FRAN IC was founded in 2005 to offer experienced PR pros and big agency services without the high overhead and bureaucracy of an agency IC is able to choose “best of class” professionals and services to create teams tailored to each program Current client assignments include financial advisors, brokerage, insurance, wealth manager, tech start-up – strong bias in Financial Services Media relations is a core competency – excellent relationships with reporters, editors, producers at influential business/financial media – mass market and trade The Influence Consulting Credo is to be aggressive, effective advocates for our clients and to be responsible professionals – we understand our clients business, we are proactive and responsive to their needs MARK We understand the new ‘digital’ new media landscape and how media works – we develop PR strategies
Influence Consulting has created and implemented full-scale public relations programs for asset managers, asset consultants, mutual fund managers, retail bankers. We have worked with CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, economists, market strategists, marketing departments, in-house PR departments. We have represented brokerage firms, insurance companies, wealth management firms, attorneys and other professional services firms. We are in regular contact with and have generated stories in important business/financial media such as Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek , CNBC. MarketWatch, Dow Jones, Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg.
Strategic planning: Positioning clients to excel against peers through integrated and consistent public relations activities. Media relations: Influence Consulting maintains excellent relationships with influential reporters, editors, and producers who cover business, finance and the markets. Editorial services: A network of writers and editors who produce marketing materials, press releases, web copy. Online capabilities: Influence Consulting maintains a trusted partner network of web videographers, designers, web developers, SEO experts and bloggers who are adept at online communication.
The NEW public relations
Wells Fargo is a pioneer and leader in social media for financial services They have been blogging for three years – they used a blog successfully to manage their merger with Wachovia – they have an innovative Twitter stream and a successful YouTube page. Wells Fargo has a VP of Social Media, in-house bloggers and ‘Twitter responders’
Wealth Management Advisor Jeffrey Hoppenworth in Chicago – LinkedIn page with 365 connections. LinkedIn is increasingly ‘going social’ with blog feeds, groups, company profiles, other apps
The ‘social media press release’ or the ‘optimized press release’ – writing for the web, distributing through multiple channels
Wikipedia exerts enormous influence on the web and is a huge PR challenge. Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000 page requests per second. Wikipedia is among the ten most visited websites worldwide. The growth of Wikipedia has been fueled by its dominant position in Google search results; about 50% of search engine traffic to Wikipedia comes from Google, a good portion of which is related to academic research. From Wikipedia: Critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies, and target its policy of favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process. Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy are also an issue. Other criticisms are centered on its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of spurious or unverified information, though scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived. COI & NPV – ‘must learn’ for creating content fo the web.
MARK - Radical transformation of media, the advent of the Internet and social media demands a new way of looking at and implementing public relations. We think different, perform different, measure differently, need a new set of skills. - thinkorswim, Banco Popular, Vichy USA