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.
Monitoring social media and listening to conversations about your brand, your competitors’ brands and critical issues facing your industry is important if you’re going to stay up to speed on trends. You may also glean information from these discussions that can be applied to your business to make it stronger.
Given the importance of listening, I’ve decided to revisit some best practices for social media monitoring. You can get started in three easy steps:
Identify the terms and accounts you want to monitor
The first step is to determine the conversations you want to track. This means you need to know the key words, phrases, and hashtags you’re most interested in following. For instance, if you’re working for the Mayo Clinic, you’ll want to track any conversations about the Mayo Clinic, its clinical practices, and its research, as well as other companies and people who frequently discuss the Mayo Clinic.
SparkToro is a great way to develop an initial list because you can quickly identify the people and companies who are most frequently discussing a particular topic and see the hashtags and terms they’re using, as well.
For instance, when I search the Mayo Clinic in SparkToro, I find that the 596 people that talk about the clinic on social media engage most with these accounts: the Mayo Clinic, John Noseworthy, M.D., Sharonne Hayes, M.D., NIH, Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., CDC, NYT Health and others.
Given that these individuals speak often about the Mayo Clinic, monitoring their conversations – along with their competitors’ conversations – could provide insight.
For more about SparkToro, please see my colleague’s post, SparkToro – the marketing tool that all strategists need in their toolkit.
Set up Hootsuite or another tool
Next, I suggest using some form of social media dashboard software. This will let you listen to a broad range of conversations on platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, among others Hootsuite has some excellent capabilities for social listening. For more information, check out this blog which covers ten tools that make listening easier.
Share your findings
A final word about monitoring and listening, it only works if you take the time to review and share the data.
The folks at Hootsuite use the phrase created by America’s Homeland Security, “If you see something, say something.” If you see a spike in traffic or some other key event online, it’s often a good idea to share the information with others on your team. To make this easy, you may want to set up an email alias to loop in key teams such as customer service or content marketing, publish a weekly or monthly report, and arrange a quarterly meeting to discuss findings.
Conversations can move quickly, so if someone needs a response right away, you should know how you’ll handle that. Processes involving customer service teams or content marketing may be especially vital if you’re a consumer-facing company.
By practicing active social listening, you will likely gain important insight into your competitor’s actions. For instance, by monitoring discussions, you may learn that one of your top competitors is missing an opportunity to address customers’ true pain points. Identifying this market gap gives you a chance to address and fill it.
There are myriad benefits to social listening. Not only can you gain insight into what is being said, but by listening you’ll also better understand the attitudes and feelings of your customers, clients, or other stakeholders, and you’ll have a better understanding of how to participate in conversations.
As public relations professionals, we are often focused on the external communication strategies for our clients, managing media opportunities, developing press releases and positioning executives as thought leaders. All of this is designed to reach their target audiences with key messages, but a critical cadre that should not be overlooked is an organizations’ own internal audience.
Beyond policy updates and new company initiatives, internal communications are a keen way to keep employees engaged, highlight progress toward business objectives, and celebrate individual wins. Here’s what strong internal communications can do for your business:
Provide a Holistic View of the Organization
A study that reviewed 360 billion emails between co-workers across thousands of organizations found that many companies became more siloed following the work-from-home orders in 2020. Without an understanding of progress toward company goals or the activity executed by other departments, employees may struggle to understand how their work is making an impact.
To ensure all employees across the organization are informed, consider developing and distributing a regular newsletter that features important company updates. The newsletter can include specific updates from one or two different departments, highlight new hires and recap the important work accomplished since the last newsletter. Not only will this keep the organization informed, but it’s also a chance to share best practices and celebrate the team’s successes.
Equip Employees with Examples of Success
An overview of the company’s progress helps keep employees engaged and motivated, however, team and individual successes are also a great opportunity to celebrate employees and share resources that may be useful to other teams.
For example, if a team in one market happens to be facing a similar problem that a team in another market just overcame, the individuals facing the challenge would benefit by understanding how others have successfully navigated the problem. Companies can share specific examples and anecdotes through a range of mediums, including a newsletter, an email or even presentations at department meetings.
With well-crafted and deliberate internal communication, individuals are well equipped with valuable resources while others are celebrated for their ingenuity and success. It’s important to highlight micro-examples to humanize the company and highlight the individuals who are driving its accomplishments.
Provide an Avenue for Feedback
With consistent internal communication channels, organizations can create a dialogue with their employees. By inviting employees to share their thoughts, questions and concerns on specific programs and initiatives, they can better understand how people are feeling and how the organization can adapt to better serve its employees.
Additionally, it’s an opportunity to determine if there are preferred methods of communication or if employees would like to receive different content. This feedback can ensure that the team owning the internal communications is meeting its goals through its strategies.
If done successfully, internal communication strategies will enable organizations to reach a critical audience with valuable and engaging content.
“The more you learn, the more you earn.” – Warren Buffett
In any field or occupation, professional development is critical to career advancement and success – and it is an ongoing endeavor. Times change, norms evolve and landscapes shift. What’s true today can quickly become old news tomorrow.
Many ambitious business and marketing professionals are constantly on the lookout for ways to further enhance their skill set. Sometimes, this is through pursuing a degree, certification or taking an online course. Or it may be attending a conference, reading a self-help book or reviewing a TED Talk.
The good news is there are countless resources available that can help with advancing professional development, and they come in varying degrees. For the busiest of business and marketing professionals, one fairly simple option is turning to podcasts.
The podcast boom over the last 15 years has resulted in a wealth of high-quality auditory content across a range of specialty areas. Need tips on digital marketing, customer experience or maximizing the value of your content? We got you covered. Below are five podcasts that may be valuable resources in helping business and marketing professionals build out their tool belt.
- Social Media Marketing Podcast: Hosted by Michael Stelzner, founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, the Social Media Marketing Podcast helps its listenership navigate the changing landscape of the marketing industry. Publishing weekly since 2012, this 45-minute podcast features expert interviews with leading marketing professionals and delivers actionable tips on how to improve social media marketing, such as through TikTok storytelling, Instagram content strategy, Facebook ad performance and more.
- Content Inc with Joe Pulizzi: Content Inc. is a weekly podcast for entrepreneurs and startups with big goals and who want to grow a loyal audience through remarkable content. Hosted by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the “godfather of content marketing,” each episode features one inspirational idea that listeners can use in their business or life. Pulizzi shares personal anecdotes and lessons learned from others that have shaped his entrepreneurial style. Brevity here is key, as each episode runs 15 minutes or less.
- Experience Leader: At the heart of every business, success ultimately comes down to customer experience. Experience Leader, a podcast hosted by Devin Smith, CX principal with consultancy and Communiqué PR client Active Digital, highlights how experience-driven companies are leading their industries by delivering excellent customer experiences. Each episode tackles a different angle of the CX journey and offers listeners insightful tips on how they can provide next-level customer experiences.
- Marketing School Podcast: Hosted by entrepreneurs Neil Patel and Eric Siu, this daily podcast covers the latest SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, conversion optimization and general online marketing tactics that work today. With each episode, Patel and Siu aim to deliver actionable digital marketing lessons they’ve learned through their years of experience. For listeners pressed on time, this podcast may be ideal, as most episodes are approximately 5 minutes in length and easily digestible.
- Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield: In this top-ranked podcast that boasts hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners, online marketing specialist Amy Porterfield breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes that deliver results for business owners. Porterfield covers many areas of online business including digital courses, list building, social media, content, webinars and more. Her podcast features expert interviews, mini execution plans, and behind-the-scenes insights from Porterfield’s biggest launches. Each episode is designed to help listeners take immediate action on the most important strategies for starting and growing their online business.
Every day, marketing strategists are on the hunt for new tools that will identify and analyze what platforms their target audiences are using and what content they want most. With SparkToro, a marketing enablement software company, marketers gain access to audience intelligence data, search engine optimization (SEO) analytics, and marketing research tools, all of which can help make their jobs easier.
What is my target audience? is the age-old question many marketers find themselves asking daily. For formerly frustrated marketing strategists like Rand Fishkin, the founder of SparkToro, navigating their brand’s audience is both time-consuming and challenging. This common marketing issue inspired Fishkin to develop software technology that helps marketers better and more efficiently understand their audience.
Here are just a few ways SparkToro helps marketers improve their strategies and target audience reach:
- Identify target audiences. With SparkToro, marketing strategies can utilize tools and features that provide an overview of their target consumer. For example, users can identify audiences by simply entering keywords customers regularly talk about, mention in their profiles, use as hashtags, etc. Unlike other marketing software, SparkToro has a significant number of details available at users’ fingertips, supporting valuable marketing research while streamlining marketers’ strategy.
- Filter out unverified users. SparkToro has a unique feature known as the “Fake Followers Audit” which identifies the percentages of both verified users and fake accounts/bots. Additionally, the “Trending Tool” refreshes every 15 minutes to keep users updated on the most popular topics, trends, hashtags, etc., discussed online. SparkToro also has a tool known as the “SparkScore,” which determines the level of influence a Twitter account has with specific insights about the SparkScore, including average likes per tweet, average retweets per tweet, number of followers, etc.
- Utilize new research methods. It’s no secret that primary research can be both expensive and time-consuming for companies. With SparkToro, marketers can utilize abundant information that offers insight into their target audience’s behaviors and interests. SparkToro provides users with an overview of big data, including audience statistics, text insights, keywords, phrases, and demographics, among other things. This information allows marketers to better understand and reach their target audience without dedicating too much time and too many resources to surveys and other primary research.
- Build your outreach and secure new opportunities. With SparkToro’s “Audience Intelligence” capabilities, users can identify the sources of influence their target audience engages with most. The function allows marketers to build detailed contact press lists of their audience’s favorite podcasts, YouTubers, social media influencers, etc., by simply entering keywords and subjects relevant to their customers. As a result, marketers can conduct outreach and secure new opportunities easier than ever without the painstaking searches for contact emails and relevant platforms.
SparkToro has several pricing plans available so marketers can pick the best options for their business and marketing goals. Along with a free subscription, premium plans start at $38 a month and increase based on the tools available. The “Standard” plan, SparkToro’s most popular subscription option, is $112 a month and gives users access to 300 searches a month, demographic data, email and social contact data, and other valuable insights key for successful marketing strategies and audience reach.
For marketers today, reaching target audiences can be challenging if they don’t already have pre-existing relationships with potential customers. However, SparkToro puts valuable tools at their fingertips, allowing them to optimize their marketing research and better understand their audience’s interests, behaviors, and needs at the click of a button.
Last month, we had the opportunity to collaborate with Delta-Q Technologies (Delta-Q) and its parent company, ZAPI GROUP, to announce the group’s first educational virtual event, “The Future of Electrification.” The virtual conference will take place on April 5-7, 2022, and feature innovators in industrial electrification across various equipment and component sectors.
ZAPI GROUP is a global leader in electrification. The company and its impressive group of subsidiaries created the event to increase learning and collaboration opportunities for OEMs and design engineers interested in embracing electrification across their solutions and equipment fleets. The conference is free to attend and offers a combination of pre-recorded and live presentations, Q&A sessions, panel discussions and virtual networking activities.
The event’s keynote speaker is Saul Griffith, an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and author of “Electrify – An Optimist’s Playbook for our Clean Energy Future.” He, alongside other speakers, will explore industrial-related topics, including best practices for embracing electrification, how to optimize equipment with lithium-ion battery technology, guidance for electrifying heavy vehicles, and why and how to avoid rare earth magnet motor solutions, among other topics.
ZAPI GROUP and its industrial subsidiaries are passionate about propelling the worldwide electrification effort and have been manufacturing components and equipment systems instrumental in widespread adoption for decades.
In addition to announcing the company’s virtual conference, we also coordinated its participation in the podcast, Engineering Matters, to discuss developments across electrification. The episode with the company is titled “Electrification: the future of the industry” and can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and other streaming options.
Below is a list of the initial articles secured from our media outreach around the virtual conference announcement. To register for the event and learn more about the conference, visit the event registration page.
- Power & Motion: Electrification Growth Prompts Launch of New Engineering Conference
- Material Handling Wholesaler: ZAPI GROUP launches Inaugural Conference, The Future of Electrification 2022
- Material Handling Network: ZAPI GROUP launches Inaugural Conference, The Future of Electrification 2022
- North American Clean Energy: ZAPI GROUP Launches Inaugural Conference, The Future of Electrification 2022
- Forklift Revolution: ZAPI GROUP Launches Inaugural Conference, The Future of Electrification 2022
Furthermore, early this month we supported Delta-Q with the announcement of the expansion of its partner program, “Charged by Delta-Q.” The company launched the program in May 2021 to give OEMs direct access to quality and compatible power solutions for their electric drive products. The program received overwhelming interest and support from battery partners and OEMs that this month, Delta-Q welcomed four additional companies to the program, including battery management system (BMS) manufacturers. The new partners include Stafl Systems, Idneo, BSLBATT Battery and American Battery Solutions. The program now has 13 compatible battery and BMS companies.
Below is a snapshot of some of the articles secured from media outreach related to the partner program expansion. To learn more about Delta-Q’s battery compatibility program and its partners, visit the Charged by Delta-Q website.
- Landscape Business: Delta-Q Technologies Welcomes Four More Companies to Its Partner Program
- BC Technology (T-Net): Delta-Q Technologies Adds Four More Companies to its Partner Program, “Charged by Delta-Q”
- ISSA: Delta-Q Adds Four to Partner Program
- Modern Materials Handling: Battery charger supplier Delta-Q Technologies adds four more companies to its partner program
- Supply Chain Management Review: Battery charger supplier Delta-Q Technologies adds four more companies to its partner program
- Logistics Management: Battery charger supplier Delta-Q Technologies adds four more companies to its partner program
- CleanLink: Delta-Q Adds 4 Companies To Partner Program
- Electronic Products & Technology: Delta-Q Technologies adds firms to partner program
- Material Handling Network: Delta-Q Technologies welcomes four more companies to its partner program, “Charged by Delta-Q”
- Material Handling Wholesaler: Delta-Q Technologies welcomes four more companies to its partner program, “Charged by Delta-Q”
- Canadian Manufacturing: Delta-Q Technologies announces four more companies to its partner program
- North American Clean Energy: Delta-Q Technologies Welcomes Four More Companies to its Partner Program, “Charged by Delta-Q”
It’s been exciting to partner with Delta-Q to announce its milestones, the momentum of its partners, and now its parent company, ZAPI GROUP. We’re eager to continue supporting Delta-Q as it drives the industry and regulatory stakeholders toward electrification and more sustainable manufacturing and design processes.
To learn more about our work with Delta-Q, check out the following blog posts:
As Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author and speaker said, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
The same is true for public relations: effective PR requires quality storytelling.
In her Harvard Business Review article, How to Tell a Great Story, Carolyn O’Hara explains that “stories create “sticky” memories by attaching emotions to things that happen. That means leaders who can create and share good stories have a powerful advantage over others.”
To create connection through storytelling, it is vital to understand the audience and then look for ways to engage on an emotional level to captivate that intended audience.
A compelling story illustrates effect and engages the audience. Often the effect (or what is at stake) is easy for the storyteller to identify and articulate. However, as a storyteller developing engagement with the audience can be a little trickier.
Recently, I rediscovered a resource about storytelling that contains some helpful reminders about how to help audiences connect with your message and drive engagement. A storyteller doesn’t have to use all of these prompts for the story to be considered compelling but including some of these attributes will help.
The suggested attributes or prompts include:
- Ownership. To get your audience to feel ownership, you can include details that create a sense of belonging or calls on their sense of responsibility.
- Mystery. Readers often are more engaged when they story is unpredictable.
- Uniqueness. By offering something new or fresh you can differentiate your story from others and make it stand out.
- Familiarity. Alternatively, you can include elements that are relatable for the audience to create a sense of familiarity to deepen engagement.
- Humanity. You can also identify the human elements of your story. To do this consider, how we as humans make sense of things, how we approach risk taking and more.
- Contrast. Noticing and highlighting contrasts or differences is another common way that writers drive engagement. It is a technique is commonly used in pieces that present both sides of an argument. For instance, consider these letters to the editor of the New York Times surrounding legalizing marijuana.
- Urgency. You can Create an understanding of why it matters now. This technique is used in many types of writing from news articles to literary fiction.
Given the importance of storytelling in public relations, it is a skill we continue to refine and develop. The approach we use to tell stories varies and the attributes we integrate into a story depend on the audience and objectives.
Over the years, we have published numerous blogs about storytelling – including “What Makes a Good Story?” and Storytelling Lessons Writers Can Learn From Taylor Swift, one of our most popular blogs in 2021.