In this solo Speak PR podcast episode, host Jim James explains how business owners can maintain continuous public‑relations and marketing activity while on vacation by leveraging batch processing, automation, and campaign orchestration. He defines batch processing as creating multiple pieces of content (e.g., podcast episodes) in a single session and scheduling their release over time. He walks through his workflow: recording several podcasts, uploading them to Buzzsprout, automatically syndicating to iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc., then using Repurpose.io to turn audio into audiograms for Facebook and YouTube. He describes how he schedules social‑media distribution with Zoho (and mentions HubSpot as an alternative) to post links on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google My Business. Jim then moves beyond simple scheduling to campaign orchestration, highlighting the French platform Batch.com, which enables push‑notification campaigns, recurring and event‑triggered messages, and location‑based (live‑push) communications that react to user actions or geography. He gives examples of using chatbots on his website (via a Ukrainian consultant) to answer routine queries and funnel leads. Jim stresses the need for a strategic blueprint before adopting marketing automation, quoting Jason Court. He outlines Batch.com’s pricing tiers and cites the Telegraaf media group as a client. Finally, he points listeners to a directory of over 100 PR applications on eastwestpr.com, encouraging entrepreneurs to adopt these tools so their business does not “take a holiday” while they are away.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Jim James. Welcome to this episode of Speak PR, and the good news is I'm going on holiday. The bad news is that I've got to get everything done before I go away so that whilst I'm away, the business doesn't take a holiday too. Does this sound like a familiar problem? If you're a business owner, you know that taking a vacation is actually one of the most stressful times in the year. Everybody wants to relax— my wife, my children, and my beagle Binky. You're expecting undivided attention. But meanwhile, part of my mind is on what's happening with the company. How do I keep all of the news, these podcasts, my tweets, my participation in social media alive whilst I'm on holiday getting revived? This episode is for you if you're a business owner and you're wondering how to manage that problem. The answer lies in automation. And batch processing and thinking about campaign and marketing orchestration. So how do I keep the messaging that I've been working so hard to share on a daily basis continue in my absence? And the answer is batch processing and automation. So here I am on a Saturday morning while the children are still asleep and working on getting all the content loaded into the systems so that while I'm away, for example, this podcast will still be heard. Now, computer batch processing is defined as running jobs that can run without the end user, but could be scheduled to run as resources permit. It's a little bit of a dry definition, but in practice, what it means is that we need to get done work in advance in one session, but to schedule the release of that information over time using the technology platforms. Now, I was giving a lecture the other day about the SPEAK PR program, which is the Storify, Personalize, Engage, Amplify, and To Know. And this really falls under the amplification part of our 5-stage methodology. Now, a chap called Jason Court, who was an editor at the Marketing Automation Times, said that you would not build a house without a blueprint. And yet many companies rush into marketing automation without a plan. Marketing automation is a tool that requires careful planning for it to be successful. Sage words indeed from Mr. Court, and I have to say that I'm on the journey of learning about marketing automation, and the first part of that journey does seem to be batch processing. Now batch processing means that I'm creating a number of different podcasts in one recording session. And I'm uploading those to the Buzzsprout where I'm hosting these podcasts, and I'm scheduling them in advance to go out on a Monday, Wednesday, and a Friday. So that part seems to be fairly straightforward. The challenge then is that when I normally post a podcast, I then tweet and put into Facebook and put into my LinkedIn manually the on the day. So what I now need to look for is a platform that when I'm away, the content that's being batch uploaded and batch distributed will then be amplified. Because stage 1 is to get the content into these different platforms like Buzzsprout, but then I need to do the amplification, the promotion, the distribution of that content. Now I've set up already where the content will automatically go to the other podcast host. So by having it on Buzzsprout, it automatically will be fed out to podcasts on iTunes, on Google Podcasts, on Spotify, Heart, and about 25 other different platforms out there. I'm now working with, uh, repurpose.io. So when the content goes from my Buzzsprout, it will automatically go into my Repurpose and be made into audiograms, which are videos of the audio. And those will then go to my Facebook group, but also then go to my YouTube channel. So that part then is automated. The, the part that I then need to work on is to automate out the distribution to my other social channels, or for example, the short links to advise people this podcast is there. Now I'm using Zoho for that. So with Zoho, what I need to do is to upload the link to the individual episodes and to again put into the diary those different episodes and to tweet when they're up and ready. And with my Zoho, I can automate the distribution to my Facebook group, to my Twitter, to my Google My Business, also to my Instagram. So I can automate that quite easily by putting that content into the, into the Zoho. I do have to do that manually though. There are other platforms like HubSpot, for example, which are enabling us to do that. And I was looking though at the next level, uh, of that, because at the moment all that automation which comes off the back of my batch production of content. This could be audio, as it is in the case of the podcast, but it could also be video production where you can then automate the distribution as well. But it also could be, for example, articles. But what I'm wondering about is this is still quite manual, quite a manual process where I'm putting the content in and I'm kind of just really scheduling it. I'm not really automating my campaign. So I've been looking at some software for what I'm reading about as, as what they're calling orchestration. So campaign orchestration seems to be where we move from worrying about automation into campaign management. And this is the sort of work that people like Virgin do where they are scheduling notices and notifications into systems that are there because of what the audience are doing. So at the moment, my automation is really very simple. I'm creating content this morning, creating a lot of content that I'm batch processing and loading. But what I'm interested in as well is what happens when people do things, for example, interact with my podcast or interact with my website when I'm not there. How do I start to automate that? Now I've done that to some degree on my website using a chat, and I commissioned a technology consultant in the Ukraine to schedule the, the Zoho bot so that when people come to my website and they ask questions, I'm giving automatic replies. For example, if someone comes to my website and they ask where the offices are. If one of my staff are not able to answer that, the bot has a number of different questions that I've already loaded into the bot. And when someone asks a question, they will get a response which are the answers that I also automatically created in the bot. So just like we're seeing when we go to the bank, for example, or on Vodafone, or many, many of these, or Singapore government is very good with this, for example, we have a bot answering low-level queries. And when they get to a certain level, then we take them to a form to fill in to inquire about our services. So that's that's working at a certain level for me. And I was looking at a French company called Batch. It's called batch.com, and they're working in specialized push notifications. Now this is. I think very interesting because they're working on the mobile and the web. And I think this is public relations for the reason that when I'm creating stories or I'm, for example, publishing this podcast, the, the goal of the podcast is to give, you know, you the listener a reason to contact me. Maybe you want to talk about, for example, the Speak PR program, or you'd like to talk with me about consulting in some way. If you then come to the next touchpoint of my company, which is, for example, my website, which could be on mobile or on your desktop, then what? Then what happens? For public relations to be profitable, it needs to be part of the entire sales process. So this company batch.com, based out of France, claims to have some 800 customers. They've got 25 countries and being used with these connectors where their batch.com platform works with some 50 other applications on the cloud, for example like salesforce.com. So what they do is they create an interface for, for customers to create, automate, and analyze push notification campaigns. And they're doing this in an interesting way because what they're enabling us to do is to schedule campaigns which can run now or at a later date, but also to create recurring campaigns which could take place at regular, regular times— for example, a certain day of the week or a certain time or a certain hour— and to send those messages dynamically to an updated user segment. So in other words, as a potential customer has expressed an interest in a certain part of the website or maybe has signed up for a certain service, we can actually send them, for example, scheduled messages. So in the same way that Binky, my beagle, is registered with a veterinary clinic and I get a scheduled SMS when his medicine is due, we can follow this as a recurring campaign along the lifespan of of the customer in the same way that Virgin does, from the minute people are thinking about a holiday all the way to them getting on the plane and leaving the plane at the other end. Now, Batch.com also has what they call event-based trigger campaigns, which means that if someone takes a particular action on, for example, our website, then that could trigger another level of content to be sent to them. So for example, if someone expresses an interest in a white paper on your website, that leaves a clue about what that person is interested in. Certainly tells you where they are. They'll give their email address. So what could we send them which is already online and created that takes them to the next level of their customer journey? And I thought what's very interesting with batch.com is they have a live push. And what's happening there is that by, for example, geography So if someone is walking through a shopping arcade, this idea of location-based marketing now is that people will be, for example, going to an area that they don't normally live in, and that will create a set of requirements for that person. Maybe, you know, directions, for example. So live push means that we can start to optimize communications that are proactive with target customers, and that's done as a function of the activities that they're taking, the expressions that they're showing to us as a company. Once we get to that area of communication, the PR becomes very interesting because, of course, if someone is moving into a different, for example, geography and we know that because their mobile phone will log on to new cellular towers or their laptop will log on to new Wi-Fi areas, for example, then we're able to start to communicate, sharing information with that potential customer or consumer that's context relevant. And from a public relations point of view, if that person is, for example, checking out TripAdvisor because they're traveling to a new location, we can tell by their location that they might have other services they're interested in, and they may be looking for that online directly, but it's something that then we could start to share with them. So understanding the consumer journey or the customer journey by location is an increasing part of retail, but also can be in industrial and other consumer marketing applications as well. Therefore, what people read about us— going back to PR— what people might read about us online, where those messages and videos, for example, for referral testimonials could be a key part of what we're sending people. So if I've got testimonials, for example, I've got with this podcast now some 250 cities have listeners to this podcast. So imagine then if people are in those different cities And if I could send them information that's really relevant to them in their individual city and town or region about what my public relations services could offer, then of course I'm bridging that gap between what the, what the customer might need where they are and what I'm offering from where I am. So batch processing for me is something I'm working on right now because I need to create a number of pieces of content to have continuity in my absence. It's also very, very productive because opening and closing the tools of making, for example, an audio take time. Just in the same way that manufacturing needs a certain volume of articles to be cost-effective, actually so public relations activities. So if we can think about batch processing, then about automation, and the final part then is about campaign orchestration. Now this batch.com product, uh, the service, they have a free trial. So batch.com, you can try their service for free. They have a €24 per month, uh, basic features developer program. And they have a €495 per month startup program, and for business users become power users, some €795 per month. One of their clients is the Telegraaf media group from Holland, and they use Batch Mobile to send breaking news to 7 million monthly readers. So as we look at going on holiday like I am, um, and going offline hopefully for a little bit of time, we want to think about our brand not taking a holiday. Because when we come back, we want to have inquiries. I want to have leads. I need to have work to come back to as a business owner. One of the reasons I have always found holidays stressful is because whilst I find people that have salaries get paid leave, as an entrepreneur, I don't get paid leave. I have to do the work now and automate it to run while I'm away so that when I come back, it's almost like the business hasn't missed a beat. So I share this with you because as a business owner and you're looking at public relations and marketing, keeping the momentum going while you're away is not easy, but it is possible. Marketing automation and latterly campaign orchestration takes some content development, some planning, and some self-discipline, but the technology is available to help us. So I share that with you. There are many platforms out there. In our technology applications directory, which is available at eastwestpr.com, under the Speak PR program. We list over 100 applications, many of which have free starter trial programs. And I've listed them there because I believe that could be of service to fellow entrepreneurs who are on their journey to sharing and unlocking the value in their business through effective public relations. So with that, I thank you for listening. My name is Jim James. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please do subscribe, rate it, share it. And in the meantime, I wish you the best of health, that you have a profitable business, and that you take a break, but not without communicating.
