Tag Archives: agile engagement

Listening: The Foundation of Agile Engagement

Posted on November 1, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Agile engagement starts with listening.

Content is the cornerstone of today’s communications strategies, but let’s face it – if the content is off the mark or isn’t seen by the intended audiences, your efforts were for naught.   That’s why we consider listening, targeting and distribution to be key fundamentals for a truly agile approach to communications.   Today, we’re going to dig into listening.  Listening is truly the foundation of agile engagement.

Listening:

Here at PR Newswire, we use the term “Social Echo” to describe the way messages reverberate around (and in some cases are amplified by) our audiences. As messages enter the stream of conversations, they’re shared by people in networks, sparking other discussions.  I think we can all agree that social conversations can make or break brands and products. Buzz (positive or negative) is a powerful thing. But that’s not the only opportunity for communicators.

I monitor social channels for discussion about PR and social media. This screen lets me see popular subtopics within that broader discussion.

If we’re tuned into what our audiences are saying and what questions they’re asking, we should be able to influence the direction these conversations take. And, of course, “tuning in” really means listening.  But listening is a pretty broad term, so let’s break it down a bit.

First and foremost, it’s imperative that communicators understand what audiences are talking about, and what questions they ask. Doing so will enable you to communicate in their context.  Failing to do so means you run the risk of being the corporate equivalent of “that guy” with the demonstrated knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Identifying hot-button issues and recurring industry complaints is another important exercise. In addition to identifying opportunities for the brand to be the hero, doing this on an ongoing basis helps communicators either avoid risky areas or meet them head on and mitigate the risks, depending upon whatever is appropriate for the objective. It reduces surprise.

Listening will also reveal to you the language uses – the keywords and phrases they use when discussing you segment and services – enabling you to literally be on the same page, which also delivers search benefits.

Where to listen:

  • Twitter – in addition for specific mentions, keep an eye peeled for discussions around new and established hash tags for your sector.  Making lists of key influencers can make Twitter more manageable, as can a social media monitoring dashboard (I use our own PR Newswire Media Monitoring service).
  • Forums and discussion groups – Discussion groups on places like LinkedIn and Quora are fantastic focus groups to which you should pay attention.  You may also find discussion groups hosted by leading publications or industry groups.
  • Search engines – okay, it’s not truly listening per se, but paying attention to what results surface for the keywords your organization has selected is a good way to keep tabs on competitors, influencers and fast-moving issues in your space.

Read our new white paper, “Earned Media, Evolved,” discussing how the transformed media landscape presents new opportunities for communicators to earn media.

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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Brand Streaming: A New Approach to Agile Communications

Posted on October 31, 2011 by | 7 Comments

Social networks + owned media = an opportunity to generate potent earned media.

We can probably agree that public relations tactics have changed pretty dramatically over the last several years, responding to sea changes in information consumption, the role of professional media and the continuing impact of social networks.  Personally, I think one of the most useful ways to get our heads around what all this means to public relations is to envision a communications in the form of streams.

Tom Stein, the president and chief creative officer of Stein+Partners Brand Activation, an interactive digital agency, offered a good definition on the webinar he and I co-hosted last week.  Brand streaming, according to Tom, represents an agile approach to communications, shifting from episodic, campaign-based planning to an adaptive, always-on presence, and has the following attributes:

  • Content flowing from brand to constituent has become a real-time, always-on stream: and that content flows across channels to media influencers, social influencers, consumers, policy makers and decision makers
  • Content is streaming right back to the brand from the audience – full of insight and opportunity
  • Brands have the ability to effectively and proactively manage this brand stream with the ability to lead conversations, ensure brand coherence, protect reputation and drive results

One key aspect that’s at the heart of brand streaming is the opportunity for owned media published by a brand – press releases, white papers, articles, case studies, fact sheets, photos, infographics, etc. – to evolve into earned media, through social interactions.

This phenomenon carries with it another important factor communicators must consider – the entirely new patterns of influence that are emerging.  A well-connected Facebook fan can be a powerful amplifier of your messages, for example.  As a result, public relations professionals are being forced to rethink old paradigms, embrace new opportunities that demand entirely new ways of thinking – and to act and react in real time.

And this brings us back to the brand stream.  The always-on, realtime opportunities and connections demand a continual presence – and communications – from brands.  It’s an entirely different role, and an entirely different mindset.

Tomorrow we’ll delve into developing the content that forms the basis of a brand stream.

Related reading:  Taking a content-centric approach to building relationships

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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Taking a content-centric approach to building relationships

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 6 Comments

Author Ninan Chacko is PR Newswire's CEO.

Marketing, today, is about driving closer, authentic, deep and meaningful relationships, on an individual level, between an enterprise and its constituents – customers, prospects, investors, business partners, key influencers, and more.

These constituents are far more informed; and as such, much smarter than ever before.  To that end, if an enterprise is unable to articulate its purpose, its ideals and values and how these impact the products & services it brings to market; if it is unable to offer something more than just its wares; and if it is only interested in being heard but not listening, the enterprise will never establish a true relationship with its constituents.

And without a relationship there is no basis for loyalty.

So how does an enterprise build this relationship?  By engaging its customers, its prospects, its investors and all other influencers in an interactive and iterative dialogue of which the foundation is content.

Content that tells stories, content that educates, content that informs an understanding of products & services, content that encourages participation, content that drives action – purchase, download, donate, view, share, and more – and content that builds community.

Today, enterprises are creating their own content – video, audio, multimedia, infographics, photography, etc. – and using technology platforms and content networks, such as those offered by PR Newswire, to deliver this content across multiple channels and to enable viral sharing of this content which helps shape a richer story that gets amplified over time.

The channels through which this conversation is happening are no longer limited to paid media, but rather a much broader, fragmented landscape of earned, owned, social and mobile media that complement paid media.

Importantly, each of these channels has different characteristics associated with it. As a simple example, Twitter has a message size constraint; it’s optimized for speed and for breaking information; whereas, a blog post allows a much greater amount of real estate to express a much richer and more nuanced version of a story and YouTube provides an entirely different, visual experience for the consumer.

So, content must be optimized for each particular channel – the style, the volume and the speed or the immediacy of that channel. That requires more than just a level of knowledge, individually, about these channels; it also requires a holistic, cross-media, integrated understanding of how to optimize and leverage all these varying channels to really make them work together, cohesively.

And when they work together – when quality content is delivered to the right target audience in the right formats that promote seamless consumption – it helps to coalesce interest across these fragmented mediums and drives response.

Content does not have to have a defined shelf life and should be republished, re-tweeted, mashed up, echoed, spur the creation of derivatives and as such drive continued conversation and engagement.  In fact, content that remains discoverable – a key role of owned media – grows in richness over time as more and more people engage with it.  This means the enterprise has to continue to monitor and engage to earn a continuing return from that initial content catalyst.

And lastly, the development of consistent performance metrics that measure the relevant indicators (click-throughs, registrations, downloads, etc.) of brand, reputation, demand and ultimately ROI, is key to the long term sustainability of such a content-centric approach.

Amplifying the content beyond the more obvious paid and owned media channels is a core insight.  Targeting and widely disseminating this content – via a trusted network such as PR Newswire’s – to the contextually-appropriate earned, social and mobile media publishers, gives your content even more credibility and will allow you to leverage many of the already established communities relevant to your content.

As my colleague Tony Uphoff at UBM Techweb puts it in a post titled Marketing as a Service, “Marketing as a one-way broadcast model, done in a series of campaigns simply doesn’t work anymore. Successful marketing today requires a content centric, conversational approach that engages and sustains a community of prospects, customers and vendors around mutual interest and the quality of the content exchange. In other words once a brand has engaged prospects and customers with a compelling story, this “community” needs to be sustained and nurtured. This shifts marketing from a project and campaign orientation to marketing as an ongoing service. The key is to be able to build, sustain and curate these communities and engage them on and off line.”

Author Ninan Chacko is PR Newswire’s CEO.

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