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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.

The Power of Persistence in Pitching

The art of the media pitch is a difficult skill to master. Media pitching begins with a newsworthy story, customized media list and, typically, a strategically crafted email. After delivering what you think is a brilliant, personalized pitch, reporters may take hold of the idea or may not even respond. Many PR pros debate the question of whether to follow up or not after a lack of response. Reporters and journalists, in most cases, do not have time to respond if they are uninterested or if the pitch came at the wrong time.

So, should you make a follow-up call? Do you send another email? What’s next?

Inbox overload. Emails can often fall through the cracks. Journalists and reporters can receive hundreds or thousands of emails per day. If they didn’t respond, don’t assume they aren’t interested. Refresh their memory in an engaging way, such as including a trending data point or reframing your hook.

A second chance. A follow-up call allows you to reframe your pitch. If they didn’t respond well to the original pitch, change your angle and try to reframe your pitch in a different or more newsworthy way. Do your research on each journalist and tailor your story according to his or her particular beat or content produced on the media outlet.

Assignments change. Journalists often switch beats and cover a variety of topics. You may have caught a reporter at a time when he or she is not interested, but know a colleague who would. Make the call to reach the right contact.

Relationships are key. It’s much more memorable to hear a name over the phone than reading it over email. Using follow-up calls can not only secure placements for your clients but can help create a relationship between contacts you only slightly know or with whom you still have yet to connect.

Persistence pays off. I speak from experience, most recently with two different outlets (print and broadcast) of which I applied all of the above tips over the course of five months. Had I not picked up the phone and connected with these journalists several times throughout this engagement, I would not have been able to secure the coverage.

By way of a continued conversation, I was able to confirm their interest, arrange briefings with spokespeople, and provide localized data to round out their stories. Given the investment on their side, I continued to respectfully follow up in an effort to see the finished product through. And, it worked!

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Going Social in 2018: 4 Emerging Trends to Give a Second Thought in the New Year

It’s no breaking news that social media plays an integral role in today’s business and personal interactions. In 2017, social media took on a new role in reporting, both in the political and corporate arenas, forever changing the “social norms” associated with social media.

As companies plan marketing campaigns for 2018, strategically intertwining marketing efforts with social media activities is guaranteed to be a successful best practice to help companies interact with its target audiences, increase website traffic, attract new talent and simply boost engagement with its current customer base.

Below are four social media trends that both Inc. and Entrepreneur have reported as on the “must watch” list for 2018:

Instagram Stories are in. In 2017, users experimented with Instagram stories. After working out the kinks and quickly ridding doubt, consumers, business influences and celebrities moved away from Snapchat and fled to Instagram’s “Story” feature to promote new products, share glimpses into daily-life activities and more. Now over 200 million individuals use Instagram Stories each month, if this trajectory continues, nearly half of all Instagram users will be using Instagram Stories by the end of 2018. For companies looking to boost engagement with its target audiences on Instagram and hire new employees, Stories present a great opportunity to showcase product innovations and company culture –  a feature that is crucial in attracting new talent.

Facebook is ditching the desktop. Unlike predominantly mobile-accessed social media like Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook was originally designed for use on a laptop or desktop. 2017, however, saw an increase in mobile engagement with 88 percent of Facebook’s advertising revenue for Q3 2017 derived from mobile advertisements. In addition, Facebook Live and subtitled videos – content that caters to individuals scrolling through their newsfeeds on mobile devices or tablets, in most cases without headphones or volume – increased in popularity from consumers, celebrities and corporate brands. In 2018 Facebook videos will continue to rise in popularity, and by 2020, experts predict that nearly 60 percent of users in the U.S. will access Facebook using mobile devices. This immense increase of traffic to Facebook mobile presents a great opportunity for companies to get visual content on the social media platform.

Augmented reality (AR) should not be overlooked. In 2017, Snapchat entertained users with AR by combining its 3D Bitmoji and World Lens features to experience their Bitmoji on the screen in front of them. Similar to this use case, this year Wayfair – the home furniture and décor company – integrated AR into this mobile application through its “View in Room” feature, letting shoppers view the furniture in their homes before making a purchase decision. Next year, the AR market is expected to grow to 200 million users, an increase from just 60 million users in 2013. Just as Apple has integrated AR face recognition to unlock its new iPhones, social media platforms will continue to experiment with AR as a way to increase market share and create new opportunities for companies to build following and interact with them.

Influencer marketing is worth the investment. Listed on nearly all of the 2017 marketing predictions lists over the past year, influencer marketing continued to increase in popularity among B2C and B2B businesses because of the added customization and flexibility these programs provide companies for recruiting brand advocates and interacting with customers. In 2018, businesses are going to increasingly coordinate influencer marketing efforts with social media activity. This synchronization will help design brand advocacy programs that add value to customers and help businesses achieve their overarching objectives. Influencer’s activity on social media will continue to grow in popularity as companies turn away from traditional advertising methods to connect with new audiences such as Generation Z who are quickly entering the workforce and becoming more active consumers.

When putting the final touches on social media calendars for 2018, consider these four trends. If utilized properly, they can help boost advertising efforts and increase engagement through maintaining a regular stream of visual and interactive content.

Did your company experiment with any of these social media approaches in 2017? Are they on your radar for 2018? If so, please share in the comments below!

 

 

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For the Love of Blog: Don’t Forget to Include Blogging in Your 2018 Plan

Speaking from experience, blogging can sometimes seem like a daunting task. Finding topics that your readers will view as interesting is challenging and then developing them into posts that maintain someone’s attention and adds value can sometimes feel nearly impossible. However, blogging is an impactful tool that provides a platform to highlight results, share perspectives on trends, increase SEO and create content to leverage for social media.

But with other deadlines knocking on your door, you may be finding yourself wondering how much value blogging will add to your business. Is it really worth your time? Well, to address your questions I did a little digging to uncover and illustrate the benefits of blogging.

If you haven’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon yet, here are a handful of stats that will inspire you to add this strategy to your 2018 plan.

  • B2B marketers that use blogs get 67 percent more leads than those who do not. (Source: HubSpot)
  • 82 percent of marketers who blog get positive ROI from their inbound marketing activities. (Source: HubSpot)
  • Companies that blog get twice as much traffic from their email marketing than those who don’t blog. (Source: HubSpot)
  • 1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, which means organic search increases their traffic over time. (Source: HubSpot)
  • 94 percent of people who share posts do so because they think it might be helpful to others. (Source: nymarketing.com)

If those numbers have convinced you to start blogging, here are several tips to keep in mind as you begin to build out your blog:

  • Use your blog as a portfolio for your work. Develop case studies or write about a successful campaign to not only highlight your company’s ability to deliver results, but also as a way to build a portfolio that you can easily refer to in the future.
  • Be consistent. Develop a blogging schedule that is consistent, yet realistic. People are hungry for content, so the more content you can share the better, however, be thoughtful in your approach.
  • Keep your blog top of mind. This is a skill I am always trying to work on, but one of the things I’ve observed from some of the best bloggers at our firm is that they are constantly thinking about how something can be turned into a blog post. The topic could be inspired by a social movement, a conversation you had with a colleague at lunch, an interesting article you read, or even a struggle you are facing. Point is, there are topics all around you – you just have to be able to recognize them.

Adding another item to your to-do list is always intimidating, especially one that will require time and creativity. However, if you don’t already have a blog, or have a blog but don’t share content consistently, seriously consider adding the strategy to your 2018 plan – the added benefits and impact on your business will be worth it.

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Will the #MeToo Movement Change Corporate Culture?

Imagine sending out a tweet, going to bed, and waking up to 53,000 replies. That is what happened to actress Alyssa Milano when she decided on the evening of Oct. 15, 2017, to send a tweet in support of her friend who had been assaulted by Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein.

Alyssa Milano’s Tweet read, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”

The impact of this single tweet was enormous. By Oct. 16, Twitter confirmed to CNN that people had used the hashtag in tweets more than half a million times and within 24 hours, nearly five million people on Facebook used the hashtag.[1] Facebook soon reported that 45 percent of its U.S. users had a friend who had posted using the term.[2]

Now, Time magazine’s editors have selected the #MeToo movement and the people behind it (The Silence Breakers) as the Person of the Year for 2017. However, the “Me Too” movement is not entirely new: Tarana Burke, an activist and supporter of victims of sexual abuse named her movement “Me Too” in 2006. She coined the term to show support for the girls and women in her community who have experienced sexual violence and viewed “Me Too” as a way to show empathy and solidarity for what they’d been through.

Burke never anticipated “Me Too” would be such an instrument of change, but Milano’s tweet galvanized women in a manner that was unprecedented. Clearly, there were myriad factors that played a role in birth of this movement:

  • The year began with the 2017 Women’s Marches across the nation to push for legislation and policies supporting human rights, women’s rights and other issues.
  • Journalist Ronan Farrow deeply investigated Harvey Weinstein, and while NBC initially passed on running his story on grounds it was incomplete, he did more work on it and took it to The New Yorker which published it on Oct. 10.[3] (This once again demonstrates the power and value of investigative journalism. For more on this topic, please see my blog The Importance of Investigative Journalism.)
  • Finally, social media and #MeToo gave many women the opportunity to identify themselves as the victims of inappropriate or unwanted sexual attention, abuse or violence — which emboldened many others to come forward.

According to academics, social movements have a life cycle. They have a period where they emerge, coalesce, grow, achieve success and then dissolve and it makes one wonder at what stage we are today. Will the #MeToo movement continue to grow? Will this movement have a longer-term impact on workplace and societal norms? It is true that many prominent men have lost their jobs, but will there truly be lasting change? And if there are changes, what metrics will measure them?

While there has been significant analysis of the effectiveness of boycotts, it can be challenging to determine their effectiveness, in part because it is hard to determine the specific objectives of the individuals participating in them. Can’t the same be true for the #MeToo movement?

I hope this is not the case. All people deserve the opportunity to work in an environment that is free from harassment and the abuse of power. Furthermore, individuals who have abused their power should not be in leadership positions in business, government, or in our community.

As Abraham Lincoln said: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Shouldn’t our leaders be people of upstanding character? Otherwise, who wants to follow them?

For more about Time magazine’s Person of the Year and the #MeToo movement, please check out these articles:

References

[1] CNN, Cassandra Santiago and Doug Criss. “An Activist, a little girl and the heartbreaking origin of ‘Me too”.

CNN. Retrieved December 7, 2017.

[2] France, Lisa Respers (October 16, 2017). “#MeToo: Social media flooded with personal stories of assualt”.

CNN. Retrieved December 7, 2017

[3] Puente, Maria (December 1, 2017) “After Matt Laurer firing, NBC chief Andy Lack faces more questions about a network in crisis”.

USA Today. Retrieved December 7, 2017.

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Twitter Doubles Its Character Limit

In case you missed it, on Nov. 7 2017, Twitter granted most of its users the ability to double the length of their tweets to 280 characters. Users had previously been limited to posts of 140 characters, challenging them to be concise in a way that wasn’t required on other social media platforms. For instance, Myspace and Facebook, two of the leading social media platforms at the time of Twitter’s launch in 2006, gave users the freedom to post without limitations. Now that tweet lengths have increased, it’ll be interesting to see how it affects daily users, including PR pros.

To quote William Shakespeare, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and based on this,140 characters should be more than enough space to compose a thought. As Laura Shubel noted in her PR Daily article, “Should you use all 280 characters?”, a shorter character limit typically helps generate better tweets. Shubel goes onto explain how the old Twitter, limited character space forced people to hone their writing skills to create succinct messages. Shorter tweets might take more time to draft, Shubel asserts, but the exercise can make people better writers.

With the 140-character limit, users often had to figure out how to fit a single thought into one tweet. To do this, they resorted to leaving out punctuation, intentionally misspelling or shortening words, and even incorporating the ever-growing list of text abbreviations to save precious characters. Witnessing users work around the limitation truly showed how innovative people could be with their syntax and punctuation.

Because of this change, PR pros may alter how they and their clients use Twitter. With double the characters, communicators will have much more room for flexibility and clarity. For journalists, tweets can now include more context, which potentially means fewer tweets. With more characters available, there is more room to include more hashtags and account “@ mentions.”  In fact, a few companies have already taken to the idea of 280 characters, some with a sense of humor. Here are some examples of brands maximizing this limit:

https://twitter.com/WDWToday/status/928048426994020352

While users may have wanted something different (ahem, an edit button please), I think the update to 280 characters will be a less dramatic change than some users think. Although visually it may seem like word (or emoji) overload, overall it will help many people communicate in a clearer way.

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A Place for Mom: A Wealth of Information on Senior Living & Related Topics

As 2017 rapidly comes to a close, we want to share a summary of some of the coverage we helped position for A Place for Mom throughout the year. For those interested in the issues surrounding senior living, this roundup offers a sense of the topics that attracted the most significant attention of journalists and their readers.

A Place for Mom is the largest senior living referral service in North America. As such, the company provides a wealth of information about senior preferences for housing, care and other vital topics. We were honored to help position this useful, practical  information.

We began the year by sharing data with journalists about the 10 safest cities for seniors that resulted in the following eight articles:

Next, we developed and distributed news about home equity and using it to fund senior care. This resulted in two articles:

Syndicated content from A Place for Mom remained popular throughout the year. We placed stories about finding love in a senior community, the benefits of shared living for seniors, and tips on taxes, as well as travelling with seniors .Stories included:

In the summer of 2017, we had the opportunity to publicize the results from a survey that clearly demonstrated that seniors want to live in walkable communities. This announcement lead to the following coverage:

This is just a small sample of the coverage we earned throughout the year. We are proud that A Place for Mom is able to provide such a valuable, well-researched resource to seniors, their families and its partner communities. For even more content, we hope you will visit www.aplaceformom.com

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