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.
Local daily newspapers across the nation are in bad shape, and many Americans fear losing a keystone of their communities: local news. National newspapers and broadcast media have their place, but local papers inform and enrich the communities they serve with stories about politics, business, arts and culture. For instance, USA Today isn’t likely to report on an initiative to close several Seattle schools because it’s not relevant to a national audience, but the news is still important to Seattleites.
Daily newspapers as we know them may disappear, but if a growing crop of online startups are any indication, local news is here to stay. These startups, called hyperlocal news sites, aggregate online stories that are specific to a reader’s neighborhood or city. Some even have their own reporters to supplement content with original articles. According to a New York Times article on the subject, “They might let a visitor know about an arrest a block away, the sale of a home down the street and reviews of nearby restaurants.”
I checked out one such site called EveryBlock.com. After clicking “Seattle” on the home page and typing in my zip code, I landed on the “Timeline” page with a list of 911 dispatches, building permits and business reviews near my house. Not exactly breaking news. Things got more interesting when I clicked on the “Overview” page. Here I found an aggregate of discounts and sales at businesses in my neighborhood, local news stories, city press releases and restaurant inspections. Improvements to my neighborhood park, two-for-one DVD rentals and the Vegan donut shop up the street got a four-star review? Definitely news I can use.
So will hyperlocal news sites replace daily newspapers? It’s possible, but they face some major hurdles. First, they need to develop a viable business model to secure advertising revenue – no easy feat in this economy. They will also need to offer customizable dashboards so readers can select whether they want up-to-the-minute reports of 911 dispatches in their neighborhood, a comprehensive list of local businesses applying for liquor licenses, or just plain news.
We will be interested to see whether these sites take off and would love to hear your thoughts. Would you use a hyperlocal news site?
Last night was the official launch party for Colleen and Jennifer’s book Strategic Public Relations. The event took place at the Palace Ballroom and featured tasty tidbits from Tom Douglas. Books were flying off the table and despite the fact it was tax day, the turnout was fantastic. It was wonderful to catch up with past and present clients as well as friends of the agency.
Strategic Public Relations is written for a broad audience from CEOs to PR practitioners and outlines how to maximize the impact of PR. The book also contains insight from business leaders at such companies as Alaska Airlines, Clearwire, Deloitte Services, Edelman, Nike, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Starbucks, and many other brand-name organizations that are using PR to accomplish their most important goals.
Strategic Public Relations has truly been a labor of love for Colleen and Jennifer, as well as the agency. As a fairly new addition to the Communiqué team, it’s been really rewarding to see the book come to life in its final stages and to celebrate that milestone with Colleen and Jennifer.
We also celebrated another milestone last night, the fifth anniversary of Communiqué PR. In her speech at the party, Colleen recounted how Jennifer approached her on Thanksgiving Day 2003 with a vision and business plan in hand. While starting a PR agency may not have been the highest priority in her life at that time, she said, “The balance in our relationship has enabled us to arrive at this point: when one of us was holding back the other one was there pushing or pulling the other forward. It’s this teamwork and partnership that allows us to stand here today to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the agency.”
A big thanks to all of you who attended last night’s festivities. The party was an overwhelming success and we were so honored to have you celebrate these milestones with us.
To purchase your copy of the book, click on the cover above or go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You can also become a fan of Communiqué PR on Facebook!
We will provide an update and link to the photos from last night when they are available.
On February 26, Alaska Airlines announced the trial launch of its new satellite-based wireless Internet service, Alaska Airlines Inflight Wi-Fi. The launch of this service, which can be used by passengers to browse the Web; access online music, games, podcasts and webcasts; send and receive e-mail and connect to Virtual Private Networks (VPN), garnered more than 45 print and broadcast mentions.
Yesterday (April 14), the company announced the initial survey results of its Inflight Wi-Fi service trial – and the positive data from this study illustrate consumers’ excitement over this service. Since the service trial launch, more than 2,100 passengers have logged on and used Alaska Airlines’ Inflight Wi-Fi. Of those passengers who tried the service and completed a survey during or after their flight, more than 96 percent intend to use it again.
A few of the other key findings from the survey include:
More than 78 percent of those who tried the Inflight Wi-Fi service are either “extremely likely” or “very likely” to recommend it.
More than 75 percent felt the service was either “excellent” or “very good.”
About 35 percent of passenger accessed the service with portable devices such as smart phones. Other passengers surfed the Web on devices such as notebook computers.
As a consumer, who easily gets bored and antsy on flights, this service is just the thing that I need to help keep me occupied and productive during flights. If you’d like to read more about what journalists are saying about this service, read some of the great coverage Alaska Airlines Inflight Wi-Fi Service has received:
The Associated Press (AP) announced on Monday, April 6 that it would crack down on Web sites and search engines that use the work of the news organization without first obtaining permission from them and agreeing to share profits. In an effort to “exercise some control” over the practice of reposting articles and gaining profit from selling packaged news feeds, the AP plans to take legal action against these sites.
According to a New York Times article, AP executives said they were “concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.”
While this new policy applies to organizations whose work is distributed by the AP, it will focus on developing a system to help revive the ailing newspaper industry and implement a system for shared revenue between newspapers and sources that are repurposing news articles. Up until now, news aggregators and search engine companies safely repurposed headlines and portions of news articles under the legal doctrine of fair use.
The AP continues to work out the logistics of the new policy, including how to limit use of articles and how to share revenue, AP Senior Vice President Sue A. Cross said the goal of this new policy isn’t to work against aggregators – it’s to “tackle bigger economic issues at stake.”
As the economy and changing media landscape continue to impact the newspaper industry, the prospect of gaining revenue from search engines such as Yahoo! and Google is tempting for many news organizations. Yet some executives at these organizations argue that this policy is “misguided” and state that much of their own Web traffic is generated through links on search pages. Others argue that although they appreciate the Web traffic generated through search engines, they believe they should receive some of the profits from these sites such as Google News, which rakes in profit from the reposted content by selling ads on the site.
I expect this debate will continue as news organizations search for ways to stay afloat. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, predicts the newspaper industry will eventually resemble television, “where some content was free, some was purchased by subscription and some was paid for every time it was viewed.”
Do you think Web sites and search engines should share revenue with news organizations when they repost the headlines and pieces of articles? We would love to hear your thoughts! E-mail us at info@communiquepr.com.
Twitter can be an invaluable resource. From chatting with friends to connecting with new people, this social network provides a way to instantaneously share information. But the sheer volume of conversations and links can be overwhelming, and many people find it difficult to navigate.
So we were pleased to learn about a Twitter feature designed to address this problem. Twitter users can use hashtags to group topics, events, communities, industries, locations or any number of other categories, thus creating organized, uninterrupted conversation chains that are easy to follow and find. For example, by searching for “#publicrelations” in Twitter Search, you can find all tweets that people sent with that hashtag. To insert your comments into the conversation, simply end your tweet with the appropriate hashtag: “Peter Shankman’s HARO is a great PR tool #publicrelations”.
Hashtags can also be used for industry conferences, such as #sxsw for South by Southwest in March, an annual music festival in Texas.
In her blog post on Twitter hashtags, Heidi Sullivan notes that while anyone can create a hashtag, as a best practice they should do some research to make sure a hashtag doesn’t already exist for their community or topic. Heidi recommends searching the Twitter Fan Wiki/Hashtags page for an up-to-date list.
Have you found Twitter hashtags helpful? We would love to hear your experiences or tips to get the most from Twitter.