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.
A little over two weeks ago my little sister, a student at University of Colorado at Boulder, sent me a link to a video of a river roaring through what is usually the calm creek near the campus. She then told me about the dramatic changes that had occurred to the city of Boulder due to the catastrophic flash floods. Streets were overflowing, buildings were being damaged and destroyed, and the aforementioned creek had turned into a dangerous rip-roaring river. The severity of this rain storm left the city with more rainfall in one week than is typically seen in two years. Due to the extreme circumstances, the citizens of Boulder were concerned for their health and safety. Citizens were left with critical questions: Is the water safe to drink? When will the power be back? Is it safe to drive outside today?
Looking for answers to their health and safety questions, a significant number of citizens turned to social media to get their updates. Facebook, for example, was taken over with pictures, videos and “facts” about the flash flooding. While Facebook, along with other forms of social media, may seem like a great way to find information on recent events, there are downsides. An article in PR Daily pointed out the complicated nature of deciphering what is true and what is false when there is an influx of information on your newsfeed.
Information on Facebook can spread rapidly, so how do you decipher a rumor from the truth? Finding a reliable source became essential during this hectic time. According to PR Daily, the Twitter feed of the city’s Office of Emergency Management posted about 500 tweets and retweets updating the city on important news surrounding the floods and citizen safety. Keeping citizens up to date helped put to rest any uneasy feelings surrounding rumors being spread on social media.
Citizens also found solace in other reliable updates that were given throughout the course of the storm. The National Weather Service sent text messages with updates about the floods and conditions of the area. The school district sent updates to students’ parents as well, informing them about school damages, closures and resources for help with their children during this time. Being well-informed was crucial for citizens. Not only did their health and safety depend on it, but also their emotional well-being. While social media can be a great outlet for up-to-date information, it is important to sort through what is fact and what is rumor before the anxiety that comes with the rumors consumes you.
For other information about social media refer to these posts on the Communiqué PR Blog:
Companies are almost always looking for new marketing trends and techniques to reach more consumers. The latest trend appears to be content marketing. Content marketing allows companies to connect with their audience making them more relatable. The problem with content marketing is, unlike traditional media campaigns that look mainly at sales, it is difficult to determine the success of a campaign. Everyone likes to see results, so how do you measure the impact of a content marketing campaign?
I recently came across an article on Ragan’s PR Daily that shared an infographic from BrandPoint revealing their recipe for measuring content marketing. There are three main categories: awareness, consideration and conversion. By achieving each step you are likely to see results. With each category there are different aspects to take into account to measure success. Below I have listed some of my favorite facts and tips.
Step 1: Awareness
The goal is to make your brand easy to find online. Some 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine, so check your ranking in search engine results. An increase will make your page, brand and product or service easier for consumers to find and prove the success of a campaign.
Step 2: Consideration
The goal is to inspire potential customers to engage with the brand. Roughly 65 percent of social media users learn about a product or service through their social media accounts. Take advantage of the many different platforms and create posts that will increase interaction. You want potential consumers to spend time viewing your page or posts.
Step 3: Conversion
The goal is to persuade the consumer to make a purchase. About 77 percent of B2C companies have acquired customers through Facebook. Keep track of social media referrals to note which is the most effective. Track which content sources contribute to the conversion step, and place more attention and focus on them.
View the full infographic below, and learn more about how to measure content marketing.
Infographic Courtesy of BrandPoint
In our daily lives, we often worry about our reputation. Be well-liked and reap the benefits. Get a bad rep and never live it down.
In the professional world, a company’s reputation isn’t just a valuable asset—it’s everything it has. Unlike in the personal world, companies can’t afford (literally) to just “not care what other people think.” Appealing to consumers and maintaining positive customer relationships are at the heart of a company’s success. Blows to a company’s reputation often won’t just blow over as in daily life, but can negatively affect sales, morale and profits—or even ruin its image for good.
As PR professionals, we work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen to our clients. We know that reputation is often manageable; we correspond favorably with media, build excitement around clients’ announcements and get their name out there in a creative, appealing way. And, when crises do arise, we help clients’ face them strategically, with sensitivity and poise.
However, one often-overlooked—yet highly influential—aspect of a company’s larger reputation is its online reputation. With the advent of review sites like Yelp and the capability of Internet users to create and write whatever they please, search-engine content and online comments now contribute hugely to a company’s image. Negative reviews and unfavorable news at the top of search engines can hurt a company’s brand much more than many realize, making it valuable to monitor online content for successful reputation management.
As proof, a recent infographic from Digital Firefly, re-posted in a PR Daily article, released some startling new facts that address exactly why online reputation management is so crucial. We highly recommend you visit the whole article, but here are a couple important takeaways to consider:
- 83 percent of companies will face crises that will negatively impact their share price in the next five years.
- 70 percent of consumers consult review or ratings before purchasing products.
- 97 percent of users who made a purchase based on an online review found the review to be accurate.
- 51 percent of consumers use the Internet even before making a purchase in stores.
- Traffic to the top 10 review sites grew on average by 158 percent last year.
In the face of such statistics, the answer isn’t to panic, but rather to focus efforts on managing online reputation. Given appropriate attention, online image is as controllable as it is impactful. Our blog post, “Best Practices for Managing an Online Reputation,” offers some helpful strategies for putting your best foot forward online. And, if you need a little help along the way, feel free to reach out—we’d be happy to discuss reputation management strategy with you.
There’s no argument about it—content is currency in social media and in media in general. Companies have a wide variety of platforms through which they’re able to disperse content and create a “voice”—various social media platforms, bylined articles, contributed content and corporate blogs are a few examples. In order to be effective with this content, it’s important to be strategic from the start. This is why we often design editorial calendars (similar to those that publications create) for client content. PR Daily recently shared a piece on “13 tips for creating a killer editorial calendar” that is chock-full of helpful advice. Below are my favorite tips from PR Daily, with a few additions from my experience at Communiqué PR.
Tips from PR Daily:
Assign deadlines to key players. Even if you’re building out an editorial calendar a year in advance, develop a schedule with deadlines for each person involved. Figure out who is responsible for action items like writing, revising, posting and communicating with editors, and assign due dates for action items for each month. This will help hold the team accountable, and can be adjusted later on. It will also allow authors to integrate and prioritize creating content into their work schedule.
Determine targets. Think through what your target audiences are, and make sure that your content is being dispersed across different verticals you might be targeting. It can be easy to get caught up in one category or genre when building an editorial calendar, but ideally, you’ll have content that will resonate with each of your target audiences.
Share with stakeholders. Allow anyone that needs to agree on or contribute to an editorial calendar visibility into it. This creates shared expectations on timing, content and authorship, which is important to clarify at the beginning. To do this, consider an online collaboration tool like Smartsheet, which we use to manage all of our client work and highly recommend. A cloud-based tool allows you to update and access information in real time, which is especially helpful for an editorial calendar.
A few tips from Communiqué PR:
Consider timing. One of the main purposes of an editorial calendar is to be strategic about content. To do this, you’ll need to think about the timing of each post. Consider the events you have coming up, or events that happen year after year. For example, plan posts related to certain holidays, industry events, or trends that you know will happen on a yearly basis.
Switch between evergreen subject matter and newsier items. With a blog or column, you’ll want to leave some room for posts that tap into trend or news items—this content is often unpredictable. However, you’ll also want to schedule evergreen content that is relevant at any time of year. This will maintain equilibrium—it’s time consuming to constantly monitor the news for content ideas, but also important to maintaining quality content. You can strike a balance from the start by planning this into your editorial calendar.
If you haven’t considered an editorial calendar for your business’ blog, guest columns or other content creation, we highly recommend it. Planning not only takes some of the stress out of creating content, but also makes sure that you get the best results from the material you produce. And, if you need assistance with this planning, get in touch—we’d be happy to be a resource.
In public relations, it often seems like slow and steady wins the race. By distributing a steady stream of news, securing key coverage and continuing to put out consistent messages via social media, blogs and contributed articles, your efforts will likely have an impact on your business.
However, sometimes there is a need for speed. As communications professionals, we need to be adept at recognizing situations, whether it is news or holidays that our clients can capitalize on with a witty response, relevant pitch, timely event or infographic.
Ad Week recently published an article titled, “Types of Real-Time Marketing, and the Brands That Got It Right,” by Tim Nudd, which looks at examples of how brands took advantage of situations with a quick response. He refers to it as “right timing marketing.”
At Communiqué PR, we often look for local news events to tee off of for pitches for our clients. Here are a few of my favorite ways brands can take advantage of timely situations:
- Holidays. Companies often look for a way to tie into the holidays. For consumer brands, for example, Christmas often makes sense. However, the holiday season is also a very noisy and crowded time. Standing out requires a great deal of creativity. Lowe’s did a nice job celebrating Fourth of July, by creating a Vine that used exploding tools to imitate fireworks. It was simple, but well-timed and creative.
- Celebrities. Leveraging a celebrity can often help draw attention to your brand. When Prince George was born, many brands tried to give “congrats” or joke about the royal birth. Ad Week called the efforts “disappointing.” However, the Sun managed to put together a clever picture featuring Prince George and other celebrity babies that was well received.
- Newsmakers. Brands often have a hard time promoting their own news in a creative, not overly promotional way. However, one of my local favorites is the Seattle Police Department. I’ve long admired their witty Twitter feed, sharp replies and out-of-the-box campaigns. During last month’s Hempfest, for example, SPD handed out Doritos with the dos and don’ts of marijuana use. Additionally, they tweet real-time updates about crime and respond to followers. It is isn’t all fun and games—the @SeattlePD handle is serious when it needs to be—but they’ve build a steady stream of followers to successfully disseminate the messages necessary.
- Comebacks. Twitter can present a fun platform for witty responses and banter between brands. And, when done well, the back-and-forth can earn you a slow clap from followers. For example, Taco Bell and Old Spice duked it out on Twitter about their products’ respective ingredients. “Why is it that ‘fire sauce’ isn’t made with any real fire? Seems like false advertising,” @OldSpice asked—to which @TacoBell replied: “@OldSpice Is your deodorant made with really old spices?” OldSpice had the last word: “@TacoBell Depends. Do you consider volcanos, tanks and freedom to be spices?”
While these companies really nailed real-time marketing, companies should always make sure that they remain true to their brands. What worked for Taco Bell, won’t necessarily work for Microsoft. Keep an eye out on the world around you—you never know where you’ll find inspiration.
Seattle is a geek’s town and last week the team at aptly named GeekWire hosted some of Seattle’s brightest tech minds for its 2013 GeekWire Summit. From e-commerce to venture capital strategies to the future of video games, the conference covered an array of topics pertinent to investors and tech businesses big and small.
The two of us from Communiqué PR who attended the Summit saw an energized Seattle tech community excited to show off the region’s successes, ideas and potential.
Did you miss out on the Summit this year? Here are our five takeaways that you need to know:
- The Seattle tech scene is diverse. Most businesses know the importance of diversity in their employees, but the tech industry is often critiqued for being a male-dominated field. At the GeekWire Summit, we were thrilled to see the diverse group of people representing Seattle’s tech industry. There was a tremendous diversity of ideas as well. Amazon and Microsoft continue to be huge economic drivers for the region, but the city’s entrepreneurial spirit showed in the range of ideas, businesses and products represented among the Summit’s presenters and attendees. Gaming, communications, retail and real estate are just a few of the markets represented at the Summit and being impacted by technology coming out of the Pacific Northwest.
- “Innovation” isn’t done yet. There are many in the tech journalism and PR fields who will say the word “innovation” is overused. They may be right, but based on what we heard at the GeekWire Summit, Seattle businesses are doing their best to counter that notion. Early in the day, Dr. Nadia Shouraboura, the CEO and Founder of Hointer, shared some fascinating ideas about how technology can revolutionize in-store shopping. Our client Kymeta’s CEO, Vern Fotheringham, participated on the Summit’s panel on “The Future of Innovation.” Kymeta is working on game-changing satellite antennas that are smaller and flatter and require considerably less power than existing solutions. Things got downright futuristic when Peter Lee, the head of Microsoft Research, expressed optimism about the future of artificial intelligence. There’s a reason that “innovation” isn’t giving up its spot atop the tech lexicon anytime soon.
- Mobile is tops. During one panel, investor Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital emphasized the dominance of mobile succinctly. “Companies that lead on mobile have an advantage,” he said. His fellow panelist, Zillow founder Rich Barton, agreed: “The platform of the future, in fact the platform of now, is the mobile device.” At Communiqué PR, we’ve seen the rise of mobile reflected in our clients’ business (as we work with companies like Mobidia and Lively) and based on talk at the GeekWire Summit, it doesn’t look like mobile is going anywhere but up. We’ve also seen the rise of mobile in the media industry, as mobile-based news outlets like Quartz are continuing to rise. A timely article from Adweek last week highlighted the increase of mobile news apps via a study from The Reynolds Journalism Institute and Digital Publishing Alliance, which found that 50 percent of smartphone and/or tablet users downloaded at least one news app in the first quarter of 2013. It’s a reminder that PR practitioners need to find ways to pitch content optimized for mobile consumption and appealing to editors who are looking to reach mobile users.
- Gaming – mobile gaming in particular – continues to be huge a draw. With geek culture thriving in Seattle, it was no surprise that GeekWire’s panel on gaming was hugely popular. When one panelist asked the audience for a show of hands of attendees of the recent PAX conference held here, a lot of arms went up. The mobile and casual gaming industries have certainly seen ups and downs lately, but users are still looking out for the next Words With Friends or Candy Crush. David Edery, CEO of the game development studio Spry Fox and a panelist for GeekWire’s “The Future of Video Games” discussion, emphasized that mobile games can drive major revenues from relatively small development teams. Based on the enthusiasm here in Halo’s hometown – also home to studios like Big Fish Games, not to mention the indie game developers who call Seattle home – gaming is going to be a major topic of discussion for years to come.
- Education is critical to the industry’s future. If you work in a tech field, you’ve no doubt heard the importance of creating more opportunities for students to learn critical computer science and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills. You’ve probably also heard of Code.org. Its founder, Hadi Partovi, dropped by the GeekWire Summit to make a pitch to the audience on the importance of teaching students to code. His presentation was stellar. In another discussion, Chase Jarvis, the photographer behind the education startup creativeLive, also argued for the importance of a creative education for students – including coding skills. It was a reminder that all the talk about innovation, or the next great startup idea, won’t go anywhere without a highly-skilled and highly-motivated next generation of thinkers and entrepreneurs!
If you’re looking for more from the GeekWire Summit, head to its YouTube channel for full video coverage of the conference’s panels and presentations.