Another week where if we waited an hour here in Indianapolis, the weather changed. We’ve had ice, snow and on the rare side for January, thunderstorms.

Our blogs this week seem to have followed the pattern of one of our favorite interview questions…so weather you favor words, pictures or numbers, we’ve covered it in at least one of our blogs during the past week. If you’ve missed one or several, here’s a quick recap:

Saturday – Faces of Roundpeg: The Boy Band
Lorraine’s ode to Taylor & Jay and the way things used to be.

Sunday – Make Pictures Part of Your Web Design Strategy
Pictures are cropping up more often on blog posts, this article explains why.

Monday – Taking Stock of Your Image
In the “old” days, designers cringed at the thought of using stock photos, Jenna explains how to modify those photos to have a bigger impact and save money.

Tuesday - I Don’t Like Football, But I Love the Super Bowl
Most of us don’t realize all that hosting a Super Bowl brings to a local community as part of the Super 46, Lorraine explains what makes the Super Bowl special for the hosting city.

Marketing in Handcuffs with Muhammad Yasin:  More than a Few Words
For this week’s podcast we’ll be joined by Muhammad Yasin, social media strategist for HCCMIS, a travel health insurance company. The topic is learning how you can make regulations work in your favor.

Wednesday - Indianapolis Social Media: Way More than 46
Allison shares her thoughts on how the Super 46 could have been handled more effectively. What are your thoughts?

Thursday - It’s In the Numbers: 4 Strategies for Blog Success
Lorraine explains why paying attention to numbers in blog posts makes a difference.

Friday – You Can’t Save Everyone
This is the marketing version of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

If you noticed that the weekly summary was published late this week, that is because the Roundpeg crew took the day off to head downtown to experience the pre Superbowl activities.  If you are in Indy, be sure to check it out before it is gone.

We write a lot of blog posts for Business Notes from Roundpeg. We average eight to ten posts a week, on topics we think small business owners will care about: marketing, social media, networking, web design, strategy and team building.  Some posts are serious and some are informative, some of the posts are sentimental and others are rants.

Each of the members of Roundpeg writes posts from time to time and we regularly invite guests to join us as well.   The blending of our different voices has created a blog which really represents who we are as a company.

We watch our statistics to see which posts get the most traffic and conversation.  There are always a few surprises, like the little posts we thought were “throw aways” that generate lots of interaction.  Here is a list of the most popular posts we have added to the blog this year.  Notice how many different authors have content in our top ten.

1. Keep Visitors Coming Back  Getting people to your website is only the first step. To be an effective part of your marketing strategy, your web design must look good,  engage visitors and give them reasons to keep them coming back again and again.
2. What Do You Say?  Make Podcasts Part of Your Web Design Inspired by  Bill Catsky, we began a weekly podcast.  This post is about how we did it and how it is working.
3. Hike Through a Work Flow – A guest post by Bill Lundy discussing  why every business should periodically review its key workflows looking for ways to improve quality, lower cost or save time.
4. Why I Am Mean to Interns - Allison explains her unique management style.
5. Blasts from the Past - Our intern Brittany Wright spent some time digging through the archives of our blog.  She wrote a post sharing what she learned about SEO from these old posts.
6.  Web Candy When you go to check out in the grocery store, do you ever grab a candy bar from those tempting shelves near the registers? What if your website could do the same thing?
7. Hardworking…Really? The process of interviewing and hiring interns can be tedious and tiring when they all say the same thing
8. Faces of Roundpeg, Kyle My Teacher  Part of a series of tributes to Roundpeg employees (past and present), customers, friends and others who have been an important part of our first ten years. This segment is about Kyle Lacy.
9. Twitter is Supposed to Be Easy  New kid on the block Peter shares some of his early Twitter lessons
10. Even Dead Fish Float  A guest post by my sales coach, Matt Nettleton.

Those of you who live in Indianapolis have probably heard about the Super Bowl Shuffle. No, not the terrible 1985 video created by the Chicago Bears, but the equally terrible 2011 video created by the Indiana Visitors and Convention Association to promote the hospitality industry in Indianapolis at a hotel conference in Chicago. The video was originally intended just for this specialized audience, but in the way of the Internet, the silly thing quickly went viral, earning the derision of locals and out-of-towners alike across Twitter, the blogosphere and even ESPN.

The event was full of high drama–it makes Indianapolis look terrible! We look like unsophisticated rubes! This will ruin our chance on the national stage! People are swearing never to come to Indy because of the poor quality video! The ICVA even issued a sort of apology for the video.

Can we all just take a deep breath here?

The video has, as of this writing, received less than 5,000 8,000 views–hardly a viral sensation. There is absolutely nothing offensive in the video, unless you’re offended by bad lip syncing and awkward dancing.  It’s just a group of people excited about a big party we get to have here in town.

ICVA doesn’t need to apologize. It doesn’t need to release a new video or keep defensively explaining that the video was made for a very specific audience. It needs to say, “here’s the video, isn’t it silly? Hope you enjoy it in the spirit in which it was made. Let’s make Super Bowl XLVI the best ever!” And then it needs to be quiet.

This isn’t a PR disaster case study, this isn’t a nightmare scenario. This was one group of people who underestimated the virality of the Internet and got a little embarrassed. It’s like your mom posting a video of you singing “I’m a Little Teapot” on Facebook–your friends may razz you for a while, but at the end  of the day, there’s no harm done. People will stop talking about it, people will forget about it and our Super Bowl is going to rock.

Indy, stop being so sensitive. Outsiders, stop being so judgmental. ICVA, stop being so defensive. We have bigger problems and more important goals to worry about than this one video. Let’s stop making mountains out of molehills and go back to throwing an incredible party come February.

Edit, 12/1/11, 9:40 a.m.: Last night, the ICVA chose to remove the video from YouTube. The right call or needlessly defensive? You be the judge.

From Brittany Wright

From the very first day, Allison repeatedly told me that I was writing academically instead of focusing on readability. To be honest, I had no idea what she was talking about. As a grad student in public relations, writing is a skill I not only have to possess, but one that I have to excel in. So, I was confused and it was a blow to my ego when I got feedback that I needed to seriously work on my “voice.” I thought  my voice was great and definitely wasn’t expecting so much criticism.

Two months later, I get it. I can look at my papers and projects for school now and see the difference in tone compared to my blog posts, web copy and social media campaign work for Roundpeg.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here is an example of the same sentence written in different tones:

Academic: The organization seeks to cultivate proactive relationships with appropriate media outlets to improve the frequency of quality media coverage.

Everyday speech: The organization wants to develop their media relationships to increase their coverage.

Now I understand the importance of being able to write in different voices and I’m able to adjust it when I need to. I’m not perfect at it yet, but I catch it much more than I did before I started this internship. I used to think Allison was just being nit-picky, but now I see that I had to figure this out so that I could become a better writer and be more marketable as I search for a PR position.

Brittany is an intern at Roundpeg, an Indianapolis public relations and social media firm.

After four weeks, Brittany is settling in.  Here is an update on the continuing adventures of our Intern:

By Brittany Wright

I’m into the fourth week of my internship here at Roundpeg, and I’d like to share some of my experiences thus far with all of you. Remember all of the things I wrote about two weeks ago? Well, I have quite a few more things to add to the list now. First, I’ve completed a ghost blog post for a pretty big-deal client, created and published another press release, worked on drip campaigns for both Roundpeg and a client, created a month’s worth of tweets for the same company, wrote a blog posting for our website about the amount of time you should spend on social media in order to create genuine relationships (remember to check it out on September 13th!) and have been managing Roundpeg’s Facebook postings.

On top of all that, the juggling of classes and work is officially underway. This semester I’m taking Agencies & Entrepreneurs, PR Planning and Strategic Marketing Management. Agencies & Entrepreneurs is a class that focuses on teaching future PR professionals about the pros and cons of opening their own agencies versus joining an already successful firm. I’m not sure that there’s anyone more qualified than Lorraine to teach me both sides of the road, but I’m giving it a shot.

PR Planning has gotten my attention because I’m such a research nerd, and now I can begin to apply my findings to an actual campaign. Strategic Marketing Management is a required course than generally gets PR students shaking in their boots because it’s only offered through the Kelley School of Business. Thankfully, I’ve spent much of my working life the marketing field, so I’m not quite as concerned as some others. However, the Kelley School of Business is definitely not a school to scoff at. As one of the top-ranked business colleges in the nation, I know the class won’t be easy-as-pie.

I determined to again maintain a 4.0 this semester and still give 110% to Roundpeg. When I start to get overwhelmed, I just remind myself what this is all about, and that is leveraging myself as a top-notch PR professional in this ever-growing field. I feel blessed that Lorraine gave me the opportunity to hone my skills and work hands-on in her company and I don’t intend to give her any less than my best.

At Roundpeg we spend a lot of time with clients focused on using social media to “tell their story”  Long before social media, there was PR.   And even today, in a very wired world, there is still a role for traditional PR.

Join us as we talk about the role of traditional public relations in your marketing mix with Jennifer Reginer, an Indianapolis Public Relations  professional.   As an  BohlsenPR account executive, Jennifer works clients such as Rich Mullins Film, Masala Bhangra, Indy Food Swap, Green Lab and with indie authors through client Author Solutions .

Do you have any comments or questions about Traditional Media? Post it here, send it to one of us on Twitter or Facebook, or call in during the show at (805) 285 -9865. Remember to use the hashtag #MTFW on Twitter

The call will be live from 10:30 – 11:00 on Wednesday, Sept 7. You will be able to listen to the program from my station on BlogTalkRadio.com If you have a question, you will be able to call in: (805) 285-9865.

More than a Few Words is a podcast produced by Roundpeg an Indianapolis public relations and social media company.

Even though I spend a lot of time doing social media, my background is in traditional, old-school public relations. The kind where journalists are always looking for a good story, if only you present it to them in the right way.

So for the longest time, I’ve approached pitching bloggers–be they moms, business bloggers, or any number of the other kinds of bloggers I regularly contact–in the same way. They just want a good story, right? It’s up to us as public relations professionals to find the right way to present it, and they’ll fall all over themselves to share your giveaway/promotion/event with their readers for free, right?

Wrong.

Pitching bloggers is an entirely different beast than pitching to traditional journalists. It’s some weird bastard child of public relations and ad buys. And it takes an entirely different mentality to be good at it.

The first thing to remember is that some kind of payment is usually expected. This doesn’t necessarily mean money (though it can)–it can also mean payment in product or tickets or some other remuneration. Make sure that you or your client factor this into your budget–unlike traditional PR, the time cost of your pro is not the only cost to consider.

And, even though you’re providing some sort of payment, you usually cannot dictate what the blogger writes. Of course, you can say that you want them to write about this particular promotion, but you’re really paying for the blogger’s unique voice on your product or event. That’s why their readers come back, and why they can be such strong brand advocates. But if you want to choose exactly what’s said about your product, don’t engage in blogger relations. Period. Note that most bloggers, however, will not write about products they don’t actually endorse or like, so in most instances you don’t need to worry about negative reviews from bloggers you’ve reached through an outreach program.

Don’t let these two factors scare you–blogger relations is an important part of PR and can’t be ignored in this day and age. Bloggers have huge, organic reach that makes every marketer drool in envy. Just go in with your head in the right place, and be prepared to make some great relationships and spread your message.

As an Indianapolis PR firm, Roundpeg helps small business distribute their messages through traditional and non-tradional pr channels.

When I was in college, every student in the School of Communications took Media Law and Ethics together. This meant that journalist majors and cinema majors and PR majors were all forced into an uneasy truce as we learned about Sunshine Laws, libel and slander, and of course ethics. One day, we were discussing some point of ethics, and an uppity journalism student raised her hand.

“It isn’t possible for a PR practitioner to be ethical,” the self-righteous ninny said.

Punching her in the face might have proven her point, so I restrained myself and engaged in civil discourse. “The first rule of PR,” I replied as primly as I could, “is to always tell the truth. Not only is it the right thing to do, you’ll always get caught being unethical. Always.”

And it’s true. Honesty is crucial in every area of public relations, from interviews with the media to press releases to social media. Think about it: public relations is, at its most basic core, about communicating with an audience. That could be customers, employees, shareholders, or the public at large. If the people you’re communicating to don’t trust you, they won’t listen to you, and your message gets lost in noise. Lying just shoots yourself in the foot. Besides that, this is the age of the Internet, the place where secrets go to die. It’s possible to fact-check nearly anything in a matter of moments, making you look like a lying, scummy fool.

So what can you do?

If you’re an agency, do the right thing. Yes, it’s faster and easier to cheat, but it will always bite you in the end. If something feels wrong, it probably is. Speak up and say something. If you’re an employee and your bosses ignore your objections, start looking for other work.

If you’re a client, demand the highest scruples from your company. It’s ultimately in your best interests because if the PR company gets caught being shady on your behalf, you’re just as much on the hook as they are. Don’t be left in the dark about what your agency is doing.

Roundpeg is an Indianapolis public relations firm which also offers social media, marketing strategy and web design services.

Jenna, our new graphic designer, has joined us this week.  It is nice to be back up to full strength, and I think she is going to add a wonderful new flavor to our company stew.

If you have been too busy to drop by, here is a sampling of what else  you missed this week at Roundpeg.

Saturday – Survey Says: Social Media Tips from Small Business Owners -
Check out our preview of the results from our Social Media survey.

Sunday – Three Upcoming Seminars for Job Seekers -
Details about the seminars Allison will be hosting in the next few weeks designed to help job seekers learn to use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Monday – Four Steps to Email Success: Category, Content, Monitor & Adjust -
As email celebrates 40 years of connecting, and overwhelming us,Lorraine still believes there is a place for this tool.

Tuesday – Why Small Business Owners Need to Blog
Not only should small business owners blog for the SEO benefits, but check out this blogpost for several other reasons you should be blogging.

Wednesday – Marketing and Murder
Jay shows how a targeted marketing strategy helped the FBI capture a mobster.

Thursday – What Makes You Attractive?
What makes a blog attractive to readers?

Friday – More Than a Few Words: YouTube and Small Business
Next Wednesday, July 6, we’ll be talking YouTube and small business with special guest, Rocky Walls. Let us know what questions you have.

Friday – Social Media at Any Age
Lorraine and Allison share the misconceptions people have about each of us, and our ability to take on the challenges of social media.

Meet Scott Pfeiffer The last of our summer interns has started, learn more about him.

Saturday Radio Shift
Blogtalk Radio will replace Roundpeg Radio.  Tune in live starting Friday, May 27th from 12:30-1. A recording of the program will be available on our website, Podbean and as a download from iTunes. A recording of the program will be available on our website, Podbean and as a download from iTunes.

Sunday – Can You Train Your Customers?
What issues are holding you back from being a better sales person?

Monday – Facebook Still #1 for Small Business Social Media
A year ago we conducted a survey to see how business owners used Social Media.  A year is a long time in the world of technology so as we collect data the results have changed from last year.

Tuesday – Finding My (Writing) Voice
Melissa shares what she’s learned in 2 weeks interning at Roundpeg.

Wednesday – Week Two: New Goals
Scott shares how his summer goals have changed after only one week at Roundpeg.

Thursday – 6 Signs Your Social Media Rockstar Is Full of Crap
How to sort out the social media professionals from the gurus, ninjas, evangelists, divas, socialites and rockstars.

Friday -

More than a Few Words – Blogging Tips for Small Business Owners

This is our first live broadcast from BlogTalkRadio.  If you missed the conversation, you can still listen to the recorded version here.

Whatever Happens,  Happens For the Best

As we say hello to our interns, we are also getting ready to say goodbye as our extraordinary graphic designer, Taylor heads off to a really cool gig in Florida. We will miss him like crazy, but we are so excited that he is going to get to live his dream.