We know you can’t get enough PRBC and so….something to chew on as you’re enjoying the weekend edition of the paper and a nice, unhurried bagel. We hope you enjoy! Continue reading
Should User Experience Be a PR function? Should Measurement?
I was listening to a podcast from the Measure Mob the other day, and it made me think about what pieces of social media are owned by PR. More specifically, I mean which pieces we are willing to take ownership of.
The Measure Men offered an example about how marketing folks focus a great deal on how they are driving traffic to the website, but they don’t seem to care about bounce rates or conversions. In other words, they’re only focused on what they think is their job: driving the traffic. The user experience once they get there doesn’t seem to matter to them.
But it’s not just marketing. I think a great many of us are guilty of focusing on our own little silo without thinking about the larger picture. You may drive engagement with your online community, but are your efforts somehow driving increased traffic to your customer services department? Shouldn’t you care about that? Continue reading
Targeting Brand Influencers to Shape Your PR Strategy
One of the best ways to shape your social image is understanding how to target and influence lead users within your industry. Lead users are people who shape and impact a community’s way of thinking. They are the people whose opinions trickle down through the web and fall in to the laps of your core customers. Learning to target these key individuals is sometimes difficult, but if done effectively can really cement your online PR efforts. Continue reading
Favoriting Tweets: The Easiest Way To Keep Up on All Your Social Media/PR News Reading
Time and time again, the simplicity of Twitter has been undermined. And simplicity is a beautiful thing when noise in social networks is never going to go away. Even stories in the news might be considered “noise” because, while trying to be relevant, they fail to catch on with the majority. Or maybe it’s the fact that people never see it, and a story, or blog post or forum discussion for that matter, never receives its proper due.
Enter the world of favoriting tweets on Twitter, the primary agent of how I keep up on what’s relevant, timely, and too good not to miss in terms of content. Favoriting, starring, or flagging articles is obviously nothing new, but it’s a must-do if you’re trying to stay abreast on everything important in the PR industry – especially if you have little time to get that juicy nugget of detail, and you’re following 1,000 PR and social media-savvy tweeps. Use it to your advantage! Continue reading
On QR Codes & PR Working with Dictators…
It’s been an exceedingly busy couple of weeks for me, both personally and professionally. (A wedding coming up in two months will do that to you!) I have, though, been actively monitoring many of the issues bubbling up in the PR and marketing space, and I thought I’d very quickly weigh in with a few random thoughts on QR Codes and PR firms working with dictators (two totally disparate topics, I know): Continue reading
Metrics and Cockfosters
I’ve been a bit delinquent in writing my fair share of posts recently due to my recent vacation to London. I spent one glorious week with my little sister and parents exploring one of the oldest cities in the world.
Continually struck by the historic and surreal atmosphere of the city, I often daydreamed about how different my life could be. What if my ancestors hadn’t left for the new world, would I live in London? Would I still giggle at words like Cockfosters and bangers and mash? (Hang with me for a moment, I promise this isn’t an entirely sentimental and introspective post.) Continue reading
Social Media is not a Magic Hammer
Social media is a wonderful tool that brands and organizations can use to tap into a vast pool of individuals receptive to their messaging. Unfortunately, a misconception exists by too many that have yet to establish a presence that as soon as they jump in, they will see an immense return. Just like any carpenter can tell you, one tool cannot build a house; social media is simply one tool on the belt that builds a successful marketing strategy.
The fact is, there exists only a handful of brands that can expect to create a Twitter or Facebook account and see a mass exodus of people follow right away. For the other 99.999% of the companies not named Apple, the “if you build it, they will come” mentality is completely false. Unfortunately, many organizations interpret this to mean they don’t belong in the game of social networking and abandon all their efforts before they have a chance to ramp up. Continue reading
Who’s Not Talking About Bin Laden?
On May 1, President Barack Obama announced to a live television audience the death of Osama bin Laden. It was a seminal moment in both the nearly ten year old “War on Terror” and in American history. However, the days following bin Laden’s death have been filled with missteps that would make even a first-year public relations student’s stomach turn.
The key point in a crisis or important news situation is to have one voice and only that voice should speak. Therefore, no confusion would be caused. That hasn’t been the case post-bin Laden’s death. CIA Director Leon Panetta opened up a can of worms when he said to NBC News that, “ultimately,” a photo of the dead Al Qaeda leader would be shown. Panetta did several other interviews, including one with Time magazine. Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, even stated that he expected a photograph would be released “fairly soon.” Continue reading
The Brand Minders
Aside from the hoopla over the Royal Wedding, one thing was pretty evident last week: big international events often bring out the worst in brand marketing.
From silly tie-ins like Royal Wedding sliding doors from Spaceslide.co.uk (Hey, you never know when you need to see Wills and Kate’s smiling faces while walking in and out of a room!) to the utterly ridiculous £500 pizza from Papa John’s made to look like the happy couple to constant debates about whether Kate’s dress would be a boon for fashion PR, marketers were out in full force last week trying to hock just about anything that could possibly … just maybe … be connected to the Royal Wedding.
All of which left many annoyed and ready for the whole show to finally come to an end.
Thus, two recent op-eds in MarketingWeek could not have come at a better time. While neither dealt directly with the marketing/Royal Wedding mashup, each made its point plainly clear: brands need to be especially careful when trying to tap into the cultural zeitgeist of the moment or teaming up with potential partners. Continue reading
PR Pity Party
A few weeks back, I sent out an innocent tweet about a new poll that showed PR pros preferred using Facebook over Twitter. Fellow PRBC-er, Jeff Esposito, read me the riot act about how he was sick of PR people taking ourselves so seriously.
Here I will quote Mr. Esposito: “I am sick of the self-promotional BS spewed lately. Last I checked our job’s function was to make co’s look good.” I tried to rack my brain about what my link had to do with this topic. After a bit of back and forth, we discovered Jeff mixed up my tweet with someone else’s and now he owes me a drink.
Yet, in the confusion, he did make a point. Do PR pros have a tendency to throw a pity party for ourselves? Recently, CNBC called Public Relations the #2 most stressful job in America (obviously, they did not fact check the salary portion). When I heard this news, I was ready to pop open a bottle of tequila and wallow about how bad I have it, how difficult my job is, and so on. Continue reading