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.
For brands hoping to engage consumers and maintain a consistent social media presence, a Facebook page can be an effective tool. Despite debates over what a Facebook “like” is actually worth, or whether the company is here to stay, Facebook provides an excellent resource for sharing content, engaging with fans, and telling your brand’s overarching story.
If you are part of a small team, however, managing the constantly changing interface of Facebook can be somewhat complex and time consuming. Thankfully, Ragan’s PR Daily recently compiled a list of 25 Facebook tips every social media manager needs. Here are five highlights.
1. How to schedule posts in advance
Just like Twitter, Facebook allows you to schedule update releases. When you post a photo, video, offer, or status update, there is a clock symbol below the update. You can use this tool to schedule when the post will appear.
How is this useful? If you’re a restaurant, for example, you might release an offer for 25 percent off a Friday night meal on Wednesday or Thursday. Or, if you’re using your Facebook to establish your brand as a thought leader, you might schedule regular links to timely industry articles, but stagger them throughout the day.
2. How to add multiple admins
If you have multiple people that might manage the Facebook page, you can add multiple administrators from their Facebook accounts (as opposed to having one Facebook account).
Add admins by clicking on your Facebook page, clicking “Edit Page,” and then clicking “Manage Admins.” You can send each individual an invite to their Facebook account, or via email. Through this, you can manage who has administrative access to your brand’s Facebook page, and you don’t need to change the password for a shared account when someone might leave the company.
We use this feature at Communique, so that everyone who might need to use our Facebook page is able to, with the supervision of management.
3. How to promote your updates
Facebook has an advertising tool that helps your post get seen by more people who “like” your page. This can be useful if you have a specific update that you might want publicized, or an offer you think will be very successful. When you update a status, you will see a “Promote This Post” button, which will allow you to select how much money you are willing to spend on promoting the post.
4. How to target posts
This is an interesting feature I was not aware existed—you can target a post’s demographic by language or location. Click on the “Public” icon next to the “Post” button, and enter countries and languages you would like to target, separated with commas. This might be helpful if you are a company with customers in the U.S. and Canada, for example, and want to promote a deal to your Canadian audience.
5. How to create milestones
This is an easy way to showcase the story arc of your company and brand. Milestones indicate important moments in your brand’s history. You can pick and choose your milestones, and include an image. Milestones might range from the obvious, such as when your company started or went public, to more specific facets of your brand’s story, such as when a specific customer started using your product and had exceptional results.
To view the rest of the list, click here: 25 Facebook tips every social media manager needs.
For more from Communique PR on Facebook, check out:
In the last 11 years, Wikipedia has become one of the most influential and searched sites on the Internet. Because of its Internet prowess, it is a great tool to promote a business or product. A Wikipedia page for your brand influences search engines, validates your presence, tells your brand’s history—and it’s free. At Communiqué PR, we typically recommend that organizations leverage the power of Wikipedia.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Wikipedia is a collaboratively-edited encyclopedia that allows Internet users to contribute and edit information. However, despite being a straightforward service, getting a successful page posted and accepted by Wikipedia can be more difficult than one may expect.
Jay Walsh, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wikipedia, has said that although it is not a written rule, writing about yourself or your own business is highly discouraged because it detracts from the neutrality the site attempts to have. Herein lies the challenge for businesses hoping to develop a Wikipedia page: How can you craft an accurate and flattering Wikipedia presence for your company, if Wikipedia’s content is constantly being scrutinized for marketing ploys?
I recently read “Use Wikipedia as a Marketing Tool,” an article by Minda Zetlin on Inc.com, which covers a few interesting tips to ensuring the success of your business’ Wikipedia appearances.
1) Begin with a general PR campaign. If your company is mentioned in blog posts, social media and articles it will help legitimize your business, and this is valuable when Wikipedia is reviewing pages. Also, make sure that your website is constantly up to date, offering accurate information for users who might add to your Wikipedia page. The more consistency, the better.
2) Search your company’s name in Wikipedia. This may seem like an odd strategy, but there is a possibility that your company’s name could be mentioned in another post. If your company has been mentioned, you have the opportunity to add to existing information about your brand on this Wikipedia post. This may give you an additional spot to share a little more information about your company without starting a new post of your own.
3) Start with a small post. Develop only a few sentences or sections at a time on your Wikipedia page. This encourages other people to add more and is seen as a “challenge” by Wikipedians. If you put up a large amount of information at once, regular users are likely to request that your page be removed because it is perceived as a marketing scheme. The thought is that it takes away from the collaborative aspect integral to Wikipedia.
4) Include links to other sites. Providing third-party links legitimizes your brand’s Wikipedia page. Wikipedians will look to see that your company has been mentioned in other articles or publications before posting about your company.
5) Use the discussion page. Every Wikipedia page has a discussion page. This can be used as a tool to add more links, explanations or information you may see as beneficial to the post.
6) Keep an eye on your post. Because Wikipedia is collaboratively edited, anyone can add to your post. After your post is first created, Wikipedians will most likely find it and edit it quickly. It is crucial that you leave some time to work on it. It is important to constantly review your page in case some unwanted edits or attacks are made. The best way to go about editing these is through the Wikipedia community. If the edits are made by you or members of your own company, then it appears to be censorship. One option to help avoid this issue is to create a “controversy section” within your Wikipedia page, in order to clarify negative issues that other users might post.
Wikipedia receives a huge amount of Internet traffic, and can thus be a valuable resource for your brand. However, due to its wide range of viewership and accessibility, it is important to make sure that all the information shared through Wikipedia reflects your business correctly, and as positively as possible, especially because anyone can create it. If carefully executed, a self-made Wikipedia page for your brand has the potential to be an excellent form of strategic communications.
All eyes were on the presidential debate this week in Denver. But prior to the big debate, both parties were busy preparing for possible scenarios and anticipating questions, hoping to shine. In any speaking platform, preparation is key and I thought it might be helpful to look at how each candidate prepared and the takeaways for PR professionals.
In preparation, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney both spent diligent hours preparing, and each camp worked to highlight their individual strengths and avoid showcasing their weaknesses.
Mitt Romney’s team is fully aware that Gov. Romney gets into trouble when he is challenged, and his team worked to help him avoid this. He spent hours watching tapes from past debates with Obama and running through scenarios that would cause himself to lose his cool. By challenging his downfall head on, Romney’s team was able to help him prepare for possible situations where he might get heated. According to an NPR article titled, “Hours Of Preparation For Romney Ahead Of Debate,” this happened during a primary debate in Las Vegas when Texas Gov. Rick Perry accused him of hiring illegal immigrants. Mr. Romney tried to interject and said, “I’m speaking. I’m speaking. I’m speaking.” He was agitated by the accusation and at one point put his hand on Perry’s shoulder.
Likewise, President Obama spent his time preparing, but his team’s objectives were to keep the president in charge of the debate without being too combative. Obama aides reviewed tapes of Romney’s previous debates to identify possible “pitfalls” for a challenger.
Another tact that both Romney and Obama used prior to the debate, was lowering the expectations of the viewers. Both candidates came out applauding their challenger as a talented public speaker and said that they themselves have not had much time to prepare or are not very experienced. This tactic is designed to make the audience surprised if a candidate does well and show compassion or expect for a candidate to do poorly. Think of it like giving a great present. If you tell a loved one that you are buying them a fantastic gift, you could oversell the present. However, if you say you’ve had very little time to shop for their birthday present, your gift will be a welcomed surprise.
During Wednesday’s debate, Mitt Romney did seem to become agitated when President Obama talked about the Affordable Health Care Act and indicated that Romney’s health plan would not address preexisting medical conditions like he claimed. Moderator Jim Lehrer tried to move the discussion along, but Romney insisted that he be heard: “No I have to respond to that,” interrupting Jim Lehrer. However, the interruption did not escalate. His aides predicted correctly and both candidates seemed to know what got under each other’s skin.
President Obama did avoid being combative during the debate. In a CNN article, “Romney takes debate to Obama over economy, healthcare,” Tom Cohen said, “The president firmly defended his achievements and challenged his rival’s prescriptions as unworkable.” However, it was Romney that seemed to command the debate.
So, what is the takeaway for communications professionals? We know that panels, interviews, speaking opportunities and debates can be a great opportunity for an organization’s spokesperson to be seen as a thought leader and increase brand awareness. However, it doesn’t stop at securing the opportunity. As a PR professional, it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of your spokesperson to properly prepare them to take the stage. It is also important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the other participants.
As PR professionals, we can learn from the approach of each camp. It is important to not only prepare for what messages you want to communicate, but prepare for how you’ll react in possible scenarios. We typically develop briefing materials for our clients that provide background on members of the media, analysts or other panelists to anticipate what questions might be asked and what hot button issues might peak a journalist’s interest. Our clients may not spend the hours that the Presidential candidates spend preparing, but we can certainly model the strategy.
How do you prepare for speaking opportunities?
Having a corporate blog can be a huge resource for driving traffic to your company’s website, building out your business, and garnering media coverage. However, with so many competing platforms and styles of blogging, it can be difficult to determine what is best for your business. I recently attended PRNewswire’s webinar “ Corporate Blogging Best Practices: Building Your Brand & Boosting Business Through Thought Leadership,“ to see what a couple pros had to say about best practices for corporate blogging.
The webinar was led by Jeff Corbin, CEO of KCSA Strategic Communications, and Thomas Hynes, manager of Blogger Relations with PRNewswire. Corbin brings expertise as an integral voice on KCSA’s corporate blog, while Hynes is familiar with blogs of all kinds—he runs PRNewswire’s blog, Beyond PR, as well as two personal blogs (Tomblr and Bike Gang!). The two blogging pros offered the following tips on best practices for successful corporate blogging:
- Grab attention quickly. If you want people to read your blog, you have to get them interested in what you have to offer. After all, as Hynes notes, what’s the point of a blog if no one is going to read it? In order to gain traffic momentum to your blog, use snappy, catch titles. Also make sure you start off with a bang – the average user gives a web page three seconds before deciding to hit the back button, according to Google.
- Be helpful. Blogs need to offer something to the reader to gain readership, not simply be a means to selling your services. Make sure to offer advice that positions your company as a thought leader on the subject, without being self-serving. Always remember, regardless of SEO practices and timing your posts, quality of content is paramount to gaining a blog readership.
- Know your audience. Who is reading your corporate blog? Or, who do you want the audience to be? What are they interested in? A corporate blog for Nordstrom, for example, might have a very different readership than the corporate blog for BMW. Think of who you are trying to reach with this blog, and who you want to view you as a thought leader—then, pick your subjects accordingly.
- Use voice. People want to hear from other people. Dry content won’t connect with the audience, and isn’t easy to read or understand. While a corporate blog should be informative and professional, let your own leadership voice and personality shine through. Blogs are conversational, not academic. Use them as a way to give your corporate voice personality.
- Maintain brand consistency. This is extremely important—don’t let your brand be about one thing, and your blog about something else. The whole point of a corporate blog is to communicate from your brand. How can you do this? KCSA has a social media head who vets all of their blogs before they are posted. Here at Communique, we have established values that guide all of our communications, and a blog goes to more than one team member before it goes out. The easiest way to ensure your blog is consistent with your brand is to…
- Have a strict corporate policy. KCSA maintains corporate guidelines for its blog, of which all staff are aware. If your company is public, this policy needs to abide by FCC regulations. Corporate policy on blogging gives your staff an exact outline of what is and what is not appropriate for the corporate blog, and can save you future headaches and wasted time over poor blog content.
- Think about traffic. While your blog should be about communicating your company’s point of view on industry topics, it can also help drive traffic to your site—something that is extremely useful for business development. Make your blog easy to share, link to other posts in your blog, and guest blog for other sites—all of these will optimize your SEO. Incorporate key words in your headline and subheads, and tag all of your posts with key concepts or keywords. Additionally, do a little outreach: issue blogs as press releases or HTML emails, list your site on blog search engines and directories, and syndicate your content.
- Use a schedule. Both Communique PR and KCSA have this blogging practice in common: schedule out posts. Assign posts on a cyclical basis to staffers, and keep that schedule public. This way, everyone contributes a different perspective, and your corporate voice is well rounded. This is a fun thing for the office to work together on, and builds morale—everyone is responsible for the voice of the company, not just the higher ups. Additionally, a schedule keeps the blog regular and organized, and doesn’t leave the weight of blogging on one single employee.
- Be careful with comments. Replying to comments on your blog can open a can of worms. Hynes has thought long and hard about allowing comments on press releases on PRNewswire, and has come to the conclusion it would not be valuable. If you have a point of view, you’re confident in it, and it complies with your internal corporate policies, then replying to comments on your blog can establish your corporate voice more thoroughly. However, this type of engagement can be a waste of time and resources. Additionally, if your company is public, FCC regulations will apply. Whatever you decide to do, think long and hard about your corporate blog’s stance on replying to commentators—and develop a thorough corporate policy around the issue, so that your attitude remains consistent.
”Corporate Blogging Best Practices: Building Your Brand & Boosting Business Through Thought Leadership: was a fantastic webinar with many useful tips on creating an effective corporate blog presence. These tips are useful when it comes to maintaining our own blog at Communique PR, and can be effective for brands of all scales. Blogging is an excellent way to cultivate a corporate voice and establishing your company as a thought leader within its industry. Additionally, brands are able to insert themselves into topical conversations, which can result in media coverage and increased website traffic. However, as corporate blogs are a direct line of contact between a corporation and the public, they need to be carefully strategized and executed. Following PRNewswire’s best practices is an excellent way to strategize around your own corporate blog.
For more on corporate blogs, see:
- The 40 Best Corporate Blogs In The World, Simply Zesty
- 10 Tips for Corporate Blogging, Mashable
For more from Communique PR on corporate blogging & thought leadership, see:
- Creating a Corporate Blog
- Thought Leadership – what is it and why is it so important?
- The Power of Blogs
More and more consumers are making decisions based on reviews from online sites like Angie’s List and Yelp. In a perfect world, every customer would be a happy customer. Unfortunately, it is usually the disgruntled customer who chooses to leave a nasty review that can leave a brand feeling tarnished. In fact, eight out of ten consumers change their mind after seeing a bad review. So how should you respond to these reviews, both positive and negative? Here are some best practices to managing your reputation when it comes to online reviews.
1. Monitor: This is the first step. In order to respond and manage, you have to understand what is being said about your brand online. Google recently launched a free tool, “Me on the Web” that can help small businesses monitor online sentiment more easily. Similarly, Google Alerts is another free tool that will bring attention to any newly added reviews. Don’t forget to check sites like Facebook and Twitter; users are increasingly turning to social media to share their consumer experiences.
2. Participate: It’s important to respond to negative reviews. Whether it’s through a private message (Direct Message on Twitter) or a short apology and possible explanation, other consumers will see that you stand behind your brand. Feel free to respond to glowing reviews too, but whatever you decide to write, make sure it is thoughtful and appropriate for an open, online community.
3. Generate and Promote Reviews: Invite your consumers to share their experience online, and make it easy for them! Increasingly, brands have links from their website to review sites to facilitate sharing. While it may draw initial attention to any bad reviews you have, encouraging consumers to visit your website and leave their opinion will start to pay off. Transparency is key.
4. Engage with Influencers: Influencers tend to have a large following and their opinion holds weight online. By reaching out to them, or sending them your product and encouraging them to review it, you can reach a broader audience. While you can’t guarantee a glowing review, at the very least, influencers can garner attention and start an online conversation about your brand.
5. Report: If someone is leaving unwarranted and malicious reviews, you can reach out to the review site and request the review be taken down.
Feeling overwhelmed trying to sift through all the reviews? Be careful of companies offering to manage your reputation for you. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that small and mid-size businesses will spend $700 million on online brand management this year alone. Be wary of companies that promise to take down any nasty reviews, as they can cost a fortune and often rely on black-hat tactics. By employing these best practices and taking the time to engage with your consumers, your brand can enjoy a genuine, and authentic, positive sentiment online.
Personally, I find great value in reviews, both positive and negative. Aside from using them to decide where to eat on a Friday night, I am increasingly relying on review sites to help me find a new doctor or dentist. While there are many reviews sites, I could never find one site that showed an overall rating that had been aggregated from the top review sites. This is why I decided to publish a website that uses an algorithm to compile the best user-reviewed dentists across the country. That way, potential patients don’t have to sift through the review sites and can rely on our site to find the top dentists in the country. I am hoping that these types of sites will be the future of consumer-generated reviews to help consumers make the most educated decisions.
About the author: Alexis Goodrich is the brand manager at Best Dentist Guide, a free guide that helps in selecting the best professional for your dental needs. Find and compare top-rated dentists, based on ratings, patient reviews, specialized training and degrees, years of practice, convenience and several other factors. Follow her on Twitter, @alexisgoody and @bestdent1st, for more dental related topics.
As a faithful Seattle Seahawks fan, a win is a win in my book. However, after Monday night’s football game against the Green Bay Packers, others may not share my sentiment. For those who didn’t catch the game or for those who may have been living under a rock the past week and avoided every existing news outlet or social media channel, let me quickly recap.
Among football fans, it’s fairly common knowledge that the NFL referees union has been on strike (or locked out by the league) since before the official season started. For the past three weeks, replacement referees have officiated games and from the start, have been met with an onslaught of criticism for their series of blunders and ridiculously inaccurate calls. However, when Monday night’s replacement refs signaled a game-winning Seattle touchdown, while replays demonstrated the refs may have made the wrong call (again, as a Seahawks fan, I’ll refrain from commenting on the legitimacy of the ruling), it was enough to send angry football fans into overdrive.
Almost immediately, social media channels and media outlets lit up criticizing the NFL and sending the league into a PR crisis management firestorm. Even President Obama spoke out saying, “we’ve got to get our refs back” and top-tier sports media outlets such as Sports Illustrated claimed that the replacement refs have, “significantly impacted the NFL’s product on the field.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the NFL demonstrated that they’re willing to put an inferior product on the field all over a $3 million fight with the NFL Referees Association—pocket change for the $10 billion industry.
So how does the NFL recover from a debacle that opened them up to public scrutiny and damaged its reputation? Well, for starters, it likely pressured them to finally reach a deal with the referees union, with official refs making their season debut in last night’s game. However, while the NFL clearly took a hit to its image, many claim that if there’s a brand that can stand the test of poor PR decisions, it’s the NFL. Although football fans nationwide began questioning the integrity of the game, is it enough for them to take action and stop watching? Likely not.
While the NFL will undoubtedly come out on top of this fiasco, no organization is immune to a potential crisis and it is how you handle the situation that really counts. For tips on how to help prepare for a crisis and protect your brand, check out our blogs on What Not To Do in Crisis Communication and Key Elements of a Crisis Communication Plan.