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.
In June 2010, I wrote about how nonprofit organizations are using social media to achieve their fundraising goals. Today, I want to expand on this topic by sharing an article on Mashable that provides a list of 10 tools that make it easier for people and organizations to raise money. I found this article to be informative and helpful in light of the work Communiqué PR is doing for Seattle Children’s Hospital and other nonprofit organizations.
The tools which made Mashable’s list include:
1. FirstGiving – This is an online donation processing service. The basic account is free, but for $300 you can upgrade to a fully-customizable page for fundraising. The site can be used by nonprofit organizations or individuals wanting to raise money for a U.S. nonprofit.
2. Crowdrise – According to its website, Crowdwise is about volunteering, raising money for charity and having fun while doing it. It enables one to share fundraising campaigns via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
3. Kickstarter – This site is geared more toward artists, designers, filmmakers, etc. It is a new way to fund and follow creativity.
4. WhatGives – This organization offers a widget that according to Mashable, “you can use on Facebook or on your personal webpage to collect donations for your nonprofit.”
5. Change.org – This is a wonderful site for driving social change. In addition to being able to start a petition, this organization provides news and information about important social issues on a daily basis. It is committed to empowering people to take action.
6. ChipIn – According to Mashable, this is “one of the most popular donation widget tools on the web.” Apparently the ChipIn widget is a fairly simple Flash application that allows you to keep people in the loop on your fundraising activities.
7. Razoo – Razoo states that more than $20 million has been given to thousands of charities. The site has “options for individuals, non-profits, foundations and corporations to raise money for their causes.” In addition, Razoo makes it easy for people to take advantage of corporate matching programs.
8. Convio – This is fundraising software for nonprofit organizations. Its online marketing software suite includes tools for fundraising, advocacy, event fundraising, ecommerce, tribute/memorial sites, web content management, and e-mail marketing.
9. Facebook Causes – These pages on Facebook can be a wonderful way to share information about a nonprofit organization or cause.
10. StayClassy – This organization believes that “nonprofits shouldn’t have to pay thousands of dollars for fundraising software.” It allows charities to manage events, accept online donations and grow awareness leveraging social media.
As soon as I have some first-hand experience working with one or more of these tools, I will develop a follow-up blog post. In the meantime, I hope you’ll take a minute to check out the full article on Mashable, which is one of our favorite resources.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a new report yesterday about how Americans get news. I was not surprised to see the percentage of Americans that “read a newspaper” and “listened to radio news” declined during the past 10 years. Similarly, the fact that a third of Americans indicated that they “went online for news” was not unexpected.
Clearly, the way Americans access news has changed with the rise of the Internet and platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) highlighted the impact Twitter has had in news consumption in a recent blog post “Like it or not, Twitter is now a news medium.” As stated in that post, we have witnessed how news can break on Twitter (e.g. earthquake in New Zealand) or be used to follow a fast moving story (e.g. gas explosion in San Bruno, California).
However, what I did find interesting is that Americans are spending more time with the news overall. With “digital platforms playing a larger role in news consumption…”, “the average time Americans spend with the news on a given day is as high as it was in the mid-1990s, when audiences for traditional news sources were much larger” as a result.
The report also reveals that the public has an increasingly skeptical view of reporting from the major news organizations. Per the report, “No more than a third says they can believe all or most of the reporting by the major news organizations.”
As PR professionals it is not only important to understand how the public accesses news and what platforms are most popular, but also understand perceptions of the popular news outlets. At Communiqué PR we take an integrated approach with our clients, where we work with bloggers and non-traditional news outlets to establish credibility with target audiences and often, major news outlets can help amplify or broadcast information more broadly. If target audiences don’t find value in a particular news source, that is clearly going to impact who we build media relationships with and the strategies we develop to successfully distribute and elevate news with.
We will continue to monitor behaviors and perceptions to ensure our strategies and tactics take into consideration the realities of American’s preferences.
In an industry like ours, where we read tons and tons of articles on a daily basis, the necessity of an RSS reader outranks many other tools in our arsenal. Each morning, I start my day by opening up my reader and sifting through the many articles hoping to identify industry trends and news that are relevant to my clients.
Personally, I use Google Reader to organize my feeds and each of my clients has a dedicated folder within the tool. All publications that are deemed important or relevant to each client are subscribed to and filed their respective folders. I prefer Google Reader due to the simple, integrated search feature offered. Ever try to find that one article you read several weeks ago only to find you can’t remember where you saw it? Google Reader allows you to type in keywords, exactly like its parent search site, and voila! Up pops a list of potential matches found within your individual leader. The amount of time saved is worth its weight in gold.
GigaOm’s Dawn Foster admitted today that, like me, she is an “RSS Junkie.” As such, she’s learned how to skillfully navigate her Google Reader to maximize her productivity in the tool. She posted a great article today titled, “5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Reader,” that highlights several best practices she has honed.
Her tips include:
- Learn Keyboard Shortcuts – This is an incredible time saver, in and of itself. My favorites are the use of the “j” and “k” buttons to jump from article to article. No more scrolling for me!
- Go Full Screen – This is for those of us who are easily distracted by the many applications we have constantly running on the screen. Sometimes it’s worth it to give your full attention to a relevant article for a minute or two.
- Ditch the Homepage – Set your home page to the folder that you deem most important. This will eliminate the potential of getting distracted by the suggestions on the preset home page.
- Group and Prioritize – This should be mandatory if you use this tool. Lumping the feeds together (for example, by client) helps you to prioritize which feeds should be read right away, and which can wait for later.
- Use Trends – Found on the left side of your Google Reader, the trends provide valuable insight into where you spend your time. This is useful for those times when you need to trim the fat a bit; you’ll know which feeds are less useful to your work.
Do you have any other tips to add? Do you use another tool for your RSS feeds? I’d love to know if you have found anything more useful than Google Reader.
Communiqué PR was recently hired by Mud Bay, a provider of healthy foods, supplements and supplies for dogs and cats, to help promote its store openings on Mercer Island, Redmond and Gig Harbor.
Mud Bay’s marketing objectives are to drive broad consumer awareness of these new locations as well as to build relationships with key influencers such as vets, trainers, doggy day cares, groomers, pet groups and shelters.
Communiqué partnered with Mud Bay to create a fun event to attract pet owners to the store openings. The first ‘Bite of Mud Bay’ event will be held this Sun., Sept. 12 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Mercer Island store and will feature pet-inspired booths with nutritional information and demonstrations to promote good pet health. On the main stage, there will be a variety of presentations focusing on nutrition, grooming and exercise for both dogs and cats.
In addition to helping with the event concept and logistics, Communiqué PR identified key influentials and conducted outreach to 1) raise awareness of Mud Bay’s presence in the community, 2) secure experts’ interest in leading sessions on the main stage and 3) promote ‘Bite of Mud Bay’ through flyers, editorial coverage and leveraging social media. Communiqué secured 10 hosted booths and four main stage presenters including the Seattle Humane Society and Bark Avenue.
We also contacted the local media to inform them of the event and provided information about the ‘Bite of Mud Bay’ to the local publications with calendar listings. This resulted in event listings with the Seattle PI, KING 5 and 425 Magazine among others. The Mercer Island Reporter and the Seattle PI both ran news stories about the event as a result of our outreach.
We are looking forward to the event this Sunday and hope you (and your pets) will consider joining us. If you’re considering an event to support your marketing objectives, we’d be delighted to help you with the planning and implementation of it.
Prior to the arrival of mass blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Tumblr & Blogger, product reviews were the bread and butter of a new or updated product’s world debut. PR pros would enlist key reviewers from the most influential publications to honor an embargo, and in return, receive shiny new hardware or a snazzy software package to test drive before it was available to the public. The grand idea being that these reviewers would publish favorable opinions on the day of the product launch and influence consumers to purchase said new product.
While Apple is repeatedly cited as an example, I chose to highlight the company because it presents strong examples for why a reviews program can be successful as well as how it can backfire.
Exhibit A: For every version of the iPhone we’ve seen to date, Apple gives early models of their new phones to top-tier reviewers such as Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue of The New York Times and one or two other reviewers who are deemed influential. These early reviews typically show up on the Wednesday before the device was publicly available and drive consumers and other reporters wild with envy. What would ensue were HUGE lines of people fighting over the sometimes 20-25 devices available on launch day at each Apple store, while the rest of the country anxiously buzzed about when they would be able to get their hands on a device of their own. In this instance, product reviews drove consumer excitement and maddening sales figures. This seems like a successful reviews program to me.
Exhibit B: Recently when Apple’s newest iPhone 4 had issues with its antenna, Consumer Reports publicly recommended against purchasing the device. What resulted can only be described as a metaphorical lynch mob. Consumers demanded a response from Apple, who remained silent for several days, and complained loudly via every medium available about the woes of owning an iPhone 4. Apple was forced to publicly acknowledge the issue and provide free cases for all iPhone 4 users. In this instance, not properly addressing concerns first brought to light in a product review actually damaged the company’s reputation and cost it more money.
As with my second example, you can’t hide from product reviews. However, since anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account or a blog can instantly become a reviewer, running a successful and strategic reviewers program, as in my first example, has become significantly more difficult. Which brings me around to the question, are product reviews still relevant? How can consumers tell the difference between a biased reviewer and an unbiased one? Do consumers even care about the biases of reviewers? Would a consumer find a review from a friend or colleague makes more of an impact on their purchasing decisions than a journalist?
Here are a few of my thoughts:
- Product reviews are still relevant because they help drive buzz about a product or service, which effects sales figures. I recommend not forgoing a reviews program just because it may be difficult to manage.
- If a reviewer has problems or issues with your product, do your best to listen and promptly acknowledge and address the situation. Most people are forgiving of problems, but they aren’t forgiving of being ignored or pacified.
- Accept the good reviews and the bad. While products go through their testing paces before being released to market, it’s difficult to test for every way someone may use it in the real world. Be gracious to a reviewer that has uncovered a glitch or shortcoming, and be sure to send that feedback to the development team.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on reviews and how much time and effort PR pros should spend on this part of a PR plan.
This week there have been two high-profile media embargos broken causing a firestorm of tweets and finger pointing. The two embargoes included the launch of Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature and Autodesk’s announcement that it will bring AutoCAD to the Mac platform.
With the rise of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, it seems the terms of embargoes are more frequently broken, leaving reporters frustrated and jeopardizing relationships between PR folks and the media. Last night, in response to the broken embargoes this week, founder of GigaOM, Om Malik tweeted that perhaps, “it is time to give the embargo and obeying them the heave-ho.” And Robert Scoble, a prominent blogger shared his distaste for embargoes.
As PR professionals the embargo has offered a wonderful way to share upcoming news with reporters and pre-brief them in advance of publicly disseminating the announcement. This advance notice allows reporters to gather relevant details, coordinate interviews and develop their article for publication at the time the embargo lifts. Embargoes also allow organizations to control when the information is shared publicly and can be particularly useful when a story is complicated or will likely have wide interest from a variety of media.
I will definitely reconsider my use of embargoes in the future but am not ready to say goodbye completely. Share your thoughts, will you use or agree to an embargo moving forward? Have your criteria for offering or agreeing to an embargoed changed in light of these recent incidents? For more information on the topic, check out this post we wrote on exclusives in April 2010.