It certainly feels as if a traditional approach to media relations is on a downward slide to oblivion. With so many ways to connect directly with prospects, customers, and influencers, many companies are questioning the investment in old-school earned media. Even social media-based PR has become pervasive enough to feel ‘traditional’ to some degree. And with sponsored content, native advertising and pay-for-play by-lines gaining in popularity, it’s understandable that many marketers are becoming more deliberate in figuring out how to best structure a long-term public relations campaign. But as we like to tell our clients, while digital strategies are an essential part of the marketing mix, traditional media outreach is still important. Here are five common myths about public relations in the year 2014 that are worth examining:
1) Traditional PR is becoming irrelevant. This is a very tempting myth to buy into because fewer publications are thriving; and because fewer reporters are employed by those publications, it calls into question readership and impact. We continue to see layoffs across the media landscape, and some trade pubs have closed their doors. Print readership is way down, but many of these publications have maintained or upped their commitment to digital content. All of this is not necessarily an indictment of earned media as much as it is the “printed form” of earned media, which we still feel provides tangible validation of a company’s products or services, and enables thought leaders to shape conversations. An independent analysis from a credible publication will always be taken more seriously than your own marketing. In addition, the search engines continue to value original “good” content from news outlets over sponsored articles.
2) Sponsored content is just as good as earned media. It is true that target audiences are looking for good content, regardless of where it is published and by whom. Still, editors are struggling to incorporate sponsored content into their online publications. They know it’s a nice revenue stream, but they are still hesitant to do anything that might confuse their readers by making native advertising look too much like their own writing. As a result, it often is marked with their own version of a scarlet A—clearly denoting it as a paid placement.
3) Get a good article placed, and everyone will see it. It wasn’t that long ago that a print publication would get passed around an office so that actual readership might be many times the circulation. Those days are long gone, and many trade pubs have shifted to online only. That means that the likelihood that an individual print article will be seen and viewed by the right audience is falling. Instead, today’s media currency is sharing through social channels as well as direct outreach. We tell our clients to aggressively market their earned media placements as much as possible, and every good PR program needs to have a solid social media strategy. That increases the chance that prospects see the article as you can’t just assume that the target audiences you want to see the content will stumble across it organically. In addition, the search engines and social media algorithms put a premium on those that get shared the most, guaranteeing that the article will come up high in search results and in social feeds.
4) You can’t connect media coverage with leads and sales. Marketing and sales teams struggle to show a direct connection between media coverage and new sales leads. At Bluetext, we think that you can make that connection and show the value of media outreach, and that any smart PR program will have those types of metrics integrated into their campaigns based on tying media coverage to business objectives. There are effective methods to drive readers to landing pages and microsites, where re-targeting and other lead generation connections can be made and measured. The key is being smart about the tools you use and the results you are looking for.
5) Traditional PR is slowly but surely going the way of the dinosaurs. This myth is probably closest to some version of reality, depending on how one defines ‘traditional.’ As I said earlier, print as a PR medium is declining, but there are still news sources for which media coverage can have impact. At the end of the day, good content is good content, no matter where it is published. Getting that good content to the right audiences means using all of the platforms—traditional and digital. No one can afford to put all of their eggs in one basket anymore. Campaigns must be integrated and coordinated for maximum impact.
Communications agencies often hype the endless ways to measure social media. The problem is, while some of these ways are useful, most are confusing and noisy. Confidently measuring the impact of your online conversations has been elusive.
That’s why Bluetext, together with our partners at General Sentiment, is launching SocialRank, a tool for brands to see how their company compares to others in the social media sphere. What’s different about SocialRank?
1. It takes an instant snapshot of chatter about your brand across the Internet.
2. It measures the chatter’s volume and sentiment.
3. It compares your data to those for well-known brands, including Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds, Android, and the Obama White House.
Why does this matter?
1. Social media offers not only an important way to see how your company is perceived among key audiences; it is also an early warning system for market, service, and competitive challenges.
2. We think that how people talk about your brand is often more important than how much they are talking about it. Measuring that sentiment—be it positive, neutral, or negative—lets executives know whether they are on track with their marketing and branding efforts, or if they have a problem they need to address.
3. You can use SocialRank to plug in your competitors to see what you’re up against.
But SocialRank is only a start to understanding your reputation across social media. Bluetext can help any company fully analyze its reputation across the Internet—whether your brand is ahead of the competition or losing ground, whether your messages are resonating with key audiences or falling flat, and whether you have vocal advocates or persistent critics. Armed with those results, we can design and implement a social media program that reinforces your positive values, while navigating the waters of critics and competitors.
So give SocialRank a try, and then give Bluetext a call to see what we can do for your brand.
Facebook analytical insights introduced last year give brand marketers, agencies and communicators the ability to understand how their fan pages are performing. This performance should be aligned with the key performance indicators set forth in your master digital media strategy. Facebook shifted metrics to focus more on content sharing and fan behavior rather than the raw popularity of a page in its latest analytical updates. In 2011 here are some focus areas for your Facebook campaigns.
Where are the ‘Likes’ coming from
Facebook provides analytics that show how fans arrive at pages, whether through search engines, social engagement, or organically through other visibility generated in an integrated campaign. Understanding how your fans find you instantly gives you insight into how to reach them or expand your community for future outreach efforts.
Fan Page Demographics and User Behaviors
Demographic information about your fans includes gender, age, location (country and city) and language preferred. All data is anonymous, but this basic demographic information can help brands tailor and adjust their content to appeal to their true audience, and eliminate guesswork. Third party platforms from companies like BuddyMedia enable global brand marketers to focus their resources for a multilingual social engagement strategy to provide experiences in the necessary languages per the data extracted from Facebook.
Tab Popularity
A great improvement from previous analytics, with the expansion of tab customization on pages has enabled the analytics to tell brand marketers which tabs are most popular and provided more granular data on tab usage. These analytics shape future content strategies and tactics throughout a brands entire digital media strategy.
Quality Matters and Facebook Has The Data To Prove It
Facebook now gives each post a rating or index to allow for comparison and easy measurement. This function allows you to truly understand what content really makes fans tick to shape your future content strategies.
Are you gleaning insights robustly through Facebook? What are you finding out?
Social networking and search engine optimization will be forever linked and integrated for progressive marketing strategies. Good marketers know that the two work hand in hand and the linkage is growing more powerful daily. This graphic summarizes the Social SEO cycles in today’s hyper-connected environment.
As innovation in search and social continues, these platforms and ecosystems will continue to find valuable integration pathways between one another. As brands fight for relevancy and stay on the edge of what’s hot, the two systems truly need one another. I believe these brand categories will blur into a consolidated category. Will this just be “media” or will this be truly “digital media.” User experience consultants can help their clients by creating digital media strategies to embrace these changing times.
Here are 10 reasons to rethink your social strategy with a complete SEO integrated layer:
1. Search engines are smarter than ever before. You must embrace their new inteligence. The value of truly earned organic, editorial links will only continue to increase in value.
2. Earned links are the modern media hit factories of yesterday. A strong social strategy will earn a growing amount of editorially-earned links daily.
3. Being fresh with your editorial pace and content will enable you to get more link baits for authoritative domain fish out in the sea.
4. Frequent Updates = frequent visits by spiders, humans and everything in between.
5. Social web success brings increasing returns. Likes and other rating systems influence search algorithyms.
6. Social is sustainable. An honest, well-nurtured community strategy will naturally progress, keep you focused, and build domain authority.
7. Links aren’t good enough. You need strong PR digitally and offline. Strong endorsements contextually to your brand will help your digital reputation strategy.
8. Ride the wave. With 600 million people spending 30 minutes a day on Facebook, your focus should be there.
9. Social scavengers produce links more likely than any other first-time brand user.
10. Stay compelling and of high quality when producing content.