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.
Just a little over a year ago I graduated from Washington State University with a degree in public relations. While I learned a lot about the PR world and am grateful for the opportunity, not one of my classes focused on social media. Interestingly, after a quick scan of this year’s course catalog, I still see no mention of social media. Now that I have been working at Communiqué PR for a couple of months, it is clear how important social media is in the PR and business world these days.
Many of our clients are looking to integrate social media with ongoing PR activities, and we are not the only firm experiencing this need. As I was reading Advertising Age, I came across an article entitled “How Social Media Is Helping Public-Relations Sector Not Just Survive, but Thrive.” The article details how social media has played a role in the resurgence of PR during the current economic downturn. A few of the points that I found to be most valuable:
- Three-quarters of the 59 agency CEOs and CFOs surveyed by the Council of PR Firms reported growth in the first half of 2010 vs. 21 percent in 2009.
- Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm that publishes annual reports on the state of the PR industry, reported that “growth in the industry is being accelerated by a significantly increased rate of client adoption of social media and word-of-mouth marketing techniques.”
- “PR, up until now, wasn’t central to a corporation’s overall branding strategy. There is now an opportunity for the PR profession and practitioners to use these digital tools and make PR a more important part of the communications arsenal,” said John Suhler, co-founder and president of Veronis Shuler Stevenson
A lot of the work that we’re doing at Communiqué surrounds helping businesses leverage social media to help reach their audiences and drive their business objectives forward. Whether it’s developing a social media strategy, providing counsel on a corporate social media policy, or educating executives on how to use social media platforms, it’s becoming critical that social media continues to play a significant role in PR and business.
As this trends continues, it is equally important to teach college students the importance of social media and how best to harness the platforms to achieve success.
In an effort to get to know its Facebook Fans better, NPR recently asked them to participate in a survey. The news outlet’s goal was to get to know its more than one million fans better – and the survey was overwhelmingly successful in helping it achieve this goal with more than 40,000 people participating.
NPR then shared the key findings, which I found to be quite interesting and relevant for the work we are doing for Communiqué PR clients. If you missed this information, it is posted online and can be found here.
A few of the points that I found to be most valuable:
- NPR learned that its Twitter and Facebook fans appear to be more mutually exclusive than it assumed. “Interestingly, fewer than 1 in 10 (8.4%) follow NPR on Twitter.” This was a surprise to NPR as it has twice as many fans on Twitter than on Facebook.
- Posting frequency was something NPR struggled with when it first started posting links to news on Facebook. I found this section of NPR’s survey results article to be most helpful as many of our clients ask for counsel about how frequently to share information. Apparently, when the folks at NPR first began using Facebook they were “posting more than 20 items per day.” This proved to be way too much for the fan base. After some trial and error, NPR found the magic number to be around 8-10 posts per day. However, Andy Carvin, senior strategist with NPR’s social media desk, and Noel Cody, internal research with NPR, believe that other publishers of information on Facebook would find that 8 to 10 items would be far too much for their followers and cite research to support this claim.
- Facebook is a “major way in which [NPR’s] fans receive news and information from NPR.” These people also expect their friends to share news with them.
There are many more observations and conclusions NPR has drawn from its survey. If you are leveraging Facebook or Twitter for your company or organization, I strongly encourage you to read this article and glean for yourself the many salient points which may be relevant to you.
A lot has changed about college since I attended the University of Puget Sound years ago. And while students today are much more digitally-focused – with e-mail, social networks, online news and more – the reality is most textbooks are not yet available as e-books. This means students will still need to search out and buy physical books in preparation for the start of a new term.
When I was in college, I either purchased the books new or used from the school bookstore or was lucky enough to buy books used from another student. At the end of the term, I was thrilled to sell my books back to the bookstore or to other students and pocket some extra cash. Today, students have a variety of ways to buy, or even rent their books online,
- Purchase new or used from online store,
- Purchase used from individuals via sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Amazon Marketplace etc.,
- Rent new or used from online service.
We recently started working with Bookbyte, a company that buys and sells textbooks online and I was surprised to learn the number of options available to students for securing school textbooks.
For the cash strapped student, renting books sounds like a great option, but it is important they read the fine print and to be disciplined about taking great care of their rented books and returning them on time. Failing to return your rented book on time, accessing marking in the text or the theft of a rented book can result in costing a student a lot more than estimated.
As the back-to-school rush is getting underway, there have been a number of articles about textbook rental. Many of these articles tout rental as a way for students to save money, however they only offer part of the story.
Renting a textbook may sound good because the upfront cost is less than buying the textbook, yet in many instances the student will end up paying more for the use of that book than they would have if they bought the text used and sold it back at the end of the term. Clearly, if you do not have the money to buy the textbook, then rental may be the right answer for you. However, buying used and selling the textbook at the end of the term offers the lowest overall cost.
To illustrate this point, Bookbyte recently compared the costs associated with renting and buying a specific book, the seventh edition of, “Project Management: A Managerial Approach” by Jack Meredith and Samuel Mantel. The analysis revealed buying the book used and selling it back at the end of the term would save a student 29 percent or roughly $18 over renting the same book. Multiply that savings by five, which is the average number of textbooks a student needs per term according to a 2009 report from Student Monitor, and a student could save an estimated $90 per semester.
So if you are a student (or a parent of a student), it may make sense for you to look online to buy or sell used textbooks. You may even recoup enough cash to by an iPad as digital textbooks on this platform are arriving soon.
Our blog post on the Best Small Business blogs was so popular that we decided to develop an article about favorite business books. Our survey was not scientific. It is a compilation of books we recently read and found valuable, along with recommendations from other business people and entrepreneurs. We hope if you pick up and read one of these that you’ll let us know what you think of it and how it impacts your work or life.
- Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos. According to the author, the best businesses combine “profit, passion and purpose.” The book follows the history of Tony’s life and the growth of Zappos to more than $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. Anthony Onesto, former chief operating officer with Zeta Interactive, recommends Delivering Happiness because it has completely changed his idea on how to build a successful company.
- Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch. We have to say we’re fans of this book and it also came highly recommended by Robyn Sharp, a small-business marketing guru and business coach. She shares that the value of this book for her business was providing a “great framework for creating my marketing plans on a budget.”
- eBoot Camp by Corey Perman. Angil Tarach-Ritchey, an expert in senior care and franchise owner for Visiting Angels Ann Arbor says, “eBoot Camp was instrumental in allowing me to help seniors and their families far beyond my community.” The book opened up a whole new career path for her.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book recommendation comes from Marc Pitman, a coach and the author of How to Ask Without Fear. He put off reading this book for years, but recommends it for its practical tips and reminders about avoiding arguments.
- Just Listen by Mark Goulston. We all know how important listening can be when it comes to the health of business or personal relationships. This book has practical advice for improving these skills with example of how communication can impact results and outcomes. We at Communiqué PR found it to be very helpful in our relationship building with journalists, editors and clients alike. For more about this book, you can check out this post: “New Book Gives Blueprint for Reaching the Unreachable.”
- Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, by Verne Harnish. According to Ken Halkin, president of Kenneth C. Halkin Management Consulting, this business book helped him to fine-tune the planning process and make plans simpler, quicker and more focused on critical issues. Based on Ken’s comments, I am adding this to my reading list.
- Open Leadership by Charlene Li – I wrote about this book on July 12 in a post entitled, “The Public Relations Strategies: Interview with Charlene Li”. I am about half way through the book and love it. I recommend it for those of you who are interested in social media and how it is impacting company culture, leadership or corporate responsibility.
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I have not read this book, but based on the number of comments I received about it, I have decided to pick this one. We received five glowing recommendations for this book. For instance, Derek Johnson, CEO of Tatango Inc., the maker of a group text messaging platform, says he has read this book multiple times, learning different things at each pass. He said, “Whether you are looking to decrease the amount of work you need to do, or increase your efficiency, allowing you to do more work in a day’s time, this book is a step by step guide.” He especially recommends this book to entrepreneurs. Another recommendation for the book came from Jaime Cevallos, the owner and founder of The Swing Mechanic, a business aimed at helping Major League Baseball players work on their swing mechanics in the off season. He said without Ferriss’s The Four Hour Workweek he never could have shaped his career.
- The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. This book was recommended by Maralyn Dolan, president of Integrated Printing & Graphics, because it helped her focus on her business core strengths. The book has given her some guidelines that allow her to feel confident in the directions she takes – and it has stayed with her for 15 years.
- The New Strategic Selling by Stephen E. Hieman, Tad Tuleja, J.W. Marriott. This is one of my favorite books. It was recommended to me by my mother who worked for AT&T as a global account manager. The book has been a tremendous resource to me in business development.
Remember when the first thing you did in the morning was make coffee and sit down with the daily newspaper or tuned in to your local TV news? Now it seems more and more the first thing we do in the morning is log on to our computers and check Facebook, Twitter and e-mail to find out what’s happening around the world, in our neighborhood and within our social circles.
According to a recent study of 200,000 people by The Nielsen Company, Americans spend a large percentage of their time online, surfing social networking sites. Some of the key findings of the study include:
- 22.7 percent of our time online is spent on social networking sites, which is a 43 percent increase from the same time last year.
- Online games, e-mail and portals combined, take up just 22.9 percent of our time online.
- If the U.S. Internet time were condensed into one hour, social networks would take up 13 minutes and 36 seconds. Online games, e-mail and portals would take up just 13 minutes and 42 seconds of one hour.
“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the Web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.
While it should come as no surprise that Americans spend a great deal of time on social networks, it is becoming more apparent that social networks are a rising form of online communication. E-mail, which was number two last year, saw its usage drop from 11.5 percent in 2009 to 8.3 percent this year. Instant messaging also saw a major hit, declining 15 percent from last year to account for just four percent of our time spent online this year.
More people using social networking sites to communicate online, and the decrease in e-mail usage, could be the reason why online gaming moved up to the number two spot for the first time. Time spent on online games g increased from 9.3 percent in 2009 to 10.2 percent in 2010, which now take up six minutes of one hour. Another possible reason for the increase in online gaming is the major presence of games on social networking sites. Games such as Zynga’s Farmville and Mafia Wars have become immensely popular among Facebook users in recent months.
U.S. consumers spend time on the Internet differently when accessing it via a mobile device than when accessing via a computer. Consider the following stats from the same Nielsen study:
- 41.6 percent, or 25 minutes of one hour, of American’s mobile online time is spent checking and sending e-mails from our mobile phones.
- 22 percent of American’s mobile online time is spent on portals and social networks, or 13 minutes of one hour.
- Time spent on social networks on mobile phones increased 28 percent, from 8.3 last year to 10.5 percent in 2010.
The study illustrates that increasingly more of our Internet time is spent on social networks. The reality is social networks play a large role in people’s lives. As people begin to spend more time on social networks, businesses are adapting to this trend and harness the power of social networks to reach key audiences. Businesses will continue to embrace social networks as a way to reach current and potential customers, and customers will look to interact with businesses on a more personal level.
What do you spend most of your time on the Internet doing? Leave us a comment.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about two new social media measurement tools from Marketwire Sysomos that I recently tested out. While my initial thoughts and experience have been positive, it made me reflect on some of the other industry tools and resources available to help organizations measure social media’s impact and effectiveness.
With social media reaching ubiquitous status for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations, it’s becoming extremely important for marketing and PR professions to become proficient in measuring the value of social media activities. This information and insight can often serve as a guide to help companies define and refine their social media strategies and help them effectively leverage social media.
A recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek article outlined the top five social media marketing mistakes organizations need to be aware of. The number one mistake? Not monitoring social media activities. Writer Mike Proulx says, “Companies that do not first “listen” and observe how their evangelists and detractors talk about their brand risk jumping into a cyclone of unanticipated activity. Constant monitoring is a must.”
I thought I would share some of the industry’s best-known tools for measuring and monitoring social media.
- BuzzLogic – BuzzLogic targets marketing and advertising managers and offers a “conversational media platform” that helps pinpoint where online conversations are taking place and where users are most engaged around topics to help organizations build more powerful and influential relationships and track competing products.
Radian6
- Radian6 – One of the more well-known solutions, Radian6 offers social media monitoring and detailed analytics reporting to help organizations track brand performance on various social media channels including Twitter, Facebook and blogs. The company also offers functionality around social media CRM, web analytics integration and workflow management.
- Social Mention – A simple web-based tool that finds brand mentions on a variety of platforms including blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in real time, Social Mention culls them together into a single stream of information for easy dissemination. Social Mention also offers a sentiment rating so that companies can get a sense of its brand perception among users.
Sysomos MAP
- Sysomos – Recently acquired by Marketwire, the company offers two tools, MAP (Media Analytics Program) and Heartbeat, that focus on the core concepts of social media – listen, measure, understand and engage. Sysomos provides real-time business intelligence data to help organizations reach their communications, branding and business objectives as well as manage brands and reputations vis-a-vis social media.
- Trendrr – Trendrr takes real time social media monitoring capabilities and puts the data into perspective with numbers. Specifically geared towards branding, marketing and business managers, Trendrr tracks and graphs activity and trends across a variety of digital platforms including social networks, blogs, Amazon, Craigslist, Twitter, Google News, torrents and video sites.
While it’s clear there are many tools and resources available today to help monitor, analyze and measure the impact of social media, I anticipate these tools will only become more comprehensive. As a PR professional, I find it an integral part of my job to help clients understand the value of measuring social media, the criteria in which it should be evaluated and the tools and resources available to help accomplish this.
Do you have a favorite social media monitoring/analytics tool? We want to hear about your experience with it. Leave us a comment.