“Content We Love” is a weekly feature written by a team of our content specialists. We’re showcasing some of the great content distributed through our channels, and our content specialists are up for the task: they spend a lot of time with the press releases and other content our customers create, proof reading and formatting it, suggesting targeted distribution strategy and offering SEO advice. In Content We Love, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the press releases and other messages that stood out to us, and we’ll tell you why. We hope you find the releases enjoyable and the insights gained from discussing them enlightening.
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts ‘Gone Nutty!’ Toaster Pastries, Now Available in Two Peanut Butter Flavor Varieties. (PRNewsFoto/Kellogg Company)
Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but when it comes to a modern press release, social media is reigning champion.
My eyes popped upon seeing Kellogg’s recent release announcing the new Pop-Tarts® lineup. The release jumped from a “traditional release” (just text) to a supercharged social media delight!
Social media can be daunting but is important when it comes to releasing news. Why, you ask? Search engines are showing social content higher and higher (as of May 16th,Yahoo! is showing tweets in the news feed itself), a whole untapped audience is awaiting on these social channels (more and more are joining daily), AND it expands the life of a release.
Imagine dropping colored dye into a glass of water. The moment the dye hits the water, the entire glass changes color. Impact. If you can drop more dye into more glasses of water, the dye goes even further and affects even more.
Sharing your story on social media is adding glasses of water!
Kellogg accomplished this by way of Click-To-Tweet.
Click to Tweet: Pop-Tarts have Gone Nutty! @poptarts411 brings fans the most requested flavor #CrazyGoodPB! Check it out http://on.fb.me/kdgHx
A) Clicktotweet.com is a website for custom tweet creation. Want others to tweet something specific? Create a click-to-tweet! The release is so much more shareable because quite literally, it is a push of a button.
B) The tweet is solid – the handle (@poptarts411 is called a ‘handle’ as it is how to find the company/person/group on twitter) is within the tweet instead of at the beginning. This is important because tweets that start with a handle look like replies or a conversation in progress. While the hope is for replies and conversations, many simply skip over tweets that start with a handle. Optimum visibility is not starting with the @.
C) #Hashtags are the way to search via social media. It shares a thought/trend/news that connects others. The #Discover feature at the top of twitter finds the news you’re looking for. Whether it is a #workout or sharing your Pop-Tarts® #CrazyGoodPB experience, you can find conversations around the #.
The press release did not just stop there. Also included a link enabling readers to connect on Facebook, providing seamless connections on multiple platforms.
Having social-media friendly releases are not difficult to have but imperative in our social-savvy world. Start the conversations by putting your content on social media platforms. Share your news and let your story be heard everywhere it can.
Big thanks to the Kellogg Company for the release we’re nuts over!
Last month a single 61 character tweet (12 words as a matter of fact) caused the S&P 500 to drop $136 Billion in mere minutes.
It boggles the mind and makes one try to find some sense in it. What does it mean?
Well, it certainly proved the tremendous reliance we all have on the content that comes from Twitter. Some would say investors rely too much on automated trades based on tweets.
It also proved the great value our society places on Twitter as a provider of content and information.
Tweets will now be featured in Yahoo’s news feed.
Yesterday Yahoo announced that it was taking Twitter very seriously indeed.
In her blog, Merissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo stated, “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.”
She went on to say that over the next few days users would begin to see Tweets “personalized to their interests and preferences” appear in their content stream, delivering on earlier promises that the search and new aggregation giant would move toward more personalization of content for its users.
[An interesting side note is that the title of Mayer’s blog post “@Yahoo delivers #bestoftheweb” is really not very tweetable. Oops. To start a tweet with a Twitter name is a mistake unless you are talking ‘at’ that person/account. It will not appear as normal tweet.]
Yahoo’s big search competitor, Google wasn’t able to keep its former relationship with the microblogging giant. Twitter results disappeared from Google some time back, making this an quite a win for Yahoo.
But what does this move mean for communicators?
While few details have been revealed, it’s probably safe to assume that Yahoo will feature tweets that are popular, influential and of course meet certain criteria for authenticity and newsworthiness.
As communicators we should be prepared and simply take this as a reminder of some best practices for content creation:
1) Create share-worthy content with tweetable headlines and by highlighting crunchy, interesting facts in bold font or in bulleted lists.
2) Cultivate social networks. Build credibility for your content and your brand.
3) Build relationships with influencers.
4) Calibrate your team for rapid response to current events.
Perhaps your content will make it to the Yahoo news page along with relevant content from trusted news sources which Yahoo customizes based on user interest.
One thing a fast-moving PR team needs is information. Stay on top of issues and opportunities as news breaks by incorporating MediaVantage into your communications strategy. Learn more about our real-time media monitoring suite.
Victoria Harres is VP, Audience Development & Social Media at PR Newswire, the main voice behind @PRNewswire, social media lead for @Business4Better and a frequent speaker and writer on social media for business.
Every other week, The Q&A Team answers questions from ProfNet readers with advice from our large network of experts. Has there been a question burning in your mind lately, something you’ve been wondering that none of your colleagues can answer? Please send it to polina.opelbaum@prnewswire.com
Dear Q&A Team,
Now that Facebook Home has been released, I want to understand how it will impact my work as a marketer. Is it worth taking a closer look at? What should I be aware of? I want to make sure I don’t frustrate and annoy our fans with ads. Any advice?
“Home” Run or Loss
_____________________
Dear “Home” Run or Loss,
Here are three ProfNet experts who can address your questions about the impact of Facebook Home on marketers:
What is Facebook Home?
The Google Play store app provides the following description of Facebook Home:
“Facebook Home puts your friends at the heart of your phone. Replace your standard home screen with a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos. Get to apps with one swipe — just drag your profile picture up to open the app launcher. And when you download Facebook Messenger, you can keep chatting with friends when you’re using other apps.”
The app is available for download on various Android devices — including the Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II, HTC One X and HTC One X+.
Pros to Using Home
Lorrie Thomas Ross, CEO of Web Marketing Therapy, simply says, “Businesses have to respond to Facebook Home — it’s here. The impact on the Facebook pages of organizations hasn’t been discussed enough. It is a big point for professionals to ponder.”
RJ Bardsley, senior vice president of Racepoint Group, says, “If Home takes off, Facebook marketing campaigns (paid and earned) become a lot more impactful. Home has the potential to turn Facebook from a primarily PC-based experience to a primarily mobile experience. This is important, seeing as PC sales continue to drop (14 percent this quarter according to IDC). If marketers invested in Facebook ads or another type of Facebook presence, they’re in for a treat as these move front and center on people’s mobile devices.”
Ross is also excited with the future potential of Home and says, “In theory, the new mobile app could create more inventory and advertising options, which can help address more monetization of the user base. This can also create more ad options.”
Cons to Using Home
Jacob Chapman, vice president of corporate strategy at Sazze, Inc., thinks Facebook Home will not prove to be an attractive option for most marketers of online businesses. Chapman has found that controlling where his message appears is just as important (if not more important) than controlling the content of the message itself.
“Controlling the ‘where’ provides us with insight into and control over our viewers’ moods and intentions,” he says.
Chapman explains that with most mobile advertising, the advertisement is placed within a certain app or collection of apps: “As the marketer, I know certain things about a viewer and their frame of mind if they open the Words With Friends app, or even if they open the Facebook app. Contrast that with Facebook Home, where all I know is that a person has turned on their mobile phone. This type of passive ad impression is phantom advertising and it is not going to be anywhere near as valuable as an ad that is served to someone who is primed for engagement.”
However, Chapman thinks this issue can be resolved if Home can serve up relevant location-aware advertising, which is advertising that is served to a user based on their proximity to the advertiser’s real-world location.
There are dozens of mobile companies trying to make this model work, but no one has been able to get the formula quite right (e.g., Groupon Now!, MobSav, Scoutmob, etc.), said Chapman. “If Facebook Home goes down this road, they will certainly have the brainpower, scale and financial resources to do it successfully where others have failed.”
How to Prepare for Home
Ross recommends that businesses interested in Facebook Home do the following three things: 1) monitor traffic from Facebook to see if there is more traffic driven to their site from mobile devices; 2) anticipate more ad costs to account for the additional inventory that could develop with the new real estate; 3) develop a strategy for the app experience — management, communications and measurement.
The more the marketplace adopts Facebook Home, the more businesses need to be prepared to monitor it and be present on it, advises Ross.
Bardlsey reiterates the importance of being present. He thinks that for good marketers, it should be all about improving the brand’s visibility by providing more value. “Now that marketers know their audiences will be more mobile, we need to think about how we engage and what value we bring to people on the go.”
Nonetheless, Ross thinks one concern for businesses is how Facebook pages will work on Home: “Will they have new features above and beyond the browser experience, or will experience be compromised with the smaller app screen? That will likely evolve in time.”
How Users Will Respond to Home
There is always initial frustration with ads, but consumers seem to get over the initial frustration fairly quickly, says Chapman.
“I definitely think Facebook will need to be very careful about how many ads they insert into Facebook Home, who they allow to advertise and what format those ads take. Tasteful and relevant sponsored posts can probably be worked in without horrendous backlash, but ads for diet pills would drive people to uninstall Facebook Home in short order,” he explains.
Bardsley agrees with Chapman, saying, “Too much of anything can be bad — and this is especially true in marketing.” He strongly suggests that any marketer focusing a campaign or part of a campaign on Home become familiar with the MMA. It has a great set of guidelines/best practices for mobile marketing.
As far as users staying away from the app due to security/privacy risks, Chapman says, “It isn’t as benign as a native operating system like iOS or Android, but there is nothing inherent in the app that makes it more dangerous than the standard Facebook app.”
However, he still urges users to be particularly aware of their privacy settings, because they will be engaging with the Facebook Home app constantly and passively. “Users may be okay sharing certain data, like their location, when they have to launch an app and take an action to share the data — but it is a different story if Facebook Home is always sharing that data whenever they turn on their phone.”
Even though the Facebook Home app may still be evolving, remember this advice from Ross: Slow is the same as stop in the social Web world. Being aware and engaged will only help your social media marketing efforts.
Good luck!
-The Q&A Team
Written by Polina Opelbaum, editor of ProfNet, a service that helps journalists connect with expert sources. The Q&A Team is published biweekly on ProfNet Connect, a free social networking site for communicators. To read more from Polina, check out her blog on ProfNet Connect.
“Content We Love” is a weekly feature written by a team of our content specialists. We’re showcasing some of the great content distributed through our channels, and our content specialists are up for the task: they spend a lot of time with the press releases and other content our customers create, proof reading and formatting it, suggesting targeted distribution strategy and offering SEO advice. In Content We Love, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the press releases and other messages that stood out to us, and we’ll tell you why. We hope you find the releases enjoyable and the insights gained from discussing them enlightening.
The headline and the lead dive straight into the story.
#Storytelling
Growing up, the phrase “There are two sides to every story” echoed all around. Being a writer and a content specialist, finding the story is the primordial base where magic exists.
To my delight, the impactful message about a state-of-the-art surgery from Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego leapt from the page because of how it was written, the visual elements, and the social media components.
Instead of being laden with corporate jargon and a “who/what/when/where/how” approach, the release made waves with great storytelling and more than just the kids took notice.
Right off the bat, the story leaps off the pages with video and images of the families. Paired with the technical (and readable) words of describing Early-Onset Scoliosis and how the magnetic rods operate, are videos and images that bring the experience to life.
On one side is the incredible feat of the surgery itself, clearly defined within the release. The words are compelling and easy to understand (acronyms explained, processes defined, etc). Yet on the other side is the human element of the doctors’ scope on their young patients and the family scope of their loved ones.
The images give a face to the message. This is not just an ordinary surgery; this is a surgery for Tommy and Anthony.
Images increase visibility on releases because humans are inherently intrigued by visuals. Including an image on your release is placing a bull’s eye target, which instantly attracts the line of vision.
Stop your audience in their tracks with powerful imagery.
And much like the magnetic rods, this release continues to grow.
The tale also took to social channels to spread the news.
With search engines showing social results higher and higher, it is 100% in a company’s best interest to involve social sharing of news.
Much align to a story, there are two sides to social media: the share and the conversation. Social Media sites are buzzing with shared information (thoughts, ideas, articles, etc) to a collective group and these same sites are abuzz with conversations about the information.
In one swoop, the story transcends from viewership on news’ sites to the online social feeds. Not only is the message shared to a bigger audience, the conversation has started with just one tweet. From a tweet can come a retweet, a conversation, and a connection. Cool!
When penning a press release, reflect on the story it is telling. Add those great images and share the great news via social media. Share your story to the world!
Big thanks to Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, San Diego Center for Spinal Disorders, and Ellipse Technologies for showcasing the backbone to storytelling!
This post originally appeared on the Business4Better Blog.Ed note: Today is the second day of Business4Better, a new event produced by PR Newswire’s parent company, UBM plc., designed to foster partnerships between non-profits and corporations. As I was scanning the blog posts recapping the first day, I spotted the post below and decided to share it with you. It’s an interesting illustration of the degree to which social influences have permeated business decision making and strategy, and the importance of empathy to an organization’s success. - SSReconciling a balance sheet or analyzing data for the next great product is not the only metric that drives the success of great companies. Rather, the secret sauce has to do with empathy for the world around you.
It is not just business for better, it is better for business, says Dev Patnaik, CEO of Jump Associates and author of Wired to Care who opened up the Business4Better show here in Anaheim.
He implored businesses to reconnect with their humanity and gave examples of companies that are doing this today. “When we are fact-based and living our lives with PowerPoint data, we are only bringing in a part of our brains every day to work, says Patnaik. “You have to have that connection and get out beyond your walls and spend the time in the real world.”
Harley Davidson is a company that embraces these ideals. “The minute you walk into Harley Davidson headquarters, the parking lot is overflowing with Harleys, the building smells like leather and the company keeps the connection to the world around them. There is an authenticity. We are them and they are us,” said Patnaik.
Patnaik also compared the culture of Nike and Reebok. Nike is a culture of athletes and Reebok is a culture of MBAs that sell shoes. Great companies have a gut sense to know what is right, the passion to leap on something new and the courage to stick with something shaky; he added.
Some view empathy is a lovey-dovey word but Nike and Harley Davidson are hard charging places, he said. “When you care about people more than yourself, you will innovate and grow. You will have a sense of mission and reason to come into work every day.”
Author Kelley Damore is Chief Community Officer at UBM Tech.
Last Thursday, Social Media Club NYC met to discuss the topic of social media measurement. Doh Young Jung, data scientist at Brandwatch, was one of the speakers at the event. The second speaker was Martin Murtland, vice president of platform management at PR Newswire. The moderator for the evening was Howard Greenstein, president and organizer of SMCNYC.
Q: What is your role in your company?
Murtland: I am responsible for developing the roadmap for a lot of the products. Some interesting research is that 56 percent of brands and agencies are equating the value of their social media activities to their business outcomes. So we need to know how to show businesses the value of what they are doing with their social media activities. I am a firm believer that the key to this is for practitioners to talk the language of business, which isn’t necessarily talking about all the metrics you can have but more about trying to understand how you can link to those metrics with what you are trying to achieve from a business perspective.
Jung: I am part of the analytics team. We do a lot of consulting services with clients, and we try to help them understand social media as well as how to use our tools better. In addition, I do a great deal of reporting for clients when they have specific social media questions.
Q: What are we talking about when we say social media measurement?
Murtland: It goes back to what you are trying to achieve from a business perspective. You can look at it like a marketing funnel which you flip over, and then you have to push your leads through the different areas. And you have to work very hard to get them through. Try to think about what you are doing with your campaigns; what metrics are appropriate in each of those general areas, as well as what you are trying to do inside the marketing funnel. For me, it is important to look at where the industry is going and what companies are doing to create these tools to enable users.
Jung: Our goal is to always deliver relevant content in a timely manner. When we talk about relevance it is about understanding our client’s objectives in terms of the data that they want and knowing when they need that data. We always want to make sure that our tool is easy for the practitioner to use and the reporting is easy to understand. Many of our clients come from PR and marketing agencies, and then we also support their clients. In addition, we have some larger financial clients that use social media monitoring for their product offerings.
Q: Why is social media measurement more difficult than just turning on these tools that you offer and letting them do the work?
Murtland: The software providers know part of the puzzle but it also takes work on behalf of the user to understand what issue they are trying to solve. It is important to know what you want to achieve consistently over time. One of the key things from a measurement perspective is to benchmark yourself. Don’t worry so much about what metric you use in the beginning, but try to benchmark what are you doing — otherwise you will not know what’s having an impact and improving. If you are able to do it well then include in your benchmark some of your competitors. You want to try to create reference points to see how well you are doing. From there you can think about what kind of metrics you can cover and what metrics you should be covering from a business perspective. Then look for an overlap between these two groups of metrics, and that should be the metrics you use.
Q: You (Jung) are a data scientist, so what is the science of what you are doing?
Jung: We deal a lot with numbers. We do want to show the different trends going on with social media data. As companies start to collect this type of data and look into it, the more accurate of a vision they can have of relating it back to their business purposes, such as the their marketing or financial results.
Q: Do you consult with companies about the purpose of the stats they are collecting?
Murtland: We do have a team for that. The first question to ask is: What are you trying to achieve from a business perspective? No metric or tool will resolve your business problem, you have to start by identifying the problem and then let everything else drive it.
Jung: Our starting point for every discussion is helping clients ask the right question. For example, if there is a case where a company is starting with zero awareness about whatever they are releasing then we have to do competitive research. So if they are releasing something on the market that already has competitors, we go into competitive data sets and see how they are doing in the market and then we tell the client what the competitor is doing successfully or wrong. This gives them some type of strategy.
Q: Now that we have established a baseline and know what business goal we are trying to achieve with our social, what’s next?
Murtland: The next step is to understand some kind of cause and effect. It is important to log and record the type of activities you have been doing. You want to show that what you are doing is actually driving the change.
Q: Can you have a tool where you are can both send out your social and measure it?
Murtland: We have a product that is an engagement console where you are able to track some of your activities. Likewise we have different tools for more earned media. You are able to log your activities in there.
Jung: We started out as a monitoring tool, so that is our core focus. We have seen more requests for engagement, and this is an area we want to venture into.
Q: Not all the networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) make their metrics available, so how do you bring all this stuff together into one global picture that you can start to understand as a marketer?
Murtland: Work out what metrics you can measure and what metrics you should be measuring. The other thing to try to validate is where that data is coming from and what it means. I think there is a lot of jargon and ways to express different things, so try to understand it.
Q: How do you view a single metric vs. combo metrics, because the combo metrics seem more accessible?
Jung: It depends on your business goals. Also different types of clients have different things they are more interested in, so there is no one easy formula. PR agencies are more interested in influencer identification, which is trying to identify whether a tweet from a personal account is different than a tweet from a more influential account. They want to find those Twitter handles that have more influence and impact on social media.
Q: How do you determine what is influential for that particular brand?
Murtland: What is important to me is the contextual influence, so what is the person’s domain and whether they are influencers around that. You can also check if they are an influencer by seeing if their followers are active; look for retweets.
Jung: Our tool can collect historical data as far back as two-and-a-half years. We begin by identifying Twitter handles or any sort of users that mention a relevant brand or marketing campaign topic. We then delve into what they are posting about and look for the topic in their conversation.
Q: How much semantic or sentiment analysis are you doing, and how do you decide if it makes any sense?
Jung: We do have built-in universal sentiment engines and they are based on things like swear words. We are able to customize syntax and understand the language better of certain conversations that have been surrounding positive or negative topics. We can manually change the rules, tweak it, and make sentiment more reliable.
Murtland: There are a couple things you want from a sentiment tool. They are: 1) automated sentiment, looking and analyzing large volumes of content and identifying trends inside it; 2) manually being able to override the scores.
Q: What do we need to do next to tie what we are doing (getting inquiries, selling products, etc.) to some sort of a business metric?
Murtland: You need to start by looking at the peaks and troughs, and try to see if there is a correlation between them. You can try to see the causes and effects that are happening and the correlations, then you can begin understanding and seeing what’s working and not working. Do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working. Repeat and then see the effect.
Jung: As a company becomes increasingly savvy about social data, one thing they can do is set a target to reach. For a lot of PR agencies, the target is often key message penetration. They want to see that a message they crafted is actually being delivered through social media to the audience that they want to reach. An increase in key message penetration has resulted in positive/negative business performance.
Q: How do you keep out confounding data? An example of this was when the “Old Spice Guy” first came out and there was a huge spike in sales, but then someone noted that P&G had a major couponing campaign going on.
Jung: Our entire app is based on Boolean, so if we see a peak we are able to delve into it. We can cut it out and see what the marketing volume was about as well as the coupon conversation. Then we look at the relationship there, and if we see both things increasing then that can mean both have worked.
You can watch a video of the event here:
(If you’re unable to view the video on this page, please go to: youtu.be/TXGg6rXLMcs)
Whether you’re a reporter, blogger, author or other content creator, ProfNet can help you with your search for expert sources. You can send a query to tens of thousands of experts and PR agents, search the more than 60,000 profiles on ProfNet Connect, or get timely experts and story ideas by email — all for free! Need help getting started? Email us at profnet@profnet.com.
Written by Polina Opelbaum, editor of ProfNet, a service that helps journalists connect with expert sources. To read more from Polina, check out her blog on ProfNet Connect.
@AP quickly tweeted that their account had been compromised and it was soon suspended and remains so now. The stock market regained strength and I think a lot of people nervously took their first breath after several long minutes.
Who should we blame?
Of course there are lots of people playing the blame game. At the top of the list is of course is the hackers themselves, and I agree! But who else holds responsibility for this crisis? The AP? Re-tweeters? Twitter?
They were doing their due diligence. Unfortunately, there are always people out there who can get around almost any online wall.
The tweet was retweeted thousands of times within minutes. All of us with the power to retweet or repost messages ‘must’ be more vigilant about confirming through a second and even third sources, information that seems incredible.
Social media is a powerful tool that can be used for good, and which can easily turn to evil by our very own laziness to verify what we’re posting.
Is Twitter to blame? Perhaps Twitter can put better security measures around its service, but in the end, online vulnerabilities are everywhere, and that includes all social media platforms. Not just Twitter.
After securing our passwords and linking social accounts to something other than an easily hacked free email address, part of doing our due diligence is to have a plan of action in case such a crisis occurs.
The AP made the right moves to recover quickly today:
1. They quickly caught and countered the false tweet on their own twitter account, @AP.
2. They had AP journalists with strong Twitter presences Tweet out that the tweet was false.
3. They put out a media advisory with information making sure the story was clearly represented.
4. They told their own story on their own web properties.
At the end of the day the stock market was stable and I don’t think anyone questions the AP’s credibility as a source of news anymore than at the beginning of the day.
UPDATE: The AP Twitter account is back up and running this morning.
The @ap Twitter account, which was suspended after being hacked, has been secured and is back up. Thank you for your patience. – @ericcarvin
Victoria Harres is VP, Audience Development & Social Media at PR Newswire, the main voice behind @PRNewswire, social media lead for @Business4Better and a frequent speaker and writer on social media for business.
I wasn’t the only social media denizen who scratched their head and said “Really?” in response to the SEC’s ruling a few days ago that cleared the way for public companies to disclose material news via social networks. It turns out I was in good company, as many others looked in askance at the ruling too, including Fortune’s Dan Primack (“SEC’s new social media policy falls short.”)
Now, don’t get me wrong. Fundamentally, I support brands using social channels to communicate. I am completely and utterly convinced of the efficacy and utility of social networks as a means to communicate with key audiences.
But I also know from my experiences in managing several of PR Newswire’s social media presences for the last couple years that social networks are not perfect communications channels. For a variety of reasons, I’ll never rely solely upon them as key communications channels. Here’s why.
Reliability – If you’ve ever used Twitter, you’ve probably seen the Fail Whale that appears when Twitter is over-capacity. Facebook users experience problems with their API and delays in getting content to post all the time. Simply put, you never know when your social network will slow down – or even grind to a halt. Call me cynical, but Murphy’s Law dictates that at some point, you’ll encounter a service problem right at the moment you absolutely, positively need to post something.
Service & platform changes – The social networks all reserve the right to make changes to their services and their platforms, without any prior warning to users, and change they do. Over the last several years, we’ve seen the networks start and end relationships with search engines and each other, change how user content is displayed and an increase in the commingling of ads within streams of user-generated content. All of these changes have affected (in some cases significantly) how and when social content is shared and viewed.
Feed management algorithms — It may come as a surprise to some, most social networks employ manage what content their users see. Using algorithms, they bias news feeds, tweet streams and the updates they display to users, surfacing content that’s proven popular and/or is from those closes to the users’ social graphs. More mundane posts are buried. Point is, just because a company posts content to a social network, there is no guarantee that all their friends, followers and fans will see it. In fact, one can be fairly certain that relatively few members of your social audience will see your message at the moment it’s posted.
Security – Social networks can be hacked, and while they obviously try to protect themselves, it’s not at all uncommon to see spammy messages spewing forth from hacked accounts. Company accounts are not immune, and the stakes go up if you’ve cultivated a particularly influential and well-connected audience populated with analysts, bloggers and journalists.
If this post has you sweating a bit, it might be a good idea to take a quick look at the various terms of service the social networks require us to agree to in order to establish accounts. None contain service level agreements and guarantees that you get from a paid vendor. (Note: PR Newswire is a paid vendor. We build security and redundancy into what we do, and we consider uptime a requirement, not a nice-to-have.)
So, while I don’t consider myself to be a Chicken Little, and indeed, I think it’s great that companies can safely add communicating via social networks to their communications mix, I do believe that brands need to be cautious about becoming over-reliant on social networks, from which they have no guarantees and over which they can wield no real control.
Author Scott Mozarsky is PR Newswire’s Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance yesterday that permits public companies to disclose material information such as earnings through social channels — such as Facebook and Twitter – as long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information. The SEC guidance related to an investigation that it has completed concerning a post by Reed Hastings (Netflix’s CEO) on his personal Facebook page that contained material information regarding Netflix’s performance.
So, is the SEC guidance a good thing or a bad thing, and what is impact do we expect this guidance to have on disclosure and the investing public?
We believe fact that the SEC is embracing social media and encouraging companies to use social channels to disseminate information is a very good thing. Companies benefit by disclosing information as broadly as possible. Using social channels in addition to company websites and press releases to distribute material information ensures more engagement with a broader audience. In fact, PR Newswire is encouraging our customers and other public companies to complement their disclosure of material information by using social channels in addition to press releases, their websites, emails, etc.
That said, similar to the guidance that the SEC provided regarding web disclosure back in 2008, yesterday’s statement by the SEC was ambiguous and could be read to permit disclosure of material non-public information solely through social channels. This would not be a good thing for companies, investors, capital markets, analysts, traders, journalists, or anyone else with a stakes in public companies. We believe it is highly unlikely that companies will use social channels as their sole means of disclosing material information. Doing so would limit severely limit the audience.
What does this mean for our customers?
The SEC has clearly stated that the purpose of Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure) is to promote broad and simultaneous disclosure of material information. Investors should have an even playing field. Selective disclosure is not a good thing and is prohibited by Reg FD. Given that the internet and social channels have become a central part of everyone’s lives, the SEC wants to encourage companies to use their web sites as a core part of their overall disclosure strategy and this now extends to social media.
Companies that use their websites as the sole means of disclosure run the risk of uneven disclosure that disadvantages certain types of investors. The SEC has been clear that the idea that investors might have to go and look for the information rather than getting it through a broader distribution is far from ideal. The SEC has also previously noted that some investors don’t have easy access to the Web. Additionally, law firms have consistently been advising their clients that the only way that such clients can be certain that they are meeting their disclosure obligations is to push the information to investors using press releases and other online distribution.
For more on the implications and risks of this ruling for the financial markets and investing public, please see Scott’s discussion on the Building Investor Compliance blog titled, “PR Newswire applauds SEC guidance on social media.”
Like any business, sometimes our own story needs telling. Earlier this year, we decided that we needed to do some PR for our MultiVu business, which focuses on the production and distribution of multimedia content. It’s cutting edge stuff, with some truly unique aspects, and it sits right between PR and marketing, and we needed to offer some explanation and raise awareness of these services.
So what did we do? We did the same thing any of you, our customers, would do. First, our team brainstormed the messaging. They outlined the key points we needed to convey from a brand standpoint, and then approached the messaging from the opposite context – the questions our audience often asks has about producing video and other multimedia content, and the various struggles that can complicate these projects.
“The hardest thing to do is to distill what you do into a short-form, engaging video,” noted Bev Yehuda, vice president of web engagement products for MultiVu. “We had to apply what we tell our clients all the time regarding developing a video: if you don’t take the time out during the process to determine what your elevator pitch is, you run the risk of creating irrelevant content.”
With the messaging drafted, it was time to determine the medium. Since this was about MultiVu, we knew we needed to use multimedia messaging. We wanted to show our expertise (and our personality!) in a fun and friendly way, so we went with an animated approach.
Upping exposure with distribution
Once our animated video was done, we packaged it into a multimedia news release (“MNR”,) which combines a variety of distribution strategies and channels.
Here’s a snapshot of the MNR we created to promote the MultiVu video. Click on the image to see the whole thing.
Of course, we could have simply shared the video socially – and we did post it directly to a number of social sharing sites – but the distribution component that is built into an MNR is crucial, for a number of different reasons:
Distribution drives discovery, delivering content to relevant audiences across the web – on channels, via news web sites and in industry niches.
Discovery seeds social conversation, amplifying your message, and increasing exposure to relevant groups.
Social conversations deliver third party credibility that can spur people to take action.
Distribution increases the number of digital touch points for your brand, and if your audience values the content, it will gain visibility in search results. Search engines are informed by user activity and interactions around a piece of content.
How Content Distribution Drives Social Interaction
Prior to the release of the MNR, we shared the video itself on PR Newswire’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages. More than 1,400 of our Facebook fans saw the video, and it was liked by 6 and shared by 3. It fared better on LinkedIn, where it was seen by 1,983 people, generated 30 click-throughs and 8 shares. Decent exposure for the two minutes (if that) required to share the video with PR Newswire followers.
However, if you need proof of how distribution drives social interaction with content, you needn’t look any further than the sharing numbers the MNR generated. Readers of the MNR shared it with their Facebook friends 196 times (as of this writing.)
Distributed content reaches qualified, interested audiences. And social shares have a strong viral effect, triggering more shares.
Overall Multimedia News Release Results
The social sharing was just one aspect of the visibility the MNR generated for MultiVu. Over all, adding distribution paid off for this project, tallying thousands of reads of the press release — and tens of thousands of video views.
It’s very satisfying for us to put on a “customer” hat and use our own services to promote our messages, and witness first-hand how our networks deliver lasting results and visibility. And based upon the results of this campaign, you can look for more from these animated characters created by MultiVu – several more videos are in the works!
Want to explore creating your own “explainer” video or learning about how multimedia distribution can increase discovery of your brand’s messages? We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.
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