media relations

Social Media – News Tweets And Measuring Impact

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

(Just as an aside, could we dispense with the term ‘press release’, used to describe a piece of writing, carrying a message and sent to a journalist with the aim of generating media coverage? Could we not just say ‘news release’ or ‘media release’? Is it not time we broadened our horizons? Anyway.)

Today, blog snorkellers mine, I give you not one wonderful thing to look at – but two! And, as you know that I am not a great advocate of social media as business or marketing communications tools, you may be intrigued to hear that they are both social media ‘value-adds’. Of course, I will put my spin on both, but you can think for yourselves, can’t you,  and you might just go away with something you feel you can use. Never, as I have said before, never say I don’t give you anything.

First I give you muckrack.com. This appears, as far as I can see – and I can’t go very far into these things, as my eyes mist over, a sense of panic descends and I find myself forgetting how to breathe – to be a sort of happy journalistic tweety site, to which you, the hapless PR practitioner, can post (for a small sum) your press releases, in tweet form. (See what I mean about the use of ‘press release’? In an online medium? Or is it that ‘press release’ is a bit like ‘press gang’ – you read the headline and it hits you over the head and the next thing you know you’re waking up in front of your PC and you’ve written a rubbish story about some crappy feminine hygiene product. Hmmmm?)

Personally, I think Muckrack is a site too far. I think it’s the answer to a question that no-one asked. I think it’s someone, probably with the best of intentions, trying to make Twitter relevant to the communications/media industries. I think the content’s a bit poor and there isn’t really a context. I’m afraid that Muckrack is doing nothing to convince me that I ought to be any closer to ‘social media strategy’ than my current ‘not with a bargepole’ default state.

But ignore me. S’pose you pay a dollar a word to put your news tweet through Muckrack. How will you monitor its impact on the blogosphere and the reactions of consumers, competitors and stakeholders? How will you know whether you achieved an ROI or not?

Fear not – well, OK, be a little fearful, because I do not have a clue and frankly don’t think it can be done, but these guys over at VMR Comms do. Blokey here is talking about Radian6, ScoutLabs and Sysomos – and I have no idea what they are or what they do, but I’d say, if you’re serious about your social, then you should be checking it out. I also check this post because it puts forward a list of questions you may need to ask before embarking on a social media monitoring gig. And they are very good questions – so good I post them here:

  • Are you looking to compare your share of voice online versus that of your competitors and track that over time using easily comprehensible metrics that can be assigned a $ value?
  • Whose voice do you want to listen to? Key influeners? General consumer sentiment? Stakeholders? Traditional Media? Male? Female? In North America or worldwide?
  • Do you need a platform that can be used in focus group fashion to slice and dice general consumer sentiment, key influencer sentiment, and or journalist sentiment?
  • Do you need to know where the fish (your prospects and key influencers) are currently swimming (“conversing”) before you dive into or create an empty pond?
  • Would you like to track how well your PR campaigns have increased share of voice specifically among key influencers or among consumers at large?
  • What about your sales and customer services teams? Are they looking for the actionable
  • intelligence that a social media monitoring platform can provide? Will the monitoring platform you choose need to integrate well with a CRM like salesforce.com?
  • Which social media “venues” are you most interested in monitoring? Blogs? Traditional News Outlets? Forums? Linkedin? Facebook? Youtube? Blogtalkradio? Podcasts? (Check out the conversation prism below to get a better sense for what’s out there)
  • If influencing the influencers is important to you, do you need a platform that helps you identify key influencers by showing you inbound links, comment count, level of engagement?
  • Is yours a global brand where you need to monitor not only key influencer sentiment but also the so-called “Long Tail” of your marketing sales curve?
  • Is your CMO demanding specific and meaningful metrics that can demonstrate a clear ROI from your social media engagement efforts?
  • If you are monitoring global brands, will you need a platform that translates content and sentiment in multiple languages?
  • Do you have the resources, expertise and social media savvy currently to fully leverage the capabilities of whatever platform is best for you?
  • How much historical data will you need? Some platforms have absolutely enormous amounts of historical data. Is that going to be helpful to your PR and marketing teams? Or not worth paying extra for?
  • What about ease of use? Do you need a platform that multiple users in your organisation will learn quickly and easily, thus increasing their level of online engagement?

Social Media – Still, Mostly, A Mystery

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Here’s a list from Communicate Magazine – a very useful list actually, of events and training courses of interest to the communications community, taking place over the coming weeks and months.

I say it’s useful, because it works well as a yardstick, with which you can measure what the medium/long-term concerns of the industry are – a lot of these events depend on the attendance of paying punters, so the organisers are clearly not going to bother with content that people are not interested in or concerned by. Creativity is always a big one, as is handling the media.

All that being said, blog snorkellers, you might also find something here that is of use to you – heaven forbid, something that you might want to stump up some of your own (or your employer’s) cash to attend. Never let it be said that I don’t give you anything.

But for the purposes of this post, I want to re-visit the email that I received from Communicate Magazine, alerting me to their list. In the body of the email – I presume to give me a flavour of the richness of content that awaited my link-clickery – they provided some 27 examples of events happening over the next three days. And of those 27 events, 17 had social media as their subject.

That’s a lot – it’s a preponderance actually, given the amount of differing issues and topics that these events might be addressing.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – there’s an entire industry grown up around the chimaerae that are business’ use of social media, and social media marketing. Some of it is well-meaning – I am sure – no, I am – but much of it is cynical profiteering. You wouldn’t provide your bank account details to a Nigerian emailster – why would you pay someone to ask the question “is effective measurement critical to effective marketing strategy”? (This is a genuine example, btw.)

This is phishing, really – caveat emptor.

(I would also like to add that not all of it is, some appears to be very well-meaning. What it does show however, in clear, sharp relief, is that – despite 2009 having been hailed as the year that business ‘got’ social media – none of the big questions (ROI, for example, or how to make social media pay) have been answered. And the tone of the conversation is now sounding ever-so-slightly desperate.)

Social Media – Taking The (3) Ps

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

This is what happens if you follow links. You end up confronted with stuff that you really didn’t want to see – nasty, horrible, hessian, hippy mojambo that elevates nonsense to an art form. Here is a link to it. Go ‘click’ if you dare.

It’s an ‘article’ (I’m being generous here) entitled “How to build conversations in social media using the 3 P’s (sic)’. It uses an ice-cream parlour as a metaphor (and no, dear blog snorkellers, it is not a good one). The three Ps are (ready?):

  • Passion
  • Planning
  • Promotion

(At this point, I’d like to draw a parallel withe four Ps of marketing – product, promotion, price, placement – nice solid Ps that end in an S. S for sales, chaps, S for sales. Unlike these wishy-washy, unsatisfactory and ultimately, given the media, unimplementable, wee Ps of conversation.)

Let’s ignore Passion for a moment. No-one knows what it means anyway. It’s like ‘quality’. Define ‘quality’. Anyone?

Planning – we’re told it’s important, apparently, to keep the conversation relevant to your business goals. An uncontrolled discussion is of no use. Hello? Social media = uncontrolled, I’d have thought. If I had a unit of Earth currency for every time that I’ve been laughed at by slightly disturbing social media evangelists for wanting to control the message, then I’d be driving a decent sports car by now. And if you can’t control the message – as the socialists tell me – then how can you control the conversation?

Promotion – no-one will find your conversation unless you promote it. Obviously, you’re using your conversation to promote your business. So you’re involved in promoting the promotion of your business. Why not cut out the middleman and just promote your business directly? Do traditional marketing channels require that you promote them? Does anyone advertise their advertising? No, of course not.

We’re shoehorning here people. Shoehorning. This is another example of taking the Next Big Thing and desperately trying to find a way of making it work in a commercial sense.

My current thinking is that social media does have a commercial value – the 7m plus fans of Starbucks must drink at least some coffee, and there must be incremental coffee sales to be had off of Facebook. The point is that no matter what you do, you cannot harness it, and it will bite you as soon as lick you. There are no rules, no acronyms, no strategies – it’s luck, serendipity, happenstance and chancing to create something interesting enough for people to want to view or interact with it.

It seems a hell of a gamble to put some or all (like PepsiCo – $20m diverted from the Superbowl) of your marketing budget into social media on the off-chance.

Social Media – The Next Big Thing For 2010?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Meanwhile, over at the super, soaraway Sunday Business Post (of Ireland), they’ve managed to track down Piaras Kelly (PR consultant of that parish) and teased out some thoughts on what 2010 holds, social-media-wise.

Why, you may well ask, blog snorkellers mine, would I bother with this rag of an Emerald hue, and the slightly-less-than-meaningful musings of one who is, after all, selling himself in the cause of promoting his employer. (Hello there, Edelman – see, Piaras, it works!) (How does one pronounce ‘Piaras’? I’m presuming it’s like other well-known Irish names like Aoife and Siobhan and Saoirse, all of which sound a bit like ‘Bob’.)

Well, two reasons.

One, it’s because Piaras had an attack of the honesties in his commentary, and says ‘people will start to realise that there’s a bit of the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome associated with social media’. Hallelujah, preacher.

Two, it’s because Piaras’ tips for trends in online PR (communications) in 2010 are Realtime, Lifestreaming, Location-Based Services, Augmented Reality and Segmentation. All of which may have some element of social media but, tellingly, either aren’t social media tools themselves or specifically reliant on social media to function.

I actually believe that what Piaras is trying to say – and, hey, his opinion is as valid as anyone’s – is calm down, social media hysteria has had its day.

In separate news, this post alerted me to research conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations (gasp), which shows that 89% of journalists polled turned to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites (eg Facebook and LinkedIn), and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.

The survey then goes on to say that 84% said social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media, and 49% said social media suffers from “lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards.”  So they then go back to the old staple of calling the company to get the facts.

Social media may well foment a global conversation, where everyone has a voice and everything’s being discussed. But if it’s being discussed with the same depth of knowledge and regard for accuracy that characterised my discussions in the pub late last Saturday evening (yes, very nice, thanks for asking) then it’s of no use to man nor beast.

Social Media – A Definition of Compelling Content? Anyone?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Knock-knock!

Who’s there?

So shall.

So shall who?

So shall media gurus continue to be idiots ripe for poking fun at.

Tell me, why is it so easy? Currently, the case for social has holes in it that James Cameron could fly one of those big helicopter-type things out of Avatar through. Those blog snorkellers who’ve visited me before will be conversant with my take on the whole social media issue, and will know that I remain wholly unconvinced that it is a valid marketing or communications tool. And don’t get me started on the concept of ‘conversation’.

Anyway (he wrote, ever-so-wearily) today’s breath of fresh nonsense is courtesy of Mashable (hi there!) with this piece on ‘How to: take advantage of social media in your email marketing’. Nothing wrong with that per se – if you want to further abuse the database that (I hope) you’ve carefully nurtured and achieved some sort of acquiescence from, (in terms of sending them the occasional piece of marketing collateral), by giving them a link to your utterly pointless social media group – well, that’s your prerogative. Although I think you’ll see a rapid increase in ‘unsubscribes’.

No, the real issue I have with this is contained within the following paragraph, which outlines what you might provide to these hapless punters if they’re stupid enough to follow the links. (I suggest that you don the mental equivalent of a welding helmet before reading this, to avoid serious and permanent damage to your sensibilities.)

“Beyond that, create compelling content that people want to share. While a good promotion might not be as viral as a funny YouTube clip, your business’ fans will be more likely to spread the word if there’s a specific call to action. Moreover, create content that’s not necessarily a direct sell, but provides value to potential customers in the form of information that’s useful to them. Between good content and easy social media sharing options, your e-mail marketing can become a powerful weapon in growing your business.”

Ooooh, compelling content. If I had one of your splendid earth Euros for every time I’d heard that phrase, I could have repaired my spaceship weeks ago. What the f*ck is ‘compelling content’? Anyone? And how does ‘compelling content’ serve the purpose of a business, brand or organisation?

(The purpose of which, contrary to what Richard Lambert might believe ‘is to make money and everything else must be judged against that criterion’.)

And it gets worse. A good promotion is not going to be as viral as a funny YouTube clip – of course it isn’t. The only things that actually achieve true viral status are either video clips of people falling off skateboards and injuring themselves severely, or adverts featuring someone in a gorilla suit, drumming along to Phil Collins, which is so far off brand message as to be ultimately pointless – in terms of product sales. (As an example – a Guinness ad, called ‘Surfers’, won the Big Gold Bastard advertising award (I forget what it was actually called) for being brilliant and popular. Did it sell any beer? No.)

Then. Create content that’s not a direct sell, but provides value to potential customers. Why? Why would you provide value to potential customers (for the hard of thinking, these are people who have not bought from you and may never do so) without some sort of link to your product or service (which constitutes, to my mind, a ‘direct sell’)?

Apparently, between good content and sharing options, your email marketing can become a powerful weapon. Possibly. Or it could transform your perfectly good business, selling products or services, into an entertainment portal, frequented by many, but delivering no value to you whatsoever.

And the moral of this rant?

Email marketing is a good thing. It has a role to play – but don’t be tempted to abuse your database or you’ll lose it – and I would imagine it took you time, effort and investment to build it up. Social media is not (necessarily) a good thing – it is over-hyped and over-valued. ‘Compelling content’ is a buzz phrase – no-one actually knows what compelling content is – most examples of ‘compelling content’ have been generated through pure luck and happenstance. Social media does not, generally, contain compelling content – or rather, it’s only compelling to those who have a specific interest in it. It does not grow your business.

Ultimately, social media marketing, if it exists, is not the same as digital marketing. Social media is simply a small part of the whole digital piece and, potentially and currently, one that can be sidelined.

Public Relations – Making News In The Digital Era – Or Any Era

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

Came across this today, which is a post containing ‘seven strategic steps’ to making news in the digital era. For ease, dear blog snorkellers, I reproduce them here. These steps, according to their author – a communicator of some note – focus the ‘news making’ process to ‘shed old-style communications practices, like press releases, that no longer work’ in order to ‘begin making your own news online in a compelling manner to engage audiences’.

Here they are:

  • Advocate change
  • Avoid compulsively marketing and promoting
  • Start listening and engaging in conversations
  • Embrace storytelling
  • Use plain language
  • Reach out to fewer to achieve more
  • Become the credible voice and face
  • Don’t be afraid to try something new

Initially, I looked at these and thought – here we go again – another set of Utopian guidelines for engaging in the global conversation, where everything goes with the flow and there are no real goals, objectives and outputs; where you’re not supposed to expect anything in return and virtue is its own reward. Not new-style communications, more the absolute antithesis of what lies at the heart of professional business communications.

Then I looked at them again, and realised that these steps are no more or less than a beginner’s guide to media relations. In point of fact, the press release has been dead for 10 years, and these steps are how you develop a relationship with your sector journalists (print, broadcast and online – but mostly print). These steps are your route map to a one-on-one live encounter with a hack who you hope is going to give your business/brand/organisation a good hearing. These are the seven strategic steps to running your conversation over lunch.

As such, they’re very useful.

Social Media – Social Media Policies in Practice

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Internal Communications and Engagement, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Came across this on Mashable – it’s a story about this, which is social media policy devised and published by Australian company Telstra for the benefit of their 40,000 employees. To date, according to the company, 12,000 employees have been ‘trained’ or ‘educated’ in the ways of social media.

I’ve said,  in previous posts, that a good social media policy might actually be seen, or used, as an employee benefit – Telstra’s policy is exactly that. This is something that has, quite clearly, taken time, resource and investment to put together, and has been formulated to educate employees and provide them with a skill, or skills, which are applicable in their day-to-day lives as well as their work lives. I particularly like it because it doesn’t shy away from threatening disciplinary action should anyone contravene the policy.

What it doesn’t do, however – and it’s telling – is explain how employees can help the company through their social media activity. It doesn’t explain the company’s social media strategy. It might be said that it begs more questions than it answers. It strikes me as a guide to social media – all well and good – but not a social media lever. It’s about stopping people making inadvertent (or deliberate) mistakes – rather than ’embracing the social media opportunity and bringing everyone in to the conversation’ (as I imagine the cyber-hippies would have it).

This is not a sign that social media has become mainstream and infiltrated Big Corporate – rather it’s a sign that Big Corporate has recognised the damage that can be caused by social media and is attempting to mitigate its effects.

This is pre-emptive issues management, nothing more or less.

Public Relations – Just A Bit Of Fun, Surely?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Another day, another story to make your mouth drop open in astonishment, partly for the right reasons, mostly for the wrong ones. My favourite free paper (that’s London’s super soaraway morning Metro, blog snorkellers mine) ran a smashing piece this morning about a New Year’s ad campaign dreamt up and executed by Cadbury House Hotel (Bristol) Health Club and Spa (yep, slow news day all round).

Simply put, the ad campaign is a picture of an green, bug-eyed alien, stretching out his (her?) long green forefinger, with the copy ‘Advanced Health Warning! When the aliens come, they will eat the fatties first!’ Followed by the usual gubbins about ‘join now get a discount yadayadayadayada’.

Well. It works for me. Bit near the knuckle perhaps, but suitably off the wall and much better than anything I’ve ever seen coming out of a health club (which, frankly, wouldn’t be hard, in fairness). But, of course, it’s fattist, isn’t it. The Metro article quotes an unexplained Vicky Palmer (45) – doesn’t say who she is or what she does, but I’d like to imagine she’s a doughnut taster for Greggs (who doesn’t spit them out) – who thinks the people who came up with the idea deserve a kick up the backside. There’s also a spokesperson for the Beat Eating Disorders association (that’s got to be made up, right – an association for people made ill by food, with the acronym BED).

The serious point, in amongst this silly season japery, is that this is actually quite fun. (Like the Heineken Christmas poster which showed a nativity scene and the caption ‘Congratulations – it’s a girl!’, followed by the payoff  ‘How refreshing, how Heineken’.) OK, if you really, really try, and squint a bit, it might be construed as possessing the tiniest possibility, just a whiff of one, of needling the most sensitive of the overweight. Those, perhaps who are overweight through no fault of their own. And believe that the aliens are on their way. And that they’re aliens with a taste for people.

Which, let’s face it, isn’t very many, is it. Sorry, fatties, most of you are fat because of the pies. Stop eating the pies and things will get less large and wobbly, trust me on this one. And if you’re a fatty and believe in people-eating aliens, I’d stop washing down the pies with Tennents Super, if I were you. (Here’s a topical article.)

That off my chest (it’s a weight off my chest, actually), the point is that just because there are some people who are overweight through no fault of their own, and are unhappy about it, and are trying to do something about it, does that mean that whole field of fat is out of bounds to the communications and marketing industries, when they’re attempting to have a bit of fun to spice up an otherwise deathly dull product proposition? I really don’t think it should be. No more should religion, sexuality, musical taste, hair colour or any other of the great taboos – as long as it’s tongue-in-cheek and quite clearly possessed of no intention to offend or alienate (if you’ll forgive me). (And I know the liberals will tell me that one man’s definition of offense and alienation is another man’s Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, but could we just be sensible here and agree that there are boundaries and definitions which are reasonably clear to everyone, if they can be bothered to look.)

The good bit, of course, is that the Cadbury House Hotel gets a splendid piece of publicity, and the Metro gets to publish a picture of the fragrant Ms Allyson Wicklen (20) who lost 5st to become the Slimmer Magazine Junior Slimmer of the Year. Well done to her.

Oh, and by the way – fatties? The aliens ARE coming and I can see no reason at all why they would waste such a great resource. They ARE going to eat you.

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating A Plan – Eurostar

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Ooooooooh, ouch. Eurostar provide an object lesson for everyone in how not to do it. The reason I come to this now is because of this piece – which I have lifted from Steve Virgin’s blog (most excellent, by the way, wholly recommended) – which details Eurostar’s commercial and marketing reaction to the – well – cock-up, frankly.

It mentions their social media concerns and demonstrates that social media was not included in their crisis management plan. Oooops.

It simply isn’t something you can ignore. Be prepared – or be prepared for the consequences.

Social Media – Raging Against The Machine

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

News reaches Wordmonger Towers that the triumph of shouty rap metal outfit Rage Against the Machine over what, apparently, is Olly Murs wearing Joe McEldery’s skin in their race to grab the coveted Christmas No 1 spot is being seen as final, irrefutable proof that social media works as a marketing/communications tool.

As you’ll all know, dearest blog snorkellers, RATM’s win was driven through Facebook (by two people who, according to the tittle tattle, have now been offered jobs by Simon Cowell. And turned them down). As a result, you have otherwise fairly sensible marketing people running around implementing Facebook and Twitter strategies, because – quite clearly – social media can motivate hundreds of thousands of people to buy a product.

No. And stop it, before I get cross. There are a number of reasons why the RATM/OMIJM’sS battle was so big, and why it worked through Facebook. None of them are applicable to a brand, business or organisation.

Most importantly, this issue became so big because of the seething hatred of being manipulated by Simon Cowell that was latent in – well – most people, actually. I hate to state the obvious, but were it not for trad media (TV, print etc etc) there wouldn’t be any hatred for Simon Cowell (or his creations), because he wouldn’t be mainstream.

Social media did not invent the Cowell Beast and thus while Facebook stoked the fire, the fire itself was laid, fuelled, had petrol poured on it and was lit through traditional channels. The audience was ripe for this and I’d like to bet that many of those who visited Facebook for this particular issue had never done so before, were driven there by what they read in the papers or heard on the news, and will never go back because there’s nothing for them there.

And the fact that this was all about reclaiming the Christmas No 1 for the people (and the Christmas No 1 is an analogue tradition) meant that RATM’s victory was assured from the word go, social media or no social media. (And don’t go moaning that the victory was achieved through downloads – downloading music is not the same as using social media, and, in any case, had the single been only available on acetate through selected branches of John Lewis, it STILL would have sold enough copies.) Music is important to people – certainly it’s more important to more people than social media brands are – and it calls them to action.

So, today’s lessons. Social media is not a valid marketing or communications tool. It is not. (Yesterday I read yet another article about ‘great uses of social media’ and yet again, the example used was Zappo in the States. It’s about time we realised that THERE ARE NO OTHER EXAMPLES.) In this case, while the Facebook element was hyped beyond proportion, it was just one communications channel, which was amplified beyond belief by the swathes of trad media coverage. The other important point to make is that the subject matter – the product, if you like – was something close to very, very many hearts. It was personal. It was not corporate – in fact it was dramatically anti-corporate.

Social media, I conclude, can only really work if you are independent, anti-establishment, small in size and in tune with the current popular mood. Any hint of slogan, brand, message or intent to sell and you become Simon Cowell – and probably end up on the receiving end of protest through the very media you’re trying to harness.