You’re gathered around on the floor in front of the teacher, eyes glazed over, enamored with the tale. A kid or two are drooling at the vivid imagery, while that one kid who always falls asleep during story time is there with his shoulders slumped, head off to the side, not a care in the world.

You don’t want your audience to be that kid. Besides anything else, it’s a sure thing he’s going to get drawn on with magic marker.

So how can you really engage your audience and keep them interested? Tell a real life fairytale and make it vivid. Here are three we love.

“My house is where plants came to die.”

Sad but hilariously true, this is reality for more people than we think. Miracle-Gro’s Potting Soil commercial is a simple story told by a “girl-next-door” who’s tried everything to keep her plants alive. We can all feel her sigh of relief when she finds something that protects her plants.

How a Shipping Giant Can Befriend a Forest

Cartoons + music = a serious flashback into kid-dom. Who wouldn’t want to remember a time where being worry-free took priority? FedEx recreates a woodland fairytale with their brand story about helping the Earth, then strips it back to show that their newest sustainability solutions are more than a dream.

“Remind me to clean up…tomorrow.”

Now we know Apple fans are probably some of the most loyal, devoted tech fans there are on the planet (and probably this universe). But even for the segment of people that aren’t Apple users, it’s hard to resist a quirky character and her technological fairy godmother who can plan a whole day with a few voice prompts.

How does your brand impact your audience? Take a real-life person who has a real-life problem and give them a real-life solution. Think about the problems your consumers have, and how your business has swooped in to help them solve their challenges. That’s the stuff of happy endings: check out this example with a Vocus customer to see what we mean.

Each of the fairytales above are told in under a minute. Can your brand do that? Take the challenge: create a YouTube video and link to it in the comments section below.

Image: headexplodie (Creative Commons)

Conversations are a concept that effective PR people, especially media relations pros, have always understood.  Unlike traditional models of paying for advertising placements, PR was a dialogue where an organization earned the opportunity to speak with a journalist with an interesting idea that had value for a given media audience.

Today, that same principle is applied in social media.  We earn the right to have conversations with fans and followers with interesting ideas and two-way dialogue.  The consequence has almost completely erased the blurring of lines between marketing and PR.

It’s hard to argue we’re *just* PR pros or we’re *just* marketers anymore.  Those days – and the need for those days – are gone.  We’ve been assimilated, joined and fused together – we are hybrid professionals as Deirdre Breakenridge so aptly calls it.  The future lies in the integration of all the sub-functions falling under the art and science formerly known as marketing.

I’m reminded of this every time Advertising Age writes, or publishes a post about public relations.  Not too long ago, such posts, let alone award winners, were far and few between; today a writer is assigned to PR as a beat.

More specifically, Timothy Kane’s recent guest post really stood out.

“In the same way that the mass-market culture of the 1950s created the need for brands, today’s social-technical culture is forcing brands to employ a new model for interacting with the public. A model based not in the slow-drip Chinese water torture of traditional advertising, but in the kind of focused dialogue that public relations specializes in.”

The future of advertising, Kane says conclusively, is public relations. I’d argue his idea is compelling and it appeals to my PR roots, but even the examples he provides, like the infamous Old Spice campaign, demonstrate it never has been, nor should it be about one or the other.

The two should and do go hand-in-hand under a model of integrated marketing.  After all, markets are conversations.

Photo credit:  Ogilvy PR’s 360 Digital Influence

There was an interview on CNN the other morning. It was early and I’d only had one cup of coffee so I apologize for not being able to give credit where credit is due…

The question the anchor asked was “What is the one thing you have learned that has helped you more than anything?”

Dayna Steele is keynoting the Vocus Users Conference this June. She’ll make you a rock star – click here to find out how.

The interview subject answered (and I paraphrase here), “When I left for Harvard, my Dad said there are two kinds of people in the world.  The first ones go off and learn to use big words, lofty phrases, and ways to explain things in a very complicated manner so as to make themselves appear much smarter than they really are.  Then there are the other kinds of people who learn as much as they can and learn to pass it on to others in such a simple and uncomplicated manner that people flock to them for information.”

I asked a few others how they would answer this same question. It was a narrow poll using most of the people I could find in my house at this hour:

Charlie Justiz aka Wonder Husband:  “The same letters in listen spell silent. You can’t listen while you are talking.”

Visiting friend Cathy Arroyo: “If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”

Mine:  “Say thank you.”

So, there is a big fat K.I.S.S. before I see you at the Vocus Users Conference in June.

K.I.S.S.?  Keep It So Simple.  (Stupid is a “swear jar offense” in our house.) Most of the time, the easiest ways to succeed are usually the most simple of things.  The little things.

What advice would you share?

Dayna Steele is a serial entrepreneur, success speaker and author.  Follow her on Twitter @daynasteele or visit www.daynasteele.com. You can register to hear her speak at the Vocus Users Conference here.

Marcus is hosting a free Vocus webinar next Wednesday on smart, easy content marketing for small businesses. Register here!

Let me just cut to the  chase here.

Content, when used properly, is the best sales tool in the world.

It’s also the best sales technique.

It’s better than any sales person.

And it can revolutionize the way you do business.

These statements are not exaggerations. They’re the truth, and I mean every word of them.

You see, content, or should I say content marketing, saved my business. I’ve owned a large inground swimming pool company for over 10 years now and when the economy crashed in 2008, we were literally on the brink of bankruptcy. We had to install at least 70 pools a year to be successful but no longer could the majority of our potential customers get loans (due to the plummeting home values) and to make matters worse, we had no money for advertising.

To say we were in trouble would be a mild understatement.

Luckily, at the beginning of 2009, I discovered “content marketing”, or blogging as many call it, and our business will never be the same because of it.

To make a long story short, our approach to blogging was different than what is seen by most businesses. We focused everything on two words: Listening and Transparency.

Listening

Most company struggle to come up with blogging titles, ideas, and subjects. Frankly, this has never made any sense to me whatsoever. Why? Because if we’re really listening to the questions our prospects and clients are asking us on an everyday basis, we’ll never run out of content.

This is why our initial blogging strategy was simple—We decided to answer every single question we ever received from a customer. And when I say “every”, I really mean EVERY—without ommisions.

Transparency

The struggle most businesses have is they feel there are simply too many subjects that are “taboo” when it comes to blogging. For example, every consumer wants to know how much your product or services cost when they come on your website. Notwithstanding, most of you reading this right now don’t discuss pricing at all on your site. Because of this, your prospects are looking for answers, not getting them, and then going to other websites that do.

Google and other search engines have taught us that if we’re willing to look, we’ll find just about any answer we’re looking for. Thus, the companies that are willing to be transparent, and address the good, bad, and ugly of their product or service—gain the respect of the search engines and consumers in general.

As an example of this, when it comes to swimming pools, no company in America addressed pricing extensively on their website until we took the bull by the horns in 2009. In fact, because the #1 question we got from consumers was, “How much does a fiberglass pool cost?” we knew that had to be one of our first blog articles.

After we wrote that article, it immediately became #1 on Google for a mountain of price/cost related search terms, which meant we were suddenly getting more visitors than ever, and leads naturally followed.

This cost/price example is one of many transparent approaches we took to dominate search and garner consumer trust in the process, and by so doing, we literally became the voice of the fiberglass swimming pool industry.

How this applies to your business

Sometimes, when I explain to other businesses how much success we had in the pool industry with transparent content, I get the following remark:

“Yeah, that may have worked for you, but our industry is different.”

I have two responses to this statement:

1. Good principles are good principles in any industry. Platforms may change, but principles of good communication and teaching do not. Every industry is full of consumer questions—every-single-one.

2. Because I now own a marketing company and write so much about this on The Sales Lion, I’ve seen transparent marketing work in literally hundreds of unique industries over the last couple of years. Lawyers, retailers, home builders, insurance companies, etc.—all have experienced success because they were willing to embrace a listener’s mindset with a transparent attitude towards content.

On Wednesday, May 16^th, I’m going to be giving one of the fastest-paced webinars on this subject you’ve ever seen. It will literally be full of actionable ideas and creative strategies by which you can take your company’s blog to another level and gain the respect of Google and consumers in the process. Frankly, it just may change the way you do business forever.

Register for Marcus Sheridan’s Vocus webinar here!

You can thank the Internet for this shift.  With the rise of a highly connected global society, social connections are now at the root of any business venture.  Shoppers use referrals and recommendations to make buying choices and they often know as much about the products and services they are searching for as the companies selling them.

The saying “knowledge is power” can now refer to a consumer’s ability to know more and know faster.  With this ability has grown an insatiable appetite for relevant and valuable information, creating a small business marketing challenge – how to attract consumers to your brand and keep them coming back for more – all by way of your content.

Today brands must educate and inform consumers to create a level of engagement that never existed before.  People don’t just walk into a dealership and purchase a new car.  They know the history of each model; they’ve browsed the dealership’s website and have most likely in some cases become a fan or follower first.

So it’s content that attracts interested consumers and content that boosts brand recognition. Small business marketing today is about getting more eyeballs to read your blog, more followers to like your products, and more fans to join your community.  Those companies that don’t buy into this new consumer-centric atmosphere are essentially handing their sales to competitors that do.

How does your small business marketing measure up?  Answer these questions to see whether your marketing is all it should be:

1. Do you create SEO content to bring more visitors to your website?
2. Does your content (i.e., press release, blog post or article) rank high on search engine pages?
3. Have you created an active community of people who share an interest in your brand?
4. Do you consistently provide solutions to consumer problems through your content?
5. Do you engage your customers and prospects directly, with such tactics as forum discussions or blog comment opportunities?
6. Is social media a staple in your small business marketing weaponry?

If you answered yes to these questions, you’ve clearly crossed over to the new realm of small business marketing.  If you answered no, now’s the time to start.

For more small business marketing inspiration, check out our blog post, We Got 10,000 Facebook Fans In One Day!

Image: edkohler (Creative Commons)

Step One: Quick Online Analysis

Are you guys marketing in the same place online?

What to look for: Do they have a website? Is it descriptive, easy to use and provides contact info? Accessible from mobile devices? What about a blog? Does their blog demonstrate thought leadership, and expertise in your industry?Do they have an online (e-commerce) store, and is it easy to find and use?

What social media platforms are they on? How do they utilize these networks? Information dissemination, engagement, contests? How often do they update these networks, and what kind of following/engagement do they have?

What to do: Compare these bulletpoints to your own online presences. If you’re lacking in one area, take a page out of their book to complete your online profiles. If you’re performing better than your competitor in any of the above areas, give yourself a pat on the back, and keep up the good work.

Step Two: Earned media

Are the online publications that cover your competitors the same pubs you’d like to appear in?

What to look for: Do a basic search in Google, or even better, Vocus to see who’s writing about them, and what angles they’re covering. Evaluate new angles or improvements that you can pitch that blow your competitor out of the water.

What to do: Think “_____ just came out with a product that does X and Y.” Well, “our product does X, Y and Z and executes them in a much more efficient manner. Here are the benefits.”

Step Three: Influencer relationships

What to look for: Who are the rock stars of your industry? For us, its people like Peter Shankman, Brian Solis and Mike Michalowicz.

What to do: Create genuine relationships with these influencers. If they use your product, great! If not, that’s okay too. The goal here is to be at the forefront of the conversation and have your business “in mind.”

Step Four (bonus!): Social Media

Zappos, who is infamous for trumping its competitors with amazing service, said at a conference, “underpromise and overdeliver.” For them, this meant shipping packages in well under the estimated shipping time, having the friendliest customer service reps and never disappointing a customer. So in the online realm, be sure you’re listening through social media to answer questions and provide customer service. Be a happy, positive face that represents your brand mission well and encourages engagement with a personal touch. Raise your standards above the norm. As long as you’re doing that, your competitor can pull all of the tricks in the book – but it won’t mess with your efforts.

(Photo Credit – Flickr Creative Commons: electricnerve)

The event blew my mind:  the caliber of speakers, the networking, the interaction with company employees and the food – it was all outstanding.  Having been to more than one Gartner Symposium in my tech-PR career, I could have easily mistaken the Users Conference to a symposium event for PR and marketing pros. Everyone was there.

Obviously, I joined Vocus and now I’m on the other side – working to ensure the conference lives up to that same standard I first experienced.  While we just published the lineup of speakers for this year’s conference and a complete conference agenda is available online, some of the most convincing reasons to attend this year come from nuggets of knowledge from previous years.

To that end, here are five reasons to attend the 2012 Vocus Users Conference – “Think Small – Achieve Big.”

1. Get great tips on relationship building. Last year, Gini Dietrich offered great tips for working with bloggers – and being effective.  There’s more to it than simply pitching a blogger on a power list. “What you need to do is figure out from a traffic standpoint, from an authority standpoint and from a community standpoint, who those bloggers are.”

2.  Hear from peers who cracked the traffic code. Research shows small business owners like to learn from their peers.  Barbara Kantor cracked the code on driving traffic and shared her best practices for earning links and traffic referrals with Vocus’ PRWeb product.

3.  Golden rules for content marketing. Joe Chernov, VP of content marketing at Eloqua provided his golden rule for content marketing last year. That’s: “Write for your audience, not yourself.”

4.  Learn to spread awesome. We all know Scott Stratten from his book, “Unmarketing” – it’s a good dose of awesome – and he brought a bunch of tips with him in 2011.  Tip #3 on this list of awesome-sauce?   “Focus,” he said. “We can’t be everywhere all the time, that would be a little exhausting. Pick a platform to be awesome on.”

5.  Interact with leading industry thinkers. In 2010, Lee Odden taught us a trick:  though he himself was a speaker (and will be back this year) he whipped out his iPhone and interviewed Brian Solis.  A clever content marketing idea for sure, but the bigger takeaway is that it’s a chance to network with some of the best-known names in our market.

So don’t wait!  If you’ve been thinking about coming to Baltimore for the conference this year, register today.  I hope to see you there!

The networks we engage on daily serve a purpose: to network and collaborate with like-minded people. As brands, we try to be superheroes, delivering customer service, promotions, information and maybe a little fun along the way. With all the time and effort it takes to do these things, I’m pleasantly surprised to see a number of “social media for social good” campaigns cropping up to give back to the people who dedicate themselves to a network or brand. I applaud this kind of social networking and hope that more companies can introduce this into their strategies to connect with their consumers on a much more emotional level – by dedicating themselves to causes their audience is passionate about.

Case #1: Becoming an Organ Donor on Facebook.

This new feature was added to Facebook in the hopes of lowering death rates of the 7,000 people who die each year waiting for an organ transplant. It’s simple enough, all you have to do is add a “Life Event” (located above your status update bar) and under the “Health and Wellness” section, “Organ Donor” is the first option. Click that, and you’ll be sent to a page where you can register to become an organ donor in your state. Not bad for raising awareness when it takes only two minutes and gets shared to your entire network when you’re done.

Case #2: PostSecret and the Suicide Hotline.

For anyone in the world looking to vent anything from an accomplishment to a frustration, PostSecret has become a place to anonymously share secrets. Individually hand written on postcards, these creations have garnered several “books of secrets,” speaking tours at Universities across the U.S. and fans by the millions on Facebook and Twitter. Once it was realized that the secrets were coming from individuals who truly needed an open-ear, the Suicide Hotline was born and remains a staple of community support at PostSecret. Who knew you could hold someone’s hand electronically? That’s what keeps this online community tight-knit.

Case #3: Walmart Fighting For Hunger.

To support the anti-hunger movement, Walmart and some of the nation’s largest food companies launched an integrated marketing campaign to help raise food donations to food banks. Through social media Walmart was able to gather votes and award $1 million to the community that got the most clicks. The overwhelming support on Twitter was a testament to the need for this campaign and the positive reception it received with Walmart’s customers and even non-customers.

We’ve got a few cool campaigns up our sleeve too.

Komen Race for the Cure

Challenge 21: Water for People

Social media for social good can make small businesses more accessible and large corporations more credible in terms of social responsibility. It also makes brands more human while simultaneously building a community. If you haven’t run a “for-good” campaign on social media, what are you waiting for?

The two days of the Vocus Users Conference are a different animal, though.   There, Eddie transforms into a super-coach: an around-the-clock Vocus trainer, meeting one-to-one with Vocus customers (hundreds are in attendance), teaching them how to get the most out of their software.

One-to-one training sessions at the conference can be scheduled just after a user registers.  Attendees can pick a time slot that works best for them ahead of the conference, then simply show up at the training area for their session once the conference begins.   Experts like Eddie will take it from there.

“You’d be amazed what you can learn in a 30 to 45-minute session,” says Eddie. “We can analyze your business goals, evaluate your system, make a proper recommendation, and then walk you through those recommendations. We show you what to do, rather than just telling you. And you can book as many sessions as you like.”

Eddie has ‘coached’ at every Users Conference, since 2004, helping countless customers use Vocus better.

“A lot of Vocus PR customers have questions like, ‘How do I find key articles to send to management?’  So I show them different techniques for doing that,” he says. “Some people will come to me and say, ‘I really want to focus on top-tier publications.’ So we create settings that help them quickly identify those publications, analyze those articles and quickly forward them out to management.”

“I also help with things like key list building,” Eddie says. “We’re trying to find the key contacts based on different campaigns that they’ve done in the past, and identify who those reporters are who keep coming back and keep promoting their organization.”

He’s found that Vocus experts and beginners alike return to the Users Conference for one-to-one sessions.  The opportunity to learn something new is just too great to pass up.

“I look forward to helping the same customers year after year,” he says.  “I’ve had people who have had the system for five, six, seven years, and they come back because the system is growing, which means we’re adding more features, and their organizational structure is changing as well.”

“This isn’t just for people who have only had Vocus for a couple years,” Eddie says. “We train everyone from beginners to advanced users. Users of all skill levels should come.  I guarantee no matter what skill level you have, you’ll always learn something new.”

Interested in one-to-one training sessions at the Users Conference?  Find out more about the top PR and marketing event of the year!

Every year, we invite all of our customers to a two-day event showcasing the latest in PR, marketing, social media and Vocus software.

Last year saw hundreds of comms pros and marketers gather in downtown Baltimore to hear speakers like Scott Stratten and David Meerman Scott, meet Vocus staff and execs, swap expertise and ideas, and learn to use their Vocus software better from our in-house coaches.

Interested in attending? Registration is open to all Vocus customers – click here!

This year, we’re headed back to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and we’ve already booked a stellar lineup of speakers. Here’s who’s on board (and we’re announcing more speakers every week):

Peter Shankman, Founder of HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Peter founded the publicity alerts service we all know and love, and is now Vocus’ VP and Small Business Evangelist..  He keynoted last year’s conference, talking customer service. This year, his theme is ‘Be Your Own Evangelist’.

Dayna Steele, Hall of Fame Rock Radio DJ

Dayna first topped the charts as a rock radio DJ in Houston, Texas.  She’s done it again, this time as an entrepreneur, marketing expert and author.

Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications

Mark is Editor in Chief of both Ragan.com and PRDaily.com, the PR industry’s go-to source for daily insight. He’ll be presenting on brand journalism and content curation.

Tim Reis, Director of Mobile and Social Advertising at Google

In four years at Google, Tim has led financial services ad teams, mobile display ad teams, and now, social and mobile ad teams.  His forward-looking presentation: The Next Five Years of Digital. We believe him.

Brian Kardon, Former CMO at Eloqua

Did you know they gave out awards for killer content?  Just ask Brian Kardon – he won one.  At Eloqua, Brian oversaw award-winning content campaigns like the Social Media ProBook.

Other speakers include Lee Odden of TopRank and Jim Joseph of Cohn & Wolfe North America.  It’s exciting stuff and we could go on, but we’ll let Peter Shankman have the final word.

For more information, click here.