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2014: A Year of New Initiatives

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It’s almost the end of the year. I usually write a “Trends in PR” or a “New Year’s Resolution” post. However, this year, I’ve decided to do something different. My post focuses on driving your own change / expansion by trying something new in 2014. I’m going to challenge you to step out of your comfort zone. Are you up for the challenge?

Every semester, I do a little exercise with my students to get them experimenting with new initiatives. I’d like to share the same video and exercise with you. Toward the end of my class (usually around week #12) I create a video that encourages students to try experience the unknown; some type of activity they’ve never participated in before. The goal of the exercise is to learn and grow, and then to teach someone else. For their exercise, they are encouraged to do something new related to PR and social media, from participating in a Tweet chat to Tech Testing different social media tools.  Some of them join a new social community and others find opportunities by networking on LinkedIn.

The timing of this exercise is perfect because the students are also learning the characteristics of an influencer. Many of the influencers I know step out of their regular routine, are first to engage in new practices and they happily share experiences that are unique to them. I challenge you to do my little class exercise, which is discussed in the quick minute and a half video below.

Your new experience doesn’t necessarily have to be social media and PR related. You might want to go bigger and try a new life experience; something you’ve always wanted to do but never had the courage, drive or the determination to try. It’s almost the New Year and with every passing year, we have to grow and change by challenging our own “status quo.”

I hope you will take the time to reflect on what it is that you’ve always wanted to do, and take those steps to accomplish your goals in 2014. For example, last year I had quite a few firsts related to PR and social media … helping to develop a class for a PR Certificate program at Rutgers University, launching my 8 PR Practices website, and traveling to speak at exciting international destinations.

In 2014, we should all take the opportunity to expand our horizons. Only you know the outcome of this initiative; will you try something that brings you new knowledge or maybe a new activity, such as whitewater rafting or skydiving. Whatever it is, enjoy your experience and then take the time to share and educate your friends and peers.

Let me quote Chuck Norris who said, “I’ve always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and you’ve got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish.”

Thank you, Chuck, for words to live by.  So, now it’s time to go out and tackle.  Do it now and don’t wait for another year to go by!

5 Ways to “Listen” For Better Blog Content

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It feels great to be teaching again! I have a class of 30 NYU PR and corporate communications grad students. We are exploring social media objectives, strategies and tactics. One of the required course assignments is to create a blog with eight posts due by the end of the semester.   As a blogger, a great deal of my writing stems from paying attention to my community and “Listening” closely to the conversations .  So, for all of my students (who I hope are reading this blog post) and for my communications friends, here are my five tips on how to “Listen” so you can create more compelling content for your community.

1. Find the experts and you will find the questions.  There are plenty of professionals participating on platforms such as Focus and Quora, and in LinkedIn groups.  They are busy creating questions for the community and answering them at the same time. Once you identify the most pressing topics, you can create your blog posts around additional thoughts and perspectives on these critical issues.  One step further would be to ask an expert to create a guest post or to participate in a Q&A on your blog.

2. Dig deeper into the blog comments and you’ll find even more interesting topics and questions.   When you read your favorite blogs, hopefully you are getting an in-depth look at a topic by a trusted source. However, digging deeper into the community comments is where the discussion gets really interesting, and you can find varying opinions on a subject.  The comment section is often overlooked, yet it is a valuable source of information.  You will also find additional questions in the comment section go unanswered. Now is your chance to answer these questions for your own community.

3.  Watch your Twitter stream for a couple of minutes and you will have plenty of blog ideas.  My Twitter stream is filled with questions, opinions, statistics, articles, photos, videos, etc. I think you get the picture. Knowing the trending topics and offering a different angle or learning about new technology and sharing your thoughts and personal experience is not only great blog material, but also truly helpful, if you are breaking down a complex subject into simple and usable layman’s terms.

4. Peer related questions are asked every day and how many do you answer?  Your peers are talking non-stop and you can offer them your answers on your blog.  Just because you check your social media communities a couple times a day (maybe more) doesn’t mean the conversations stop.  Simple monitoring tools and following hashtags can help you to uncover an abundance of questions.  Now is your chance to answer the questions and to help your peers.

5. Follow your favorite experts and personalities, and filter their information into your news feed.  I learned early on that whether it’s a friend or a colleague, when people are excited about some “big” news, even if they can’t tell you about it right away, they will allude to the excitement on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.  If you are listening, you can be there to catch the actual news when it breaks, or ask if you can receive information as soon it’s publicly available.  If you’re listening carefully you may be among the first to report a breaking story to your community.

These are just a few of the many ways to “Listen” for better blog content.  I hope you turn on your listening ears on to create meaningful posts that ignite your audience and lead to more interesting conversation and engagement. What are some of the ways you are “Listening” for better blog content?

PRStudChat

#PRStudChat Announcement: #SummerCamp Continues in August with Unraveling the Technical Aspect of PR

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Last month we kicked off the #PRStudChat #SummerCamp program with Lois Goh (@loisalmode), a student from Flagler College, moderating a session on how to incorporate social media into your PR planning. This month’s #PRStudChat session will take place on August 15th at 8:30 p.m. ET and will focus on how to unravel the technical aspect of public relations. Our student moderator / camp counselor will be Murewa Olubela (@PRmurewa), who is an undergraduate studying creative writing and public relations at the University of South Florida.

The session topic, selected by our student camp counselor, will involve the community in a dynamic discussion on the importance of the tech tester role in public relations and the use of social media management tools. Additional questions we’ll be asking that night will concentrate on website analytics, mobile technologies and the use of QR codes.

We expect another fast-paced and informative #PRStudChat session.  If you have any questions you would like us to discuss, please feel free to post them in our LinkedIn Discussion Group.  We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the technical aspect of PR, as it becomes a greater part of our PR practices. “See” you on the 15th.

A Little More About PRStudChat:

It began with a simple question asked by Angela Hernandez, then President of PRSSA at Central Michigan University (CMU). “Is PR Right for me?” A follow up blog post by PR 2.0 expert Deirdre Breakenridge inspired a series of direct messages on Twitter between Breakenridge and fellow PR industry pro, Valerie Simon. This was an important question and one that should be explored beyond one student or one blog post. Why not build a community to help students across the country, and even the globe, learn from the experience and perspective of industry professionals… A community where everyone can learn and grow together. Read more

8 PR Practices - Practice 8 Master of the Metrics

PR Practice #8: The Master of the Metrics Chart of Responsibilities

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Today’s blog post is the last in the “edited” or “cut” chart series.  In my book, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, PR Practice #8, the Master of the Metrics, focused on how communications professionals must deliver accurate metrics tied to their measurement programs. These metrics have to meet the expectations of their executives, as well as the professionals developing and implementing their social media programs.

I mentioned in the chapter, “Social media doesn’t change good PR measurement practices, although it may add to the complexity.  The same principles you learned about outcomes (quantifiable change in attitude or behavior) vs. outputs (the tangible elements in your campaign) and the outtakes (the key messages you want your audience to take away) still hold true.” Except now, as the Master of the Metrics you have many more metrics to benchmark and levels of engagement to report.  And, as the Chart of Responsibilities illustrates below, there are new practices to learn and embrace, from creating measurable social media objectives to tracking the appropriate metrics over time and clearly communicating the ROI and impact of your program.

 

 

© PR 2.0 Strategies

Here’s how the responsibilities breakdown in your new practice:

Breakdown Metrics From Simple to Complex

Social media communications has a wide variety of metrics for you to choose and a number of tools and resources to help you track your program success. However, setting up a social media measurement program means you must have a full understanding of the metrics available, from benchmarking simple community participation to more complex engagement with your constituents.  There are those metrics that help to illustrate how a company is reaching higher-level business communications goals, as well the metrics that track the goals for different types of social media participation by community. Identifying the simple to the complex helps you to present the types of metrics that executives in your organization expect from social media engagement.

Create Measureable Social Media Objectives

Understanding the different types of metrics is key, however, in order to even decide which metrics are the best to track, you must know what you’re trying to accomplish with your social media program.  The simplest question, “Why are you using social media?” is often overlooked at the onset of a program.  What you set in place as your measurable objectives will allow you to determine if you are reaching your goals.  Are you using social media to create more awareness, how much and over what period of time? Or, is your social media program meant to create leads, which result in sales and how many, by when?  Your metrics will also help you to benchmark how you are performing relative to the competition in the marketplace.

Determine Metrics to Track Over Time

Shonali Burke, VP, Digital at MSL in Washington, DC, said it best in her interview on measurement in Chapter 8.  She stated there are simple mistakes professionals make with their measurement including that they don’t know what they are measuring specifically, and they also don’t track metrics over time.  In order to get a clear and more accurate picture of performance it’s important to track the metrics over a period of time. You may be monitoring your social media communications every week or every two weeks. However, it’s also very important, as you track over time, to compare “apples to apples” with respect to your competition. For example, if you are measuring consumer sentiment about your brand on a weekly basis, then you must be tracking the weekly competitive consumer sentiment as well.

Clearly Communicate ROI

The first step to clearly communicating ROI is to understand the definition of true ROI, which is involves a financial calculation. When you say “ROI” to a C-Level executive this means the money part.  How does social media communication lead to the bottom line? In many cases the metrics you gather are only a piece of the ROI calculation.  You need to show how your metrics, in conjunction with other data (web analytics, sales data, etc.), show click to conversation.  Social media can help to illustrate ROI, as long as you’re able to deliver the metrics that relate to leads, sales, reputation management, crisis mitigation, cost-effective recruiting, customer service efficiencies and/or employee productivity through your social media communications.

Develop a Six-Step Process Metrics Program

You can use a six-step process to evaluate analytics that measure what is or isn’t working in a social media program.  It’s important to realize that all programs from the macro level down to the micro department level need goals and objectives, with supporting strategies and tactics.  If your organization’s higher-level goals include reputation/image, dialogue and engagement, advocacy/relationship building, sales revenue and leads, and thought leadership and education, then your metric reporting may include:

  1. Reviewing sentiment data
  2. Evaluating the peaks and valleys of weekly or bi-weekly volume monitoring vs. the competition
  3. Identifying audience sharing habits through link tracking
  4. Analyzing share of voice in various platforms,
  5. Reviewing relationships with top influencers
  6. Tracking increases in thought leadership (as a brand influencer)

Identify the Inform, Inspire and Engage Metrics 

When a company makes the decision to participate in social media, there are three phases of participation.  At each phase, metrics can be captured with varying levels of importance.  The first phase is the Inform Phase, which focuses on the company’s outputs from their tweets and Facebook posts to the number of YouTube videos shared. The second phase is the Inspire Phase, which means your brand communication motivates your stakeholders to use the information you provide and to further share their experience (comments, blog posts, shares). The third phase is the Engage Phase, which is highest level of interaction with people in your communities. When you are truly engaged with your stakeholders, you are deep in conversation that leads to valuable business outcomes, including leads, sales, customer-service satisfaction, etc.

Evaluate High Level vs. Low Level Metrics

As the Master of the Metrics, you will want to make sure your program goals are always measurable and you are helping to report information that’s required by your executives vs. what department personnel need to monitor and measure community engagement. Another way to look at the metrics is to categorize them into lower level community participation (tweets, retweets, comments, views, friend/follower growth) vs. higher-level adoptions that lead to business growth (leads, sales, registrations, cost savings, productivity, etc.).  It’s the actions at a high level that interest the C-Suite the most, as these metrics are more financially based.

As a Master of the Metrics you have several new responsibilities. You must make sure your organization is capturing the metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on the macro level, which is across the entire organization, and you’re also helping to guide metrics on a more micro level (by department).  You will be driving the metrics in your program and proactively capturing the information to meet the expectations of your executives. At the same time, you’re proving the value of your social media communications program.

 

 

 

dannybrown

To My #PR Tech Tester Friends: Help with the Social Web is Here!

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If you’ve been following my blog posts for the last couple of months, they’ve been focused on several new practices in PR, as a result social media communications.  In my book, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, PR Practice #3 emphasizes the role of the Tech Tester.  Today, it’s imperative for communications professionals to learn about new technology, including monitoring and engagement platforms.

To all my Tech Tester friends, here’s a new platform to test: JugnooMe™, which is the first in a collection of social marketing tools designed to make the social web simple, accessible, and monetizable.  The platform launched in February 2012, and there are many exciting initiatives in store to help business owners overcome the challenges they face when promoting their brands on the social web.

However, before you start your tech testing of JugnooMe, here is a video interview with Danny Brown, VP, Partner Strategy at Jugnoo, Inc.  For those of you who don’t know Danny well, he is an award-winning marketer and blogger. As a matter of fact, he’s recognized as one of the leading marketing bloggers in the world and is syndicated across the WebProNews, Newstex, AllTop and Social Media Informer networks.

In the interview, Danny answers several questions that dispel the myths of small businesses and social media. He also offers you a glimpse of JugnooMe™ and what makes it different than other social platforms.  Take a look at the video and then have fun tech testing to see if JugnooMe™ is the right platform for you and your company. Let me know how your tech testing goes!

Practice 6 - The Relationship Analyzer

PR Practice #6: The Relationship Analyzer Chart of Responsibilities

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I’m reading an advance copy of the book, “Rethinking Reputation: How PR Trumps Marketing and Advertising in the New Media World” by Fraser Seitel and John Doorley. Early in the book, the authors state, “PR is an ancient art form.” They trace public relations back to the days of Moses. Since the beginning, PR is at the heart of a company’s communications and builds relationships to foster goodwill and confidence with the public.  However, a major difference in practicing PR today is the ability to build a meaningful relationship with stakeholders by using technology to deepen and strategically grow relationships for the long term.

There are new responsibilities for PR professionals who want to move from simple connections with audiences to meaningful, one-on-one engagement that leads to more valuable outcomes.  The Relationship Analyzer is PR Practice #6 in my new book, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, which discusses how you can take your relationships to a new level. To continue with my “edited” or what I’m calling the “cut chart series,” today’s post discusses the Relationships Analyzer’s Chart of Responsibilities. There are many new roles PR professionals undertake, as they move from creating connections to strategic relationships that benefit their brands.

As I mentioned in my book, “When you move from relationship building to relationship examining, a new practice for public relations surfaces … The Relationship Analyzer is a strategic practice that digs into the psychographics of people based on like-mindedness and common critical issues, and the study of behavioral actions of the people in your communities, as the key to higher-level interactions.” The wheel visual below depicts several new roles and responsibilities for you to learn. As a Relationship Analyzer you will continue to uncover information and learn about the people you want to meet in various web communities.

 

© PR 2.0 Strategies

A Relationship Analyzer’s responsibilities include a three-part process, which will guide your approach to connections and deepening relationships.  This three-part process includes developing detailed audience profiles, using technology to analyze direction and growth of your relationship and creating strategies based on a web community’s culture. Several technology tools will help you to actually see and make these connections in your social media outreach.

Here’s how the responsibilities break down in your new practice:

Develop an Audience Profile

An Audience Profile is a helpful resource to identify the needs of each audience segment, to pinpoint exactly where groups are congregating, to distinguish what issues/topics interest them, and to allow you to discover the best ways to communicate directly. By identifying specific needs and interests, you will be able to provide customized and meaningful information, all in an effort to build stronger, more mutually beneficial relationships.

Analyze Growth Relationships

The Relationship Analyzer’s job is a direct response to the depth of relationships and the participation required to keep close connections. You can use technology tools and resources to monitor the direction, growth and strength of the relationship, during all phases of your communications. Technology reveals the weak connections between you and a friend/follower, or between your brand and its stakeholders, so that you can continually apply new strategies to strengthen and/or build those bonds.

Define Position on Relationship Staircase

As you participate in social communities, you quickly learn your friendships appear to fall into different buckets. Remember, these buckets may change depending on the community. However, you can group friends/followers into classifications, from the Casual Friend all the way up the Relationship Staircase to The Trusted Confidant/Brand Champion.  Understanding the position of the relationship helps to you to create additional opportunities to advance and further your climb to the top of the staircase.

Use Technology to Visualize

You can capitalize on the great connections by using technology to visualize the nature of your relationship and its intensity at any given time. Technology tools in the various social platforms help you to see weak ties, as well as your strong connections to customers and to your influencers. These tools help you to figure out a better strategy to cultivating stronger relationships, not only quickly but also through like connections. Visualizing (through maps or graphing technology) where your connections are the greatest and where you need help with your engagement enables you to move from awareness and the Casual Friend to a Trusted Confidant/Brand Champion.

Devise Your Strategy to Grow

Once you identify where your audience, or your influencers congregate you can answer specific questions to devise your relationship growth strategy. These questions include: How do you think your friends/followers view you or your brand on the Relationship Stairway?  Have you taken the initiative to climb the steps a little higher, with some or most of your friends/followers? How do you figure out which friends/followers you want to move up the steps quickly, and have you analyzed these friends or their friendships lately?

Breakdown the Landscape

You must observe and identify the differences between communities and be able to apply cultural norms and group behavior to rally a community on your behalf.  You also have to investigate your own participation to know how to engage differently in networks. Your job is to uncover how culture and best practice engagement plays a part of a relationship’s growth. The culture in your Facebook groups may be very different than the what’s expected from those who participates with you on your brand’s main Twitter feed.  Knowing the landscape and the needs of different communities will help to cultivate the relationship.

Create Experiences for Channels

You will quickly learn that people don’t want to see and hear the same stories, and receive the same information or share identical content in all of your communities. You will come to find how social channels breakdown with different strategic purposes.  Facebook may be used more for crowdsourcing and contests, or customer service and consumer research.  Twitter may become a channel for update to the moment news and information, exciting events and activities as well as reputation management.  Google+ may be your opportunity to have video hangouts for closer interaction with stakeholders and idea generating sessions with your customers.

The Relationship Analyzer is a new and evolving role and one of the most important PR practices.  Relationship building is at the heart of public relations. Your ability to grow relationships and measure the outcomes through technology and visualization is an excellent way to expand the depth of your insight and to achieve your communications goals. Your new knowledge and skills will help you to connect, engage and find mutually beneficial relationships with people who will further your brand’s mission and become loyal advocates.

 

Social Media and Public Relations Book Launch

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Finally, it’s here … my book, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, is available in all digital formats and paperback copies too.  The book crystallizes eight new practices for public relations professionals to shift their mindset from tactical to strategic, learn new skills and knowledge, create greater opportunities to collaborate as influencers and to use new practices for professional development, as well as to raise the profile of public relations in the eyes of our executives and the public.

My video discusses a few of the many experts who contributed to my book including: Ariel Hyatt, Priya Ramesh, Jason Kintzler, Sarah Evans, Valerie Simon, Shonali Burke and Brian Solis.  You can watch the video to get a sneak peak at the content shared in their interviews.  I look forward to your thoughts and opinions, and the new practices you’ve put in place with respect to social media and public relations!

PR Practice #3: PR Tech Tester Chart of Responsibilities

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Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, will be available on May 4th!  As a part of the book’s launch, I thought it would a good idea to share some of the material that didn’t make it to print. So, I’m continuing with my chart series, which are all of the charts cut out of the production process (due to space constraints), when we were in the final home stretch. Today’s post discusses the chart from PR Practice #3, which is the PR Technology (Tech) Tester. The PR Tech Tester’s new role is to experiment with different types of technology for better internal and external communications, which results in building stronger relationships.

You can see from the wheel visual that there are several new roles and responsibilities for you to learn as a PR Tech Tester.  Learning, embracing and educating your peers on these responsibilities will make you a more valuable asset in your organization.  I’ll be doing a blog post in the next couple of weeks focusing on the results of a pilot study which reveals what employers look for in young professionals entering into the workforce, with respect to knowledge, skills, values and sensitivity. According to the study, information technology is among the most important skills and, today, is considered a core competence.

© PR 2.0 Strategies

The PR Tech Tester is a professional who quickly learns that a critical part of the communications strategic process is how you use technology in your planning for better monitoring and measurement, channel distribution, optimized content and stronger relationships via your brand communications. Remember, it all starts with the hybrid professional, whose knowledge often expands to other areas of marketing. Here are a few of your PR Tech Tester responsibilities:

Select a Database Contacts and News Monitoring Services

Technology offers you unlimited access an online searchable, contact database where you’re able to keep up with media and blog contacts, and their pitching preferences.  These services also offer you instantaneous access to your company’s media coverage, as well as intelligence on competitor mentions and trending industry topics in real-time.  Researching and testing the technology allows you to find the right solution and will help you to follow, engage and build better relationships with specific journalists and bloggers who would find your content to be relevant and newsworthy.

Create a Social Media Monitoring / Measurement Program

As a PR Tech Tester, you will immediately notice many of the social media monitoring platforms today allow you to track daily conversations across platforms, your share of voice (SOV) against competitors and your company’s brand sentiment. These platforms also offer information on key influencers, word cloud formations revealing relevant topics, and top domains where the most relevant conversations take place.  Selecting the right social media monitoring tools will help you to strategically put a system in place, offering a tremendous amount of intelligence; from trending topics to the critical issues of the people you want to reach.  

Determine Website Analytics

PR professionals are getting more and more familiar with the value of website tracking and analytics.  Where social media monitoring ends, website analytics begin. Typically, PR professionals have relied on the marketing and/or web team for website analytics.  But, with your social media programs and stories driving people to your company’s website and newsrooms, you can no longer rely on someone else providing you with the analytics you need.  The ability to track analytics in real time allows the PR Tech Tester to understand a great deal about the behavior of an audience, from how many of your active visitors have actually been to your site before and how long they stay to how many people go to certain pages of your site, revealing the most popular areas.

Test For Social Media Influence

When you discuss online influence or social media influence, from a technology standpoint, it’s an algorithm that helps you to capture the most powerful people in your network. However, there are different algorithms based on the tools you choose.  For example, one influence tool might calculate variables including reach, amplification probability and overall network influence. Another tool might measure different criteria, such as impact, engagement, clout, signal and the velocity, at which you share. It‘s important to familiarize yourself with these tools in your research process as they (1) help to identify people who may have greater impact on their own networks, and those who may be more likely to share your company’s content, as potential brand champions.

Identify the Right Social Channels for Audience Collaboration

The social media landscape is constantly changing and PR professionals must keep up to date on the new and different collaborative platforms, where their brands have an opportunity to engage with stakeholders.  As a PR Tech Tester it’s your job to know the platforms where your audiences congregate and the technology they prefer.  One of the best ways to keep updated on the latest platforms is to subscribe to blogs/bloggers that report on technology, social media and latest and most interesting collaborative platforms for businesses. Stepping outside of your regular circle / network of peers, and interacting and/or collaborating with professionals who have a stronger focus on business and technology will give you insight into many of the new evolving platforms.

Evaluate Email Marketing / Content Management Platforms

In the past, most PR professionals were not focused on platforms that managed content and sent out numerous emails at a time.  PR pros were used to crafting single, customized emails to media contacts. However, today, in order to accurately reach and track responses from numerous contacts, you need an email platform that enables you to customize and then monitor the open and response rates.  PR pros will benefit from sending out their news releases or pitch letters to a select group of contacts through a software management system to learn the number of emails sent out, the open rate and the bounce rate, the number of people who click as well as who forward your correspondence.

Review News Release Technology

Because the media landscape has changed, PR pros are faced with decisions regarding how to share business stories.  As a PR Tech Tester, you will realize how there are a few options.  One option is the use of a wire service that has ramped up distribution capabilities to include 2.0 functionality and reach.  They offer the ability to distribute your news release beyond traditional print, broadcast and online media outlets to reach bloggers and consumers. Then, on the other end of the release spectrum is the Social Media Release (SMR), which is a community tool for sharing news and customized stories.  The SMR is highly interactive and is housed on a blog platform. PR Tech Testers need to research and decide the best approach to sharing their stories with the public.

Being a PR Tech Tester and finding the right technology for your toolkit is trial and error.  Today, technology is no longer someone else’s job. You have to roll up you sleeves to experiment and make it an integral part of your programs for better engagement and communications impact.

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