As a journalist in my first career, as someone who spent a dozen years in the media spotlight in politics, and as a member of the public relations team here at Bluetext, I am very comfortable talking to reporters, for print publications, on the radio, and as a commentator on broadcast networks. I act as a spokesperson for many of our clients, and am often interviewed myself. Most of our clients, of course, don’t have this same background and spend their time running and growing their businesses, not thinking about media interviews. Giving them the public relations interview tips is essential.

They are frequently nervous and uncertain on how to act in an interview or how to stay on message. So when we have opportunities to place them in front of reporters to discuss their companies, we often provide media training in advance to get them ready.

One of the lessons I teach is that even though I do this for a living, I still make mistakes when I’m not prepared. With that in mind, here are 10 tips for preparing for a public relations interview to make sure you get your message out the way you want it:

1) Find out what the reporter wants to ask before the interview, and prepare your talking points ahead of time. Practice with a colleague or family member.
2) Reporters like sound-bites, whether in print or on air. Draft one or two beforehand so that you can use them during the interview.
3) This is not a test. It’s okay to have notes in front of you during the interview with your talking points and sound-bites. The only exception is for a video interview, but you can still have them nearby.
4) When interviewed on video, you want the audience to listen to what you are saying, not looking at what you are wearing. Dress conservatively without embellishment.
5) Reporters are neither your friend nor your adversary. They are simply the conduits to your real audience, the reader or viewer of the interview.
6) Never get defensive. Always remain positive and smile. It’s not about you, it’s about the message you are delivering for your brand or organization.
7) Take your time when answering, and make sure you understand the question. It’s ok to rephrase it, or to ask for clarification if you don’t understand it.
8) When on camera, lock your eyes onto the reporter’s eyes; don’t look at the camera. If it’s a “remote” interview, where the reporter is in a different location, look only into the camera.
9) Pause between thoughts for two beats–it gives the editors a place to edit.
10) Keep your interviews short and answers concise. That gives a much better chance that your sound bite will be the one used for the story.

And finally, practice, practice practice. The more comfortable you before the public relations interview, the more likely you will ace the interview.

Many enterprise companies and organizations have marketing programs to talk about their products and services with their customers, and rely on those types of product marketing assets to reach their target audiences. That information is important, but it’s missing an essential element in the customer journey—developing a connection with the audience that will last beyond the one transaction.

Digital marketing firms know that building a strong customer relationship is as much about storytelling as it about the product or service. At Bluetext, we work with our clients to develop more than just a story they can tell. We want our clients to elevate that narrative to what we call a Signature Story.

What’s the difference?

A story as most of us understand it is pretty formulaic. It has a beginning, middle and end, and uses facts and anecdotes to paint a picture of the value that a brand is bringing to the market and its customers. We often recommend that our clients change up the order of the narrative, starting with a strong conclusion, placing proof points and examples in the middle, and ending by reinforcing that conclusion. But to take it up another notch and become a central ingredient for the brand, a Signature Story is needed.

Put simply, a Signature Story is a narrative that includes a strategic message and allows a company or organization to grow by enhancing its brand promise, its customer relationships, its business strategy and the strengths of its organization. It should be authentic and intriguing in order to grab attention, and tell a story that quickly and succinctly elevates the brand in the eyes of the target audience. It should be thought-provoking, interesting, entertaining if possible, and should paint a compelling picture in the eye of the customer. Finally, it must be authentic in the sense that it must ring true to brand and not be viewed simply as a marketing ploy. It doesn’t need to be entirely based on facts, but it must be in the spirit of a true story.

Signature stories are critical assets, can provide inspiration and insight both inside and outside of the organization, and can be leveraged over time. The challenge is to identify that core story, and to make it a part of the marketing mix.

A strong example of a Signature Story is the clothing retailer Nordstrom, known for its exceptional customer service and commitment to making it right by the client. As the story goes, a secret shopper in the employ of the parent company visited a Nordstrom store that had previously been on the same location as a store that also sold tires. The secret shopper appeared with a used tire and asked to return it for a refund to the now Nordstrom store. The sales clerk, after perhaps a moment of hesitation, took the tire and provided a refund. The clerk knew that Nordstrom’s reputation for service was the most important element of the brand, and out-weighed the obvious fact that the tire didn’t come from that store.

More important is that it reflects Nordstrom’s key values in a compelling and thought-provoking way, and strengthens is brand values.

Or consider L.L. Bean, the iconic outdoor equipment manufacturer in Maine with a long and colorful history. As told in an article in Brand Quarterly earlier this year, L.L. Bean could be content to portray its culture just by talking about its high-quality merchandise. But, “stating such facts is unlikely to create interest, credibility or even a connection to L.L. Bean.”

Instead, the company tells the story of its founder, Leon L. Bean, an avid outdoorsman, who returned from a hunting trip in 1912 disgruntled because of his cold, wet feet. Undaunted, he developed a new boot by stitching lightweight leather tops to waterproof rubber bottoms. He found that his new design worked so well he offered them for sale via mail order, sending out notices to lists of Maine hunting license holders.

But here’s where this tale becomes a Signature Story: After discovering that most of the first 100 pairs sold had a stitching problem and leaked, L.L. Bean refunded the customers’ money despite the fact that it almost sent him into bankruptcy. He then went about fixing the process so that future boots were indeed watertight. This story communicates the L.L. Bean brand value fare more effectively than simply talking about its quality in a vacuum.

Here are the elements of a Signature Story:

The Message Must Link to the Brand. It should speak to the customer relationship and the business strategy, and it should enhance the brand’s visibility, image, personality, relevance, and/or value proposition.
It Should be Intriguing and Provocative. Elements to consider include some combination of thought-provoking, novel, provocative, interesting, informative, newsworthy, or entertaining to the audience.
Authenticity is Essential. Key audiences cannot perceive the story to be phony, contrived, or a transparent selling effort, and there should be services and programs to back up the main message.
It Should Draw in the Audience. If the story is interesting and engaging, it is more likely to result in an emotional connection and response by the customer.

The world has changed dramatically with social media. Businesses are following suit. Salesforce found that 70 percent of brands are increasing their social media spend this coming year.

Social media isn’t just an alternative to traditional media—it’s turning the traditional model on its head. Since the beginning of the modern era, consumers made purchasing decisions based on the advertisements that they saw or heard. Today, it’s easier to connect with other consumers via social media and make better purchasing decisions by learning about their experiences with a product or service.

People expect brands to talk with them rather than at them. They no longer want brands that merely sell to them, but rather they prefer brands to entertain and inform them. In this new paradigm, influencers are a force to be reckoned with. Brands can strategically partner with the right personalities to spark organic conversations and seduce their followers.

Simply having even one influencer share your content across their social platforms can result in a huge surge in social reach and engagement. But how can we get an influencer to share our content to their large and loyal following?

In this Bluetext ebook, we frame out 6 ways to get influencers to share your content to their large and juicy audiences.

As we have written many times, including on the Google “Hummingbird” release and “Mobilegeddon,” search engine optimization is a never-ending game of cat and mouse. The mouse–anyone with a website that they want to get noticed–is always trying to find shortcuts that make their website come up high in a Google search. The cat–the search engine team at Google–wants to eliminate any shortcuts, work-arounds or downright cheating. That’s the game that has been going on for many years, because doing it the way Google wants, which is by having great content that is fresh, original, updated and linked to by other sites, is hard. In fairness, Google has been doing a great job of reacting and responding to the evolving nature of Internet usage and protecting the integrity of its search engine, and has made it much more difficult to game the system.

So here’s where Penguin 4.0 comes in. One of the ways that Google has assessed where a particular webpage should rank in a search query is by looking at the inbound links on that page. The theory goes that if The New York Times is linking to it, it must have the type of credibility and value that warrants a high ranking. Lesser websites have value, just not as much as The New York Times. However, by making inbound links an important component in the rankings, the mice on the other side found ways to artificially have lots of websites link back to key pages, sometimes by buying links or engaging with networks of link builders. That was the first unintended consequence.

In response, Google launched a Penguin update in April 2012, to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings. At first, the Penguin algorithm would identify suspicious links when it crawled the Internet, and simply ignore them when it performed its ranking in response to queries. But sometime in the middle of 2012, Google started punishing websites with bad links, not just ignoring them but actually driving page rankings down for offenders. And that set off a mad scramble as sites needed to somehow get “unlinked” from the bad sites. Which led to unintended consequence number two: Not only did webmasters have to worry about being punished for bad links, they also had to worry about rivals purposely inserting bad links to undermine their competitor’s search results. Ugh!

So, in October of 2012, Google tried to fix the problem it created by offering a “Disavow Links” tool that essentially tells the Google crawlers when they find a bad inbound link that the website in question has “disavowed” that bad link, and therefore please don’t punish us for it any longer. Here’s how Searchengineland described the tool at the time: “Google’s link disavowal tool allows publishers to tell Google that they don’t want certain links from external sites to be considered as part of Google’s system of counting links to rank web sites. Some sites want to do this because they’ve purchased links, a violation of Google’s policies, and may suffer a penalty if they can’t get the links removed. Other sites may want to remove links gained from participating in bad link networks or for other reasons.”

And that created yet another unintended consequence, because, unfortunately, the Penguin algorithm wasn’t updated on a regular basis. So for websites trying to clean up their links, as SearchEngineland put it, “Those sites would remain penalized even if they improved and changed until the next time the filter ran, which could take months. The last Penguin update, Penguin 3.0, happened on October 17, 2014. Any sites hit by it have waited nearly two years for the chance to be free.”

Penguin 4.0 addresses that by integrating the Penguin “filter” into the regular crawler sweeps that assess websites on an ongoing basis. Waiting for up to two years for a refresh is now a thing of the past, as suspect pages will now be identified–or freed because they are now clean–on a regular basis.

What does this mean for websites? It’s what we’ve been writing now for a half dozen years. Good SEO doesn’t just happen, and it can’t be manipulated. It takes hard work, an effective strategy, and a long-term view to create the kind of content and links that elevate your brand for your customers, prospects, and the Google search engine. For more tips on navigating Penguin, download our eBook now.

Bluetext’s Chief Creative Officer, Jason Siegel will be speaking at MediaPost OMMA VR/AR in New York during Advertising Week on September 28th.

MediaPost saw the need for an event focused solely on Augmented and Virtual Reality as these new mediums have taking the marketing world by storm. The event will explore how marketers can take Virtual and Augmented Reality from the novelty phase into an opportunity to enrich branding and deepen consumer relationships.

Jason will be part of a panel discussion titled “Retailers Follow Pokémon Go”, which will examine the overwhelming success and influence of Pokémon Go, and how retailers can learn from this case study and incorporate AR or VR experiences into their marketing strategy to appeal to in-store shoppers.

Other topics the event will cover include:

• How different types of VR/AR experiences map against specific brand goals.
• Where do you start…small?
• How to distribute experiences efficiently and connect VR/AR campaigns to other marketing platforms and programs.
• Who are the players and how should marketers and agencies vet them?
• Storytelling in 360 degrees

Make sure to tune in for the conference live-stream on September 28th at 4:00pm EST here. And to learn more about Bluetext’s VR work, contact us today:

Bluetext is excited to announce that our Chief Creative Officer, Jason Siegel, has been recognized for this year’s 40 Under 40 Awards presented by DMN. The event celebrates 40 individuals under the age of 40 who not only display innovative, digital marketing techniques, but are actively reshaping the craft of the business. The DMN 40 Under 40 Awards will honor the exceptional marketing achievements of the winners on Thursday, September 29th at The Dream Downtown in New York City.

Jason is recognized for embracing the tidal shift toward technology and data-based marketing strategy that customers now demand, discovering cutting edge opportunities to reach new prospects and wow existing clients. He is acknowledged as a pioneer in web design, creative communications, and interactive strategies, continuously challenging himself and his peers to take ownership of the customer experience.

Learn more about the full list of award recipients and purchase your tickets to join the celebration here!

MediaPost, the largest and most influential media, marketing and advertising site on the net, featured Bluetext’s work with cybersecurity client Varonis to create a virtual reality marketing campaign for EMC World 2016. Our Partner and Chief Creative Officer Jason Siegel shared the ways that virtual reality can advance B2B marketing goals, engage new customers and help clients stand out from the crowd. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Let’s talk B-to-B.

But not boring! Virtual reality is working out in surprisingly interesting ways for Bluetext, a digital marketing firm based in Washington, D.C. Although its business has lots of of well-known clients with more conventional campaigns, Bluetext is creating a niche for itself producing 360-degree videos for some customers.

Varonis Systems, supplier of a software platform that lets companies structure their data and detect leaks in the organization, has a complicated business supplying security for IT systems.

VR, it turns out, does a good job of providing complex information. And because of the VR aspect, at least at this early stage of the game, B-to-B 360-degree videos can get gawking attention from client-customers.

So Bluetext created an intricate multilayer 360-degree video, which the company provides to would-be clients. The Varonis “digital briefcase session” lets viewers veer off on these virtual tours. A company’s chief tech officer can go off in that direction, while the HR exec aims his goggles in another direction. (You can imagine the conference room scene.)

This is probably the least important part, but I love it. Varonis took its VR exhibit to the crowded, noisy EMC World show floor in Las Vegas, and at that crucial tech show, it captured a very distractible bunch of floorwalkers by handing out headsets — branded with the corporate logo. Then they hustled them into the booth to watch the briefing.

Varonis increased its traffic six fold with all those customers watching video. (Varonis also offers a VR app at Google and Apple stores.)
“If you think of those shows like those fighting for attention with their noisy 10 by 10 booths, you can see the advantage of just giving them a Cardboard and letting them watch,” says Bluetext founder Jason Siegel…

Siegel points out, excitedly, “There is research that shows sales increase the more senses are involved,” and spherical video has at least three–hearing, seeing and feeling. That’s one more than everybody else.

Here’s the full article.

To learn more about how Bluetext is leading in VR, reach out today:

It’s been an exciting summer here at Bluetext, and to top it all off, our Chief Creative Officer Jason Siegel is speaking at BizBash’s Elevate DC 2016 on August 3rd about his ideas and insights on the many cool things happening in our office and the industry in general. Jason will head to the Reagan Center here in Washington on August 3rd to participate in this one-day conference for meeting and event professionals. Filled with engaging speakers from a variety of industries, Elevate DC promises to be a great time, and Bluetext is honored to participate.

Jason will speak about “The New Rules of Social Media and Event Marketing”, sharing the way that social media engagement and other innovative marketing strategies can help businesses drive interest and registration for events. Following up on Bluetext’s recent virtual reality campaign for Varonis, Jason will discuss how to seamlessly integrate VR into an event marketing strategy. He will also be exploring how to use a three-part, campaign-style approach to maximizing event reach and creating urgency to register.

To see Jason’s presentation and the many other great speakers coming to Elevate DC this year, you can register here. And to learn more about how Bluetext is on the cutting of VR, reach out today:

Anyone familiar with The New Yorker Magazine may have noticed an interesting cover on the May 16 edition—a two-color drawing of a women stepping onto a subway car. It seems somewhat simple—not particularly eye-catching. But download an app called Uncovr (developed for The New Yorker), hold it over the magazine’s cover, and the image comes to life in your smart phone’s screen. Buildings grow off the page in 3-D form, music plays, city blocks rise up into the air, cars move around the streets. You can bring it in closer to zoom in among the buildings and see more detail, or bring it farther away for an overhead view. As long as you keep the screen anchored to the cover, an eye-popping video experience unfolds for the viewer.

This is Augmented Reality at its best. This older cousin of Virtual Reality has paved the way for the more immersive VR technology experiences through a Google Cardboard or a more expensive set of VR goggles like Oculus Rift or the Samsung Gear.

Augmented Reality is a live view of the physical environment that is augmented by computer-generated visuals. Virtual Reality, by contrast, replaces the real world with a digitally created one. Yet for marketers, they can go hand-in-hand. We’re huge fans of VR for digital marketing, and have produced a number of high-end experiences that bring customers into a virtual demonstration using state-of-the-art cameras and video editing. But new and better ways of leveraging Augmented Reality can play well along side of a VR campaign.

For marketers, this can mean an engaging way to preview a Virtual Reality campaign that can scale to as large of an audience as needed. Where VR videos require a set of goggles, Augmented Reality only needs a still graphic to key off of and an easy app download.

In The New Yorker’s example, the distribution model was simply the cover of the weekly publication. For CMOs at our enterprise clients, it can be a mailed postcard or one-pager, or it can be conveyed through a digital graphic via social media or an email. The image essentially serves as its own bar-code or QR code, bringing the experience to life. But rather than an obscure set of black bars and white spaces, the newer versions of Augmented Reality can anchor to a graphic representation that is part of the visual display, and leverages the motion-detecting software in the phone for changing viewing angles or for zooming in and out.

Augmented and Virtual Reality together deliver an amazing immersive experience that sets a marketing campaign far apart from the other noise in the market.

Designing, developing and implementing a new website can be very rewarding, especially when design and functionality work together to deliver a great experience for your audience. But it’s not always easy. Understanding the audience, how it interacts with your site, how it likes to obtain information, and what it responds best to is complicated and takes a lot of insight and experience. We know. We do it for a living.

That’s why we are proud to show off our own new website here at Bluetext. We are not the cobbler’s kids who don’t have shoes. Our website has been a key element in our success, and we keep it both cutting edge and fresh. One of our key objectives is to show off the great work we have done for our clients.

For our regular visitors, you may not notice some of the new design changes. There are additional case studies, the information is laid out in a more logical manner, and you will see new graphics and promotions. But from the back-end, it’s a significant progression for us.

The site is hyper-optimized for search engines, leveraging the latest changes in the Google search algorithms to ensure that the site gets the most organic traffic. It is closely integrated into our analytics and marketing automation platforms so we can track how people are using and interacting with the site. It’s also focused on delivering a personalized experience so that visitors can quickly get to the content they want and don’t have to revisit the home page each time. We’ve improved the load times so that everyone should have a good experience on the site. This is partly in response to Google’s rewarding good user experience, including load times for images and videos, in its search results.

We’ve also focused heavily on mobile as more content and sites are optimized for a mobile-first experience. The site is fully responsive. The creative displays are better and will provide examples of our work in more categories so that visitors can quickly find exactly what they are looking for. We’ve also enhanced the blog for greater industry insights on trends and best practices that we are seeing in the market, and have included an Ideas and Resources section on the home page.

So check it out, take it for a test drive, bang on the doors and kick the tires. Let us know what you think, and ask us how Bluetext can help you achieve greater success for your brand.