For the past 100 years companies have had the luxury of deciding what products they want to make and sell, what their brand message will be and how they will deliver it to their audience. Communication in PR was based on a one-way, two-step flow of communication through mass media.

The Internet changed that.

We’re in the age of social media and markets have indeed become conversations. The media landscape is in a state of flux. Consumers have access to new tools that allow them to easily and quickly access breaking news, find information, publish their thoughts and opinions and communicate with their peers. It also allows them to give you feedback and form a deep relationship with your organization, but you have to be open to this new media landscape and embrace social media. Listen, learn and respond.

With 500 million people on Facebook and 50 million on Twitter it’s no longer a question of ‘should we be doing social media? – but rather ‘are we doing it right?’

The first step in getting it right is to tap into the online conversations and listen to your audience. Social media offers you the opportunity of doing in-depth research, listening to conversations and hearing feedback we’ve never had access to before. There are tools to mine that data and get intelligence that can inform your PR strategy and hone the messaging.

Case Study: Finding New Markets

By listening to mentions of the brand online Hennessy Cognac discovered fans of their brand on a social networking site in the U.S. for African Americans: BlackPlanet.com.

Analysis of these conversations about Hennessy, and further study of the online and offline lifestyle choices of these brand fans, revealed their interests, preferences and how they interacted with the brand. Based on this data Hennessy created a tour called Hennessy Artistry. They sponsored and partnered with well-known African American music artists and DJs and held events and concerts in major cities across the U.S., always making content from these events available to post and share online.

In Q1 of 2010 they held a major launch party for their first new product in 50 years: Hennessy Black. The event was held in Chicago hosted by LeBron James with special guests Jay-Z, Young Jeezy, Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis, Cleveland Cavaliers Chicago Bulls & Chicago Bears. Content about the event reached more than 25,000,000 people through the following websites; ChicagoTribune.com, RedEye/ChicagoNow.com, ChicagoSunTimes.com, HuffingtonPost.com, TheSource.com, BlackPlanet.com.

200+ blogs and websites posted the ‘black carpet’ video interviews with celebrities like LeBron James, Jay-Z and Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis.

LeBron James [Black Out Chicago - Black Carpet] from MCM on Vimeo.

When you search Google images for Hennessy Black there are 260 000 results. Since March Hennessy Black has been mentioned in just over 20 000 blog posts.

Listening to the online conversations is not only the first step-it’s a vital step. There is an old PR saying: know before you go. Listening makes is so much easier to get that information and once you have it, you can allocate your resources wisely. You’ll know where to start, who to talk to, what content they respond to and what social sites you should be concentrating on.

When you know the lay of the land it’s much easier to plot a path to your destination. A social media marketing strategy is that roadmap.

Follow me on Twitter

Image Credit: The Pub Report

According to Google Insights for search there is a rapidly rising interest in social media strategy. And rising right along with it are searches for social media training. These searches are coming from

1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom

And there’s been steadily increasing news coverage of these two phrases – with the interest in training ramping up mid 2009.  The most interest is training is coming from New York City and London.  San Francisco, Washington DC and New York City are the top three locations for searches on social media strategy.

The main focus of the stream of news articles is the need for a sound social media strategy as opposed to the unstructured, ad hoc efforts so many companies start out with.  The Google News timeline shows 38 just in this last week.

Senior management executives at CPG companies and retailers are clearly giving serious thought to social media and its implications. Many expressed keen awareness of the pressing need for a well-honed social media strategy that harnesses the positive power of social media, effectively addresses/turns around potential negatives, and includes ROI measurement. “If you’re going to tell your [brand] story in a world of blogs and streaming video, you better be able to communicate digitally,” summed up Hershey CFO Bert Alfonso.   MediaPost

Irish Government unveils new social media strategy: The Irish Government’s Information Service has built a new social networking-led internet platform based on WordPress, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter called MerrionStreet.ie. “There was a sense in Government that the old way of disseminating information through traditional websites left a lot to be desired and we felt the need to move to a more modern era.  Mere text doesn’t cut it and people expect more.” Independent.ie

If you are looking for a road map take a look at this 10 point social media strategy.

I liked Srinivas Kandikonda’s article in Technology News about the need for a social media strategy and although he is writing about media organizations, the lessons apply equally to  any business today.

Here are his main points:

The need for adoption of social media and delivery to multiple mobile devices is increasingly becoming essential for retaining and attracting new customers

The smart phone is the next content platform.  It’s a powerful touchpoint and a highly personal channel. From news and product information to coupon campaigns and location-based marketing companies can engage consumers wherever they are to influence the buying decision and strengthen customer relationships.

Companies are taking a holistic approach to branding and delivering content to various platforms such as televisions, Internet, mobile devices, social media sites, print and other channels.

Good content shared on multiple channels is becoming a valuable asset. Companies that leverage social networking, content and knowledge assets will be those best positioned for future success.

The content that gets published across these channels should be consistent and be managed together

In a recent Washington Post article, 10 Mistakes Companies Make in Social Media, Debbie Weil said “Organizations and companies using social media should have a hub on their primary Web site where users can find links or feeds to blogs, Flickr photo galleries and other third-party Web sites. This also gives customers or constituents a single go-to URL”  A social media newsroom fits this description perfectly.

Search engine optimization plays a major role in driving traffic to the website. The site should be optimized not only for its own content, but also for the content published on various other channels.

Have one overall  keyword strategy.  work with your SEO colleagues and incorporate the keywords and phrases into all your PR content – news releases, blog posts, tweets.

A comprehensive social media strategy enables customers, as well as employees, to interact with each other using Web 2.0 tools, integrated with internal and external portals

As the Cluetrain Manifesto said: Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

Advanced analytics that can track campaigns that are spread across multiple channels are an essential part of this strategy.

Managing hundreds of pieces of content distributed across multiple channels presents a significant challenge, but there are products available that can help you track all your PR, news and social content. Radian6 is one.  Marketwire just acquired Sysomos to do just this.

At the Media Relations Summit in New York City at the end of June there were comments in practically every session about how much the media landscape has changed and that as the jobs description of a journalist changes, so too does the work of a PR person.  Content on multiple channels is a big part of PR today.  We have to know how to create it, how to distribute is and how to track views and engagement.

Related articles that you might find helpful

Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience in a MultiChannel World

7 Steps to Effective MultiChannel Marketing

I had the pleasure of chatting with Maggie Fox at the Media Relations Summit in New York City last week. She spoke on the session about the future of social media and in this interview Maggie explains how branded content and the intersection paid and earned media is a growing trend she is seeing.

Great minds think alike, Maggie! Branded content is one of the trends in my Future of PR report

Using paid media to extend the reach of your news content is often a controversial subject in PR. Making the most of the online and social media opportunities to leverage great content produced by customers or bloggers makes good PR sense.

Suppose a blogger or video blogger produces content around a remarkable brand or product experience and their blog only reaches ten thousand people.  You could use paid social media and online news services  to deliver it to other people who might be interested, but won’t ever see that particular blog post. This kind of content has a high trust-factor and sites like digg and foursquare are offering paid content marketing opportunities now.  You can also use services like Outbrain and Newsforce to place the content on major news sites.  And that audience is growing by leaps and bounds. Newspaper websites had their highest ever number of visitors in Q1 of this year.

Its definitely time to add some new ideas and tools to our traditional PR and media relations skill set.

Update:  You might also find this post about the long tail of the media from Geoff Livingston relevant to this idea.

He says:

In Chapter Four of Now Is Gone, we talk about this “ping pong match” between traditional and new media outlets. From the draft material in June of 2007:

One great way to promote your new media initiative remains traditional media, who often use well-respected blogs as sources or even the subject of stories… [Social media attention] drives information into the spotlight forcing traditional media to pay attention – or look like they’ve missed the news, and most importantly the conversation. Blogs [can be] a more effective way of reaching and inspiring traditional media to react than most PR professionals and wire services combined.   Ping pong matches demonstrate that weighting one tool by its actual total community and eyeball impact fails. As Seth Godin said in Meatball Sundae, “It doesn’t matter if the socially generated earned media only gets one percent of the hoped for attention if it’s the right one percent.”

However, it doesn’t hurt to make it available to the other 99 percent either.

Follow me on Twitter

Twitter can be used for many things.  It’s being referred to as more of a news platform than a social network.   Ogilvy 360 has a very good slidedeck about Twitter strategies that lays out  who to follow and what content to create depending on why you are using Twitter.

Using Twitter for PR still gives you several possible goals:

• Brand awareness
• Dialog with influencers
• Thought leadership
• Reputation Management
• Crisis
• Event Awareness
• Media Relations

While we might think of universities and the academic world as a conservative space they’re streets ahead of business when it comes to social media adoption.

Ninety-five percent of colleges and universities use at least one form of social media to recruit prospective students. This was among the key findings of the study, “Social Media and College Admissions: Higher-Ed Beats Business in Adoption of New Tools for Third Year,” conducted by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Research Chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite Inc., a Seattle-based research firm.

The new report is the outcome of a statistically sound study of the nation’s 4-year accredited colleges and universities. The study examined these institutions to quantify their adoption of social media tools and technologies. This is the third year that Barnes and Mattson have tracked social media adoption by the higher education sector, and theirs is the only statistically sound longitudinal study of its kind. The findings are based on 478 interviews and are valid within the range of +/- 4%.

Blogging:

22% of Fortune 500 have a corporate blog

42% of the Inc. 500 have a corporate blog.

51% of colleges and universities’ admissions offices maintain a blog for their schools.

Key findings:

• 95% of college admissions offices use at least one form of social media; a 10% increase over 2008 and 34% growth over 2007.
• Usage increased for nearly every social media tool included in the study.
• Social networking is the most common form of social media used by colleges and universities, with 87% of admissions departments using it.
• 59% of colleges’ and universities’ admission departments have a Twitter account
• 51% of colleges’ and universities’ admission departments have a blog. Almost all of those using a blog are using other forms of social media as well.
• 46% are using online video to deliver virtual tours of campuses, virtual visits to the dorms and sample lectures from the faculty.
• 38% of colleges’ and universities’ admission departments use message boards; 22% use podcasts and 13% use wikis. (Many respondents report that students and faculty often use wikis to collaborate on projects, but this is not a commonly used tool for recruitment.)
• 91% of respondents consider social media to be important to their recruitment strategies, a 3% increase over 2008

“There is continued evidence of enthusiasm and eagerness to embrace these new communication tools, and there is also evidence that these powerful tools are being utilized more effectively each year,” stated Barnes.

“Schools using social media are clearly studying the ‘rules of engagement’ in the online world in order to maximize their effectiveness at recruiting prospective students,” added Mattson.

A full copy of the new research report can be downloaded at:
http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/

Barnes and Mattson will publish a paper based on the findings in an upcoming issue of the Society for New Communications Research’s Journal of New Communications Research and will present the findings at the Society for New Communications Research’s Annual Research Symposium.

We know by now that we have to listen before we jump into social media. But the question I often get asked is how?  I just got an email from a friend today who is in NYC at a conference and she said “I am looking for concrete answers and all I get is platitudes!”

What to Listen For:

In order to listen well you have to decide what you are looking for.  Start with your company name, brand names, competitors and add generic terms that describe your business and/or your product

Example:  a skin care company should also listen for mentions of skin care, dry skin, aging, anti aging, wrinkle cream etc.  You can do some keyword research to see what phrases people are searching for, or look into your own analytics to see what words and phrases people search to find your website.

Free Tools

The most basic tool is RSS.  You can set up a dashboard using  something as simple as an iGoogle page.

You can see how to do this in this short video

Another tool you can use to make a great dashboard is NetVibes.  Here is a video on how to set it up.

And watch this video I made to show you how to do the searches

Do the searches in Google BlogSearch, Twitter, Yahoo News, and other social websites like Technorati, digg.com,  StumbleUpon and Delicious

Subscribe to the RSS Feed for these searches and pull the data into your RSS reader. Watch the video of how to do this

There are other free tools that can help you listen to conversations

Backtype

IceRocket

SocialMention

Paid Tools

There are many monitoring tools on the market now.  Each one has its own set of features and pricing structure

ViralHeat Read a review

BuzzLogic Insights
Radian 6
Buzzmetrics
Trackur
Visible Technologies
Cision

Techrigy (review from TechCrunch)

Sysomos Read the review by Dave Fleet

Jive Software They integrated Filtrbox into their Jive Market Engagement Solution.

Getting Value from Listening Tools

Smart social media gal Liz Strauss posted this article about how to get the most from listening tools. It’s a must-read for anyone involved in this activity

Follow me on Twitter

Image credit: K Y Olsen

On Wednesday morning a group of people interested enough in social media to brave the LA traffic gathered at the W in Westwood for the Visible Technologies Social Media Readiness breaskfast. The first speaker was Esteban Kolsky of ThinkJar. Kolsky was a Gartner analyst and now does work on social CRM and strategy.

He spoke about the depth of unfiltered intelligence available in social conversations and the value this data has for an organization. Monitoring and analyzing social converations is faster, more accurate and costs about one-tenth of traditional market research.

According to the Trust Barometer what people trust most is no longer ’someone like me’  it’s now  ‘a company like me.’

People trust, form relationships with, and buy from companies that share their values.  They expect, and in fact demand, that these companies become social internally and externally. They want to be involved,  They want to have a voice in how the products are designed and how the company operates.

To be a social businessyou have to:

Listen – but listening alone is not enough. Most companies are not sure what to do with the data and are not organized to use the information

Learn – Analyze the content you monitor and learn from the information and start to do something about it. There is a wealth of information in these conversations.  Mine the data and find those gems of intellegence.

Participate – Don’t let this be a one-way flow.  It’s about the conversation.  That means you have to participate and engage with your customers, detractors and evangelists. Use tools.  Form social media teams. Set social media policies and guidelines.

Collaborate – Provide your employees with the tools to colloborate,  Be open.  Take down that firewall between the smart market and your smart employees, so eloquently described in the Cluetrain Manifesto.   Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in. 
Grow and improve  - use the information you learn from your interactions with people  inside and outside the company to change, adopt better practices and make better products.  Use social media like you use email – it should be that integrated into your organization, not a ‘campaign’ or ‘experiment’ in PR or marketing.

Become a client-driven, innovative organization.

What does it take to do this?

• Buy in from the top
• A commitment to changing the way you operate
• Social media training. 

The training needs to go across the entire organization, from C-suite to finance (they approve the budgets) legal and  compliance, sales and CRM.  It’s not just for the marketing and PR department.

It’s no surprise that women dominate most social networks and news sites. What might raise a few eyebrows is this  finding of the iVillage and SheSpeaks survey Women and the Digital Path to Purchase: 50% of women are fans or followers of grocery, health/beauty or household product brands and the stores that carry them.

• 36% follow a food/beverage brand
• 32% follow a health/beauty brand
• 25% follow a household product brand
• 19% who follow a superstore via social media. 

• Consumer reviews on shopping sites 61%
• Blogs  33%
• Posts from friends on Facebook or Twitter  19%
• Posts from Brands  11%

Facebook and Twitter posts from friends were most influential among women in their 20’s, with 26% citing them as being “most influential.”

If you market a product in these categories and you were wondering how all this online chatter affects store sales, take note of this finding – women are 77% more likely to look for products and 67% more likely to purchase them in a store after reading online reviews on a community forum or message board.

Follow me on Twitter

Image credit: lu_lu on Flickr

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has a new report out about the news content in old media and new media and how blogs and social media news agendas relate to or differ from traditional media sources.  The findings are very interesting.

What used to be a one-way broadcast of news has become an increasingly social medium.  Half of Americans rely on friends and people they know for news.  44% of online users get news from a social site.

News Patterns

Although most original reporting still comes from traditional news sources, technology like blogs and social networks have opened the floodgates of discussion and opinion about the news.  People are influencing the impact of the news in ways that were impossible before.

The Pew study looked at the types of news stories consumers share and discuss the most and the issues they have less interest in.

Not surprisingly , they discovered that each social community has its own culture, personality and function.  The study analyzed a year of data – top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages, seven months’ worth on Twitter and a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube.

Emerging News Trends

• The stories that gain traction in social media are substantially different from those that lead in the mainstream media.  Gosh!  Could this be a clue as to why mainstream media circulation and viewership is declining?  Are they perhaps not tuned in to our tastes and interests?
• There are also big differences between what gets noticed and shared in blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Just as with other media channels, each of the social media channels has its own community and their interests differ
• News consumers don’t stay long on any website – make your news brief and appealing to the particular audience of that platform
• Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied
• Stories that gain traction in social media do so quickly, often within hours of initial reports, and leave quickly as well
• Blogs are still heavily reliant on mainstream sources for their content
• Twitter on the other hand is not.  A majority of Twitter news linked to online sources
• News videos on YouTube that got the most views and sharing had a strong visual appeal

PR 101 Still Applies

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

‘Do your homework.  Read the blogs.  Do;t pitch stories that are wrong for that blog or website. Use video to get more interest – but make sure they are visually appealing and tell a story.

Don’t make the mistake of viewing ’social media’ as one homogeneous platform and put the same content on all channels.  It did not work in old media and it won’t work in new media.  It might save time , but it does not get results. Find out who the audience is for a particular channel and create content specifically for them.

To properly service journalists, bloggers and  social media conversationalists you need to provide multiple types of content on your online newsroom.  Don’t assume that you know what they want.  Let them pick the content they prefer and make it easy for them to take it and use it.

Follow me on Twitter

Image Credit  Respres Flickr