If you follow PR types on Twitter, you start to see an interesting pattern emerge - there's a whole lot of talk about "web 2.0", and how to get noticed in social media. There's also a lot of verbiage about how important it is to "tell a story".

Lost in the haze of PR self promotion? Something very, very simple: PR and Marketing exist to promote your company's products and services - they aren't some kind of isolated service that exists to create some kind of "aura" around the company. Stories are great - so long as they are related to your products and/or services.

I don't claim to be a PR guru, but I do know this: it's crucial to let people know what your products are, how they work, and what problems they solve. That's why we do things like the weekly podcast - to highlight how Smalltalk gets used. That's why we do "Smalltalk Daily" - short screencasts that explain various aspects of the products we offer. That's why the audio and video are syndicated out through iTunes - it makes it all easier to find and easier to subscribe to.

It's really not that complicated - regardless of what a lot of the "pros" will try to tell you.

Technorati Tags: marketing