No one wants to think back to 2007 these days. For us, it is because of embarrassing memories of junior prom dresses and tuxes, but for the long-in-the-tooth PR and Media pros it is because that was the start of Armageddon. Sure, collapse of both the PR/Advertising and newspaper publishing world was still slightly over the horizon, but the recession that came to bear that year was the writing jumping off the wall and becoming all too true: The End Is Near.

So, why can we sit here today and lovingly gaze out the window as we amble through the day’s PR projects knowing that our brethren in media are somewhat safely ensconced as well? It is because Social Media became our knight in shining armor and delivered audiences to us in a way that we never saw as possible. Moving with painfully slow determination, PR and media pros found that not only could they reach whom they wanted to reach, when they wanted to reach them, but they also found that they did not need each other anymore. Yes, the media hack vs. PR flack war was as over as use of that dated cliché was (we had to Google it!).

But, don’t take the reasoning of a couple of millennials as proof – look at the data. Content distribution through Social Media is insanely measurable. Add “boost” or “sponsorship” to your post, a range of paid distribution options that allow you to target very specific audiences, and suddenly likes, clicks and other engagement actions are flying your way – provided your content doesn’t suck. Yes, in this new content-distribution-through-Social Media world, the same “Content Can’t Suck” rule that applied to old, dirt-world media is still in effect.

Let’s start there. How do you create content that doesn’t suck? Know your audience and write for them. This is not a mass media play. The world may not value your content, but if you create it with a specific audience in mind, they will. Content that clicks, pun intended, is valued by those targeted audiences. They find it helpful and/or informative. That means you are providing information on how to, or what not to, but not the text equivalent of a selfie “hey look at me.” Too often, brands focus on the brag rather than what their audiences want.

Also, content is not limited to text either. When we say “content” we mean text – headers, decks, body copy AND images, video, infographics, etc. People are visual. Use a great visual or even a short video to help tell your story. Don’t overload the visual however. A small bit of text is okay – as long as it doesn’t distract from the visual’s ability to tell your story.

Good content gets rewarded.  Recently, Facebook announced that brands that created highly relevant ads based on their target audiences would be rewarded with increased reach and even more cost-effective pricing. Content that is compelling and informative also gets shared. People like to be smart but love to be perceived as being smart! Can your content help them with the latter objective? If so, they are likely to share it.

Pricing? Yes. Sorry, but these days, publishing is pay to play. If you want “free media,” keep faxing those press releases. Facebook offers a variety of paid promotion options, and each comes with some nifty targeting options. You can sponsor or boost a story by adding promotional dollars. If you are really targeting your audience, this spend will not be as painful as you might think, given the high costs of print, radio and television ads. Filtering options include geo-targeting specific markets down to the zip code, demographics, interests (based on profile information and posts) and more.

Let’s look at promoting content through Twitter shall we? Twitter allows you to promote a tweet. You start by creating a good tweet that perhaps announced something unique and special. Be sure to add an image or a video because either will drive audience engagement. Then, use the promoted tweet targeting options to find and lock in your exact audience. Once you launch, your message will appear in the home time line of the audience you targeted.

LinkedIn has also jumped into the promoted content game and now allows you to promote your updates. Similar to Twitter, promoted content on LinkedIn can be highly targeted, which allows you to use location, company, industry, job title, job function, degree, school or group all to help you home in on the exact audience you want your content to reach. Your content should be focused and visually appealing, with relevant photos, a short link and a title under 70 characters.

YouTube videos are also a great ways to tell a story. Use of video is substantially growing. PR pros are using video to show an aspect of the story such as an interview and it has the added benefit of allowing users to consume the information in another media type than text. We are all visual learners. So watching a video is sometimes better than reading about the same subject. You can increase the odds that your video will be searched for and found by adding keywords to your headline and caption along with a hyperlink to a supportive landing page on your website if one is available. You also can promote your video through Google AdWords, but you might want to seek out a Google Partner to help you with that (hint: we are one J).

The road ahead? Paid posts on Instagram, the fastest-growing Social Media Platform, SnapChat for business, and more (not going to mention Meerkat until it hits $100MM in valuation). Social Media is always changing, so you will need to research night and day for the latest best practices. Or you could follow us on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, or sign up for #GCAiPlanet, our weekly newsletter. It’s your choice.

Authors: Darcy Fortune, SEO PR Analyst; James Garvey, Social Media Marketing Analyst

Customers find convenience and willingly introduce their bank to friends and family.

Tabwith.me Founders Paul Cheek (left) and Rob Ianelli.

It’s an experience we all have had. A social occasion like a lunch or night out begins to wind down and that awkward moment of how to split the bill arises. Most of us squirm our way through it, but Rob Ianelli decided to do something about it. Rob, who along with Paul Cheek, founded Tabwith.me, a real time social payment network that operates through their app called Dutch.

Rob was out for the night with friends when the idea came to him. “It was a disaster sharing payments between the eight of us and I thought it would be easy if I could pay with my card and we all get charged our amounts and then I get paid back,” reflects Rob. “If you think about it, we can share anything, but I can’t share payments. You can only send payments. That’s been our big tenet.”

And like that, Dutch was born. Actually, it took a few years and travel to a couple different continents. Rob and Paul were accepted into the highly competitive global accelerator MassChallenge in Boston a few years back where they really made progress building their app. They also applied and pitched at Startup Boot Camp in Boston, a global fintech accelerator based in London (startupbootcamp.org), and won a spot there too. So, it was off to the UK where they worked with international financial technology experts as well.

The Dutch concept is relatively simple. Participating issuers allow their card holders to enroll into Dutch so that they can invite friends to pay dynamically. Friends can connect through a combination of credit, debit, or prepaid cards to join a transaction. The Dutch system accepts the transaction and automatically splits the total when the card is charged by the merchant. Then all participants are notified with the amount they paid.

“Everyone we talk to is like ‘Oh my god I could’ve used that during this event’,” reveals Rob. “It’s the idea that I can participate in transactions with friends anywhere at any merchant at any time.”

Tabwith.me’s first customer is located in the Netherlands, a company that the founders met during their time in London. Back in Boston, Rob and Paul have started implementing Dutch at a local bank, which is very interested in its convenience and prospecting possibilities.

“The banks we are working with and talking to like the convenience aspect,” explains Rob, “because they know that is what customers – especially hard to reach millennials – are looking for. But beyond that great customer experience, we are able to brand Dutch for these institutions so that they are essentially introduced to their customers’ friends and families. That is a unique competitive advantage.”

Rob and Paul envision a world where payments are transferred into a social network riding the payment card rails to drive collaborative consumption – all enabled by Tabwith.me’s payment technology. All that inspiration, born out of a relatively frequent awkward situation, is indeed impressive.

Good luck Rob, Paul, and Tabwith.me!

John Garvey is in the business of making connections, which is how a small team of marketing students at Western New England University wound up launching an online fund-raising campaign for a small, Russian robotics firm. http://gcai.co/-BizWest

And, seven benefits it will provide you and your company right away!

If you want to create an innovation pipeline for your business, hang around with innovators. It’s that simple and, at GCAi, we know it works. Given that our clients are not interested in what we did yesterday, but instead want to know all about tomorrow, we need a fresh stream of ideas and inspiration to both inform and invigorate our work. Here is how we do it.

In 2014, as mentors for the global accelerator MassChallenge and Startupbootcamp.org, we worked with a lot of innovators from all over the world. Early in the year we ran digital marketing boot camps for startups from Mexico and Colombia. I also was a mentor to fintech (financial services technology) startups as part of Startupbootcamp.org’s Boston cohort and we helped twelve different MassChallenge finalists – several of whom won cash prizes at the end of the accelerator. Currently, as part of another MassChallenge program, I am working with a Russian startup based in St. Petersburg. We worked with wearable tech, social venture, app development, biotech, robotics and, of course, digital marketing innovators. We also cut our non-innovative work down to near zero.

During this busy year, we learned how to recognize true innovation and how to sniff out innovation posers. To save you some time, because there are a lot of them, here are some tips on spotting innovation posers. To start, real innovators do not compare themselves with Apple, Amazon, Facebook, or Google. This could be considered ironic since we are a Google Partner. However, the distinction is that Google awarded us with that designation based on performance and will take it away if we fail to live up to it.

Innovators never say this should happen or that should happen. Instead, they constantly talk about what they are doing now or what they will do next. You also will hear innovators talking a lot about failure – the many times they have fallen flat on their face – and more importantly, the critical knowledge they gained from it. Innovation is not all about failure though. Real innovators have built a business, most of the time many businesses, and those ventures succeeded.

Innovators will talk over your head, so be prepared. Ask an innovator to “explain it to me like I am a five-year-old” and you will be sitting alone at Starbucks in seconds. You have to catch up with them, so expect to do some running and probably some research.

Here are seven benefits from hanging around with innovators.

1. Globs of inspiration. Hanging around real innovators is like downing three cups of espresso. You simply cannot help but be dragged along in their innovation currents, and that will positively impact everything you do.

2. A new view of space. To innovators, workspace does not equate to Starbucks. That’s free WiFi and an energy boost. Most innovators can tell you what makes workspace important – and here’s another news flash, it won’t be about foosball tables or kegerators either. Workspace impacts innovation for better or worse. Tables, easy chairs, open and airy spaces and walls that you can write on – all are hallmarks of the lair of a successful innovator.

3. Learning that collision helps not hurts. Innovators like to be around other innovators mainly because they bump heads and instead of a welt, new ideas swell up. Without collision, innovation will not happen.

4. Getting comfortable with risk. As business owners and operators, we are taught the road to ruin is paved with risk. Risk mitigation, if not outright avoidance, is critical to success…and stagnation. Innovators accept risk, even embrace it. Without risk, ideas will not be challenged, failures will not happen, and, therefore, breakthroughs will not happen.

5. A new appreciation for teamwork. Innovators do not operate alone. They have teams, and those teams are made up of only the individuals and talents critical for success. There is no fat on the time, and collaboration is the only thing saving the venture from the abyss. Everybody who signs on knows this. Are there dysfunctional innovation teams? Sure, but they kill themselves off quickly.

6. Pivot is a good thing. Walk into your next meeting and tell everyone that your plan did not work, the data didn’t pan out, and you are heading in a new direction. Now you are probably standing in front of your building with all of your belongings in a box and security is taking your credentials away. In business, changing direction is a complete failure and often requires that heads roll. In innovation, it is a breakthrough.

7. The rules of basic planning still apply in the innovation zone. Too often innovation is thought of as a great idea, but it is not a reality without a go-to-market strategy. Innovators generally are surrounded by a bunch of people who are poking around to make sure both the idea and the strategy are in place and very, very real. Investors, advisors, mentors, and team members, who often will have equity shares and little else, all prod the innovators to consider both sides of the idea/execution equation. In business, we often see just the opposite – an idea without a strategy or a strategy that is not grounded by an idea.

Innovators are not necessarily serious people, but they have serious intent. There’s no joking around when it comes to their product/service/mission objectives. Proven innovators know that launching a new product or service is very hard work with a lot of risk involved. That is what separates us from them. To hang out with innovators, I would suggest mentoring. Join an accelerator as a domain expert – someone who knows something very specific about something very useful. As one of our mentors and a proven innovator, Anthony Tivan, CEO of Magellan Jets, advises us, offer your expertise not advice. In other words, mentor based on your experience, rather than your opinion. If you have something useful to offer, innovators will start checking in with you, and you will benefit from those engagements in some very profound ways.

– John Garvey

Garvey Communication Associates Inc. recently hosted a tour for 11 German entrepreneurs from the student association of entrepreneurship at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. During this innovation tour and visit to the GCAi headquarters in downtown Springfield, these budding entrepreneurs were given some useful tips in digital marketing for startups from John Garvey himself, president of GCAi (More).

German entrepreneurs visiting GCAi. Pictured with the students (from left to right) is Media Director Mary Fallon, Accounts Analyst Jamie Duncan, and President John Garvey.