Jumat, 29 April 2011
Kamis, 14 April 2011
Integrated communications approach to PR…the content marketing way.
Integrated communications approach to PR…the content marketing way.
One of the two specialties that could change public relations is content management, according to John Bell’s blog post. Now, I’ve always been an active proponent of the content-based approach to PR and have written about it in the past too (PR 2.0? Be THE client! and How do you do PR?, among others). But, beyond piecemeal perspectives on the importance of content in the PR business, here’s a broader perspective on the way PR could approach content.
I notice most PR agencies (including us, Edelman India) using a standard PR approach that is heavily dependent on mainstream media. Now, this is a logical thing to do given how mainstream media rules, in terms of attention and reach. But, increasingly, I also see clients demanding an integrated communications plan that includes social media as an integral part of the PR exercise – instead of treating it as a separate silo.
So, here’s a possible way that would help integrate social media as part of integrated communications – not just in words, but in process, operations and also articulation. This method approaches PR more as a content marketing exercise and less as a relationship exercise. In a way, relationship becomes one of the basic necessities in order to market content successfully.
The starting point now, in any PR discussion, is ‘placing <stuff> in media’. If PR, or communications, is a content game (as I have always believed it to be), then ideally, our starting point should be content. So, our commitment should then be in terms of creation of content.
Once the umbrella theme for the client is identified, we then work on a quarterly (or half-yearly) basis to identify content that we can create on behalf of the client – content that would be perceived to be useful or interesting to select target audiences that the client wants to reach out to.
When I say content, don’t assume it as a 5 page whitepaper. Each piece of content could simply be a 2 paragraph thought and we use a detailed content marketing plan to chart how we will utilize each month’s content.
So, that 2 paragraph piece could take the form of a tweet, a blog post, a press release, a billboard, a pitch note for an interview and so on – we plot the plan in the template so the team just works on sharing content via the most appropriate channel and also tweak to content to fit each channel.
You would also notice paid media listed under this layer, including things as far from PR as outdoor media! My question is – why not? If a client has something to announce/share, looking at that content from a single source (as against seeing it from the PR angle or marketing angle) could help make better use of that piece of content. Streamlining the content at the right time and using the right tools could become easier if seen from a single, larger perspective of what that piece of content is aimed at achieving.
All this happens in the first layer, which only utilizes those channels of communication that are not owned by the client.
The 2nd layer is meant for owned media and we plot the same content as we will use in channels owned by the client.
Layer 3 talks of those activities that need to be done to support the other 2 layers – this involves maintenance (and creation, where needed) of owned-media channels, mainstream media and social media monitoring reports and so on.
From a client’s point of view, they get an integrated plan that starts with content and offers a holistic content marketing plan. As for measurement, we just need to find ways to track the reach of our content across all these channels.
Now, this may be too heavy for some clients, but it would help if we educate current and prospective clients gradually to use this method. It helps in the long run that we’re not working backwards from media, but forwards…starting with what the client/brand has that is worth sharing/talking about and marketing that content to the appropriate target audiences.
I’m sure I may not be the first to cook up something like this and there may be other models similar to this already in existence. If you’re in the PR space, I’d love to know your take on this model.
Social Networking Safer Than We Think
Social Networking Safer Than We Think
15 Apr 2011Social media has been called ‘dangerous’ for young people, but new research suggests otherwise
Concerned parents and an inflammatory media will perhaps be surprised to learn that a recent study has revealed that young people are actually far better equipped to deal with online safety issues than is popularly assumed.The Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing (YAW-CRC) has found that young people themselves are the most valuable resource for adults concerned about the online safety of their children.
Researchers from the University of Western Sydney, Murdoch University and the Inspire Foundation have released the first two reports of the YAW-CRC. The research consists of a literature review on the Benefits of Social Networking Services and the results of a ‘living lab’ study on Intergenerational Attitudes towards Social Networking and Cybersafety in which researchers supported a group of young people as they developed and delivered a cybersafety education workshop for a group of parents with teenage children.
The research found that not only were young people generally able to protect themselves online, but that social networking actually held several benefits, including enhancing education, supporting personal relationships, providing safe opportunities to explore their identities and increasing the sense of community and belonging.
Young people are at home in social media
‘Our research has shown that young people have an incredible amount of expertise,’ says Dr Amanda Third from the University of Western Sydney. ‘With support they can be an excellent source of information and education for parents seeking to realistically assess the cybersafety risks their children face.’This research fleshes out the previously uncharted territory of how young people engage with online tools and makes for some compelling evidence for the use of social media to help young people feel connected. It also offers benefits for parents and researchers working with young people (as opposed to making assumptions about their activity based on negative case studies).
While the online world is one older generations have had to learn, this sort of research demonstrates just how fluently our youth speaks social media.
‘It was really fantastic to have a young person who was able to show me the techniques that she uses to be able to block, or filter or manage her online relationships,’ says Maxine, a parent and research participant.
It seems that young people not only know acronyms that would baffle baby boomers and many Gen X-ers (ROFLMAO springs to mind), they also know how to be safe online.
Which means learning from them, as opposed to restricting them, is the best bet for creating an online space that is safer for everyone.
Image source: ANA Marketing Maestros
Kamis, 07 April 2011
How small business can avoid becoming the next GoDaddy
CHICAGO |
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Social media is great for spreading the word but sometimes its content can become the elephant in the room, quite literally.
Just ask Bob Parsons, the flamboyant founder and CEO of Web hosting site GoDaddy, who posted a video link of his elephant shoot in Zimbabwe on his Twitter account last month.
The controversial dispatch was the latest in a string of high-profile social media gaffes, highlighted recently by insensitive remarks about the Egyptian uprising by fashion designer Kenneth Cole and Japan's earthquake by comedian Gilbert Gottfried. Gottfried's behavior cost him a longstanding gig as the voice of the Aflac insurance duck.
The move by Parsons, known for provocative tactics that include Super Bowl ads with scantily-clad women, was also not without fallout. His personal blog is replete with customers threatening to pull their GoDaddy business. Meanwhile, the company lost high-profile accounts such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
"Did you miss the fact that your customer base includes people who would be disgusted by this? It was so incredibly childish, egotistic and in very poor taste, I can hardly believe it," said "Russell," a respondent on the blog.
Parsons, who has more than 30,000 Twitter followers (twitter.com/DrBobParsons), hasn't apologized. Instead, he stridently defends his actions, leading many to believe he relishes the attention.
"The video was posted on my personal video.me channel (www.bobparsons.me) and came with a warning that it was graphic," he wrote. "I posted it because I wanted people see what the people over there endure and how problem elephant are dealt with. Doing what I did is the best way I know of to help those subsistence and starving farmers."
Most small business owners, whether or not they buy Parsons' line of reasoning, will never be caught up in such a public spectacle. Even so, the wide-reaching impact of Twitter, Facebook and other online channels represents dangerous waters. Small businesses, which often rely heavily on social media for customer awareness, can't afford costly mistakes.
NO LAUGHING MATTER
"My advice to small business is don't do a Parsons," said branding strategist Jonathan Salem Baskin. "Don't confuse customers' interest in knowing about the products and services they buy or could buy with an interest in you personally."
"You make no money from humiliating yourself publicly," he said. "Your customers don't care about your vacation."
Baskin is a proponent of keeping social media content - all marketing for that matter - related to the business at hand. It's fine to engage customers in a dialogue, he said, but make sure the topic pertains directly to the product or service.
"I'd like to hear from Joe's Dry Cleaners that he's getting into environmentally responsible solvents and what his customers think," he said. "Talk to your customers about what matters to them. The technology shouldn't change what you talk about and why you talk."
The lure of social media and its ability to quickly and inexpensively share with the masses are often too tempting to adhere to strict boundaries.
In response to slowing sales in late 2009, entrepreneur Sonny Ahuja, who owns Milwaukee-based retail site GrandPerfumes (www.grandperfumes.com), began hosting a regular Saturday morning Twitter show that included "dumb blonde" jokes that offended some viewers.
HOW TO: Optimize Your Content for Social Discovery
David Sasson is the chief operating officer of Outbrain, a content recommendation platform that is based in New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidsasson.Since the rise of search over the past decade, few obsessions have run deeper in the world of online publishing than search engine optimization (SEO). In an attempt to grow their audience and gain exposure for their content, publishers have increasingly focused on keeping Google’s crawlers well fed with tasty morsels of meta data, keyword repetitions, internal linking and more. But designing websites for crawlers often has a downside; namely, it can lead to a poor experience for flesh-and-blood users. How often have you actually used a keyword tag like the one below to navigate a site and discover new content?
Luckily, this mentality is beginning to change as the sources of traffic into publisher content diversify. While search may have constituted the majority of referrals to a publisher five years ago, we now see it giving up ground in favor of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and through the recommendation of other content creators and curators who link out more frequently than ever before.
This development is great for publishers. Not only does it mean they can return to their emphasis on structuring content for humans instead of crawlers, but the audience engagement levels from these sources is much higher. For instance, across the hundreds of major publisher sites where my company operates, we see that bounce rates (meaning people who consume only one page on a site before surfing elsewhere) from search traffic is generally 14% higher than from other sources. Similarly, time spent on site from search traffic is lower by about 16%.
These changes aren’t totally surprising. After all, someone accessing content from search is usually looking for an answer to a question. If Google does its job perfectly, then the person should never need to go deep into a publisher’s site to get what they came for. Meanwhile, how do people find great, original content using a search engine if they don’t even know it exists? They can’t. Search provides wonderful answers to directed inquiries, but it is not the natural starting point for discovering new, interesting content.
This changing landscape, however, means that publishers need to refocus on the larger question of content discovery: How do you create content that will find its way to people who are in browse mode? And equally important, once people come to your site, how do you help them discover great additional stories so they stick around longer? Fortunately, a lot of the tactics required to improve discoverability are a return to common sense principles.
1. Write Better Headlines
Your headlines need to be interesting and feed people’s curiosity, not simply focused on keyword density and repetitions. Good titling boosts clicks, especially from social networks like Twitter where users won’t see a blurb or image.
For example, print publishers like Cosmo have known for years that people love lists. This translates to digital, too: “The 9 Reasons We Love Fatty Foods” will pull in audiences, even if you’re boxed out on Google for the keyword “foods.” (Interesting tidbit: Research on the publishers in my company’s network indicate that odd-numbered lists will net you a 20% increase in headline click-through rates vs. even numbers.)
2. Make It Visual
Add an engaging thumbnail image representing your story. Just as photos draw people into content in newspapers and magazines, a great image goes a long way online. Now that sites like Facebook automatically pull in your thumbnail when people share your story, it’s more important than ever to designate engaging images in your page structure in order to capture audience attention from outside and within your site. At my company, we find that when we add thumbnail images as part of an article headline, we see a 27% increase in click engagement and content discovery.
3. Hold On to the Readers You Have
Use your page’s real estate wisely. We tend to focus on tactics for drawing new audiences into our content, but it’s equally important to think about how to ensure those people quickly find additional great reading material once they arrive. This means analyzing the real value you’re getting from each navigational device on the page. Are people using them and clicking deeper into your site? Or are you simply cluttering the page with links that have diminishing returns? Avoid the notion that you can spray paint your way to a work of art. If you’re not getting at least 1% engagement on a navigational module, junk it and keep the page clean.
4. Create the Best Possible Content in the First Place
Write great, original pieces. Easier said than done, of course. But now that content discovery is moving more and more into the hands of real people who are sharing it, recommending it and reading more of it once they come to your site, there’s a limit to how far you can get through repurposed or aggregated content.
The tactics used to optimize for overall content discovery continue to evolve. While making sure your content is well represented in search will always play a role, SEO should be seen as just one piece in a much larger puzzle. It’s now more important than ever to design your content for humans, not just crawlers.
Social Media is About Conversation, Not Conversion
Social Media is About Conversation, Not Conversion
By Mark Evans - Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 7:30 am (Copy)
With the growing focus on return on investment (ROI), it should not be a surprise many companies could start looking at sales as an increasingly important metric for success.This, however, would be a mistake because social media is not a hard sales medium. This is not to suggest it can’t be used to encourage sales but social media does not work well if a primary goal is closing deals.
Nevertheless, this may not stop many companies from thinking otherwise because, after all, what’s the use of doing social media if it doesn’t benefit the bottom line.
The reality, at least if you follow best practices, is that social media is about conversation not conversion. Sure, conversation is over-used member of the social media mantra but it’s probably the best way to describe the way social media can be effectively used to start and build relationships with consumers.
Social media is a way for companies to get their foot in the door. It’s a way to make consumers aware of who you are and what you do. If it can capture someone’s attention, there is an opportunity to educate, entertain or engage them with relevant or interesting content. And then there might be a chance to convert them into customers.
In many respects, this process is like dating. It’s impossible to meet someone at a party, and then marry you the next day – unless, of course, you’re partying in Las Vegas. In a normal situation, you meet someone, go on a few dates to get to know them better, and then see where the relationship leads. Maybe you get married in the future, maybe not but it takes time to get there.
When social media works well, it offers a variety of ways to encourage consumers to think differently about a company, and their products and services. It could be how a company answers questions, provides valuable resources, handles customer service, or provide relevant information.
At the end of the day, all these things contribute to convincing a consumer to start thinking about buying a company’s products or services – aka the “soft sell”.
Selling soft doesn’t mean not selling effectively or well. It means being measured and patient when dealing with consumers. It means not looking for the instant sale even when it looks so close you can taste it. Consumers can smell desperation, and the more you try to “hard sell” them the more your chances of doing so start to disappear.
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