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.
With over 1 billion users, Instagram can be an invaluable resource for businesses to create brand awareness and share more creative, visual content. Today, creating a compelling brand story is the focus of many digital marketers. Fortunately, Instagram offers a vast array of business tools created to enhance marketing strategies and engage customers. With dynamic features such as branded content ads and live interactive stories, it is clear why many companies have delved into the world of Instagram.
Led primarily by Gen Zen and millennial users, Instagram is constantly evolving its platform to optimize the content users see in their feeds. Instagram relies on an algorithm that determines the order of photos and videos you see based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting, and the timeliness of the post. Essentially, the algorithm is designed so that users will see more relevant posts (i.e., content they most often engage with) first.
Although this may not seem problematic on the surface, the algorithm has become a sense of frustration for small business owners as organic reach becomes harder and harder to come by, especially when companies often look to reach new audiences who may not be engaging with their brand already. It is important for businesses to make relationship-building a priority. Earlier this year Forbes released an article stating, “Make sure you actively engage with your audience and you post content that’s going to excite people and prompt a quick engagement when they see it on their feed. Do this and your content will be more likely to appear for a larger group of users.”
With this in mind, here are a few helpful practices to include in your business-marketing strategy to enhance your reach and create authentic connections that can further your communication objectives on Instagram:
Post videos. Producing quality video content can increase the amount of time users spend interacting with your post – leading to increased engagement. Videos can also be a great way to showcase your brand organically and authentically.
Strategize the cadence of your posts. In order to push your content to the top of users’ feeds, it is critical you post often. This increases the chances of your audience seeing your content and allows followers to engage with your posts frequently. Instagram Insights is a great platform for businesses looking to analyze the demographics of audiences, the content they’re enjoying, and when they spend time on the app. Scheduling your posts accordingly will help optimize visibility and reach.
Utilize Instagram stories. Using the Instagram story feature can be another great way to actively engage with your audiences while promoting products, partnerships and building brand awareness. Afterall, one-third of the most viewed stories on Instagram are from businesses. One of my favorite aspects of Instagram stories is the share feature. This allows you to share posts and bring more traffic to your page. For example, if you posted a photo over a year ago that received a lot of likes, you can use Instagram stories to resurface it and bring attention back to the post. Using the story feature to post polls or share updates can also be a solid strategy to engage with users and increase interaction, while also getting a better sense of the needs of your target audience.
Engage with your audiences. One of the easiest ways to keep your content prioritized in Instagram’s algorithm is through likes and comments. Forbes council member Scott Douglas Clary says, “Proactively engaging with other users on the platform and followers of your page through likes, tags and comments can show that you’ve created meaningful relationships between users.” You can connect with your followers and make authentic relationships in a lot of different ways. If someone posts a photo of themselves using your product or service, a simple acknowledgment can go a long way. For example, Starbucks recently posted a photo of a summery drink to their Instagram and wrote back to nearly every user that commented saying things like “Glad you like it!” and “If you think it looks delicious, just wait until you taste it!” This is a great way to pull your audience in and make them feel like they are a part of your brand story.
As Instagram continues to evolve, don’t be afraid to try new approaches and tailor practices to your marketing strategy. For the latest announcements, updates and best practices visit the Instagram Business Blog or other Instagram related blog content.
Have you noticed interesting engagement patterns on your business’ Instagram? What strategies have you used to cut through the noise? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below:
The moment of crisis – for better or worse, we’ve all been there. It’s dreadful, it’s mortifying and it can significantly impact the reputation of an individual or brand.
It’s a moment that no one ever wants to deal with. Yet, it’s in times of crisis when anyone – be it an individual, business or other organizational entity – truly proves their mettle to themselves, their colleagues and their stakeholders.
Strangely, a moment of crisis presents a unique opportunity to showcase the integrity of the affected individual or business. It positions you in a fight-or-flight type of crossroads. That’s why in these moments, it’s critical to address the crisis and any associated challenges head-on. Assume ownership and accountability where appropriate and emphasize the steps that are being taken to ensure the crisis will be resolved.
Recently, Capital One reported that a hacker gained access to personal information of more than 106 million individuals in the U.S. and Canada – a nightmare situation for a credit-card and bank-holding company. One of the largest data breaches in history, the breach occurred March 22 and 23, 2019, and the breached information included 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. The hacker also managed to access an undisclosed number of names, addresses, credit scores and other private information. Credit card applications dating back to 2005 were also accessed. The New York attorney general is investigating whether Capital One is negligent in this case.
It’s distressing news and Capital One was besieged with a torrent of questions from customers and credit-card applicants. So how have they handled this crisis? Below, we run through a few of the Golden Rules of PR Crisis Management provided by the Forbes Agency Council and assess the Capital One announcement and ensuing aftermath.
Take Responsibility
Capital One was swift in releasing its statement and overview of the breach, announcing the news at the close of business day on Monday, July 29, or 12 days after learning the breach had occurred. Included in the overview was an apology from Capital One chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank:
“While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened,” said Fairbank. “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”
Other parts of the announcement could’ve done a better job of assuming responsibility for the breach. One confounding statement drew online ridicule. This underscores the importance of carefully crafting appropriate messaging to deliver in crisis situations.
Be Proactive, Transparent and Accountable
Capital One did its part to get ahead of the story. Once it learned of the breach on July 17, Capital One says it closed the vulnerability. Two days later, the agency verified its information had been stolen and began working with federal law enforcement. The accused hacker, Paige A. Thompson, was arrested 10 days later, with Capital One releasing its statement following her arrest. The breach was publicly disclosed less than two weeks after Capital One was tipped that the incident had occurred, with Capital One detailing what happened, what the impact of the breach was, and what steps were being taken to address it.
As the New York Times reports, a similar-sized security breach that occurred with credit reporting agency Equifax – in which private information for 147 million people was exposed – was publicly disclosed six weeks after the agency learned it had taken place.
Prepare for Social Media Backlash
Oh, was there social media backlash – and in crisis situations, it must be expected.
In Capital One’s case, many customers were upset to learn of the breach via news outlets or social media and not from a personal email, and they vented these frustrations online. The New York attorney general took to social media to announce the investigation into whether Capital One is negligent in this breach.
To their credit, Capital One kept its breach announcement pinned as a social media post on its Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages in the days following the occurrence. Capital One has also been communicative and responsive to commenter questions about the breach on its Facebook page.
Be Prepared
As any PR professional can and will attest, having effective protocol in place for crisis situations is imperative and will ultimately determine if your organization will sink or swim in the aftermath of a crisis. Your organization’s protocol should serve as a type of support and provide guidance for navigating the storm of a crisis. It will help you prepare an appropriate response and effectively communicate with stakeholders and media.
The Capital One breach is being reported as one of the largest ever, and while the company’s response may not have been perfect, it was swift, honest and upfront. An effective protocol had to be in place.
The company was also gifted a few chance circumstances. In some ways, Capital One was fortunate in how this breach occurred, as the hacker was broadcasting the hack on a public GitHub page and via a Slack chat thread. Doing so led to the tip of what had transpired and saved Capital One precious time to address the incident. Having an effective plan in place only helps an organization capitalize on such opportunities.
No one wants to prepare for a crisis – there’s a reason why such instances are often described as “unthinkable.” That being said, preparing in advance for how you’ll handle a crisis situation before it occurs will save you an extra headache and give you one less thing to worry about should such a situation arise. So be prepared – you’ll thank yourself later.
I recently came across an article in The New York Times that I thought would be helpful to those of us with a commitment to perfection. The article is titled, “It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done,” and focused on how challenging it is for perfectionists to get things accomplished, specifically when it comes to writing.
Too often, we perfectionists fall into an editing and re-editing spiral in a never-ending feat to make it better. As Tim Herrera writes, “By agonizing over tiny improvements in our work — if they even are improvements — we prevent ourselves from achieving the actual goal of, you know, doing the work.”
Essentially, we inadvertently paralyze ourselves with this thinking, which leads to no action at all. It’s a slippery slope and at some point, we have to realize when to cut bait. When stuck in this position, Herrera suggests that we must ask ourselves if the changes we are making are to make it better or just to be different, which doesn’t always translate into better.
Dr. Alex Lickerman wrote in Psychology Today on the topic of just getting things done. “Recognizing that inflection point — the point at which our continuing to rework our work reaches a law of diminishing returns — is one of the hardest skills to learn, but also one of the most necessary.” He added that “overworking something is just as bad as failing to polish it.”
In this article, Herrera points out that there are two types of decision-making styles: the maximizers and satisficers. He writes, “Maximizers relentlessly research all possible options in a scenario for fear of missing the ‘best’ one, while satisficers make quick decisions based on less research.”
The interesting takeaway, for one who identifies as a maximizer, is that research shows satisficers are more satisfied with their decisions than maximizers are. All this to say, just getting it done will leave you more satisfied than if you struggle with the fallacy of perfection. Not to mention, you’ll actually get it done.
Herrera also shared two strategies in the article that might help those of you who have experienced the perfection roadblock.
First, “Embrace the magic of micro-progress,” by focusing on small wins rather than the full-picture completion. It’s important to break big projects or decisions down into incremental steps, focus on one step at a time, and celebrate the wins along the way. This strategy dismisses the self-imposed expectation that we need a perfect idea before we even start something.
Second, “Reframe the way you think about the things you have to do.” Rather than focusing on the result, it’s important to take time to think about the process and how you get to said result. This strategy enables you to be aware of the forward momentum you’re making rather than getting bogged down in the stress of the result.
As the writer James Clear put it, “When you think about your goals, don’t just consider the outcome you want. Focus on the repetitions that lead to that place. Focus on the piles of work that come before the success. Focus on the hundreds of ceramic pots that come before the masterpiece.”
Herrera’s article motivated me to be more mindful about the power of positive thinking and personal expectations. I am going to apply his thinking the next time I approach a perfection roadblock.
Some 90 percent of brands use social media to increase brand awareness. However, 58 percent of those brands say measuring the effectiveness of social media efforts is challenging and only a small percentage (38 percent) measure social media ROI, according to Hootsuite’s Social Barometer 2018.
The obstacles hindering success of corporate social media campaigns can vary; for one, the time investment can be daunting and teams might not know what platforms are best to engage with their target audiences. For example, Instagram can be a great tool for hiring design executives but might not be the best tool for engaging with engineers in niche industries.
Additionally, keeping up with platforms’ frequent updates can be tricky but necessary to ensure the marketing team is leveraging the platform effectively and maximizing the tools available. Teams also need to dedicate time and personnel to draft and distribute content and monitor metrics to ensure the brand is properly engaging with its customers and that social efforts are tying back to larger business and communication objectives.
With these factors in mind, it can be difficult to feel confident investing marketing budget in social media campaigns and effectively distributing the content.
Luckily, there are a number of social media marketing tools available to help businesses better organize and schedule content, as well as engage with users and report results. Below is an overview of three of the social media marketing platforms Communiqué PR is currently using on behalf of our clients, as well as some of the platforms’ benefits and unique capabilities.
Optimized for web and mobile IOS and Android use, Buffer is a software application designed for managing social media accounts on platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Buffer allows a business to include a variety of profiles (i.e., corporate and executive accounts), which can help synergize the cadence of posts and ability to track metrics.
Buffer also has “approval” features so that posts can be reviewed or edited if necessary before they are published by the team, as well as simple collaboration capabilities, so that multiple users can access or tee up content.
Another attractive feature Buffer offers to business customers is the ability to engage with its followers by replying to comments and messages. This “reply” feature helps marketing teams directly engage with audiences on different social platforms though one application. The ability to quickly respond to conversations and leverage social media to resolve customer support requests helps brands provide quality customer service.
Hootsuite is a social media management platform where the user interface acts as a dashboard to view all integrated social media accounts. Hootsuite supports Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest offering scheduling, monitoring, content curation, analytics, team management, security and content boosting capabilities.
A differentiating factor Hootsuite offers is tailored packages for the financial services, government, healthcare and higher education industries. Many users also leverage Hootsuite’s special integration features to improve the effectiveness of ad campaigns, employee advocacy, analytics and insights.
The ability to respond to posts quickly, create approval workflows and manage platform access helps improve collaboration among brands and their audiences, as well as increases the efficiency of social media campaigns by streamlining the process of posting and measuring impact.
Unlike Buffer and Hootsuite, HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software that offers full CRM and CMS tools, as well as social media management capabilities. HubSpot provides companies with content management, SEO and web analytics tools.
The ability to integrate CRM, SEO and social media management helps brands reach their target audiences on their preferred platforms, drive more traffic to specific landing pages and improve coordination of communication and activities on all marketing and sales avenues. Lastly, through HubSpot’s robust platform, users can track and convert visitors on across all platforms into qualified.
Despite any negatives associated with leveraging third party platforms, social media management applications offer a host of benefits. The comprehensive overview of accounts in one location, combined with improved analytics tracking helps businesses measure how investments in social media impact the company’s bottom line.
The USC Center for Public Relations secured input from these business leaders as well as more than 1,500 public relations professionals around the world to gather answers to numerous questions about where the industry is headed. The results were released earlier this year in its Annual Global Communications Report.
This was the first time the Global Communications Report solicited input from CEOs and sought to “determine where they think their company’s communication efforts should be focused.”
While the report provides more data and insights into the perspectives of PR professionals (agency and in-house) and students, it is interesting to see how CEOs responded to questions regarding their communication goals and the strategies they feel are most valuable. Below we have recapped some of the findings.
When CEOs responded to the question regarding their most important communication goal for their company:
- 44% of CEO respondents shared that their most important communication goal for the year is to sell products and services. Interestingly only 25% of in-house communicators indicated this was the most important goal for their company.
- 39% of CEOs indicated their primary goal is to differentiate their company’s brand from the competition. In-house communicators were in sync with the CEOs on this goal with an identical 39% indicating this was the most important goal.
- Marshalling data and analytics to gain insight into opinions, issues and trends was the top priority for 12% of CEO respondents and 14% of in-house communicators.
- Only 1% of CEOs stated that shaping position on social issues was the most important communication goal for the coming year. Eight percent % of in-house communicators felt this was the most important goal for their organization.
When asked what communication strategies CEOs feel will be most valuable to their company in the future, the results were divided:
- 38% stated shared media (i.e., social media and online influencers) were most valuable
- 36% percent responded that owned media (i.e., original content distributed through company channels) is most valuable
- 14% indicated earned media is the most valuable media strategy for their company in the future
- And only 12% felt that paid media was the most valuable media strategy
The full report can be accessed here: https://uscannenberg.formstack.com/forms/2019_gcr.
In a quickly changing business landscape, there is one timeless, but important, activity you shouldn’t lose sight of – networking.
Whether you are stepping into a new career, or have made it to the top of your industry, networking can play a critical role in your professional life. Consider it a long-term investment than can lead to new opportunities, insights and growth.
Below are three tactics to help you build and maintain meaningful connections:
- Create a Relationship Action Plan. Networking may seem like an arduous task, especially if you are content with your career. However, just because you finally landed your dream job or a new client, doesn’t mean you should stop networking. A strong network can often provide you with the knowledge and resources needed to continue moving forward in your profession. Best-selling author of “Never Eat Alone,” Keith Ferrazzi suggests one way to maintain relationships and practice intentional networking is through Relationship Action Planning. In case you’re not familiar with the term, Relationship Action Planning, according to LinkedIn, is “the act of proactively working to advance relationships with the people most important in achieving your business plan.” Ferrazzi has even created a downloadable Relationship Action Planning PDF you can fill out to keep yourself on track. You can’t get more intentional than that.
- Diversify your networking strategies. Although the concept of networking may be timeless, the strategies for building one’s network are constantly evolving. Resources such as LinkedIn and email can serve as useful avenues to spark and follow up with new connections, however, they are only a small piece of the networking puzzle. Attending events is still a wonderful way to meet new people. Expert Forbes panelist Frances McIntosh suggests looking “for local events such as Chamber of Commerce networking events, book launches, or art walks – something you wouldn’t ordinarily do.” This gives you an opportunity to exchange knowledge with individuals outside of your immediate field and gain new insights.
- Follow up with new and existing connections. Effective networking is not a one-and-done activity. While handing out a business card can be an effective networking tactic, this is only the first step. Once you have made a new connection, it’s important that you follow up and maintain the relationship. Like Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI (Business Networking International) said, “It is not what you know or who you know – it’s how well you know each other that counts.”
With this in mind, building on old relationships with friends and colleagues can serve you just as well. Don’t be afraid to bring out your college yearbook and call up a few old friends to meet for coffee. You never know what information or connections you may glean!
What are some helpful networking tactics you’ve used? I’d love to hear about your experience.