Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Mon, Feb 08, 2010
Today dna13 announced the release of a significant upgrade to its software platform, which now includes streamlined monitoring and communications management capabilities in one fully integrated solution.
The release certainly comes at an opportune time, with issues surrounding workflow management and social software getting tons of play recently. Numerous research reports have confirmed what communications professionals already knew: Emerging social media platforms and technologies are upending traditional enterprise models, and sidelined communications activities-listening, engaging, collaborating, etc.-are becoming central to effective strategy execution. As a result, communications management/workflow is becoming relevant across the organization.
Take, for instance, the results of the Gartner's 2010 Global CIO survey, which revealed a striking shift in priorities away from cost-based efficiencies and towards social technologies, including virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0. Most interesting to communications professionals, however, are the top 10 business priorities these surveyed CIOs identified for 2010:
- Business process improvement
- Reducing enterprise costs
- Increasing the use of information/analytics
- Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
- Attracting and retaining new customers
- Managing change initiatives
- Creating new products or services (innovation)
- Targeting customers and markets more effectively
- Consolidating business operations
- Expanding current customer relationships
Look familiar? Indeed, these business objectives mirror those of communications professionals in so many ways, especially in the context of social technologies' effects on the enterprise. With the enhanced platform, dna13 has addressed many of these organizational needs, facilitating consistent messaging and strategy deployment among executives throughout the organization-critical advantages given today's complex communications environment. Plus, the platform continues to support communications activities with:
- A fully integrated real-time monitoring service of both traditional and social media, which now includes microblogs, as well as the ability for clients to register RSS feeds and additional content sources.
- A secure, collaborative environment that allows users to select specific issues or campaigns - as well as the people, teams or organizational units that need to be involved - and provides access to the most current key messaging, FAQ information, media lists and other related assets to help align all key stakeholders, all in a single location.
- Reporting that allows users to see, in a graphical and tabular format, the coverage they've received across all mediums, by issue or campaign, region and/or business line.
As the business environment continues to evolve in the face of changing priorities and demands, enterprises must remain agile in order to manage their reputations and relationships. For more information on dna13's enhanced platform and thought leadership content, please visit www.dna13.com.
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Thu, Feb 04, 2010
While the Web's economy operates in the currencies of links, conversations and content, the ultimate driver of these transactions is so obvious, it often goes unnoticed: the search engine.
It's commonly said that Google is the new universal homepage, and research repeatedly confirms that it-or its search counterparts Bing, Yahoo, etc.-is the starting point for the vast majority of online users, be they consumers, media, investors, employees ... you get the idea. Thus, a company's placement in the top search results can be the deal maker or breaker for any type of communications effort, from marketing and media outreach to crisis management. Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies evolved accordingly as it became clear that this was the best-if not the only-way to exert some control over what content audiences found first.
With the rapid socialization of search, though, even the most advanced SEO strategies are proving ineffective. As an increasing amount of social media content is incorporated into search data through the likes of Google Social Search, the ultimate optimization Holy Grail is sure to be SGO-that is, Social Graph Optimization.
That's the term used during a Social Media Week panel discussion in NYC yesterday, in which panelists David Berkowitz (Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, 360i), Seth Sternberg (CEO, Meebo), Mark Ghuneim (CEO, Founder of Wiredset and Trendrr), Hashem Bajwa (Head of Digital at Droga 5) and Anna O'Brien (social media enthusiast and data analyst) discussed how brands can reach and influence consumers through their increasingly robust social graphs.
But first: What is a social graph, anyway? According to the panel, it's the online representation of our relationships (business and personal) in social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The obvious next question, then: What is Social Graph Optimization?
The answer, courtesy of panel coverage: "Social graph optimization = increasing your visibility in social graph, like SEO optimization does for search."
"Search has been great traffic driver," Sternberg said. "Now social media drives [traffic] and needs to be optimized."
This new iteration of optimization has implications on every facet of strategic communications, especially listening to, evaluating and measuring the impact that online conversations have on your brand, reputation and bottom line. While the best practices for SGO are still emerging, the panelists did make a few points that will surely be fodder for future discussions:
- "Shareability" is the crux of SGO: "Create natural messaging for your users to make their friends want to click," Sternberg said. "If you get 1% of daily visitors to share, you are doing well." "Bottom line: if you do something well, it will be shared. Quality gets shared."- Ghuneim
- Learn the tools before you use the tools: "Education is key," Sternberg said. "We're failing to teach the tools that are necessary to succeed in this new media environment." As for some of those tools, Meebo and Facebook Connect were both topics of conversation.
- Balance owning your content and leasing it: "You want to publish where your users are, but don't give up your own home." -Sternberg
- Start segmenting audiences according to strength of relationship: "It's no longer ‘Everybody is friends,'" O'Brien said. "Moving from "everybody is friends" in SM to diff types of friends and groups that need to be targeted."
The kicker came from Ghuneim, who urged the audience to reconsider their definition of optimization:
"When I lose a follower, I consider that optimization," he said. "They weren't listening and weren't relevant."
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Wed, Feb 03, 2010
February 1 marked the first day of the second annual Social Media Week, during which time conferences occur simultaneously in cities around the world, from New York City and Berlin to Sao Paulo and Toronto. The common goal: advancing the understanding of social media in the corporate, public and nonprofit sectors.
New York City's Social Media Week kicked off yesterday with a panel of PR professionals discussing the uses of social media within their industry. Among the topics of conversation were social media's implications on client relations and, not surprisingly, ROI. Though the two topics were not formally linked during the panel itself, panelist comments pertaining to each underscored a number of critical best practices for executing communications initiatives with an emphasis on ROI:
Define expectations up front: Whether you are working for a client as an external PR partner or within an organization's communications department, managing expectations from day one is essential, especially in the context of social media. From the client management side, often expectations are too much, too fast; they expect to see social media deliver results instantly, and their judgment is clouded as a result.
According to panelist David Teicher, Social Media Manager at McCann Erickson, "Clients don't have accurate expectations of social media. People need a reason to be engaged."
Danielle Mancano, Account Manager at SHIFT Communications, supported Teicher's comment, saying, "Clients often lack goals. [It's] important to listen first and pay attention, [and then to follow up] with action."
Making listening a core part of measurement: Piggybacking off Mancano's statement, listening to social media conversations is not just one step in measurement/evaluation, but an ongoing process that must inform strategies throughout the duration of the initiative. Not only does this maximize ROI, but it also helps to optimize the PR budget - a huge benefit in today's challenging economic environment.
Tie measurement back to the original expectations and objectives: The Social Media Week panel addressed social media ROI in the context of the various metrics that are at executives' disposal, including:
• # of retweets on Twitter
• Google Analytics
• "Likes" comments on Facebook
• # of Twitter followers
• # of Facebook status updates
• # of Facebook fans
These metrics are all pieces of the ROI puzzle, but they need to be put into context-that is, there need to be benchmarks from the outset of the initiative that can be cross-referenced against changes over the duration. Otherwise, ROI is calculated in a vacuum, and PR workflow is stunted as a result.
Stay tuned for more reactions to the various Social Media Week events taking place in New York City ...
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Thu, Jan 28, 2010
Thanks to the rapid collaboration of disparate forces, including the emergence of social media, widespread corporate malfeasance, economic turbulence and media fragmentation, the importance of intangibles like reputation and trust to organizations' bottom lines has increased exponentially. Likewise, the drivers of these intangibles have changed markedly, especially as external stakeholders find more and more ways to influence corporate outcomes.
The results of the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, released earlier this week, underscore this reality, revealing a significant shift in the factors that global opinion leaders believe are most important to driving corporate reputation and trust. One big difference between 2006 and 2010: the role financial returns play in determining reputation, which fell to the bottom of the list this year after ranking 3rd in 2006 (the questions were worded differently-see image below).
What is important to corporate reputation, according to the report: transparent and honest practices (83%), trustworthiness (83%), and high-quality products and services (79%).
Now, consider these reputation drivers from Toyota's point of view. A perennial customer favorite, the Japanese automaker just announced its decision to suspend sales of several popular car models following a recall of more than 2 million vehicles due to problems with their acceleration mechanisms. According to reports, the eight suspended models account for 57% of Toyota's U.S. sales, and news of the suspension prompted a 7.7% decline in the company's share value.
Suffice it to say that dealers and investors are not too happy at the moment. But, from a reputation management standpoint, Toyota's decision was spot on. After all, the company's brand is built on durability, reliability and quality - three values that cannot be sustained if their vehicles' safety is in question. To continue selling potentially affected models for the sake of short-term stock movement would be to put shareholders before customers, which, judging from Toyota's actions, is not something they are willing to do.
"Helping ensure the safety of our customers and restoring confidence in Toyota are very important to our company," said Group Vice President and Toyota Division General Manager Bob Carter in a TIME article. "This action is necessary until a remedy is finalized. We're making every effort to address this situation for our customers as quickly as possible."
With Toyota's current crisis and the Edelman Trust Barometer findings as a backdrop, communications executives should consider these reputation management take-aways:
- Communicate early and often: Frequent communications was the 4th most important driver of corporate reputation, according to Edelman's Trust Barometer. For Toyota - or any company in the midst of a crisis - the best thing to do is stay out in front of the news by constantly giving updates and responding to media inquiries.
- Communicate via multiple channels: Trust Barometer findings showed that multiple information sources enhance a company's credibility. In this vein, Toyota is communicating updates via all its online assets, including Twitter, Facebook and its online newsroom.
- Listen and respond: Reputation is most at risk during a crisis situation, so it is especially critical to not only monitor conversations in real-time, but to also respond to stakeholders' concerns, even if it is only to direct them to the most up-to-date information. Doing so most effectively requires identifying the most important conversations, managing volume, and synchronizing messages and responses across the organization.
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Mon, Jan 25, 2010
Wednesday's invitation-only media event will most likely lay to rest the growing speculation surrounding Apple's long-awaited, much-anticipated new creation: a tablet-based computer whose rumored capabilities, depending on who you ask, are the stuff of legend.
It's too soon to analyze the details of purported features (come Wednesday, there will be plenty of that), but based on widespread reports from people in the know, it is safe to say that this gadget will be another nail in the coffin of traditional media as the primary content middleman. After all, to hear that "every company is a media company" is commonplace now, thanks to emerging digital platforms that enable any organization or individual to create and share content.
Apple has played a unique role in chipping away at traditional media's supremacy in content delivery with products like iTunes, Apple TV and the iPhone, and it stands to make waves-no, make that tsunamis-with its new tablet creation, though not in the standard, destructive way one might think. In fact, the product could actually reinvigorate floundering traditional media platforms, with reports claiming that Apple has recently been in discussions with book, magazine and newspaper publishers, as well as television networks, about how they can work together to provide content through the tablet.
Apple mastermind Steve Jobs is no stranger to finding creative ways to repackage existing content and deliver it through new channels (see the aforementioned product references), and this just might be a much-needed boost for the stuttering media industry. Of course, there are obstacles to overcome-for example, it's reported that some televisions networks weren't too excited about his desire to only license popular content, as opposed to the whole enchilada.
Only time will tell if Apple can facilitate the rebirth of traditional media, but one thing is certain: new communication models are all about being a bridge, not a gatekeeper.
As for the rest, stay tuned ...
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Thu, Jan 21, 2010
Piggybacking off of an earlier post on the quality v. quantity conundrum of reputation management, the process of selecting the most appropriate PR software for your needs is riddled with obstacles. For starters, new solutions seem to emerge almost daily, making it difficult to know where to begin. Then, you must assess each provider's capabilities against your own needs:
- What breadth and depth of media coverage is sufficient?
- What level of analysis are you looking for?
- Reporting capabilities?
- Customization?
- Alignment with other organizational activities?
With all of these questions in mind, the following checklist outlines the most important areas to evaluate when selecting a communications management platform:
- Issues-centric analysis: This functionality allows users to classify every piece of data, from internal activities to social media conversations, and assign it to a specific issue/topic/campaign. This enables rapid retrieval, roll-up reporting, demonstration of ROI through customizable reports, and identification of trends and patterns.
- Automation: The most effective communications management applications can be rapidly deployed, configured and reconfigured as needed, and have comprehensive customization options. The biggest failure of most automated applications is the lack of customer service and back-end support, so consider this when seeking a solution.
- Security: It is critical that the software platform have permission-based security clearances that are aligned with workflow and organizational hierarchies.
- Collaboration and convenience: The most strategic communications applications use topic-specific collaboration functionality that ties together corporate users, agencies, spokespeople and the C-suite. Collaboration functionality should also promote sharing information across the enterprise. Likewise, convenience is critical and hinges on easy deployment and a user-friendly interface.
- Media relations/research: Media relationships remain a vital part of PR success, and your communications management platform should support the process of cultivating these relationships by providing information surrounding journalists/bloggers interests, reporting histories, biases and engagement preferences.
For more information on evaluating communications management platforms, check out dna13's white paper, "How to select PR software that safeguards branding".
Posted by Kevin O'Neil on Mon, Jan 18, 2010
Today's communications environment is not for the faint of heart. Because of the speed with which information now travels, executives might go to bed confident that their organization's reputation is impenetrable, only to wake up and find that an issue emerged overnight and demolished that perfect façade. Often, these issues percolate in online channels that fly under the radar and, for any number of reasons, suddenly gain enough momentum to break onto mainstream media platforms. In other cases, they remain isolated within niche communities, but those communities happen to be among the organization's most influential audiences.
To protect their corporate reputations in the context of this fragmented media environment, executives have begun to shape reputation management programs that not only outline processes for identifying and reacting to emerging issues, but that also help drive strategy, marketing, PR and customer relationship management.
The crux of these programs: sophisticated applications that monitor conversations across media platforms, with particular focus on those with a direct impact the brand, reputation and bottom line.
In the early stages of social media proliferation, these monitoring platforms could have easily been mistaken for a panacea. They helped executives spot issues that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. However, as the number of platforms and conversations increased exponentially, reputation management programs could be as harmful as they were helpful. As executives began being inundated with an ever-growing pool of information, they had to dedicate increasing amounts of time and resources to determining which conversations actually required a follow-up action, and which could be disregarded.
This, of course, became cost-prohibitive, causing many executives to reassess the effectiveness of their reputation management platforms. Sure, the quantity of conversations caught in their monitoring platform's net was important-what if the one conversation NOT caught ended up spawning a crisis?-but even more so was the QUALITY of those conversations.
Today, reputation management programs must address the quality vs. quantity issue in the context of the specific organization's business goals, key stakeholder groups and primary challenges. To assess the effectiveness of their current program, or to determine their needs moving forward, executives should ensure the solution can:
- Retrieve information rapidly -as close to real time as possible
- Accommodate your budget by capturing just what you need, when you need it and in a form that allows you to use it most effectively and efficiently
- Prioritize information according to influence, sensitivity and reach
- Support daily communications activities
- Identify emerging trends and issues
- Offer perspective on competitors
Given the current trajectory of media's fragmentation, it is likely that the quality vs. quantity challenge of reputation management will only become more critical. By establishing expectations up front and shaping monitoring strategies accordingly, you are more likely to avoid squandering resources that can be better used elsewhere.
For more insights into reputation management, check out dna13's white paper, "How to select PR software that safeguards branding."
Posted by Dave Armon on Fri, Dec 18, 2009
Last year, every public relations and corporate communications conference wanted to address one hurdle: how to prove the value of social media to a C-suite that was technology averse or hopeful all this friending and tweeting was just a fad.
Too many CEOs were too hesitant to give social media any kind of meaningful budget, particularly in a recession.
As our last post suggested, however, the C-suite is finally starting to catch up. Chances are, your CEO is already on LinkedIn and sees the potential for corporate growth accelerating with the right social media strategy.
The PR department is faced with a new question: should we hire a full-time social media specialist, or should we reach out to a PR agency with proven social media experience?
Listed below are the merits of each option, followed by suggestions of how to leverage the relationship you do have with IT, Marketing, Customer Service, Internal Communications and other corporate functions that may lay claim to social media turf.
See these articles (Hubspot's argument for PR firms, Rise's questions to ask social media consultants, and Jennifer Van Grove's qualities to pursue in social media candidates) for in-depth discussion of what kind of professional can make or break a social media initiative.
HIRING IN-HOUSE
-Their attention to your business's goals will be undivided; there are no other clients to distract them from your company's goals.
-In the short run, an in-house social media specialist can cost less. They usually bring a mix of PR and technology experience to the position -- enough for some content creation and enough for some basic coding.
-In a world that values authenticity, a customer will want the person they correspond with on Facebook to be a full-time employee and may even feel cheated if they find out their online conversation is with a PR firm and not the company they thought.
HIRING A PR FIRM/SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT
-A PR firm will have more experiences to draw from and may bring a broader understanding of your company's industry to the table.
-A PR firm may cost more, on average, but will bring in a greater number of deliverable results -- sales leads, business partnerships and other "measurables that matter" (not just how to measure social media, but how to link its success back to the company)
-It's possible for a PR firm to address the "authenticity" concern by being upfront with customers. Many will appreciate the broader experience of an agency representative rather than someone with a narrow focus.
Of course, there is a third option that we haven't addressed: spreading the duties of social media across the company. Zappos and Best Buy are two retailers that have embraced this approach.
I'd argue that, while it's feasible (even encouraged!), to make every employee of a company a brand ambassador, it's best to have one entity in charge of the messaging strategy. Otherwise, it's too easy to lose sight of the company's goals.
Of course, the greatest danger of any public relations initiative is to jump in blindly without setting measurable benchmarks or delegating responsibilities at all.
Posted by Dave Armon on Thu, Dec 10, 2009
For those of us in the public relations industry who actualize our communications programs through online conversations and engagement, it's easy to describe the merits of a social media campaign.
Online advocacy, if launched and managed correctly, tends to create more lasting, sustainable, loyal relationships than traditional media campaigns. Social media initiatives often cost less than most marketing campaigns, and they are an excellent way to create meaningful, original content in a marketplace where traditional media placement opportunities are disappearing left and right.
Nonetheless, one of the roles of the c-suite is to identify the potential downfalls of social media -- along with any budget line item.
The best way to illustrate the value of social media to the suits upstairs is to be able to identify and defend the downsides, along with strategies to fill in gaps left by social media tools.
Here is our list of the shortcomings of social media -- shocking, we know -- and ways to counteract those problems:
NEGATIVE: "Social media campaigns are too risky."
The public defines what content will "rise to the top" of the online conversation, so they hold power over the popularity of any single campaign. It's more likely for a one-time, six-week social media campaign to flop than for a six-week public relations initiative - what if nobody notices?
RESPONSE: "Social media engagement is more successful in the long run than PR campaigns."
Social media is less effective when constrained by a short timetable. Instead, allocate just a few resources to a long-term listening program that eventually evolves into an online conversation - see Tom Smith's article from earlier this year in Mashable. The same points (particularly point #4) apply today.
NEGATIVE: "The Internet is for consumer products, and that's not us ."
The most exciting social media campaigns tend to be consumer campaigns. For companies with B2B or B2G business models, the Internet should be left to Burger King, Coke, or TV shows.
RESPONSE: "Tell that to the destroyed printers from Expert Laser Services."
Relationships lead to B2B sales. Social media allows companies to make direct connections with clients and prospects by answering questions on LinkedIn, engaging customers on Twitter, or even using customers' ideas to make a better product. Social media engagement may have to be more targeted and goal-oriented for B2B companies than Coke, but that makes it no different than traditional media relations, where one hit in the right trade publication can be more rewarding than The New York Times. The Expert Laser Services campaign worked because ELS created a relationship with contestants based on a mutual disdain for broken technology.
NEGATIVE: "It's too easy for a social media campaign to backfire."
When a social media campaign fails, it can fail BIG - look at Microsoft's laughable online video advertising Windows 7 (we'd link to the parody videos, but most of them are NSFW).
RESPONSE: "That's why we listen first."
These social media campaigns failed for a reason - they didn't listen to their audiences before jumping into the conversation. Instead of blasting information for anyone to come across and mock, listen to what online communities have to say about your company first, and eventually respond to their questions.
NEGATIVE: "We don't have the manpower."
Social media can suck hours out of the day - from checking RSS feeds to Tweeting to writing blog posts and creating original content, social media is exhausting for those of us who do it for our jobs.
RESPONSE: "Our existing employees and our customers will be our brand advocates."
Employees are on Facebook anyway (particularly if they are part of Generation Y). Follow the Coke or Zappos model to set employee social media guidelines and encourage them to gather company followers - make social media engagement part of the corporate mentorship program. Encourage fans to draft their own content and invite industry leaders within your vertical to lead the conversation from your podium. It takes a village to raise a brand.
Posted by Dave Armon on Mon, Dec 07, 2009
Anyone who doubts the ubiquity of online social networking need only look to the New Oxford American Dictionary, which chose "unfriend" as its 2009 word of the year.
When the verb describing the act of removing someone as a friend on Facebook earns an official place in a respected dictionary, it's time to validate social media as more than a fad.
Clearly, 2009 was the year of digital dabbling -- from Twitter to Facebook, Flickr to YouTube, FourSquare to Google Wave -- and scores of brand communicators are now ready to move from experimentation to large-scale execution.
There's no shortage of guidance from early social media marketers, as well as not-so-far-fetched parodies of the gurus (adult language) who feigned knowledge where none existed.
Those brave enough to organize their thoughts and publish books on the new paradigm for consumers and business opened themselves up to robust online conversation, accolades and criticism. Thanks to people like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Shel Israel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Deirdre Breckenridge, Courtney Barnes and Paul Argenti practicing what they preached, we all learned a tremendous amount this year.
The dna13 team went a step further, polling the published thought leaders as well as brand managers, PR officers, CMOs, analysts, journalists and academics about their social media experiences. The goal: to provide concrete advice from early adopters for those about to take the plunge into a new world where consumers are in charge.
In essence, "Social Media Lessons Learned in 2009" is a crowd-sourced white paper containing tips and video from early SM adopters.
Rest assured, we put it together knowing that it had better be good or we risk you using that brand new New Oxford Dictionary word.
Enjoy!
Photo by CC Chapman: Chris Brogan signing his book, "Trust Agents," at the Inbound Marketing Forum.