The Importance of Your Online Newsroom

Media relations have always been a huge component of successful PR, this much we know, but we can all agree that today’s journalist is altogether a different beast than its ancestors? Technology has turned the career of your average journalist on its head, and maintaining good standing with these new gatekeepers of the media requires instant and 24-hour access to company information. I’m talking about your online newsroom.

According to Business Wire blog, 92 percent of journalists turn to company websites first when doing research for a story. Is your website prepared to handle the demands of today’s journalists? Keep in mind that today’s journalists don’t run around town with a fedora and a steno pad, some don’t even leave the comfort of their own home. Bloggers are as influential now as ever and their needs, which are almost entirely digital, must also be considered.

THINGS TO CONSIDER PUTTING IN YOUR ONLINE NEWSROOM:

• Basic company history and information: don’t assume that every journalist who will write about your company knows the life story. Making these facts known will make interviews more efficient, they can get down to asking questions about the meat of the story and not bother with basic information.
• Mission statement: it is important to make your organization’s focus clear, and to maintain that focus across all content in your newsroom.
• Contact information for your SME’s: if your subject matter experts have been properly briefed on how to interact with members of the press. Make sure they also contribute content regularly, for a journalist their expertise brings credibility to their story. For your organization, it sets you apart as a knowledgeable leader of your industry.
• Referrals to bloggers within your industry: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Bloggers must maintain a healthy subscriber list, so if you refer them subscribers, they would be more willing to throw you some coverage. Build a relationship!

There are many things to consider when organizing your online newsroom, but getting the formula just right can really make a difference for you and your media coverage. Earned media still reigns supreme, and the beast must be fed!

Who is in charge of social media?

There is no doubt that social media are unique and powerful tools available to marketers and public relations professionals alike, but with the lines between the two blurring more each day, who takes the lead on these platforms? This is a debate that has been going on for a few years now, and has yet to come to a clear conclusion.

Makovsky, an integrated communications firm in New York held a session at the 2012 Global PR Summit where they presented the results of a study they conducted. This survey of 175 marketing and communications executives essentially asked the following questions: What can PR and marketing learn from each other? And what to CMO and COO’s do well or poorly together?

Four out of five of these executive agreed on two things that marketing can learn from PR: the power of storytelling and that reputation is the consequence of authentic behavior of the organization. A majority of these executives also agreed that what PR can take away from marketing is a way to quantify value to their methods, and  to learn to use data and analytics to make decisions.

Essentially what these results indicate is that marketers need to be more right-brained and PR practitioners more left-brained. Why not just work together? Marketing has the metrics to measure KPI’s and ROI while PR brings a very clear sense of reputation and brand identity to the table. Additionally, marketing research can help an organization make informed decision while the media relations can prevent marketers from tooting their own horn and introduce the power of earned media. This team of two trades, if collaborating effectively, should have a built in system of checks and balances.

Having said that, concerning social media, public relations should be the gatekeeper.

In that same survey by Makovsky, it was found that the biggest reason for collaboration between marketing and communications is the Internet. Specifically, it is the increased voice of the consumer, highly visible crises, and the fact that reputation is being factored in to the buying decisions. These three areas are areas where PR excels.

Communication between businesses and consumers is no longer a one-way street. The simple fact is that a customer can now, from their smartphones even, talk eye to eye with the biggest of brands makes a profound difference in the role of PR. The fact that Dave Carrol can make a video about his unpleasant experience with United Airlines and cause 14 million negative impressions for the commercial airliner brings PR to the forefront of social media for their knowledge of crisis management. The field of public relations is all about shaping reputation.

Social media are great channels to promote products and conduct market research, but they must be overseen by the PR folks because interactions over social media are conversations between the brand and the consumer. It is because social media is two-way communication that PR should take the reins, marketers are simply not trained to respond to all types of interactions online.

New Media: Easy to Use and Misuse

The new facets of marketing are very easy to use. I’m talking of course, to the smaller companies who think they may save some money by taking a shot at new media. You are the ones who can benefit most from these smaller-scale yet effective marketing methods like casual video, memes, and podcasting to name a few. I’m going to go right on and say it, to the dismay of all ad agency’s out there — you can do it. It is possible for you to, but here’s the deal: without personnel  who know your industry, know the media and are committed to these methods, they are all useless.

If you are deciding to do a podcast you have to have people that are committed to regularly produce content. Likewise, with memes, your team has to know the Internet trends that will make your memes relevant to your audience. Casual videos don’t require such a high budget and can be produced more regularly, but you want to put out compelling content and use the right endorsers to really capitalize on these methods. Moral of the story: you don’t have to go and hire a marketing firm to do your everyday advertising. But if you don’t and are going to be producing content, you need to invest the funds in hiring an in-house person or team to handle your online brand. Because it is a reflection of your brand and if you try to cut costs by doing it yourself or tacking it on to another employees regular duties either your normal responsibilities or the new media will fall by the wayside. It is a lot to handle and that is why you need to have people committed to it. Because if you get on these platforms and experience an initial boom of followers or shares, you will get your hopes up but you have set the standard to produce for these many people. If you aren’t putting out regular and relevant content you will lose these followers and lose your presence on businesses final frontier.

Visual cues for your consumers

They say a picture is worth a thousand words — but they never said which thousand words those were. Stupid is a word. So is irrelevant. How about pointless or wasteful? Those are words. While I think it is important that images play a role in reaching consumers in Web 2.0 it is perhaps even more important that they be the right images that reflect your brand. What words are the pictures in your advertisements worth? Are they good ones?

Consider the fact that while your images they may be interesting, they may not lead to an impression. This is to say that the image may not get clicked on, and that whatever image you chose to tweet will be directly related to the twitter handle. People won’t always take the time to properly consume your advertisements, so don’t leave it to chance. For this reason I advise you to err on the side of caution; keep the images appropriate to your brand. If your brand can afford the more risque or provocative images, then go for it. But if you are counting on the humor of a “get your mind out of the gutter” type of ad, don’t risk it.

On the other hand, be proactive — stir emotions. These images can be worth a thousand positive words, the trick is using the right ones. There are statistics upon statistics of how strong images can be in a message. In his book, Brainfluence, Roger Dooley has a whole section titled, “Picture Brainfluence.” It talks about how babies and pretty women draw consumer attention, and how images help consumers empathize (a major way for non-profits to capitalize). Whatever emotion is that works for your cause, exploit it. Pity, happiness, love, envy, sadness, patriotism — call on them to solidify a connection with your target market.

Influence in the Digital Age

Look left, an ad. Look right, another one. On the radio, the television. Pull out your phone and, oh look, more ads. Scroll down to the bottom of this post, and I’m willing to bet, there’s an ad. So what happens when the bright colors can’t get any brighter and the bold ads can’t get any bolder? What then?

Then you fall back and distribute messages through your followers and your networks. It will be the list of people that whose trust you’ve gained and the influence you’ve earned, that will disseminate information when the noise of the internet is too loud to overcome in your market. Attention is the currency of the digital world, and influence harnesses that currency.

So what does this mean for marketers, and well, for student marketers? It means that employers will want to know just how influential you are.

We are all familiar with various forms of Internet analytics, but the subcategory of social media analytics gives a genuine perspective of reach. Klout had the right idea, but many will argue that their timing was wrong. Does your Klout score mean anything? Maybe it does. If recruiters will be perusing through your social media anyway, would it hurt to let them know of your reach on social media? Fobres thinks so.

Klout may not have the right formula though. I personally find it hard to believe that, on a scale of 0-99, I have a 45 when the Associated Press has a 99. Regardless, there is something to be said of measuring influence in the digital age.

Why the 4 P’s and Web 2.0 Do Not Mix

When the traditional marketing mix was developed, the question was “What do you do?” Not, “Why do you do it?” You see, the four P’s are very product-centered. Since the advent of the Internet, companies can not afford to be so old-fashioned. This is not to say that the 4 P’s are not important, but rather that they must be examined under a new light and with new considerations.

In 1999, there was an essay published by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, David Searls and David Weinberger that has been considered a foreword for marketing in the age of the Internet. The Cluetrain Manifesto is made up of several theses which all indicate a change in the relationship between businesses and their consumers. It is incredible to think that 15 years ago, these four writers, bloggers and pundits had a grasp on what was to come.

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter — and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

– An excerpt from The Cluetrain Manifesto

We can agree that most everyone has recognized that the Internet has changed the game — not just in the sense that there additional channels to tap, but that these new channels are not one-way streets. The world is flat, and consumers can now protest, or laud, the spoonfuls companies decide to feed them. This has a profound effect on marketing — an effect significant enough to have its own seat at the marketing mix table.

Some would argue that Product in the 4 P’s focuses on people, and to an extent it does. It focuses on a need or want to satisfy in a consumer, but today’s world is so competitive that you aren’t the only company that can fulfill those same needs or wants. Now it comes to a matter of making them chose your company. To do this, you need to understand your target market.

The folks at Brains on Fire have taken this to heart. In their book The Passion Conversation they evangelize that people are the key to marketing. Their formula for marketing success starts with finding (or making) a passion point in your customers. Then passionate customers will advocate your brand in a perpetual cycle of word of mouth marketing.

People, though, can also have a negative affect. Attack of the Customers, by Paul Gillin and Greg Gianforte, talks about how the Internet has given voice to the voiceless and how for some companies this has been a major problem. Companies are constantly attacked online, and staying off of social media does not prevent it. Companies have to make an online presence and remain diligent in reflecting their brand online.

“By now you know we’re in the middle of a communication revolution with an explosion of new media channels to reach your audience directly and then have your ideas shared in social networks. But most organizations act as if we’re still in the mainstream media era of big expensive campaigns,”

– David Meerman Scott

The communication revolution has taken its toll on marketing and PR, and the strategies used by the two must adapt. They must begin and end with people.

Crowdsourcing and Duolingo

To expand on an observation I made for my Marketing through Social Media class earlier this week, the idea of crowdsourcing can be a fantastic way for companies to gain valuable insight from consumers and maybe even some free labor? Let me explain.

In the case of Duolingo, the popular language education mobile app, crowdsourcing has been bringing in a bit of revenue. The point of the app is to teach you a new language, available now are: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. Upon reaching a certain mastery in the language, in this case Spanish, Duolingo has your translate news articles from English to Spanish as a form of comprehension. Duolingo has partnered with CNN and BuzzFeed to translate their articles in to Spanish to reach a broader readership.

Some have questioned the ethics behind this type of work, but the app is free. And if anything, the revenue made off of the translation — only 10% of these articles actually generate any money for Duolingo — it is paying for the free education.

As if Duolingo was not already getting enough from crowds, they have decided to broaden their language courses. In fact, if someone wants to teach it they’ll make it available. In another interesting way of crowdsourcing, Duolingo has made it possible for anyone to share a language with the world. If you clicked the last link, pay attention to the editor’s note — that article was translated from Spanish to English using no other than this innovative language app.This is truly a success story for crowdsourcing. This incubator idea has the potential to double the languages that they currently have, and add to the more than 10 million registered Duolingo users.

Where did Doulingo get this idea? Besides having the loosely referred to “Father of Crowdsourcing” as a founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn of course. Maybe they borrowed the idea from Khan Academy? In 2011 Khan began to accept volunteers to translate their content for students across the globe. Maybe Khan should take after Doulingo and have volunteers contribute new subjects. Education organizations like these could stand to do a little crowdsourcing — it’s working.

We promise, free content really is free

Free content. Anybody who’s anybody is doing it. But why?  No doubt that you have worked hard to hire a staff that bring so much to the table with their years of expertise and their graduate degrees. Why give away what these knowledgeable people have to offer? In short — to build credibility.

Today the average consumer is far too “wise” to know that nothing is free. In this case, the content really is free. There’s no catch. So when a high end marketing firm who specializes in content marketing posts an article on LinkedIn on how to add to your content with texture packs and brushes, click on the link. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to have to enter your email address and be constantly bombarded with emails pushing their services. It means that they want to share some of their practices and maybe their application in some of their work. That’s all. If this really ends up helping you then the next time you are more willing to click on the link with their next big tip, and pretty soon you begin to consider them an authority in content marketing. Here is the return on investment: So when your boss tells you, the head of marketing for a small startup, that you will be refreshing your brand and that you need to start looking for a marketing firm, who do you think will immediately pop in to your head? That’s right, that marketing firm that you’ve come to trust.

This may not bring you as much business as your total reach may indicate, and there will be some people who will simply freeload your content and expertise. But by producing free content you raise your brand awareness, and when that turns into a consistent audience, it can turn in to business and eventually referrals. If nothing else, it builds good will, and add to your brand equity. So go ahead, start rolling out free content like this.

An Age of Strategic and Calculated Content

When the world became flat, the wall between marketing and PR came down. I won’t involve myself on the economic globalization argument that the video argues, but the events that Thomas Friedman identifies in this lecture apply to the profession of communication and provided a way for you to be reading this right now. These events are the following:

1. Individuals are empowered to create their own content in digital form by the accessibility of the personal computer.
2. August 8, 1995 — Netscape goes public, introducing the web browser and starting a massive investment in fiber optic cable that would wire the world which connected computers around the world for free.
3. The “Workflow Evolution” allowed everyone’s software and computers to be inter-operable.

These three events enabled people to compete, connect and collaborate. This got the ball rolling. It would lead to uploading original content. When this became available to everyone and anyone, everyone sped up. “Whatever can be done, will be done,” Friedman said. The question remained — who will do it first?

Thus began the frantic race for attention. To put into perspective of the diffusion of innovations, uploading original content was enough for innovators and early adopters. The early and late majorities joined in and all of a sudden content had to become more elaborate, and the currency of attention became measured by clicks and downloads, mentions and retweets. Content now comes in whatever vehicle you are in the mood for. It’s in your mailbox, your inbox, your phone, it’s audio, it’s visual, maybe it’s both on and offline — it is everywhere.

For those laggards still out there. Today’s insatiable content-consuming audiences aren’t interested in your ads that simply tell them about how great your new product is. They want to know why you do what you do. Consumers are loyal to brands because since the flattening of the world a corporation and an individual can go toe-to-toe.  In this sense, the world has very much been flattened and the average consumer can deal a critical blow to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

With their new-found vulnerability, the marketing and the public relations departments of the organizations that caught on were forced to set aside their differences and work together to produce all content. Consulting and critiquing each other to avoid any possible errors that could discount their brand, and still win over the coveted attention of an audience.

Today, the content that everyone leisurely consumes is the result of  countless hours of strategic and calculated work. Just this past week Central Texas PRSA hosted guest speaker Dr. Isaac Muñoz, manager of customer intelligence for Southwest Airlines, and he took those in attendance through a brief overview of the year-long process of refreshing their brand. Several ad campaigns, copy testing and various other forms of research all focused on establishing the customer as the answer to the question: Why we do you do what you do? On their website they even proudly say that they like to think of themselves as “… a Customer Service company that happens to fly planes.”

The major shift in focus for Southwest, and many other companies is a direct result of the world becoming flat.

Don’t specialize quite yet

The best advice I can think of for a communications student coming out of school is to be a jack of all trades — a communications generalist, if you will. There is an immensely wide array of jobs in the field of communications, and at such a young age most won’t know exactly what they want to go in to. One may choose to go in to the medical side of communication, go to a PR firm, become a PIO, work as a member of the media, private consulting or even a communications representative for a large corporation. So while in school, don’t delve too deep in to a skill that you may not end up using. Instead, focus your time and energy on broadening your scope. Become an amateur at everything communications: brush up on marketing tactics, keep up with social media, know social trends, stay on top of current events, explore with creative software like the Adobe suite, try your hand at photography and keep writing at the center of your studies. I make a point to ask how important writing is to all of the speakers I come across in the arena of communication, and they all confirm that writing is a valuable stock to invest in. But that alone will not be enough, so scratch the surface of as much as you can to become a knowledgeable intern or college hire. Once you are in the job you like, then expand on those skills to cater to the job you decide you want to pursue.