Category: Digital marketing

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Social Media ROI: your questions for M&S, Nokia, Giff Gaff and Bazaarvoice – #SocialBrands

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date January 15, 2013
No Comments on Social Media ROI: your questions for M&S, Nokia, Giff Gaff and Bazaarvoice – #SocialBrands

How do M&S, Nokia, Giff Gaff and Bazaarvoice measure social media ROI? What tools do they use to measure social media value?

I’ll be putting these questions and more to senior representatives of all of these businesses at the Social Brands conference being held in London on Thursday February 7th 2013.

I’m moderating a panel with Lou Jones, Head of Online and Digital Marketing at M&S, Craig Hepburn, Global Director, Digital & Social Media at Nokia, Vincent Boon, Chief of Community at Giff Gaff, and Richard Anderson, VP Client Services at Bazaarvoice.

It should prove to be a lively discussion.

Feel free to leave your questions in the comment section below or Tweet me: @andismit.

The conference overall has a very meaty line up of big brands and senior digital figures.

According to the organisers: “Social Brands is the only social media event bringing together those across marketing, communications, PR, brand, customer service and beyond. Join 150+ of your peers and hear from brands who are leading in the social space, driving long-term engagement and tying buzz to business results. Promising insight, inspiration and new ideas, this year’s agenda is packed with thought provoking speakers, invigorating debate and invaluable networking opportunities.”

And there is more info on Lanyrd too. Look forward to your questions!

Tags #socialbrands

Digital marketing digital pr Featured online pr Social media

Escherman becomes a HootSuite Pro Solution Partner in the UK

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date December 12, 2012
No Comments on Escherman becomes a HootSuite Pro Solution Partner in the UK

I’ve long extolled the virtues of Hootsuite as a social media management platform for PR and communications teams (*).

We’ve helped a number of individuals and teams get properly set up on Hootsuite.

As a result of getting more immersed in Hootsuite, I became a Hootsuite Certified Professional earlier this year. And I’ve continued to try and ensure we’ve kept fully up to speed with all the many capabilities of the platform.

It is therefore very gratifying to announce we have now been signed up as an official Hootsuite Solution Partner in the UK.

How nice you say. What’s the benefit of that?

In short, we now have access to a range of additional tools and resources so we can offer even more value to any team or organisation who wants to get the best out of Hootsuite.

Don’t forget, if you haven’t tried Hootsuite before, you can always sign up for a free 30 day trial – just click here.

And always happy to discuss how we can help people implement Hootsuite effectively.

(*) For those unfamiliar with it, HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organisations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Yammer, Tumblr and more.

Earlier this year HootSuite hit 4 million users, including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies. Along with HootSuite’s web platform, 20% of users access the dashboard through their mobiles including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and iPad. HootSuite also offers localized versions of their dashboard in six languages – English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.

There are many benefits to HootSuite Pro

Engage: Optimise your audience engagement by creating search streams, scheduling messages and monitoring all of your social network profiles from one customizable web and mobile dashboard.

Collaborate: Invite clients and colleagues to participate in your social media management. Assign messages for follow up and share streams, helping you increase efficiency.

Analyze: Measure your efforts using over 40 social analytics modules to build and share custom reports. Or select from one of our pre-made templates for quick and easy reporting.

Secure: Share access with team members without compromising security. The team permission levels and advanced sharing options ensure you remain in control of your valuable social profiles and accounts.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR Media online pr

Lissted adds sentiment scoring, trends and data export. Creates integrated press monitoring and reporting platform for Twitter

Realwire’s Lissted platform has added yet more interesting functionality.

First up, sentiment analysis. Each journalist Tweet now gets an automatic sentiment rating (courtesy of the Lexalytics salience engine). This means that you can now filter your journalist monitoring in terms of sentiment as well as by time and/or Klout score – in real time.

In practical terms, this means that you can monitor, say, a particular group of journalists who are talking about your brand or relevant topic – and immediately understand where the most positive and/or negative comments are coming from – and take action accordingly.

Secondly, Lissted now provides automatic trend analysis. At a generic level, you can see at a glance the current most popular topics that the press are talking about in real time. Better still (if you are a Lissted Pro user), you can analyse trends within a defined subset of journalists. So you can monitor trends within a media group that is specifically relevant to you. Certainly takes the guesswork out of what the media really is talking about on Twitter.

Finally, you now have the ability to export data out of Lissted into a spreadsheet. From a reporting standpoint, this really is the jewel in the crown. For example, you can define a specific group of journalists over a particular time period – and then export not only the Tweet content and associated data, but also Klout and sentiment scores for offline analysis. I can see this being an immensely powerful tool for determining which content has the most relevance, reach and impact. Smart PR pros are going to be able to use this to spend more time refining their content and engagement strategies rather than wasting countless hours just struggling to gather the requisite data.

Coupled with the recent announcement of dynamic Twitter lists, Lissted has evolved rapidly into a robust monitoring and reporting platform for looking specifically at the media on Twitter. Given media relations remains at the core of much PR activity, Lissted certainly seems to provide a powerful means of providing real time insight into the conversations that journalists really are having on Twitter (as well as the content they find most worthy of linking to).

Any PR who has an interest in remaining ahead of the game in media relations would do well to check it out.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured online pr

What counts as a good ReTweet level? And what impact does RTing have on clickthrough rate?

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date September 13, 2012
No Comments on What counts as a good ReTweet level? And what impact does RTing have on clickthrough rate?

Every social media guru will tell you why getting retweeted is a good thing.

RTs mean your message is being amplified.

Getting your message amplified means more people are exposed to your message and content.

And that surely is a good thing, yes?

However, I haven’t come across any stats on what constitutes a good, bad or indifferent level of retweeting.

How many RTs should you be aiming for? 5, 10, 100, 1000?

Clearly, who is doing the Retweeting has to be factored in.

Getting a single RT from someone like @stephenfry is going to gain you a lot more exposure than 1000 RTs from people who only have 1 follower each (assuming of course Stephen Fry’s follower base is a relevant audience for you).

Still – I thought it would be interesting to see what the average RT levels were for certain high profile Twitter accounts. And where possible, see if there is an impact on clickthrough rate.

I used as one of my test examples the New York Times (@nytimes) – not least of which because they still use the bit.ly URL shortener. So we have publicly available data on clickthrough rates.

Using FavStar, I could see that the all time highest RT’d @nytimes Tweet was this one, with 3776 RTs. FavStar also provides a measure of the amplification effect. It has a limit of 1000 RTs – by this measure, this particular Tweet reached at least an addiitional 317,000 Twitter users via RTing.

Bear in mind that New York Times has 6.1 million followers (without getting into the fake/inactive follower debate again here). So the ratio of RTs to followers for the NYTimes best ever RT’d Tweet is 0.06pc. (Over the last month, the average RT rate for all NYTimes Tweets is 70 – many thanks to the rather nifty Nixon McInnes ReTweet tool that allowed me to work this out very quickly).

Over the last month, the most RT’d Tweet for the NY Times has been this one. And looking at performance, it has gained 6776 clicks so far.

If we take one of the least RT’d Tweets in the last month – this one – we can see it has a substantially lower click through rate – 249 clicks.

Clearly there are some big caveats here. Factors such as the timing and content of the Tweet surely have some bearing on whether it gets Retweeted – and thus increases the likelihood of a link being clicked.

I appreciate this is hardly a scientific study – based as it is on one example. But at the very least, it should put some broad parameters on people’s expectations. If even the most followed media properties on Twitter don’t see the RTs for their Tweets reach into three figures, then the likelihood that run of the mill of accounts (ie most Twitter users) will see RTs reaching double figures is low. Then again, by focussing on those quality users whose reach and relevance has the most meaningful impact for your audience, low RT rates don’t have to be such a disappointment.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR online pr tech pr Technology PR

Dynamically updated Twitter lists now possible with Lissted

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date September 6, 2012
4 Comments on Dynamically updated Twitter lists now possible with Lissted

We all know that Twitter lists can be very handy. One of the benefits of a list is that it allows you to keep track of what particular people are saying without actually having to follow them. Monitoring multiple lists in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite is certainly easier than having everything piling into your home stream

However, the main beef with lists historically has been the pain involved in maintaining them. Sure, there are some lists that you can “set and forget” (for example, if you have a fixed list of people that you know will remain stable for some time).

But what if you want to create a dynamic list? Imagine you want to maintain lists of people who match certain criteria? So long as they meet the criteria, they stay on the list – if they don’t, they get removed. PR professionals, for example, may wish to keep tabs on certain journalists because they may have Tweeted or written about things relevant to a particular client. The problem with this is that more often than not, there is a shelf life to the journalists interest and/or relevance to the list the PR person creates. Trying to manually update a list in this way is a dull, unproductive bore.

Unless I’ve missed it, I’m not yet been aware of any way of automatically maintaining Twitter lists. At least ones that might have meaning for a PR professional.

Until now that it is.

Realwire’s Lissted tool, launched back in June, already provides a neat way of both identifying relevant media for PRs to target as well monitoring journalist conversations on Twitter.

Built on a robust database of over 12,500 individual journalists and media outlets, Lissted lets you have see exactly which journalists are Tweeting or writing about any topic or issue.

Let’s imagine you want to know about any journalist mentioning your client’s name in the last 24hrs. Realwire will happily show you those journalists that have either mentioned the client in a Tweet – or referred to the client in any content they have linked to. You can also view the results in terms of Klout score (handy if you are looking at a lot of results and want to focus on the ones that potentially have the biggest reach and impact). You can also get automatic email alerts when any journalist Tweets or links to relevant content, based on the keyword parameters you set . Having used the tool in anger over the last two months I can vouch for the usefulness of this feature (here are some screen shots of the results in Lissted itself along with what the email alerts look like).

Now, Lissted has added the ability to create dynamic lists of journalists.

You can see how this can be a real time saver. Here are some sample dynamic lists created by Lissted.

Cabinet Reshuffle

iPhone 5

Take the iPhone 5 list. This is a list of technology journalists and media outlets who have mentioned the iPhone 5 in the last 3 days. If someone stops talking about iPhone 5, then they drop off the list. Conversely, any new journalist talking about iPhone 5 will be added. You can see how this can be useful. Depending on the criteria you set, you get an automatically updated Twitter list. Being able to keep a rolling track of relevant journalists in one list that requires no manual intervention is really rather good. And if you import the list into Hootsuite, you can further filter on the list by keyword and/or Klout score (so you could filter further on journalists within the list based on additional criteria).

I gather from Lissted that there are additions and enhancements planned for the tool over the coming weeks.

Any PR professional who wants to spend more time on having meaningful conversations with relevant journalists rather than fiddling around trying to maintain Twitter lists would do well to have a look at this new Lissted feature (or Lissted generally if you haven’t done so already).

Books Digital marketing digital pr Featured online pr

Book launch – Share This: the Social Media Handbook for PR professionals (CIPR)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date July 19, 2012
2 Comments on Book launch – Share This: the Social Media Handbook for PR professionals (CIPR)

Last night saw the official launch of Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR professionals at Google Campus in Bonhill Street, London. It was the icing on the cake for a great collaborative process that has hopefully delivered something of real value to PR people in the UK. And beyond. CIPR CEO Jane Wilson (see below) revealed last night that the book will be published in the US in August.

Big plaudits also go to my old chum Mr Stephen Waddington (pictured below) for pushing the project forward. Without him, this wouldn’t have seen the light of day. And of course, huge thanks to all of my fellow co-authors who are all, I think, justifiably pleased with the outcome: Katy Howell, Simon Sanders, Helen Nowicka, Gemma Griffiths, Becky McMichael, Robin Wilson, Alex Lacey, Matt Appleby, Dan Tyte, Stephen Waddington, Stuart Bruce, Rob Brown, Russell Goldsmith, Adam Parker, Julio Romo, Philip Sheldrake, Richard Bagnall,Daljit Bhurji, Richard Bailey, Rachel Miller, Mark Pack, and Simon Collister.

And in case you were wondering, here’s what we got up to after the launch party – a curry in Brick Lane. Outstanding.

And here’s a quick video of yours truly giving a flavour of one of my chapters in the book: What has Google Ever Done For PR?

[wpvideo 95BktlLj]

I do hope you’ll buy and read the book. And of course, I think we’d all welcome any feedback!

Digital marketing

The end of Master Builders in PR (and its relevance to the CIPR’s Share This book)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date July 16, 2012
No Comments on The end of Master Builders in PR (and its relevance to the CIPR’s Share This book)

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a fascinating book that provides some solid evidence to suggest that the humble checklist is one of the most valuable tools known to mankind.

But one chapter that stuck out for me was one entitled The End Of The Master Builder. This section of the book focussed on the extensive use of checklists in the construction industry – and why this had come about. Gawande interviewed Joe Salvia, a structural engineer, who had the following illuminating comment:

“For most of modern history, he explained, going back to medieval times, the dominant way people put up buildings was by going out and hiring Master Builders who designed them, engineered them, and oversaw construction from start to finish, portico to plumbing. Master Builders built Notre Dame, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the United States Capitol building. But by the middle of the twentieth century the Master Builders were dead and gone. The variety and sophistication of advancements in every stage of the construction process had overwhelmed the abilities of any individual to master them.”

The use of checklists extends not just to the building process itself, but to the communication between specialists.

As Gawande explains: “In the face of the unknown — the always nagging uncertainty about whether, under complex circumstances, things will really be okay — the builders trusted in the power of communication. They didn’t believe in the wisdom of the single individual, of even an experienced engineer. They believed in the wisdom of the group, the wisdom of making sure that multiple pairs of eyes were on a problem and then letting the watchers decide what to do.”

So what are the parallels with PR? If you think about it, PR professionals in the past may have considered themselves the comms equivalents of master builders. Namely, that a skilled PR would be able to understand and manage the whole PR process from start to finish.

Like construction, PR is now far more complex. The ability of any single individual to be able to have genuine expertise in every aspect of PR (let alone digital marketing) is going to be remote.

Which is why Share This: the Social Media Handbook from the CIPR is a reflection of this reality. By gathering 20 individuals who know their stuff in their respective specialisms, the reader is getting a much more valuable insight into the complexities of modern PR (as well more insightful ways to handle that complexity). The process of writing the book mirrored the use of communication checklists in the construction industry (ie many pairs of eyes scrutinised everyone’s content).

I’d urge anyone working in PR and communications to read the book. Aside from my own humble contributions to it, you’d be hard pushed to find such a diversity of relevant content and knowledgeable experts in one place.

There is a 20pc off list price offer if you order the book via www.wiley.com – just use the following discount code: VB964. Or you can order via Amazon.

I look forward to your feedback on the book!

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-111840484X.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Share-This-Social-Handbook-Professionals/dp/111840484X/

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR

The implications of Brand Anarchy (and why you should buy the book)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date June 8, 2012
5 Comments on The implications of Brand Anarchy (and why you should buy the book)

Don’t bother worrying about whether you have lost control of your brand’s reputation. You never had control of it in the first place. However, there is an opportunity to take command of your brand. But it won’t be easy. And you probably should have started working on it yesterday.

This is a core axiom for Stephen Waddington* and Steve Earl* in their recently published book, Brand Anarchy. It is an ambitious attempt to trace the historical developments that have led to the current state of the PR and media sectors as well as an impressive survey of the major trends and issues that will impact anyone with responsibility for managing reputation today. And in the future.

One of the many things to commend about this book is the breadth of issues raised, analysed and evaluated. The authors don’t shy away from asking the big questions about the definition and meaning of crucial concepts such as reputation, engagement, influence, authenticity, participation, analytics and measurement. What is refreshing is that Waddington and Earl demonstrate their hard earned communication skills by writing in a clear and concise style, thus avoiding the Latinate concatenations of more prolix authors who claim authority in the field of PR and social media.

They also have credibility. These guys know of what they speak. They’ve been in the PR frontline for nearly two decades. Both were journalists. Both built and sold a multi-million pound PR firm from scratch. They continue to create and manage communication campaigns for top brands. But as they cogently argue, the speed and complexity of change within the PR and media industries means there is no room whatsoever for complacency – or for anyone to claim they have all the answers.

Another plus point for the book is the breadth of industry observers and commentators interviewed. The acknowledgements page reads like a Who’s Who of the brightest thinkers and doers in the UK PR sector today (indeed, many are regular CIPR Conversation contributors. As is of course Stephen Waddington himself). Following this lot on Twitter would give you a real time intelligence feed into the best insight in the industry today.

Combining this breadth of insight with the authors own tenacious desire to not just accept commonly held (but often mistaken) beliefs about the real drivers of industry change make a refreshing departure from many recent paeans to the power of digital media. The balance of optimism and healthy scepticism is about right.

Unsurprisingly, the ultimate conclusion drawn by Waddington and Earl is that the PR sector needs to develop new skills. And fast.

So. Should you buy the book?

If you want easy, simple answers, then don’t bother.

However, if you want something that makes you think more profoundly about the future of the PR and communications sector (and by definition, your own career and future within it), then yes, you should.

For the cost of a few pints of beer, I’d wager this may prove to be one of the best investments you could make this year. Or any year.

I started taking not a whole pill but a quarter. After a few days I began to take half a pill and only then I took a https://drbocklet.com/xanax-online/ whole pill. In general, I want to say that I was helped very much.

*Disclaimer: Stephen Waddington and Steve Earl are former colleagues. We all worked together in the mid 1990s in the same large PR firm. Even though we all went our separate ways, we have continued to meet and discuss the state of the PR industry in real life and online ever since. They have kindly given plenty of airtime to my views in the book. Does that make me biased? Probably. I leave it to the individual reader to decide whether my relationship with the authors adds weight to my assessment of the value of the book. Or not.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR online pr SEO

One trick ponies make good glue (CIPR Conversation)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date May 25, 2012
No Comments on One trick ponies make good glue (CIPR Conversation)

(This post first appeared on the CIPR Conversation).

The debate around PR and SEO refuses to go away. However, recent Google algorithm changes seem to have pushed the discussion to the fore again. A common theme is emerging – namely, that, more than ever, high quality, relevant content on trusted, high authority sites is crucial to good SEO – and PR professionals may be better placed to create that content than many SEOs.

Simple, yeah?

Well, not quite. As ever, reality begs to differ. I was particularly reminded of this by Dr Peter Meyers of the Chicago based firm User Effect who has written some excellent blog posts recently on the subject of SEO.

Specfically he points out that: “Every week, without fail, I hear someone ask where they should put their SEO budget – in on-page tactics or in link-building. Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies and consultants lining up to give them the answer – and that answer just happens (“coincidentally”) to be whatever the company/consultant is good at. When you’re an expert with a hammer, you start to think you can nail anyone (wait, that’s not right).”

And of course, these kind of comments could equally apply to PR. If your expertise lies in media relations, then naturally you’ll find it hard not to recommend to a client that a media relations solution is the way forward.

But I agree with Dr Meyers when he says that the honest answer is: “It depends”.

And of course, that is the answer that no client wants to hear. They want “an answer”. Or more specifically they want “THE answer”. That someone is going to take the pain away and deliver the silver bullet solution.

In a similar vein, people sometimes view training as a quick fix. Send someone on an SEO training course and they’ll come back with “the answer”.

Clearly, you have to start somewhere – and for PR professionals, the CIPR already offers workshops and webinars that will provide a rapid fire introduction to SEO basics (as well as other areas of the digital marketing mix such as social media and analytics).

But this is merely the first part of the journey. You can spend your entire life just reading about SEO or attending training workshops. However, there comes a point when you actually have to start doing it.

So rather than waste our energies arguing over whether SEO firms should be doing PR and vice versa, the only real way to find out is as Dr Meyers so eloquently puts it: “Do The F*cking Work.” Sticking with the same core set of skills that may have worked in the past is no longer an option. As I’ve opined before, one trick ponies are going to be a liability. Or as Dr Meyers more colorfully puts it: “One trick ponies make good glue”.

No single blog post or one day workshop is of itself going to solve all your problems. This is your profession and your career. Not only is continuous learning and development a pre-requisite, actually making the time to apply it is mandatory. Even if you can’t immediately find opportunities within your own work to apply these things, then make the opportunities yourself. It costs next to nothing to create your own blog, install Google Analytics and set up a Google Adwords account. Don’t just read about SEO and nod sagely when people stand up at conferences and say that PR professionals COULD have a valuable role in SEO. Actually do it.

Tags advertising, business, dr peter meyers, marketing, social media, technology