Doing great work like this clients will keep videographers in the advertising business for a long time because they make you want to follow the brand, buy the brand and be part of culture....Kudos to the photographer-turned-filmmaker Nabil Elderkin, who’s made his name directing videos by Kanye West, Bon Iver and Nicki Minaj, among many others.
In this video, the clip (from R/GA's London and Los Angeles offices) weaves in flashbacks to Williams's childhood in Compton, Calif., as she pushes through her workout, while the song "Black Unicorn" by 2 Chainz featuring Sunni Patterson plays.
HARO can be a great way to get coverage and links for your website – but it can also be a huge waste time with no results if you approach it in the wrong way. Understand these six personas and you’ll avoid wasting time and focus on the queries that could give you the media opportunity you’re looking for.
Online PR is an important part of any link-building strategy, but SEOs don’t always have the right skill sets to make it work for them. But one of the great things about HARO is that it can provide a great education at no cost – just dive in and keep at it!
HARO does have quality rules and the sites that pitch must have a certain score on Alexa. And the editors do scan the pitches and do refuse pitches that are not up to scratch.
Sign up at HelpAReporter.com and you’ll get three emails per day featuring queries from journalists who are looking for examples and good quotes to add color to their stories.
Scan through the queries (you’ll get between150 and 200 per day) and you’ll find that they fall into these types of personas.
Persona #1: Top-Notch
The BBC, Washington Post, ABC News, Fast Company, and many other top media outlets regularly pitch queries on HARO. These journalists use HARO to get quotes and add personal stories to their content.
This is one of the great advantages of HARO – it allows anyone who signs up to get access to top journalists.
Of course the payback can be tremendous, however for the top-notch journalists:
You need to be exactly the type of person they’re looking for
You’re going to face a lot of competition – lots of other people will be pitching
You’ve got to have a great story and you’ve got to pitch it well – no mean task
If you can’t fulfill these criteria, then you’ll be wasting your time pitching.
Probably the most common and possibly the most useful of the media outlets you’ll see on HARO. Most have good audiences and require a good standard of writing. These include sites like Open Forum from American Express, Entrepreneur Magazine, and BankRate.com.
Most of your online PR effort on HARO should go into sites like these.
They present a good opportunity because any business can respond, no matter what industry you come from.
The resulting articles are likely to be along the lines of "21 Small Business Owners Share Their Top Tips on…." That means you don’t really have a chance to stand out – the article will not be exclusively about you or your business.
There’s a high probability of getting a link because such sites understand the value exchange – give them a good quote and you get a link in return.
Of course others will see that too, so you’ll have lots of competition.
What is required is:
Flexibility in being able to see how to make your business relevant to the subject of the article.
A great sound bite – you need to write something original so that they can simply cut and paste into their article.
Persona #3: Niche Business Sites
These are queries from particular niches – lawyers, psychotherapists, dog trainers, and so on. You really have to be relevant to that niche – trying to twist your story to fit is a waste of time.
If you do fit the bill, you’re likely to get good editorial coverage and a decent link – but you must have a good story to tell.
The disadvantage is that any particular niche is not going to be featured that often and so your opportunities are limited.
However, the value exchange mentioned earlier should be followed – any site that gets a good quote should give a link in return.
But "stingy" sites don’t follow this value exchange. They’re usually attached or related to a commercial business so they’re not strictly a non-partisan media opportunity. They’re often reluctant to give links because they want to sell their own good or services.
So choose very carefully before investing time in making pitches to these sites!
Persona #5: Authors Looking for Material for Future Books
These can be a mixed bunch. You may get some decent writers, with a publishing contract already in place, looking for interesting examples or case studies.
But you may also get a lot of people writing their first e-book who think they can fill it with material from HARO pitches. They still have to meet the Alexa threshold, but it‘s worth checking them out.
Remember:
the book may never get published
you’ll wait a long time for your publicity or link
your contribution may be out of date by the time it’s published
,li>if the book does get published, it might bomb - no fame or fortune for you!
Are you really prepared to take the chance?
Persona #6: Anonymous
You’ll also see queries that give neither the name of the writer nor their targeted publication. For some reason, the publication does not want to tell you who they are.
Perhaps they’ve got a guaranteed spot on Oprah Winfrey and don’t want to be inundated with hundreds of pitches?
Perhaps, but you shouldn’t count on it. Your time could be better spent on other opportunities.
These six personas cover most of the queries you’ll find on HARO. But before pitching, you need to do some further checks.
Simple Checks on Queries That Interest You
When you do find queries that seem to fit the bill, check out:
Is the site a place where you’d really like to be featured?
Does the site readily link to sites that are featured in published articles?
Can you find articles that have already been written by the journalist behind the query?
Are there other ways to pitch this journalist or media outlet? A guest post or a press release perhaps?
Handling the media is something that won’t come naturally to all SEOs (see Jon Ball on SEW, "The Future of Link Building").
However, if you think you’ve got an aptitude for working with the media, then HARO is a great place to start.
You will get editorial and often that will be accompanied by quality links. But perhaps more importantly you’ll get the opportunity to develop your skills by working with and building contacts within the media – and that could be very valuable indeed.
Apple is synonymous with upper echelon design, but very little is known about the company's design process. Most of Apple's own employees aren't allowed inside Apple's fabled design studios. So we're left piecing together interviews, or outright speculating about how Apple does it and what it's really like to be a designer at the company.
Enter Mark Kawano. Before founding Storehouse, Kawano was a senior designer at Apple for seven years, where he worked on Aperture and iPhoto. Later, Kawano became Apple's User Experience Evangelist, guiding third-party app iOS developers to create software that felt right on Apple's platforms. Kawano was with the company during a critical moment, as Apple released the iPhone and created the wide world of apps.
In an interview with Co.Design, Kawano spoke frankly about his time at Apple--and especially wanted to address all the myths the industry has about the company and about its people.
"I think the biggest misconception is this belief that the reason Apple products turn out to be designed better, and have a better user experience, or are sexier, or whatever . . . is that they have the best design team in the world, or the best process in the world," Kawano says. But in his role as user experience evangelist, meeting with design teams from Fortune 500 companies on a daily basis, he absorbed a deeper truth.
"It's actually the engineering culture, and the way the organization is structured to appreciate and support design. Everybody there is thinking about UX and design, not just the designers. And that's what makes everything about the product so much better . . . much more than any individual designer or design team."
It has often been said that good design needs to start at the top--that the CEO needs to care about design as much as the designers themselves. People often observe that Steve Jobs brought this structure to Apple. But the reason that structure works isn't because of a top-down mandate. It's an all around mandate. Everyone cares.
"It's not this thing where you get some special wings or superpowers when you enter Cupertino. It's that you now have an organization where you can spend your time designing products, instead of having to fight for your seat at the table, or get frustrated when the better design is passed over by an engineering manager who just wants to optimize for bug fixing. All of those things are what other designers at other companies have to spend a majority of their time doing. At Apple, it's kind of expected that experience is really important."
Kawano underscores that everyone at Apple--from the engineers to the marketers--is, to some extent, thinking like a designer. In turn, HR hires employees accordingly. Much like Google hires employees that think like Googlers, Apple hires employees that truly take design into consideration in all of their decisions.
"You see companies that have poached Apple designers, and they come up with sexy interfaces or something interesting, but it doesn't necessarily move the needle for their business or their product. That's because all the designer did was work on an interface piece, but to have a really well-designed product in the way Steve would say, this 'holistic' thing, is everything. It's not just the interface piece. It's designing the right business model into it. Designing the right marketing and the copy, and the way to distribute it. All of those pieces are critical."
Facebook has hundreds of designers. Google may have 1,000 or more. But when Kawano was at Apple, its core software products were designed by a relatively small group of roughly 100 people.
"I knew every one of them by face and name," Kawano says.
For the most part, Apple didn't employ specialist designers. Every designer could hold their own in both creating icons and new interfaces, for instance. And thanks to the fact that Apple hires design-centric engineers, the relatively skeleton design team could rely on engineersto begin the build process on a new app interface, rather than having to initiate their own mock-up first.
Of course, this approach may be changing today.
"For Apple, having a small, really focused organization made a lot of sense when Steve was there, because so many ideas came from Steve. So having a smaller group work on some of these ideas made sense," Kawano says. "As Apple shifted to much more of a company where there's multiple people at the top, I think it makes sense that they're growing the design team in interesting ways."
Notably, Jony Ive, who now heads usability across hardware and software, is reported to have brought in some of the marketing team to help redesign iOS 7. It's a coup, when you think about it, for marketers to be deep in the trenches with designers and engineers. (That level of collaboration is frankly unprecedented in the industry.)
Apple products are often defined by small details, especially those around interaction. Case in point: When you type a wrong password, the password box shakes in response. These kinds of details are packed with meaningful delight. They're moments that seem tough to explain logically but which make sense on a gut level.
"So many companies try to mimic this idea . . . that we need to come up with this snappy way to do X, Y, and Z. They're designing it, and they can't move onto the next thing until they get a killer animation or killer model of the way data is laid out," Kawano explains. The reality? "It's almost impossible to come up with really innovative things when you have a deadline and schedule."
Kawano told us that Apple designers (and engineers!) will often come up with clever interactive ideas--like 3-D cube interfaces or bouncy physics-based icons--during a bit of their down time, and then they might sit on them for years before they make sense in a particular context.
"People are constantly experimenting with these little items, and because the teams all kind of know what other people have done, once a feature comes up--say we need a good way to give feedback for a password, and we don't want to throw up this ugly dialog--then it's about grabbing these interaction or animation concepts that have just been kind of built for fun experiments and seeing if there's anything there, and then applying the right ones."
But if you're imagining some giant vault of animation ideas hiding inside Apple and waiting to be discovered, you'd be wrong. The reality, Kawano explains, was far more bohemian.
"There wasn't a formalized library, because most of the time there wasn't that much that was formalized of anything that could be stolen," Kawano says. "It was more having a small team and knowing what people had worked on, and the culture of being comfortable sharing."
There was a commonly shared piece of advice inside Apple--maybe you've heard it before--that a designer should always take the stairs, because if you met Steve Jobs in the elevator, he'd ask what you were up to. And one of two things would happen:
1. He'd hate it, and you might be fired.
2. He'd love it, the detail would gain his attention, and you'd lose every foreseeable night, weekend, and vacation to the project.
Kawano laughs when he tells it to me, but the conclusion he draws is more nuanced than the obvious Catch 22 punchline.
"The reality is, the people who thrived at Apple were the people who welcomed that desire and passion to learn from working with Steve, and just really were dedicated to the customer and the product. They were willing to give up their weekends and vacation time. And a lot of the people who complained that it wasn't fair . . . they didn't see the value of giving all that up versus trying to create the best product for the customer and then sacrificing everything personally to get there."
"That's where, a lot of times, he would get a bad rap, but he just wanted the best thing, and expected everyone else to want that same thing. He had trouble understanding people who didn't want that same thing and wondered why they'd be working for him if that was the case. I think Steve had a very low tolerance for people who didn't care about stuff. He had a very hard time understanding why people would work in these positions and not want to sacrifice everything for them."
As for Kawano, did he ever get an amazing piece of advice, or an incredible compliment from Jobs?
"Nothing personally," he admits, and then laughs. "The only thing that was really positive was, in the cafeteria one time, when he told me that the salmon I took looked really great, and he was going to go get that."
"He was just super accessible. I totally tried to get him to cut in front of me, but he'd never want do anything like that. That was interesting too, he was super demanding . . . but when it came to other things, he wanted to be very democratic, and to be treated like everyone else. And he was constantly struggling with those roles."
Do you already have more customers than you can handle?
I thought so.I haven’t met a business owner yet who was willing to turn away more customers or sales.
So if you wanted to find more qualified leads and customers right now... how would you go about doing it?
Now, most of you have already begun to evaluate which marketing vehicle is going to be best:
Should you use social media?
What about a letterbox drop or telemarketing?
How about another ad in your local newspaper?
And truth be told, there are a hundred ways that you could get your name or brand out there. But all of these would cost time or money and history has proven that most of the options that you have relied on to date will produce less than a 1-2% conversion rate. That means there are an awful lot of people out there who will see your message and choose not to contact you, even though some of them may legitimately be in the market for your product or service.
Why is that?
You know (or least you suspect) that a large percentage of your sales/marketing budget is not effective and simply doing more of what you have always done (or what everyone else in the industry is doing) isn’t going to improve your results significantly. If you want to influence with integrity, attract more customers and increase your sales exponentially, you need to re-think your entire approach and strategy.
Not now but in a moment, I would like to share with you a little story about how a very clever (and effective) salesman used some broken glass to communicate his point of difference and outsell every salesperson in his company...
But before I get to that, let me ask you one question - “have you ever come across one of those rare business owners who sells exceptionally well, even during the worst of times?” These super salespeople sell like crazy -- rain or shine -- and they don’t experience slow days, weeks or months. And what's even more impressive - they make it look effortless, don’t they?
Do you know why? Because it is easy for them – they have mastered the art of influencing with integrity and they don’t have to worry about closing techniques, reframing objections, rapport building or establishing their credibility.
Let me share with you a quick story that will explain exactly what I mean by influencing with integrity and how it can help you to achieve phenomenal results in your business. In the 1970’s, Corning Glass introduced an innovative product, safety glass, into the North American market.
A young salesman with little experience joined the company shortly thereafter and began working his way up through the sales department at a feverish pace. In very little time, this young man named Bill, became the top-selling salesman of safety glass in North America. He stunned management with his rapid achievements and became known for refusing to use the standard templates and presentations that most of the other salesmen relied blindly upon. At the national sales convention, he was given an award for his achievements and asked by the president to share his secret to sales. Everyone seated in the room that night waited on the edge of their seats to discover just how this young man, with no prior sales experience, was able to outsell everyone.
To the president’s invitation, he replied humbly, “of course, it was simple.”
"First of all,” he confessed “I commissioned some samples of safety glass cut into 6" squares and I purchased a hammer and safety goggles. Rather than boring my audience with small talk, a background summary or building up my credibility, I would simply walk into the room, greet my prospect and open with the question “Would you like to see a piece of glass that doesn't shatter?”
And I never met a single one that turned me down. In fact, they were all eager to take part in my little experiment and jumped at the chance to pull on the safety goggles, put the glass on the desk and whack it with the hammer. They loved every minute of it and inevitably when they couldn’t break it, they would take the goggles off, sit back in their chairs and exclaim “'Holy smoke, that's incredible!”
"Then I would simply say,” as Bill paused strategically and drew the adoring crowd in closer for more of his wisdom, “How much of it would you like? And I'd pull out my order pad and start writing up the order."
Well as you can imagine, Corning Glass was so impressed with this strategy that they equipped all of their salespeople with goggles, hammers and small sample sheets of glass. They sent them out and found that the average closing rate shot up by almost 29%. Now granted, this specific strategy is ideally tailored to work for selling safety glass and it’s not going to work (without some modifications) to get more customers to buy from you.
But my point (and what you need to take away from this example) is this: The top salesman at Corning never had to "close" the sale, discount his price or resort to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques of matching and mirroring to create rapport. His presentation cured the #1 source of pain for his prospects upfront, so there was no need for him to close, hard sell or waste anyone’s valuable time. The sale was a done deal even before Bill pulled out his order pad.
Now, let me ask you: How would your life change if you could attract more customers and close them that way everyday -- where leads are drawn to you quickly and closing is just a formality that you no longer need to dread?
Surprisingly, the dilemma you face right now in attracting more customers has a whole lot more in common with Bill and his story than you might think. You and I say “Yes” to things every single day before we think them through. I want to share with you WHY that is and what compels you to decide and take action. And in the process you will also unlock the secret to transform your message into one your prospects are dying to say “yes” to.
Understanding Why Customers say “Yes”
While each of the distinct parts of your brain are constantly communicating with and influencing each other, each performs a very specific role. And as you might suspect, only one of them is responsible for decision making. Neuroscientists have now successfully mapped and measured which areas of the brain light up when stimuli are processed and decisions are made.
So when your prospect says, “I need to think about it,” we know that the part of the brain that your message is triggering is the new brain. This part of the brain lights up when you are processing words, numbers, colours, making spatial comparisons, or looking for data. In a nutshell, it THINKS and when it does so, it uses up tons of energy—which delays the decision making process.
Now thinking may not seem like a big deal to you but it is for your brain. Your brain consumes 25% of your body’s total energy. Because of this extraordinary consumption, your brain is hardwired to conserve energy when and where it can. One of the ways it does this is to NOT rely on the thinking part of your brain to make decisions. From a survival perspective, the brain doesn’t like to use more energy than it has to. Therefore, if you can make it easier for your customer’s brain to grasp your message, process it quickly and decide, you are more likely to get a “Yes”.
If you want to drag out the process of getting to a decision, make sure that he uses his new brain. Give your audience lots of words, numbers, graphs, lists of features and benefits, talk about your competition, and list all of your awards and accreditations—and your customer will NOT decide but he will do a whole lot of thinking and waste time.
So where do you decide?
At the top of your spinal cord, there is a collection of neurons—commonly referred to as the old (or reptilian) brain. All bodily functions that take place below the level of consciousness emanate from this part of your brain and it is the part of your brain that lights up when you DECIDE. In fact, it lights up before you have conscious awareness that you have even made a decision because it “sees” things as much as 500 milliseconds faster than the new brain.
In order to help your prospects use the least amount of brain energy and trigger a quick decision, you must stimulate and appeal to the old brain. This part of the brain is primarily driven by visual cues and primitive instincts. It is 45,000 times older than language and writing and neuroscience has proven that it struggles to process both.
In order to influence with integrity you need to learn how to trigger the old brain quickly so that when the thinking part of the brain kicks in, your prospect spends time looking for reasons to justify why he has already decided to buy from you – as opposed to reasons why he can’t or needs to think about it.
In order to do what Bill did naturally and help your prospects to say “Yes” (more quickly) to your product or service, you must first learn to speak the language of the reptilian brain. Without this skill, all of the other strategies and tactics that you have learned in your sales training so far are of no use to you.
And the best part about this is that you do not need to compromise your integrity or your ethics to improve your results. You don’t need to fall into the trap of feeling that you must hard sell your audience, make your message elaborate, spend more money putting it out there, or use tactics that are designed to trick people into deciding now.
Here are My Top 7 Secrets to Make This “Broken Glass” Strategy Work for You
1.Quit Using Templates – Stop trying to find prospects with the template newspaper ads, letters, postcards and fridge magnets your competitors are using.People do business with people they like and who are like them.Connect with people and demonstrate you understand their pain and can solve it.
2.Capture attention upfront – In order to stand out and be remembered, you need to open with a question, story, or picture that is relevant to your audience.
3.Stop wasting time on you - Never waste your time telling potential customers about you or your brand. 100% of your message should focus on your prospect and how your solution will cure her pain, keep her safe, or make her life better.
4.A picture is worth 1000 words – Your brain is hardwired to process visual cues and act before you have time to think things through carefully. If you want more customers sales, you need to get rid of words, graphs and statistics and demonstrate how their life will be better with your solution.
5.Simplify your message – The brain can only process and memorize 3 or 4 key points at a time. If your message is more complex than that, it simply will not be remembered.
6.Use stories to communicate your key points – Messages that cause your customers to reconnect with or rediscover strong emotions from their past and associate those with your solution, are 10x more likely to trigger the part of the brain that decides.
7.Crank up the contrast – In order to trigger a decision quickly and increase sales, you must stand out. Your customer needs to feel the difference between your solution, your competitor’s solution, doing it themselves, or doing nothing.
These 7 steps will help you increase the effectiveness of your message and reduce the amount of time and money that you spend chasing more customers and sales.When you make it easier for your prospects to see and grasp your message, they are more likely to decide and will appreciate the fact you have not wasted their time and energy on stuff that is important to you, but not them.
Do you already have more customers than you can handle?