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PR changes so fast and furiously that it’s not even PR anymore. It’s content building.

Our fundamental approach to PR has always been about delivering results that impact a company’s bottom line. Whether a brand has been around 10 days or 10 years, communication for the sake of it is a luxury we no longer have. More companies—big and small—are taking a hard look at their PR spend and asking the most salient and fundamental question: What value am I getting from PR?

At the same time, it’s fascinating that companies are taking a more holistic view of audiences and influencers, understanding that as the definition of media has fundamentally changed. Effective brand builders and marketers must look at business drivers beyond the list on page 52 of “Marketing 101.”

More companies than ever are skeptical about the value of paying Bursedelfleischhillketchshand, Inc. six figures annually, and so we’ve examined how we can adjust our offerings to meet their needs. As we did this, two things became clear:

In our increasingly virtual world, the importance and value of offering services outside the U.S. has increased big time. Whether based in Brighton or Brisbane or Baton Rouge, some portion of every company’s influencer and customer base is likely global.

Also, while big brands will always be big, small businesses are grabbing an increasingly powerful role.  As our CEO Richard Laermer pointed out in his fun book Punk Marketing, big boy brands are also trying to mimic their smaller brethren to connect directly and personally with their audiences, who often hate them for their bigness. And through this, small businesses themselves have become both a crucial audience and drivers of products and services that have the potential to truly benefit from PR. After all, they have the stories to tell.

Because we’re smart enough to know what we don’t know, RLM didn’t set about opening offices in every country on the planet. We know firsthand the pitfalls of this model, from siloed communications to padded bills. Instead, we set about identifying our counterparts in different countries, agencies that share our passion for PR and our core philosophy.

And we found some amazing partners. Two of them we want to introduce you to: Voice Communications in the UK and CP Communications in Australia.

We are not announcing some big formal network like the hyphenate-firms do because we see that as a sure path to joining their ranks…and that’s not what or where we wish to be. Rather, this affiliation is a collaboration on behalf of clients will bring in real, on-the-ground expertise.

Instead of “paper” partnerships (you know the type: Hey, let’s say we work together and see what we can get), this is real.

Before you read the articles on our partners, let us promote something. (Note: RLM rarely uses this eight-year-old newsletter to talk about ourselves. So give us this day.)

What’s the topic? We are often asked how RLM is different from other agencies.

Value: To be clear, we’re not necessarily cheaper than others. We offer value. We do not waste clients’ money on inflated overheads. We don’t mark up expenses. We don’t have armies of junior folks representing client brands. We deliver measurable value. Every agency will tell you that only senior people will service your account. In most cases, that’s not true, because junior people are more profitable. But we don’t have junior people in the back room or anywhere else.  Actually, since we moved in May, we don’t have a back room anymore!

Accountability: Because we are an independent agency—one of the last in the nation—we don’t answer to a board or shareholders or a holding company with a proud history making shopping carts. We answer to our clients—and only our clients. None of our clients have iron-clad year-long contracts; instead, we have agreements that provide the flexibility to let us do what works and abandon what doesn’t.  That is our motto. See? Abandon can be a good word.

Service—and Services: As a smaller agency, RLM has a right and reason to over-service and over deliver on accounts, and we do it with pride. We provide the whole range of communication services, from Twitter feeds and blog commenting to TV spots and newspaper inches, custom designed to fit your needs.

Who are you? You’re the tinyish firm looking to grow quickly or a big one whose stakeholders need value from PR. We’ll tell you—get a bunch of us and a host of ideas—what we can do for you.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Award-winning Voice is built on combined skills and experience with genuine passion for PR, and is proud to have created a new breed of PR consultancy, consisting of a small, friendly group of hand-picked, motivated professionals who enjoy the buzz of top flight PR. Voice offers all the expertise and creativity of a big agency, but without the eye-popping fees or tear-inducing expense claims.

Voice has found that as communication vehicles have multiplied in recent years, communication itself has become far more personal in its nature. Nichola Cain, Managing Director of Voice Communications explains: “We have seen definite shifts in expectations of PR. Businesses are now looking for that personal touch, and the opportunity to build a close long-term relationship with their agency. Voice is perfectly suited to offer first class results, maximising the best of what any company has to offer.”

After over a decade of experience at some of the biggest PR agencies in London, Nichola launched Voice Communications to provide clients with a robust PR strategy and plan that prioritises business objectives, delivers measurable PR results, and ultimately provide ROI.

Since inception, Voice has gained a broad and eclectic range of B2B, B2C and public sector clients which includes Accio Group, Anser Project Managers, PepsiCo Naked Juice, Harlow Council, Shaken Udder, Ultimate Boot Camp, Amara, and Searchwells.

Voice’s client base is not limited to the UK shores, they recently won Australian client Mediband, based in Sydney. Since then, Mediband has featured in a multitude of publications including The Telegraph, and they have seen sales triple as a direct result of PR.

Voice quickly recognised the growth of social media, and set up a dedicated digital department to service existing and prospective clients. Voice also noticed the growth in company’s awareness of their environmental responsibility, and has a department dedicated to this; A Green Voice, which covers everything from producing a company’s CSR policy to working with completely ‘green’ products.

From insurance firms and beverage brands to project management companies, Voice’s list of clients showcases their vast capabilities as a PR agency. Voice appeals to companies of all shapes and sizes from one man bands through to multinationals; small enough to deliver that all important personal touch, but big enough to resource and deliver first class results.

CP Communications offers truly strategic and creative solutions that can help you achieve your business objectives through strategic PR programs and marketing.

CP Communications was established in 2001 to drive business success by using the power of PR and marketing.

CP Communications works within a variety of industries including information technology, professional services, recruitment, aged care, digital media and media. We produce results for organisations of any size in any industry.

How to pitch to a blogger

We source information from blogs – recipes, opinions, news – but did you know you can pitch stories to bloggers just like you do to journalists?

The first thing to note when pitching an idea to a blogger is – they aren’t journalists. They have a very personalised medium where they interact with their readers through comments on their blog. So you need to make the contact with them personal.

Sending an irrelevant media release to them is obviously a big no-no but rather than pitching a general release, be sure to make your contact with the blogger a little more personal than you would with a journalist.

Read their blog first, make mention of posts that interested you and if possible make this friendly contact before sending a ‘pitch’ email. You can also start building a relationship with relevant bloggers by posting comments on their blog and engaging with them.

When a relationship has been built, a blogger will generally be more receptive to your ideas.

The pitch should be in the form of an email – which needs to be clear and to the point. Busy people do not read long emails, so in the first paragraph clearly outline your idea. Don’t email a media release. Take the time to detail the story idea and why their readers would be interested.

Obviously if you are asking them to review a product – send them the product but first ask them if they would like to receive it. Blindly sending products in the hope for a review is a waste of time.

Welcome Facebook Community Pages: What are they all about?

Just when we thought Facebook couldn’t get better to be able to connect with people, a new application has been introduced that will connect users at an even deeper level.

Enter Community Pages.

These pages allow you to connect with other people who share the same interests as you. For instance, if you have stated on your profile that you are a fan of water-skiing, this can connect you to a community page about the sport where you can learn more about it and share ideas with other interested people.

Where a Fan Page is created by a representative of an organisation or brand, a community page is created by Facebook about an idea, concept or interest.

It is not possible, at this stage, to contribute photos or content to community pages, with most information currently taken from Wikipedia. However, Facebook explained that in the near future there will be opportunities for people with passion or expertise in a specific field to contribute to these communities.

In your profile, information like your hometown, education and work can be changed from simply being words, to actual connections to different community pages. Facebook will become an intricate web of live connections.

Want to set up a Facebook page? Read our guide.

The most common queries we get about Wikipedia are “How do I submit a listing?” and “My page is wrong; how do I change it?”  We also get “Why does RLM do this so well when I can’t?!”

Good questions, all.

The answer to the first is straightforward: You don’t submit a listing to Wikipedia. You create a listing.

Anyone on earth can create and edit Wikipedia listings. There is no submission process. And you might have read this week about a new, much-improved Wikipedia UI dubbed Vector, which leads us to the second question. (The third question is our secret sauce, but you can call me anytime at 212-741-5106 x233 and I’ll give you a quote.)

Here are the realities of Vector, and why you should pay attention:

With Vector, editing Wikipedia pages has become much easier because they’ve removed much of the “wiki code” users see in the editing process. Now,  users edit information in tables and boxes via simple forms. It’s still not the dictionary definition of easy but it’s more user friendly.

The hope from the Wikis is that by simplifying the editing process, more users will edit listings. Up to now, just 1% of Wikipedia users have been responsible for more than 50% of edits.

And what about that 1%? Raises an interesting point: Wikipedia is the result of contributions created and edited by users. Wikipedia’s editors are mere mortals who volunteer to edit contributions; their only qualification is that they love and use Wikipedia a lot. These editors have no more power than we do; they just spend more time on Wikipedia than most of us do.

It’s important to understand that Vector is a UI change and includes functionality changes. It has nothing to do with content. Wikipedia entries still have to be written according to their own guidelines for encyclopedic content. That means NONE of your marketing copy is appropriate for Wikipedia. None of it. For more on RLM’s own “way of doing Wikipedia,” read this article.

Vector also makes no changes to the fact that anyone can edit (beginning to sense a theme?). If your brand has competitors or is involved in controversy, you need to be even more vigilant about your Wikipedia listing(s).

Now about that page content…

Smart companies are recognizing that Wikipedia is a communication vehicle that millions depend upon. Like Twitter, Facebook, your own blog and the news media, Wikipedia delivers actual measurable value to a communications program when used effectively. If you haven’t done a thorough audit of your Wikipedia presence recently, the time is nigh. If you aren’t sure what that audit involves, we can do it for you.  This is not a hard sell; we’re just telling you what we do.

As Twitter becomes a topic of conversation in board rooms the world over, Twitter has weighed in with “Twitter 101 for Business.” It’s a decent overview—and will be a huge help in creating those slides for the board presentation—but lacks the specificity needed to really wrangle your brand in the Twitterverse.

If you’ve ever tried to get customer service from Twitter, you know it’s a frustrating loop.  They only have 138 employees!  So you click Contact and Customer Support, and you find yourself in FAQs devoid of contact info. Press Enquiries leads to a contact form, but between us chickens, you’re not press covering Twitter so you don’t really want to use that. Which leaves a postal address. Go ahead…write them a letter…dare you…better yet, pop on over to Folsom Street and say hi!

Twitter doesn’t hire overseers awaiting instruction from you. If you have a question about how to use a function of Twitter, there’s plenty of info available, and of course you can always just ask your PR agency (if they don’t have an answer for you, ask us).

But if you have a REAL problem, one keeping you awake at night, you need to contact Twitter directly. Good news: there is a wizard behind the curtain. Here’s how to find him:

1. Start at the beginning. If your question is not answered, proceed to…

(This gets tricky…pay attention…)

2. Click Check Your Existing Requests and log in

3. When you get to the screen that says you have no open requests, go to the menu bar of your browser and enter this address: http://help.twitter.com/requests/new

4. Fill in the form and click Submit

And wait. And wait. And wait some more. They’re notoriously slow.  You can check the site for response to your query, and you will also be notified when Twitter responds via email—to the address associated with the Twitter user name you logged in with above.

Meanwhile, what do you do about those nefarious Twitizens who keep messing with your communications?

That’s for another installment of this newsletter. If you need a preview, drop us a line. We are all about giving things to those who ask us.