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.
You don’t have to be a social media or public relations expert to realize that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) recent and well-intended #myNYPD Twitter campaign quickly turned into an epic fail for the nation’s largest police force. Shortly after issuing an invitation to people to post photos of them posing with the city’s officers, the department received hundreds of images showing New York’s finest engaged in aggressive acts and driving one of the most-trafficked hashtags in the world.
This latest Twitter campaign gone awry joins ranks with epic fails of other brands including JP Morgan Chase and McDonald’s. It also offers marketers an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others and better prepare themselves to conduct successful social media campaigns on behalf of clients.
In this particular case, the NYPD failed to consider two critical tenets of any social media campaign:
- Know your audience
- The only content you can control is your own
According to social media expert Charlton McIlwain, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, the mistake “shows either a profound misunderstanding of how social media works or a profound misunderstanding about popular perception of the NYPD, or probably both.” If the NYPD had, at the very least, considered its audience and their perceptions, which should be considered when developing any strategic social media campaign, they may have avoided what will certainly become one of the year’s most publicized social media backlashes.
In all fairness, the NYPD did also receive some positive images and messages of support from Twitter followers, and some credit can be given to NYPD Commissioner William Bratton who honestly acknowledged to the Associated Press that “the Twitter campaign may not have been fully thought through.” He also went on to say, “It’s not going to cause us to change any of our efforts to be very active on social media. It is what it is. It’s an open, transparent world.”
While the NYPD’s unsuccessful Twitter campaign won’t change their efforts to be very active on social media, I would be willing to wager that the department’s communications team will more diligently consider their audience and potential negative reactions to any social media campaign moving forward.
The following infographic from Cox Blue provides more tips around building a successful social media campaign. For other tips on social media and crisis communications, check out the rest of our blog.
Credit: Cox Blue (CoxBlue.com).Yesterday I was reading an article offering tips to entrepreneurs who want to grow their startup companies while maintaining ownership of their equity. The article, entitled “Who needs VC Money? Not this profitable startup,” was written by Ryan Shank, co-founder and COO of Mhelpdesk, who opted to focus his company’s limited resources on product development and customer service rather than vying for venture capital.
Shanks’ success in growing his business without venture capital brought to mind one of our agency’s newest clients, Summit Imaging. Like Mhelpdesk, Summit Imaging has experienced significant growth without taking the traditional path of pursuing outside investment. Another similarity between the two companies is an uncompromising dedication to delivering the best quality customer service and a reliance on satisfied customers to help champion the company through word of mouth recommendations.
Summit Imaging is a privately owned ultrasound medical equipment support company that just last month was driven to relocate its headquarters to a 32,000 square-foot facility in Woodinville, Washington. The move marked the company’s fourth relocation due to growth in the past eight years, and while this growth is certainly inspiring, it’s how the company has grown that I find really interesting.
Summit Imaging has grown from an operation of one in 2006, to a profitable and innovative 34-person operation today. It was surprising to learn that with such consistent growth over the years, the company does not have a dedicated sales and marketing team. Rather, Summit Imaging’s success has been realized through positive word of mouth and referrals from customers.
Like so many entrepreneurs before him, Larry Nguyen built his small business out of a humble garage. The solo engineer began refurbishing and selling parts for ultrasound systems and quickly came to realize that there was a growing market for his services. Almost immediately, he invested in further developing skills that would allow him to repair complicated devices down to the component level. This expertise, along with an equally important decision to develop an error database in order to achieve unparalleled customer satisfaction, soon resulted in a reputation for outstanding quality and customer support.
Modeling itself after “urgent care” in the medical field, Summit Imaging strives to offer customers the fastest turnaround times for customer support, rapid repair and parts replacement. The company offers an innovative and highly efficient end-to-end customer service process that minimizes costly downtime and aims to exceed the expectations of biomedical engineers who are responsible for servicing equipment from a variety of manufacturers, and hospital administrators at every point of contact.
Nguyen’s emphasis on core values including innovation, reliability, outstanding quality and customer satisfaction has paid off with word of mouth referrals that have grown Summit Imaging into what it is today: a profitable operation with a 60 percent growth rate year-over-year and a 93 percent customer-retention rate.
Not one to rest on his laurels, Nguyen’s next mission for Summit Imaging is to set a new industry standard for supporting and repairing ultrasound equipment, wherein no matter which company a hospital works with, it will receive the highest quality customer service, minimizing downtimes for healthcare providers and patients, alike. Ambitious? Indeed. But ambition is one of an entrepreneur’s strongest qualities, and given Nguyen’s track record, I’m inclined to believe that he and his highly-trained team at Summit Imaging are well-positioned to inspire others in the industry.
For more about lean startup strategies, see Shank’s article in The Upstart Business Journal . For thoughts on PR’s role in relation to startup business, see “PR and the Lean Start-Up,” or “When Should a Start-up Business Hire a PR Firm?” on the Communiqué PR blog.
When it comes to brand promotion, it can often be easy for companies to overlook the value of LinkedIn as a viable platform. Compared to its “trendier” cousins—mainly Facebook and Twitter—LinkedIn can come across as being more for personal job-hunting and networking purposes than for creative brand engagement and content marketing.
That may be true to a degree, but companies shouldn’t ignore LinkedIn as a powerful business medium. A recent infographic I stumbled upon, created by DegreeQuery and distributed in a recent Ragan post, helps to show just how powerful LinkedIn can be for business. Consider the following statistics revealed by the infographic:
- LinkedIn has a total of 280 million users worldwide, including 84 million in the U.S. (and 36 million millennials). That’s about one-fourth of the total U.S. population.
- Forty percent of those users visit daily and 38 percent from mobile devices.
- Each user joins seven LinkedIn groups on average, while 200 group conversations take place each minute.
- The site includes 3 million business pages and features 1.2 million products and services. Where’s yours?
With stats like these, you’ll likely want to reconsider if you don’t see LinkedIn as having true business value. Instead, think of the platform as a gigantic pool of potential customers and industry connections. Building a company page and engaging networks with compelling content and company news can go a long way in terms of disseminating brand messages, driving traffic to a company’s site and promoting products and services. Journalists also turn to LinkedIn to monitor news and research stories, making it a missed opportunity to not maintain a visible business page.
If in need of some tips on how to best use LinkedIn for your business, check out our blog post: “Best Practices for Company Pages on LinkedIn.” Be sure to also check out the full infographic below for more interesting stats:
Source: DegreeQuery.com.
Summer break is right around the corner for many college students, which means it’s time for aspiring PR pros to plan how they can get a head start on their careers before going back to class in the fall. It may not be as fun as hitting the beach, but there are several items that should be added to every PR student’s summer to-do list:
- Attend industry networking events. Meeting other students and professionals who share your interest in PR can be incredibly valuable, and networking events are excellent places to connect with people who could be your future colleagues. Not sure where to find events? The PRSSA hosts regional and national conferences on a regular basis.
- Work on your portfolio. Writing is a critical part of PR, so it’s important to have a portfolio of samples that show your skills. Your portfolio can include sample press releases, AP Style articles, presentations and published articles or blog posts. Published work is a big portfolio-booster, and knowing how to write a news story is an incredibly valuable skill for PR pros. It’s important to understand what journalists look for in a story idea so your pitches are newsworthy. A great way to get journalism experience is writing for your school newspaper. It’s a lot of fun, but it can be a big commitment. Another way to build your portfolio is by creating a blog on a topic that interests you.
- Get an internship. The best way to prepare for a career in PR is by getting an internship. One of the many benefits of an internship is that it provides real-world experience beyond what you’ve learned in class. Summer is an ideal time for an internship because you have more time on your hands so you can fully dedicate yourself to your position.
- Stay on top of the news. Make time to stay on top of current events. Is there an industry you’re interested in? Find out what the most popular publications are and read them regularly. For example, if you’re interested in tech PR you might want to check out Gigaom or TechCrunch.
- Build up (and clean up) your social media presence. Most employers use social media to research candidates, so make sure you represent yourself well online. Better yet, use platforms like Twitter to provide commentary around current events and PR-related news. Start doing this early so you have a solid inventory of well-worded posts when the time comes to start looking for a job.
These are just a few of the many ways PR students can use their summer break to prepare for their career. What other suggestions do you have? If you’re a student, what PR-related activities are you planning to do over the summer?
Modern technology has created an array of outlets for the public to share their every thought and opinion. People turn to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, blogs, and more to express themselves and share their views. Each outlet offers a different mode of expression, some through words, others through pictures. What these all have in common, however, is a username – an identity – attached to each post.
With an online universe of contradicting opinions, confessions, and secrets, it was only a matter of time before an outlet evolved allowing the public to express their personal thoughts without revealing their identity. Apps such as Whisper and Secret allow users to post “secrets” while their usernames remain anonymous. This creates spaces where people feel safe to vent, reveal their darkest secrets, and admit their most embarrassing stories.
PR Week recently wrote an article on the topic of anonymous gossip apps, in which Lewis PR VP Katie Pierini said, “Anonymous apps don’t yet allow brands to enter and influence the conversation exactly where and when it is taking place.” That might make it difficult for PR professionals to do any damage control that may be necessary. The anonymous gossip websites and apps are so far primarily used for such things as embarrassing stories, love confessions, or other personal topics that may be too personal to share on the more common types of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore these topics are not typically concerned with brand or company complaints.
Thus far in their short lives, Whisper and Secret have not yet posed a major threat for PR professionals, even though upon first look these outlets appear to grant power through anonymity. This anonymity, however, ultimately gives the post less credibility and therefore may not be as potentially harmful as other comment sections, about which I recently wrote. PR professionals, I noted, are often rebutting “trolls,” or negative commenters, who will continue to pose problems because of the sense of credibility behind their names.
But, surmises Allison Knaupe, SVP of digital and creative at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, “Unsourced complaints are to consumer service departments what unsourced articles are to researchers: useless.”
That said, Pierini pointed out the opportunity these sites have, believing that “the communication-building made possible by these tools will also be great for grassroots causes and events.” The article further argued that it’s not that these websites and apps will become chatter ground for brands and companies, but that it’s important to note the changing behavior of consumers. Consumers now have access to a variety of apps that are specific to their certain behaviors, interests and even local communities. PR professionals will need to be vigilant and aware regarding the variety of segmented apps and the way the public is changing their social media use.
When you think about the employees in your company and on your team, what sets apart the “good” performers from the “best” performers? Aside from productivity and the ability to meet or exceed the duties and responsibilities outlined in their job descriptions, what leadership skills define your A-players?
At Communiqué PR, as in other PR agencies, everyone, even managers, needs to excel as individual contributors in order for an account team and the agency as a whole to succeed. Now, a recent study conducted by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman and published on the Harvard Business Review blog, has identified nine behaviors that distinguish exceptional individual contributors from the competent. Ranked in the order of which made the most difference, stand-out performers do the following:
- Set stretch goals and adopt high standards for themselves
- Work collaboratively
- Volunteer to represent the group
- Embrace change, rather than resisting it
- Take initiative
- Walk the talk
- Use good judgment
- Display personal resilience
- Give honest feedback
All of these skills plus job competency would make for one high-achieving employee, but the skill that struck me was the last: the ability to give honest feedback. This behavior is expected from a manager, but not normally from an individual contributor, which is why, according to Zenger and Folkman, those who exhibited this behavior stood out the most from the crowd. Furthermore, the study found that the best individual contributors were able to provide feedback in a manner that was “perceived not as criticism, but as a gesture of good will.” Giving feedback can also be one of the more difficult leadership skills to perfect, no matter where you are in your career.
Delivering outstanding work for our clients requires tight collaboration within account teams, across the agency and most importantly with our clients. Whether it’s helping a colleague refine a pitch, delivering a presentation, or providing counsel on a thorny issue, the perspective, expertise and opinions of others can help the collective team accomplish its objectives. The key for encouraging this skill is to nurture an environment where the respectful exchange of feedback is supported.
For more information on the study and details on the nine behaviors, check out Zenger and Folkman’s post on the Harvard Business Review blog.
For you managers: How do you identify contributors who are able to offer honest feedback? How do you specifically nurture that skill within your team or company?