Posts Tagged ‘grassroots’

Hear about the Behind the Scenes of Attracting Google to Duluth

Monday, May 17th, 2010

This is the ninth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 9: Hear How We Brought Google to Duluth

Instead of reading another blog post, I thought you might enjoy hearing some of our advice. While we’ll be launching a new podcast in June, today I wanted to point you to a podcast where I was the featured guest earlier today. The podcast itself deals with job transitions, but the host asked me a handful of questions about PureDriven and specifically our success with the Google project. So for those of you who are more listeners than readers, listen to Your Story, at Coach Radio.

So Remember: I talked a lot in this broadcast about giving to others without knowing what direct benefit you’ll ultimately reap. Both getting into social media as a career, and the Google project paid off handsomely for myself, and PureDriven, but there was no way of knowing how or even if we were going to benefit, at the start. So next time you want to turn down a potential opportunity, examine it for potential long-term benefits, not solely on whether you’ll earn a paycheck from it next week.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else”

To read the seventh, visit “ A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors ”

To read the eighth, visit “ Google Needs To Know You Exist, So Tag Correctly“

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Google Needs To Know You Exist, So Tag Correctly

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the eighth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 8: Developing An Online Tagging Strategy

is Critical to Getting Seen Online

Word Cloud of Obama's speech to Congress

Photo Credit: Jason Morrison

In our efforts to attract Google to Duluth, we knew we wanted the public involved, and we knew we wanted everything we did to be seen by Google. Your business also needs to get exposure, once you’ve invested the time having a website developed, or put your Facebook page together. So is lots of words and pictures the key? Yes, and no. If you have a gorgeous website, but no content, then Google won’t see you, and therefore neither will anyone else.

If however, you have a lot of content, but not the right keywords in certain slots, that can seriously hamper your efforts.

So first, define your strategy. For example, we wanted attention in a lot of different places, so everywhere Google went online on the issue of Google Fiber, a video we shot, an article done on us, something we wrote, or our Facebook group would display prominently.

Our strategy was to make our entire online effort strong, not only googletwinports.com.

So we focused on optimizing every piece of content we put out. We told people exactly how to write their headlines, so collectively our YouTube videos would rank high for terms like “Google Fiber.” We wanted hefty levels of chatter and engagement. So we had volunteers chatting all day long on our Facebook Group, keeping people engaged in the process.

If your business wants exposure online, step one is normally creating the website or blog. Step two meanwhile, is making sure the pages are all tagged correctly. For a short primer on where to stick keywords, visit our first search engine optimization instructions page. And to see where those tags physically go, click on our second search engine optimization page.

One caution however. We’re currently upgrading our keywords, so what to pay attention to are the spots they go in. Pay no attention to the words in the boxes. If you need help choosing keywords, visit this excellent site called Google Insights For Search.

So Remember: If you want to be found on the web, you’ve got to have content filled with keywords not just in your copy, but also in the correct spots on each of your website pages.

Go ahead and post questions or comments down below, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else”

To read the seventh, visit “ A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors “

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A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the seventh installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 7: Connect With, Don’t Chastise Competitors
Handshake

Photo Credit: AndyRob

With more than 1,000 competitors, the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative had a lot of reason to worry. Not only were we competing against most other communities in America our size, we were also up against big cities with far more resources and money than we had. This post isn’t about why we eventually rose to the top online based on this Share of Voice Report, or landing on Page 1 of the New York Times. I’ve already covered those two topics. What I wanted to focus on here, is the attitude we had throughout the campaign, that I believe really helped us stay focused on our goals, which helped us catapult ourselves to national prominence.

We didn’t care a whole lot about the rest of the country. Sure, we paid attention to what everyone else did, and incorporated ideas we thought worked extremely well, like the idea Grand Rapids had of having everyone post their confirmation codes, after explaining to Google why they ought to build their network that that particular community.

But we didn’t spend our hours worried about resources other cities and companies had, nor felt like we needed to simply copy what everyone else did. We live by Lake Superior, so we used that in our wildly fabulous video, from which the world learned of our campaign.

Instead, we encouraged the cities who we thought were our biggest competition, by connecting with them through private messages, and even kicking around ideas for how we might be able to team up on public relations stunts to sell our cities collectively. We also did our best to credit companies by name with work they did for us, whenever we were being interviewed as well.

We also took opportunities to build on what other cities have tried. In response to Topeka renaming itself Google, we put out a spoof video renaming our kids Google and Googlette. You can see all those videos by visiting our YouTube channel.

We realized that over the long haul, you get so much further in life by linking arms and minds with others, instead of viewing everyone as a threat. Sure, we had our own secret sauce projects we didn’t share with the competition, but we knew worrying about what everyone else was doing would only cost us time and energy. The online and even offline marketplace may seem packed with competitors offering your services more cheaply than you can. But remember, you only need a small sliver of the overall pie to be successful. And the way to get a bigger piece of that pie is to encourage your competitors. Then they want to help and work with you. People aren’t genuinely thankful and helpful, which makes your effort really stick out. I know it sounds nutty, but view the online world as a friendly marketplace full of potential customers and other businesses you might partner with. In the long run, it will prove a much more fruitful venture than if you view everyone as a threat.

Don’t believe me? Jason Fried, of 37signals.com, wrote a great piece along the same lines, which you can read in the most recent INC. That particular column is exclusive to the magazine I believe, but if you click on the link, you can read other great stuff of his.

So Remember: Being helpful and kind to others can only help your business. Worrying and acting mean to competitors feels natural to many of us, but will ultimately lead to fewer sales.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else“

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A Google Fiber Tip: If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the sixth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 6: If you can’t be yourself, someone else, literally
Meet my good friend, Speedie Gigabit,
This little man was created by local designer Brian Barber, and it was possibly one of the most successful ideas of the campaign, which I initially balked at.

Luckily, PureDriven as a whole and the rest of the volunteers at Google Twin Ports loved the idea of the character. My main complaint was that it served as yet another project our staff didn’t have the time or resources to manage. In fact however, it turned out to be a fantastic way to rally our supports and speak to them on Facebook. Here’s why it worked so well for us, and you might want to consider having a mascot or single person represent your business online.

1. It gave our volunteers a unified voice online. Right now, if your business uses a Facebook Fan page that you are an administrator of, every time you make a comment, it’s like the company logo responding. If you’d rather respond as an individual, you have to remove your administrative privileges from the Fan Page, and then get someone to make you an administrator again, when you want to change the page in some way. Here’s an example of when I post something on our company’s Facebook page.

Even though I’d like the person to know who I am, responding as the page’s owner, makes the logo appear, where ideally, I’d like my face to be.

In some cases, an employee might also want to respond to a customer. But if he or she responds as an individual, an introduction explaining he or she works for the company would have to preface every comment.

But a mascot, or even one person creating a personal profile on behalf of the company, solves that dilemma.

Whether it’s a person or a mascot, the personal profile can respond to comments and take part in conversations, with a clear, singular voice, instead of multiple individuals respond to comments, or having the company’s logo appear by each answer.

But in the world of Facebook and sites like it, real pictures of real people are preferred. And people do business with people. So having a picture of a real person on Facebook and especially Twitter to represent you, is ideal.

Because our campaign was a regional effort, we went with the mascot. It provided a “person” yet didn’t identify the entire campaign around one real face, as would be best for solo-entrepreneurs and candidates for office.

On a Facebook Groups page there is no company logo issue, but you still want that unique person or logo people can latch on to. And even if you’re a private individual with your own business, having two private accounts – one as you, and one as your public persona – is often most effective on Facebook.

A friend of mine runs a new business called Sgt. Steve, for weight loss and coaching. His real name is Steve, but when he responds to a customer or potential customer, he uses a separate Sgt. Steve account, to go along with the persona, and to keep people from wondering, “Is this someone named Steve, or THE Sgt. Steve?”

So how do you create a second private account?

All that’s required is a second e-mail address. If you don’t have one, just sign up for a free one at Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.

So Remember: Having an additional private Facebook account to speak to customers either with a picture of a person or a mascot, can give your business or organization more of a voice online, and it’s more personal than a logo talking to a customer.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical“

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Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the third installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the GoogleTwinPorts initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

St. Joseph Volunteers

Volunteers at a bicycling event in St. Joseph, Missouri. Photo Credit: MoBikeFed

Lesson 4: Volunteers are your most important asset. Treat them like they are.

During the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative, our core team of leaders dealt with hundreds of volunteers. Here are three lessons we learned.

1. Don’t try and tell them what to do.

We knew what we felt needed to be done, and assumed that because we were the leaders, all the volunteers would be quick to following instructions. While some volunteers certainly followed directions, many didn’t.

They’re real people with time constraints and challenges. So over time we took a more laid back approach to volunteers. We would offer them specific tasks we called missions (so they didn’t sound like work, thanks to our marketing genius Kate Bradley) and would encourage them to try one. If they weren’t serious, they quickly faded away. If they didn’t do what we asked them, but hung around anyway, we would then try and talk to them about what they were interested in. Often once we matched them up with their natural interests, did some amazing work. It’s better to let go of some of your control and get a volunteer engaged where he or she feels comfortable, so they can contribute, even if where they feel comfortable isn’t where your greatest need might be.

2. Ask Early, Ask Often

We needed hundreds of volunteers to blanket our communities with fliers talking about the Google Twin Ports project, much like an election campaign does. But because we had so many projects in need of volunteers, we didn’t start asking for volunteers for a pledge-campaign drive until a week prior to the canvassing across the Duluth and Superior area. (Keep in mind Google only gave us about six weeks total.) When we were ready, we hit as many media outlets as possible with the message (social media sites like Facebook, e-blasts, TV, newspapers and radio especially.) While we hoped for about 125 volunteers, we probably got about 80, and covered half to 3/4ths of the area we were hoping to. Other initiatives later on made up most of the slack. But remember to ask for volunteers early and often.

3. Engage, engage, engage

Our group’s official Facebook Groups Page stands at 20,569 members

That page ended up being a great location to keep volunteers and supporters loosely associated with the organization informed, and to hear our latest calls to action. In order to keep the energy up, we made sure we worked hard to have several volunteers constantly chatting on the site, as well as asking people to post the verification code that they received, after nominating the Duluth-Superior area as a test site for Google. This gave something for each person to “talk about” and contribute. That once again allowed our organization to touch them with our message. We didn’t come up with the idea of posting the code though. We got it from the Grand Rapids, Michigan, fan page, which did an amazing job as well. And as you can see, had a much bigger presence on Facebook than we did: 38, 843 people as of 11:40 a.m. on May 3, 2010. (We’ll get into why in our minds that didn’t matter much in the long run though.)

So Remember: 1. Try and steer volunteers to what they want to do, because that’s where they will be most effective. 2. Ask for help early and often. It takes seven to 10 times before someone will typically take your request seriously. 3. Find little ways for people to stay connected to the effort, even if they don’t have the time or inclination to do a whole lot.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best“

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In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the second installment in a series titled, “How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times,” explaining how PureDriven helped vault the GoogleTwinPorts initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses of all sorts, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 2: Why Getting Paid Is Overrated

Credit: FutureShape

Google only gave communities about 45 days for the entire project, making a nimble initiative critical. Many volunteers came forward, along with a handful of local advertising agencies and people

willing to work for money.

Because of Minnesota disclosure laws, asking for money from Duluth to hire a firm or firms would take too long. So if a company wanted to help, it had to do so with the understanding that it would be strictly on a voluntary basis. It was a frustrating thought, considering we’d heard anecdotal information that other communities were handing their organizing committees checks of $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000. We on the other hand, had to work completely for free at the beginning, even spending our own money for incidental costs like food and parking fees, with no guarantee of being paid back. But this lack of money ultimately translated into a boon for us. 1. Organizations only interested in the project if they could make money off it, quickly vanished. 2. That in turn allowed for those lesser known individuals and organizations who showed up for mainly altruistic reasons to take over, such as the TwinPorts Commonwealth, which co-managed the project with PureDriven. Companies like Outcom Consulting and ProPrint also pitched in for free. And others lowered or nixed their prices altogether. Had we had money to spend, what we got for free wouldn’t have been so free. To see a complete list of all the companies that helped out or supported the project, just visit GoogleTwinPorts.com.

So Remember This: Not having money is sometimes a wonderful thing. If you’re a business, consider getting involved in a project with no guarantee of getting paid, because often it will in fact pay off in the long run in ways you didn’t expect. PureDriven probably received more than $50,000 in free advertising, simply because our name was attached to the project, which was being talked about throughout the area and all over the Internet. When money isn’t the object, the people you want to work with – because their motives are in the right place – tend to materialize, and those who may be talented but only in it for the money, fade away.

If you missed Lesson 1 of our series, just click here: How to Get Your Client on Page 1 of the New York Times.

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Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times.

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

On Feb. 10, 2010 Google announced a nationwide contest to build one or more test locations for ultra-high speed Internet, which would run between 100 and 1,000 times faster than what it currently available. By several measurements, the Google Twin Ports initiative was the most successful at getting grassroots support and national attention based on this share of voice report. This is a series of posts on how we did it.

Google wanted communities to show them two things. 1. The engineering of the city, and logical pros and cons of Google trying to build this test bed in their community. 2. Whether the community as a whole liked the idea, by voicing grassroots support. This is the story of how PureDriven and a cadre of dedicated volunteers together vaulted our effort spanning the Duluth, Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin communities – an area commonly called the TwinPorts – to national prominence (Step 2). Traditional stories about our effort ran nationwide; our mayor was interviewed on CNN; and video and photographs of him leaping into Lake Superior for Google showed up on the front page of the New York Times, CBS and CNBC, and hundreds of other traditional and online news outlets. Overall, the Google Twin Ports effort ultimately was discussed or mentioned more than 1,500 times online according to data collected by PureDriven.

We tell this story to explain what worked for us, so businesses and grassroots organizations can build similar successful efforts, and avoid our missteps. What is written here is also only the opinion of me, Patrick Garmoe (although it was reached after talking with other volunteers informally). As a full-time staff member of PureDriven, and a 10-year veteran of print journalism, I led the public relations effort, and therefore had first-hand knowledge of the tactics used here. Each of the blogs posts in this series will begin with a short story, followed by tips you can apply to your efforts to gain both traditional and online exposure for your company, cause or initiative.

We will be posting the full collection prominently on the blog indefinitely.

Lesson 1: To really get on the national radar, you need both real news, and an image that encapsulates what you’re selling. Ours was cheap camera footage of our mayor, Duluth Mayor Don Ness, leaping out of the freezing waters of Lake Superior. (By the way, the mayor was going to leap into Lake Superior as part of fundraiser for Special Olympics anyhow, so it wasn’t any more work to do it in the name of the Google project as well.

I knew early on we needed something that without words, would really show how much we wanted Google to come, something the public and media would respond to, and catch fire online and on the web, because it was so funny, or interesting, or crazy.

The day before the Polar Plunge, I heard about the leap. I called around that Saturday morning to videographers I knew. No one was available. So I grabbed my $100 Flip video camera that I use for video blogging purposes, and shot this video.

I took a couple hours to edit it that weekend with iMovie on my iMac, (it was the first time I used that particular software by the way) and slapped it online our PureDriven’s  YouTube account. The image didn’t pick up steam immediately, nor did I expect it to. I knew that if this effort became a national story, traditional media organizations would need visuals. Ultimately that’s exactly what happened. CBS news ran a story, along with CNBC, and likely dozens of other news networks across the region, and even internationally. That’s why I assume the New York Times eventually asked for a picture, which we were happy to provide (the one that ultimately ran in paper was from our local newspaper, the Duluth News Tribune. I’ve included a link to the picture below.

Duluth Mayor Don Ness Leaps into Lake Superior

I believe CNN saw the New York Times story, and therefore opted to call our mayor to be on its morning show the next day. Whether it’s local or national media, television takes its story list from newspapers and websites. During the same segment, CNN also interviewed the mayor of Sarasota, Fla., who also happened to have pulled a public relations stunt that got them coverage in the same New York Times story. There are thousands of cities competing for Google. Why did Duluth get so much attention? Because we did the best job coming up with a visual for news organizations to show.

As of this writing, we’ve had nearly 40,000 views of the video on YouTube. That isn’t bad for an unrehearsed piece of footage that took only five minutes to shoot. Not even the part on the end where our mayor challenges other mayors to jump in Lake Superior was rehearsed.

So Remember: As long as the picture isn’t fuzzy and the audio is decent, quality often doesn’t matter. The video looks jumpy, because I was racing around without my tripod. Don’t over think video. Just start filming. And it’s best to get a newspaper or website to tell your story. Because often the television stations look at what the newspapers do, and copy it, especially if there’s footage they can show.

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