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.
There has been and continues to be significant discussion about the ownership of social media strategies and activities within an organization. As a PR professional with some social media experience, let me add my perspective to the debate.
I believe social media should be owned at a strategic level by the top corporate communications or public relations officer or manager in any organization. Here’s my rationale to support this statement:
1. Corporate communications and PR own the organization’s external communications and oftentimes the overarching positioning. This puts them in an ideal position for understanding how the company brand should behave on social media platforms. With this insight, the corporate communications / PR department is well equipped to develop and deploy the right social media strategies and tactics.
2. Social media is about engaging and developing direct one-to-one relationships with individuals. Typically, the PR and communication teams in an organization are already doing this with many audiences (e.g. journalists, analysts, investors and other influencers). Given this, the communication team already has many of the skills and expertise required to build relationships via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.
3. Corporate communication / PR needs to have a direct handle on how the company is perceived. Social media provides immediate access to this information. Thoughtful and well-managed engagement on social media platforms can provide tremendous positive PR for a company.
4. Corporate communications and PR often own content that is ideal for sharing on social networks. For instance, these departments will have news they can break to their online communities, they’ll know about informative articles they can link to, or they’ll be involved in the creation of video.
Of course, ownership does not mean that corporate communications has to do it all. It may make sense for corporate communications or PR to involve other groups within the organization (such as HR, legal, customer service or product marketing) in the development of the social media strategy or even in the execution of the strategy.
But the ultimate responsibility and accountability for social media needs to rest with the communications department. After all, good governance requires clear, decisive and insightful ownership as well as a thorough understanding of each department’s roles and responsibilities. Corporate communications and/or PR, if they’ve done their homework, should already be poised and well-versed to handle these duties in the social media realm.
For additional insight on social media, please see the following links to past articles written by the team at Communiqué PR.
I was reading the New York Times and came across an article entitled, “How to Market Your Business with Facebook.”
As we work to help our clients reach the right audiences, we are increasingly thinking about Facebook with its audience of more than 300 million active users. As PR practitioners, we are not so interested in the advertising opportunities, rather than providing our clients counsel on the following:
1) How to build online communities of fans;
2) How to take advantage of the tremendous amount of demographic information available on Facebook; and
3) How to leverage traditional media and content on Facebook. There are tremendous opportunities to populate business Facebook pages with product reviews, photos, YouTube videos and more.
If you have a few minutes, I highly encourage you to read the New York Times article. It provides some excellent examples of how other businesses are using Facebook. For instance, a popular cupcake bakery called Sprinkles is using the social media site to drive traffic to its retail stores. They do this by offering its Facebook fans a special code which can be redeemed in the store for a free cupcake. Today the bakery has more than 70,000 fans.
While many organizations are focusing solely on Twitter, I know Facebook will become increasingly more helpful to us as we work with an array of clients looking to seed product to people for their feedback and input. It is almost like a virtual focus group because it allows businesses to access people’s reactions and attitudes to their products.
Tideworks Technology’s President, Michael Schwank, recently contributed an article to Cargo Systems sharing his perspective on how the down economy has given ports and terminals an opportunity to evaluate and implement new technology.
In the article, which is slated to be published in the coming issue of Cargo Systems, Schwank outlines how the container industry experienced significant traffic leading up to the economic downturn. In an effort to keep up with increased demand, many port operators were unable to dedicate the time and resources to evaluate and deploy new technologies, even though the new technology would enable them to be more efficient and reduce operating costs. Since the downturn, container traffic has decreased and operators are taking advantage of this time to implement new technology in anticipation of a future recovery.
Supporting Schwank’s assertion, Tideworks has recently announced new deployments of its solutions with San Marta International Terminal Company (SMITCO) in Colombia, Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) at the Conley Container Terminal, as well as with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) at the Seattle International Gateway (SIG) and CSX Intermodal’s operations at the new state-of-the-art Northwest Ohio Terminal.
To learn more about these announcements from Tideworks please visit the following sites:
Cargo Systems
Container Management
Cargo Business News
Progressive Railroading
The Journal of Commerce
To learn more about Tideworks and its technology solutions visit http://tideworks.com/.
SAM Medical Products, a developer and manufacturer of innovative medial products used for emergency, military and hospital care, is featured in the December 2009 issue of Popular Science (cir. 1.3 million). SAM Medical Products is awarded the “Best of What’s New 2009” award for its innovative dual-purpose, hemostatic gauze, CELOX Trauma Gauze.
According to Editor-in-Chief Mark Jannot, for the past 22 years, Popular Science has given the “Best of What’s New” award to innovations that are making a difference in the world and challenging what is possible.
CELOX Trauma Gauze is the only two-in-one gauze that can control life-threatening bleeding from traumatic wounds as well as protect and cool first- and second-degree burns. Woven from chitosan fibers (essentially a product which is derived from the shells of shrimp and other sea crustaceans), it absorbs 16 times its weight in blood. In addition, it can be used for burn victims. When soaked in water, this gauze turns into a gel-like bandage that evaporates to cool burns by 10∫ F for 20 hours.
We provided public relations services and counsel for the launch of this product, and as a result had the chance to test the gauze. CELOX is unlike anything we’ve ever used. It is certainly an innovative product that will make a great impact on emergency medical technicians, burn and wound victims and military medics.
To view the “Best of what’s New 2009” feature, click here. You can also visit http://sammedical.com/ to learn more about SAM Medical.
On Mon., Nov. 16, our client, Digonex, announced the release of its Sports & Entertainment Analytical Ticketing System (SEATS), the first fully automated, dynamic pricing system for event ticketing.
The ticketing industry is facing many challenges including a tough economy, declining event attendance and competing forces for the entertainment dollar. While sophisticated pricing models are still a relatively new concept to the market, the impact that dynamic pricing solutions can have on buying and selling behaviors is significant and can make a positive impact on the event ticketing market.
SEATS leverages dozens of parameters to calculate the best price for event tickets such as seat quality, number of performances, rival performances, third-party offerings and sales patters, among other variables.
Al Branch, senior news editor of TicketNews.com, published an article about the announcement entitled, “Dynamic Pricing Showdown: Digonex Launches Competitive Product to Qcue.”
You can also view the full press release by clicking here.
Communiqué PR attended a Puget Sound American Marketing Association (PSAMA) event on Wed., Nov. 11 entitled, “Building Brand with Social Media: How Starbucks does it and what they’ll do next.”
The speaker, Brad Nelson, principal tweeter for the @Starbucks Twitter handle, previously worked for Starbucks as a barista before joining the company’s marketing team.
Interestingly, Starbucks, which in 2008 was named one of the worst brands in social media, now has more than five million fans on Facebook and nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter. Starbucks has more Facebook fans than Coca-Cola and is now the third highest rated brand in social media. Starbucks’ social media initiatives are intimately integrated with traditional media efforts and enable the company to build its brand, listen to conversations, gather feedback from consumers, answer questions, and launch new products and promotions.
Brad provided some interesting insight on the use of social mediums, such as Twitter and Facebook, and how companies can leverage these networks to interact with and provide value to consumers.
Some of the highlights include:
Social media is about engagement. While social media can be used to provide valuable information to key audiences, it is really about meaningfully engaging with consumers and other key audiences. It’s not about talking at others; it’s about talking with others.
Responses on Twitter should be instant. Starbucks does not employ an approval process for Twitter responses. While some companies have approval policies that may cause them to take up to 24 hours to respond to direct messages and questions on Twitter and Facebook, Starbucks is able to respond almost instantaneously because Brad does not have to secure approval for his responses before replying. Brad’s use of Twitter is similar to the discussions a customer might have with a barista in one of the stores. After all, a barista does not check with upper management before interacting with or responding to a customer’s inquiries.
Social media is not a fad – it is here to stay. According to Brad, the first social medium was instant messaging, which became popular in the early 1990s. Over the years, social media has evolved and matured. And it will continue to grow in the years to come. Those who are not engaging and learning about social media will be left in the dust as more employers and companies begin to leverage these mediums and expect their employees to have experience and knowledge of these platforms.
To learn more about leveraging social media to align with business objectives, send us an e-mail at info@communiquepr.com.
Follow Brad Nelson on Twitter @Starbucks
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