Evolution Magazine December 2013 8 | Page 16

Are you ready to Be Inkandescent? Hope Katz Gibbs A h, the art of being yourself and living your dream — while making enough money to employ others and grow your marketshare. Isn’t that every entrepreneur’s goal? Doing it with spirited passion, brilliance, and white-hot light is what makes the best companies stand out from the crowd, for they are “inkandescent.” That’s the mission for The Inkandescent Group, LLC — a PR, content marketing and publishing company that I founded in 2008: www.TheInkandescentGroup.com. I knew there were thousands of entrepreneurs who needed help with their public relations and marketing campaigns, but couldn’t afford the big guns in NYC. For the last five years, our PR firm “by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs” has helped businesses raise awareness of their brand and ideas. Staffed by award-wining print and broadcast journalists, designers, web developers, and photojournalists, our team knows how to tell a great story — and has fun doing it. It’s been very satisfying to help other small-business owners craft their message, create stunning websites, write educational newsletters, and get quoted in the news. Realize that Content Marketing Is Queen 16 Evolution Magazine/ December 2013 Since getting in the news is what most entrepreneurs hire PR firms to do, we’ve been happy to oblige. We’ve gotten our clients mentioned in national publications such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as well as “The CBS Early Show,” and on Fox News, and more. But what is the real value of that kind of fireworks if you don’t catch the embers? Sure, being quoted in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal is a great credibility builder, but if you don’t catch the embers — on your website, in a monthly newsletter, and on your social media pages — it’s just a pretty memory. That’s why we focus on helping our clients develop a logical, methodical strategy around their PR and marketing campaigns. This includes using every article they write, every press mention they generate, and any accomplishment they achieve three times. Embracing the “Power of 3” is also the reason we launched our own business magazine in January 2010. We wanted to give our clients, and other smallbusiness experts, another means of sharing their insights and ideas with our growing network of entrepreneurs. After all, a tenet of journalism is to “show, don’t tell,” and what better way