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.
As my colleague Beth covered in a previous blog, the ability to think critically is essential to PR and communications professionals. Everyday clients rely on us to evaluate their news to determine its value, anticipate potential outcomes and analyze industry trends.
Because the concept of critical thinking is universally accepted as an important skill for every individual to possess, there are a countless number of articles, books and curriculums dedicated to the topic. Recently, I came across the Global Digital Citizen Foundation’s “The Ultimate Cheatsheet for Critical Thinking” that contains several helpful questions to stimulate the cognitive process. Divided into six categories (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How), the 48 questions have multiple use-case scenarios. While the checklist may not have been created specifically with the public relations industry in mind, it is still an effective resource to consult before writing your client’s next pitch or announcement.
For example, even the most seasoned PR professionals can recall a time when they pitched a story and received less than enthusiastic responses from journalists. (Except for me – reporters always respond to my emails within the hour and either cover the news or provide constructive feedback. I’m kidding, of course.) Undoubtedly a significant amount of time and thought went into crafting the pitch, and it’s easy to feel discouraged when the results fail to align with the effort. In this situation, asking the following questions may prompt you to target different outlets or uncover a new angle to follow up with media:
- What would be a counter-argument?
- Who will be the key people in this?
- Where are there similar concepts/situations?
- Why is there a need for this today?
- How does this disrupt things?
Another common exercise we assist clients with is establishing their messaging framework. Within organizations, consensus can often vary on the positioning statement, key differentiators and target audiences. It can be difficult for the co-founder to receive feedback that, while his/her company description may be technically accurate, the jargon-laden paragraph fails to resonate with journalists. Questions from the checklist to keep in mind while developing messaging include:
- Where do we see [our product] in the real world?
- Where is there the most need for this?
- How does this benefit us/others?
- Why should people know about this?
- How do we see this in the future?
Finally, while Communiqué PR’s clients range from startups to publicly traded companies, they all have one characteristic in common: Each has a compelling story to tell. When considering a PR engagement with a potential new client, it’s important to ask:
- What are the strengths/weaknesses?
- Why is it relevant to me/others?
- Why is there a need for this today?
- How is this similar to [the leading competitor in the space]?
- Where are the areas for improvement?
Whether critical thinking is an area you want to improve or you view yourself as an expert critical thinker, I encourage periodically referencing the checklist. Its applications are limitless and can be particularly useful when developing communication plans, building media lists and corresponding with clients.
In 2016, Communique PR began working with Swiss-based Interroll (https://www.interroll.us/) to help build awareness of its logistics solutions for the U.S. market.
With a strong track record and long history, the company is a leader in the global logistics industry. Interroll offers a broad product range in its four product groups: rollers, drives, conveyors/sorters, and pallet/carton flow. The company’s solutions are used by a broad cross-section of OEMs and system integrators in distribution centers for larger retailers/ecommerce companies, and in the food processing and automotive and tire industries, among others.
To help bring this industry to life, consider the November 2016 GeekWire article with videos that show how Amazon uses solutions like Interroll’s in its distribution center: Inside look: How Amazon’s robots help pick, pack, and ship your holiday purchases. As displayed in the GeekWire video, advanced conveyor and sortation systems are an integral part of the fulfillment process. The growth of the conveyor systems market and the increasing demand for facility efficiency has made working with Interroll and in this sector both exciting and informative.
Given the breadth of uses of Interroll’s solutions, we have been able to successfully work with a wide variety of publications to tell the Interroll story. Below is a sampling of some of the editorial coverage and contributed articles we have helped secure for the company.
- Food Manufacturing: Factors Plant Managers Should Consider When Purchasing New Equipment
- Food Safety: How Well-Equipped is Your Facility?
- Packaging World: A magnetic speed controller for optimizing gravity roller conveyor operation
- Plant Engineering: Magnetic speed controller
- Material Handling Product News: Optimize gravity roller conveyor operation with magnetic speed controller
- The Packer: Interroll debuts new speed control system for conveyors
- Manufacturing Tomorrow: PACK Expo – Interroll Debuts New MSC 50 Magnetic Speed Controller to Optimize Gravity Roller Conveyor Operation at PACK EXPO 2016
- Design World: Difference between drum motors and gear motors for food conveying
We recently announced Interroll’s welcoming of its 50th Partner to join their international customer program, “Rolling On Interroll,” and look forward to continued success with this dynamic company. Look for Interroll at ProMat 2017 in Chicago in April!
As anyone who actively posts on social media can attest to, crafting a winning post takes time – from finding the right image, to drafting a witty caption, to incorporating the right hashtags, it can be a long process. If you manage social media for a brand, coming up with thoughtful content on the fly can be stressful, particularly if there’s a deadline looming over your head.
Avoid scrambling for content by planning out a social media content calendar every week. A calendar can also help ensure you are accurately capturing your brand’s voice across channels and finding the right balance between curated and promotional content. In addition, it allows you to schedule your messages for optimal times to broaden the exposure.
There are many different formats and tools that can be used to manage a social media calendar, but if your company is new to social media management or working with a limited budget you can build a basic, effective calendar using Excel. If you plan on managing the calendar with other team members, try using a cloud-based spreadsheet tool such as Google Sheets or Smartsheet so everyone has access to the latest version at all times.
Below are step-by-step instructions on how to create the calendar. The sample sheet below was created using Smartsheet, but can be adapted for a traditional spreadsheet tool.
1. Create tabs or sections for each month. If you’re using Excel, create a new tab for each month. Add a row for each week of the month.
2. Create a column for social channels and for each weekday. Then add a row for each of the social channels you plan on managing.
3. Create a color coding system. This will help manage posts if multiple people are contributing to the calendar. Add a key at the top of the sheet to ensure everyone knows the system.
Once your basic calendar is set up, you can customize it by adding more columns for posting multiple times a day or creating a more complex color coding system. If you’re using Smartsheet, you can also set up email reminders associated with specific rows to remind content managers to create or publish posts.
Before you start developing and publishing content, research what your content ratio should look like, how to develop a brand’s voice, and the optimal time to post on each channel. This will help inform your content development and publishing schedule.
If you decide to publish multiple times a day, you can streamline your efforts by investing in a social media management tool such as Hootsuite that allows you to schedule posts for publication at a designated time. This can save significant time and prevent you from stopping periodically throughout the day to post on social media.
Achieving success requires advanced planning, and this is particularly true for social media management. With some thoughtful planning, you can help your brand establish a strong presence on its social channels.
Data journalism. One of the biggest trends in reporting right now but often a misunderstood science. When people think about a data journalist, images of a man or woman with thick glasses and a pocket protector furiously tapping into a calculator often springs to mind. But of course, anyone who knows or works with a data journalist understands that these stereotypes are untrue. Data journalists are storytellers at heart, guided by the unquestionable logic of data and driven to uncover trends and insights revealed by quantitative analysis.
For the past year and a half, Communiqué PR has had the pleasure of working with a data journalist spearheading research and writing stories about trends in senior care and housing. Ben Hanowell, whose official title is lead researcher and data journalist at A Place for Mom (APFM) – the nation’s largest senior living referral service – was kind enough to spend some time speaking to me about his role at the company and how he came into his profession. Luckily, no pocket protector was seen during the discussion.
Questions & Answers
So, Ben, in your own words, can you tell me what a data journalist is exactly? What is it that you do?
A data journalist is someone who uses the analysis of data to directly tell stories that are of interest to the broader public. So, while traditional reporter might rely more on access to key stakeholders or shoe leather reporting – going out on the street and asking a few people their thoughts on the issue of the day – a data journalist will instead find a data set that is relevant to whatever topic they are trying to cover and they will use their quantitative analysis capabilities to analyze that data set. Then they will use their writing capabilities to make their analysis something that the public can understand and wants to read.
Did you always want to become a data journalist? What did you study in School?
Well, I’ll just preface this by saying that when I was 6 years old, what I really wanted to be was the first Egyptologist to win an Academy Award, but that didn’t pan out. So, my major in college was anthropology and I went to graduate school and studied bio-cultural anthropology, but I also studied game theory. Game theory is a branch of economics that uses economic models to understand how people will optimize their behavior in the presence of other people who are also trying to optimize their behavior. I also studied demography, which is the study of populations, in particular their death rates, birth rates, and migration rates. All of that was pretty quantitative, so that is where I learned statistics. I found when you try to communicate any quantitative analysis to anybody who is not themselves a quantitative analyst, you’ve got to figure out a way to make the story interesting. So that is what motivated me to learn how to write about data analysis and also how to visualize data, make it look pretty.
At APFM, what are your main responsibilities as a data journalist?
I use company and public data to tell compelling stories that serve three aims. One is to build valuable links back to our website from reputable news sites, which is a search engine optimization strategy. So the idea is that we do some piece of analysis that is newsworthy, we work with CPR to pitch that news to reporters – either as a contributed article or something that they can cover on their own – they link back to the original piece of research or asset that we created around this analysis and, because news organizations have high domain authority, especially major national outlets, that boosts our ranking in search engines.
Another reason they created a data journalist role is because the mission of APFM – and I think this is the most important reason – is to serve the noble mission of senior living. Searching for senior living is a major emotional and financial decision, and families need good information about the market so they can make decisions as efficiently as possible. We can use our data, along with some public data, to build things like our Senior Living Cost Index, which tells people what senior living costs look like in over 2,000 cities and metropolitan areas in the United States.
Then there is a third reason they created the data journalist role and that is – since not only are we serving the noble mission of senior living for consumers but we also want to work well with our community partners – to generate new insights about the senior living market to help them serve consumers better, and also to help their businesses thrive and more effectively manage the referrals that we send them. So those are the three things I do as a data journalist, but then there are the other cool things I get to do. For example, I get to have interviews with national and local reporters – that is really fun – and I also get to analyze a lot of data, which I love doing.
How do you see your role at APFM evolving in the future?
Another reason APFM hired a data journalist is that they want to build a sense of credibility, a real credibility, and to build a brand as an authority on the senior living industry, and one way to do that is through rigorous analysis. So I hope that, as we continue to do that and we have these incremental successes, that we can eventually grow the team to have, not only people that are data journalists like myself, but traditional reporters. One thing I would love to do is have people team up with a traditional reporter and we could tell both the human side of the story — the qualitative side of the story — and the data side of the story. One good example of that is right now we are going to pitch this story around Valentine’s Day that has to do with love and marriage after 65. One of our contributors went around and interviewed people at senior living communities, on the ground shoe leather reporting, to try and get the human side of the story. I, in the meanwhile, am doing some analysis of our data and public data surrounding marriage and divorce and co-habitation among people who are older adults. Imagine if we could put those two things together from the start and really tell a compelling story that would really speak to major podcasts like This American Life. That would really develop a lot of brand awareness around APFM, and links and credibility.
A special thanks to Ben for taking the time to speak with me for this blog post and for his ongoing mission to uncover helpful information for the senior living community. In a follow-up discussion about the blog post, Ben said he would “totally rock a pocket protector,” and reflecting on his responses to our questions, he asked, “Do I really say the word ‘really’ that much?”
While motion imagery takes viewers to new worlds, the content creation process has been stuck in the dark ages – until now. In January, our client StratusCore, a virtual content production company, announced the general availability of its cloud-based digital content production platform and suite of tools for the digital content community. By coming out of stealth mode, StratusCore has made its platform and suite of tools available for productions, studios and artists worldwide.
Despite CGI and other technological innovations, the content creation process has been surprisingly archaic until recently. Typically, artists are forced to lug around heavy, insecure equipment, and must invest thousands of dollars in tools, which can be a barrier to entry. Studios and productions still face asset security and artist control loopholes. Today’s productions, artists and studios, however, now have access to a cloud-based platform that streamlines the entire content creation process, from inception and creation to rendering and delivery.
Nestled in the heart of the Madrona neighborhood in Seattle, StratusCore has already gained serious traction in Hollywood, with customers including Netflix, Sony, Universal, DreamWorks and more using the industry-compliant platform. Considering the explosive growth of digital content creation and the surge in subscription services, from Hulu to Netflix, the content creation industry is booming, but the technology that powers it is ripe for disruption.
With its cloud-based content creation platform, StratusCore helps some of the world’s largest productions and studios create, manage, store and process their data-intensive assets securely. In an age of hacks and leaks, particularly in an industry where assets are everything, this platform is paving the way for secure digital content production.
In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the coverage we secured for StratusCore’s general availability announcement:
- StratusCore, a digital content production startup used by Netflix and Sony, comes out of stealth –GeekWire, Jan. 31, 2017
- StratusCore cloud production platform – Advanced Television, Jan. 31, 2017
- StratusCore Unveils New Service Platform to Aid Content Creators – Larry Jordan, Jan. 31, 2017
- StratusCore now available to one and all in the digital content production industry – Animation Xpress, Jan. 31, 2017
Over the time that I have worked at Communiqué, the term “thought leader” has popped up frequently. In fact, it’s kind of been everywhere. Thought leaders are mentioned in articles, blog posts are written about the importance of developing thought leadership, and thought leaders are sought out for speaking opportunities.
At first, I didn’t give the term much thought because, in context, I assumed it was simply a vague title referring to an expert in a particular industry. However, as I saw it more and more, questions began to nag at me. If a thought leader is just an expert, why wouldn’t he or she be referred to as such? Is there a difference between thought leaders and experts? If they are different, what exactly is the importance of thought leadership? And is everyone else as confused by this term as I am? In short, I decided to do some digging.
For those of you who, like me, may be a little fuzzy on the details of thought leaders and thought leadership, an overarching definition is a good place to start. While there are a number of ways to explain what a thought leader is, during my research I found a blog post that described it in a way that resonated well with me:
“Welcome to the NEW thought leader: passionate, smart, professional subject matter experts who have advanced the conversation around their particular areas of interest and expertise. But New Thought Leaders are more than experts – they’re genuine authorities. They are people the media come to for quotes; they bob up often as interview guests on podcasts; publishers approach them to write books; people come to hear them speak!”
This definition makes two things very clear: 1) Experts and thought leaders are linked, but are not the same thing; and 2) the term’s current popularity stems from the fact that it has been recently redefined. It is a classic syllogism (e.g., all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares) in that all thought leaders are experts, but not all experts are thought leaders. What differentiates the two is how active the person is in society’s current social space, which is the driver behind the redefinition. Someone could be the leading expert in their field, and not be a thought leader simply because no one knows about what they are doing. Thought leaders, on the other hand, are active participants on social media and are constantly engaged in their industry’s dialogue. Society both recognizes them and regards them as a viable, important source of information.
This brings me to the importance of thought leadership. Without thought leaders or thought leadership, the amount of valuable information available would be diminished, as would the push for innovation. Thought leaders have big ideas and can put experts and other individuals on the right path toward making those ideas a reality, meaning thought leaders truly need to be leaders – leaders that are engaged and consistently sharing their ideas with the broader public. This could include contributing content to publications, being interviewed for article quotes, speaking at major industry events, or actively using social media to keep others updated on industry trends. Whatever the medium, a thought leader’s focus is on using a platform to help people better understand their industry and push the boundaries of what is currently known.