Relationships go through a process – attraction, understanding, commitment and finally, the ‘L’ word.

Loyalty.

30-second commercials. Flashy magazine ads. Rubber bracelets. Subliminal messaging. Applications for just about everything. In the modern day of too-many options and decisions, technological advances and competitive prices, what makes a consumer loyal to a brand? And the better question — what can a public relations agency do to provide a company with enough recognition and promotion to ensure an audience of passionate and dedicated consumers?

There are many answers to that question, but lets focus on one: the ability to engage. There is no longer a “courting” stage; as a company, it will take effort to keep the spark. Effort means keeping on top of the your industry’s pulse, listening and personalizing your product for your target consumers, opening up the discussion within social media channels, and being honest with what you can offer. The overarching theme here is communication.

That’s where PR steps in. PR is like the relationship guru that gives your company innovative ways to shake up your advertising routine and work with you to find ways to communicate to your loyal audience. And if you hit a bump in the road, such as a publicity crisis or a product malfunction, PR is there to help secure your brand and image. PR’s goal is to keep your loyal audience by showing them how engaged and loyal you are to them.

Nobody wants to date someone who won’t listen to them. No long-term potential. After all, who wants to end up like this twosome? The Breakup

Mashable reported this week that the AP Stylebook has added 42 new guidelines for social media.

In traditional media relations, AP style is a HUGE part of what we do.  At Zenzi we hold all of our communications and writing to high standards and aim to follow the rules and adhere to AP style for anything that goes to a reporter.  If it has the Zenzi name on it and a reporter is reading it, there are no excuses for anything but the proper style, not to mention correct, grammar, spelling and all that good stuff.

We often cringe when we run across what we perceive to be horrific abbreviations and misused capitalization in social media (think something along the lines of “RU coming 2 hpy Hr 2nyt?” – not really appropriate by professional standards).  It’s terribly common and someone needed to start setting out some rules, so leave it to the good folks at the AP to step up to the plate.  Interestingly, some abbreviations are now considered official, such as “POS” (Parent Over Shoulder, of course), and some Twitter-iffic vocabulary words have been added, including “trending,” “retweet,” and “unfriend.”

And now it’s time for us to all get up to speed and start implementing these basic guidelines in our own social media writing styles.  The new guidelines seem to cover the full spectrum of how journalists interact with social media, from how to refer to digital terminology to abbreviations and rules of thumb for how journalists should use social media, and how to confirm sources used from “blogs, tweets or other forms of social media,” according to Mashable.  I agree with the Mashable newsroom’s sentiments regarding one change in particular that was long overdue — changing the word “Web site” to “website.”  Guess websites are too common now for a formal name, and it just looked odd to me anyway.   Check out Mashable’s article on these changes, below, and visit www.apstylebook.com to get your own copy of what should be every PR professional’s writing bible.

The AP Stylebook has released its new social media guidelines, including the official change from “Web site” to “website” (a move first reported back in April) and 41 other definitions, use cases and rules that journalists should follow.

Read more here.

Before diving into this gold-mine of digital marketing tips and tricks, and depending on how brave you are, click here to take our quiz and we will send you personalized results to find out if your efforts and knowledge add up to classify you as a Digital Daredevil! Then, continue on below for an overview of our recommendations to make you a digital marketing superstar.

DIGITAL MARKETING ESSENTIALS

Don’t attempt to tame the brave world of digital PR and marketing without mastering the basics first. Get your campaigns up to speed with these helpful tips from Zenzi:

Start with a Strategy

Digital marketing offers a multitude of opportunities for businesses to establish immediate and real-time relationships with customers, deepen connection and engagement, drive feedback and positive word of mouth and strengthen your brand.  And just like any other important business initiative, it takes advance planning to define your target audience and business objectives. Study your customers and see how they are behaving and interacting using various social media channels. What are their habits? How can you participate in their conversations in a way that adds value? Before you dive in, you should document your approach, objectives and success metrics for each different medium.

Evaluating the value of social media

By Dean Calbreath, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Over the past several years, companies have increasingly spent their advertising and marketing dollars on search engines such as Google or Yahoo and social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

But how much business do they actually bring into a company? And how can companies improve their online presence to generate more sales?

Those questions have dominated the Online Marketing Summit, a four-day conference concluding today at Paradise Point Resort in Mission Bay.

“What’s working in social media is that it’s a great way to engage your customers and have a real dialogue with them,” said Thad Kahlow, chief executive of Business OnLine, a San Diego firm concentrating on Web-based marketing. “What’s not working is the drive to know how much return they’re getting on their investment.” Read on!

Here at Zenzi, we strive for excellence in all areas of the marketing matrix. We pride ourselves on keeping up with every new trend and delivering unprecedented PR results. In an effort to increase the quality of our PR efforts, we have launched the Zenzi SEO PR service.

Zenzi SEO PR is a new service that leverages blogs, online and traditional media, reviews, video search, photo search, events and social media networks to influence and optimize your Website results.

With Zenzi SEO PR, we have expanded the traditional definition and approach for SEO to include both Organic SEO and Universal SEO. Organic SEO is about optimizing your own site. Universal SEO optimizes links from influential sources such as reviews, video sites, social media and directories, which can either positively or negatively impact your website’s level of relevance.

We offer a variety of SEO PR plans to fit your individual needs. Please give us a call for more info!