Archive for the 'online PR' Category

A new survey from Nielsen set out to show that as people use social media they use email less – and surprise! it came out completely the other way around.

“It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users. Intuitively this makes some sense. Social media sites like Facebook send messages to your inbox every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity. Also, it’s perfectly logical that as people make connections though social media, they maintain those connections outside of the specific platform and may extend those connections to email, a phone conversation or even in-person meetings.”

SearchEngineLand.com reports that Twitter and Facebook, and the multitude of APIs that allow people to share content without even going to these sites, has transformed the social sharing of content into a crucial online marketing tactic that companies are making a mandatory part of their consumer outreach. The sharing of content is what makes social media so successful.

Social media websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, and others have realized that you can’t make someone visit your site. Instead of trying to ‘oust’ other sites, they have instead focused on making sure users can share whatever information they want across any medium they choose. SearchEngineLand

Adapt this philosophy to your own PR content.

• Make is easy to find, republish and share.

• Update your online newsroom and make it social media ready. Syndicate all your news content in feeds.

• Add a Share This button.

• Use the Social Follow button so that visitors can easily find you on all social sites.

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For the past 100 years companies have had the luxury of deciding what products they want to make and sell, what their brand message will be and how they will deliver it to their audience. Communication in PR was based on a one-way, two-step flow of communication through mass media.

The Internet changed that.

We’re in the age of social media and markets have indeed become conversations. The media landscape is in a state of flux. Consumers have access to new tools that allow them to easily and quickly access breaking news, find information, publish their thoughts and opinions and communicate with their peers.  It also allows them to give you feedback and form a deep relationship with your organization, but you have to be open to this new media landscape and embrace social media.  Listen, learn and respond.

With 500 million people on Facebook and 50 million on Twitter it’s no longer a question of ‘should we be doing social media? – but rather ‘are we doing it right?’

The first step in getting it right is to tap into the online conversations and listen to your audience. Social media offers you the opportunity of doing in-depth research, listening to conversations and hearing feedback we’ve never had access to before. There are tools to mine that data and get intelligence that can inform your PR strategy and hone the messaging.

Case Study: Finding New Markets

By listening to mentions of the brand online Hennessy Cognac discovered fans of their brand on a social networking site in the U.S. for African Americans: BlackPlanet.com.

Analysis of these conversations about Hennessy, and further study of the online and offline lifestyle choices of these brand fans, revealed their interests, preferences and how they interacted with the brand.  Based on this data Hennessy created a tour called Hennessy Artistry. They sponsored and partnered with well-known African American music artists and DJs and held events and concerts in major cities across the U.S., always making content from these events available to post and share online.

In Q1 of 2010 they held a major launch party for their first new product in 50 years: Hennessy Black. The event was held in Chicago hosted by LeBron James with special guests Jay-Z, Young Jeezy, Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis, Cleveland Cavaliers  Chicago Bulls & Chicago Bears.   Content about the event  reached more than 25,000,000 people  through the following websites; ChicagoTribune.com, RedEye/ChicagoNow.com, ChicagoSunTimes.com, HuffingtonPost.com, TheSource.com, BlackPlanet.com and the 200+ blogs and websites that posted the ‘black carpet’ video interviews with celebrities like Lebron James, Jay-Z and Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis.

When you search Google images for Hennessy Black there are 260 000 results.  Since March Hennessy Black has been mentioned in just over 20 000 blog posts.

LeBron James [Black Out Chicago - Black Carpet] from MCM on Vimeo.

Listening to the online conversations is not only the first step-it’s a vital step. There is an old PR saying: know before you go.   Listening makes is so much easier to get that information and once you have it, you can allocate your resources wisely. You’ll know where to start, who to talk to, what content they respond to and what social sites you should be concentrating on.

When you know the lay of the land it’s much easier to plot a path to your destination. A social media marketing strategy is that roadmap.

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Image Credit:  The Pub Report

I had the pleasure of chatting with Maggie Fox at the Media Relations Summit in New York City last week. She spoke on the session about the future of social media

Earned vs Paid Media

One of the opportunities Maggie spoke about is earned media being used in conjunction with paid media – often a controversial subject in PR.  How does this work in social media?  When a blogger or video blogger  produces content around a remarkable brand or product experience that post does not necessarily reach the maximum audience you would like it reach.

Now there is an opportunity to take that content, which has a high trust-factor, and get it out to more people.  Sites like digg and foursquare are offering paid content marketing opportunities and services like Outbrain and Newsforce make it possible to get your content to the people visiting social sites and traditional news websites.  And that audience is growing by leaps and bounds. Newspaper websites had their highest ever number of visitors in Q1 of this year.

Its definitely time to add some new ideas and tools to our traditional PR and media relations skill set.

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The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has a new report out about the news content in old media and new media and how blogs and social media news agendas relate to or differ from traditional media sources. The findings are very interesting:

What used to be a one-way broadcast of news has become an increasingly social medium. Half of Americans rely on friends and people they know for news. 44% of online users get news from a social site. Although most original reporting still comes from traditional news sources, technology like blogs and social networks have opened the floodgates of discussion and opinion about the news. People are influencing the impact of the news in ways that were impossible before.

The Pew study looked at the types of news stories consumers share and discuss the most and the issues they have less interest in.

Not surprisingly , they discovered that each social community has its own culture, personality and function. After analyzing a year of data from top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages, seven months’ worth on Twitter and a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube several clear trends emerged:

• The stories that gain traction in social media are substantially different from those that lead in the mainstream media. Gosh! Could this be a clue as to why mainstream media circulation and viewership is declining? Are they perhaps not tuned in to our tastes and interests?
• There are also big differences between what gets noticed and shared in blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Just as with other media channels, each of the social media channels has its own community and their interests differ.
• News consumers don’t stay long on any website – make your news brief and appealing to the particular audience of that platform.
• Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied
• Stories that gain traction in social media do so quickly, often within hours of initial reports, and leave quickly as well.
• Blogs are still heavily reliant on mainstream sources for their content.
• Twitter on the other hand is not. A majority of Twitter news linked to online sources.
• News videos on YouTube that got the most views and sharing had a strong visual appeal

The more things change, the more they stay the same. PR 101 still applies.

Don’t make the mistake of viewing ’social media’ as one homogeneous platform and put the same content on all channels. It did not work in old media and it won’t work in new media. It might save time , but it does not get results.

Do your homework. Read the blogs. Don’t pitch stories that are wrong for that blog or website. Use video to get more interest – but make sure they are visually appealing and tell a story. Find out who the audience is for a particular channel and don’t send the same content to all channels.

To properly service journalists, bloggers and social media conversationalists you need to provide multiple types of content on your online newsroom. Don’t assume that you know what they want. Let them pick the content they prefer and make it easy for them to take it and use it.

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In a recent analysis of social media use by large and small corporations across several sectors we found that less than twenty percent have buttons showing where else they have content.And many of them don’t carry a consistent branding and message through their blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

If you are not yet vigorously active on Facebook, take another look at what they are up to: depending on whose stats you believe Facebook is either right behind Google nipping at its heels or has already surpassed them in terms of traffic.

And according to WSJ.com they are about to take another leap forward.  Their new ‘Like’ button is already appearing on sites like Scribd.com. The idea is that other sites will include this button that users can click on to signal their interest in a piece of content and that approval shows up on his or her Facebook page, with a link back to the site. No wonder sites eager for more traffic and better search visibility  are rushing to display the button. More than 70 partners have signed up to embed “Like” buttons or other customization widgets on their sites, including ticketing site Fandango.com and CNN.com.

“Facebook is growing up fast and Google had better be on its toes,” says Paul Gillin in his latest newsletter. “Services that choose to partner with Facebook will benefit from immediately adding content from Facebook’s 400 million-plus members with minimal effort. They’ll also enjoy easier cross-enrollment with the social network.”

Since Facebook is getting so many visitors and driving so much traffic back and forth to websites, it’s time to take another look at your Facebook page. What experience are you offering once people get to your page?  Why should they become a fan?

Simply putting up a page and not ‘pimping’ it as much as you can means you are leaving opportunities on the table.  With the new features available, you can have a robust presence that cross-pollinates with your other online content. The Social Media Examiner page is a great example.

Engage

The point of social media is to build relationships and have conversations.  You can’t do that unless you engage with your followers and fans.  It’s obvious why an individual would want to do this, but why should a business or an organization do it? More than half of Facebook fans said they are more likely to make a purchase from a brand they follow and 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.

Social Media Audit

If you feel that your social media efforts are not producing stellar results analyze the activity on your social sites.  Just pushing content out is not the way to go. Duplicating that content across all platforms with no human interaction won’t get you the results you are after.   At the Society for New Communication Research Fellows’ meeting at the NewComm Forum this week there was much discussion on this subject. Every company has to be a publisher today in addition to their core business.  And if you are not doing this and getting great results perhaps your staff needs more social media training in how to blog and tweet more effectively and make the most of Facebook, LinkedIn and sites like StumbleUpon and Digg.

The CMO Club polls its members each week and the most recent question put to the group was:

What is your top priority for hiring?

Social Marketing was at the top of the list with 39.2%  with comments such as “The biggest gap I have is Social Marketing expertise. We all know the basics, it’s applying new social networking capabilities to our marketing mix.” and “A few years back Industry expertise mattered more. Now it’s the science of customer engagement. I can always teach them about the industry.”

When asked what they’d do differently in 2010, 64 %  said they planned to increase social media spending, and 72% of those CMOs not currently overseeing social media initiatives planned to create some.

Pete Krainik, founder of the CMO Club, even suggested this will be the year that CMOs failing to grasp social media will be fired.

Krainik predicts that social media will be an enterprise-wide mainstay by 2011, but it seems like most marketers are still trying to wrap their heads around it all.

Are we seeing a similar trend in PR?  Is your job at risk if you don’t master social media skills this year?  The PRSA Counselors Academy has this on their top 3 items for PR  professionals in 2010. The PR And Social Media report from Econsultancy tells us that only 13% of companies are ‘very satisfied’ with the level of social media service they get from their PR agency.

A quick Twitter poll of PR and Communication professionals shows that about 70% of them think that PR professionals and PR agencies that don’t master social media will lose out.

PR executive recruitment specialists report that they are seeing the same trend as the CMO Club – social media skill is the number one requirement for landing a PR job today.  (Yest most PR schools don’t teach it.)

And just knowing how to put up a Fscebook page or a Twitter feed is not enough.  You have to know how to implement the right social actions for your situation and blend them seamlessly into your PR campaigns. You have to be able to build a community and actually engage with them – not just use social media as another broadcast medium

What can you do to improve your social media skills?

• Learn how to plan a social media strategy
• Attend the Social Media Club meetings in your area
• Follow PR thought leaders on Twitter:
• Subscribe to this blog

What would you advise PR people to do to improve their skills?

Image Credit: Desmond  Kavanaugh

This chart from the Burueau of Labor is quite an eye opener.  Newspaper employment figures are at the lowest ebb in 50 years

We’ve been hearing about layoffs in newsroom, but it’s more than just the journalists.  This trend hits everyone working for a newspaper.  And to see it in graphic form like this really makes an impact. The numbers are back down to what they were in the mid fifties.

Brent Arends of Marketwatch asks: Can the news survive? Share prices have plunged across the board; many publishers are hemorrhaging money. Warren Buffett, a fan of the industryfor decades, now says he would not invest in it at any price.

Silicon Alley Insider says this is good news:  It’s a great opportunity. The next decade will give birth to new forms of reporting, more in tune with today’s technology and news consumption habits.

So how can we as PR people take advantage of this trend? 

• Be aware of the constantly changing news consumption habits.  
• Be proficient in the new technology that feeds these habits.

How will you take advantage of this opportunity?  Share your ideas with us.

Sally Falkow: your social media PR guide.

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Early in December Google announced that they will be including real-time news and updates in their web search pages.  And soon after Yahoo followed suit.

How does this affect the news cycle and PR?  As you can see in this short video news items and Twitter/Facebook status updates are right at the top of the page when you do a search now.

So even though your website might not be on page one for the keywords and phrases relevant to your business or product, if you have content in Google News and Twitter you could show up right at the top of the page!

An increasing number of journalists are using Google and Twitter to find sources and sniff out stories. Other people’s content will be showing up in these real-time search results, so you should be thinking about how to get your news in there too.

Real-time search is just one more reason to make sure you have good quality content in the social web.

How can you socialize your news content?  This short video explains it well

A social media newsroom with news feeds gets the content out here.  Build a community of fans and evangelists on Twitter, Facebook and other social mews site like StumbleUpon so that they pass on the content and start conversations about your company and your brand

Social Media is no longer a fad, or something to try out.  It will become an integral part of PR programs in 2010.  And PR people have to master social media and use it strategically to be effective.
Nothing backs up  predictions like cold, hard facts. 

Joseph Thornly posted this graph from Google Tremnds that shows searches for public relations have been declining since 2004.  Interest in social media and social networking started to pick up in 2006, grew slowly  through 2007 and 2008 and really gained ground in 2009.  In December 2009 searches for social media and social networking passed the number of searches for public relations.  

The news reference numbers are just as interesting.    News about social media grew rapidly in the first half of 2009 and passed PR about mid year.  Social media and social networking are neck and neck in news volume.

Of course we don’t know who does the searches, or exactly what they’re looking for, but it does give some insight into what people are currently interested in.  And social media seems to be the winner. 

The Econsultancy report on social media and PR revealed that only about half of the companies who participated in their survey are “satisfied” with their agency’s level of social media and online PR knowledge. Only 13% are “very satisfied”.  More than one quarter are  dissatisfied – 16% being “mildly dissatisfied” and 11% “very dissatisfied”. 

It seems we need to up our game.  A poll of 450 PRSA Counselors Academy members listed mastering social media as one of the most important things for PR practitioners to do in 2010.

Learning how to do a social media strategy would be a good place to start.

Sally Falkow

Your social media and online PR guide

The Proactive Report

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If you plan to increase your use of social media in the new year here are 5 tools that can help you be more effective

1. Feeds – The web isn’t about pages any more. It’s about streams, feeds and syndication.  RSS feeds are the blood vessels of the social web.  It’s how you read news updates from friends on Facebook and Twitter.  And since Google is now indexing real time content such as status updates and displaying them right at the top of a search results  page, it’s vital for PR people to understand feeds and search.  Feeds make it possible for your content to join the content stream on the social web.  
2. Monitoring conversations:  It is essential to have a good tool that can help you keep track of what is being said online.  You can do this manually with RSS technology. Set up a custom page at MyAllTop.com or use the latest premium version of NetVibes.com.  Take a look at a sample dashboard here.  And there are several good monitoring tools: Radian6, Filtrbox, Trackur, SM2 and eCairn. 
3. Measuring your progress:  You can use the  tools above to keep track of some of the stats you need to keep an eye on, but you also need to learn how to read your web analytics.  Google Analytics is free and it is an excellent system.   You need to know how many unique visitors you get, what days are best to post content, what content people read most, what sites refer traffic to you, etc.  Google Trends and Google Insights for Search can also provide valuable data.
4. A branded, interactive  video player that gives you analytics. Online video is growing at a rapid pace.  Networks, cable companies, marketers and technology firms are getting quite serious about online-video distribution.  A recent study shows that small businesses’ interest in online video has increased by 75% over the last year. (Marketing Profs)  eMarketer predicts that online video will jump by 40% in 2010.  Aand while it is important to have your video content on YouTube – now the 2nd largest search engine after Google – thnk about the value of having your conten on your website in a branded payer that offers the ability to add information, trackable links, buttons to a shopping cart or EBay and back-end analytics, so you can see how many people watch the video, how long do they watch, where do most people leave.  Check out Veeple.  And read Greg Jarboe’s book Video Marketing an Hour a Day
5. A Social Media Newsroom.  Once you have content flowing in the social stream, create a space on your website where it can all be easily found and searched. Bloggers and journalists are under immense pressure today.  They don’t have the time to figure out where your content is.   They might run acorss one piece of content in a search or see it on Twitter. But if they want to find out nore they will visit your website.  Make it easy for them to find everything you have and dead simple for them to take it and use it. Our recent survey shows that about 65% of companies and agencies have some form of newsroom online.  Now is the time to upgrade to a social media newsroom.  Offer your content in social media format – give them multi- media elements with the embed codes right there.  Offer a custom search function that searches your social content.  Give links to all your other social profiles and pages.  Let them save and share your content with just a click.

Ther are many other tools and platforms out there, but these are the 5 social media tools I recommend to get you off to a great start in 2010.