Archive for the ‘Social PR’ Category
6 Reasons Social Media Sucks, But You Need to Use It Anyway
Monday, June 20th, 2011Amid all of the hype, conferences, and rapid adoption of social media marketing by organizations from sole proprietors to the Fortune 100, there remains an undercurrent of skepticism. This surfaces in posts like Social Media Skepticism, 5 reasons why social media skeptics maybe right and Business social networking: where’s the ROI?. It’s why posts like 20 Ways to Generate ROI from a Corporate Blog have to be written to help people who are “doing everything right” but still not seeing business results from social media make adjustments to their efforts. It’s why a search for “social media sucks” on Google yields almost 12 million results (so much for my SEO on this post, oh well).
Image credit: Spin Sucks
It’s true that social media remains in many ways a sort of wild west. Many of the participants are shady, self-proclaimed experts are sometimes snake oil salesmen, and paths are still being created. Yet there are also an increasing number of social media success stories and the picture of what social media success looks like is becoming clearer. And there’s no turning back; social media has changed buyer expectations and behavior. Despite the dangers and potential pitfalls of social media, businesses will continue to expand and refine their social networking efforts.
Here are six reasons why social media skeptics have a point, and six reasons businesses must and will continue to embrace social media marketing anyway.
6 Reasons Social Media Sucks
1. It’s full of self-promoters. No question. Certain aspects of social media (such as the ease of building a large following on Twitter—if you’re not picky about things like quality or relevance) are like helium for those with already overinflated egos. Facebook can be a wonderful platform for sharing information, but also a playground for narcissists. These people aren’t shy about telling you how wonderful they are (it’s amazing how many Twitter handles and profiles, for example, include terms like “guru,” “expert” or even “god”), or treating social media as a direct sales channel rather than a mechanism for sharing valuable insights and information. The great thing about social media, however, is: you don’t have to follow, friend, “like” or in any way encourage such folks if you don’t want to.
2. It’s more of a place to interact with peers than to engage prospects. Again, no argument, most of the activity across social networks is of the birds-of-a-feather variety. Marketers follow other marketers, PR pros hang with other PR pros, engineers interact with other engineers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (see below) and it’s the biggest part of what makes social media activity enjoyable. Problem is, few CEOs or general managers are excited about the notion of paying employees to essentially spend their time engaged in online water cooler chats with cohorts at other firms. Ultimately, both sides need to come to an understanding, with management conceding that not all of that peer interaction is a waste of time and employees focusing primarily on achieving business goals through social media activity during work hours.
3. It’s an easy way to waste a lot of time. It can be. The more active a person is in social media, the more time it naturally takes up (e.g. because there are more blog comments to respond to, more Twitter followers to check out, etc.). Then again, almost any activity, improperly management, can be a time sink. The key is to prioritize between networks and spend the time on each wisely.
4. It means giving up one’s privacy. Not an unreasonable concern. Facebook in particular is notorious for privacy issues. Google settled a lawsuit last fall relating to its Google Buzz service. I’ve always found Foursquare a bit creepy; turns out there’s actually an app named Creepy that aggregates “GPS coordinates for any user (of geolocation services like Foursquare, Twitter and Flickr), pointing out their most frequented hangouts on a map…Essentially, it’s a stalker’s dream app.” The solution? Be careful and thoughtful about what you post online. Always assume the entire world can see anything you do on line. If you wouldn’t do it in front of your mom, your pastor and your boss, don’t do it online. That award you just won for your last brilliant email marketing campaign? An excellent thing to add to your online profiles or post a status update about. Last night’s extracurricular activities? Probably better shared over a beer with your buddies than with the world on Facebook or Twitter.
5. It’s just another avenue for spam. Sadly, yes. Twitter was riddled with tweet spam early in its ramp up phase, though the service has added tools and made other significant strides since then to combat spam and p*rn on its network. Google “Facebook spam” and you’ll get 246 million results. LinkedIn has had problems with LinkedIn group spammers, though the business social network has responded by creating new group management tools to fight spam. Yes, like email, social media sites and social networks can be sources of spam. Having learned from email, however, most networks (as a matter of survival) have taken spam-fighting into consideration from the start and make their tools more sophisticated as spammers have developed new techniques.
6. It’s hard to measure the ROI. Maybe or maybe not, the social media ROI debate continues. But in general, measuring the ROI of social media with any precision is problematic because social media far more often influences a sale than leads directly to one. Still, as Jennifer Kane noted at the recent OMS Minneapolis event, correlations between social media activities and sales can be measured—and correlations are good data.
6 Reasons Social Media is Essential Anyway
1. Social media has become a vital element of SEO. Links from authoritative websites are still of course an important signal of authority to the search engines, but social media links now play an increasing and essential role in these calculations as well. So much so that Rand Fishkin now places page-level and domain-level social signals among its top three search engine ranking factors. Michael Gray has written about which social signals the search engines use and Lee Odden has put together an outstanding presentation on how to use social media for SEO. With more than 80% of consumer purchases and 90% of b2b buying cycles now starting with search, this may be reason enough to embrace social media.
2. Your buyers are there, and they expect you to be there as well. According to recent research, one-fourth of all online time is spent with social media. Nearly 60% of American spend time on a social network at least once per month. YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision makers (more than 10 times the figure for Forbes.com). And 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a social media presence.
3. Social media produces high-quality leads. Based on research from MarketingSherpa, my own experience and that of clients I work with, while social media activities don’t usually produce a high quantity of leads, they do result in quality leads–the kind that convert, and buy, at a higher rate. It makes sense; while social media is more about branding and PR than lead generation, those who follow your brand in social media are much more likely to look favorably on your company and its offerings, understand the value, and to have engaged with your company previously than leads generated through most other sources.
4. It’s a critical and cost-effective tool for gathering market and competitive intelligence. Gone are the days of conducting expensive surveys and focus groups to find out what your prospects are thinking. It’s no longer necessary (or at least not as necessary as it once was) to spend thousands of dollars on analyst research reports to find out what your competitors are up to. The buyers in your market are telling you all of this now, through social media. They are talking about their challenges and looking for answers on LinkedIn, in blog posts and comments, on Twitter, Facebook, and dozens of industry-specific social media forums. It just takes listening.
5. It’s an excellent way to find business partners. Remember all of those peers mentioned in point #2 near the top of this post? Turns out all of that cohort networking isn’t such a waste of time. Increasingly, business gets done by networks. Both individual consultants and companies generate opportunities where they provide only a partial solution to a customer’s needs themselves; they need to bring in one or partners who have complementary skills in order to win the deal. Those partners are very likely to come from their social media network, where a level of trust and familiarity has already been built up. It’s a bit like the much-maligned “old boy networks” of years gone by, but much more open and effective.
6. Social media is the new PR. Journalists increasingly rely less on wire services and more on social media (more than 75% say they use social media to research stories) and online newsrooms for story ideas, sources and research. Effective PR has always been about building relationships with reporters and editors, and social media is now how these relationships get built. A PR program that relies exclusively on traditional phone, online wire service and mail tactics is no longer effective.
So, every negative thing you’ve heard, read, or even said yourself about social media is probably true. But that doesn’t matter. The benefits are too compelling. The key is to listen, plan, and monitor activities to maximize the value of business social networking while avoiding the trolls and pitfalls as much as possible.
How to Build the Ultimate Online Newsroom
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011by TomPick and guest blogger Maria Verven
Almost every PR pro over a certain age remembers press kits–actual physical folders stuffed with a company’s recent press releases, management bios, a corporate fact sheet, a few case studies, and maybe an article reprint or two.
They were expensive to print and ship and awkward to lug around—for both PR people who produced them and the journalists who ended up with them. They were bulky, killed lots of trees, and of course weren’t searchable.
And there was the constant balancing act: include too much information, and nothing will get read (it will seem overwhelming). Too little , and the writer won’t understand how cool and unique your company really is. Yeah, no one today mourns the press kit, but they were the best technology available at the time.
As the web took off and corporate sites proliferated,press kits (or at least elements of them) were moved online. Searchability improved, trees were saved and shipping costs plummeted. Online newsrooms are a dramatic improvement, but even today many are sub-optimized; it’s not at all uncommon to see websites where the “news room” or “media page” is little more than a list of press release links, with perhaps a PDF of some media coverage and some sketchy management bios.
The best online newsrooms go well beyond that and really take advantage of the web medium. Combining rich content with careful organization and search capabilities, they enable PR pros to provide the media, analysts and bloggers with a vast amount of information without seeming overwhelming.
The ultimate online newsroom should house everything media are looking for in one convenient, easy to navigate spot. It ideally should include:
- • The primary media contact’s name and contact information (including social network profile links). This is preferably one single individual, but can be multiple names (e.g. based on division, product line, purpose etc.) if absolutely necessary.
- • Links to news releases (current year and archive of past years). If your company produces a lot of news releases, also provide the ability to view by topic (e.g. product line, financial releases, personnel announcements, etc.).
- • Links to media coverage and bylined articles.
- • A company backgrounder or fact sheet (see below for detail).
- • FAQs (real ones, that real media people would care about).
- • Management team bios and photos (downloadable JPGs in high-res and low-res versions for print and web). Bios should specify each executive’s area of expertise and best topics for quotes or interviews.
- • Story ideas (again, thoughtful ones).
- • Upcoming events / sponsorships / speaking engagements (with speaker bios included).
- • Links to white papers, PowerPoints, videos, ebooks, infographics, and other company-generated content and thought-leadership assets.
- • Links to analyst (industry and/or financial) research and coverage.
- • A link to the company blog(s).
- • RSS feeds for press releases and blog posts.
- • Downloadable JPG images in hi-res and low-res formats. These include the company logo and other important images such as the company headquarters building, product photos, software screenshots, photos of executives at industry events, etc.
- • Links to all of the company’s social media profiles (LinkedIn company page, Facebook, YouTube channel, Twitter etc.).
- • A search-friendly URL structure with “news” included, e.g. news.company.com/section/pagename or company.com/news/section/pagename (where “section” is the content type: news releases, bios, images etc.). See the 2011 Online Newsroom Survey (PDF) from TekGroup for more guidance here.
News releases should always be in HTML format for searchability. If PDF or printer-friendly versions are offered, these should be stored in a separate subdirectory that is excluded from search in order to avoid duplicate content issues. Releases should be presented in reverse date order and links should include the headline, date and one-line summary (preferably Twitter-friendly 115 characters or less). Again, current releases should be displayed on the newsroom main page with a link to archives, and the media contact name should be easy to find on every release. Also consider creating social media releases (which can include videos, images, links and other items) using a tool like PitchEngine.
One thing that’s often overlooked: updating the media contact name on older releases if that name changes. You don’t want to direct media to contact former employees or your old PR firm (!).
The media coverage page should highlight the two-three most recent articles, with an archive section for the rest (assuming the company gets that much coverage).
The company backgrounder needs to be factual, objective (non salesy) and written in the third person. It’s best to provide both a short version (often just the news release boilerplate) and a longer version that includes more company history, competitive differentiation, and how the company’s products and/or services help customers solve problems (backed up with facts).
Management bios should include information on how long that person has been with the company, key responsibilities, any outside leadership roles held, and social media profile links.
To develop story ideas, start by looking at looking at editorial calendars from “A tier” publications in the industry and look for recurring themes. Make it clear which executives are the best sources for each topic.
Upcoming events and speaking engagements should include the date, name of the conference or event, a description of the company’s participation in the event, and links to the conference website and the speaker’s bio (if applicable).
All content should (of course) be search optimized, with the ability to limit the search to just information within the newsroom section of the site.
It almost goes without saying, but important news should be shared via the company’s Twitter feed, Facebook page and other important social media outlets. All newsroom content should be easily sharable using social media buttons for the most popular sites and networks (tools like AddThis, ShareThis and Meebo make it easy to add these buttons to any site or page). Use and link to social content sharing sites for your media assets as well, including YouTube and Vimeo for company videos, SlideShare for presentations, Podcast Alley and iTunes for audio, Flickr for photos, plus Scribd and Docstoc for PDF files.
The days of the press kit are far behind us, and there’s no need to simply replicate that old format online. The ultimate online newsroom can simultaneously provide far more information and yet give each reporter exactly what he or she is looking for.
Maria Verven is a PR and content marketing executive with KC Associates, a Minneapolis-based b2b technology PR and marketing agency. She’s well-versed in the “new rules” of doing PR, with expertise in social media, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, social media and blogging.
Why Social Media Matters for B2B Vendors
Monday, March 28th, 2011Social media marketing has clearly been embraced by consumer brands. Pepsi famously dropped its Super Bowl advertising a year ago in favor of a social media campaign. Coke, Starbucks and Disney are among the top brands on Facebook, with millions of fans. SMR has developed a sophisticated methodology for continuously tracking the top brands on social media based on reach, satisfaction and other metrics.
B2B marketing executives, however, tend to be a bit more skeptical. Though adoption is increasing, many b2b marketers still question the true effectiveness of social media for reaching business buyers. After all, four out of ten companies still ban access to social media sites from the workplace, and many more sharply limit its use. B2B products and services don’t generally make the same kind of emotional connection with buyers that consumer brands do, and tactics that work for b2c marketers (e.g. social media games and contests, “checking in” at retail locations, coupons and discounts) are inappropriate or flat-out inapplicable in the business world. There is, so far, no b2b version of Yelp, and its unlikely there will be anytime soon, as many companies worry about the legal liability entailed in either endorsing or disparaging a specific vendor.
Still, social media is rapidly becoming an essential component of the b2b marketing mix. B2b buyers use social media tools throughout their buying processes, from problem-solving and how-to content in the initial research phase through product/vendor comparisons and customer experience validation. Bloggers provide much of this information, supplementing the reporting and commentary of trade publications and industry analysts. Buyers thwarted from using these tools at work (e.g., part of the four-in-ten companies above) find ways around corporate roadblocks, access social media sites via mobile devices, from home or the local coffee shop, or while traveling. They rely on search and social media through the bulk of their buying process, and expect b2b vendors to be there.
For b2b marketers still trying to quantify the potential benefits of social media marketing, here are a dozen helpful stats. You can find the original sources for most of these findings in Best Social Media Stats, Facts and Marketing Research of 2010.
- • Companies active in social media report a 59% higher lead conversion rate for organic search traffic
- • 85% of B2B buyers say they want B2B vendors to engage and interact with them online
- • 93% of B2B buyers believe that all companies should have a social media presence
- • 9 out of 10 start a purchase process with search (and social media increasingly affects search results)
- • Three-quarters of B2B technology buyers say they use social media at some point during a buying cycle to gather information or communicate with colleagues about a purchase; 58% use LinkedIn for this purpose
- • YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision-makers—more than 10X the figure for Forbes.com
- • 43% of employees in Fortune 1000 companies say they use LinkedIn for professional purposes
- • 100% of the Fortune 500 have at least some of their executives listed on LinkedIn. 50% of LinkedIn users are business decision makers.
- • 65% of journalists use social media to conduct research for stories
- • 59% of C-level executives report using social media for business purposes at least weekly
- • 90% of B2B technology decision makers watch online videos
- • 80% of B2B technology decision makers read blogs; 69% are active on social networks
In short, b2b marketers need to embrace social media marketing because the buyers are using it. They expect vendors to use it as well. And you can’t win the game if you’re not even on the field.
Best Social PR Guides, Tips and Tools of 2010
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011Social media marketing, online PR and SEO are three tactics that are all powerful on their own, but have far more impact when used in a coordinated, synergistic manner.
How can you amplify and extend new releases through social media? Optimize company news for SEO benefit? Effectively connect with bloggers and other key online influencers in your industry? Which online tools are most helpful for PR pros? What does the future hold for online / interactive / social PR?
Get the answers to all of these questions and more here in some of the best social PR guides, tips and tools of the past year.
Interactive PR Guides, Tips and Tools
Twitter Pitching Etiquette: What works, what doesn’t… by COMMS Corner
Noting that “Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, if used effectively, can help build relationships, identify new trends and help facilitate networking with like-minds throughout the industry,” Lacey Haines and Adam Vincenzini share a few best practices for pitching journalists through social media, such as keeping pitches short and using a DM rather than a public message when pitching on Twitter.
The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases by Adam Sherk
We’ve seen these before—meaningless, over-used goobledygook buzzwords in press releases—but here Adam Sherk provides an updated list for 2010, topped by “leading,” “unique,” “solution” and “innovator” and proceeding through “customer-centric,” “outside the box” and “peak performance.” So, if you’re stumped for an opening line the next time you’re drafting a press release, try something like “XYZ Company, the leading innovator of unique, customer-centric solutions, today announced an outside the box product which supports peak performance.” Go ahead, works for anything.
6 free online PR tactics that deliver by iMedia Connection
Rachel Hunt supplies valuable guidance on how to use social networking, award submissions, guest blogging, speaking opportunities and original research to maximize the impact of PR efforts.
Public Relations: The best press release is no press release by MarketingSherpa
The headline may be a bit harsh—drafted and used properly (which they too frequently aren’t), press releases can still serve a valuable role—but Daniel Burstein does make some excellent points here. One of the best: “Talk to me (the media) like I’m your older brother, not your mother…When you talk to your mother, she’s likely excited and proud about almost anything you have done…However, try the same pitch with your older brother and see how well that turns out. ‘Loser. You’re only in advertising because you couldn’t hack it in medicine.’ To grab the attention of your older brother, you need something really newsworthy.”
5 successful marketers reveal their favorite public relations tools by Matt About Business
Matt Mansfield interviews five PR pros including Joe Chernov of Eloqua and Lisa Ann Pinkerton of Technica to get the scoop on their favorite tools for PR management, social media and other functions. The tools, briefly reviewed, range from the obvious (e.g., Vocus and Cision) to the obscure (Butterfly Publisher).
Pitching on Twitter? Try these 8 tactics to entice the media by Ragan.com
Maya Wasserman offers expert guidance to successfully connecting with reporters and editors on Twitter, from focusing on individual journalists rather than publications and building a relationship before pitching to using PitchEngine and being brief (which is pretty much enforced by Twitter anyway).
Social Media Press Releases and Blogger Outreach
The Art of Creating a Social Media Press Release by Socialfish
After a quick trip through the history of social media press releases, Maddie Grant muses that the essential elements of a social media release remind her of nothing more than…a blog. She then makes the heretical (!) contention that “You don’t need a PR agency.” While that may be taking a good idea a bit too far, she does make an interesting argument that “If your ‘news’ is cool or important enough that when you post it on your blog, your community shares it, and tweets it, and talks about it, then the trade journalists who cover your industry will notice…Do this right and the news will find you.” Good advice even if you do use a PR agency.
The 5 Cs of Blogger Relations by prTini
***** 5 Stars
Noting (very accurately I might add) that “The top bloggers receive hundreds of pitches a day. Even bloggers with less traffic to their site are still being pitched on a regular basis. Working against us, some PR people aren’t quite so savvy and are spamming these bloggers,” Heather Whaling lays out an excellent model for doing blogger outreach right, including collaboration (“how can we provide content that will drive traffic to their site?”) and content (“before you ever think about pitching a blogger, make sure you’re offering something valuable”).
Is the Press Release Dead? 5 Tips to Revive It by iMedia Connection
“Has the press release taken its last breath?” Paige O’Neill answers “not yet” if it evolves into a social media release, and provides guidance on how to create and share one effectively.
Social PR News and Commentary
The Future of Public Relations and Social Media by Mashable
Erica Swallow interviews 14 PR experts including Jeff Esposito, Lou Hoffman and Dave Delaney to get their opinions “on the future of public relations and how they see social media changing the industry.” In short—relationships with key influencers have always been and will continue to be the key to an effective public relations strategy. Social media changes how those relationships are formed and maintained, but not fundamentally what PR pros do.
Google Launches Blog Finder for Any Topic by ReadWriteWeb
Marshall Kirkpatrick dives into Google’s expanded blog search capabilities and concludes “The search results in this new search by blog feature look pretty good to me. The ranking of those results, however, seems questionable…That said, in as much as I know about the topics I searched for, the top blogs in those fields definitely peppered the search results, to greater or lesser degrees.” PR pros shouldn’t rely solely on Google’s tool when developing an outreach list, but it’s a good one to add to their arsenal.
Update on Trusting PR Agencies without a Social Media Presence with Your Social Media Programs by PR Meets Marketing
Cece Salomon-Lee reports on the progress PR firms are making in using social media for their own business as well as their clients’—”eating their own dog food” so to speak. Among her findings: “While most agencies didn’t link to their social media channels on their website in 2009, 83% included this on their home page in 2010. Twitter was the most popular social media channel, with 80% of PR agencies having a presence. 35% had followers numbering over 1000.”
PR and SEO
Why PRs can be better link builders than SEOs by Econsultancy
Kelvin Newman contends that the skills which make PR pros successful (e.g., deep vertical industry knowledge, writing, relationship-building) also make them natural link builders for SEO. There’s no question that online PR plays a key role, in conjunction with SEO, in successful web presence optimization.
SEO Press Releases Extend Your Coverage by Adventive Marketing
5 Stars *****
Janet Killen explains in a comprehensive yet concise manner step-by-step instructions for getting maximum SEO benefit from a press release, integrating keywords, links, online distribution, social media and RSS.
Get More from your SEO Press Release by InteractMedia SEO Content Marketing Blog
Expanding on Janet’s advice above, Beth Hrusch reminds us that keeping readers in mind is critical too, and provides seven tips for optimizing press releases for both search engines and people.
Related Post
Best Social PR Guides and Tips of 2010 (So Far)
How PR and Social Media Can Work Together
Monday, December 6th, 2010Social media and PR seem like natural allies. Both are primarily focused on brand awareness, credibility building and image enhancement. Both are critical tools for dealing with bad news or crisis situations. Both require relationships with influential people in one’s industry to be effective. And both rely on the ability to tell an interesting story.
So why do corporate PR and social media efforts so often appear disconnected and out of sync? To be sure, some agencies and companies get it, and do an effective job integrating social media and PR efforts. But many organizations in both groups still treat the functions as separate silos—or worse, mix them awkwardly, damaging both efforts.
But integrated properly, social media can help amplify PR efforts, and effective PR can help generate social media coverage. It’s a virtuous circle that looks something like this.
In this example, a press release is distributed online, posted to the company’s Facebook and Twitter updates, and used to create a social media release (using a tool such as PitchEngine). Any significant online news site pickups of the release are posted to Twitter (it’s okay to repeat news a few times on Twitter as not all of your followers will see all of your tweets, just don’t overdo this) and to social bookmarking sites.
For SEO and traffic purposes, the press release and social media release link back to the company’s website/blog. The social media release also links back to the company’s LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
The social media release is used for blogger outreach. Since many (most?) bloggers are overwhelmed with pitches and unlikely to write about the company’s press release, the company uses the press release as a hook and offers to write a (informational, non-promotional) guest post on the topic. When a blogger publishes a guest post from the company, that post gets linked in the company’s LinkedIn groups, Facebook page, Twitter and social bookmarking sites. These links send more traffic to the blog (which the blogger likes) and spread the company’s fame.
Likewise, any other blog or media coverage, or bylined articles by the company, are shared via social media sites. Bylined articles will—and other blog/media coverage may—include backlinks to the company’s website/blog as well. And the website/blog includes social sharing buttons, making it easier for site visitors to share the company’s content with their connections across popular social networks.
PR and social media can also be used together to promote events, speaking opportunities, corporate presentations, video and other content.
Social media and PR can both be used to influence journalists and other influencers online. Smart companies and agencies are putting this together.
