Archive for April, 2008

If you have not yet caught the Twitterbug here are two stories that should convince you that it’s a worthwhile exercise in customer service.  Companies should be monitoring Tweetscan, if nothing else.

Frank Eliason works for Comcast.  He started to check out what people were saying about the company on the micro-blogging service  and he tweets under the name comcastcares.

His tentative Twittering hit the spotlight after he noticed a post from Michaal Arrington of TechCrunch complaining that his Comcast Internet service was down and he jumped right in. When he was accused of helping because it was Arrington, others came to his defense saying that he had helped many others as well.  

Robert Scoble tells the story of how he was contacted by H&R Block after he posted on Twitter that he was doing his taxes there.  Again a high profile blogger broughy it to the fore, but these companies were on Twitter helping folk before that high profile relationship started.  They just catapulted them into the limelight.

“I’m hoping that going forward, the Frank Eliasons of the world — whether they communicate via Twitter or elsewhere — will not only be commonplace but corporate priorities, not picked because they happen to be the right people at the right place at the right time, but because, just as corporations can’t operate without PR and marketing executives, it’s important to have people on staff in charge of online customer outreach.” writes Catherine Taylor , who interviewed Eliason for Social Media Insider. 

 

 

 

A recent Burst Media Online Insight survey of more than 6,000 consumers found that four out of five (79.6%) respondents go online to conduct personal research on green initiatives and products. Data in this survey could hep you with your online PR content strategy

Consumers indicate high recall of green advertising but are often skeptical of advertiser claims. To allay doubts many seek more information on green claims made in advertising. Where do consumers go to find this information?  The number one source is the news

• News stories (43.7%)
• Word of mouth/family and friends (35.2%)
• Personal research (33.9%)
• Advertisements (26.7%)
• Community initiatives (18.4%)
• Organized groups (12.2%)

Consumers over the age of 35 rely on news stories much more than respondents under 35 – 47.6% versus 36.3%, respectively.

What kind of news stories would grab their attention?

1. Recycling information (35.6%) 
2. Healthy recipes (33.9%)
3. Alternative energy sources (27.5%)
4. Natural remedies (26.2%)
5. Eco-friendly cleaning products (25.4%)
6. Green technologies (25.2%)
7. Nature/outdoor recreation (24.8%)
8. Tips for simple living (24.0%)
9. Gardening/organic gardening (23.9%)
10. Organic foods (23.8%)

Get your content in to an RSS feed and syndicate it.  Add ways for people to share the content and add it to social media sites.  That way it’s likely to get picked up by bloggers.

 

 

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The New Communications Forum started today at the beautiful Hyatt Vineyard Creek hotel.

I’m live-blogging the social media/beyond blogging pre-con workshop with David Parmet.

There is a mix of knowledge here – some very new to Web 2.0 and some who are quite savvy.  David is talking about the importance of RSS feeds and blog content in terms of Google ranking.

Tip:  When you are writing articles, press releases or blog posts, think about your keywords and use them in your titles and headlines. Do your keyword research and get a content strategy in place.

Tags:  Use tags to spread your content and let others find it.  Example:  David tells the story of how his wife discovered the tags on Del.icio.us about lighting when they were doing remodeling.  She was tagging ideas and then found all these other cool ideas that others had tagged too.

Categories on blogs are the bigger, overall sections of the blog. Each blog post should be tagged with relevant keywords. The amazing thing about tagging is that when poele add tags it spread your content into more places.  Example:  The person who took the original photo, or wrote the blog post tags it with certain keywords. Anyone who finds the content will tag it with words they associate with it.  It can spread into more audiences who will find the content when they search.

The most important step you need to master in Web 2.0 and social media is how to listen.  It’s vital to know what is being said about you and your company. (Note: You can get a free copy of the PRoactive Report which covers Online Reputation Management in detail) 

How do you publicize your blog? 

• Read the blogs of others
• make relevant comments about their posts 
• Transparency is paramount
• If there is a remark that you can address for the company, do so.
• Link to them in your blog. Links are the currency of the Internet.
• Write good content that adds value to the conversation.

Tip for PR folk: Mentioning an A-list blogger in your post can attract their attention.

Video blogging:  Buy a Flip from Pure Video on Amazon or Costco for about $100.  Add videos to your blog and to a sitelike Blip TV or YouTube.  You can use Tube Mogul as one place to upload and distribute your content to other video sharing sites.  It is a free service and it has metrics that allows you to see where your video is getting most play.

Podcasting:  Use a digital recorder that has a USB connection so it’s fast and easy to get the files onto your computer. M-audio is a good one.

The takeaway from this session is that blogging, podcastng and videocasting is easy to do, costs almost nothing and gets great results.

There is a learning curve. But once you get going and get familiar with the tools and the format, the rewards are vast.

 

 

Blended search results are changing the way people click on a search result page.

It used to be that a search result page offered you ten blue text links.  Now we get shown news resutls, images and video. And according to a study from Jupiter Research and iProspect it’s the news that’s getting the most attention and clicks.

SEO becomes more and more important to PR every day.

 

Roughly a third of search engine users click a news (36%) or image (31%) result after conducting a general web search. This compares to just 17% and 26%, respectively, for these assets being clicked by search engine users within vertical (news or image) search results.

17% of search engine users click video results appearing within blended search results, compared to just 10% of users who click on a video after conducting a specific search for videos.

Not only can your news top the search results page if you do it right.  Now Google will pull a quote from your article if it is relevant to the query and they think the quote warrants it.

See this example in the post by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land 

When you click on the name Eric Schmidt you get a whole list of his quotes.  What a great PR news tool! 

What do you have to do to get your news and exec quotes on page one? Understand  how search works and how to optimize your news content for the search engines.

Join me at the New Comm Forum in Sonoma next week – I’ll be talking about these PR challenges and opportunities in my session with Rebecca Lieb.

 

After his keynote at the Media Relations Summit last week I spoke with Robert Scoble about how PR can use the new technology – twitter, friend feed, blogs, Facebook, podcasts, online video.

“That’s the new PR – build relationships with people who care about your product and give them a story to talk about,” says Scoble.  “You don’t have control but you can give them a story – if it’s interesting, they’ll talk about it.”

If you want to reach all these little audiences around the world you have to have a real integrated approach – use all the different types of media.  A PR person is a relationship person.  Start with the one you feel most comfortable with. 

Listen to the podcast

Johnson&Johnson are experimenting with social media.

Earlier this month, J&J invited 56 influential mommy bloggers to an all-expenses-paid trip to a three-day conference in New Jersey where they had breakout sessions on everything from wine tasting to infant eye exams, writes Brandweek.

The idea was to connect with moms and build relationships. A great idea, but unfortunately they hit some controversy that resulted in a flood of blog posts and comments.

Here are some of the comments about the event.

“The whole event seems a little lets-throw-an-idea-up-in-the-air-and-see-what-happens,” Stop Drop and Blog. 
“J&J are throwing a “BabyCamp” for mommy bloggers. Sounds great, right? But a couple of problems.

1. You can’t bring your baby. Dumb.
2. They scheduled it at the same time as BlogHer. Double dumb.
3. They disinvited a couple of bloggers, one who had a baby, and another who was speaking at Blogher. Triple dumb.”   Robert Scoble

Lori Dolginoff, global communications director at Johnson & Johnson and the Camp Baby organizer, said in an email “What a learning process it has been for all of us. …because this is an event created for education and networking, we felt that you could not take full advantage of the agenda while caring for your children. This was probably the hardest call we made and certainly have learned a lot through this process. In the future, we will be much more overt about these decisions but we tried to communicate this as questions arose.” 

The event itself was well organized, but J&J didn’t really know what they were getting into in terms of bloggers, said   Kristen Chase, a mom blogger and online radio host who helps run the Web site coolmompicks.com.

Not all the bloggers felt this way. There has been some very positive feedback from bloggers who attended

The organizers of the event went out of their way to ensure we all had a pleasurable and educational experience and I commend them on a job well done.  May We Recommend

If I had any doubts about going to Camp Baby it all disappeared after talking to Lori yesterday. She is a take charge, transparent, accept responsibility and learn from mistakes kind of person and I applaud her for that. J & J might have needed a refresher course in sending out invitations, but when it came to planning and executing the event, they certainly had it hands-down. They certainly spared no expense in making sure that the bloggers got there in the most convenient way possible. Once there, we were treated courteously and with the utmost care and respect.  Maryamie  (Mrs. Scoble)

Why are companies so attracted to social media? One reason is the declining reach and influence of TV. Another is the fact that people prefer to get information from their peers.  A recent Keller Fay Group and PQ Media study revealed that nearly 80% of consumers trust the recommendations of family, friends and bloggers more than they do traditional advertising. And word-of-mouth marketing efforts are expected to grow more than 30% until 2011.

Susan Getgood has some excellent advice for working with bloggers. 

 

 

Companies are no longer inundating consumers with their ‘brand stories’, but instead helping customers tell a story to other consumers. The idea is not to promote that particular brand, but to make those customers more interesting to others, says Trendwatching.com

While well-known, storied and very visible STATUS SYMBOLS will dominate consumer societies for years to come, they will face increasing competition from STATUS STORIES. Is the ultimate and ongoing value of going on an exotic trip discovering remote islands that other tourists haven’t set foot on before—the experience itself—or is the real value to be found in the impressive stories a traveler can tell his or her peers on return?

And the shift towards an online, virtual world is just one more challenge for visible, physical, real world status manifestations.  The answer may lie in figuring out how to provide consumers with the tools and ingredients they need to tell a story about it.  Pontiac Underground is one good example.

Finding your evangelists and building a social media site where they can tell your story to others makes good business sense.

Bob Lutz, the controversial vice chairman of General Motors talks to Robert Scoble at Fast Company TV.

He says that he did not realize that the media would be one of the biggest audiences for the Fast Lane Blog

Watch the video

 

AOL is aggregating content from their existing blogs into a new Tech Network. You can now access content from Engadget blogs, Switched, TUAW and Download Squad in one channel.  And it won’t be branded AOL.

Sites in the new network include Engadget Mobile, Engadget HD and sites like Joystiq, Xbox 360 Fanboy, and Wii Fanboy. It’s the second largest technology news and information publisher online as the combined blogs bring in nearly 5 million combined monthly visitors, making it about twice the size of Wired and on a par with Yahoo Tech.

If these blogs are not yet on your tech media relations list now would be the time to add them.  Just bear in mind that working with bloggers is not the same as pitching reporters.

 

For communications professionals, being unfamiliar with social media tools borders on malpractice writes Lee Aase, manager for Syndications and Social Media at the Mayo Clinic. 

Lee is also the Chancellor of the Social Media University, Global where he shares his knowledge.  It’s a great resource for PR people who want to get up to speed on how to use social media tools. 

Lee just gave an excellent presentation on using Facebook and LinkedIn at the Media Relations Summit 08.  You can read his post and see his slides here.

My partner Doug Hay and I did a full day workshop on how to create a social media strategy. We wil not be putting those slides up – there are over 200! But the outline for the session is 

1. Listen to the conversations (find supporters, detractors and influencers)
2. Set goals
3. Develop a content strategy based on what you learned in step 1
4. Choose the social media tools that make sense for your strategy
5. Deliver the right content to the right audience
6. Engage with your customers/readers/evangelists/detractors/inlfuencers
7. Facilitate conversations – provide tools and venues
8. Measure the effectiveness of the strategy and adapt

We plan to do more of these one-day workshops with Bulldog Reporter and PR University.

If you think you might be one of those who areguilty of PR malpractice you can  

Try Lee’s 12-step social media program for PR professionals

Get some social media training.

Subscribe to the PRoactive Report and get the latest updates on social media, online PR trends and new technology tools for PR.