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.
This morning, The New York Times (NYT) announced sweeping changes to its subscription model, including some very intriguing digital options. Joining the ranks of The Wall Street Journal, the NYT will now offer limited free content online, and keep everything else available only to digital subscribers. The NYT claims this move “will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our website and on mobile applications.”
Beginning March 28 in the U.S., the NYT will be different in the following ways:
- Online users can only view 20 articles per month before they’re requested to become a paid digital subscriber.
- Smartphone and tablet users will get the “Top News” section free of charge, while everything else will be limited to the paid subscription.
- If you subscribe to the physical paper, you’ll get free access to all online content.
- For those people who want to upgrade right now to the paid subscription, there are three different options ranging in price from $15 per month to $35 per month.
While this won’t likely have a significant effect on communication strategies, there is one interesting key point I’d like to make. According to the announcement, people that click on a NYT’s article via a social media link on Twitter or Facebook, will be able to read that article, regardless of whether or not they have reached their monthly limit.
The takeaway? Utilizing social media to highlight and publicize interesting NYT articles about your company or your industry will be more important than ever. Editorial coverage in the NYT is often coveted by companies, due to the newspaper’s high readership, global reach, reputation and credibility in the field of journalism.
With this new online viewing limit, it will be difficult to ensure a mention of your company will be read by the masses, which means it will be more important that communication professionals assist clients by working together to tweet, re-tweet or post NYT articles that we know will be of interest to our audience. It’s our chance to become even more of a thought-leader in our given industry, as well as a valued member of the social media world.
Do you think the new subscription model for the NYT will change your communication strategy? Do you plan on being more diligent about posting links on social media? Join the conversation in the comments below.
We often get questions from our clients, particularly in the B2B space, around the value of blogging. Do people really read blogs anymore? Why invest in a blog over Twitter or Facebook? How do you launch a successful blog? The reality is that today’s businesses are driven by data, insight and engagement with their target audiences making blogging a key fundamental in any B2B social media strategy.
While many B2B companies believe that blogs are tailored for more consumer oriented brands, there are a number of excellent B2B corporate blogs including Oracle, SAP and Ariba that are leveraging this platform as a vehicle to establish thought leadership, increase awareness and visibility and drive online engagement and traffic.
I was excited when I recently came across an interesting article on Social Media Today surrounding B2B blogging trends for 2011. The trends were gathered vis-à-vis a survey by the founders of B2B Marketing Zone who interviewed B2B marketing professionals and PR bloggers. Some of the 2011 trends outlined include the following:
• B2B Blogging Will Grow – “Given the increasing popularity of inbound/content marketing (and the declining effectiveness of advertising), more companies will start blogs in 2011.” While less than half of today’s B2B companies have blogs according to the article, there is a significant opportunity to establish thought leadership and drive additional traffic to your website which will lead to an increase in B2B blogs in 2011.
• B2B Blogs = Big Value – In addition to positioning a company as an expert, a B2B blog provides an opportunity to provide new and existing customers with “frequent updates versus static websites.” Additionally, according to the survey there is a, “direct correlation between blogging and B2B customer acquisition” making blogs a viable platform to help drive sales.
• Content is King – As more B2B marketers are tasked with driving online content that translates into leads, blogging will become a critical component for delivering compelling content. As with any type of blog, to achieve success and effectively engage and drive readers to return, topics must be relevant, timely and regularly updated.
These trends come as no surprise given what we’re seeing with our clients. A significant portion of our PR plans for this year include establishing a B2B blog or up leveling current blog activity. It will be exciting to measure the results at the end of the year to see if these trends are on par and we were able to move the needle to help organizations meet their business objectives.
Do you have any favorite B2B blogs? I’d love to hear about any successful examples, drop us a line!
Earlier this month, we visited Lewis Elementary in Portland to facilitate broadcast interviews with KATU, KPTV and KOIN. What was the exciting news that drew three stations to Lewis?
The draw was the announcement of a new digital learning pilot program introducing iPads into the classroom. Reporters came to talk with students and teachers involved in the program as well as executives from Bookbyte, a Communiqué PR client.
While not all news will resonate with broadcast media, this story had the essential elements. First the local story ties into a national trend of integrating technology into classrooms. Additionally, we were able to offer compelling visual elements and interviews. Ultimately though, timing played a big role.
Originally the interviews were slated for late February. However the threat of snow in Portland and potential school closures resulted in rescheduling the interviews for the next week. Coincidentally, the interviews took place the same morning Steve Jobs announced the iPad 2, which provided news producers with a timely connection to the story of iPads being integrated into classrooms.
Here are a few quick tips to consider:
- When working with broadcast news outlets, in particular, it can be helpful to have some flexibility so you can adjust to breaking news or competing coverage.
- Help the reporters understand any relevant connections to developing news. In this case the iPad 2 announcement.
- Be clear and upfront with reporters if other outlets are covering the news. It was not a surprise for the reporters when they ran into each other at Lewis Elementary.
- Offer various angles and contacts when multiple outlets choose to cover the story. We were able to offer each outlet different classes, teachers and students so each outlet was able to develop its own take on the story.
By providing producers and assignment editors with the right elements, and adjusting to competing news, we were able to secure coverage with several local news broadcasts.
- KATU, Portland students tap into education with iPads, March 2, 2011
- KOIN, iPads in the Classroom, March 2, 2011
- KPTV-Fox 12, Portland Students Learning with iPads, March 6, 2011
As you can see the kids really helped sell the story! We want to thank the students at Lewis Elementary as well as the teachers and administrators who welcomed us and the media into their classrooms and ensured they had the needed media releases on file.
For more information on pitching broadcast check out the following posts:
A few weeks ago, the American Red Cross – and its Twitter account, @RedCross – became the target of a number media blog posts and articles. The reason wasn’t another natural disaster response or a direct push for donations (although it did turn into a push for donations later). The attention was due to this rogue tweet that appeared late one evening:
Most people immediately assumed this tweet was not the official viewpoint of the Red Cross, but rather that they were witnessing a simple public error made by one of its employees. Instead of being chastised for allowing such a tweet to happen, the Red Cross was ultimately praised in the articles and posts for the way it rapidly addressed the mistake, using both honesty and humor to diffuse the situation. As James Plafke of GeekoSystem noted, “The Red Cross handled the situation pretty entertainingly–something that doesn’t happen much these days–and released a charming follow-up tweet.”
Those of you who utilize social media on behalf of your company probably already know this: Since social media is run by humans, it is susceptible to human error. It’s just a fact of life, and you can’t always prevent it from happening. The key takeaway from this revelation is simple – be prepared. Many companies have a crisis communication plan for all types of unlikely scenarios that they may have to face, so why not employ one for your social mediums as well?
What the Red Cross did was take the most appropriate action it could: It took ownership of the mistake, embraced it, addressed it quickly and moved on. It’s easy to forget that people follow companies on Twitter and Facebook because they enjoy the feeling of having a personal connection with them. Consumers are looking for genuine human interaction, and they know that mistakes do occur.
Mistakes, however, don’t have to catch you off-guard. Set up a plan and make sure all stakeholders in the social media process are aware of how to handle a situation, should one occur. In the plan, you should outline who will be responsible for deleting or addressing the mistake, set a goal for how fast you will realistically respond, and determine who will speak with media or journalists, if necessary. Once you have thought through this list and agreed on a plan of action, your company and team will be able to handle any situation calmly and methodically.
If you need tips for creating a crisis communication plan, check out our blog post here. We wish you happy planning, and remember it’s always better to be prepared.
We are all aware that the world of media is constantly changing and that it can sometimes be challenging to keep up with the latest innovative tools and resources available to us as PR professionals. We continue to work at lightning speed to not only meet our clients’ objectives but also the accelerated deadlines with which our media contacts are faced. To help us get our work done faster, more efficiently and achieve the best possible results for our clients, we often rely upon the tried and true industry tools such as Cision, BusinessWire and HARO.
However, a number of other new tools and resources exist that enable us to uncover editorial opportunities, build relationships with reporters and develop social media releases. We have shared a few of these tools in a previous post, but there is one in particular that I have been hearing a lot of buzz about from other industry professionals and that I wanted to try.
PitchEngine is a publishing platform that enables users to create social and search optimized content that is consumer-facing. Its website states that it’s “Co-op SEO” would provide “exceptional indexing in major search engines” and since they offer a free 30-day account, I recently leveraged the platform to compliment my outreach efforts to introduce Bookbyte’s latest eBook, Words of the Presidents: Speeches and Letters from 1776 to 2011 to journalists and bloggers.
PitchEngine makes it easy to incorporate PR assets like video, audio and images directly into your press release and share it with your media contacts via e-mail or post it directly to Twitter and Facebook. For Bookbyte’s announcement, the platform allowed for me to create a social media newsroom complete with the company’s logo and visuals from the eBook in addition to adding keyword tags to enhance search engine optimization.
As we have shared before on our blog, SEO rankings are critical to help drive more traffic and business as customers often become familiar with a company through a search on the Internet. According to data from analyst firm iProspect, “62 percent of search engine users click on results within the first page of search results and 36 percent believe that companies whose websites appear at the top of the search results are leaders in their field.”
Within the first week, the announcement received more than 100 views and it only continues to climb. Unfortunately, PitchEngine’s free account doesn’t provide an analysis of who has viewed the release unlike BusinessWire and other wire release services, which are paid services that we often use. However, I was impressed that when searching with keywords “Bookbyte,” “eBook” and “Presidents,” the social media newsroom on PitchEngine was found on the first page of Google and on the second page of Yahoo! and Bing search.
In addition to using PitchEngine, I had also targeted a specific group of media outlets and bloggers to share the news of Bookbyte’s latest eBook including Dianna Dilworth, editor of Mediabistro.com’s eBookNewser, who featured the news twice. This particular media placement appears as the first result across all three search engines proving that nothing will usurp the power of knowing the right media targets and contacts for your client’s announcement.
To be successful, it is important that we continue to learn, adapt and utilize the latest tools that are made available to us. While each may vary in their purpose and functionality, every PR professional should consider utilizing a few to test how they can efficiently and effectively add value to your PR campaigns and initiatives.