Category Archives: Social PR

Social Media ProBook: Social Media Strategy Reference

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There’s no rule book for how to craft a robust social media strategy. Luckily, the people at Eloqua created the ProBook.

Think of the Social Media ProBook as a guide to the who, where, how and why of social. From guides to how PR people should think about social, to writing for Facebook and organizing your company from the inside out, the ProBook offers sage advice from some of the best in the business.

In short, it’s a positively golden resource for any company. Want to get your hands onto it? You can download it here.

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You’re not part of the conversation so why should I care

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This is what your customers say when you are ignoring them.

There are countless companies, both big and small, that are still not online. And when monitoring and responding to online chatter are becoming more important as customers take to the Internet to voice praise and complaints, not being online makes a huge difference in how you are perceived.

Imagine that you are a Fortune 500 Company from the energy industry. Imagine that you took your operations to Mexico where people are not open to companies changing the landscape of their ecosystem; where people are somewhat illiterate when it comes to hi-tech energy saving solutions. Imagine that news about how you are damaging the environment is online in the form of videos, pictures and articles from local and international news.

This is the situation Sempra Energy finds itself in.

Do a search for Sempra Energy online and you’ll see their website at the top but everything else is from news sources. Their Twitter account is sporadic and if they do post something, it’s news. No interaction.

It seems they don’t know that there’s a problem.

Meanwhile conversations about Sempra are happening on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. But where is Sempra?

Nowhere to be found.

This might not be you. You might not have this problem, yet. But if your customers are voicing their complaints and you are not there to respond, what do you think is going to happen?

Exactly!

There are an infinite numbers of ways to approach this problem, but the principle remains the same: don’t ignore, acknowledge.

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Is Klout a good way to measure online influence?

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One thing marketers yearn for is to the find the all elusive influencer or influencers who can help them spread the word about a new product or service. And now, with social networking tools giving us instant access to an almost infinite amount of people, finding these influencers becomes easier.

In theory.

Here’s the problem: measuring online influence is a hard problem to solve. There are many factors that contribute to measure a person’s influence. Another reason why it’s hard is because online influence, just like Google rankings, can be easily gamed.

There are quite a number of companies who are trying to crack this problem. One of them is Klout, who has been making major inroads into the emerging social media measurement business. And, social monitoring and analytics tools like Radian6 are using Klout’s data to find those online influencers.

Simply understanding how Klout works, a clever person can systematically do things to influence his/her Klout score to appear influential and then use that as a reference.

With that said, it doesn’t answer the question of this post: Is Klout a good way to measure online influence?

Collin Kromke says it’s total BS. Why?

Because one’s influence isn’t temporary.

I agree. A person’s influence shouldn’t go up or down if you stop ‘socializing online’. These scores make it look as if we were playing a game to see who interacts the most to get that influence score up.

But at this point it’s all experimental because, as stated above, it’s a daunting task to measure one’s online influence.

What do you think, is there a better way to measure online influence?

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Don’t be afraid to sound like you

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So, do you talk to search engines or do you talk to people?

Keyword stuffing your website for Google is not going to get you noticed by people. And it will most likely get you banned from Google. The other problem…

The thing about writing for search engines (algorithms) is that your content sounds like it was written by a robot. This is not ‘reading friendly’ for people. It also makes your blog less personal.

First impressions are important, and people know when a first impression is accurate. This not only applies when meeting someone physically, but also in digital form. That means your social network profiles on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, but also where you have content about you: Your blog, presentations, interviews, email, etc.

While the usage of video will increase with time, the language you use to articulate your ideas is the first impression people will make about you. Talk to customers like you would talk to friends. Explain things as if you were sitting next to them.

With a blog you have the ability to communicate simply and directly to your readers.

Don’t be afraid to be you.

Write to be read, don’t just write to write

The holy grail of SEO is inbound links to your blog/website and people (bloggers) will not link to content that was created by a robot. They will link to content that was created by another human that adds a thoughtful angle to a topic that interests them. The value is how you articulate it in your own words, not how good it sounds to search engines.

The same principle applies to Twitter, people won’t follow a robot. You better have a picture of yourself and a thoughtful bio (your own words) that gives people an idea of who you are.

Again, don’t be afraid to be you.

It’s the best online marketing principle there is. Period.

 

 

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3 Ways to guarantee you’ll get amazing PR

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If you’re a small business your marketing budget is quite limited, so you need to get really creative. Effective PR is a cost-effective way to gain editorial exposure for your product, get more leads, generate more sales and build a great brand.

Getting a mention from the media makes you look more credible than traditional advertising. So having a PR strategy is a must.

But before you do that, you need to make sure you have a few things covered first.

What’s your market?

Be very specific about the community that will benefit from using your product of service. This helps you choose which media to work with based on the impact it will have.

What are the benefits relevant to my market?

People don’t care about features, they care about what those features do for them. Believe it or not, we subconsciously ask ourselves ‘So What?’ every time we are pitched a new product or service. How do you answer the ‘so what’ about your product or service?

If the product or service you are promoting does not benefit them in any way, you need to go back and reevaluate your value proposition. This is not just important for you but also when pitching the media and it has to backed up by some numbers.

What media does my market use?

Do you know which media outlets your target market typically reads, views or listens to? You need to know. If they are not so obvious you will need to do some timely research.

 

Look at these questions as a checklist of key factors you need to know cold before pitching your services or product to the media.

What would you add?

 

 

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3 simple tactics to help you build an audience on Twitter

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To market your business, it’s not enough to just create a Twitter account because everyone else has one. What you want is to build an audience that speaks for you; that helps you spread your ideas; that helps you get found.

To do this, you want to get known for something.

This is how you get started:

Be a human

It sounds funny, but there are countless dummy Twitter accounts that have no human behind it. All they do is repeat, repeat and repeat. Not very personal, if you ask me.

Make sure your profile represents you by having a picture of yourself, your best description and nice background to seal the deal. People trust other humans, let people know there’s a human behind your account.

Interact with people

This is a big one. Unless you’re a news channel, if all you do is push messages to followers, then nobody is going to interact with you. You are just noise to others. If you really want to get noticed you have to engage with people on relevant topics. Talk, respond, and initiate conversations.

Share relevant and intriguing content that is useful to your followers

“You are what you tweet.” Social Media is all about sharing the stuff you’re interested in, and then connecting with other people around these interests. On Twitter, people follow who they’re interested in. It’s that simple.

 

A direct result of following the above tactics, is that you will not only build an audience, but also your personal brand. And once you have a recognizable and credible personal brand, the snowball keeps gaining momentum for your brand until you get to Guy Kawasaki territory.

What do you think?

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How social media has changed PR

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Simply: Social Media allows you to become part of the conversation and answer questions before they are asked.

Doesn’t that sound great?

Here are 4 ways social media has changed Public Relations forever:

Relationships

Businesses now understand that they can no longer bombard people with information, but it is rather up to them to develop the relationships directly with the consumers. Social media users are now carriers and distributors of content, rather than just the media.

Because social media is great way to engage people, it also means that if you solve their problems they will be more likely to want a relationship with your organization.

Remember that the most important rule of Social PR is to listen.

Content

Businesses must create content that meets a need. As a business, you want to answer customers questions and/or concerns, as well as news about your organization that matters to them. Negative points, if you’re just pushing out promotional content that’s out of context for the customer.

Response

Because conversations between people are happening all the time, hopefully about your brand, it’s imperative that businesses respond immediately. Fast response is the new normal and every minute and hour that goes by, customers will get mad and might start talking negatively about your brand.

Monitoring and Tracking

Monitoring allows a company to gain insight as to how their brand is perceived online, which can be used to develop future strategies. There are useful social media monitoring tools you can use to manage this process.

 

What do you think, did I miss something?

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The most important rule in social media PR

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in social media listen first

“One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears, by listening to them.” – Dean Rusk

So what’s the first step in social media marketing then? Listening.

Listen and then talk

is not the same as hearing. We all like the sound of our own voice and it often stands in the way of understanding the person we’re talking to (your customers). If we really want to understand people we have to pay attention to what they say and do and once we do that we’ll stand a better chance of influencing their behavior. Nothing new with this statement, repeated often but rarely practiced. I repeat again, we like the sound of our own voice.

 

You need to give a damn about what people have to say to do social media properly and only deep empathy translates into insight.

 

You need social monitoring tools

If you aren’t familiar with social monitoring tools, here are to add to your arsenal, here’s a . But the quickest way to start listening immediately is to user Social Mention:

Suppose you want to know where you brand is being mentioned online across different channels (who doesn’t?), you go to Social Mention and type in your brand name and hit search. For example I did a , in the results page you get mentions for  ‘foursquare’ across different categories such as blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio, Q&A and networks.

You can also search for keywords related to your business such as ‘________’ and it will give results where that appears across social channels; you can then go that individual channel and engage in that conversation.

There are both free and paid tools but most of what you need to get started is already on your website in the form of comments, analytic stats, RT’s, Twitter trackbacks, newsletter stats. These will provide you with some good data and information before you move on to the external tools.

Below is an interview with Amber Naslund, co-author of the new book The Now Revolution and VP of social strategy at Radian6. Amber shares why social media monitoring is so important and what you need to monitor to get the most value out of your social media activities.

sme_bw2010_amber_naslund_v1 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

I like to say that every business should strive to know their customers better than they know themselves, this takes a lot more effort and goes way beyond the ‘I want them to buy my product and shut up’ mindset most traditional businesses have. Luckily social media tools let us have a 1 to 1 conversation with customers, and enables us to get under their skin to uncover those hidden insights that might just give us a new idea for a new service or product.

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WordPress plugins that I use for public relations and why

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wordpress plugins for PR

Last week I wrote about some free social media tools I use for PR,  today I’ll let you know how to enhance those tools with powerful WordPress plugins I use for PR. There is an infinite number of wordpress plugins available that’s it’s hard to know which ones to use.

As a Publicist I need to be able to:

  • have a website optimized for search engines
  • a way to manage my content
  • easy access to key traffic statistics
  • a fast loading website
  • a way to make it easy for people to share my content
  • a way to know who interacted with my content on social channels
  • a way to track my content
  • a way to manage my comments
  • a way to know what content people like the most

There isn’t a list of plugins out there that’s specifically addresses these points so here is mine.

WordPress SEO plugin

Created by SEO guru Yoast, this is the most complete SEO plugin for WordPress out there. Ignore it at your own peril!

W3 Total Cache

In the fast and attention-less world we live in if you don’t have a site that loads fast, visitors won’t stick around for long and will click the back button leaving you, with a high bounce rate. This is why you need to cache website.

Wordbook

This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Also created by SEO guru Yoast. Use this plugin track your blog visitors and other advanced features; it provides important traffic information in your WordPress Dashboard.

AddThis

Do you want to know how people are sharing the content on your blog or website? Of course you do. With this plugin you can and then some! AddThis let’s you customize what buttons appear; it also puts the ‘share button’ right were visitors can click it. The key with this plugin is flexibility.

BackType

How many people does a person reach on Twitter? BackType reveals in the comment area who interacted with your content on Twitter. Truly powerful because sometimes you don’t get an @reply from someone who Retweeted your post; BackType shows you everyone who retweeted you. This makes it easier to identify and reach out to these people who have already showed an interest in what you have to say.

Disqus

Disqus is a social commenting system. What makes this plugin useful for PR is it gives commenters the option of sharing their comment with their friends on both Facebook and Twitter and therefore expanding the conversation to their network.

Twitter Tools

This plugin automatically posts your most recent published post to Twitter. It’s added value is that it can also be used with Bit.ly to track those links and you know how important it is to track and monitor how people interact with your content.

Other key features is it let’s you add a ‘New blog post’ prefix at the beginning of your tweet and also lets you add hashtags to help people find and notice your new content.

PostRank

Want to know what content has the most resonance, who likes it and where it resonates the most? PostRank is a very powerful social analytics platform that, if used to it’s full capacity, let’s you know exactly that. The WordPress plugin provides you this information in the Dashboard and also comes with a ‘Top Posts’ widget which appears in your sidebar (like we have it here) that shows visitors the most popular posts.

 

While this is a short list, the combination of these plugins really does enable our PR practice to be more efficient and smart.

What plugins do you use?


 

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Free Social Media Tools for Social PR

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social media

 

As a PR professional, you already know that social networking and real-time communication have dramatically changed the way you do your job. Your role is no longer focused on simply preparing and pushing information and marketing campaigns to audiences.

The pressure is on to know what is being said about your industry, brand and competitors; align your messages and your teams so that you can plan highly targeted and effective campaigns; and, respond to brand-threatening conversations at a moment’s notice. Your role is also to use the myriad of metrics available to you to adjust your campaigns swiftly if you need to, and measure your results at critical points.

Here are 10 free tools to make managing social PR easier.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts have been around for a while so if you haven’t setup alerts for your name, brand name, industry specific keywords do it now.

AllTop

What to know who the top blogs for a specific category are? AllTop really is a like a huge online magazine rack. All the content is separated into categories where you can find the top sources.

Social Mention

Simply put, Social Mention is Google Alerts on steroids. You can quickly monitor your brand across social channels. It helps you track conversations and mentions relevant to your brand in just about every social channel there is.

Twitter Real Time Search

Want to know what people are talking about instantly? You go to Twitter and search the trending topics. Looking for something more specific? Use Twitter’s search engine and search using hashtags (#) to find what’s being said about that particular topic. You can also create your own hashtag to tag your content with and make it easier for people to find it.

Topsy Analytics

Topsy is a Real Time Search Engine that has the largest index of tweets on the web and just a few weeks ago it released its proprietary analytics tool where you can compare domains, @ mentions and keywords in four different time frames from Twitter. Topsy only measures tweets that have links on them or that have a lot of retweets.

You can use it to compare competitor websites and see which links are the most popular. This gives you an idea of that what they’re focusing on and what they might do later on.

Google Trends & Insights

What to know what people are searching for on Google? Google Insights for search shows you historical data of a keywords performance over time as well breakout searches which might indicate a trends is forming.

Klout / Tweet Level

With the rise of social networks also comes the ubiquity of ‘influencers’ and with millions of people talking on social networks, figuring out who has influence is a challenge. Enter reputation tools like Klout, PeerIndex and Edelman’s TweetLevel. While there isn’t one tool that stands out, you can still use them to get an idea of what type of influence a user has.

Very valuable tools indeed.

Compete / Quantcast

Knowing how much traffic a website secures is important for the marketing mix. There are those who swear by Alexa, but there are better alternatives. Compete is the most well-known but their numbers are only from the U.S. I think Quantcast gets closer to the real numbers, but most sites are not in their index.

BackTweets /BackType

How many people does a person reach on Twitter? BackTweets reveals who interacted with your content on Twitter. There is both a Free and a paid version available. There’s also a WordPress plugin that integrates with your blog comments that shows the number of tweets your post got.

Bit.ly

In order to measure content influence you need a tool that tracks that content. Bit.ly is a URL shortener that helps marketer keep track of how many clicks their content gets.

Did I miss something? What tools do you use?

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