Though it may seem obvious to public company executives and PR professionals, creating and submitting press releases is a great way to boost your online and offline credibility. Yet I hardly see any small and medium sized businesses actively engaging in this type of in-the-trenches PR work.

Even if you’re not at a large corporation, the reasons to submit a press release are many. Apart from the fact that they’re read by journalists and can result in genuine press coverage, the backlinks to your site from major news sources are great for SEO.

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Business consultant and author Stephanie Chandler of The Leap! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business and The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide shares some great tips for business owners in this economy. Watch her video made exclusively for BIG Marketing for Small Business.

Social Media – start networking; it’s all about relationships. Don’t walk into a function thinking “What I am I gaining. What’s in it for me?” Go in there with the mindset that everything is an opportunity to build relationships.

Marketing Plans – get a vision; find what you need to make it happen. Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years? What steps and goals must be accomplished to reach that vision?

Publicity Plans – create a month-by-month plan of publicity opportunities for your business. Know who’s covering what and when they are covering. Don’t forget about online!

Check out the video for more tips. She also talks about the Project Rev contest that could give your small business a $5,000 boost!

I’ve become a fan of Tom Mayenknecht of The Sport Market. I catch his morning show on Team 1040 Radio almost every Sunday, and enjoy the business and marketing angle he brings to major league sports. Today, he talked about Toronto-based Sun Life Financial who, in a deal announced January 19th, acquired the 10-year naming rights for the Miami Dolphins’ football stadium for $40 million. The timing of the name change to Sun Life Stadium could not have been any better. Introduced last week as the stadium played host to the NFL Pro Bowl, it enjoyed a coming out party to the largest Pro Bowl audience in 10 years,  with over 12 million U.S. television viewers tuned in on ESPN. Today, that audience number will jump to over 100 million U.S. viewers and over 160 million global viewers. On his blog, Tom goes on to describe the value and impact the Sun Life brand will enjoy from this well-timed launch:

“Depending on the number of times Sun Life is mentioned and its new stadium graphics shown during the Super Bowl telecast, the case can be made that the Toronto-based insurance company will receive media value that is at least equal to the first five years of its naming rights deal. That does not include valuation of the billions of media impressions that Sun Life Stadium will receive this week in print and on the internet, along with radio… The Super Bowl timing is only one example of how this deal is a winner for Sun Life. The low cost of the sponsorship is the headliner here. Sun Life paid about one-fifth the $20 million US per year that Citi Financial has invested in Citi Field ($400 million US over 20 years) for the new home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball. It paid well less than the going rate for NFL stadiums, including the $7 million US per year that Bank of America did for the home of the Carolina Panthers.”

In an economic climate where purchasing naming rights to sports stadiums is a luxury for most corporate giants, this seems like a brilliant move for Sun Life Financial who should enjoy an almost immediate return on their investment, while paying far less for naming right than other corporations in the past.

“It’s impossible to imagine Barack Obama’s rise without the modern methods that his campaign used to organize itself, particularly around the internet,” says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the nonprofit think tank the New Democratic Network. “This really was the most successful campaign of the 21st century.”

“This is what happens when you have a charismatic candidate, and you organize on a scale not seen before,” he adds. “Literally, the size and scale of this is unprecedented in American political history, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the money, and passion, and support of millions of American people.”

The campaign came up with a number of innovations on the internet. It used wikis — online collaborative software — to coordinate and churn out precinct captains in both California and Texas. And it created a counter-viral e-mail campaign to combat the anonymous e-mail smears that question his religious faith and patriotism. It set up policy pages that solicited ideas from supporters, and at one point, the campaign solicited letters from supporters over the internet to lobby the undecided superdelegates.

And Obama’s campaign constantly updated its YouTube channel to keep its supporters around the country up to speed on his latest speeches.

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On the iPhone: “We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn’t very good. We talked to our friends, and they all hated their cellphones too. Everybody seemed to hate their phones. And we saw that these things really could become much more powerful and interesting to license. It’s a huge market. I mean a billion phones get shipped every year, and that’s almost an order of magnitude greater than the number of music players. It’s four times the number of PCs that ship every year.

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Who’s winning the branding campaign amongst ALL US presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans included? Barack Obama… hands down. I watched his speech in the New Hampshire primaries after finishing second to Hillary Clinton and it’s the first time a politician has given me goose bumps during a speech since seeing former President Bill Clinton speak to a standstill audience at a fundraiser here in Vancouver in 2001.

The Obama camp did a smart thing very early. They identified a simple theme or core value – “change” – that the Obama brand would stand for, and since then have repeated consistently in every speech, every verse, and every message. His message proved to resonate so strongly amongst Iowa voters that they pushed Obama into the number one position, and sent all the other candidates into me-too mode during the New Hampshire debates, each trying to deliver their own version of a change message. All rang hollow against the candidate who first brought the message to the masses. In Obama’s speech yesterday, he further evolved the message with an emotional, Martin Luther King-like sermon that was summed up in a three-word catch phrase, “Yes we can”. Watch and see this phrase repeated over and over again during the rest of the campaign, not so different than a company tagline.

What Obama has got over the other candidates, besides his charisma and likability quotient, is that his message is clear, concise and comes across as authentic. As other candidates try to re-tool their message, Obama is evolving his. A very effective branding campaign, one that many small business owners should consider when evaluating their own company brand.

• ME, Oct 13th, 2007 (through Expedia site):
  Hello -I need to change my return flight on Alaska Airlines from San Francisco to Vancouver. Please let me know what the procedure is and how much the change will cost me. Thanks. Rajan

• EXPEDIA, Oct 15th, 2007, 10:17am:
  Dear Rajan Sodhi, Thank you for contacting Expedia.ca regarding your reservation. Due to our high security measures, we ask all Expedia.ca members to call us directly and speak to one of our agents in order to change or cancel their booking. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. Our Customer Support Representatives are available to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thank you for choosing Expedia.ca!

• ME, Oct 15th, 2007, 11:20AM:
  I have been on hold for over an hour now. Please call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX. Rajan Sodhi.

• EXPEDIA, Oct 16th, 2007, 10:00am:
  Dear Rajan, Thank you for taking the time to write to us. We appreciate your thoughtful comments, and we’re sorry that your experience was not as expected. We rely on customers like you to provide us with the information we need to continue improving our services. We would just like to remind you that your time is of value to us, but we are experiencing an unusually high call volume at this time, and all calls are answered in a priority sequence. Due to high security standards, we do require you to call back, but cannot at this time give you a direct line to call. We thank you for your patience. If you have questions regarding this matter or require further assistance, please reply to this email or contact our 24-hour support desk at 1-888-397-3342. Our customer support representatives are available to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• ME, Oct 17th, 2007, 11:40AM:
  I am currently on hold again and it has now been exactly 1hr and 40 minutes. Do you find this acceptable? I have been a customer of your site for at least three years and I find this appalling. Please provide me now with a direct phone number to an agent or call me at XXX.XXX.XXXX or XXX.XXX.XXXX – I cannot continue to stay on hold. Thank you. Rajan SodhiItinerary# XXXXXXXXXXX
  1. Need to change return flight from SFO.
  2. Received a notification through Expedia that a change was made to my flight. Cannot see it on site – prompted me to call you. Please clarify.

• EXPEDIA, Oct 17th, 2007, 12:17pm:
  Dear Rajan, We apologize for the wait you had on the phone lines as we are currently experiencing an unusually heavy call and e-mail volume. Unfortunately, we cannot provide a direct line or have an agent call you as they are all working hard to reduce the call volume. We understand that you are frustrated and appreciate any patience in this matter. If you have questions regarding this matter or require further assistance, please reply to this email or contact our 24-hour support desk at 1-888-397-3342. Our customer support representatives are available to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Ridiculous. And they have the nerve to refer to themselves in their recorded greeting as ‘customer care’ representatives. What’s the point of using witty terms and canned friendly email messages if the service doesn’t deliver. I used to recommend Expedia to everyone. I’ve been using their services for over three years and book 90 percent of my flights and hotels through it. No more. Crappy service like this makes me want to find a good travel agent.

Liam Eagles of The Whir and Top Hosts covered our Customer Social event in Toronto at funky C Lounge this past Wednesday. Great turn out and a lot of fun! Check out photos from the event by clicking the album cover above.

Just returned from the unveiling of the new Vancouver Canucks hockey jersey at GM Place. Free hot dogs and drinks for anyone willing to stand in the gigantic line. No way. Got inside, took in the pre-show, enjoyed the hype video and then the moment of truth… team captain Markus Naslund skated out with the new uniform. What do I think? What do you think? I love the colours. I like the overall cut of the uniforms, very sleek. But, I’m having a problem with the “Vancouver” wordmark in combination with the Whale logo – seems way too cluttered. Each is quite strong on its own, together they seem to be fighting one another. Also, having a horizontal border along the bottom of the shirt which now is cut similar to a dress shirt (tapers up the side seams), seems just wrong. Overall, don’t love it, but don’t hate it. I’m a Canucks fan, so I’ll live with whatever they come out with, but I’m surprised there wasn’t a little more forethought in the overall design. Here are some pics from the event. By the way, very well attended on a spectacular sunny day. A lot of fans in this city, that’s for sure.