Do PR pros speak social media?

There are thousands of PR pros all over the world who speak hundreds of languages. But they do have one language in common: social media. Do they?

Social media has become powerful. That’s a fact.

PR specialists worldwide have recognized the benefits social media brings in the relationship with stakeholders, be they media, customers etc. And now they use all the available tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker, blogs and so on. So no matter the native language they all speak social media.


Or maybe not...The trend is new and not all PR pros have had the chance to practice social media. Moreover, technology can sometimes raise problems for senior practitioners who are not that computer literate (as Kathryn wrote).

The future looks bright however. Universities provide online PR courses, students are eager to take new media classes, senior practitioners attend trainings, and online communications specialists do their job.

In the end all of us in PR will speak social media no matter the country. Because that’s the beauty of social media: it is global and crosses cultural barriers (among others of course:))

Media relations on Twitter

To tweet or not to tweet with journos? This is the question…



People use Twitter no matter the age, profession, gender. The micro-blogging platform has brought both journalists and PR pros together, while offering the latter the opportunity to do media relations in real time. How come? Well, press releases, interviews, pitches and press conferences can be held on Twitter.


THE TWEET RELEASE

The tweet release is a short press release that only contains the lead - who, what, when, where, why.
Examples of such releases (below) were posted by Cristian Manafu, top blogger in Romania. He calls them “news in 140 characters” (I find the name quite appropriate:)):
• Microsoft organizes a series of workshops in March;
• The forum on Tourette has been lunched;
• Ericsson lunches a competition for students interested in developing applications.


THE TWINTERVIEW

A twinterview is an interview held on Twitter. The advantage of such approach is that journalists get the answers they need in real time (compared to an email interview for example). Moreover, it is time saving because journos do not have to commute to a certain venue (like in the case of face-to-face interviews). The real time issue also applies in case of the readers (followers) who read the ongoing interview.

Check out the first and the second twinterview in the UK.


THE TWITPITCH

Pitching stories on Twitter seems to be more efficient from journalists’ point of view (as Jeremy Porter wrote) because:
• It forces PR pros to go straight to the point because of the 140-character limit;
• It allows PR people to learn what a journalist is interested in writing about by following the journo on Twitter, thus eliminating “spam”.


THE TWEET CONFERENCE

Tweet conferences gather journos and company officials on Twitter and have similar advantages as twinterviewes.


I would say: TWEET. But be cautious, learn how to use Twitter, make sure you follow the right journos and send them appropriate (newsworthy, attractive etc) tweets.

You might be also interested in reading about @MicroPR :)

Interpersonal needs theory applied in social networks in Romania

There is no doubt technology has changed the way we communicate, leaving its footprint on intrapersonal, interpersonal and group communication: from diaries we got to blogs, from letters we got to emails, from telephones we got to mobiles, from meetings we got to online conferences.

Defined, interpersonal communication takes place between two individuals (called a dyad) and has a number of determinants, among which the most important are age, gender, personality, education, occupation, social class and nationality (Rosengren, 2006). Several theories have tried to explain why people engage in communication with one other. Among these there is the interpersonal needs theory, according to which people engage in interpersonal communication to fulfill needs. Schutz (1958, cited in Sammut, 2010) suggests three such needs:

• Inclusion – the need to establish identity with others;
• Control – the need to exercise leadership and prove one’s abilities (applied in group communication as well);
• Affection – the need to develop relationships with people.

Group communication takes place between more people who establish certain relationships among themselves. This type of communication is also influenced by certain variables, just like in the case of dyads.

With social networks interpersonal and group communications have moved online and the needs behind engaging into “relationships” (virtual ones) are changing.

A study conducted by Daedalus Millward Brown provides an insight on why Romanians use social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Hi5, explaining the needs behind engaging into virtual interpersonal and group communication in case of Romanian people (variable considered: nationality).

The results show Romanians use:

• Twitter for problem-solving, personal development, promoting opinions and ideas;
• Facebook for a sense of belonging, virtual entertainment;
• Hi5 for self-promotion.

I find interesting analyzing these findings and Schutz’s proposals from the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.


Whereas in Shutz’s view communication needs are more related to the love/belonging level of Maslow pyramid, in case of social networks and online communication needs are more focused on the esteem and self-actualization levels.

Given the fact that in Maslow's hierarchy needs are fulfilled on levels from bottom to top (which means people reaching esteem and self-actualization needs have already satisfied the love-related ones), we can conclude that with social networks people not only fulfill affection needs but go beyond them. Consequently, the highest peak in terms of satisfying personal needs can be reached with Twitter, Facebook and Hi5, at least in case of Romanians.

Dealing with bloggers

Interview with Stephen Davies, Online Communications Consultant

1. What makes a blogger different from a journalist from the point of view of a PR pro?
Although both are very similar in the fact they are both publishers of news, views and opinions, bloggers and journalists differ in a number of ways. The first one being is that, unlike journalists, bloggers generally aren’t paid to write and thus don’t treat blogging in a professional context. You will often find that people blog purely for the enjoyment of it, whether this comes from writing about their passions or connecting with like-minds around the world.


2. How should PR pros approach bloggers?
Because bloggers aren’t usually paid to write and often do it in their own free time do not expect to approach a blogger like you would a journalist. Remember this is social media (emphasis on ‘social’) so sending a press release or some other kind of unsolicited email without any prior personal contact may not go down too well.


3. How can bloggers contribute to online PR? In Romania for example bloggers take part in online campaigns.
I’m not so sure you should be thinking how can bloggers contribute to PR, but more along the lines of how can PR contribute to bloggers. The key thing to create positive word-of-mouth within social media is to provide something of value. That is, really understand your audience and what makes them stick and try to provide something of value to them that is mutually beneficial.


4. What is the golden rule in the communication with bloggers?
If I can give you three golden rules I’d say:
a. Know what the blogger writes about and make sure what you have is relevant to them;
b. Look to build relationships with them. Don’t just send them a press release out of the blue;
c. Understand that bloggers don’t usually think nor act like journalists do.


5. What are the most common mistakes PR pros make in the communication with bloggers?
As already mentioned, I think the most common mistake, and potentially the worst one too, is treating bloggers the same way they do journalists. Doing this opens the communication up to so many issues such as having you, your agency and your client named and shamed in public.


Many thanks to Stephen Davies for answering the questions!

Online political communication: a war between the media and politicians?

Politicians can no longer ignore the power of online media. While some platforms - such as YouTube - are “an enduring source of embarrassment” for them, as Craig showed in “You Tube: Political Headache”, others are weapons of attack in an attempt to win electorate.


The Romanian presidential elections of last year were filled with examples of politicians using social and online media in the battle for winning the highest position in the state. They set up Twitter accounts and created blogs, websites and Facebook pages. I have to specify that youths are generally reached with these instruments in Romania in contrast with the UK where even elderly people know what a tweet is.

But since we are talking about wars between the media and politicians I will stop at two episodes from the elections series.

Traian Basescu versus the TV

The former and yet present president of Romania, Traian Basescu, has (like any other politician one may say) supporters and enemies. Among the most important enemies we find highly influential TV hosts Mircea Badea, Mihai Gadea and Valentin Stan (let’s call them ‘the three musketeers’). Under the slogan “Are you voting the TV?” Traian Basescu ran a campaign in November 2009 meant to show people that his statements are misinterpreted and negatively commented by the three, claiming voters should not let themselves influenced by the TV. The campaign benefited from a website (URL reading ‘television as president’) where parody videos involving the musketeers were uploaded (which of course highly circulated on the internet as well). The parody with Mircea Badea, presenter of “In gura presei” pamphlet press review show, depicted Train Basescu making the ‘simple’ statement “It is raining outside” and the musketeer negatively interpreting the sentence. The reply soon came and Mircea Badea reversed the script during a live TV show. In the new ‘play’ Badea asked Basescu questions regarding controversial topics implicating the president, who simply answered “It is raining outside”. The “war” was highly covered in Romanian media – online and offline. You can see all the videos here but unfortunately the recordings are in Romanian.

Social media is green...or maybe not

The Green Party entered the Romanian political scenery with the occasion of the 2009 presidential elections. They were “fresh” and so was the leader Remus Cernea. He gained electorate, especially teenagers, using social media. At one point, the party sent a press release announcing the green candidate leads the polls on the internet, being among the most covered politicians in the online medium. A journalist from “Academia Catavencu” pamphlet publication made fun of him saying he was good on the internet because he had nothing else to do all day given the fact that he lived with his parents. Email exchanges followed between the journalist and the campaign staff member (this was an indirect "war"). The editor at “Academia Catavencu” continued to make fun asking whether Remus Cernea had his own room in his parents’ house.

Given the above I must say that online political communication has both pros and cons. And the online media represents the battlefield between journalists/media representatives and politicians, politicians and politicians, politicians and enemies and so on.

Update: FYI - Remus Cernea is the first and only Romanian politician in the top 1000 politicians worldwide on Facebook in terms of number of fans, ranking 783 at the end of March (858 at the beginning of the month).

Downsides of social media

People talk about the benefits social media brings to organizations. A recent study showed that consumers who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand not only recommend, but also buy the brands they tweet with or write wall comments to. Which means social media can trigger sales, among so many others.

I personally do not contest the advantages of engaging into social media. However I think PR professionals and companies should think twice before writing a blog, creating Facebook pages and tweeting with clients. And I am not the only one of course – PR Blogger and others also covered the issue.

What are the reasons I invoke?

First, online exposure can also have side effects. An organization present online is prone to receive negative comments, not only positive and neutral ones.

Second, once companies are online people have certain expectations from them. If an organization accustoms its clients to announce sales on Twitter it will have to “keep its promises” and send tweets no matter what. Or if a company creates a blog with interesting materials posted every day, it has to keep providing such information daily.

Third, with online media it is so much easier to lose control over the message. Links, photos, videos and so on travel with light speed from computer to computer. If a company issues wrong information the chances to correct it in time (before it is widely spread) are low. How could one make sure the correct version gets to all the people who have received the bad one? In contrast, with offline media a company gets the chance to present correct versions of a story in the next morning’s newspaper.

Forth, a promise is a promise. If a company is on social media it has to be there 24/7. That is why a lot of resources are engaged when jumping into this vast communication pool.

The best thing to do before engaging into social media is to make a thorough analysis (why not even a SWOT one?) to see how appropriate the approach is for the company (also given the stakeholders) and to determine the compatibility of business objectives with social media.

Online customer and media relations

Online media provides opportunities for managing relations with various stakeholders, from customers and the media (the most common perhaps) to suppliers and authorities.

Social media is a great way to keep in touch with clients. As Clare wrote, Facebook and Twitter offer chances for airlines (and not only) to hear from customers. They facilitate two-way communication (so much desired in theory but not so much applied in practice, until now) instead of one-way flow. Whereas newsletters were a widespread practice to keep clients updated on news and special offers without receiving any feedback, with tweets customers can now learn about news and sales while also expressing their views on the subject.

British Airways uses online media for both client and media relations. The airline has two Twitter accounts to communicate with customers (one for the US and one for the UK), with over 35,000 followers (not a very high number but still). I will however not describe BA’s social media efforts but rather focus on their online media relations, particularly in Romania. Sending press releases, handling media inquiries and managing interviews via e-mail are part of the day-to-day job of any PR professional. But online press conferences are not…

British Airways was the first airline (and company) in Romania to organize an online press conference. Such approaches are not so unusual now, but they used to be in 2007. I find the concept appropriate given the fact that the press conference was announcing the launch of the ba.com portal in Romania.



The conference

The BA online conference had the parts of any regular press meeting: welcome message, CEO speech and Q&A session. The venue was however virtual. Instead of registering at the welcome desk, journalists received a user name and a password in order to log onto the portal especially created for the event. It comes as no surprise that the media kit was available in electronic format.

The results

It generated important coverage, reading on both the launch of the ba.com website and the online conference itself. Journalists were enthusiastic about the idea and considered it was an original one. According to them the online conference was time saving. It was also a great opportunity for media representatives to participate at the event, as it would have been otherwise impossible because of the busy schedule.

As technology is evolving, stakeholders relations are changing too. We have learned few of the benefits online media brings in the relation with the customers and the media. By mixing some elements of social media and online media relations we get a new type of press conference. I will write about it in a future post. Clue: it is blue :)

Picture: Qsrmagazine

Pros and cons of using YouTube for uploading videos

In the video below I present the benefits as well as the disadvantages of uploading corporate videos on YouTube channels versus using company websites.


For more information check out http://www.helium.com/items/1092150-how-do-i-use-youtube

Evaluating online PR

Evaluation of the PR activity has always been an issue. In the book Effective Media Relations published by the Chartered Institute for Public Relations, Anne Gregory (2000) draws attention to the two schools of thought regarding the assessment of the public relations efforts. The first claimed the results of PR were intangible and impossible to measure. The second believed PR can be measured and looked at the number of press cuttings. A variation on the second school was to measure the cost of advertising in the media.

In the last years offline PR has been evaluated based on the following criteria, among others (Wilcox, 2009):
• measurement of advertising value equivalency - based on the size and position of an article in a media outlet
• measurement of media impressions – number of people exposed to the article and the messages given by circulation or readership
• measurement of key messages – counting how many pre-established messages were actually included in the articles
• measurement of production - total number of generated articles in a given period and the number of publications reached
• measurement of editorial slant – analyzing tone of voice: positive, neutral or negative
• event attendance – number of people attending an event

Although these are still not totally satisfactory methods they have been doing their job so far.


But PR is now moving towards online and the evaluation methods have to do the same.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are the most common social media and assessment of online PR can be done for each one separately, as presented below. I underline that both quantitative and qualitative evaluation can be made for social media.

Metrics for blog (one can use Google Analytics for blog metrics):
• no of visitors
• no of unique visitors
• page views
• bounce rate
• average time spent on blog
• no of comments
• no of followers
• no of track-backs to blog

Metrics for Twitter:
• no of followers
• influence of followers
• no of company/brand/etc mentions
• no of direct messages
• attitude of tweets: positive, negative, neutral
• no of re-tweets

Metrics for Facebook fan page:
• no of fans
• no of “likes”
• no of comments
• general tone of comments: positive, negative, neutral

Metrics for YouTube channel:
• no of channel views
• no of views for individual video
• no of comments
• type of comments: positive, negative, neutral
• subscribers to channel
• ratings

Websites are also used in online PR even though I think they are not so much of a novelty. :) I will however list some metrics for websites:
• no of visitors
• no of unique visitors
• page views
• bounce rate
• average time spent on website

Besides the above metrics, PR pros can also determine some “returns” as presented by Brian Solis. He wrote about four ways to assess social media efforts:
• return on participation – measuring the time spent for engaging in social media e.g conversations
• return on involvement – evaluating touchpoints
• return on attention –seize, hold and measure attention in terms of produced responses activities
• return on trust – measuring loyalty and referrals

The online Kit Kat Jesus campaign is a great example of a high return on participation, involvement and attention. :)

Media monitoring shifts toward online

Having an online presence requires online skills. PR professionals master the art or learn about how to make bloggers write about the company they work for, how to communicate with clients using Twitter, how to use corporate YouTube channels, how to create successful Facebook fan pages and so on.

But with thousands of people engaging in the online medium monitoring what is being said about a company is an issue. While monitoring agencies can deal with both offline (TV, radio and press) and online monitoring there are some free tools PR pros can use for an in-house online monitoring. I will briefly present four of them which I find handy to some extent: Technorati, Twitter search, Google Alerts, and RSS.

Technorati – allows key word and tag search in sites, blogs, posts, and news while filtering can be made by fields (entertainment, business, sports, politics etc) or by authority! (influence in the blogosphere).

Twitter search – specialist search engine for Twitter based on key words. The advanced search function allows search by words, people, places, dates, attitudes! and other.

Google Alerts – provides e-mail updates based on selected key words. User can choose from news, blogs, video, groups, and comprehensive (multiple sources) opting for frequency of updates (as it happens, once a day, once a week).

RSS – subscribers to RSS receive updated information on subjecst of interest under the form of the so-called feeds. RSS are available for websites, blog posts, comments, online publications etc.

By using these tools PR pros can have an idea about what is being blogged, tweeted and commented about a particular company, event, topic, person etc. Not only can they track references about a company but they can also monitor competitors and other industry-related subjects.

One can now easily say that “Monitoring has never been easier thanks to all these online tools.” This may not be necessarily true…Although some of the instruments provide web pages monitoring in many languages sometimes they fail to effectively show the expected results. For example Google Alerts set for Romanian language offers e-mail updates with stories published even years ago! Moreover, receiving and gathering all the online references about the topic of interest are just the first step. Companies need to allocate human resources to filter all the information (in order to eliminate “spam”) and organize it.

Bottom line – online monitoring tools are of great help but they do have some limitations.

Picture: Interactive Insights Group

From press release to social media news release

Technology has changed the way PR pros handle media relations. Some time ago press releases (PRS) were sent by mail. They have been distributed via e-mail in the last years. Technology is now evolving at fast speed and leaves its footprint on public relations practice once again. Here comes the social media news release (SMNR).

What is the difference between a press release and a social media news release?
ATTRACTIVENESS, STRUCTURE and REACH to name a few. Let’s have a look.

Features compared

While a SMNR includes the elements of a traditional PRS (logo, title, facts, quotes, boiler plate, and contact information) it also adds value to its receiver through multimedia, RSS, social bookmarking and other useful links – see the pictures below.




There are a few points I want to make about the comparison:
1. “A picture is worth a million words” and one can argue that traditional press releases can also include photos. I say that opening e-mail attachments takes longer than scrolling a mouse. :)
2. A SMNR is better structured than a PRS making it easier for readers/journalists to spot the information they need.
3. The format of SMNRs is attractive (take a quick look at two photos above!). First impression always counts even if we should not “judge a book by its cover”.
4. Sharing is facilitated through SMNRs (Copyblogger).

Receivers compared

With a SMNR public relations pros can directly reach media, consumers and other social media users (Davies, 2009) while with a traditional PRS only media is directly targeted - consumers are a second audience. Not only does a social media release have a better reach but it is also more effective because messages are not filtered by gatekeepers. Consumers actually get to be exposed to unedited messages!



Still, media is a common audience for both and when talking about gatekeepers one thing is for sure: if you want to make press or social media releases appealing to the media you must make them newsworthy. Some things never change, right? :) And if we are talking about PR and journalism it is worth mentioning that Contemporarypr blogged about the An Inconvenient PR Truth campaign run by Realwire against irrelevance of public relations materials which I find very interesting.

So which of the two should we use? One of my professors once said that the answer to any question is: “It depends.” I have to agree with him on this one. :) Two of the issues to be taken into consideration are company resources (financial, video, audio etc) and receivers’ characteristics (internet users or not).