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.
Twitter is one of the most valued social media platforms utilized today by organizations and brands who seek to engage and interact with their target audiences. However, if you have one of the 200-plus million registered accounts on Twitter responsible for driving more than 110 million tweets per day, it can be easy to get lost in the conversations.
It is likely that in the early days of your presence on Twitter, you watched the numbers of followers quickly rise as your employees (along with their family and friends), current customers and partners all subscribed to get the latest news on your company. But have you recently reached a plateau in which you are no longer attracting new followers? Or perhaps you have seen a dip as followers choose to unfollow you?
I recently came across a useful article on SocialMediaExaminer.com that shared “4 Tips to Maximize Your Twitter Marketing.” The tips serve as a good reminder on the basics of using Twitter as part of an engagement strategy. We thought it might be helpful to highlight some of the tips shared in this article, in addition to a few other ideas we have learned through our own engagement on Twitter.
- Define your business goals and objectives. When we develop PR strategies for our clients with a social media component, we examine what we want to accomplish by using Twitter and set metrics to measure our engagement against. It’s important that this strategy closely aligns with the organization’s overall business goals and objectives. However once you have an established Twitter presence it’s always a good idea to revisit these goals one to two times a year to make sure they continue to align with your social media strategy. Additionally it’s a good idea to analyze how the community has responded, since launching your presence, as this may also help drive any changes in the strategy.
- Create your conversation strategy. Twitter is about building a community and your success thrives on the ability to form a relationship with your followers. The article suggests “thinking through your conversation strategy and put it in place before you invest time in searching for new people to follow.” At Communiqué PR, we often develop an editorial calendar to ensure we are developing content that aligns with the company’s story arc. In addition, it also allows us to evaluate if we have the right balance of company news, conversation starters and other interesting industry news.
- Organize your community with Twitter Lists. Twitter provides this functionality for a reason – to make it easier for you to focus your engagement with your followers. By breaking up a community into lists, you gain a better understanding of what they are up to and the conversations that are meaningful for them. If you are not familiar with this feature, Twitter provides a great tutorial on how to create them.
- Nurture your Twitter community. It is important to recognize that it takes time and commitment to build a community. The article makes a great recommendation to keep your engagement in perspective and to “start small and build over time” by following a handful of people each week. When we have new followers on our own Twitter channel, we often spend a few minutes to get to know each of them by reading their profile and tweet stream. It provides us with a greater sense of what type of information they value and share with their followers.
What has worked well for you when building your community on Twitter? Do you find the Twitter Lists feature helpful to engage with your community?
Adoption of social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube has been significant, and according to CMO.com it is anticipated that “CMOs will invest more in social media this year than ever before.” Earlier this year, CMO.com launched its 2nd Annual Guide to: The Social Landscape in an effort to capture the social media landscape.
While the CMO.com guide offers tips on nine social media platforms, new platforms continue to emerge and attract attention and members everyday such as Quora, Empire Avenue and Ning. For a complete list of active social media networking sites check out Wikipedia – but be ready, the list is extensive. It is easy to reach platform overload.
For most marketing professionals, the social media platforms with hundreds of millions of active members continue to draw the majority of their resources and attention, and the benefits of even the most popular networks differ greatly. Just last week, we wrote about how LinkedIn compares to several other networks and outlined the different pros and cons (The Value of LinkedIn vs. Other Social Media Networks).
Clearly, as communicators, we need to stay up to speed on these new platforms and understand which networks will be most effective and efficient in reaching our target audiences in order to support an organization’s business objectives. Is the best platform the one with the largest number of active members? Or is there a niche platform that may not have reached the masses yet, but specifically caters to a critical target demographic?
Ironically, we utilize some of these same social networks to stay informed of new entrants. We also look to resources such as Mashable, TechCrunch, Soshable, and Social Media Examiner to become aware of changes in the landscape.
How do you stay up on the changing social media scene? What platforms are you investing in today?
Cause marketing campaigns can be an effective way for companies to engage with customers and encourage them to feel emotionally connected to a particular product or service. The value of these types of campaigns can not only help win new customers and build customer loyalty, but also increase awareness and sales of product.
According to Wikipedia, “cause marketing or cause-related marketing refers to a type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a “for-profit” business and a nonprofit organization for mutual benefit.”
There have been countless (and memorable) examples of cause marketing campaigns including:
- Yoplait packaged specific products with pink lids as part of its “Save Lids to Save Lives” campaign in support of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For each lid that consumers turned in, the company donated 10 cents to the organization.
- Cheerios teamed up with the American Heart Association to secure its stamp of approval on its products to help promote the fact that Cheerios met the Associations’ low-fat, low-cholesterol standards.
- Product Red, one the largest cause-related marketing campaigns ever created included participation from some of the most well-known brands to support The Global Fund to Fight AIDS. Created by Bono to engage the private sector in raising awareness and funds to help eliminate AIDS in Africa, Product Red included a series of campaigns with companies such as Apple, Nike, Motorola, Starbucks and The Gap.
- Back in 1983 American Express launched a campaign to help raise money for the Statue of Liberty Restoration project. A penny for each use of the American Express card, and a dollar for each new card issued were given to the Statue of Liberty renovation program.
So how do you determine which cause or organization makes most sense to partner with to launch a mutually beneficial campaign? Consider the following tips by Kim Gordon, who recently wrote an article “How to Start a Cause Marketing Campaign,” for Entrepreneur:
- Designate a product and donate a portion of its sales to charity. Also known as passive customer participation, helping a nonprofit this way is possibly the easiest and fastest way to jump into cause-marketing. It’s essential to choose an organization your target audience will value and want to support. It can be a national nonprofit — such as one that funds cancer research or cleans up the environment — or a local charity.
- Create and sell a symbolic item. This strategy asks the customer to take an active role in the giving process, and requires a more aggressive public relations and advertising campaign. It involves creating and marketing an item that allows customers to physically demonstrate their support for a designated cause. This can be an item they wear or carry, such as a tote bag, T-shirt or bracelet emblazoned with a supportive and inspiring message.
- Sponsor a special event. If you’re looking for a high-profile way to support a cause, then creating a fundraising event could be the best strategy. Traditional events include everything from 10K runs and bike-a-thons to banquets. Keep in mind, the more creative you are with these events, the better your results are likely to be.
- Provide grassroots help. One tried-and-true strategy for lower-profile corporate giving is to donate staff time to make a difference in your community at the grassroots level. It’s smart to align your giving with your company’s primary business. This will not only aid the nonprofit you choose, but also help your customers remember what your company stands for. For example, each store in the Whole Foods Market chain donates food to local food banks and shelters and holds community giving days during which five percent of net sales are donated to a local nonprofit.
Once you have a cause marketing campaign in place, PR and social media can be a terrific way to get the word out and encourage engagement. This could include a combination of traditional and online media relations tactics such as a press release, buddy e-mail, and/or developing a calendar of tweets and Facebook posts.
Have you launched a successful cause marketing campaign? We want to hear about it! Leave a comment or send us an email.
In case you missed it, there was study released today by ROI Research, Inc. stating that users think it’s more important to have a LinkedIn account than any other type of network. The news got me thinking about my use of social media and what constitutes as value around social media.
I agree for professional use, LinkedIn is extremely valuable. We are currently recruiting for an account manager or account director, and I have spent significant time on LinkedIn perusing professional’s backgrounds, looking at the comments others have posted about them and examining individuals’ experience. We also have found LinkedIn to be a wonderful way to advertise positions.
Nonetheless, I would be hard pressed to say LinkedIn is more valuable than Facebook or Twitter. With Facebook, I have been able to connect with people on a more personal or social manner. I have re-connected with long-lost relatives and college friends who have moved half way around the world.
Twitter also serves a unique purpose in my personal and professional life. I use it to find out about breaking news, solicit information or opinions, or find out what is trending around the world.
Just like there are different TV networks or channels devoted to specific content such as drama, sports or news, the different social networks serve unique purposes in our lives and I don’t think you can say one is more important than another.
Last week, I came across an interesting question on Dave Fleet’s blog that his colleague at Edelman Rob Clark first raised, “Is Share of Voice a Useless PR Metric?” My initial reaction was that measuring a brand or company’s share of voice is still very much a valuable PR metric, especially given today’s competitive market place and the prominence of social media in driving awareness and shaping perceptions.
After further reading, Clark stresses that measuring a company’s share of voice is more than simply collecting and counting volume of clips or mentions, but rather a deeper analysis of understanding the “mindshare” or perception of a company in relation to its competitors, analyzing the tone, message pull through and quality of coverage. At Communiqué PR, we could not agree more with this philosophy.
When conducting research to measure our clients’ share of voice, we look beyond the metrics measuring the number of online mentions and total impressions to analyze the sentiment value not only for our clients, but that of their competitors as well. This insight enables us to modify components of a campaign or strategy to achieve a more advantageous outcome and match business goals.
We thought we would share some of our best practices when analyzing share of voice that may be helpful to you in your own analysis.
- Identify your top competitors. We recommend selecting two or three top competitors in the industry that closely matches your core business offerings. If you select more than this, or competitors who have a broader scope of services, your share of voice will be smaller as a result and much more difficult to monitor long-term.
- Identify the key messages. Presuming your company has developed effective key messages, measuring how often these messages percolate through your media coverage should be easy to quantify. If they are not being picked up, it is an indicator that either they are not resonating with media or perhaps the spokesperson may need a refresher on media training.
- Determine values for tone and types of coverage. Creating consistent values for measurement of tone are key to understanding sentiment. For instance, did the article position your company positively or negatively? It is also important to assign values to consistently rank the types of coverage. As an example, consider that a feature story will have more weight, especially if a third-party influencer is included in the coverage as compared to a re-posting of a press release. However, do not discount the value of re-posts of a press release as it can help to increase your search engine optimization.
- Determine your share of discussion. Finally, if the coverage features both you and a direct competitor, examine how much of the story focuses on your company and/or quotes from your company executive. If your competitor receives more air time, examine if it is because the piece is a sponsored post or perhaps a suggested topic your competitor presented to the reporter, a detail your PR partner may be able to identify when evaluating the media opportunity beforehand.
By establishing your parameters and metrics for evaluation at the onset, it will be easier to gather meaningful data to measure results for your company against your competitors, and also establish a consistent framework for the future. Be aware, however, that this analysis can be a time consuming task and depending upon your organization’s goals and budget, the analysis may only be needed at the onset and conclusion of a campaign, or perhaps in a long-term relationship with your agency to measure effectiveness.
Do you have any other tips or best practices to share? Leave us a comment.
Whenever a client has a photo-shoot for new headshots, we invariably are asked about attire and to provide counsel on what he or she should wear. It is a fair and smart question because what one wears conveys a lot about personality and individual brand. Given these questions from clients, I was eager to read Kate Betts’ book, Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style.
It is a wonderful book with excellent photos and is a quick read – focused on Michelle Obama’s style and how she is influencing women and their thoughts on dress. According to Betts, for some reason in our country women have felt that style and substance are mutually exclusive. Most women can live in one area or the other, but not both, asserts Betts.
She goes on to explain that some First Ladies seem to use style to enhance their husband’s administration, power and influence, while other First Ladies leverage politics. Michelle Obama seems to combine both style and substance seamlessly.
Ms. Obama is willing to stand out whereas most people dress to fit in or conform. She has been sleeveless in Congress, gone barefoot on the south lawn of the Whitehouse and touched the Queen. She is well-educated, substantial, and stylish, and it shows in her personal wardrobe choices.
The next time you’re getting dressed for an important event in your life, think about the power of your personal style. Are you willing to push boundaries or simply fit in? Do you exude confidence, playfulness, or strength? Find examples of people you admire and notice what they reveal about themselves, and their company or brand, by the way they dress or accessorize.
Finally, if you’re having a headshot taken, keep these tips in mind:
- Dress in a manner that is consistent with your personality and the spirit of your company.
- Remember that colors, textures and patterns will appear different in a photo than in real life. If you are not sure how an outfit will appear in an image, have someone take a test shot for you.
- Color often conveys power and can help you standout, but you do want to avoid any color or pattern that will distract from your face.
- Cameras will pick up wrinkles, so select a shirt or dress that is not prone to them.
- Finally, consider where you’ll stand. If a news outlet is sending a photographer to your office, scout a location or background that conveys the personality of your company.