Tag Archives: agile engagement

The Future of Content Marketing is in Utility

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Sarah Skerik | 1 Comment

According to Mitch Joel, the future of content marketing isn’t just in more content. It’s in utility. Specifically, it’s about giving people something they can use, and challenging ourselves to think about whether we’re adding value every time we press publish, or are we adding just more static and noise to the ecosystem.

In his wide-ranging presentation to the Content Marketing World audience, Mitch stressed the profound opportunities brands have today to build direct relationships with their audiences. Simply put, your brand doesn’t need a newspaper to communicate with external audiences any longer. However, the success of the content in sparking the direct relationship depends upon its utility.

Charmin’s Sit Or Squat app provides real utility, and drives interest in what is, let’s face it, a low-interest product.

A fantastic example of useful content Mitch offered is Charmin’s Sit or Squat app, which you can use to find nearby bathrooms that are clean and have amenities you may need (e.g. a changing station, or accessibility). The utility of this app generates awareness and loyalty for a very low interest product.

However, Mitch stressed that in the drive to garner attention, brands to balance privacy and personalization, noting that privacy is not on the table. Marketers must strenuously avoid crossing the privacy line. Ultimately, fantastic personalization delivers utility people value. One example he gave is Amazon, which has mastered personalization to the point where privacy no longer matters.

The utility theme continued in a discussion of active and passive media. Media is passive or active to the consumer.

Passive media: You just sit back, relax and enjoy it. Newspapers, magazines and TV are examples.
Active media: You have to interact with it to derive value.

Many times, Mitch noted, people want their TV to be passive. They just want to watch. They don’t want to like, follow, friend or pin – they want to sit on the couch and watch. Many brands wreck the utility of their passive media by festooning it with options that get in the way of the audiences’ expected experience. They end up with a Frankenstein-eque mishmash – and a terrible user experience. It’s okay for media to be active or passive, and it’s up to marketers to balance the mix of the two. But it’s imperative that we keep utility for our audience in mind.

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

At PR Newswire, content marketing is powered by an agile communications approach – built on effectively listening to online conversations, targeting of active influencers, creating content based on the insights gleaned and syndicating content that is relevant, compelling and trustworthy on an ongoing basis to drive visibility and deliver results.

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Posted in Agile Engagement, Content PR & Marketing

Tagged #cmworld, agile engagement, content marketing

Small Business Communciators Monitor Online Conversation With Multiple Channels

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Sarah Skerik | 2 Comments

Anyone who has implemented a plan for monitoring online conversations and social media mentions knows how tough tracking all these discussions can be fore even the most ambitious and well-intentioned communicator.

That’s why findings from a survey conducted by PR Newswire and PR News aren’t terribly surprising. Fewer than 40% of small business communicators monitor conversations daily, despite the speed with which conversations and rumors can take hold online. The good news is that only 3% of communicators reported that they don’t do any monitoring. Another 18% indicated they monitor conversations weekly.

One reason why the majority of communicators aren’t listening on a daily basis likely stems from the simple fact that many people find themselves relying upon multiple channels in order to keep tabs of key social networks and online groups.

The the survey found that the topics monitored were roughly even, distributed between monitoring for the brand, the industry and (to a slightly lesser degree) competitors.

The Small Biz PR Report covered the survey comprehensively in the article titled 37.7% of Communicators Monitor Conversations Throughout Each Day.

PR Newswire is conducting another survey , this time on the topic of content marketing. Your participation is invited! Take the content marketing survey.

We know that monitoring social, online and traditional media can be hard. PR Newswire’s new Agility platform puts monitoring different channels in one place. Monitor your media, interact with your audience, identify media & influencers and distribute your content – all in one place. Learn more about the Agility Influencer Engagement Platform.

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Posted in Agile Engagement, Measurement & Monitoring

Tagged agile engagement, Agility Influencer Targeting, content marketing, small business pr

Keeping Brand Visibility Flowing: a Look at Brand Streaming

Posted on June 21, 2012 by PRN Bloggers | 2 Comments

The concept of brand streaming is the ability to tell your story across multiple mediums, creating an “always on” presence that attracts and engages people when they’re actively seeking information, whether they’re chatting on social networks or using a search engine. With this approach, brands are tasked with being not only entertaining but informative, accessible and engaging. This can be a lot to handle if the communications teams and processes aren’t empowered to develop messages dynamically and respond quickly as opportunities arise. This week on our webinar titled, “Keeping Your Brand Visibility Flowing through Content: A Look at Brand Streaming in Action” a fantastic panel spelled out best practices and tactics for implementing a brand streaming strategy. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap highlighting the takeaways that you can apply to your own campaigns.

Rebekah King, senior manager of consumer communications for Kelley Blue Book (@KelleyBlueBook on Twitter) kicked off the discussion by describing upon how KBB has built a cohesive team to pool content from various verticals in the company. Her social team builds their content strategy and produces content themselves but leverages the expertise of other departments like PR, Marketing, Customer Service, Market Intel, etc. This strategy allows KBB to use every angle of their organization to inform their audience.

When dealing with social media, Rebekah said, “Social media is not a monarchy, it is a democracy,” noting the best way to be successful with social media outreach is to get each and every unit of an organization involved in the process. She also emphasized the importance of measurement and analytics. Using analytics KBB can see what content is producing better results, and they’re able to quickly tweak their messaging to adapt to the changing needs of their audience. Additionally, the empirical nature of measurement data makes it easy for others to understand what type of content generates the best results. Sharing that data with others on the team encourages everyone to create the sort of content they know their audience will appreciate. Rebekah did make the point of noting that methodology an organization uses to measure social media performance should be made in a manner that fits with how it values its business processes.

Our second presenter, Matt Gentile, global director of PR & social media Century 21 Real Estate (@Century21)offered a look at how Century 21 is using Facebook as a tool for their 100,000+ agents and a way to engage core audiences. He believes for his organization, Facebook works because it allows them to reach their audience in a variety of ways. When he took over social media for Century 21, Matt set the goal to get the professionals that work with Century 21, both inside and outside of the organization, to become more familiar with the company – and their content and tools – through Facebook. One of the biggest challenges that Matt has seen with Facebook and other social media platforms is that people tend to think that they are solely platforms for advertising. In reality, as he stated, “Social media is a way to build your sphere of influence”. He believes that the best way to be successful in building this sphere is to “share, respond, and recognize” no matter the social media platforms. Matt made it clear that he believes you should always engage with social media users if they are providing positive commentary. If they are giving negative feedback, he advised that an organization respond to that person with an email where they can state their problem and work on solving it. Matt finished by speaking how he views Pintrest as the next social media platform that more organizations will begin to utilize.

Did you miss the webinar? Listen to it here: http://promotions.prnewswire.com/LP_Brandstreaming_OnDemandWebinar_20120620_DK.html

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Posted in Agile Engagement, Content PR & Marketing

Tagged agile engagement, brand streaming

Webinar Today: Keeping Brand Visibility Flowing – Brand Streaming in Action

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Sarah Skerik | Leave a comment

Today PR Newswire is hosting a webinar on brand streaming, continuing the conversation about communicating effectively in this real-time, connected world.

Today’s discussion will really dig into the nuts and bolts of recalibrating the communications function in your organization to capitalize upon the opportunities the digital (and social) information markets provide today’s brands and organizations. We’ll discuss how to organize your team, leverage “found” content and learn how one brand’s focus on Facebook turned “likes” into leads.

Here are the details, and the link to the webinar registration page:

Moderator:
Sarah Skerik, Vice President, Social Media, PR Newswire

Presenters:
Matt Gentile, Global Director PR and Social Media, Century 21 Real Estate

Rebekah King, Senior Manager, Consumer Communications, Kelley Blue Book

Webinar Time: 10:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Mountain, 12:00 PM Central, 1:00 PM Eastern

Keeping Brand Visibility Flowing Webinar Registration

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Posted in Agile Engagement

Tagged agile engagement, brand streaming

The Impact of the Agile Marketing Trend on Public Relations

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Sarah Skerik | 3 Comments

via Flite Agile Marketing

The latest buzzword coming to the communications forefront is “agile marketing.” Derived from the agile approach to software development bearing the same moniker, agile marketing changes up the traditional marketing model and shares some of the same cornerstones that underpin the agile development approach, including:

An interative and incremental approach. Agile development chops work into bite size pieces, but adds the capacity for iteration and adaption during development. The result – a fast moving and fluid development cycle that enables continuous improvement.
The scrum. The hallmark of the agile approach is the scrum – an development approach featuring a cross-functional team that works very dynamically to solve problems and meet deadlines. The days of the silo are gone. The agile marketing scrum will involve people from product, marketing, operations, sales and PR (at the least.)
The sprint. Scrum development breaks projects down into fast-moving sprints, which are generally no more than one month in length, and are frequently measured in weeks or days. The sprints define and organize the work to be done for a period of time by the scrum.

The precepts of agile development are well expressed in the graphic below. In a nutshell – to me at least – the agile approach is about breaking out of the straightjacket of processes and getting.things.DONE. It’s also about continuous improvement and iteration, and ultimately, about putting the customer first.

via Chiefmartec.com

So what does this mean to PR? It’s helpful to think in terms of agile engagement - staying connected with audiences, interacting with them and listening to what topics are top-of-mind with the people who are shaping conversations online. This differs from the traditional approach of planned campaigns and crisis communications. Under an agile strategy, the PR team is plugged into marketing campaigns, but also develops the ability to adjust messaging quickly to head off negative events and to capitalize upon fast-moving opportunities (e.g. newsjacking.)

Developing an agile engagement framework means the communications department will need to re-wire processes and build some new muscles. Specifically, PR pros can expect a host of new demands and requirements, including:

Tighter integration with faster-moving marketing and social media campaigns, demanding the ability to adjust messaging and audience targeting quickly
Increasing focus on customizing message, content and touch points for customers and specific audiences
Re-aligning the decision-making and processes to support the fast-moving agile approach.
Empowering employees. Find the social media extroverts and influencers in your midst and nurture them.
Increasing the commitment to real-time information. Monitoring social channels becomes a necessity.

Developing an agile engagement framework means the communications department will need to re-wire processes and build some new muscles, aligning staff and expertise – in the communications groups and elsewhere in the organization – with corporate objectives. The effort is worth it, however. The brand will develop a flexible approach enabling communicators to quickly to their environment , aligning consumer and brand goals and ultimately maximizing return on brand equity and communications investments.

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

We’ve just announced The Crowd-Sourced eBook: The Definitive Guide to Social Influencer Engagement and invite you to contribute.

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Posted in Agile Engagement

Tagged agile communications, agile engagement, agile marketing, content marketing, public relations

Targeting Audiences – You Have to Find Them First

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Sarah Skerik | Leave a comment

How do you find social audiences interested in topics related to your brand or organization? Listorious is one of the jumping off points.

One question we hear repeatedly is this: “How do you go about finding your audiences in social networks?” Tracking down your centers of influence in social spheres can be a bit daunting at the outset. Depending up on the subject matter, interests may be fleeting, such as when someone is doing pre-purchase research on a product. On the other hand, interests can be very personal, whether the subject matter is somone’s hobby or a health issue. It’s always important to remember that social audiences are made up of individual people, and the approaches that work best foster connections on a human level.

So, keeping that in mind, here are some ideas for sources of information, and getting started.

Search Engines: Search engines do a great job of surfacing social content, and are a good first step when identifying an audience. Plug in keywords relating to the topic or area you’re researching, and see what surfaces. You’ll find blogs, editorial pieces and discussion groups relating to your query.

Media Databases: Databases of media and bloggers, like PR Newswire’s own MEDIAtlas online media database , can be a great place to start – you can use them to identify bloggers who focus on your target segment, and you can access their contact information. Taking the time to find the bloggers who write about topics that are in line with the brand/product/service you’re promoting is a key piece of identifying your audience – because established bloggers already have a foothold with that audience. Find the bloggers who are most closely aligned with the messages you’ll be conveying, and start by reading their blogs and building relationships with them.

Social Networks: Special interest groups abound on Facebook and LinkedIn, and on Twitter, they take the form of chats (timed conversations centered around a #hashtag), ongoing discussions (again, labeled with hashtags) and lists curated by people who are interested in that subject. Listorious, a directory of people and Twitter lists, is a good starting point – ideally, you should take the time to follow lists, listening to what’s said and shared – and then develop your own list, cherry-picking the people whose interests align with yours. Remember, these groups exist to enable people with similar interests to share information and connect. Receiving promotional messages is not their raison d’etre. These are the places where interaction and engagement are required.

It’s important to note that these sources will not provide you with a list you can download into a spreadsheet and begin hammering with email pitches, which isn’t the point of this exercise to begin with. Once you’ve found your people, treat them as though you were interacting with them face to face. Listen, engage and interact. As you get to know them, and they you, if you’re producing good content, they’ll interact with it and share it. At that point, your efforts will start to pay off. As the relationships mature, you’ll be able to invite bloggers to beta test a service, or solicit feedback on ideas from a group. The more you invest in developing relationships with online audiences, the greater the dividends will be.

Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the free ebook Unlocking Social Media for PR, which we’ve updated for 2012.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged agile engagement, Agility Influencer Targeting, audience targeting, media database, SocialMedia101

It’s Fryday! (Lessons learned from #frenchfries)

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Sarah Skerik | 1 Comment

Today is Fryday - a national promotion from McDonald's, derived from social media intel.

Social media monitoring is something we all know we should be doing, but winnowing out the signals from the noise can be difficult, and beyond that, figuring out what to do with the resulting data can also be a challenge. To be successful, an organization needs to be agile – its business processes need to be able to ingest the data and recalibrate communications on the fly.

Erm.

That last sentence in can sound pretty daunting. Business processes, ingesting data, recalibrating communications … at this point many folks are inclined to think “that’s for other companies, we simply can’t do that…” and turn quietly away. Fact is, listening isn’t so hard, it can be done by any organization for little to no money, the changes can be incremental, and in order to be successfull, all you really need to do is pay attention, and use what you learn.

I heard a great example of this from Heather Oldani of McDonald’s earlier this week at PR Newswire’s Social Content Leadership Forum in Chicago. McDonald’s has real traction in social networks, and they’re paying attention to online conversations and building relationships with different communities and constituents. Conversations encompass everything from environmental, parenting and nutritional topics to tracking national availability of the McRib to discussions around menu innovations, such as Fruit & Maple Oatmeal and apple slices in Happy Meals. Conversations ebb and flow, but the McD’s team has noticed a constant.

In less than an hour, McDonald's Facebook post had garnered thousands of likes, shares and comments.

“French fries are social,” Heather noted. Topics and issues may come and go, but people love McDonald’s fries, and they talk about that devotion online.

Now, in the grand scheme of McDonald’s menus, the fries are certainly a lynchpin, but they aren’t the headliner. New sandwiches, salads and coffee drinks steal the headlines and are the focus of the company’s menu-oriented promotions.

But because McDonald’s was paying attention, they realized that there was more lasting, ongoing enthusiasm for fries than for pretty much any other menu item, unless you’re this guy:

Bet he likes fries, too. #fryday

But I digress.

McDonald’s realized it had a unique opportunity with the approach of Friday, 11/11/11 – an aesthetically very French-fry appropriate date. Using the palindrome as a hook , McDonald’s developed the Fryday promotion, offering fries for $.50 today.

In the Chicago area, McDonald’s is using billboards to promote Fryday, but true to the roots of the promotion, a lot of activity is happening on social networks, too. The company’s Twitter team (follow them @McDonalds) is chatting up the deal online, and several franchisors are also getting into the game. The Twitter hashtag #fryday is busy and the McDonalds New York Tri-State Area Restaurants have created a check in for the promotion on Four Square. Is the suggestion of hot, crispy, salty fries powerful enough to get people in the door?

My guess is the answer is yes. Not bad for a little promotion derived from simply paying attention to what people are talking about online.

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

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Posted in Agile Engagement, Digital Content

Tagged agile communications, agile engagement, agile PR, social media, social media monitoring

Rethinking Press Release Tactics To Meet Evolving Audience Preferences

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Sarah Skerik | 20 Comments

On yesterday’s “The Science of Press Releases” webinar with Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, we discussed an array of findings about press release viewing, usage and sharing that I’m sure raised a few eyebrows. The webinar, in case you missed it, featured Dan’s findings after he crunched an enormous amount of press release data – metrics and analytics both – PR Newswire provided.

Here’s a look at the deck we presented:

Some of the findings were pretty surprising, including:

Views (the number of times a press release is viewed on PRNewswire.com)

More press releases are viewed on Saturday & Sunday than any other day
The wee hours of the morning (between midnight and 1 a.m. Eastern, specifically) see a real spike in press release views. The start of the workday (9 a.m.) and the early evening also see a higher than average number of press release views.

Engagement (the number of times a reader of a press release takes another action with the press release, such as clicking on embedded links, sharing it on social networks, emailing or printing it, etc.)

Engagement activities do not map to views. Mondays show the greatest engagement, and engagement tails off toward the end of the week.
That said, the wee hours of the morning do see more readers engaging with press release content than at other times.

Media views (the number of times a press release is viewed by a registered PR Newswire for Journalists member)

Media views did map to views overall – more press releases are viewed by media and bloggers over the weekends
Apparently media and bloggers are early birds, in extremis. Most views happen in the wee hours of the morning, or before the work day (7 a.m. ET).

Headlines

Across the board, the headline lengths that generated the most views were in the 120 character range

Multimedia

Releases with embedded photos and video drove more views
However, releases with video showed lower engagement than releases with photos.

These findings are all interesting, and some are pretty surprising, and they beg us to rethink some of the conventional thinking around press releases.

Social sharing:

Sharing of press releases on Facebook spikes on the weekend, and also on Thursdays.
Press releases are shared on Facebook at a dramatically higher rate early in the late afternoon and early evening (between 6 and 7 p.m. ET.)

Timing:

PR Newswire’s highest volume days are Tuesday and Wednesdays. While news from public companies is generally issued either before or after the markets close, the timing of press release distribution is often dictated by when all the approvals are finalized or timing around a particular event such as a conference call, press conference or release of other content.

In my mind, timing depends upon your primary audience. Public companies and others with specific regulatory constraints may need to hew to the traditional timing model. However, for others who aren’t so burdened, it may be time to experiment.

“Staggering” distribution:

More than a few PR folks tweeted unhappily about working round the clock after seeing the data revealing that press release readers are real night-owls. However, I think it’s important to remember that press releases are easily found after they’re distributed.

As I looked at the readership data, I wasn’t thinking that we need to change the timing of press release distribution wholesale. But I do think there’s plenty of opportunity to target different audiences and serve content up directly to them at different times.

So what does this mean? I think it’s still perfectly OK to issue press releases during the work day, during the work week. PR pros do not need to worry about working nights and weekends (any more than they already do!) But you can certainly atomize the content and convey different bits and pieces to key audiences. What do I mean?

Pitch the story later in the day to key journos and bloggers.
Share the content on Facebook in the evening, and start posting status updates for your brand when YOU are on Facebook yourself.
Tweet interesting tidbits and pieces of data from the press release throughout the day.
If possible, publish any related content (a short slide deck, images, a video) or a blog post offering more perspective after the release is issued – and update your channels accordingly
Watch for interaction and commentary from your audience, and respond. Don’t leave the conversation hanging.

If you read this blog, you know that I’ve been musing on the concept of agile engagement as a new model for PR, defining it as a move from campaign-based communications (which, let’s face it, the traditional issuing of a press release is) to an adaptive and always-on presence. While the ‘always-on’ piece can pose a bit of a challenge, the underlying press release usage data indicates that our audiences are always on – so it stands to reason that some of our strategies need to evolve accordingly.

We’re not done with this re-think, not by a long shot. Coming soon, we’ll discuss headlines, targeting and multimedia elements.

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

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Posted in Agile Engagement

Tagged agile communications, agile engagement, pr, press release, public relations

Tag Archives: agile engagement

The Future of Content Marketing is in Utility

Small Business Communciators Monitor Online Conversation With Multiple Channels

Keeping Brand Visibility Flowing: a Look at Brand Streaming

Webinar Today: Keeping Brand Visibility Flowing – Brand Streaming in Action

The Impact of the Agile Marketing Trend on Public Relations

Targeting Audiences – You Have to Find Them First

Rethinking Press Release Tactics To Meet Evolving Audience Preferences

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