Posts Tagged ‘communications’

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Social Media: Anti-Social, Or An Opportunity For Influence?

09.12.01

“Are sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube making it easier for customers to hate you?”

Head in the sand

This was the question posed by Timothy Taylor in a Globe and Mail story entitled “anti-social media” yesterday. Using examples such as product faults (he cites Dell’s exploding batteries, although I think they were made by Sony…) and contest results (Nissan Cube), he asks the reader to consider whether social media may give voice to critics as much as to companies.

In his concluding words, “Everything that makes social media such a powerful tool for brand awareness also makes it a tempting platform for brand sabotage.”

Here’s my take.

The toothpaste is out of the tube

Taylor is certainly right in (at least) one respect – social media does give have the potential voice to a company’s critics. Unfortunately for the naysayers, though, the horse has already bolted on that one. Social media tools have been doing that for coming up to ten years now, and I don’t see this going away any time soon.

With that said, let’s face it – if your laptop caught fire (regardless of the manufacturer), you’d be talking about it. If social media weren’t around, it might be with a smaller group of friends but it might also be to your favourite reporter… and the news would still get out.

Social media tools, used properly, can do several things for companies:

  1. Provide an early warning mechanism – social media monitoring can give you an early heads-up when an issue is brewing. Nowadays, social media users don’t just report the news – they often spark it. Dell’s Richard Binhammer once said that social media gives the company a two-week heads-up on news that may break in traditional media. While I imagine that timeframe has shrunk over the two years or so since then as traditional media have clued-in to the online space, it’s still an important point.
  2. Provide insurance in advance – social media tools can help you to put a face (or multiple peoples’ faces) on an otherwise faceless organization. The relationships that you can build through that process probably won’t save you when something goes wrong, but it can make people (a) pause and ask if something is true rather than jumping to a conclusion and (b) take a more balanced view of the issue than they might otherwise.
  3. Provide an opportunity to respond – these new channels – blogs, social networks, etc – give people more of a voice than before, but they also give companies a voice where previously they had none beyond the mass media.

Bottom line: Far from losing control, these new online tools provide an opportunity for influence where companies previously had none.

Is that a good thing?

I guess it depends on whether you’re open to thinking differently about your communications with customers, or whether you’re pretending you can put the conversation back in the tube.

What do you think?

Posted in: issues management, social media

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Think Media, Not Medium

09.10.20

HeadphonesI just downloaded the audiobook version of Mitch Joel‘s book “Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.”

I bought the hard copy of the book two months ago when it was first released. So why get the audio version too?

Books just don’t work for me any more.

I love books. I have a stack of books in my office and a full bookcase in my home office. I love being able to hold, see, wave-around and annotate the hard copy of something as I consume it. However, I’ve had this book for two months now and am only half-way through.

On the flip side, as I make a concerted effort to live up to my commitment to myself to get back into running I’m finding myself consuming more and more audio content via my iPod Nano.

On the way home from work yesterday, I got through more of the audiobook than I’d consumed in the last two weeks via the hard copy, despite being on vacation.

Communicators: Think beyond one medium

It’s all too easy for us to think in terms of individual communications channels. PR folks do their thing; advertising folks do their thing; maybe the social media folks do theirs too.

That kind of thinking isn’t as effective nowadays, where people are used to consuming information in the way that they want. A ‘book’ doesn’t work for me, but the same content in a different medium is perfect.

As communicators, I think we need to move towards what I think of as a medium-agnostic approach to communications. Part of that is reaching your target audience wherever they inhabit, so each person can consume information in the way in which they choose. So think – are you re-purposing your content wherever you can?

It’s all about making your customers’ lives easier. How are you achieving that?

Image source: sxc.hu, via d-s-n

Posted in: communications

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Mainstream Media Still Matters

09.10.02

It’s easy to jump on the “mainstream media is dead” bandwagon. Journalists are jumping ship, outlets are fragmenting and readership is, in many cases, down. What’s more, it’s what a lot of the “cool kids” are saying so it must be right… right?

But here’s the thing – your local newspaper still probably has higher readership than your corporate blog… and as for tier one outlets, well, you’re probably not even close to their audience size.

Their audience is still bigger than yours

Mitch Joel recently wrote about the conundrum facing newspapers – more and more people say they will go elsewhere if their favourite news site suddenly introduced fees. Beneath the surface though, there’s a useful point for PR folks. As Todd Defren wrote in a separate post yesterday, “Though the news media still struggles to figure out how to make $$$ from journalism, the audience is present and accounted for.”

You catch that? The audience is present. It’s not as targeted as niche communities, but the reach is there (the reach/niche debate is one for another day).

Long term/short term

Social media is at its best long-term. I believe that; you probably do too. Yes, you might get lucky and get immediate attention but let’s face it, that’s not so likely.

As Dave Jones noted on a recent Inside PR podcast, agencies are fond of telling companies not to worry about social media results now; that in a few years they will – without necessarily having any evidence to back that up. See how your CFO or client reacts when you tell him he needs to wait for a couple of years to see the result from the budget he carved out from other marketing programs to give you.

How will you reach people?

You may have the best social media program possible, but if that’s all you have, how will people find out about it? Devoid of an audience, you run the risk of standing alone in a forest and shouting at the trees.

Depending on your company, you may already have an established visitor base for your corporate website. If so, the weight is off slightly but you’re still not off the hook. Search engine optimization is obviously key, but vaulting up to page one of important search terms isn’t usually a short-term endeavour.

Where does that leave us? With the established audiences of mainstream media – whether you’re buying placement through ads or earning it through media relations.

The definition of mainstream media has broadened (we can now count sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, Daily Kos, HuffPo etc as mainstream) but the old channels still matter.

What do you think?

Posted in: communications, social media, strategy

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57Comments

Your Social Media Presence Needs Substance, Not Just Style

09.09.30

“Twitter” isn’t a communications strategy. It isn’t even a social media strategy. As a company, having a Twitter account doesn’t even set you apart from the pack any more.

As social media’s golden-child-of-the-moment heads into the trough of disillusionment, we’re going to see more and more people vocalizing the same thing; Jennifer Leggio said it succinctly today: “I don’t care if your company is on Twitter.”

I’ve argued this for a while, but I’ll argue it again – Twitter (or Facebook, or FriendFeed, or blogging) isn’t a silver bullet for your company.

Plan properly

ToolkitInstead of wondering how best to use Twitter, try wondering:

  • “What are we trying to do?”
  • “Who are we trying to reach?”
  • “How do we best reach those people to achieve those things?”

Sometimes, the answer to those questions won’t include Twitter. Remember – Twitter is just one tool in your social media toolkit, and social media is just one set of tools in your communications toolkit. There are lots of other options.

Have a purpose

Just having a Twitter presence isn’t enough to make you interesting, either. Thousands of companies do nowadays. It doesn’t set you apart. You need substance to your presence, rather than just style.

Look at the companies we often look to as models of how to approach Twitter successfully – each of them uses the tool to accentuate their USP or to add something new to their communications (over-simplifying here to make a point):

  • Zappos uses it to shine a spotlight on their great customer service
  • Molson and Ford solve the problem of being large, potentially faceless brands by putting people and personalities out there
  • Dell uses Twitter to address a perception of poor customer service, while also putting a face on the company (along with sales generation)

These brands aren’t just there because they should be (in fact, they were on Twitter before it was the golden child) – each of them uses it for a purpose.

Stop and think

So, before starting a Twitter initiative, ask yourself:

Are we doing this for the right reason? Is it the right tool for the job?

Your thoughts?

Posted in: communications, strategy, Twitter

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Do People Really Care About PR Disclosure? And Why It Still Matters

09.09.15

Do people really care about disclosure by PR agencies when it comes to activities for their clients?

I don’t mean those of us in the fishbowl or in the PR industry, but the average person on the streets. Do they really care if a company’s representatives are in-house or contracted? Businessman about to reveal identityDo they care if a PR agency (or any other agency) is acting on behalf of a company, if they have the authority to do so?

Does the average person care about disclosure?

Those of us living in the fishbowl (social media and/or public relations) love to discuss the concept of disclosure. I should know – I’ve written about disclosure several times in the past.

A post yesterday from Jason Chupick over a PR agency’s disclosure (or lack thereof) of their role in a video for AT&T, and subsequent tweet by Todd Defren, sparked an interesting conversation on Twitter with Beth Harte, Sonny Gill, Arik Hanson and myself.

Essentially, as Jason’s post put it:

“Last week AT&T responded to criticism about the delays the MMS service for IPhones, as well as the device’s network-hogging tendency by way of a “Seth the Blogger Guy” YouTube video [...] Seth is neither a blogger, nor does he work at AT&T. He’s just the face of the team doing the work.”

Our subsequent discussion revolved around whether the average person in the street would care that someone from AT&T’s PR agency starred in the video without disclosure.

My take: if most people in the world don’t have a clue what a PR agency is, or the nature of the client/agency relationship, are they likely to care about disclosure from agencies? Probably not. They’re more likely to care about the quality of the product/service they’re buying or the responsiveness of customer service than about who is speaking on behalf of the company.

Disclosure still matters

As the title of this post suggests, though, I think disclosure by PR agencies is important regardless of the importance the average person puts on it, for three primary reasons:

  1. De-railing your message – whether the average person cares or not, controversy courts the press. There’s no better way to derail your message than to create controversy about the medium.
  2. Industry reputation – controversy over disclosure can haunt you for years. Stories like Wal-Marting Across America or the AllIWantForXmasIsAPSP blog still reverberate around the industry. Is that what you want you or your company to be remembered for?
  3. Ethics – when I finish my work for a day, I want to feel good about it. While lack of disclosure isn’t necessarily the same as deception, I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and know that I’m doing best job I can.

On top of these reasons, if I’m right and the average person doesn’t care who’s communicating on behalf of a company, then where’s the downside to disclosing? The main argument for not disclosing tends to be that admitting it’s not the company speaking directly can lessen the effectiveness of the communication. If that’s not the case, then what?

Bottom line: I don’t think most people care about disclosure. The social media/PR echo chamber does, but I’m not sure the concern extends to the broader public. Regardless, though, I think disclosure is still important. We’re firm on disclosing our activities on behalf of clients, and I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

What do you think?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: communications, pr, public relations

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51Comments

Interactive or Engaged?

09.09.08

(This is a guest post by Valerie Merahn Simon. For more about Valerie, check out her bio at the end of this post.)

I recently came across a press release about a new social media initiative taken by a large restaurant chain. A highly regarded advertising agency was responsible for the successful initiative, which resulted in a growing Twitter following, significant Facebook fan base, and impressive number of YouTube views. The website now offers a wealth of information on everything from nutritional information to in-store specials and promotions, as well as various sweepstakes. There are interactive quizzes and games. It really did appear that the agency was executing a fully integrated communications effort.

Then I read a blog post by John Bernier, a marketing manager for Best Buy, responsible for leading a team of employees in launching Best Buy’s “Twelpforce,” and realized what was missing. Bernier notes that customer’s must take advantage of social media as an “opportunity to listen to the customer to provide them more of what they need, when they need it, where they want it.”

Social Media is not simply an opportunity to pass information along and talk AT the customer, it’s an opportunity to engage and learn from your customers, and the marketplace. While the Best Buy website may not offer much in the way of sweepstakes or promotions, it offers many opportunities to engage and learn from customers; forums, the Geek Blog, IdeaX, ratings and reviews, and, of course the Twelpforce, offer customers the opportunity to make the most of Best Buy. And it allows Best Buy to make the most of its customers.

Advertising is an opportunity to create and communicate a message, to craft exciting and interesting ways to get the public to take note of the brand, in a manner in which the company would like it to be perceived. Public Relations is about developing the conversation between and about companies and the public; building relationships with the employees, customers and other targeted groups.

Social media provides a means for the consumer to voice opinions, and I believe the companies that will find the greatest success will understand the difference between interactive and conversational. While I very much agree that there are many lessons PR can learn about social media from advertising (see Dave’s earlier post ) and acknowledge that the ad agency designed campaign noted above certainly offered the client many benefits, the focus was on the restaurant, not the consumer. For a company to be most effective in its use of social media, it must offer customers the chance to take center stage.

Do you see the difference between customer interaction and engagement? If you were a marketing director, would you hire a PR Agency or an Advertising Agency to help develop and implement your social media strategy?

Valerie Merahn Simon serves as a Senior Vice President at BurrellesLuce media monitoring and measurement, and writes a national public relations column for examiner.com. She is also co-founder and host of #PRStudChat, a monthly twitter chat between PR professionals and students moderated by Deirdre Breakenridge. She can be found on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Posted in: communications, pr, public relations, social media

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Five Things PR Folks Can Learn About Social Media From Advertising

09.09.03

Photo symbolizing the divide between public relations and advertisingWe in the public relations industry seem to love to look down upon those on the advertising side of the communications industry when it comes to social media. They don’t get conversation, we tell ourselves smugly. They think in terms of one-way information pushing, not two-way dialogue.

Stop and think for a minute, though. Regardless of the media buy budgets, advertising agencies command big dollars. They land smart, creative people. They execute highly original ideas. They have a voice at a senior level. As much as folks on the PR side might hate to admit it, we can learn from the advertising folks. This is especially true as the different communications disciplines converge.

We’ve recently hired a creative director from the advertising side, and his perspective is breathing new life into our approaches.

So, what can we in PR learn about social media from the advertising side?

1. Scale matters

Relationships are important and conversation is key, but results are king. Successful businesses are built on scale – of sales; of profits; of customers. Advertisers understand that for a consumer-facing product to become a true success, it has to break outside small cliques and niches.

2. Creativity beats staid

As the public relations, marketing and advertising worlds converge, we increasingly find ourselves competing for the same business. This means we need to compete not just for strategic vision and execution, but also for creativity. What’s more, clients will pay for big, creative, results-focused ideas.

3. Measure, measure, measure

If we’re to go head-to-head with other disciplines, we need to measure the heck out of our programs. They certainly do, and they use it to make the case for their programs. This is one lesson I’ve found easy to adopt. I’m a big proponent of measurement and measurable objectives, so I welcome this.

4. Target your audiences

Remember all those ads you didn’t like? They weren’t targeted at you. Good advertisers are laser-like in their targeting as they know you can’t please everyone.

5. Craft your message carefully

I read a great piece the other day (unfortunately I don’t remember where) that said something like:

Good advertising sells product. Great advertising sells the aspiration behind the product.

In PR, we have an additional challenge when it comes to the publicity side – not only do we need (in some cases) to accomplish this, but we need to craft messages that get our clients in the paper in the first place. For, unlike on the advertising side, our coverage is earned with journalists rather than bought.

Rocket science? No. Important? Yes.

What else?

Posted in: communications, marketing, pr, public relations

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14 Key Skills & Attributes For New Public Relations Professionals

09.08.25

Public relations has changed significantly over the last few years. Even if you don’t buy into the idea that online communities and relationships are part of the public relations function, it’s hard to deny the rising importance of blogs, the gradual decline of traditional media and the impact that online conversations can have on brands. If you do believe that public relations should include these new activities, then there’s a whole new board game to be played.

Along the same lines, the skills that new PR grads need have evolved too.

Here are my thoughts on 14 skills and attributes a new PR professional needs in today’s market.

Traditional Skills/Attributes

Yes, there’s a new game to play (in my opinion), but the old game is still there too. PR pros still need the basic attributes and skills that they’ve always needed.  Try launching something using social media alone and you’ll appreciate the gap that traditional media can leave if it’s lacking. So, entry-level PR professionals still need to be proficient at (among other things):

  • Writing – the cornerstone of a PR professional’s career. If you’re not confident about your writing skills, brush up. You’ll need them. Learn how to write a news release – study those produced by other organizations and practice for yourself.
  • Communications skills – I’m talking ‘small c’ communications here rather than the ‘big c.’ Learn to communicate more effectively with other people
  • Attention to detail – because nothing will drive your colleagues (and, if you’re unlucky enough for your work to make it there, your clients) mad like poorly-edited work. Proofread everything. Fact check everything. Hand things to your supervisor when you would be happy with them going to the client.
  • Media relations – you’ll probably be doing media relations throughout the majority of your career. You may not have had an opportunity to do it for yourself as a new graduate, but an understanding of the basics is certainly an advantage – what’s in a media list? What are the pitching best practices?
  • Proactiveness – if you don’t know an answer to a question, first try to research the answer. If you can’t find the answer, ask. Whatever you do, don’t just sit there until you approach the deadline for your work.
  • Work ethic – public relations isn’t a 9-to-5 job. It shouldn’t take over your life, but the nature of the work is that sometimes you’ll have last-minute deadlines and sometimes you’ll have to chip-in to help others. There’s nothing worse for more senior team members than watching the more junior ones walk out of the door at 5pm then having to stay there until 9pm themselves. Put in that little bit of extra effort. It won’t be every day, but people will notice.

New Skills/Attributes

Alongside the regular attributes that I think new PR pros should have, I would add a whole new list of attributes related to the online work. Among these I would include:

  • Blogging - you don’t necessarily need to have one (although it’s a big plus), but an understanding of the importance of blogs and an interest in their use, is essential in my view.
  • Microblogging - it’s still an emerging technology, but I would argue that an understanding of microblogging tools (the primary one currently being Twitter)  is essential for new grads.
  • Social networking tools – Facebook, MySpace LinkedIn, Plaxo and more – there’s a plethora of social networking tools out there. An understanding of the leading social networks is desirable.
  • SEO - some parts of search engine optimization are quite technical, but others are very simple and require little technical knowledge. An understanding of the basics is highly valuable. This leads to my next point…
  • Coding - basic HTML, PHP, VBScript and so on are not critical skills, but I find them useful on a daily basis.
  • RSS, RSS Readers – I consider an understanding of RSS to be central to people doing any work in social media. For one thing, RSS turns monitoring multiple searches and sites every day into a manageable task. For another, it helps when providing recommendations to clients.
  • Blogger relations – understand the nuances of blogger relations.
  • Social media ethics – everyone has their own lines when it comes to ethics. Know where yours lie and how you feel about topics like astroturfing, ghost blogging, sock puppets and other common ethical issues (I’ve given my on astroturfing and ghost blogging several times recently).

It’s hard to find someone with all of these attributes. If you’re honest with yourself, you’re probably stronger in some of these areas than others. Figure out which areas are your weakest, and work on them.

I’ve probably missed a whole bunch of attributes here. PR pros, new and old – what would you add?

Update (8/25): Some great comments already. Additions to the list include:

(Hat tip to Dave Jones for sparking the idea for this post)

Posted in: pr, public relations

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253Comments

Astroturfing Online Reviews: 3 Reasons It’s A Bad Idea

09.08.23

TechCrunch reported yesterday that they had obtained evidence that a PR firm had “a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client’s applications.”

AstroturfAs a PR professional, this is extremely disheartening to me. I guess on some level we all know this happens, but this is a great reminder that this kind of activity just isn’t acceptable.

Here are three reasons you won’t find me practicing this kind of behaviour:

Risk to the client

Some people in the post’s comments suggested that it’s PR professionals’ job to position their clients in the best way possible through legal means. The implication was that this activity was legal, so it was ok.

I would agree with their definition of a PR pro’s role to an extent, but I add “ethical” to the list of qualifiers. For me, that rules astroturfing out.

I have had clients ask me to write reviews for them, and have refused (and explained the rationale): Because our refusing protects them from featuring in articles like the one on TechCrunch. As a PR professional, I consider exposing a client to the risk of being featured in an article like this to be completely unprofessional. I haven’t had a single person push back after explaining this.

Risk to the PR person/agency

In fact, the risk goes both ways. As the firm involved in this specific instance is no doubt discovering, getting outed for this kind of behaviour isn’t pleasant. I don’t plan on tarnishing my reputation with this kind of activity.

It’s unethical

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I want to go to sleep at night knowing that I’ve done the right thing. Despite some peoples’ perceptions, going into PR doesn’t mean giving up your own ethics. I want to look at my ugly mug in the mirror and feel good about my work.

Remember – not all agencies will do this. As Brits like me (and Aussies) would say, it’s just not cricket.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: communications, ethics, pr, public relations, social media

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28Comments

Why Spam PR Pitches Won’t Go Away

09.08.20

Yesterday morning I received an email pitch. Nothing particularly exciting about that; it wasn’t the first pitch I received yesterday and it certainly wasn’t the last. It wasn’t tailored and it wasn’t addressed to me but it was on topic. I noted that it was for an ebook on social media marketing and set it aside to read properly later.

Spam

Very quickly, though, I began to see replies to that pitch. And then more replies. They kept coming. As it turns out, the sender of the pitch had created a mailing list and had emailed that list using the ‘To’ field in the address bar.

Over the next eight hours, I received 27 replies to the original email from people on the list. People who, apparently, like the ‘Reply All’ button (which, I think, should have an “are you sure” prompt when you use it). Emails getting increasingly irate at the original sender. Emails from well-known social media types like Mike Driehorst, Jennifer Leggio, Om Malik and Francine Hardaway.  Emails from reporters at the WSJ, at AdAge, at AP and Newsweek. To make matters worse, everyone began getting copied on support tickets about the removal requests.

Emails after a spam pitch

All told, we received 45 emails over an 8-hour period.

Spray and pray worked

One telling point, however? The first reply in the email chain was from someone who wanted to review the book. So was the fourth, which raised the possibility of a Blog Herald review.

Sadly, spray and pray was getting results. From a short-term perspective, the spammy pitch may have actually worked. It got two responses. Perhaps, were it not for the mailing list disaster, it might have received a few more.

In the long-term, however, the pitch did nothing to impress those of us on the list who viewed it as spam. It built no relationships and it certainly destroyed plenty (numerous people noted they have blacklisted the sender).

This is part of the volume/customization trade-off that PR people face. Some agencies will continue along this path – despite the people they alienate, they will land coverage for their client.

Other agencies (ours included) will choose to take a more targeted approach. We’ll pitch less people, choose our targets and personalize our approaches. We’ll aim for a high return from a smaller number of pitches.

Like it or not, both tailored and spray-and-pray approaches can work. However, one of them builds relationships in the process while the other damages them. I choose the former.

What do you think?

Posted in: blogger relations, communications, pitching, pr, public relations

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