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.
Attending any event can be intimidating and present a ton of pressure to stand out among a large crowd. Just last month, SWSX, an event took place in Austin, Texas, that offered its unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Mark Dewings, head of brand and marketing communications at SoundCloud, offered PR Week some insight on how to make your presence known at this well-attended annual event. With SXSW V2V – an extension and re-imagining of the legendary SXSW experience – taking place this summer, I was inspired to share Dewings’ adaptable advice.
Conferences similar to SXSW tend to have high attendance rates. Last year SXSW V2V drew some 1,500 professionals. That poses the question: In a crowd of that magnitude, how do you separate yourself from the group? Dewings response emphasizes two points: building relationships and being creative.
Become a part of the community. There are multiple ways to do this. One is to serve on panels and become a part of showcases. Apply for any opportunity available to present you or your client to the group. This will allow you and the brand to become the focal point of a meeting or presentation rather than remaining unknown.
Social media also provides an opportunity to get involved. In the past SXSW and other events have displayed screens with live Twitter feeds, providing yet another opportunity for exposure of your company and its activities. Whether you tweet about your presentation or your favorite part of the conference so far, it is an easy way to display your brand’s name.
Lastly, at an event this large product launches often struggle to gain traction. Do your best to engage people with your product whenever possible, whether it is during an official presentation or a quick meeting during a networking opportunity.
Use creativity. This applies to any and every aspect of your experience at a conference. A lesson Dewings learned after his 2013 SXSW attendance was that his company didn’t have to limit its reach to the audience attending SXSW. Be proactive before, during and after the conference. This is an excellent opportunity to engage your followers, not only about your product but also about your conference experience, allowing others to “attend” the event with you. Also, come up with unique ways to present your product. A simple presentation will not make an impact. Find a unique space and an interesting story that will make you and your brand memorable.
At an event this large, standing out is no easy task. Dewings describes the ultimate goal as “cutting through the clutter,” meaning that your brand should not be one that goes unnoticed. Rather, your brand should be one that takes advantage of this opportunity and uses it as a platform to promote your product and your brand. Dewings’ versatile advice is applicable to any conference you or your client may be attending – leverage it and make the most of your time there.
Content today is produced and consumed at a mind-blowing rate. From news to blogs to social media and multimedia, just about anybody these days with an Internet connection can add their own content to the mix. At the heart of all this content creation lies the selfie. More than just your average duck or kissy face, the selfie represents something much bigger: the power of people to create and disseminate their own visual media.
With audiences able to produce their own content at an insanely fast pace it can be difficult for brands to compete and inject their own messages into the mix. In a world of selfies, self-obsession and social media, how can brands produce content compelling enough to rise to the top?
A colleague and I attended a seminar last week, hosted by PR Newswire, which sought to answer that exact question. The session, titled “How to Keep Your Content Relevant in the Age of the Selfie,” featured Michael Pranikoff, PR Newswire’s global director of emerging media, who spoke to factors brands must consider in order to create content capable of breaking through the noise. I thought I’d share some of the useful insights I gleaned from Pranikoff’s talk about what it takes to create standout content.
According to Pranikoff, brands should strive to create content that:
1. Appeals to emotion. Creating great content involves more than just thinking about what will entertain viewers. The best kind of appeal, according to Pranikoff, is emotional—we share the content that moves us, touches us or makes us think. Content will be much more effective if it’s able to grab hold of viewers’ emotions.
2. Is earned. Of course, this isn’t always possible in advertising. But, shared Pranikoff, the second-most effective kind of advertising, only after word-of-mouth, is earned editorial coverage (traditional PR, anyone?). If you can get someone else to tell your story, audiences will trust this type of earned coverage more than any blatant ad. (For more proof of the value of traditional editorial coverage, check out my last blog post here.)
3. Is worthy. Content that is worthy adheres to the value exchange, in that it’s mutually beneficial and offers legitimate value for viewers. The content must be good enough that it’s worthy of being shared and spread among audiences. Is your content relevant, useful and compelling? Is it creative and a no-brainer for people to pass along? Focus on telling a genuinely good story and offering authentic value rather than just hyping up your brand.
4. Has a call to action. You can’t just create content that is easy to pass along, you actually have to ask viewers to pass it along, said Pranikoff. Ask yourself: What do I want somebody to do next after reading this? If you want people to share your content, you have to ask. For maximum effectiveness, this call to action should be overt and in the first two paragraphs.
5. Contains multimedia. More multimedia equals more visibility and engagement. According to Pranikoff’s talk, content with multimedia garners nearly 10 times more views. Using multimedia in news releases, for example, increases journalist and public engagement by 35 percent. Include it in your content whenever possible.
6. Is widely distributed. The goal in creating any content is to spread your message to new audiences, not just those who already love your brand. You can’t just spread the content over your own social networks and expect it to go viral—you’ll be much more effective if you syndicate the content out to an outside audience.
7. Maps to larger objectives. All of the other factors on this list are great, but at the end of the day, the content is a failure if it doesn’t support your larger business objectives. Making audiences laugh or cry isn’t always enough to make them love your brand. Be sure that any content you produce relates back to a larger business or communications goal to make it worth the effort.
8. Creates “moments of excellence.” Creating moments of excellence has to do with audiences having a great experience with a brand, product or service. As Pranikoff explained, “Sometimes, the best marketers are those actually out there with the customers, not those behind the desk.” The messages that people appreciate the most are those that bring them joy. If a brand can delight customers with a great reputation, act or service, those messages will shine through—and be shared—more than customers’ complaints.
With audiences capable of generating their own content, it can be tough for brands to stand out from the crowd. But with the above tips, a little hard work and a whole lot of creativity, it’s possible to produce content that moves both audiences and the needle.
One of our clients recently created an infographic presenting data around the end-of-life support for Windows XP. It included a lot of nitty-gritty technical data that would typically make a reader’s eyes glaze over. But when the data was presented in a bold, brightly colored infographic it transformed into interesting factoids that caught our attention – as well as the journalists we pitched it to.
Lately it seems like infographics are everywhere, and for good reason. They present information in a simple, easy-to-understand format. Whether it’s step-by-step instructions, an annual report, or facts from a white paper report, an infographic is sure to make your message clearer and help it reach a wider audience.
For PR pros, infographics are a great way to get your client’s message out. They are eye-catching, embeddable and easily shared. Wondering how to create them yourself? There are several free tools that make building a professional-looking infographic quick and easy.
One of the most popular tools is Piktochart, an infographic design app that claims it requires very little effort to produce simple and high-quality graphics. I decided to test this claim by creating my first-ever infographic using the tool, and it certainly lived up to its assertion.
I simply had to choose a template, drop in my data and scale each piece to fit. Piktochart even provides graphics to illustrate your data.
It only offers a couple free themes to choose from so there are probably quite a few other infographics that look like mine, but if you’re willing to pay for a subscription your options expand immensely.
My infographic may not be the most visually innovative, but Piktographic is a great tool for people with limited design skills who want to build their own infographics.
Below is the infographic I created on what makes infographics such a powerful PR tool.
One of my goals in 2014 is to more regularly connect with former colleagues, clients and journalists. It is not always easy to find time to network, but to keep a pulse on the business community as well as to maintain personal connections with the people who have made a difference in my life, it is important to take time to connect face-to-face.
As I was considering my goal, I began thinking about best practices for maintaining connections and relationship building. Here are my thoughts.
- Make Connecting In-Person a Priority. Working in the deadline-driven world of PR is often ridiculously busy and, like most careers, time-consuming. Given this, it is not always easy to make time for lunch or coffee with a former colleague or client. However, if you are going to maintain relationships, you need to connect in-person on a semi-regular basis. This might be once a quarter, twice a year or annually. Determine what makes sense for you and the people that you value, and set up alerts or reminders so you do not forget to reach out to them. LinkedIn has a wonderful new tool allowing users to set reminders to take place in a day, a week or a month.
- Focus on Developing and Maintaining High-Quality Relationships. I am a firm believer in quality over quantity. To develop quality relationships, it is important to understand people’s business and personal goals and to think about how you can add value to the other person’s life. In advance of meeting, I recommend coming up with the questions you want to ask so that you are honing in on the things that the person will be excited and proud to share. You must ask the right questions. These are ones that make the person feel good as opposed to making them feel as if you are wasting his/her time. For instance, you might ask: “What are you focused on that is important for you?” Listen carefully to the response and follow it up with a question to find out why it is important. A wonderful resource for questions to ask to deepen relationships and for advice to hone one’s listening skills is a book titled, “Just Listen,” by Mark Goulston.
- Promptly Follow Up and Follow Through. Send a thank-you note and recap any action items that you promised to execute or identified coming out of the discussion. Ideally, you are going into the meeting with the goal of adding value and offering the other person an upfront benefit, so you should be coming out of it with some ideas of things you can do. This may be sharing an interesting article or book, or brokering an introduction to someone in your network. Do not expect anything in return, but instead be pleasantly surprised when the person returns the favor.
Finally, I recommend staying current on networking best practices. There are a number of wonderful articles on this topic on Harvard Business Review’s website. I especially found Dorie Clark’s post, “Three Mistakes to Avoid When Networking,” interesting and informative, especially when trying to make new connections with people who don’t know you or are perceived as above you in status.
Networking takes work, but the results can be extremely rewarding with new or reaffirmed friendships and business relationships. The key is to make sure you make it part of your regular routine, invest in preparing and follow through. Taking these critical steps can make all the difference to building meaningful and long-lasting relationships.
April Fools’ Day is tomorrow and along with it will come a flood of pranks and hoaxes from many well-known brands and companies. You can always count on some brilliant spoofs from Google and one of my favorites from last year was Scope’s bacon mouthwash. When executed well, April Fools’ Day pranks are a great way to build buzz and to get people talking about your company or brand.
We love a good joke at Communiqué PR, but when it comes to corporate pranks, we advise our clients to proceed with caution. A lot of caution. We’ve blogged about PR and April Fools’ Day pranks in the past (check out the links below to those posts) and thought it would be worth revisiting the topic. Here are some additional tips to consider if you’re planning your own April 1 hijinks:
Make it unbelievable. The point of the prank is to make people laugh, but there’s a thin line between fiction and reality. To ensure that people will eventually realize that you’re pulling their leg, you almost want to make your prank so unbelievable it can’t be true, such as this April Fools’ 2013 post from Southwest Airlines. But beware: Promoting untruths about your company’s financials and other key metrics could land you in hot water. Also consider adding a disclaimer to your blog post, graphic or whatever medium you use to deliver your prank, just in case people miss the punch line.
Skip the press release. Wire services will be on extra high alert so don’t expect your fake press release to make it past their editors. Plus, the last thing you want to do is dupe a reporter. Instead, use your blog or social media as your platform, which also makes it easier for others to share the fun.
Be prepared for the backlash. Even the best laid plans can go awry and not everyone has your sense of humor. Monitor social media and be prepared to quickly address any negative reaction.
Looking for inspiration for April 1? Take a look at AdWeek’s list of the top April Fools’ Day pranks from 2013.
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For many PR practitioners, describing our profession often includes some sort of caveat that PR is more of an art than a science. According to a recent article in Ragan’s PR Daily, this accepted understanding of the industry may be changing.
In “Words that makes (sic) your headline more shareable,” writer Adrienne Erin shares a list of words and phrases that have been proven by scientific methods to be most effective at capturing attention and encouraging engagement. In many cases, the success of specific words in encouraging the desired response (e.g., reading an article, sharing with others, clicking through on links) may not be especially surprising, but as a practitioner, I appreciate being armed with the knowledge that these words actually do have an impact.
Here are a few words that will make your headline more shareable, per post type:
Blog Posts
100 popular blogs were analyzed by Startup Moon to quantify which words and phrases make a headline more successful. Key takeaway: Many of the words suggest that the information will make a reader smarter. Here are the results:
- Surprising
- Science
- Critical
- Huge
- Hacks
- Smart
Facebook and Twitter
More than 10,000 of the most retweeted tweets were analyzed by “social media scientist” Dan Zarrella* to determine a list of the 20 most retweetable words and phrases on Twitter. According to the article, successful or highly shareable content on Twitter would seem to offer valuable knowledge in a short amount of time as readers are on the go and scanning for words that imply the content won’t take much time to review. A few to ponder include:
- How to
- Free
- Top
- 10
- Great
- Facts
According to a study conducted by Marketo and based on more than 31,000 data points, the following types of content are most likely to be shared via Facebook:
- Inspirational content such as quotes and advice
- Uniting content that makes readers feel part of the story and encourages sharing
- Funny content that is acceptable to most groups
- Giveaways, contests, discounts and special offers
- Amazing content with a wow factor such as unbelievable photos or facts
- How-to style content such as quick tips and engaging advice
Other trends to watch:
- Facebook and Twitter have seen an exceptional increase in the popularity of infographics.
- Action words, especially verbs, are more widely clicked and shared than are nouns or adjectives.
- Numbers are popular and the number of shares for a piece of content has a direct correlation with the size of the number in the title, so go big!
- Controversy causes clicks. Readers often click on a headline that they believe will challenge them or their beliefs.
After reading the article, I was eager to put this new research to a test. I pulled the top five “most read” blog headlines from the Communiqué PR blog and found that none of them included any of the key words highlighted by the research. I did, however, find that the headlines included words such as “studies,” “tips,” and “lessons” which imply that the content would make the readers smarter.
I will further test this new research by incorporating the key words and trends (as appropriate) in everything from email subject lines when pitching, to headlines on news announcements – starting with the headline of this blog post! Feel free to leave a comment about my creative use of the top words for blogs. If you don’t have time, don’t sweat it – I can always pull the number of visits and analyze the results like a scientist.
*Readers who scan may think this article is a shameless self-promotion written by Dan Zarrella. We are not the same person, we just have the same amazing name.