the wise, check out TweetDeck as a way to manage the tweeting process or using the Twitter website will become a headache fast.
• Hold a Promotional Contest: Put a new spin on an old PR ploy by holding a contest aimed at the younger demographic. Contest winners could receive any number of prizes, but don’t be afraid to be different. Make the grand prize a trip to the X Games or ACL Music Festival in Austin. Make it fresh, exciting, a bit daring even, and you will get noticed.

Follow just a few of the ideas presented here and you’re well on your way to shedding the old club ‘em-over-the-head ‘n-drag ‘em-back-to-the-cave approach to marketing and PR.

Good luck, and happy hunting and gathering!

photo credit: despi88

About the Author

Dave is a former fiction writer turned CPA and technology consultant. He founded The Sage Closer to help Sage business partners with their PR and marketing communication needs.