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.
News announcements made in conjunction with your company partners offers great leverage to tell not only their own story, but further develop yours. It’s a successful way to reach a broader audience base while also remaining top of mind with the press. These announcements can demonstrate growth for your company, for example, as well as speak to larger organization initiatives. If perhaps your organization is promoting “green IT” as an initiative, a partner announcement with a manufacturer of green data-center solutions would illustrate your organization’s commitment.
Partner announcements can go a long way toward building the overarching story of your company because, in true “story” mode, they involve outside characters (see the below blog post titled, “The Power of a Personal Story” for more details on telling a compelling story).
Communiqué PR recently worked with Big Fish Games, a leading developer, publisher and distributor of casual, family-friendly games, to promote a partner announcement with Glu Mobile, a leading global publisher of mobile games. The announcement broke news of the availability of Mystery Case Files: Agent X on mobile phones, but more importantly for Big Fish Games, the announcement illustrated the continued growth of the Mystery Case Files brand and Big Fish Games into other platforms.
The team worked closely with Glu Mobile to coordinate media relations outreach efforts. In addition to Glu Mobile’s efforts, Communiqué PR was able to garner results for the news which included a mention in the Washington Post online paper.
See below for a few examples of the resulting coverage.
If you are interested in learning how to best leverage partner announcements for maximum impact, please contact me at (206) 282-4923 ext. 115 or [email protected].
“It doesn’t matter what you said, it only matters what they think you said.”This quote underscores the importance of coverage analysis and understanding how your messages are resonating with marketplace audiences. Analyzing media coverage is an often underutilized tool that can help you determine how your messages are being perceived. Armed with this information, you can then adjust your messages accordingly to ensure they have the most effective impact and help you accomplish your business objectives. It also helps you learn how the marketplace perceives your business in relation to your competitors. This is critical in order to ensure that you maintain differentiation in the market.
Here are some best practices to follow when developing a coverage analysis report:
1. Develop search terms to track coverage that include your company’s name, product or service, competitor names and any other industry relevant terms that will help you to gain a birds-eye view of marketplace activity.
2. Review the stories. Analyze how your company messages are framed in the context of the marketplace and in relation to competitors.
3. Determine which of your messages are being communicated and which ones are not.
4. Identify messaging discrepancies and use them as opportunities to contact reporters to set the record straight and develop a relationship.
5. Record the name of the publication, the article, the date and the author and categorize whether the article and their tone is positive, negative or neutral. Look at the percentage of positive, negative and neutral articles. Consider using a pie chart to bring this information to life.
6. Compile a report that includes an executive summary, a definition of the methodology and the related information.
Coverage analysis is the key to help you develop more effective media strategies and ensure that your audience gets the message.
The impact of story telling can lead to greater exposure for your company. Stories have the ability to arouse a reader’s emotions. Creating an emotional connection is extremely powerful since readers are then more likely to not only remember the story but share it with others.
It’s public relations’ job to lend expertise that creates, shapes and helps place effective story telling for clients/companies that have powerful stories to tell. Storytelling provides a strong and effective opportunity to bridge the gap between experience and communication, and thus gain meaningful and insightful exposure.
Communiqué PR recently worked with Big Fish Games, the worldís leading online destination for casual entertainment, and a long time Communiqué client, to share one such story from one of its customers, Marilyn Snaring.
Marilyn contacted Big Fish Games earlier this year to express her gratitude. Her husband, Harold, experienced a sudden stroke in April 2007 that rendered him paralyzed on the left side of his body. His vision was also corrupted, leaving him unable to see the left side of a page, screen or document, and the stroke further impaired his attention span and ability to concentrate, making it hard for him to focus on therapeutic activities for long periods of time.
Marilyn, Harold and Harold’s speech pathologist struggled week after week to help Harold regain these lost abilities. One day, Marilyn brought Harold a copy of Big Fish Gamesí Mystery Case Files: Huntsville, a game whereby players search for hidden objects on a screen. As Harold took to the game, he surprisingly and rapidly began regaining some of his lost abilities.
The game forced Harold to scan the entire screen, which helped him regain use of his left field of vision, and since the game was fun and enticing, he enjoyed long stints playing it; helping him to increase his attention span. Marilyn and Harold subsequently sought out additional games from Big Fish Games to continue Haroldís recovery. Harold continues to improve with every week and relishes spending time playing other episodes of Mystery Case Files.
After learning of Harold’s experience, Big Fish Games conducted a survey and found that a significant number of its players experienced similar health benefits. Big Fish Games and Communiqué PR then worked to strategically share these benefits and Haroldís story with others who might be struggling with their own health challenges or looking for creative solutions for a family member. Thus far coverage of the story appeared in the Seattle Times, Yahoo! Games, and numerous blogs including The Boomer Blog.
The Snarings’ story is compelling because it posses all the key elements of a great narrative, itís inspirational, and it highlights an experience that either directly or indirectly impacts many people. This can make for powerful PR.
As companies look to public relations to build awareness and influence audiences, it is important to leverage the power of an overarching story and ensure that PR activities map to that broad narrative.
Some other great company story initiatives you may want to check out include the Dove campaign for real beauty, Half Price Books, and Dunkin’ Brands’ community relations “serving heroes” campaign.
Communiqué PR’s founders Jennifer Gehrt and Colleen Moffitt recently caught up with two PR-oriented publications, PRWeek and Workinpr.com. Editors spoke to Jennifer and Colleen about their perspective on current industry trends, best practices and how PR has changed over the past 15 -20 years.
Check out the PRWeek article to learn about leveraging search engine optimization (SEO) or the Workinpr.com Q&A to learn more about Communiqué PR in particular.
The full articles can be found below or at the following Web sites:
Many companies struggle with how to respond to bloggers – let alone engage and interact with them. With more than 75 million blogs on just about every topic imaginable, it is overwhelming to think about monitoring and engaging bloggers. The key, like so many things in life, is focus. You need to figure out who the most influential bloggers are and educate them.
Public relations and marketing professionals must recognize this influential audience is not going away. More and more of us are blogging on a regular basis. I am blogging, my mother is blogging, and when I want to sign up for a new service or purchase a product, you can bet I am going to check out what other consumers are saying about it via various blogs.
So what is the right way to monitor, analyze and engage with bloggers on a regular basis? How does a company with limited resources do it? Does a company need special software, tools or dedicated staff for this endeavor?
Read on for a few of my thoughts on this topic.
Monitor & Analyze
1. The first step is to gain a basic understanding of who is blogging. One easy way to do this is to set up a Google Alert. Google allows people to monitor news and blogs. Do this and you’ll begin to gain a sense of how many people are blogging about your company, product and service and what they’re saying.
2. Consider the content of posts and gain a sense of sentiment. Are bloggers positive, negative or neutral about your company or product? Are they highly emotional or more lackadaisical? Are their posts relevant and timely, or not?
3. Identify the reach of each blogger. To do this, you need to know how large his or her audience is. Does the blogger have a lot of links from other sites to his or her blog? How frequently is he or she posting? Where does the blog rank in Googles’ PageRank system?
4. Finally consider how much authority or credibility the blogger has. Is he or she considered an expert? Is he or she an average user? But one with strong, informed opinions?
Engage
As soon as you have done these four things, you’re ready to engage. This is the most time consuming part of the process. Each and every company is going to have different needs around engaging. Consider the following ways to engage:
- Regularly read and post responses
- Invite the blogger to meet with you or others in your company
- Look for ways to build a rapport and relationship with the blogger – make sure you’re sincere. This is critical. If the blogger thinks you are just reaching out to him or her to gain a favorable review or endorsement, it will be off-putting. You need to seriously consider the blogger’s needs and wants. If the blogger has written something negative about your company or product, carefully consider his or her perspective. Does it have merit? Can anything be done to correct the underlying issue? A little courteous diplomacy goes a long way.
- Brief those influential bloggers you’ve identified or targeted in advance of announcements. When possible, toss them a heads up on news so they feel special and included in your network.
So what about tools?
There are a number of companies offering solutions or tools to help with the activities outlined above. Consider Visible Technologies (www.visibletechnologies.com), a Seattle-based start up. It offers a solution which is able to track the constantly growing amount of consumer generated material on the Internet. Visible Technologies’ solution collects posts and allows employees to comment on those posts. To do all this, Visible Technologies uses a proprietary platform and multi-tiered querying technology.
- Resource Interactive is another company which offers social media solutions to companies. We recently reached out to the company to learn more about its resources and methodologies surrounding tracking Web 2.0 and responding to bloggers. Gail Sech, manager of business development, was very helpful in answering my questions.
- Andiamo Systems, brand monitoring and word of mouth measurement services offers a 14-day free trial on its Web site. Its mission is to provide businesses easy-to-use, affordable, on-demand tools that help customers identify, measure, better understand and act on consumer attitudes and opinions of their brands and their competitors brands to increase market share and profits.
- BrandIntel. This company’s services looked interesting as it purports to provide “predictive consumer insight through a combination of proprietary technology, iterative human analysis and proven best practices.” But what I did not glean from its Web site was whether they also provide a methodology for responding directly to individual bloggers, which I believe for most companies is going to be important.
- BuzzLogic claims to “unlock the marketing power of social media. Surface the influencers leading conversations that matter and target your messages to them and their audiences for the highest return.” Sounds good.
- Collective Intellect Inc. Interesting to see that Collective Intellect asserts it is the only real-time provider of data on social media. It provides actionable, data-driven intelligence on the impact of user-generated content across blogs, social networks and message boards, as well as traditional media. I have to say I was impressed with the information on this firm’s Web site. I especially like the focus on making data actionable. After all, what good is information if you are not going to act on it? The only red flag for me was the focus on serving Fortune 500 companies… I am wondering if they will also support the little guy.
- Cymfony Inc. is a market influence analytics company that sifts and interprets the millions of voices at the intersection of traditional and social media to gain consumer insight and develop stronger bonds with influencers. Apparently, its award winning platform, Orchestra, integrates innovative technology with expert analysis to identify the people, issues and trends impacting your business – all at the speed of the market. Clients include: Southwest.com., Verisign, DoubleClick, Jiffy Lube, LG and Hasbro.
- Umbria Inc. is a marketing intelligence company that analyzes social media-including blogs, message boards, Usenet, and product review sites. Umbria delivers not just data, but insights into brands, markets, consumers and trends. Each week, CNN uses Umbria blog analysis to look at a topical issue in the news for insight on what the blogosphere is saying about it.
- Zeta Interactive aims to be the leading provider of integrated interactive services that help marketers realize the full potential of the Internet to build brands, increase sales, improve processes and reduce costs. For monitoring the blogosphere, it offers RelevantNoise. Zeta Interactive’s proprietary technology dedicated to mining the social internet for business intelligence. Again, upon a cursory review of the company’s Web site it is not clear to me if they offer a way to respond and engage with individuals bloggers.
Other companies providing services around blog monitoring, social media management, reputation management, etc., include:
More resources
Clearly the practice on monitoring, analyzing and engaging with bloggers is in its infancy. Many companies are scrambling to come up with the best methodologies and practices for doing this. We will continue to follow trends in this arena. In the meantime, here are some additional articles to check out.
David Pogue, with the New York Times provides insights on blogging and how to take advantage of Web 2.0 in this article http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/are-you-taking-advantage-of-web-20/
Bill Siwicki, from Internet Retailer, looks at word of mouth and how to leverage social media in his article which can be found at http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=25851
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iamota, a Mobile Application Service Provider (MASP) that helps agencies and brands of all sizes access, interact with and sell to mobile consumers, recently announced general availability of its first product, iamota impact.
iamota impact is a Web 2.0-style, on-demand mobile service that allows users to quickly and easily create and launch their own campaigns, while ensuring they reach the widest audience and create the most interactions with mobile consumers.
Communiqué is excited to be a part of this latest announcement from iamota. Similar to the adoption of the Internet in the ë90s, the mobile channel has quickly evolved to accommodate consumer demand. Enterprises are beginning to recognize the benefits and possibilities of this new channel, as they look for innovative ways to create and distribute content to mobile users.
Here’s what the media is saying about iamotaís latest news.
’It looks like the start of a pretty sweet service, said Blogger Kin Lane.
’Just over a month ago eMarketer reported the mobile marketing and advertising industry earned $2.7 billion in revenue in 2007, said Michael Essany, Mobile Marketing Watch.
He further noted, ’That figure is expected to double in 2008. By 2011 revenue is forecasted to reach $16.2 billion. The growing number of retailers participating in mobile marketing will likely continue to drive those figures to new heights.
’In my opinion, services like this[iamota impact], which are targeted toward retailers and small business owners, are extremely important for the growth of mobile marketing and advertising industry, as retail industry is one industry which can use mobile advertising and marketing very effectively to its advantage, said Blogger Krishnan, Cell Phone/Mobile Advertising.
To date, Communiqué has garnered 13 articles on behalf of iamota. Please see below for a list of the top seven.
InternetRetailer, ’New service helps retailers create mobile marketing campaigns, Bill Siwicki, February 28, 2008.
Kin Lane, ’White Label Social Networking for a Mobile Platform, Blogger Kin Lane, February 28, 2008.
FierceMobileContent, ’iamota intros do-it-yourself mobile services, Staff, February 29, 2008.
IP Communications (TMCnet), ’iamota Announces iamota impact, Anshu Shrivastava, February 29, 2008.
Mobile Marketing Watch, ’Iamota Launches ëImpact,í a Web 2.0-Style On-Demand Mobile Service, Michael Essany, March 1, 2008.
Cell Phone/Mobile Advertising, ’Iamota Impact – Mobile marketing service for retailers, Blogger Krishnan, March 3, 2008.
Tech Media Reports, ’iamota launches mobile services interface, Staff, March 4, 2008 (need subscription to view).
To view complete details surrounding this announcement, please visit www.iamota.com.