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 many PR professionals and marketers may agree, the ability to prioritize multiple assignments and stay on track with a myriad of projects requires strong organizational skills. Recently at Communiqué PR, we started utilizing Smartsheet.com for our project management needs and to facilitate online collaboration.
Introduced by the Bellevue-based company in 2006, Smartsheet.com is an online tool for tracking any type of work. Whether your focus is in marketing, sales, human resources or project management, the Smartsheet project management and collaboration tool can help. Every Smartsheet account is unique and secure. It provides a workspace whereby information can be imported and shared (by invite only) with an unlimited number of people whether they are inside or outside your organization.
For instance, we use Smartsheet.com on behalf of one of our clients, Verdiem. All of our current PR activities are listed by task name and include the anticipated start and finish date as well as who they’re assigned to. We have access to the sheet, which was created by our client, and the PR team in the U.K. also has access to the sheet. This enables us to see the status of particular activities and ensure we’re not duplicating efforts.
We have found the tool to be incredibly helpful, straightforward and convenient. We use Smartsheet for synchronizing the development of press releases, projects for clients, case studies and tracking speaking opportunities. With its Excel-like appearance, it is fast and simple to update and we can update it from any computer with an Internet connection.
As you can see in the image, everything I need to stay on track is in one space, at my fingertips. Each day I use it, I need my notebook less and less. Here are a few other noteworthy reasons why I think Smartsheet.com is especially helpful for PR teams and marketers:
- Project planning and task management: Users can conveniently monitor progress of projects from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an Internet connection. This feature is great for off-site meetings since we can literally take our work materials with us. The grid and calendar views, under the toolbar ‘view’ button, provide flexibility in monitoring personal progress. I feel more confident and focused with project planning and setup because I can see all of my deadlines displayed on one spreadsheet when I am in or out of the office.
- Version control and collaboration: Smartsheet assists us with collaboration across organizational boundaries. For team efforts, Smartsheet helps with version control, preventing replications, saving time and energy. As mentioned above, we can also collaborate with clients.
- Easy to use templates: There are a variety of Smartsheet templates to choose from, depending on the task or team objective. For instance, those interested in marketing or project management can chose from project tracker, issue tracker, event management and marketing department goals templates. These templates are motivating as they visually conceptualize the status of any project as well as future steps needed to reach end results and due dates.
- Goals: One of the main appeals of using Smartsheet is its goal-oriented interface. With timing of the essence in PR, social media, marketing and event planning, managing work from an omnipresent, cloud-based platform helps us keep sight of what we wish to achieve. Additionally, there is a discussion box where users can add notes at the bottom of task lists and chat about desired objectives and outcomes.
This tool is integrated with other technology partners including Google Apps, Box, Salesforce, Zimbra and Amazon web services. According to Smartsheet.com, the award-winning tool is trusted by more than 10,000 subscribing organizations in more than 100 countries. These numbers are not surprising considering the numerous customer success stories that the company has posted on its website.
If you are managing a team and looking to improve collaboration and coordination, we highly recommend checking out Smartsheet.com.
With so much content and information being shared on the Internet today, visuals are regularly used to captivate and engage readers beyond the written word. In addition, the speed at which information is now being shared is reshaping how we absorb media. For example, take the rise of Pinterest, the online scrapbook of images which are often sourced from various media stories and blogs. According to comScore as reported by TechCrunch, “Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history.”
There is no doubt imagery and video have the power to engage and entertain us, and the ability to educate and influence. One visual in particular – the infographic – offers a great way of looking at information in a compelling and digestible way. We have talked about the rise infographics on our blog before and why organizations should consider harnessing the power of these visuals.
I recently did some additional research about how to create a compelling infographic for a project we are working on with a client, and came across some interesting – and fun – tools to use.
- What About Me? If you’re still not convinced how infographics can communicate complex information, try this free infographic generator from Intel to create a “colorful snapshot of the most fascinating subject in the world – You!” This tool allows you to create infographics based on your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube activities, categorizing when and what you post on all three networks, and even evaluates the average tone of your messages. Once complete, you can download it to share via your social media channels.
- Wordle. Wordle is a “toy” created by Jonathan Feinberg that generates word clouds from text that you provide. By entering in a bunch of text or the URL of any blog, blog feed or web page with an Atom or RSS feed, you will get a word cloud featuring the words most prominently used in the source text. Words with greater prominence will appear differently than those that do not. You can even modify your cloud with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The word cloud featured in this post is created using the Communiqué PR blog.
- Creately. With this free tool, you can create a diagram or flow chart for anything from a database diagram to a family tree. When you start, you simply select from a number of diagram types and can either create your own from scratch or select a template to use. You then add in your data to create a professional-looking visual to use however needed. Apparently this tool also promotes greater collaboration among teams, which I will need to check out further for our own use here.
Naturally, there are a number of tools and resources available to help you get started in creating infographics. What tools or tips have you found helpful when creating infographics? Have you found information is grasped more easily when conveyed in an infographic?
Many companies are leveraging Facebook as a fun, interactive way to engage customers and increase brand loyalty. Given there are currently more than 845 million active users on Facebook, it’s likely that you’re reaching customers through a platform where they’re already highly active, which creates a low barrier to entry and provides an easy way for customers to interact with your brand. Since building a brand presence on Facebook can seem like a daunting task, last year, we provided companies with guidelines, tools and tricks to help get them started.
However, once a company goes through the steps to create a page, there are still several questions around the most effective ways to engage with fans. Although it sometimes feels like Facebook has been with us forever, the reality is, Facebook pages for businesses are still relatively new. Given this, we want to share research from Buddy Media, a social enterprise software solution, that helps to uncover the answers to some frequently asked questions from businesses around how often to post, what types of posts will drive the most engagement, etc.
Some key takeaways from the research include:
- Wednesday is the Day to Post: Although most brands publish evenly throughout the work week, engagement rates spike on Wednesday.
- Don’t Post too Many Times in a Day: Facebook users engage 40 percent more with less than three posts a day from a given brand.
- Short Posts Work Best: Posts with 80 characters or less receive 66 percent higher engagement.
- Questions Get Fans Talking: Posting questions generate more than double the amount of comments than non-question posts.
- Post During Non–Busy Hours: Engagement is 17 percent lower during “busy” hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Given this, the best time to post is 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. when fans aren’t at work, and remember you can use a tool like HootSuite to pre-schedule your posts.
- Fill in the Blank is the Best Structure: This is one of the most underutilized post techniques, but one of the most engaging. Brands that utilize the fill in the blank strategy (i.e. I like to do “blank” on a sunny day) generate comment rates nine times higher than other posts.
Follow these tips and you’ll be on the right track to increasing your Facebook engagement. Also, remember to keep your content fresh and informal. The great thing about social media is that it gives your customers a human connection to your company so make sure to showcase your brand in a way that’s authentic and relatable.
Over the past several weeks, I have been working with a client to redefine her company’s social media presence and engagement across its Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube channels. While the company has been actively sharing content on these platforms for more than two years, it wants to amplify its presence to drive further awareness and engagement among key influencers.
Like other managers often ask when launching – or broadening – their company’s online engagement, my client asked “what should we be doing and what type of content should we be sharing?”
Unlike other traditional marketing tactics where you broadcast your company’s message to an audience, social media is all about engagement. With social media, it is important to share compelling and credible content, but even more importantly, that content should be shared in an authentic, genuine way. Your followers on these social media platforms are human beings who are seeking a human connection with your brand.
I’ve recently noticed the topic of creating “authentic online engagement” trending among a few of my go-to online sites about social media, including Mashable.com. In a post written by Valerie Buckingham, who is the Head of North American Marketing for Nokia, she shared some great advice on how brands can keep social media outreach authentic. Below are the key takeaways:
- Identify a Variety of “Individuals.” In her post, Valerie stresses the importance of having a variety of individuals who work within the company participate in its social media engagement. Leveraging the bench strength of other experts within the company is also one of the recommendations I shared with my client, particularly when developing blog content or participating on LinkedIn. By doing so, it provides the company’s followers with a glimpse into its leadership and culture as they share a “real human perspective” on a topic. Valerie also shared the importance of the “individual” when thinking about your audience, and not to “assume they are a homogeneous mass.” She offered, “as you develop a social communications plan, take into consideration whether this audience is just getting to know your brand or if they are loyal customers.”
- The Importance of Listening. As discussed in countless industry blogs, articles, case studies and at conferences, listening to your audience is essential when it comes to social media. Knowing what interests your audience will help you in the development of meaningful content and engagement. You can learn what is important to them by monitoring discussions about your brand or simply posing a question to capture their feedback. Just be sure to respond back to comments – both positive and negative – with a positive response, to continue to build that authentic engagement.
- “Keeping it Real.” In Valerie’s post, she cited a great example of how KLM studied the social media profiles of travelers who mentioned their KLM flight via Twitter or Foursquare, and developed materials “such as a travel book for the hopelessly lost or a sports watch for the casual runner” to send to these frequent airline travelers. These targeted, custom “random acts of kindness” created some happy travelers who were more than willing to chat about KLM on Twitter. And nothing is better than having customers talk about your brand in an authentically positive manner.
- The Golden Rule. We have seen all too often examples of a brand’s reputation tarnished due to an ill-crafted post, response or remark. Take for instance how Netflix and the public backlash against the price increase and launch of Qwikster. The company leveraged its blog to communicate to consumers about the changes to its service, but failed to articulate how these changes would benefit the consumer. As Valerie points out, it is important to think about what your message means to your audience and how it might be interpreted. All of your efforts to engage authentically with your audience “hinges on what you say next.”
In previous posts, we have touched upon the importance of creating valuable content that connects and engages with your readers. But as we – myself included – continue to follow brands on social media, there is a real desire to feel a human connection with the person who wrote that post, almost as if they wrote it just for me.
Next time when you’re drafting a blog post or sharing an update on Facebook or Twitter, think about crafting it in a way as you would communicate with someone over a cup of coffee. You can still have an intelligent conversation in a casual setting, but your personality typically comes through. And engaging on social media should not be any different.
We all have something we think we’re good at – our work, parenting, a hobby, driving – but how do we really know if we’re achieving our best? Professionally, there are the external rewards, of course – a client landed, promotion, a deal closed, a bonus earned – but do these things truly reflect our aptitude at a given task or set of tasks?
A few months ago I read a great article that talked about benefits that coaching can bring to professionals, even experienced ones (and we’re not talking about “life coaches” here). The author, Dr. Atul Gawande, is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a Harvard-trained surgeon (he’s also written several insightful books, including the incredible “The Checklist Manifesto”). The article describes Dr. Gawande’s own experiences with enlisting a “coach” – in his case, a retired surgeon and past instructor – to observe him during surgery.
What struck me about this article was that the coaches didn’t focus on results. Instead, they focused on the little things individuals – a surgeon or math teacher, for example – can do to enhance their performance. Even the most introspective and attentive among us, Dr. Gawande argues, could benefit from an experienced practitioner nudging us toward better work. It’s individuals doing the little things well, he points out, that collectively lead to positive results.
He describes, for example, how the famous UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden, would show his team how to put on their socks. Failure to properly put on your socks, Coach Wooden argued, would lead to blisters. Blisters would lead to poor individual performance. And poor individual performance would lead to poor team performance. In one of Dr. Gawande’s coaching sessions, his coach found that the patient had been draped in a way that limited his assistants’ ability to help him. The result, though not catastrophic, had been to limit the effectiveness of the entire team.
Success is directly tied to the little, seemingly meaningless tasks that encompass our work. With experience, we learn to tie these tasks together in ways that work for us and that, hopefully, produce the desired result for the whole. Dr. Gawande’s article reminded me that all of us, even surgeons, can benefit from a course correction now and then, and that there really are no little things when it comes to your particular vocation.
Or driving.
Proactively sharing news and speaking with reporters is what most people think of when they think about public relations, but monitoring mentions of your brand in coverage and social media channels is a key part of being a PR professional.
Tracking results in coverage and social media can help you evaluate the success of a campaign, raise awareness of potential crises or rumors being spread about your brand, and can help you keep an overall pulse on how your company is being portrayed in the media. We want to share a few tools that can help you accurately track mentions of your brand in news coverage, social media channels and more.
For Big Budgets ($1,000+ per month)
If you’ve allocated a thousand or more dollars of your PR/marketing budget each month to coverage tracking, a professional coverage monitoring service, like Meltwater, could be up your alley. It offers an extensive and international search service, detailed reporting, and has a consultant or two on duty to assist you and customize your reports. High-end services like this tend to run a few thousand dollars per month, especially if you want to add social media tracking to your package.
While Meltwater offers a comprehensive solution, the price point makes tools like this out of reach for most of our clients.
For Moderate Spenders ($10 – $999 per month)
If your budgets aren’t sky-high, tools like BrandsEye or trackur might be more your speed. They offer thorough, accurate tracking for monthly fees that total less than a thousand dollars (including a few plans that are less than $100 per month). Solutions such as these usually have some limitations, such as the number of search terms you can enter or the level of customer support you’ll receive from the company.
While you may not get the VIP treatment as you would with the more expensive solutions, these mid-range tools do the job for most of the customers we work with, offering straightforward reporting and easy-to-use interface that makes coverage monitoring intuitive and more fun.
For Penny Pinchers (free options)
Let’s face it; most of us don’t want to spend anything on brand monitoring. We’d rather use those dollars for proactive campaigns or the development of a strategic story pitch. But don’t worry,there are still tools that get the job done for those looking for a free ride when it comes to coverage monitoring.
Google Alerts remains one of the most popular free tools to track mentions and keywords in coverage. You can opt to receive notifications in real-time or once per day, making it easy to review coverage when you want. Also, you can use Google Alerts whether you have an account with Google or not.
There are some free social media monitoring tools out there too, such as SocialMention that not only show you what people are saying about your brand, but also provide some basic analytics and reporting.
What are the downsides to these free tools? They aren’t always as thorough or accurate as paid services. They also don’t always have the robust measurement tools or reporting your organization might be looking for, like sentiment reports or being able to monitor for a specific timeframe. But if basic coverage tracking or social mentions is all you need, these options are great.
Has your organization tried any other tools that you like or don’t like? Do you think the investment in brand monitoring tools is worth the investment? Let us know in the comments.