Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

An infographic shows a side-by-side comparison of public relations skills and tools from a decade ago and today.

...At the turn of the century, PR practitioners were faxing pitches and mailing press kits. Today they’re tweeting pitches and emailing virtual press kits. 

The upheaval in technology and media has been advantageous for savvy public relations professionals. As PR executive Beth Monaghan explains in a blog post...

There are always situations where leasing works, but if you can buy the asset of content, and you know that (if done correctly) the asset will grow in value, why would you ever pass up that opportunity...

If executed correctly, you can leverage (and re-leverage) that asset to continually communicate with customers and prospects. A great example of this is CMI’s 100 Content Marketing Examples eBook. That piece of “owned” content was made up of about 50 other pieces of “owned” content. For the most part, top-tier content marketing like this does not depreciate over time (it’s what publishing folks call “evergreen” content), unlike a car. Great content works more like buying a house or property — if it’s good, and can easily be found (location), it will go up in value....

Businesses may soon be able to lure customers passing by their stores with precisely-timed, tailor-made discounts sent to their cell phones.

AT&T Senior Vice President Jeff Bradley said his company is working with a well-known restaurant chain on an app that would send a customer a dollar-off coupon for her favorite latte or slice of pizza.

His statement created an audible buzz among the nearly 1,000 people in the big ballroom of the Westin Seattle on Wednesday, and it was just one of the whiz-bang examples he cited to show how technology is dramatically reshaping how goods and services are traded....

...I was recently sitting in a webinar on news releases with my co-workers when the presenter recommended we tweet our news releases to promote them. I felt like gasping out loud. I tried to hold back and finally I just couldn’t. “I just have to say I do not agree,” I blurted. Our intern looked up curiously and asked why. My reasoning? Would you sit down with your friends and read your press release to them? No. Would you read it to a group of prospective new business clients? Would you pass it out to people as you walked down the street? NO. Or at least I hope not.

I have been asked many times to tweet a news release and every time it makes my blood boil. That’s not social. It’s not a conversation. It reminds me of the annoying person that only likes to talk about themselves, constantly. No one cares. It’s like shoving dry cereal down someone’s throat without stopping to offer them milk. And my favorite reason, “if you tweet it the media could see it.” Oh please, I assure you the media isn’t going to pick up your news release because you blasted it on Twitter....

Imagine a brick and mortar store without sales associates helping customers. Imagine a restaurant without a wait staff catering to its clientele. It just seems wrong, doesn’t it? We expect people to be there as needed when we’re shopping, and part of the whole allure of dining out is the convenience of being waited on.

Five to ten years from now, however, it will probably be just as difficult to imagine a company operating online without some sort of social media or interactive strategy. Why? Because like traditional expectations for the retail and hospitality industries, today, for any company doing business online, people expect an engaging experience.

Because We Can, We Must: The need for interactivity online didn’t really start with social media, but through social media’s success, it became undeniably clear.On social media channels like Facebook or Twitter – even on older channels like websites, blogs, and email accounts – personal, relevant interactions between businesses and/or consumers have become the new normal.

Because it’s possible, and because it’s been proven to be effective – at SnapApp, for example, we’ve seen an over 50% click through rate on average for people who use interactive content – creating interesting and engaging experiences online is a necessity....

In the content marketing game, everyone talks about something ‘going viral’.

Most agencies, like Velocity, will tend to downplay the idea: “Just make the best content you can make and if it happens, it happens.”

Well it happened. To us.

Our recent Slideshare piece, “Crap: Why the biggest threat to content marketing is content marketing“, has just been through a hell of a hockey stick, reaching over 168,000 views to date. In B2B land, that’s pretty viral.

This post is my attempt to share what it feels like when this happens. I hope it doesn’t come off as one big brag: I honestly feel we were just lucky with this one, so telling this story is in no way an attempt to prove how clever we are. If you’ve met us, you know how futile that attempt would be....

Web analytics and general knowledge of digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) have come a long way since the days when people were measuring “hits” on a site. Tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, and proprietary systems within companies have made digital marketing reporting more simple and accessible for the average marketing professional. These days, you’re nowhere in marketing if you don’t understand your basic web KPIs, including customer engagement and conversion rates. 

However, as content marketing takes the forefront in digital marketing tactics — especially for B2B and SEO marketing — marketers are still stuck in the stone age as it relates to measuring the effectiveness and impact of various forms of content. For example, consider white papers (or any page turn publication) — they are a common lead generation tactic within content marketing, yet most marketers fail to measure anything beyond “downloads.” The question remains: What can a marketer do to better understand the effectiveness of this type of content?...

Few domains in business and society have been untouched by the emerging social-media revolution—one that is not even a decade old. Many organizations have been responding to that new reality, realizing the power and the potential of this technology for corporate life: wikis enable more efficient virtual collaboration in cross-functional projects; internal blogs, discussion boards, and YouTube channels encourage global conversations and knowledge sharing; sophisticated viral media campaigns engage customers and create brand loyalty; next-generation products are codeveloped in open-innovation processes; and corporate leaders work on shaping their enterprise 2.0 strategy.

This radical change has created a dilemma for senior executives: while the potential of social media seems immense, the inherent risks create uncertainty and unease. By nature unbridled, these new communications media can let internal and privileged information suddenly go public virally. What’s more, there’s a mismatch between the logic of participatory media and the still-reigning 20th-century model of management and organizations, with its emphasis on linear processes and control. Social media encourages horizontal collaboration and unscripted conversations that travel in random paths across management hierarchies. It thereby short-circuits established power dynamics and traditional lines of communication.

We believe that capitalizing on the transformational power of social media while mitigating its risks calls for a new type of leader. The dynamics of social media amplify the need for qualities that have long been a staple of effective leadership, such as strategic creativity, authentic communication, and the ability to deal with a corporation’s social and political dynamics and to design an agile and responsive organization....