Female Business Owners: It’s Time to Start Promoting Yourself

I’ve recently been contemplating ways to promote myself and my “brand” to help my company, Violet PR, gain more exposure as a top boutique public relations firm in northern New Jersey. Since I started the business as a home-based freelancer in 2010, we have grown to include four full-time professionals and several part-time employees based in a hip loft space in downtown Montclair, N.J. As part of our marketing plans, my staff and business coach have encouraged me to do more public speaking, post more on LinkedIn and Twitter, and generally talk about my accomplishments.

This is harder than it sounds. Generally, I’ve shied away from promoting myself – preferring instead to promote my team’s accomplishments using words like “we” and “us” – and avoiding photos with me taking center stage. Part of my rationale has been that I’m comfortable behind the scenes: after all, as a PR person, my goal has always been to promote my clients—not to become part of the story. Also, I genuinely want to give my team, partners and clients credit for their creativity and hard work.

However, after reading my friend Jessica Broome’s new survey about the “self-promotion gap” – which explores women’s fear of promoting their accomplishments – I now  understand there are deeper, cultural reasons why I haven’t felt comfortable doing so.

The 2019 survey of over 1,000 adults found that most women, in fact, avoid talking about their strengths and accomplishments. While 83 percent of women are inspired by hearing other women talk about their successes, seven in 10 women would rather minimize their successes than tell people about them. In fact, 42 percent of women said they’d rather clean the bathroom than talk about their accomplishments!

So why should we care? Well, for one thing, even though more women than men have been graduating from college since the 1970s, men are still earning more money. In 2019, women earned just 79 cents for every dollar that men made, regardless of job type or seniority. Men also dominate the C-Suite: women held just 6.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEO roles in 2019. And male entrepreneurs are the ones getting their businesses funded: CrunchBase reported that only 3 percent of global venture capital dollars went to companies led by a female founder during the first three quarters of 2019.

And in my field, women make up 70 percent of the industry, yet hold only 30 percent of the leadership positions, according to The Holmes Report. Female PR salaries are also lower: in 2017, white females were reported to make about $6,000 less than white males with comparable education and experience. This gap increases with people of color.

So, before you stop reading this post in frustration, there are a few bright spots in the “self-promotion gap” survey. Women aged 18-34 are more than twice as likely as women 55 and older to say they want to stand out. Moms and black women also show higher rates of willingness to talk about their accomplishments.

This gives me hope.

So, in the New Year, as I seek to grow my business and inspire younger women, I am pledging to be more intentional about promoting myself, my brand and my company. Here’s the first one:

In less than a decade, I’ve successfully built a profitable, award-winning boutique PR firm from scratch, without any outside financial help or loans, while always paying myself and my staff competitive salaries.

Whew!

(OK, now I also want to say I have had amazing clients, fantastic staff, exceptional mentors and some good fortune as well along the way!)

To my female colleagues, clients, friends and moms, cheers to a successful 2020!

ABOUT APRIL MASON

An expert in economic and real estate development, April brings over two decades of experience developing public relations campaigns for clients large and small. She founded Violet PR in 2010 to shine a light on community leaders, developers and designers making a difference in the world.

ABOUT THE SELF-PROMOTION GAP SURVEY

The Self-Promotion Gap is a 2019 survey exploring women’s fear of self-promotion, commissioned by Mighty Forces, Southpaw Insights, Upstream Analysis and Grey Horse Communications. Read more at www.selfpromotiongap.com.

GlobeSt Names Violet PR as 2019 CRE Influencer in Marketing

GlobeSt.com, the premier online destination for original and timely commercial real estate content, recognized Violet PR as an influencer in commercial real estate marketing. Read an excerpt of the article below.

Influencers In Marketing

Marketers are just as integral to the art and science of owning and managing real estate as the finance and broker functions, and should be acknowledged as so.

By Erika Morphy | December 03, 2019

When you work in, say, commercial real estate finance, chances are good you will know at least something about research. Or sales. Likewise an office broker: there is a good chance he or she knows more than the average layperson about the retail asset class. However, there is one area of CRE that may not be as familiar to these people as it should be, which is marketing. To be sure, a CRE marketer has a certain skill set that does not translate well to sales or finance. But marketers are  just as integral to the art and science of owning and managing real estate and should be acknowledged as so. Which is what we have done in the following pages.

Violet PR became a change-maker, breaking into the industry as a woman-owned business. Established in 2010, April Mason founded Violet PR when there were limited female leaders in the CRE space. Since then, Violet PR has worked to generate media coverage and secure speaking opportunities for some of the most influential women in the Garden State.

Whether it’s rebranding a city, drawing attention to a revitalized neighborhood or promoting a new sustainable development, Violet PR helps clients make a difference. Through the combination of news stories, social media and compelling content, this NJ-based boutique public relations agency has helped clients attract more dollars and supporters.

Violet PR has worked on campaigns for many CBRE projects including the Live! Hotel and Conference Center in Hanover, MD, the 22,000-square-foot office revitalization at 706 Giddings Ave. in Annapolis, MD, the Baldwin Harbor Apartments in Orlando, and 197 and 207 Van Vorst in Jersey City, NJ. The team has also promoted many significant regional projects, including expansions at Port of Savannah, the completion of SubTropolis in Kansas City and developments around the Pittsburgh International Airport. Violet PR also has secured national and trade media coverage for Brooklyn’s first new marina in decades.

Violet is proud to work with ProudLiving Companies, a real estate development firm that constantly gives back to its community. The Violet PR team secured over five media placements for this initiative in local newspapers. Its team also provides mentorships to other professionals looking to break into the commercial real estate space.

Read more

How to Use YouTube Effectively as a Public Relations Tool

The mere existence of YouTube and the ability to easily create, post and share videos across the internet has changed the face of public relations and marketing. As YouTube has become one of the top content curation platforms over the past decade, companies in the business to business (B2B) space are finding more ways to strategically produce content that highlights both their industry and unique services.

According to Alexa rankings of the top 500 sites on the web, YouTube is second only to its parent company, Google, and according to Buffer’s 2019 social report, 62 percent of businesses use YouTube as a channel to post video content. YouTube is a hot commodity for businesses looking to boost organic traffic.

Marketing and PR teams representing B2B companies can utilize YouTube as an educational and search engine optimization (SEO) tool to engage with target audiences. Although
many businesses are aware of the untapped potential of YouTube and what it brings to the table, many companies struggle with pinpointing the right tactics to elevate a business profile on the platform.

How to Maximize YouTube for Business

PR professionals can turn to industry influencers, principals behind B2B projects or interviews with C-suite executives to effectively elevate a business profile on YouTube. Content could include company and branding announcements, thought leadership “vlogging” or even unique commentary from trade shows and various conferences.

YouTube effectively creates opportunities for marketers and PR professionals to leverage their skills to attract a target audience, generate brand awareness or increase a client’s likelihood to come up on search engines. This comes via interactive and engaging content that a public relations firm identifies, creates, leverages and shares across channels.

YouTube can be leveraged as an effective tool for PR campaigns because the video segments are easily shareable among hundreds and thousands of users — perfect for clients
with a limited budget looking to maximize organic traffic and boost their position on search engines.

There are several ways companies and PR/marketing professionals can capitalize on the power of YouTube to create an ongoing B2B campaign, including:

1. COLLABORATE WITH AN INFLUENCER OR “VLOGGER”

It may come as a surprise, but there are quite a few YouTube influencers and vloggers that specialize in B2B industries. These are active contributors bringing commentary to
large-scale commercial real estate projects, feats of engineering and architecture, environmental trends, and more. Collaborating with one who has a strong following will bring organic traffic and brand awareness to an ever-expanding user base.

2. INTERVIEWS WITH MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISTS

If your company has an interesting story regarding a new project, re-brand, expansion, corporate responsibility initiative, or anything that could be considered news,
arranging an interview with a multimedia journalist could be a great way to package your story. These journalists combine texts, images, sound, videos and graphics
to tell their stories. A company could reach a multimedia journalist by offering exclusive interviews with high-level executives and a project/facility tour.

Once complete, you can also reshare that video on your firm’s business YouTube channel, and on other social media networks. There is a good chance that the journalist may
also tag your company or interview source in his/her work, building visibility for the topic area. If posted to YouTube, any mention could direct traffic to your
company’s profile.

3. CREATE YOUR OWN YOUTUBE SERIES

Creating a series of YouTube videos using your staff or with an outside marketing/PR team can also benefit your business immensely.

Engaging videos could include:

  • Exclusive interviews with C-suite executives discussing a new project or company news.
  • Panel discussions with executives and industry experts debating the latest industry trends or predictions.
  • Create short recaps of major industry projects; incorporate team members that were close to the project.
  • Post recap videos featuring company booths and clients attending speaker engagements or trade shows.

These videos can be produced regularly, semi-regularly, quarterly, or be largely dependent on project news. The more you populate a video platform or social
media profile, the more likelihood that it will reach potential clients or partners.

If you’re posting videos directly to YouTube, be sure to incorporate relevant keywords in a video’s title, tags and description. Using relevant keywords can increase views and build traffic because these words target audiences searching for similar content.

Web audiences are vast, and marketers have a real chance of reaching ideal demographics – should a few parts align. These include consistency of posts/videos and a unified/creative message. (Some type of marketing push behind the “launch” is equally beneficial.)

In Closing

There’s no question that YouTube will continue to expand in popularity in 2020 and beyond.  The above tips can help business owners in the B2B space maximize their company’s YouTube presence to reach more potential clients.

With due time and a solid foundation in visual media, you should expect to see results as your company publishes engaging content and interacts with a
user base, even if that user base is not extensive at the start.