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.
Last month I had the opportunity to attend the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 16th annual 40 Under 40 honoree bash in support of Larry Nguyen, CEO of Summit Imaging and client of Communiqué PR. This year, Larry joined the ranks of Seattle’s young business superstars honored for their business leadership and contributions to the community.
The event was held at the Showbox SODO where more than 300 attendees were treated to the emcee-stylings of Publisher Gordon Prouty—whom we learned is a fan of funny hats and prefers his cocktails to be of the Manhattan variety—and Digital Managing Editor Emily Parkhurst, who generously spent her birthday conducting brief interviews with honorees rather doing whatever it is she would usually do on a birthday. For me, that would be diving into a pint of ice cream and enjoying a deep muscle massage, but I digress.
Given the abundance of technology companies in our community, I expected a tech-centric list of candidates, but was pleasantly surprised to see a number of honorees from other industries. There were, of course, a number of highly-deserving individuals from technology companies, and in many of these cases it was inspiring to see technology—both high and low—being used to make significant improvements in the lives of people around the world.
I won’t give a full list of all of the individual honorees and their accomplishments, but I do want to call out a few who were unexpected or whose stories I found particularly inspiring. Here it goes!
Dr. Quinton Morris, Seattle University. I’ll admit it—I’m a sucker for the arts, and this honoree is artistic director and programs coach for Chamber Music Madness, an organization aimed at empowering young people through one of my very favorite things: music. He also is responsible for bringing music back to Seattle University after a painful 25-year musical drought.
Ty Redinger, president of Lil’ Kickers. Redinger struck me as being incredibly genuine and good natured, and no wonder! He works with kids! Lil’ Kickers is a child development program that uses soccer classes and coaching to enhance a child’s overall growth and well-being. The organization has more than 237,000 children enrolled nationwide.
A new personal hero, Carrie Ferrence, CEO & co-founder of Stockbox Neighborhood Grocery. Ferrence’s team at Stockbox brings fresh produce and other nutritious foods to low-income or sparsely populated areas that are otherwise ignored by large grocery store chains.
As the proud daughter of a veteran, I was particularly interested to learn about Kameka Brown, nurse practitioner director for the Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education with VA Puget Sound Health Care System. Long story short—Brown serves the men and women who serve our country by creating systems to improve accessibility to healthcare for veterans.
Speaking of people helping people, Brian Glaister, CEO at Cadence Biomedical, is driven to return mobility to stroke victims. He told a touching story about a customer in San Francisco who lived at the bottom of a very steep hill and whose life essentially ended at his front door. Thanks to Cadence’s Kickstart Walking System, a rehabilitation technology that helps people recover from neurological conditions, the customer was quickly up and moving again.
There were so many others honored that evening—34 to be exact—and while I would love to congratulate them all personally, it’s much quicker for me to simply direct you to the list via this convenient link. For more about why these select few have earned entry into the exclusive “40” alumni club, visit Puget Sound Business Journal online for many interesting stories curated by assistant managing editor Becky Monk.
In June, the USC Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center released results from its eighth biennial Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP VIII) Study.
The report is focused on providing senior communicators with “guidance as they manage their organizations, develop strategy, and prepare for the future.” Data was gathered from professionals in a variety of organizations including corporations, government agencies and non-profits.
There were many notable findings from GAP VIII.
1. Budgets have recovered post-recession and, similarly, organizations across a variety of industries expect increases in staff growth in 2014. Some 40 percent of public company respondents expected PR/Communication budgets to increase in 2014 over 2013 levels.
2. Social media is widely used, with use of Twitter seeing dramatic growth; however, Facebook use has remained flat.
3. Measurement and evaluation are still in flux, illustrating the need for tools that measure “outcomes and actions rather than outputs.”
4. Agencies are recognized for “intellectual added value, rather than simple labor.” This was the first time in the study’s history that intellectual added value was the most commonly cited reason for working with agencies.
5. PR/Communication is an increasingly strategic contributor to organizational success. About 44 percent of the respondents indicated that “their senior leadership believes PR/Communication contributes to financial success.”
In the introduction to our book, Strategic Public Relations, we cited data from a previous GAP study which showed that senior managers rated PR as one of the top three contributors to organizational success. Previously PR had been near the bottom of the list. This year’s GAP illustrates PR’s rise in strategic importance to organizations.
The authors of the report wrote: “The results of multiple GAP studies, seen in combination with ample anecdotal evidence gathered from discussions with industry leaders, validate the existence of a very real trend: Many companies are giving communication and reputational considerations a far greater role in organizational planning and decision making than was previously the case, and [are] benefiting from that change. In this new environment, PR/Communication is seen as a strategic asset affecting enterprise-wide policy and behavior, rather than in its far more limited, historical role as a purely tactical, secondary, and largely marketing-driven function.”
We have seen this trend in practice as CEOs, CMOs and business owners now more often understand the value of having our team involved at a strategic level within their organizations and facilitating the sharing of information early in the decision-making process so PR and communication can be incorporated broadly.
It’s been an excitingly busy time for one of our clients, Point Inside, the provider of a mobile shopper engagement platform for Top 100 retailers. Point Inside’s StoreMode™ platform powers retailers’ branded apps with real-time, store-specific product search and location to help shoppers quickly find what they need in stores. We recently helped Point Inside announce its phenomenal 1690-percent revenue growth since 2009, having grown revenue more than 150 percent year-over-year without the support of venture capital funding.
Point Inside’s impressive growth coincides with the retail industry trend toward an integrated shopping experience that blends the physical and digital channels. The company’s shopping and engagement solutions enable retailers to make the most of this mobile revolution and create an overall better, more personalized experience for their customers. In addition to its revenue growth, Point Inside also shared details for the first time around its:
- Top 100 retail customers and success of its partners
- Tens of millions of shoppers using its platform
- Billions of user requests per month for its services
- Creation of more than 10,000 maps of indoor venues and 5,000 store-specific search engines
- More than 20-fold growth of its employee base since 2009
- Recent headquarters relocation to a new 12,600-square-foot space—with 6,000 more to come by January—the third in five years to match company growth
To support the announcement, we reached out to local and national retail and marketing industry media, leveraging both Point Inside’s momentum and how it ties to retailers’ increasing adoption of mobile solutions. This approach was successful, generating significant press and industry interest, briefings with key influencers and editorial coverage, such as the following:
- MediaPost – Search Data In Mobile Apps Shows Unmet Demand
- Bellevue Reporter – Bellevue startup reports massive gains since 2010 | Point Inside improving in-store retail experiences
- GPS Business News – Point Inside: “Our Platform Is Used by More than 100M Devices“
- Retail Times – Point Inside reports sales surge and recruits new users to mobile shopper engagement platform
- GeekWire Radio – Windows 10, drones and the future of shopping
It’s neat to see a local company like Point Inside at the forefront of its industry, and we look forward to supporting Point Inside on even more exciting developments in the months to come. For more on Point Inside and its recent momentum, check out www.pointinside.com.
Have you ever wondered how many people actually read your tweets? Now that Twitter has made its analytics dashboard available to everyone you can find out. The dashboard, which was previously only offered to advertisers and verified accounts, provides details on your tweets’ engagement as well as follower demographics. You can check it out at analytics.twitter.com.
The insights the dashboard offers will be incredibly useful for companies looking to increase brand awareness or engagement on Twitter. Following are the metrics that will matter the most to your digital strategy and tips around how to leverage them.
Individual Tweet Data
Unlike other free analytics tools, Twitter’s dashboard provides data about how each tweet is performing in real time. Upon clicking the tweet, you can see how many people have viewed it, clicked on the link, and shared it via email since it was published.
This data can then be exported to an Excel file so it’s easier to see how tweets compare to each other. Once the data has been exported, it’s helpful to divide it into two categories: micro and macro. Micro activities are actions in which the user has viewed the information but not directly interacted with it, such as impressions and favorites; and macro activities are actions in which there is direct engagement, such as retweets and replies. Compile this information every month to gauge how your account has improved or declined and to gain insight into what types of tweets resonate most with your followers.
Follower Data
At the top of the Followers page is a graph that tracks overall growth since your account was created, which is useful for an at-a-glance visualization of how your account has grown over time. It then drills down into what your followers are interested in and where they are located. Their interests are divided into two categories: Most Unique Interests and Top Interests. Those are then ranked from most popular to least popular and accompanied by the percentage of followers interested.
It can be helpful to track your users’ interests over time to see if they remain steady. This will help you make a more informed decision about whether to tweak your posts to match your followers’ specific interests. If their interests don’t match your brand, consider implementing a strategy to attract the right audience.
Twitter’s analytics dashboard provides incredibly helpful metrics that, when analyzed effectively, can help strengthen your brand’s presence on the site. If you have started using Twitter’s analytics dashboard, what other tips do you have for leveraging its insights?
Today’s consumer has access to an abundance of information from the Internet and social media, making them the most informed they have ever been. So, this poses an important question: Which information is the most influential? Is it the customer reviews, the social media campaigns, the endless types of advertising, or possibly expert content? The Nielsen Company recently posed this question and was able to discover the impact of content in the consumer decision-making process.
The Experiment
The Nielsen Company recruited 900 respondents from casino floors in Las Vegas and took them to the Nielsen MediaLabs. Next, they placed each respondent in one of the nine product categories (i.e., auto insurance, child seat, digital camera, video game, etc.) and exposed them to three types of content. The content presented was expert content, user reviews, and branded content.
The effect that each type of content had on the consumer would be measured in three stages. The first, familiarity with a new product; the second, affinity toward a brand or product; and lastly, purchase consideration of a brand or product.
The Results
Overall, each type of content showed improvement among the three categories: product familiarity, affinity and purchase intent. But which had the strongest showing? This is when PR professionals can chime in with an “I told you so.” Expert content was the most effective and consistent across all three content types.
Expert content provided the most familiarity lift for seven of the nine products, the most affinity lift for five of the nine products, and the most purchase intent lift for six of the nine products. “On average,” said Nielsen, “expert content lifted familiarity 88 percent more than branded content and 50 percent more than user reviews; they lifted affinity 50 percent more than branded content and 20 percent more than user reviews; finally, they lifted purchase consideration 38 percent more than branded content and 83 percent more than user reviews.”
Now what?
Numbers don’t lie. Expert content is effective. The next step is to capitalize on this information and secure expert content. This can be done by finding the right contact and placing it in the right publication. Spending time to find the publication that reaches your target audience is critical. In order for expert content, or any content, to serve its purpose and be effective, the consumers have to read it. Be sure to consider the audience when reaching out to a journalist or expert.
The other important aspect is making sure you are contacting the correct people. Contact someone who is interested in sharing his or her thoughts about your product. Without the right contact, your product won’t be given a second glance.
Generally, all forms of content have the ability to influence the consumer. However, the results of this study are clear: Customers want the opinion of a credible third party. An objective opinion is going to build trust and be more effective in convincing the consumer your product is the right product.
If you’d like to see more results from the Nielsen Company study, use the link here.
The use of the serial, or Oxford, comma has been a long debated topic. For those unfamiliar with the debate over this “rule,” an example with a serial comma follows: I have traveled to Seattle, San Francisco, and Dallas. Whereas, a serial comma omitted looks as follows: I have traveled to Seattle, San Francisco and Dallas.
The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style have two different views on the topic. The AP Stylebook requires the omission of the serial comma in simple lists, whereas the Chicago Manual of Style requires a comma before a conjunction when joining the last two items in a series.
In the public relations industry, it is important to keep journalists happy, so following the correct style is extremely important if you want your clients’ stories to be covered. However, when it comes to the serial comma, some follow the AP Stylebook, some follow the Chicago Manual of Style and some follow other guidelines (as you can see, our firm tends to follow the AP Stylebook).
If you want a good laugh on the “heated” debate of the Oxford comma, check out Scott Leadingham’s article on Quill. Leadingham makes some interesting points surrounding these “standardized rules.” For example, if standardized rules exist, then what are writers to do when the rules contradict across the industry (think AP Stylebooks’s rule of omitting the serial comma vs. Chicago Manual of Style’s rule of using the serial comma)?
The article also includes an excerpt from “The Book on Writing” by Paula LaRocque, also in favor of restoring the serial comma. LaRocque highlights the confusion surrounding the Oxford comma, providing the AP Stylebook as an example. The stylebook approves of omitting the serial comma in simple lists. However, the AP Stylebook demands the serial comma in a complex series, when the last two items in the list run together, or when the item in the list contains a comma. (LaRocque’s examples: The flag is red, white and blue, vs., The main points to consider are whether the athletes are skillful enough to compete, whether they have the stamina to endure the training, and whether they have the proper attitude.)
Clearly, there is some confusion surrounding the Oxford comma, and to add even more confusion, different stylebooks have different rules. Various experts, including the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, are in favor of the serial comma, yet others swear by the AP Stylebook. What are your thoughts? Retain or omit the serial comma?