Episode 90: “PR and International Networking Week”

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Synopsis

International Networking Week is the culmination of BNI’s public relations efforts. During International Networking Week, BNI holds events to demonstrate the benefit of networking to different groups.

PR helps you position yourself ahead of your competition. The purpose of publicity is not just to promote, but to announce and inform. PR is usually free, but you may need to hire a professional to write your press release.

What can P.R. do for you? A search for “International Networking Week” produces 97 million results on Google, and the first two pages are all about BNI.

Any businessperson can build up to powerful PR. There are many PR professionals in BNI; ask one for tips for where to start. It’s worth putting time and effort into creating brand awareness and name awareness.

Visit PRWeb.com and Beneaththecover.com for help distributing press releases.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 090 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. I’ve got a fun topic today that I’m going to be discussing, and that is PR Helping Your Networking Efforts.

Priscilla:
Oh, great. Well, tell us about it.

Ivan:
Well, PR really can help build credibility for any business. Next to word-of-mouth, publicity is one of the most cost effective strategies you can use to market your business. And BNI has been doing this and focusing on this for many years. Sort of a culmination of all of this has been our recent efforts in the last few years to develop and do International Networking Week.

If BNI members aren’t familiar with it, this podcast is being conducted during International Networking Week. This is the third annual International Networking Week that was an initiative of BNI, and so if you have a chance, to go InternationalNetworkingWeek.com to get some additional information.

International Networking Week is an initiative of BNI’s; it’s all about PR and developing the brand and recognition for the organization. It features a lot of networking events all across the world, and the goal with International Networking Week is to celebrate the key role that networking plays in the development and success of businesses across the world. We’ve been doing and will be doing simultaneous events that are being held globally, and the idea is to focus these events to bring people together in business, possible government, communities, to network and to understand the concept of relationship networking.

All of this has been really done to help build the BNI brand, and it’s a great example of how you can use PR to help your business. PR increases your credibility, helps position yourself ahead of your competition, especially if you’re in control and you’re working it, is a very positive aspect of what you’re doing. The main objective of the publicity is really to announce or to inform. You don’t want to just promote your business; you want to announce or inform. PR publicity is usually free in most cases. You don’t have to pay to get your press release in a paper, but you may need to have a professional writer. So BNI members who want to generate their own PR, you may have to hire a writer to draft the press release, to do the edits.

There are a lot of online sources and resources available to teach you how to structure, design, and format your PR. Certainly, there are many PR members in BNI, so if you’ve got a member that specializes in PR, go to them, talk to them about this podcast and how you, as a member, can use PR on a smaller level.

Again, International Networking Week is the culmination of almost 20 years of our PR efforts, so it’s very large. Just to give you a sense of how big it is, Priscilla, I did a Google search on International Networking Week a few months ago, and they had, for Google’s 10th anniversary, they had an old database that would go back to 2001. So I typed in International Networking Week for 2001 and I got zero hits. So that means if you went to Google in 2001 and you typed in International Networking Week, nothing would pop up.

Well, I went to Google a few months ago. I’m sitting in front of my computer right now. Let me type it in right now and see what we come up with. International Networking Week, if you punch that in right around International Networking Week, you’re going to get – here’s the number. This is bigger than what I did just a few months ago. I got 97 million hits.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
Just now. Just now did it. Now it goes up and down. If it’s somewhere near International Networking Week, it’s higher than when it’s sometime away. But right now, International Networking Week, I just typed it in, and I got 97,400,000 hits.

Priscilla:
Are those all related to BNI?

Ivan:
Oh, that’s the beautiful thing. The first two pages are all totally BNI. They click back to BNI. So here’s LinkedIn groups signed in as Business Network International. Get Connected 2009, Business Network International. The official BNI podcast from episode 38 a year ago is up here. It’s one BNI Web site after another BNI Web site or some link that talks about BNI. This is all about brand building. And although this is an example on steroids, you have to understand it took us a long time to build to this and you, too, any business person can build to creating powerful PR by starting with press releases, hiring somebody to write them, working with PR firm. We work with PR firms to get our press releases up.

There are Web sites and distribution services such as PRWeb.com. A good friend of mine, Mike Drew, at BeneathTheCover.com, is also developing an online PR service, and so I’d recommend if you – and it’s a lot less expensive than PRWeb. If you’re a BNI member and you want to start getting some PR out there, go to BeneathTheCover.com, connect with Mike Drew, and he can absolutely help you in distributing your press releases worldwide.

Networking in business is more than just going out and shaking hands. Your business also needs to generate publicity in order to increase visibility and credibility. The professionals should really focus some of their time and effort on creating brand awareness and name awareness, and that all comes through PR. I thought that this was the best week for me to talk about this since this is an example of PR that BNI has really had a great deal of success with, International Networking Week.

Priscilla:
Wow, that’s just great. You’re an inspiration to all of us.

Ivan:
Well, you know what I tell people? I’m a 20 year overnight success. It took 20 years of doing this to achieve any level of success. The secrets of success without hard work is still a secret, so you’ve got to really focus, keep your eye on the ball, and keep doing things incrementally improving over time, and you build and build and build your business.

You know, one last thing before we wrap up. With International Networking Week and PR, there’s a great example of a video. We’ll have a link on this podcast to a video that I just did that is up at YouTube right now. It’s the International Networking Week 2009 video. It’s about ten minutes long. And we’ll have a link to it, so click on that. It’s the beauty of technology today. YouTube is an incredible way to get your message out, and so what I have done is, through systems like my podcast, my blog, BNI.com, SuccessNet, I do links to the video that I did at YouTube. And technology today, it’s very easy today to stand in front of a green screen with a video guy, doesn’t cost a fortune, you do a fairly semi-professional looking video, you get it on YouTube, and it gets tons of exposure. It’s another great way of building PR.

By the way, the videos from ’07, ’08, and ’09 show up as Number 3 when you type in at Google, International Networking Week. So that gives you a sample of just how powerful this kind of PR effort can really be in whatever you do.

So BNI members go to school on me; learn what BNI has done and apply it to your business, and you, too, can build a regional, national, or international brand.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, you know YouTube is free also.

Ivan:
It sure is. It’s free, and we get a lot of exposure for this and other things we do right up there.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, I think we’re out of time, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thank you so much.

I’d like to just remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.