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.
Influencer marketing has become an incredibly popular method brands use to reach their consumers—especially social media. A study conducted by Tomoson in 2015 proved exactly why this has become one of marketers’ favorite news tools, stating brands make $6.50 in revenue for every $1 they spend on average on influencer marketing. In fact, so many marketers are seeing the positive effects of this method that 59 percent stated they would be increasing the budget for this activity.
With such impressive numbers, and the added benefit of tracking the effectiveness (to a degree) with click-throughs and engagement, it is no wonder this method has become an integral part of brands’ marketing plans. So if you are working with an influencer, here are a few ideas around how to leverage them to connect with your audience and drive results for your brand.
Personal Branding
Any influencer a brand collaborates with will already have some sort of following – that’s what makes them an influencer. And with a following comes personal branding. They’ve already built a persona for themselves, whether they are a reality TV star, a makeup artist on YouTube, a professional athlete or a comedian. Their audience has an understanding of who they are and you want to ensure that their personal branding messages align with your brand’s messages.
That being said, as you begin working with an influencer, have a conversation with them to understand what messages they are passionate about not specifically related to your brand. Once you have a clear understanding of the messages they want to communicate, you can determine how to best align your brand and its messages with their messages. By working backward, you can authentically intertwine the influencer’s messages with the brand’s messages, making them more impactful and enabling them to better resonate with the target audiences.
Social Media
If you have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat, you’ve seen some form of influencer marketing. You may not always be aware of it, though many more influencers are adding “#ad” to their posts, but influencers are everywhere.
Of course, one of the most apparent ways to leverage social media when working with an influencer is to create social media posts that tie back to your brand. This could show the individual using your product or it could be an image of an activity with a description about how your product or service enhanced that experience. Images are a critical aspect of not only influencer marketing, but marketing in general. If you share a piece of information with someone, they will likely only remember 10 percent of it three days later. Add an image to that information and information is retained increases to 65 percent.
In addition to having the influencer post about the brand, its products or updates, you should also interact with the influencer from the company handles. Retweet or regram a post they have shared or comment on the post itself. This will reinforce the connection between the brand and the influencer. Lastly, create a specific hashtag for the influencer to use when posting about the brand. This will enable people who come across the post to easily find one centralized area with all of the posts shared by the influencer. It’s a way to create a story arc in the crowded, content-saturated environments created by social media.
In-Person Events
One of the reasons social media has become so popular is because it enables people to directly connect with others, especially those who once seemed out of reach, such as movie stars, models, sport icons, etc. Social media has provided fans and consumers with what feels like a direct line of sight into individuals’ lives, creating a behind-the-scenes look.
Consumers are often very curious to know what influencers do day-to-day, how their careers or fields operate, their personal interests and anecdotes, and what products they are using and enjoy. An in-person event is a way to enhance the connection between the audience and the individual and increase the number of messages the influencer can share with their audiences. Instead of having the audience’s attention for a matter of seconds as they scroll through their feeds, the influencer can captivate their attention for the length of the event and build a more meaningful, personal connection.
Influencers are becoming an integral portion of marketing campaigns and the number of brands leveraging them is growing. To ensure your campaign is successful in cutting through the noise, create authentic messages, encourage engagement, and create opportunities for your audiences to build personal connections.
September has arrived in full swing with back-to-school preparations, football-related programming, and dreams of pumpkin spice lattes. One September event that I look forward to (more than any kind of latte!) is the release of the next generation iPhone. This month, Apple is unveiling a major redesign of the iPhone, but most importantly, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the device that has forever changed the way consumers – and PR professionals – are connected to a mobile device.
As a diehard iPhone user who has watched Steve Jobs’ iconic 2007 keynote address countless times, I recently took a moment to reflect on this ten-year milestone. Since its conception, the iPhone has been a catalyst for the widespread adoption of smartphones; it has also played a pivotal role in mobile app development and social media consumption. The opportunities to discuss the impact of the iPhone are endless, but I want to highlight three ways that the iPhone has changed the way we practice PR.
1. The evolution of the 24 hour news cycle.
Steve Jobs, in his 2007 keynote address, called the iPhone, “a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” As this device gained popularity, the smartphone industry exploded to challenge Apple’s quick tripling of its market share. It is no surprise that smartphones rapidly caught on with consumers, but even Jobs could not have foreseen the extent of its adoption. Indeed, according to Pew Research, 77 percent of Americans (roughly 242.3 million people) own a smartphone.
In the past, access to breaking news and information was limited to the evening news and newspaper printing press schedules. Now, there are 242 million people in the United States alone that have access to the worldwide web in their pocket. This means that there are 242 million people seeking the most immediate and compelling news from more publications, blogs, apps and online sources than ever before.
Journalists and PR professionals have had to drastically adapt their practices to cater to this demand for information as well as the vast number of news sources. Because news never stops in our digital age, reporters are in intense competition among other news outlets to be the first to report breaking news.
The constant, high demand for news means that PR professionals have to work harder to get their companies and clients to stand out from all of the constant, competing noise on the internet.
2. There are now incredible opportunities to form relationships with journalists.
The popularity of social media, undoubtedly aided by the development of smartphone applications, has created unparalleled opportunities for PR professionals to connect and form relationships with journalists.
Many reporters are plagued with hundreds of irrelevant emails and pitches every day. While there are still those PR professionals who won’t do their research, the advent of social media has made it easier to find the perfect beat reporter match for the story they are trying to place. Twitter can be an excellent resource to find out more about a reporter’s interests, which industries and companies that reporter typically writes about, and if you have any mutual connections. These three elements combined help foster that incredibly important and coveted personal connection. A 2014 PRSA study sums it up it perfectly, “Overall, social media helps you see what kind of person a reporter is.”
3. The rise of consumer co-created messages.
With a powerful, pocket-sized machine in millions of people’s pockets, the volume of user-generated content on the internet has skyrocketed. As digital marketing firm Brolik describes it, “…smartphones have allowed us to create that content (with cameras and keyboards) and post it to social media (with Internet connectivity) at almost any time. The result is an unprecedented ability to create and interact with content all day, every day for the over 50% of Americans who, according to the Pew Research Center, have a smartphone and use it for social networking.” Now, in our digital age, anyone can say anything about anyone. This is both a PR pro’s dream, and worst nightmare. The viral nature of social media makes it too easy for a worst-case scenario to become a part of the daily news cycle.
Take the NYPD, for example, when it attempted to leverage co-created content by encouraging Twitter users to send photos of themselves with officers using the hashtag #myNYPD. Unfortunately, a steady stream of photos demonstrating police brutality and racial profiling surged through Twitter in response. If the NYPD had taken the time to asses the risk of this kind of co-created content, the adverse reaction of the public might have been anticipated, and the campaign would either have been adapted or cut entirely.
With no control over the content of the message, it is the PR pro’s duty to insert his or her client’s point-of-view into the conversation. In the case of the NYPD, it was important for them to have already established a personality on Twitter, rather than blasting information and hoping for the best. Dan Tisch, chairman of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Management, shared some thoughts regarding smartphones and co-created content in a New York Times interview, “In a world where the ordinary consumer is walking around with global publishing power in his or her pocket, the role of public relations has shifted from creating content to attempting to influence the content that’s created by others.”
While you won’t see me camping outside of the Apple store for days prior to the release, you better believe I will be upgrading. The iPhone 8 is likely to have a radical redesign from its earlier counterparts, leaving new opportunities for society to evolve along with it. Who knows where this new generation of iPhones will take PR professionals – most likely somewhere unimaginable.
As PR professionals, we are constantly seeking innovative ways to amplify, leverage and increase visibility for clients. Considering the investment of time and energy that goes into securing coverage for clients, PR professionals should be asking themselves how to increase the reach of the content before it’s published.
In addition to the traditional strategies, integrating paid tactics is a way to take earned media amplification to the next level. To successfully use paid channels, you first need to understand what the content aims to accomplish and the types of paid options available. Setting specific goals and tracking the right KPIs will make it easier to adapt your content and your paid amplification strategy for success. Example KPIs include website traffic, increasing video views and boosting social channel engagement.
There are countless ways to incorporate paid channels into your amplification strategy, but this post highlights a few ways to elevate single pieces of content. Here are a few ideas to get started:
Paid Social Media Posts
Social amplification enables brands to amplify the reach of organic content and target the right audience. With social channel algorithms evolving daily to provide users with a better experience, brands need to supplement organic posts with paid promotion to ensure the posts are reaching their target audiences. Nearly every social platform offers some type paid amplification options.
You can bring individual content pieces to the news feeds of new, targeted audiences through boosted posts. It’s quick, easy, priced by the click and a great way to expand viewership on content that’s important to your brand. After posting the content on your Facebook business page, select the “Boost Post” button in the lower right corner. Define your audience, select a budget and amplify away.
Similar to boosted posts, Twitter’s promoted tweets give brands the option to elevate specific posts to new audiences. Twitter bases its targeting options on keywords, interests and followers. Tweets will be displayed directly on the user’s feed and can include specific calls to action, such as “register now” or “learn more.”
LinkedIn offers a variety of ways to leverage its 500-million-strong user base. A good place to start is its self-serve PPC advertising platform, which allows brands to target audiences based on a variety of criteria, such as job title, responsibilities, geography or age. Through its sponsored content feature, brands can pay to have content featured on a member’s LinkedIn home screen or news feed.
Content Recommendation
Content recommendation platforms allow brands to place their content on respected websites and media properties underneath other types of relevant content. Through companies like Outbrain, brands submit content to be linked to websites such as CNN, Time and ESPN. It’s an effective way to amplify without interrupting, as the headlines from brand publishers blend into the rest of the content recommendations, creating a seamless user experience.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content or sponsored articles are an evolved version of what many PR professionals call advertorials and have been around for decades. In addition to sponsored content options on social channels, major publications are developing their own studios to create and host sponsored content. They usually employ a team that is separate from their editorial team to produce content for their sponsored content offerings. Using a publisher’s content studio doesn’t come cheap so a healthy budget is necessary when exploring sponsored content. Examples of content studios include, BrandVoice at Forbes, Partner Studio at Huffington Post and T Brand at The New York Times.
The perception of paid media is changing in PR agencies. In the last several years, paid media has transitioned from being a faux pas to becoming a core part of the PR strategy. Consumers are increasingly inundated, becoming more fragmented and harder to reach. To drive results for clients today, paid media can play an integral role in your overall strategy.
Forbes has labeled 2017 “The Year of the Influencer,” and they might be on to something. The idea of an influencer in itself is not particularly new or revolutionary – brands have been using celebrities to promote their products for decades – but the landscape of influencer marketing has drastically changed over the last few years. Thanks to the rise of social media the coveted title of influencer is no longer reserved for the mega-famous or people with millions of followers – and so enters the micro-influencer. These days, just about anyone can become a micro-influencer if they have the time and energy, and that has opened up a lot of doors for marketers.
A micro-influencer is exactly the same as an influencer, just with a smaller following. Think 10,000 to 100,000 instead of hundreds of thousands or millions. Don’t get me wrong, the big names and celebrity influencers are great if you want a lot of eyes, but there are two major downsides: cost and engagement. Getting the big names is expensive, and multiple studies have shown that social media users with huge follower bases actually see a drop in engagement after they pass the 100,000-follower mark. Why? People just stop trusting them. Turns out, consumers are sick and tired of brands trying to pull the wool over their eyes and are starting to question the authenticity of the sponsored-influencer Instagram posts that are popping up on everyone’s feed. Micro-influencers fix both of these problems.
You may still be thinking, “But won’t big stars with lots of followers expose my brand to a much larger demographic and, therefore, increase my sales more than a micro-influencer would?” Yes and…maybe. It will definitely expose your company to a lot of people that you may not have reached yet, but it will only significantly increase sales if what you’re selling appeals to everyone and you can afford it. Big influencers will have followers that are every age, gender, nationality and race, that all have different tastes and interests. So unless your product or service is demand by a huge demographic, you could be spending massive amounts of money to market to people that are never going to become customers. With many celebrity endorsements costing five or six figures, it might not be worth it.
Micro-influencers, on the other hand, usually have a much smaller variation in the kinds of people that follow them, which can be extremely helpful if you are targeting a specific audience and cost virtually nothing compared to the bigger names.
Let’s say that you have a new workout clothing line that you are trying to market. In one scenario, you pay a celebrity to endorse your brand in a sponsored Instagram post. In the second scenario, you do some research to find 20 micro-influencers that are passionate about fitness and healthy living and pay each of them to sponsor your brand. Some 97 percent of Instagram micro-influencers and 87 percent of bloggers charge $500 or less per post, so that is only $10,000 to get 20 sponsored posts out there. In comparison, influencers with three to seven million followers charge an average of $187,500 per Instagram post. You could get sponsored posts from 375 micro-influencers for that same amount of money. Now, you probably won’t reach three million followers through the 20 micro-influencers, but if each of them has 50,000 followers, you will still reach 1 million people at a 20th of the cost.
Not only that, but these 1 million niche followers have much a higher probability of actually engaging with your brand than the celebrities followers. This is because it is a niche audience engaging with a trusted source. Micro-influencers become micro-influencers because they are passionate about something and their followers are typically passionate about the same thing. So the 1 million people who follow your 20fitness focused micro-influencers fitness are more likely to invest in workout clothes because they have an interest in working out.
This is also where trust plays a major factor. Micro-influencers are more believable when they sponsor a product because their followers know that companies aren’t just throwing huge amounts of money at them to endorse a product they probably don’t even use, which is the general perception around sponsored celebrity posts. Even more believable? Having a micro-influencer rave about a product because they genuinely love it. To cut down on costs even further, you could send your top micro-influencers some free workout gear and ask for their opinions and feedback. If they think it is a great product, there is a chance they will post about it without the extra sponsorship fee.
This year might be the year of the influencer, but it doesn’t look like they are going anywhere anytime soon. There are lots of benefits to any influencer marketing, but micro-influencers are one of the most cost-efficient and effective ways to get your brand out there. In this case, you can have quality and quantity.
If you subscribe to HARO (Help a Reporter Out) queries, you’re likely familiar with the format of these email alerts. If you are not, welcome to the world of HARO – a great database for journalists and PR professionals with a number of sources for upcoming stories and opportunities to secure media coverage for clients.
HARO emails are sent several times a day and are broken into different industry categories. Under each category are lists of the titles and topics in need of resources. However, above the categories and at the top of every email, HARO publishes news and/or tips and tricks for marketing and PR professionals.
In a recent email blast, HARO featured Cision’s free white paper, “The Five Truths of Modern Media Targeting,” which addresses the common challenges associated with conducting influencer outreach.
For example, did you know that “80 percent of influencers complain about irrelevant pitches they receive?” Cision’s white paper addresses this mix-up and shares five tips for how to effectively leverage influencer campaigns.
- Design your targeting strategy with your clients in mind. This may seem like a no-brainer, however, it’s a good reminder to take a customer-centric approach when creating a list of target influencers. Many PR professionals will go after the big dogs like The Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, but it’s more important to consider the outlets with which your customer is reading and engaging. Identifying the individuals, news, trade and social channels your clients are already interested in will better inform your strategy for creating a brand-influencer campaign. At Communiqué PR we achieve this by taking time to learn a company’s objectives and target audiences; taking this strategic approach accurately leads into the next step of creating a media list.
- Find relevant influencers using more than just Google. Although Google is a great tool to discover influencers’ topics of interest and areas of past coverage, it should be one step in the influencer vetting process. Taking time to consult other database tools will help quickly filter the right influencers with which to engage. For example, Cision’s influencer profiles contain links to their recent articles and their social media accounts to provide transparency into their “sphere of influence.” A best practice I use is to start with a Cision or IT Database search, and then verify my findings using Google to determine if this influencer is still covering the topic.
- Understand the messages your target influencers want to hear. A major element in identifying the correct influencers lies in understanding the topics and trends they cover and that their readers care about. By taking the time to learn past areas of coverage and even the voice of their reporting, PR professionals will quickly be able to determine if the influencer is a fit. If they do seem like the right influencer, take time to craft and individualize the campaign so it will not only resonate with the influencer, but also provide them with the information they need to serve their readership. Types of items to research before drafting your message include, but are not limited to, past articles they’ve written, topics of interest, audience demographics and the their preferred time and contact method.
- Personalize pitches and reduce the volume of outreach. This shouldn’t be breaking news to any PR professional. Tailoring pitches goes in hand with tip no. 3, however, in addition to connecting influencers with the right messages and experts, it’s also important to minimize the number of individuals to whom you are sending pitches. If you followed step no. 3, you’re influencer press list should not have 100 contacts in it. Keep campaigns small, meaningful and targeted. You’ll receive more results, improve brand perception and, most importantly, inform rather than overwhelm.
- Bigger isn’t always better. Often PR professionals and clients view unique visitors per month (UVM) and reach as the most important metrics when evaluating and selecting influencers to target. Depending on the company size, product availability and topic of your campaign, an influencer with readers who value your campaign topic will be more beneficial than a high-visibility influencer with a larger readership. Cision’s “Digital Reach” approach takes a step further than UVM and analyzes the level of engagement influencers have with their audiences. This is executed by measuring how often content from the influencer is shared via social media channels and linked with other websites. Assessing these types of influencer data will help uncover the impact niche influencers can provide to the business, as well as inform conversations to secure your clients buy-in.
If you’re still in need of resources, check out these two blog posts on influencer programs to help drive value with your strategies and prevent your brand from conducting off-topic outreach.
On July 26, 2017, A Place for Mom, the nation’s largest senior living referral service, released detailed findings from its Senior Living Preferences Survey. The findings, which are relevant to seniors, their families and friends, developers and urban planners, revealed some surprising trends in senior housing and care.
A Place for Mom found one preference of seniors is to live in walkable neighborhoods, a trend more often ascribed to millennials. Other findings from the survey included:
- Walkability is not just for active seniors. A strong preference for walkability is most common among senior apartment consumers (53 percent), but over a third of independent-living consumers (38 percent) and over a quarter of assisted-living consumers (26 percent) show a strong preference for walkability.
- Walkability is not just for city slickers. Consumers in both urban and rural areas prefer walkable communities. To the extent that differences in preferences exist, walkability is most important to consumers who prefer urban centers. Yet more than half of consumers who prefer suburbs, as well as a third or more of consumers who want to live in a small town or rural area, also strongly prefer walkability.
- Regardless of care needs, the top three most important neighborhood features are low crime rate, close proximity to hospitals, and close proximity to family. Over 90 percent of consumers in each senior housing and care category prefer a neighborhood with low crime; same for proximity to a hospital.
You can read the full press release here: Will 75 Million Baby Boomers’ Desire for Walkability Impact City Planning?
To support the announcement, we connected with a number of A Place for Mom’s community partners to capture their feedback about their senior living residents desires. They were able to corroborate APFM’s findings with insight into occupancy rates and other information. We then reached out to a number of highly relevant national business and industry press to share the news, generate interest, and secure coverage. Our efforts resulted in nine original articles.
Following is a summary of the coverage around the news:
- Seniors want walkability, too, survey says – Curbed, 7/25/2017
- Walkability May Be Key For Future Senior Living Developments – Senior Housing News, 7/26/2107
- Developers: Keep Grandma In Mind – M Report, 7/26/2017
- Walkable Areas Are Getting More Competition – Realtor, 7/26/2017
- Seniors want walkability, too, survey says – Builder, 7/26/2017
- Survey: Older Americans Value Walkable Neighborhoods – Professional Builder, 7/26/2017
- Walkable location a surprising draw for assisted living prospects – McKnight’s Senior Living, 7/26/2017
- What We’re Reading: Walkability to Serve Seniors and Their Communities – National Center for Mobility Management, 7/27/2017
- Not just millennials: Baby boomers want walkable neighborhoods too, study says, – Boston Agent Magazine, 7/28/2017 (the same article is posted on Chicago Agent Magazine)
We want to congratulate A Place for Mom on its research, and are excited to see what it will uncover next. As the largest provider of referral services in North America, it has a wealth of interesting data and the company’s data scientist is continually examining it to discover new trends and to see how community partners can transform the senior living experience. Be sure to check out www.APlaceforMom.com.