Other Voices Interview

Other Voices: A Discussion with Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications

Filed under Discussion, Other Voices Interview by Allan Schoenberg on 29 April 2011 at 03:13 {2 comments}

I have been fortunate enough to get to know Mark Ragan more closely during the past few years. Mark, as you may know, is CEO of Lawrence Ragan Communications and one of the leading figures in the public relations industry. For more than 30 years, the company has been the leading publisher of corporate communications, public relations, and leadership development newsletters and information to the industry. When The Ragan Report launched in 1970, the company made the leap ahead of the industry to position professional communicators as business leaders. Today, the Ragan brand now includes more than 16 targeted newsletters, MyRagan.com, PR Daily, HealthCare News and HR Communicator. In addition, Ragan produces several communications conferences, workshops, and senior-level forums. If you’re on Twitter you probably already know and follow @MarkRaganCEO. Here are the highlights of our discussion.

What is the mission of Ragan and what do you and your team hope to achieve?

We want our customers to think of us whenever they need a question answered or a problem solved. We want to become their top information source for news, information and practical, real-world advice. But we also want them to think of us as in indispensable resource for training. Need to learn more about social media strategies? Come to us. Want in-depth analysis of IBM’s new approach to content curation? You’ll find it in our archives. Looking for staff training on social media policies, listen to our webinar with Shel Holtz.

To support this mission, we’ve adapted the content curation model. This means we produce original content, but we also ‘curate’ content about PR, social media and internal communications from around the globe.

We launched this new model with the redesign of Ragan.com last year and the re-launch of PR Daily last February (Disclosure: I am a contributor to PR Daily). The results have been overwhelmingly good. Traffic to Ragan.com has doubled to 160,000 visits a month. PR Daily’s traffic has gone from 40,000 to 250,000 for the North American edition. PR Daily Europe is growing, but we’re new to this market, so we’re content with our average of 15,000 visitors each month.

This summer, we’ll introduce the new redesign of HR Communications News and Health Care Communications News. Both sites will be designed off the early success of Ragan.com and PR Daily. In the fall, we’ll be launching a new Brand Journalism news site.

Ragan has been around since 1970 when your father launched The Ragan Report. We’ve come a long way as an industry since then. Where do you see the industry headed? Are there trends we need to watch?

The smartest companies are turning their organizations into media outlets. No longer content to wait for traditional media to write about them, these companies are providing news and information about their markets directly to consumers. American Express, IBM, Best Buy, The Mayo Clinic, Southwest Airlines—this is just a short list of companies that have begun to practice what is increasingly being called ‘brand journalism.’ Many of them are scooping up reporters from traditional media and building news sites around their brands. Like Ragan, they too are using the content curation model of mixing original content with aggregated content from bloggers, traditional media and other online sources.

On the internal side of the business, companies will continue to rely increasingly on user generated content produced in internal, collaborative networks, so-called Facebook-type sites behind the firewall. The smartest among them are building mobile platforms so employees can access their Intranets from home or while on the road.

You are a huge advocate for social media. Why has it become so important to the public relations industry?

Social networks allow PR pros to deliver messages directly to consumers. They provide an alternative to the classic ‘beg-the-media-to-write-about-us’ strategy.

Why wait for someone to pick up our news release when we can cover and deliver our news through social channels and online sources? A great example of this occurred this week when an airplane slid off a runway at Midway Airport in Chicago. Southwest’s PR team covered its own story by getting making sure that consumers got information from its NutsaboutSouthwest blog first. Time will tell if companies can build credibility with this approach. To succeed, brand journalism must be honest and transparent. If it isn’t social media will turn against the organization and ‘out it’ for pushing false information or withholding key facts.

You’ve been busy at Ragan Communications the past year — global events, a new website, additional staff — what’s been the most exciting project for you and your team?

Watching our newly designed news sites take off and become increasingly the top sources for corporate communications news. PR Daily is now the #1 news site for PR pros in North America, though few people realize it. Any check of any web traffic monitoring site proves it out. This has been very rewarding for our editorial team. They’ve worked hard at making Ragan.com and PR Daily thorough, entertaining and conversational.

On the conference side of our business, we’re the most proud of the trust placed in us by the two-dozen companies that now host our events. Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, SAS, ConEd, Cisco, SWIFT in Brussels, The Mayo Clinic, NASDAQ, and many others. Their confidence in our events team, and their trust in our product, has helped us reach our goal of providing the best conferences in the industry.

We focus on B2B topics here on this blog. When you talk with communicators what do you think are the major differences between those in B2C and those in B2B?

B2B communicators have a tougher time proving the value of social media. If you’re a company making steel bolts, it’s hard to post big numbers on your Facebook and Twitter pages, and it’s an unfortunate fact of life that the C-suite continues to believe the big numbers equate with social media success. And yet, B2B communicators actually stand to gain more from social media and content curation. They can build content-rich sites that quickly establish them as leaders in their markets. The smaller the niche, the bigger the chance that you’ll dominate the news and conversational markets in your industry.

B2B social media has really come into full swing in the past year and companies are doing some interesting things. What are your B2B customers telling you their biggest challenge is when it comes to social media?

Getting budgets approved that divert advertising dollars from traditional media to social media and content marketing programs. However, this is changing rapidly. I am working with a hospital system now that may invest up to $2 million in building its own news and information site—a content site that is integrated into social media and traditional news sources.

You’ve been a big fan of the Flip cam and of course Cisco’s recent announcement must have been a surprise. But let’s be honest, video certainly isn’t going away. Where do you see the role of video in the enterprise?

The Flip is certainly not going away. Much has been made of Cisco’s fear that smart phones will replace pocket cameras. This may be true with teenagers, Moms and other consumers, but you won’t see internal communicators shooting roving reporter features with their iPhones. Flip’s competitors—like the far superior Kodak Zi8—will continue to rack up big sales in the corporate communications industry, as will other cam corders designed for higher quality videos.

I also believe that videos will become shorter as editors and producers embrace the reality that people want to ‘snack’ on information. We’ll get to a point—if we haven’t already—where a 90-second video is almost too long.

As for enterprise video, sometimes known as YouTube behind the firewall, this trend will continue to grow. I met a marketing director at a small, 30-employee firm who is now required to post 60-second video summaries of meetings she attended so others could get briefed on important news. In other organizations, companies are mounting cameras on computers and asking employees to share their expertise with others by posting short videos on ideas and news. Skype and other voice-over-Internet services will continue to be used to bring far-flung employees into global conferences and internal communication summits. And virtual conferences, like the one I participated in at SAS two years ago, will all make use of improvements in worldwide video streaming.

Most people in the PR industry know you via your work life and Twitter feed. So how does Mark Ragan unwind and relax from a busy day in the office?

Well, it helps to have a four-year-old. We live in a television-free house where the only computer is locked away in my basement office. I try to put my online life away when I arrive at home, but it’s difficult. I am the CEO of a media company in a world that no longer provides convenient news cycles. What I have done is hire more people, including my first social media editor. She has helped take a huge load off my back by creating our first LinkedIn communities and keeping up with trends, new tools and strategies. And, of course, large pints of ale always help. But you would know that, Allan.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Visualizing B2B Social Media Marketing

Is Motivation the Key to Success?

Getting Your Degree in “Business Acumen”

Listening & Responding to Customers: Industries That Have Struggled Are Making Strides

Filed under Other Voices Interview, Uncategorized by Aaron Pearson on 28 January 2010 at 12:42 {9 comments}

A Q&A With Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

Jeannie Walters’s Chicago-based consulting firm specializes in the cornerstones of customer experience, including customer engagement, employee engagement and connections like social media. Before starting 360Connext, she spent 12 years at Vox, a customer experience consulting firm, eventually as President and Partner. Walters specializes in helping companies achieve more loyalty from employees, customers and prospects through improved experiences at every level.

Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

I spent some time last week talking with her about the profound impact improved customer engagement can have in B2B, both in terms of strengthening existing business relationships and in unleashing those customers as word-of-mouth advocates for your brand.

Aaron: Talk a little about what you learned at Vox that reflects your priorities now at 360Connext.

Jeannie: A main focus for me has been around the customer experience, and typically no one person owns that function so it touches a lot of areas. Employee engagement is one of the easiest ways you can influence customer experience so that’s a big focus for me right now. For example there are a lot of companies right now that have laid off employees and you need to keep those remaining employees focused on the mission. The other area that’s really coming to life is social media to connect directly with customers, and that goes to both content and communication. But most customer initiatives don’t typically work, because it has to become a part of the organization’s culture.

Aaron: Changing culture is a very long-term process, right?

Jeannie: It is, but one step people can take is to really understand what your customer experience is right now. I’ve worked with large companies like Allstate and AIG and that’s a daunting effort. So you need to take it one piece at a time. For instance, look just at your social media strategy. Or just look at conversion rates online. Then take those learnings and apply them to the next piece and the next piece. Don’t expect a CRM system to be a magic bullet to [fully understand the customer experience].

Now my focus is more on midsized companies because in a lot of ways, you can move things a lot quicker, make changes easier. Oftentimes, midsized companies are still run by the original leader. They are often more passionate about the customer experience too.

Aaron: How do you engage employees in customer experience initiatives? It’s not just about the marketing and sales people, right?

Jeannie: The problem is we often focus on the salesperson relationship but often after the deal those people move on. So companies need to focus on retention as much as acquisition. All the money and resources go to acquisition or selling – making the sale. …

A lot of the [employee engagement problem] relates to hiring the right people and making sure they’re the type of people that solve problems and are service-oriented. Because if you get feedback from customers, you need people who are really prepared to respond.

Aaron: So what are some of the best practices in being responsive to customers?

Jeannie: Be very public about feedback and use it. There are some SaaS [Software as a Service] companies that do a great job of that. They say, “Customers, we heard from you and so we’re doing x, y and z” with our software. The other thing is kind of empowering employees to solve problems. Call centers are often incented to spend less time on the phone and that’s terrible.

Aaron: I’ve actually heard of call center workers purposely faking connection problems to rack up a bunch of short calls.

Jeannie: Yes it’s better for them if they hang up.

Aaron: Of course, it can be hard to find the resources for solving that caller’s problem right then and there, especially with complex products.

Jeannie: So you need to be realistic, about whether we can call you back for instance. At the end of the day, humans are reasonable. The rub comes in when the expectation comes a certain way and is not delivered. Cell phone companies are finally figuring out that service is what they do and getting much better at call center service.

Aaron: Talk about customer events. Do people use them well?

Jeannie: Social media has done a lot to promote events better and to help companies understand what customers are looking for. People want substance, and especially with complicated products, they want to understand how to make this work better for me, and another customer can help them understand that best. SaaS companies have also done a great job here by bringing together their power users to help [these other customers] and that’s had a lot more influence on the experience.

Aaron: It’s interesting that you keep bringing up SaaS companies – these are companies that realize they are service companies, not software companies, so it seems natural that they would really be focused on listening to and responding to the customer, true?

Jeannie: Absolutely true. Also, look at banks and how they used to be known for abusing small business clients. They took your business for granted and then realized people have more choices. Some banks have been strugging with family-run businesses because the clientele is dying off and they didn’t reach out to the next generation. I had a client who found their business customers had a relationship with their banker. So if the banker moved on, so did the business. In response, the bank started creating small business-focused events – forums for small business customers. AmEx Open Forum is an example of that. If you are an AmEx busines customer and carry an Open card, you get access to other entrepreneuers like yourself. The part of the pendulum swing that we’re in is exclusive memberships. I predict we’ll see more of that. People want to find the right people a little easier.

Other Voices: Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB magazine and BtoB’s Media Business

Filed under Other Voices Interview by Allan Schoenberg on 13 May 2009 at 15:24 {no comments}

I had the pleasure of meeting Ellis Booker at the Chicago Social Media Club event in March 2009. As the editor for BtoB magazine, Ellis oversees content for the only publication devoted exclusively to the intersection of business marketing and business strategy. He also is editor of BtoB Media Business, the Magazine for Business Publishing Executives.ublished monthly by Crain Communications Inc., the publication reaches an audience of more than 45,000 readers. In addition to the print edition, BtoB offers online content and a weekly e-mail newsletter. Prior to joining BtoB Ellis was Editor at Large for CMP’s Internet Week, Senior Editor for Mecklermedia’s Web Week, and Senior Editor for Computerworld. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. You can find Ellis on Twitter at @ellisbooker.

Q: What changes in B2B marketing and communications have you seen since you’ve been at the magazine?

A: Two things. First has been the embrace of marketing metrics. It’s significant, I think, that during this latest downturn, marketing continues, albeit at reduced budgets. In other words, marketers have succeeded in demonstrating their value to the business bottom line. There will be no going back to “let’s throw it out there” campaigns. Even newfangled viral executions are being monitored closely, and modified if they are not meeting some pre-determined success metric. The second thing, I’d say, is how much more playful and creative the executions have become in the nine years I’ve been editor of BtoB. I would credit Ogilvy’s brilliant work for long-time client IBM as helping to create this new, creative landscape.

Q: The economy has obviously been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. How do you see B2B communicators coping?

A: It’s sector by sector, as you’d expect. What will be interesting is how the hardest hit areas, such as construction and financial services, find their voice in the recovery. And how the survivors, many in merged situations, handle their merged brands.

Q: How do you see B2B companies embracing social media?

A: Cautiously. But they need to engage these new channels, at the very least as listening posts for how their products and brands are being discussed by customers and prospects. Another healthy outcome of social media is that it is forcing companies to look at how their customers consume media. The old assumptions about target audiences–the trade magazines they read, shows they watch, conferences they attend, etc.–are being considered with fresh eyes. Also, the smart companies are giving their young employees more and

more responsibility for setting the strategy for these channels, which are consumed by young professionals like themselves.

Q: With all the press about print diminishing, how do B2B companies feel about print advertising? And how is BtoB dealing with this?

A: We’ve had a multi-page NetMarketing section in BtoB since relaunching the title in 2000. So Internet topics are not new to us. We also have a standing section on business media, which provides very insightful coverage of media companies. Regarding the future, what I think you’ll see is the media print brands in each category surviving and growing integrated print-Web-event-data businesses. The second- and third-place media properties are on the bubble, unfortunately.

Q: What marketing programs are they doing for brand retention and awareness?

A: Answering this slightly differently… one of the things that has concerned me is marketers being too myopic about, if you will, transaction-based campaigns and having less patience for long-haul, multi-year efforts that build brands. This problem is magnified in the current economy, of course.

Q: Where are B2B companies investing most of their marketing dollars?

A: No surprise here. Online is still growing at double digits, although far less than a couple years ago. Within that online spending, paid search and search engine optimization take the lions share.

Q: If you could give advice to B2B communicators, what three things would you tell them they need for being successful?

A: First, I’d say communicators must learn to listen before they can talk. And by “listen” I mean listen across all channels, using analytic technology to make informed decisions. Second, they need to coordinate their efforts. It’s simply not acceptable these days to have online and offline efforts out of sync. Third, they should be ready to adapt, and adapt quickly. Companies that adopt the right technologies to listen, monitor and manage their messaging should be able to modify these efforts quickly when the data indicates X or Y

isn’t working.

Q: Finally, what’s really the best way to pitch a story to you these days and what are you looking for?

A: The best way is e-mail. I live on e-mail. But before sending me a pitch, please read BtoB (and our many, subject-focused e-mail products) to see how we organize our coverage. That’ll give you the best idea of what we’re interested in. And on last thing. Despite my many comments about enabling technology, our focus here is about how marketers, practioners, are using these tools. We don’t do product reviews. We want to talk to users.

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