Revolver

A recent survey by Terrapinn in November 2009 discovered that the top three challenges to brands when implementing a Digital PR and Reputation Management strategy were:

1. Shortage of time and resources
2. Lack of in-house knowledge of how to engage online
influencers and how to interact on social networks
3. Keeping up to date with the pace of trends and
technology

Having recognised a shortage of in-house skills, businesses are turning to specialist companies for help with their online PR and reputation management strategies, with 56% of respondents saying that they wanted to employ a specialist Online Reputation Management Company.

As well as this, 93% of those businesses surveyed agreed that “online PR and reputation management will become more important over the next 5 years.”

Undeniably.

The many benefits of the ever evolving phone industry has yet another enticing offer in the form of the new online restaurant booking site Toptable, which has launched a free app for the iPhone.  It allows users to find and book restaurants near their location and uses augmented reality to show where the restaurants are.  Other features include a tip calculator to help with leaving a gratuity and a My Sommelier tool, which suggests which wines go with different foods.

This shy’s in comparison to Microsoft’s announcement of its mobile operating system Windows Phone 7, which features integration with its own search engine Bing, connected gaming service Xbox Live and media player Zune.  The computing giant wants to turn around its fortunes in the mobile industry with the launch of a range of phones this year.  This is exciting when you know that HTC has already committed to building devices which use Windows Phone 7.

Interesting to note when according to the American Mobile Association, total spend on mobile marketing will grow from $1.7 billion this year to $2.16 billion in 2010 in the US alone.  Google’s $750 million purchase of mobile ad network Admob reinforces that 2010 will be a significant year for mobile.  From this, many expect to see much more consolidation in the mobile sector.

All of this may well mean that mobile may start to take advertising $$ which would previously have been spent online.  Since it is a new medium however, there remains consumer resistance to mobile advertising, so perhaps it is best for advertisers to favour the soft-sell approach of providing useful information in this space through tactful digitally enabled public relations, rather than pushing hard-selling messages.

For instance, this will work with social media and help to evolve search functions.  Search will become increasingly real-time as users take advantage of Google and Bing search results including Twitter and Facebook updates, or use Twitter Search as a stand alone application to be accessed on your phone.

Can luxury retailers venture into social marketing and PR without losing their prestige and sophistication?

“Luxury brands are the IDEAL brands to be using social media and that social networking, microblogging and online content creation represent big opportunities for these brands to really stand out, improve their customer loyalty, drive sales and, in fact, maintain the image they have worked hard to create for their brands”, says Ogilvy Digital 360’s Rohit Bhargava.

Positive benefits can be achieved through several online PR approaches.

1. Monitor and listen to understand customer needs.

Listening to what customers are saying online, whether they’ve purchased your product or not, is imperative.  Not only shows brand where their current customers are, it exposes new markets.  Community monitoring provides real-time consumer sentiment and perceptions of a brand’s products.

2. Start off by using sharing tools.

Sharing tools enable customers to share corporate-created content such as videos, blog posts, images, and contests.  Good start because it simply extends the corporate approved and created content to the social realm, explains Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research Analyst.

By adding social sharing buttons, a brand or retailer with an e-commerce site needs to make the sharing barrier as low as possible to encourage customers, potential customers and citizen fashion journalists (aka bloggers) to share products across their social communities or taken further and make sure you add fashion-site-specific sharing icons if the fashion communities that a brand’s engaged with or sponsoring. Also the perfect time to explore if a brand should develop its own widgets.  Interactive widgets boost website traffic and increase the ROI on social media initiatives.

3. Highlight consumer-created content from “preferred” customer segments.

If celebrities are using your products and talk about them, echo it back and highlight them.  Owyang suggests highlighting users of your products in your blog, from Twitter, or other social technology and allow users to share and spread this kind of news to their own websites using simple tools like ShareThis.

Though celebrity product lines have started to lose their luster, celebrity endorsements still hold weight with many consumers and their aspirations. User-generated content from fashion loving consumers, independent fashion bloggers and digital fashion celebrities are powerful word-of-mouth marketing and sales tools. User-generated content is a gold mine, and there are thousands of people sharing and spreading retailers products across the web. Estee Lauder examplified this by their in-store product demos linking up to profile pictures on social networking sites.  This is a perfect example of a brand using their online marketing and PR to drive awareness to in-store events. The best part is that the in-store event tied back to the online social media efforts.

4. Develop or sponsor lifestyle communities.

Branded communities, social networks, or bloggers can all be reached using traditional media relations tactics.  Not unlike traditional sponsorship and spokesperson product trial programs, you can develop brand affinity in the social space through formal programs.  The trick, however, is understanding how your products can become a platform to uplift their voice –not just to insert your own.

Luxury brands can actually take social media a step further.  Many luxury brands are developing their own social networks or even invitation-only communities.  Sponsoring communities can be a chance to develop brand affinity and establish authentic consumer-brand relationships.  Not all of a luxury brand’s social media strategies should be about mass awareness. Quality over quantity still has its place.  Sites such as MyItThings, LadyLux, LuxuryCulture or Just Luxe can have a better ROI as their audiences are more likely to become paid customers. And while some may not agree with me — when it comes to luxury brands, social media ROI does extend to sales.

Nevertheless, one should also draw upon that “not all of a brands social media strategies should be about mass awareness.”  When we think about the viral nature of the social web it seems a common misconception that its all about going viral..how many people we can reach…how fast something will spread…how many clicks?  Luxury brands need luxury social media.  They have to be especially strategic and find segmented ways of addressing their top customers as well as their aspirational fans. 

The advent of the digital generation has fundamentally transformed the nature of public relations and corporate business.

Industry leaders have revealed that the world’s top companies are increasingly turning to social media to convey their messages to both the public and their stakeholders, with 79 % of Fortune Global 100 companies admitting to using at least one social media platform as part of their communications strategy, according to a study by Burson-Marsteller.

On average, companies claimed to have 4.2 Twitter accounts, 2.1 Facebook fan pages, 1.6 Youtube channels, and 4.2 corporate blogs.  More specifically, Asia-Pacific companies are more likely to have blogs than engage on other social media platforms.  50% of companies surveyed have a blog, while 40% use Twitter and 40% use Facebook.

Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific’s lead digital strategist, Charlie Pownall, noted that regional companies have been slower to integrate social media into their strategies, but are changing. “International firms are leading by example in their use of social media; Asian companies have proved more conservative, remaining concerned about resourcing, costs, measurement and the potential reputational risks,” he said. “As their domestic audiences continue to move online, and as the technology infrastructure improves across the region, Asian companies will come to use social media as the core business tool that it has become in the US and Europe.”
Globally, 82 per cent of the polled companies had tweeted in the last week, and 59 per cent had posted content on their Facebook fan page.  In the prior month, 68 per cent had uploaded a video on YouTube and 36 per cent had posted an entry on a corporate blog, reveals Media Asia.

Media Asia further adhere that companies have used social media to interact with audiences as well as using the platforms to relay their own messages.  Thirty-eight per cent of companies affirmed that they respond to audience tweets, and 32 have reposted user comments.
This is interesting to note when news comes that Twitter has passed the landmark figure of 50 million tweets per day and passes Myspace, whilst also considering to allow businesses to personalise accounts used by multiple memebers of staff by adding their own ‘byline’ to tweets in what is the first of a series of additions for business users.

The media relations landscape has changed as traditional publications have downsized, re-focused online or been eliminated altogether.

As we all know, fundamentally, Public Relations serves two groups:  The companies that pay for representation and the journalists, analysts, reporters and increasingly, bloggers, that rely on PR professionals as a source of news content.

With this in mind, and considering advertising budgets have shifted online combined with changes in consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing habits via the social web present both challenges and opportunities for PR agencies to deliver more value to their clients.

In a 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey by TopRank, 91% of respondents reported using standard search engines to perform activities such as research companies, past media coverage and subject matter experts.  In the same study, 64% reported using social networks, 55% use blogs and 50% use Wikis as social media tools.

The increased use of search and social media both by the media and by end consumers will no doubt motivate PR professionals to better understand the digital PR strategies and mechanics of successful SEO and social web participation.  Keyword research, content optimization and promotion along with link building make up the core of search engine optimization for news content.  Press releases, archived webinars, white papers, video, podcasts, blogs and past media coverage are all opportunities for news SEO.

Making it easy for journalists or end consumers to find and interact with news content can provide a substantial boost to PR results in a time where the value of PR budgets are in question. Digital public relations savvy agencies are making both traditional media relations, digital media relations and optimized news content work together.  Not to mention working to partner with journalists to provide content via push delivery, but can also optimize (SEO) news content to make it easy for story researchers to find companies the public relations firms represent.

The trend in hard times is for companies to cut all marketing costs that are not tied to direct sales.  Yet, some companies as we can vouch for are shifting budgets to smart, creative digitally enabled public relations efforts.  When no one else is marketing, there’s even more opportunity to stand out to prospective buyers.  So don’t shy away from digital pr, it’s the thing of the future don’t you know?

It has to be realised that social media can be used to inform consumers in real-time of how a corporation is reacting to events that affect the customer. Transparency in the process and access to constant information can help stop a negative story from going viral, a great example of positive digital PR.

Neverthless, embracing social media is a huge undertaking, and involves a large investment.  One prime example being Dell who didn’t shy away from these obstacles, instead they’ve gone above and beyond, truly cultivating a cross-platform community.  They’ve created multiple Twitter handles, a network of blogs, and are very active on Facebook.

Dell is also one of the few companies to publicly state that they created a return on investment from Twitter.  Apparently, Dell’s social media efforts help create $1 million in revenue, impressive I think we would all agree.

Saying that, as we all know social media isn’t all about ROI, but it is possible. Creating cross-platform strategies can lead to the most success, especially when your demographic is already Internet and technologically savvy.

When IBM decided they wanted to start using blogs, they didn’t just create one blog, they created an entire network.  IBM created a way and allowed their employees to write about their experiences, what they’re working on, or any other topic of choice.

IBM capitalizes on the intelligence of their employees to give consumers insight into what happens behind the scenes.  By giving the industry experts they’ve hired a voice, IBM is able to highlight the people behind their products. Users get to see how IBM operates, and are given a direct connection with IBM employees.

Indeed, having a CEO that blogs is great, but increase the number of blogs and you increase the number of connections.  Leveraging your employees to write about what they love conveys the corporate dedication to the industry, accurately described by Mashable, the Social Media Guide.

And I for one am all for it.

Yesterday Google announced a new social media service called Google Buzz. This new service combines a number of different social media tools into one: (a) friends, commenting and rich media (photos, videos) like Facebook, plus (b) simple, public status updates like Twitter, and (c) location based updates like FourSquare. Google Buzz also adds two more new and interesting things: (a) curated recommendations of what updates are likely to be most interesting to you, and (b) easy access to the social network through a tool 175 million people use… Gmail.

However, at this point, Google Buzz is designed to be used by people more than companies. Nevertheless, just like Facebook ended up creating Business Pages for companies to use instead of personal profiles, Google Buzz may in the future create some sort of business account to make a better way for businesses to interact in the community. Given these limitations, there are still some useful tips for getting started on marketing and digital PR using Google Buzz.

A key tip being thrown around is find people in your industry, and follow them. Following more people gives Google Buzz a better idea of what you like and don’t like, and it does encourage other people to follow you back because they do get notified that you followed them. Note: right now you can only use Google Buzz on Android phones and iPhones, so you may need to wait to get started on this.

More interesting, Google has already started to put social status updates into search results, and they recently launched social search. All this means that even if you think everyone you sell to will never use social media, you still need to have a presence in social media as a company. Building a larger presence in social media and using social media to promote your content will help you rank more often in plain old search results (which are no longer so “plain” or “old”), which is important for every company.

Interesting. Isn’t it just?

Increasing emphasis on the digital and social side of communications has caused some in the PR industry to say that in the context of digital PR, social media and search engine optimisation can work together to compound results.  As some contend, as PR efforts continue to emphasise content publishing, digital and social communications, the opportunity to keyword optimise content for search is “low hanging fruit,” says Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing.

What forward thinking companies must apparently do well is assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Important when considering that social media marketing efforts that factor in keyword optimization of content can directly influence the discovery of communities and social content via search engines.  Additionally, social content is known to boost links to your website, improving search traffic and Pull PR results. In other words, if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?  Implementing social media and SEO as silos misses a significant opportunity, which is why it can factor highly in adoptions by digitally enabled public relations consultants.

Meanwhile, industry insiders also nod to search optimized and social media friendly blog content which can extend the reach of company news to search engines as well as social media news and bookmarking sites.  With this in mind, public relations consultants have turned their affections in recent years to the power of search engine optimization for growing the impact of pull based PR efforts.

Search engine marketing is constantly evolving and it is said many companies simply do not have the time or resources to keep current with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics, which is why the search engine marketing business is rapidly growing as an integral part of today’s online PR activities.

Over in Sunny South Africa, marketing strategist Jonty Fisher raises an interesting question: is social media’s most natural fit with PR?

Disputing the popular view that it is a discipline that should be standalone channel or function in the marketing mix, Jonty contends that rather than being simply another channel, social media has taken on a platform role alongside traditional media such as television or print.

Neatly summing up the nub of the matter, he puts it thus:

“Let’s be frank, before the term ‘earned media’ became a buzzword amongst the social media crew, it’s essentially exactly what PR agencies have been doing for decades. Public relations (much wider than media relations alone) is all about connecting a brand to its audiences, using media pitching to create free publicity (earned media), events and one-to-one interactions to drive word of mouth and brand engagement (sound familiar?), the influencing of opinion leaders (ditto) and the creation of public campaigns to educate and affect perception of target consumers about the brand (still with me?).”

Back in sunny Scotland, that’s precisely the line of thought we followed when setting up Revolver. Whatever you call it (from digitally-enabled public relations to plain old Digital PR) the practice of engaging with the social media has to be driven by the same communications principles and techniques you’d apply to any PR campaign.

That social media is different kind of animal is true. That it requires a slightly different approach and skill set is also true. Apart from that the old school media rules still apply, and any organisation that loses sight of that essential principle runs the risk of blundering into a PR crisis of their own making.

Punch have announced the latest offerings of support to achieve a successful PR campaign, nodding to the importance of social media tools in particular.  They recommend six specific steps to achieving this.

1. Engagement – In an age where knowledge is free and consumers are more likely to be acquainted with the products that are relevant to them, Punch say that engagement is a key element when it comes to influencing brand perception online, leading to positive conversation.

2. Conversation – As social media has the potential to be like a fan to the flames of a relevant and interesting story, they say by highlighting news and articles to relevant consumers is a great way of expanding brand reach, whilst also creating online chatter around a subject.

3. Targeting – Reaching out to specific individuals via social networks is a way of influencing industry leaders and initiating interaction with them, resulting in positive relationships emerging.  In general, responding to specific consumers directly will serve to assure users that there is a human behind the brand, not an automated robot, and in the long term can help in the development of a group of brand advocates, says Punch.

4. Addressing Issues – One of the best uses of social media is to address any issues that consumers may have with a brand, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. Punch say that positive feedback should be met in a positive way, whilst also negative sentiments should be listened too and tended too.

5. Crisis – Crisis communications exercises are difficult at the best of times, but as Punch reveal, social media can play a bit role in measuring how much a crisis has affected users online, whilst also social networks are a great medium for keeping people updated, ensuring a measured process of the dissemination of information.

6. Search Engine Optimisation – Punch are aware that the promotion of content through social networks is a great way of generating backlinks to a brand website. With Google having recently implemented social networking conversation into search results, and the value of links from social networks being high, brands can benefit from significantly increased website traffic from social networks.

Needless to say, by outlining the tools and the subsequent benefits of social media this in turn highlights the value and need for digitally enabled public relations consultancy.