It has been an interesting few days.  On Monday, we officially announced that BlueStorm hadd aquired CYBERCity, another Binghamton-based computer services firm.  The merger is a solid mix of CYBERCity’s personal-to-small business market and BlueStorm’s small-to-medium business focus.  We are looking to expand our enterprise infrastructure business and use the advances in enterprise infrastructure technology to make them available to smaller organizations.  The big upside is in the managed services business where both teams have been having success, so we see this as a great growth opportunity (trying so hard not to use the word synergy, but this is a text book example).

It was a fun strategic/tactical exercise to roll-out news to each outlet.  The first step was to coordinate website updates to show a co-branded presence. This had to be done before I posted the announcement on our Twitter and  Facebook because  of the immediacy of those outlets, so I had somewhere to link readers.  I also wanted to make sure news outlets had a chance to confirm (because they still do that) and assign the story, so sending out email and faxes (yes, dialed it myself) also had to be sent before the social media postings.  The big surprise was having one of the local TV news stations call so quickly that I had not yet received the fax confirmation.

Here are the steps I followed –
A week early:

1. Create a call sheet – name, email, fax, and Twitter accounts
2. Sign up to follow their twitter accounts – You want to give them time to follow you

Day of the announcement:

1. Update website — In case  news people go there to confirm
2. Send out faxes and emails
3. Post on BlueStorm’s Twitter and Facebook — It’s also good to have some of your co-workers on-call to RT and “Like” so the message spreads virally
4. Post on local third-party or business blogs — The local news site allows the public to create their own blog space, so I posted the release on BlueStorm’s PressConnect page
5. Send direct message to reporter’s Twitter — I only did this to those that I had a prior relationship
6. Good old-fashioned follow-up — This worked great because I found that my local press contact was out that day from her voice mail.  I was able to connect to the news desk and placed a press release based article at the top of the Business section. That would have been an embarrassing miss.

The Results The story ended up in the lead segment of two local news broadcasts, including this report on Newschannel 34.  We also had the Business section headline in the Binghamton Press and appeared on the front page of the Binghamton Business Journal.  The only downside was that the WBNG-TV News interview and Press articles were not posted online even after I called.  My lesson there was that next time I needed to include the web producer on my release list.

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It has been far too long since my last entry, but the reason is good — we were on the move again. At the end of September, I started a new job in Binghamton, NY. Probably the last place on earth I ever thought that we would be moving.

For the first few months, I drove back-and-forth between Weschester and Binghamton, but we made the move to temporary residence at my parents, and then finally into our own apartment this week. No hurry right now to buy a house, but that will happen soon enough.

I’ve been doing all the moving myself while the rest of the family spent Christmas plus a couple more weeks in Florida. So I’m off to unpack up some more boxes and settle in. Good to be back.