Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
As the lines between marketing and PR continue to blur, it’s no surprise that effective marketers are investing more and more in content marketing. In fact, according to a report issued by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the most effective B2B marketers allocate 42 percent of their budget (up from 37 percent in 2015) to content marketing, whereas the least effective allocate 15 percent.
According to the CMI, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
At the core of this strategy is the assumption that when businesses deliver valuable, compelling information to buyers, they will a) view the business as an expert in the industry, and b) reward the business with increased loyalty.
While examples of content marketing can range from blogs and microsites to podcasts and contributed articles, the key to a successful content marketing campaign is compelling content. According to a recent report, however, 60 percent of marketers say that they struggle to develop engaging content on a regular cadence.
The Key to Compelling Content? Write for Your Audience
And with the rise of publications hungry for contributed content (Forbes now has over 1,000 contributors), developing compelling B2B marketing collateral will become only more critical to a brand’s success.
The key to creating compelling content is to know what your audience cares about, offer a fresh perspective and align the content with your brand voice. A brand that’s mastering content marketing is Simple Finance, a modern, branchless bank that appeals to millennials. The company’s blog offers a wealth of content that’s compelling, timely and, most importantly, significant for its key audience. From articles on how to save for a baby to how to budget for a road trip, the company’s blog rivals a quality editorial site. (See “The Rise of Contributed Content: 5 Tips to Make Yours Sing” and “Considerations to Stay Competitive in Creative Content Marketing” for more tips on creating great content.)
And Simple is just one company that’s nailing content marketing. As companies continue to leverage both blogs and editorial publications to share their content, the lines between marketing and PR become increasingly blurred.
Marketing and PR Should Work in Concert
While content marketing may appear to fall squarely in a seasoned marketer’s camp, PR professionals have deep experience with content marketing. From developing thought-leadership bylines to crafting social media content, content marketing is central to a PR pro’s expertise.
Unfortunately, PR and marketing teams have typically operated in remote isolation, but the rise of content marketing calls for working together to achieve the same goals.
With the majority of marketers struggling to produce compelling content, it will be increasingly important for PR professionals to actively engage in marketing discussions and leverage their expertise in editorial content for content marketing.
At Communiqué PR, we’re passionate about content creation and welcome the opportunity to snap into marketing teams to assist with their content marketing initiatives.
A personal brand is the story people think of when they hear your name. What are you known and remembered for?
If you’re a top executive and hope to be a thought leader in your industry, building a personal brand is imperative in this day and age, as surveys reveal declining trust of corporate brands. Recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 62 percent of millennials trust brands less today. Millennials are increasingly looking to experts and individuals, who they trust over corporate brands, to guide their purchasing decisions.
According to another report, “Millennials are more than three times as likely as Boomers (22 percent vs. 7 percent) to turn to social channels. They’re on the hunt for feedback from experts and people with common interests – not just personal connections.” And millennials matter because by 2017 they “will have more spending power than any other generation.”
Given millennials’ spending power, individuals who leverage their personal brand to create an authentic connection between their company brand and target audiences/consumers will be significantly more effective in building trust and increasing sales. Consider, for example, the often course, raw and insightful John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile. Legere has leveraged his personal brand to the benefit of T-Mobile – from the magenta t-shirt and outspoken critique of his competitors, to his direct engagement with customers via social media. The results show he has built trust, driven customer acquisition and increased revenue for T-Mobile.
These days, people want to buy from brands that align with their values, and CEOs especially should authentically live and breathe their respective brand’s values. As Shelly Lazarus, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather shared in a Harvard Business Review article about personal branding for your career, “When you’re leading people toward something important, losing your authentic voice is the last thing you want to do.”
So how do you develop and promote a personal brand and thought leadership platform? Below are four steps to get you started.
1. Identify issues and topics you’re passionate about and that move the business forward. First you need to identify a topic that resonates deeply with you, that you are passionate about, and that you have the credentials to comment on or a topic on which you have a unique perspective. Make sure the topics are authentic and true to you.
Consider, for example, Arivale CEO Clayton Lewis. As a competitive triathlete and a seasoned venture capitalist with many years of experience on the Board of Trustees for Harborview Medical Center, he has a unique perspective and passion around scientific wellness. Clayton lives and breathes the brand values of Arivale, a company that “uses cutting-edge science, personalized data, and tailored coaching to deliver prioritized, actionable recommendations that inspire its clients to achieve and sustain their wellness potential.”
2. Create a mission statement and ensure your personal brand topics align with this statement. A personal mission statement will help to keep you focused, be a guide for decision making and provide direction. A mission statement will ensure you are consistent and do not go off topic or get pulled into activities that do not align with your mission.
A famous and well-cited example is that of Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group – “To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes.”
There are numerous articles that provide guidance on how to develop a personal mission statement, including Scott Wylie’s article “Why Business Leaders Must Set a Personal Mission.”
3. Contribute your perspective on your industry’s most important problems. To build your personal brand and become an established thought leader, add value to ongoing conversations by offering solutions to address problems that plague the industry via networking events, contributed content and social media. Ensure that proposed solutions or predictions are insightful, evidence-based and provocative.
Cindy Gallop, former president of global ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), is actively contributing her perspective to address the lack of gender diversity in the advertising industry. She has leveraged a variety of mediums to drive the conversation including an article in The Guardian, “White men running advertising only pay lip service to diversity,” as well as a podcast interview by The Takeaway and broadcast via NPR.
4. Keep it authentic. Authenticity is key to personal brand management – clients and the general public can sense inauthenticity and a lack of sincerity and veracity. You cannot build meaningful connections if you are not authentic.
“Authenticity is not the product of pure manipulation,” offers Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, authors of Managing Authenticity: The Paradox of Great Leadership. “It accurately reflects aspects of the leader’s inner self, so it can’t be an act. But great leaders seem to know which personality traits they should reveal to whom and when.”
Furthermore, research indicates that authenticity is correlated with higher self-esteem, lower stress, and greater life satisfaction.
Social and digital media have made it easier than ever to connect an executive to the company where that individual works, but the separation of personas has become harder to maintain. Companies would be well served to educate and guide their executive teams on how to manage and build their personal brands in order to better reinforce and build the company’s brand perception in an authentic manner.
Intentionally building and managing your personal brand may seem daunting, but it’s vital and worth the investment. Take positive action toward the above steps and then work closely with your marketing/PR team to help define your platform and amplify your activities. It will dramatically help build your personal brand and that of your organization.
If you’ve spent any time in the media industry, let alone on the Internet, you’ve more than likely encountered the most enduring buzzword as of late: millennial. As many outlets will be quick to tell you, this generation born between 1980 and 2000 is now the largest in the U.S. with the biggest presence in the labor force.
With millennials poised to restructure the economy, it’s no wonder the media compulsively analyzes their attitudes and desires. Millennial stereotypes are an unfortunate byproduct of this obsession – “millennials are self-absorbed,” “millennials are entitled,” etc.
While there is much to learn from this generation, it can be problematic to conflate the characteristics of individuals ranging from 15 to 35 years old. Millennial workplace stereotypes more accurately reflect the modern work environment in general, as opposed to the attitudes of young people exclusively.
Given this, millennial stereotypes can actually reveal valuable PR lessons, including newer roles and strategies. The following are some commonly circulated “millennial” PR tips that can be leveraged to engage modern consumers of all ages.
“Millennials are Digital Natives”
Indeed, millennials grew up right alongside the evolution of the Internet and tend to be more comfortable using social media as a result. But social media proficiency doesn’t stop with the kids – in the U.S., 51 percent of 50-64 year olds and 77 percent of 30-49 year olds are active on social networking sites.
Thus, consumers of all ages now expect to be able to reach brands immediately through channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. PR professionals can cater to this by helping to maintain a consistent and responsive social media presence for their clients.
Shareability has also become a crucial element of any successful campaign. PR people can take advantage of the viral nature of social networks with content like digestible articles and quippy tweets. As more people make themselves at home in the digital world, it becomes mandatory for PR professionals to establish a strong Internet presence for their clients.
“Millennials Trust Peers”
As the “if your friends jumped off a bridge” adage implies, young people of all eras have been highly influenced by their peers. Social media has provided an unprecedented connectivity that happened to coincide with the coming of age of millennials.
Many consumers today look to the Internet for a second opinion of brands, with 47 percent of U.S. readers consulting blogs to follow trends and ideas. Millennials in particular are more likely to trust anonymous consumer reviews over the opinions of people they know.
As the title would suggest, PR people are masters at all kinds of relations, from media to analyst to investor. This online review culture creates an opportunity for PR firms to develop another skill – influencer relations. With up to 70 percent of consumers preferring an endorsement by a non-celeb blogger, PR firms can create additional value for their clients by cultivating relationships with these key individuals.
“Millennials Care About the Greater Good”
Many indicators suggest that millennials are the some of the most progressive thinkers thus far, so it’s frequently posited that millennials care more about social justice and responsibility when it comes to consumption.
Sure, millennials care about the “greater good,” but so do most other 21st century consumers, who tend to be more exposed to and versed in issues like diversity, sustainability, gender equality and the like. Studies have found that over half of consumers worldwide are willing to spend more money for socially conscious products.
PR professionals are well-positioned to address these concerns by developing strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, especially given their role as a liaison between brands and the general public. The PR people of today and tomorrow will use media relations and communications skills to promote the transparency and ethics of their clients. As long as CSR campaigns genuinely make a positive impact, this strategy will prove to be favorable for both PR pros and brands.
As long as millennials are in their prime spending and earning years, they will be the frenzied subject of speculation until the next generation takes their place. The resulting generalizations of this age group – despite being sweeping and often inaccurate – are indicators of contemporary consumer demands. Thus, PR professionals would do well to have millennial attitudes in mind when forming their strategies. Traditional PR roles are no longer enough; social media mastery, influencer relations and CSR implementation are among the new responsibilities of the PR professional of tomorrow.
In a perfect world, our business-to-business (B2B) clients would all have big-name customers who want to do joint press releases and have a steady flow of company news to share. Spoiler alert: This rarely happens.
All B2B PR professionals are bound to hit a few roadblocks on the path to success, and when you do it’s important to think creatively and strategically in order to find a solution that will help your client meet their business and communication objectives. After all, that’s what our clients hire us for.
Every client’s situation is unique, but some challenges are common across B2B verticals and industries. Below are three common challenges among B2B PR clients and examples of solutions that the Communiqué PR team has implemented in the past to overcome them.
1. No referenceable customers
Customer references are one of the most powerful marketing tools for B2B companies. Positive references show prospective customers how others have benefited from the service and help establish trust. Reporters are also much more open to covering company news and writing feature articles when they can interview a customer about their experience. However, many business customers are averse to serving as a customer reference, particularly in industries that involve sensitive information such as financial services, marketing analytics, and healthcare.
If your client is having trouble securing customer references, first offer to provide guidance to help them negotiate with the customer. As PR professionals, we are more adept at explaining the benefits of PR and can suggest a variety of PR activities that will give the customer more control over the messaging, such as bylined articles or case studies. If the customer is still not comfortable serving as a reference, start brainstorming other ways that you can prove the value of your client’s product or service. For example, offer reporters aggregated customer data to support current trends or ask a trusted industry analyst to provide a quote for a press release.
2. Lack of company news
The easiest way to keep your client in the news is to maintain a regular cadence of company announcements. However, many B2B companies do not have a steady flow of company updates that they can share publicly.
If your client does not have news to share on a regular basis, focus on newsjacking instead. Newsjacking is when you capitalize on a trending news topic to insert your client’s point of view into the conversation. To execute this strategy, monitor trending news stories and when a relevant topic appears, immediately reach out to journalists to offer your client’s expert opinion. To do this successfully, it is important to act quickly because the lifecycle of a news story can be very short. Be sure to set up and nail down key messaging beforehand so you and your team are prepared to speak with the media upon request.
3. Over-allocated reporters who cover too many beats
As newsrooms continue to shrink, the reporters who remain are stretched thin. Gone are the days when every technology topic has a dedicated reporter writing stories about it every day. Now there is often only one reporter covering everything from Amazon to the latest big-data startup. Reporters today are covering more beats than ever before, and they no longer have time to cover every product update or company announcement.
In order to catch reporters’ attention, find a creative angle that fits their beat or aligns with an industry trend. If the news is complex or falls into a niche, make it very clear why it’s important and how it impacts a broader audience. When available, provide other assets to support the story such as statistics, customer or analyst interviews, and images. Strive to make reporters’ jobs as easy as possible by providing as many elements of the story (including a compelling angle) as you can.
B2B PR can be challenging at times, but finding creative solutions to work around roadblocks is fun, intellectually stimulating, and incredibly rewarding when you succeed.
Recently I experienced a rare day without any client or team meetings on my calendar. I hunkered down and took a deep dive into my email, powering through tasks and to-dos, updating clients, reporters and colleagues along the way. I had documents reviewed, edited and approved via email, and checked in with a co-worker about a deadline via Skype.
By the end of the day, it occurred to me that I hadn’t really left my office all day and that my interaction with humans – real, live face-to-face humans – was truly minimal. And yet work moved on seamlessly! This got me to thinking about how technology impacts the way we work today and what it means for employees and managers in the years ahead.
In an article for Forbes, contributor Joe McKendrick writes about the impact that digital and cloud technologies are having in today’s workplaces, particularly around the future of management. “There has been an acceleration of automated decision-making capabilities, in which many day-to-day decisions are handled by algorithms,” McKendrick writes.
As access to technology becomes more affordable and integrated into everyday business, employees across the board have become empowered to use online tools to manage work and streamline processes. This eliminates the “need for layers of hierarchy to process and disseminate things,” says McKendrick, which dovetails with the rising trend he refers to as “the smashing of the corporate hierarchy … fueled by an increasingly educated workforce of information workers.”
As enterprises and organizations continue to utilize cloud-based resources and automate many core business functions, the big question then becomes, “Is management an outmoded notion in the age of the digital enterprise?”
McKendrick’s answer – which I agree with whole-heartedly – is no.
Particularly for creative organizations – and I’m grouping PR agencies like mine into this category – there’s really no substitute for the human side of management. Your computer can run spell-check on a press release, for example, but it can’t determine if the content aligns with your client’s strategic goals, or captures the messages from a conversation you had with the VP of marketing last week.
A report from Kinsey substantiates this (“Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet)”): “For now, computers do an excellent job with very well-defined activities, such as optimizing trucking routes, but humans still need to determine the proper goals, interpret results, or provide commonsense checks for solutions.”
True, there are (satirical) programs that will randomly generate a startup company website, but there’s never going to be a way to automate the process of brainstorming or troubleshooting a pitch idea that isn’t resonating with media without at least some human interaction. Even if those conversations are held over Skype or Slack or Telepresence, it’s still the human brainpower that gets the job done at the end of the day. For creative firms, our people are our competitive differentiator.
And for organizations managing PR firms, this is also key.
Here at Communiqué PR, we have been longtime users of cloud-based tools such as Smartsheet and Harvest and Cision that are instrumental to keep projects running efficiently for our clients. They also provide our clients visibility and transparency into our activities and budgets, in real-time, which eliminates much of the administrative work that would have been required even a few years ago.
But again, even by providing our clients with access to these cloud-based tools and reports, there’s still no way of automating the collaborative process that a client-agency relationship involves. In fact, over-dependence on electronic communication can lead to crossed wires around deadlines or deliverables and that can have a real impact on hours, budgets and relationships.
McKendrick concludes, “Technology is an incredibly empowering force, supporting a workforce that is fully equipped with the information and resources that will take people well above and beyond traditional and confining job descriptions.” And certainly, having worked in PR focused on technology-based companies exclusively, I’m a fierce advocate for cloud-based and digital tools that make our lives, and work, easier. But the workplace of today (and tomorrow) will always need their carbon-based, human management to keep businesses and teams inspired and moving forward. All that might change is the tools and the means they use to do so.
Instagram recently announced that it will begin rolling out business profiles to users in select markets. These updated tools will be available to companies of all sizes and will provide insights to help them better understand and attract followers to continue to grow their business. Although companies have already been using standard Instagram accounts as a way to showcase their product offerings, company updates, office space and team members, this new tool will offer different features to help companies better engage with their target audiences. A few of the new tools include:
- Contact button. This addition makes it easy for current and prospect followers/customers to speak with an employee at the company. Businesses can choose how followers can contact them (i.e. via call, text or email) – enabling a private and direct-line of communication between the two parties.
- Analytics tool – This feature enables businesses to view impressions, reach, website clicks, engagement, follower activity and demographics. Through viewing these metrics, the company can better understand the types of posts that are resonating best with their audience/followers.
- Promote tool – This update allows the business to turn a popular post into an advertisement within the app. The “promote” tool is only accessible to Business Profiles – the user who converts the post must have admin-level access and the ads must adhere to Facebook’s advertising polices. Facebook Business has shared a helpful step-by-step process for how to use the promote tool.
With these new tools, companies can more efficiently communicate with their target audiences, increase the quality of their marketing efforts, and connect with prospective customers that they may not have discovered or contacted if not through the ease of Instagram’s business profile update. In addition, having an advanced knowledge of the demographics and preferences of your most engaged customers will enable marketing teams to accurately advertise and improve the overall customer experience.
Instagram is a great platform to increase engagement through visual marketing in the form of photos and videos that convey emotional responses, which in turn increase followers’ emotional connection to the company and even brand loyalty. As the number of Instagram users continues to skyrocket, businesses must share meaningful content that will stand out among its competitors and build the emotional relationship and brand awareness with its followers.
Business profiles can help accomplish this. By understanding what type of content triggers high levels of engagement and an emotional reaction (either positive or negative), companies will be able to improve planning and create more successful Instagram campaigns based on popularity and outcomes of their past posts.
One caveat to Instagram and all social accounts, however, is that in order to be successful, companies must establish a firm character and cadence with their posting. If a company posts a photo once every five weeks, followers will likely lose interest, feel no responsibility to engage, and ultimately unfollow the company. Reaching out to an outside party to handle social accounts allows marketing coordinators and VPs to focus on content planning and other marketing initiatives to grow the business. Having to develop and continuously update an editorial calendar for social posting can be a daunting task, not to mention replying to followers’ comments and questions in order to keep the relationship strong and engagement high.
A PR firm that has a close relationship with a company’s business and communication objectives can help align social media activity with company announcements and content development in the pipeline. Capitalizing on the Instagram Business Profiles opportunities will help drive buzz around company announcements and news, as well as increase traffic to the company website.
Is social media stressing you out? Let us know and we will help to find a strategy right for your company.
If you are a small business interested in using Instagram, check out this article:
Four Ways Instagram Can Lead a Small Business to Success