Tag Archives: agile engagement

SXSW: Forget Stories. Your Brand Needs a Narrative.

Posted on March 12, 2013 by | 11 Comments

If you’ve spent any time at all recently reading PR and marketing blogs, you know that storytelling is a top trend, and for good reason.  Building storytelling into the communications mix delivers the personable and engaging messaging that sticks with audiences and is effective fodder for social content consumption.

However, at SXSW yesterday, I learned where stories fall short in a brilliant presentation titled “Moving from Story to Narrative,” by John Hagel, author of “The Power of Pull” and co-chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge.

The problem with stories, Hagel argued, stems from the fact that they’re not participatory.   Stories are told to the reader, from the vantage point of the teller.  This leads to the next problem.  Stories eventually end, and the reader moves on to other things.  Now, savvy marketers reading this will say to themselves that those other things can be influenced by providing compelling calls to action, streams of related nurturing content or the ability to participate an adjacent community.   Without a doubt, this is all true, but even the best CTAs don’t work all of the time.

Enter the narrative.

Narratives differ from stories in two important ways, according to Hagel.  First, narratives don’t have an end.  They are open ended, and the resolution is yet to be determined.  Secondly, narratives invite participation.   The inherent message isn’t “Listen” — it’s “Join.”

“Narratives motivate actions,” Hagel noted in his presentation.  “In some cases, they motivate life and death choices.  Stories don’t do this.  Every powerful movement that has impacted our world has been shaped and energized by a potent narrative.”

The “Think Different” slogan from Apple beautifully encapsulated the company’s narrative: how technology and intuitive design can enable people to achieve  more. As Hagel said, Apple founders Jobs and Wozniak thought differently from day one.

  • Apple:  Their charge to “Think Different” isn’t about Apple.  It’s about us, and how we can use technology to achieve more.  Apple is the catalyst.
  • Christianity:  People are born in sin, but have the opportunity to be saved.  How things turn out isn’t known, but it will be determined by people’s choices and actions.
  • The American dream — Anyone from anywhere can achieve anything:  This opportunity expressed in this narrative has drawn people from all over the world to America for hundreds of years.

“In a business context, if you can harness the power of narrative, you can derive competitive advantage,” said Hagel.  Narratives work because they don’t simply motivate employees, they can galvanize a broad swath of people, and inspire them to action.

From campaign to context

I took pages and pages of notes during Hagel’s presentation, even winning kudos for speed and thoroughness from the reporter sitting next to me in the audience.  For the last 24 hours, I’ve been noodling on what he said, thinking about how a brand might start to embrace narratives.  As Hagel mentioned in his presentation, narratives take root organically, growing from the actions of people, and they evolve over time.  They aren’t the product of a brainstorm session, so this post won’t contain Tips for Making Narratives Work for Your Brand or anything like that.

However, there are strong parallels between Hagel’s description of the narrative, and the move we’re seeing in marketing away from episodic campaigns, and toward living brand streams.  The clear message is that today’s audiences crave context, and communicators can derive more power for their brands by providing that important framework.

I’m going to go away and think about the narratives emerging within my company, and my industry, certainly. However, I’m also going to be thinking long and hard about the connective tissue content generates, and how that can be used to create context around opportunities.  If a narrative emerges, great.  But in the meantime, there are important lessons for communicators about what makes people tick in John Hagel’s work.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Is your interest in honing your brand’s content strategy piqued by today’s post?  Join PR Newswire and special guests Brian Solis,  Jim Lin and Lou Hoffman for a live event  in San Francisco titled  Tipping the Engagement Scale in Your Favor: How to Employ Multimedia Content for Compelling Storytelling

Related reading:

Create narratives, not stories – Moxie Interactive

Moving from Story to Narrative – @ItsDane

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What is Content PR? [Infographic]

Posted on January 15, 2013 by | 1 Comment

ContentPR-infographic-loRes

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PR Trends for 2013: Evolving Media & Social Business

Posted on December 19, 2012 by | 4 Comments

What’s on tap for PR in 2013?  The answers we received when we asked PR pros to complete the sentence “PR is _____”  provided a harbinger of what the industry can expect in the coming year.

The answers were myriad and varied:  Mind share. Cross-channel conversation.  Content that adds value for readers.  Creating understanding in a complex world.  Engaging dialogue.  A connection between a company and its publics.

And all the answers were correct and point to an emerging reality – PR is getting a lot “bigger.”    The scope of the job is greater, the audiences more vast, the information marketplace is more fluid and the integration with other departments more crucial.

To gain a better angle on the trends for 2013, it’s also important to consider the underlying drivers of trends.

Social Business :   There’s no question that changes in the media environment has had an effect not just on PR departments, but on entire organizations.     Social media has changed customer expectations and introduced an age of radical transparency.  Smart organizations have recalibrated their entire enterprise to connect with, communicate to and serve their customers and prospects.   So what do these changes mean for PR?  A lot, it turns out, from a tactical standpoint.

  • Collaboration & integration:  Silo-busting has taken on a new urgency – it’s crucial for different departments to collaborate in order to deliver a cohesive message strategy and experience for customers across channels.   Social media, inbound and outbound marketing and print buys, for example, all have to work together and make sense.    Print media often drives online behavior, and brands need to plan for (and capture) those actions.
  • Listening & response:  Today’s transparent marketplace puts new pressure on businesses to respond quickly to queries  and comments from their constituents.  This requires communications departments to spool up their social listening efforts, and calibrate their processes (such as review and approval) to speed response.

Evolving media markets:  Journalistic model evolution:  The underlying business models of traditional media continue to evolve – the fact that Newsweek is going all digital in 2013 was probably the most dramatic example from 2012.   What does this mean for PR?  As journalistic models change and go digital, chances are excellent that the folks creating content for digital entities will change how they measure success. Instead of news stand sales, for example, digital metrics, such as the number of times a story was read, shared and commented on – will take precedence.  But the digital environment wages war every second for reader attention .  How can an organization succeed?  By consistently publishing unique, useful and interesting content. Therein is the opportunity for PR pros.

  • Digital media does a great job of serving niche interests, and while the audiences may be smaller, they are enthusiastic and informed.  Find unique story angles to share with tightly focused digital media for maximum visibility to your core audiences.
  • Just because something isn’t “hard news” in the traditional sense doesn’t mean that it won’t be of interest to your audience.  Content that will help your constituents and addresses their pain points plays very well.  Find your internal experts who can offer tips, tactics and advice to your readers.

Mutable social networks:   As we build our communications plans and strategies, it’s important to remember that social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest have the right to change their service offerings, algorithms and terms of use – and they do.  For example, in November, Twitter ceased to render images from Instagram (owned by Facebook) within its news feed, in order to give images generated by using its own suite of photo filters more visibility to Twitter  users.   Organizations that had created rich content on Instagram, and used Twitter to share it to a wider audience, found themselves in a tight spot, as visibility for the images they distribute was reduced.   At the same time, Pinterest announced that (for the time being at least) they added support for Twitter cards, thus ensuring images shared via Twitter via Pinterest will render  on Twitter’s web site and apps.  Confuzzled?  You’re not alone, and there is no safeguard against these sort of changes, which can negatively impact the investment an organization has made in developing a strong presence on a particular network.  So what should communicators do?

  • Don’t become solely reliant upon a social network.   While social networks are incredibly useful for finding, connecting with and engaging audiences, at some point, the brand needs to develop a more direct relationship with audiences.   Encourage your social connections to participate in events, refer them to content on your own web site, and provide engagement options (live chat, comments, etc.) on your own web site to enable your audience to communicate directly with the brand, via channels the brand owns.

In subsequent posts, we’ll discuss trends in PR tactics and outcomes for 2013. Watch this space for more!   In the meantime, you can access an archive of a recent webinar titled PR Prepping for the New Year: A Look at the Evolution of Modern PR & What It Means for You discussing the evolution of PR and trends for 2013.  Panelists included:

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

 

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A 6 Step Plan to Maximize Content Marketing with Agile Engagement

Posted on December 3, 2012 by | Leave a comment

cm marketing paperThe bad news first: The sheer momentum with which the two phenomena are evolving today is swamping many marketing departments. It turns out that generating enough high value content in ways that are meaningful to multiple social audiences is a monumental challenge in today’s always-on media world.

The good news? Owned and earned media were born to leverage off one another – and their combined impact often proves to be far greater than the sum of their parts. Successful PR professionals work toward a self-renewing “virtuous cycle” in which owned media is published by a brand, audiences play it forward as earned media, and the amplification continues as these ripples spread throughout the social sphere.

And there’s even more good news: owned media is not limited solely to the videos, white papers, tweets and other content you produce; it also includes the multimedia platforms you’ve creatively designed to host that stream of brand messaging, as well as the communities you’ve built and diligently maintained around your messaging. With these multiple manifestations of owned media comes a greater resulting opportunity for earning media.

We’ve just published a new white paper titled “Content Marketing: A Six Step Plan for Agile Engagement” designed to help you get your arms around earned media opportunities and incorporating the agile engagement construct into your communications plans. We hope you enjoy the  paper, and invite your feedback in the comments below!

Link: Content Marketing: A Six Step Plan for Agile Engagement

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Earned Media: Capturing Audience Attention

Posted on November 28, 2012 by | 2 Comments

According to  Altimiter Group’s Rebecca Lieb, who  addressed  Future M conference attendees recently, today’s media environment is a “virtual Times Square; an environment of screens.”  As consumers, she noted, we are bouncing from device to device and message to message.  We are “tuning out the noise and too distracted to concentrate.”  This is an environment that makes it even harder for brands to capture the attention of their audiences.

Her analogy is a good one.  Your first experience on New York’s bustling midtown streets can be exhilarating – amazed by the bright lights, flashing billboards, and bustling crowds.  You may try to soak it all in, capture the moments on camera and embrace the chaos.  The third or fourth time, however, might not be quite the same.  Anymore, when I think about Times Square, I consider the quickest exit strategy; the detour I can take to get around the dizzying lights and crowded streets to my final destination.  Something has to be quite intriguing to capture my attention there, and therein is the challenge for brands today.

So how should brands tackle this challenge? By being ubiquitous.  By being visible across all media channels and creating a dynamic and consistent story in paid, owned and earned media spaces.  By creating “branded surround sound,” as Lieb puts it, and implementing an integrated strategy in which all channels work in concert to amplify one another and ultimately maximize the impact of the overall strategy.  Consumers are simply looking for the most relevant and engaging information – in the instant that they need it and in the channel they are seeking it, and to remain relevant, a brand message must be wherever they are.

This informed and active consumer, along with the emergence of new social platforms where they have the power to share and play a brand message forward, has caused a shift in the scales of paid, owned and earned media.  It has spurred a transfer of influence from traditional marketing to this new, evolved converged media where earned media, more commonly known as PR, is taking the crown as King.  Owned media, too, is rising in influence, helping sustain the buzz of a brand generated by earned media, in turn, posing a challenge to paid media.  Still a necessary component, there is a growing opportunity for paid media to leverage owned media & earned media to stay relevant.

The new playing field requires communications professionals to reimagine their strategies of the past.  They must create more holistic programs, programs driven by engaging content, constantly streaming from brand to consumer.   Marketers are using enhanced PR tools to cost-effectively communicate with their audiences through multimedia content.  PR pros are doing more than managing brand reputation, but are evolving their role as storytellers to influence consumer behavior and drive demand through earned media.  The convergence, while it opens up the door to more opportunities for a brand, also requires willingness to adapt, an integration and collaboration among departments, a strategy that aligns across departments, as well as to the overall business goals, and the ability to act with agility.  Understanding the impact of the converged media landscape gives you an edge in the virtual Times Square within which we are living.

Are you an earned media wizard?  The deadline to enter the Earnies is approaching.   Entry is free! To enter the Earnies, simply review the categories, and then click the pink “Submit an Entry Now” button under the category that best fits your campaign.

Author Meryl Serouya is a marketing communciations associate with PR Newswire.

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Call For EARNIES 2012 Entries: Celebrating Earned Media

Posted on October 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The Earnies awards recognize individuals and organizations for outstanding efforts in the area of earned media executed across social media. For our second year of the Earnies, we’ve added more categories to give you even more opportunities to show off your successful campaigns, including awards for best visual campaigns using Pinterest or Instagram,  best global communications campaign and best infographic.    Here’s a full list of the Earnies award categories.

To enter the Earnies, simply review the categories, and then click the pink “Submit an Entry Now” button under the category that best fits your campaign.

The deadline is November 30, 2012, so pick your favorite campaign and enter today!

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Bikes, Baseball & the Power of Goodwill in Preserving a Brand

Posted on October 11, 2012 by | 1 Comment

The future of Lance Armstrong’s personal brand is blurry.

Yesterday was a sad one for me. A long-time cycling fan, and in particular, a fan of Lance Armstrong, the damning report issued yesterday by the USADA was a little heartbreaking.  Specifically, the testimony from eleven other cyclists has pretty much sealed it for me.  He doped, and worse, according to the report, he was the ringleader, pressuring other riders to get on board with the team doctor’s program of systematic blood doping.   The simple fact that he’s never tested positive doesn’t hold much water anymore.

Of course, as a fan of cycling, I knew doping was rampant.  Other favorites – Christian Vande Velde, Jan Ullrich, Alexei  Vinokourov, Tyler Hamilton to name just a few – have tested positive for a variety of sins against their bodies and the sport.  When the news of their positives broke, I was really angry.  No one likes a cheater.

But I’m not nearly as angry with Lance, a fact that has confounded (and disgusted) me.   Where is my outrage over this?

The answer is actually pretty simple.  Lance Armstrong’s story of beating cancer is one we all know, and it’s a heroic tale.  But what makes him such a sympathetic character – even in the face of the charges leveled against him by the USADA – is the fact that Lance is also a bona fide Good Guy.  He has effectively and relentlessly used the story of his survival to power the Livestrong movement.  Livestrong provides tens of millions of dollars annually to a variety of cancer-related advocacy and support programs.  The work this organization does, by all accounts, is impressive and immensely valuable.

From a PR standpoint, Lance Armstrong has provided us with a master class in the insulating power of goodwill and a good reputation.  Though his career as a professional cyclist has been permanently sullied, his work with Livestrong provides an important counterweight.  And the legions of people he’s helped are positive advocates for Lance and his brand.  Right now, they are buoying his brand in the rough surf of this current crisis.   They are buying him a little time in this current crisis.

Barry Bonds – a contrasting case

The polar opposite of Lance Armstrong is Barry Bonds, who was considered to be one of the best baseball players in the history of the game, until his use of steroids and implication in the Balco scandal.  A famously sullen player who  (unlike Armstrong) annoyed sports reporters by refusing to give interviews, Bonds curried no favor with fans, except through is play.  When the news of his steroid use broke, he was widely reviled by media and fans alike.  The teams he played for haven’t retired his number, and he’s fallen from grace, and into obscurity.    Bonds created no insulating layer of goodwill and as a result enjoyed little public support.

What’s next for Lance, and Livestrong?

From a PR standpoint, the question of what Lance should do next is interesting.  His former teammates, in their testimony to the USADA took responsibility for their actions, offered apologies and committed to riding clean (something many have been doing now for years.)  By and large, cycling has cleaned up its game significantly.

All this puts Lance in a tight spot.  He’s vociferously denied that he doped while racing.  An about-face now will be difficult.  But it’s probably the right thing for Lance to do, from the standpoint of his personal reputation, and the longevity of the Livestrong foundation.  The foundation brand is inextricably linked with Lance Armstrong.  One could argue that coming clean and doing all he can to repair his name is part of his fiduciary duty as Livestrong’s chairman of the board.

So, as both a fan of cycling and from the PR standpoint, my advice to Lance is simple.  Own up.  Be human.  Admit your failures, foibles and mistakes.   Transparency is strong medicine – it’s difficult to swallow, but it is a potent remedy.  hrow support behind the clean cycling and anti-bullying movements, and double down on your commitment to Livestrong.  Do these things quickly, and change the public narrative.  The opportunity to salvage reputation is fleeting, but it’s there.

That’s my advice to Lance.  If you were his PR counsel, what course would you chart?

Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the free ebook Unlocking Social Media for PR.

Image courtesy of Flickr user AngusKingston.

The cornerstone of managing a brand’s online reputation is active listening.   Our free white paper can help you get started: Active Listening: The Key to Relevance & PR Results.

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The Key to Relevance: Listening

Posted on September 19, 2012 by | 4 Comments

It should be no surprise that listening is the logical first step in a truly agile communications strategy. Social media provides the ultimate feedback loop, and actively listening to your brand’s Social Echo delivers insight that can enhance just about any public relations and marketing initiative.

Your Social Echo – that powerful reverberation of conversations around your brand in the social sphere – provides proof of concept for good PR strategies and tactics, warning signals about potential crises and always-on inspiration for improving and evolving communications.

At a tactical level, establishing a brand’s thought leadership and optimizing brand messaging were cited as the top two reasons for monitoring social media, according to our survey of PR professionals. To take a closer look at each of these concepts, we’ve asked social media professionals to share their best practices for analyzing social media to build and amplify one’s thought leadership presence, as well as using social feedback to inform messaging in the new white paper (available for free download) titled “Active Listening: The Key To Relevance & PR Results.”

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How to Amplify Messages by Cultivating Audiences & Influencer Relationships

Posted on September 13, 2012 by | 3 Comments

It’s not a comfortable question, but in today’s connected world, it’s one we communicators have to ask ourselves.  And here it is:

How many of the media and influencers in our  media databases hear regularly from us (or our brands) other than when we have a press release in hand or a story idea to pitch? 

In many cases, the answer is “Rarely.”  However, social media offers us the ability to develop relationships at our fingertips, as well as some opportunities to significantly improve our personal effectiveness, and the resonance of the messages we publish, specifically:

  1.  The ability to create a landing pad for messaging, by cultivating an interested audience; and
  2. A way to develop personal relationships with key influencers that will keep you “present” and top of mind.

Creating a bouncy landing pad for messages by cultivating your audience before you communicate:

It’s not unusual for a PR campaign to still operate on the “Ready, aim, fire” principle.  The audience is targeted and the message is subsequently distributed.  Follow up calls are made.   This approach misses one of the greatest gifts to PR from the inventors of networks like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest – the gift of ongoing audience attention.  Any content marketing strategy worth its salt makes social channels a key distribution network for messages.  PR pros need to embrace this strategy, too.  Why?

Every day, on social networks all over the world, with absolutely no regard at all or whatsoever for our various and sundry communications plans and corporate schedules, conversations are happening relating to the products, services, ideas and causes we spend our days promoting. People are looking for information.  Bloggers are blogging. Consumers are considering what to consume next.  If we’re lucky, several of these actors might alight upon a message we published.  If we’re unlucky, however, they may overlook our brands completely.

Now, some folks aren’t considering capturing these spur of the moment opportunities.  However, those communicators who are more dialed in to their marketplaces – and, arguably, their company KPIs (key performance indicators) – do care deeply about these opportunities – and they’re wise to do so.   The ability to capture the ongoing attention of your audience can result in extremely measurable outcomes, and create a soft, springy and receptive landing pad that can bounce your messages around to different people who will amplify it for you.

Modernizing media relations with meaningful digital connections

The second opportunity social media offers public relations practitioners is a more modern approach to media relations.  And no, I’m not talking about simply sending out pitches on Twitter.   By paying attention to what journalists are doing on social media, you can:

  • Develop a good idea of what sort of stories interest them. (What do they tweet, bookmark or read via social reader?),
  • Identify other opportunities for coverage or exposure beyond their primary beat (Do they pin images on Pinterest? Contribute to a blog in addition to their beat?  Create vlogs or podcasts? These are all parts of the news hole.)
  • Learn what sort of content is popular with the larger audience.  (Which stories trigger enthusiastic sharing?)
  • Find non-traditional influencers who weren’t on your radar screen but are nonetheless influential, especially in niche areas of interest.
  • Understand what topics are near and dear to the hearts of the audience.

The act of simply paying attention to the conversation around topics central to your organization is always informative.   An added bonus is that you’ll be able to subtly introduce yourself into the conversation (and to the key players) by adding value when you start sharing useful information, and sharing content posted by others among your own social network.   Tweeting a journalist’s story is a positive way to get on his or her radar screen, especially if you have cultivated a solid and relevant following yourself.

Developing digital relationships

The good news is that cultivating audiences and developing good digital relationships with media and influencers on social networks are achieved through similar means.    Here’s how you do it.

  1. Develop a focused presence on the social networks germane to the topic you’re promoting.   This presence is ideally branded, but it can be a personal presence bearing your name, as well.  If you’re ambitious, you can do both.  Either way, be transparent about who you are, and where you work.
  2. Delve into the topics at hand. Become an expert, share your expertise, and share good content.  Engage in conversation.  Focus on being helpful, interesting and authentic.
  3. Research hashtags, follow lists and read what others tweet.  Get a handle on the nature of the conversation in your space.  Learn what sort of content resonates with the influencers who have gained your interest.
  4. Look at your media list and connect with key media who have also developed professional presences on social networks.  Important: pay attention to how these folks use social media.  If they don’t talk shop on their Facebook wall, you should avoid doing so too.
  5. Commit to building these presences over time.  It takes time to gain traction with an audience.  Along the way, you have to care for and feed your social presences.
  6. Practice the 90:10 rule.  Fully 90% of what you share shouldn’t be brand-focused.   Act as an editor at large, finding and sharing lots of interesting stuff.   Yes, you can drop one of your messages into the stream every now and then.  But if you want to create and maintain interest, you’ll need to be selfless with the content you curate and the presence you construct.

As you proceed, you’ll pick up more followers, and find interesting people to follow. You’ll identify influencers.  And if you do it right, you’ll become a valued member of the community, one who others rely upon for great information.   You’ll be creating a receptive audience for key messages, and positive relationships with influencers who matter, and triggering a loop of incredibly valuable attention, interaction and opportunity.  We call this new approach to PR and content marketing Agile Engagement.

Author Sarah Skerik (@sarahskerik) is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

Image courtesy of Flickr user  stevendepolo.

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