Younger generation:
- Only 19% of 16-24s communicate via email (in sharp contrast to a survey by Beloit College in the US, which found that most ‘kids don’t like email’)
- 29% of their time on the web is spent communicating on social networks

Older generation:
- Half of over 55s consider emails the most important media activity
- A fifth, or 20%, use social networks

More than ever, engaging with your audience means two-way communication. While the over 55s tend to communicate in a more closed environment (i.e. personal email), younger generations are using open networks (for example, Twitter), where companies have the opportunity to engage with them directly.

Going back to an earlier post on brainstorming – knowing your audience and what they read is important, but also knowing where they spend their time online will help shape a successful campaign.

• Audience – always know who they are. My mother used to shout at me for judging people and stereotyping, but now it’s time to embrace it. Picture the audience, I mean physically draw them. What do they like? What do they read?

• Chill-ax – clear the mind of useless junk! Who can be creative when they’re envisaging an endless amount of emails creeping into their inbox or deciding where to go for lunch? Try to get rid of these distractions.

• Questions – force them out of people – chair the meeting, write everything down and question everyone. You never know what’s lurking in the depths of your HR manager’s mind – they could be a creative genius!

• One last thing to bear in mind is people bounce off each other.

And if all else fails, if your team is void of fun ideas and keeps contributing ‘research stories’ – a fail safe is just to suggest to get some flesh out. As a good friend once said, life’s short, play naked!

On the flip side of those companies waiting on baited breath for their Twitter strategy to start paying dividends, are those who should really embrace social media, but won’t. And it’s this psychological barrier that – along with dispensing good, social media sense – communications consultants must help their clients overcome, with plenty of relevant evidence.

On the bright side, there is so much more cogent discussion about PR and social media that really, it’s like a gold rush in and of itself.

A new study announced yesterday by ExactTarget highlights that consumers active on Twitter are the most influential online. The report reveals that Tweeters are three times more likely to impact a brand’s reputation through syndicated tweets, blog posts, articles and product reviews than the average consumer. This provides a strong argument that online influencer research and digital PR campaigns are of value to brands.

ExactTarget’s principle Morgan Stewart points out that “while the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivalled” noting that it’s becoming the “gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every corner of the internet.”

Some useful, persuasive stats:

72% of Twitter users publish blog posts at least monthly
70% comment on blogs
61% write at least one monthly product review
61% comment on news sites

Providing further evidence of the value of opening up a Twitter channel, the report reveals the principle reason for consumers to follow a brand on Twitter is to get information about the company and consequently their products.  If your audience is online and you’re not, you are clearly missing a trick.

The new service is being brought to market under Origo’s Adviserwise brand involving 36 of the leading product and services providers in the UK. Firefly is tasked with running a blended offline and online PR campaign to drive awareness of the service across the industry and further educate target audiences about the benefits of using eServices to increase efficiencies and reduce business processing costs.

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption and Marketing Manager for Origo, said: “As Origo’s long standing PR partner, I am delighted to bring Firefly on board to help us with this exciting launch. They understand our business, know our target media and have always provided a very professional service. As part of the campaign Firefly will be helping us establish a greater digital presence for Origo with a new blog as well as maximising our social media platforms and I’m looking forward to seeing the results.”

If you are agency-side, as simple as it may sound, your client contact will most likely send the PR plan on to other people in their organisation. Introduce it properly. Keep it short and sweet. It might be forwarded to the MD, FD or procurement team. Gracious words like “thank you for the opportunity” go a long way. Enthusiastic is good, smarmy is not.

Two warnings:

1. Spell the company’s and people’s names correctly, and double-check titles and addresses. If you’re lucky you might get 3 strikes. In tough times, and with bountiful choice in a buyer’s market, don’t even risk one chance of a strike.

2. Add colour, add relevant pictures, add diagrams, add tables and spreadsheets. Help the reader by beginning each section with clear subheads.

Ideally, the PR plan should show reflection and research. If an agency is not briefed thoroughly enough then I suggest you don’t guess or make assumptions – ask for clarification. Perhaps propose that you should undertake some more in-depth research before writing the PR plan. 

• how effective have the entire communications efforts been recently?
• how are they perceived against competitors?
• where do they want to be in the target market?
• how do they wish to be known and understood?
• and, after all this is sorted and understood, then start writing the PR Plan……….

Too often we pile into writing a PR plan without any clarity and insight on the above basic points. Push and question to get clarity and, if confusion reigns, politely propose that more guidance would really help.

What I found interesting was one of the podcaster’s comments which suggested that Hayward’s many PR failures (the key reason he’s going) may have seriously overshadowed fundamentally ‘OK’ managerial decisions he made during the crisis. There are two different but related themes at work here: ‘good’ PR can define leaders. In the case of Hayward and his predecessor, ‘bad’ PR also has the ability to also take them down. Secondly, I personally don’t believe PR is enough to paper over, or indeed, obscure (business, ethical, environmental) cracks of as profound a nature as those which led to the Gulf oil spill. Which also raises a third question: what is your best asset when fighting a crisis of BP-sized proportions? 

The incoming CEO, an American, will have a major job on his hands in helping repair the ocean-sized reputational damage to BP. Let’s hope he and his advisors understand that good communications, as part of a bigger whole that includes accountability and  responsible action, are not mutually exclusive.

Point 1 – Back in the day, a traditional newsroom had three types of jobs: reporter, editor and photographer. With the rise of all things digital, new titles have appeared: multiplatform idea triage specialist and deputy director of word-flow management and video branding strategy, to name a few. Is there really a need for fancy new titles that mean nothing to no one? What does a multiplatform idea triage specialist actually do?

Point 2 – Online headlines are no longer designed to catch the reader’s eye. What they are designed for is SEO, and they’re often changed to something utilitarian – as I have demonstrated in the title of this post. Can you imagine The Sun without their brand-defining (and often funny) pun headlines? So we don’t forget what we could be missing, here are a couple of great ones taken from Friday’s paper:
- We’ve saved her ass (the story about rescuing the parasailing donkey)
- Fish Fingaaghs (the story about a man accidentally filleting UK’s rarest fish)
- Stumphenge (the story about the timber ring found near Stonehenge)

It is interesting to see how the internet has affected the business of journalism, but let’s hope that the things that make “traditional media” special don’t get pushed aside in the digital wave. I firmly believe there’s room for both.

This is a crude test, but in principle, what is the best approach – A, B or C?

A is tempting with a bit of thinking and lots of doing! It’s all about is being really busy, but are you absolutely sure you’re doing the right things? This is classically when the plan says something vague but the team take off in their own directions. See  this clip. You get my point.

B is balanced – equal thinking and doing. But the plan and the team efforts may not work together and may even conflict. There’s not enough pull back to the plan and goals, or a focus on what absolutely needs to be achieved.

The right answer is C. You should spend more time thinking and planning than doing. If you only do what you absolutely know will be successful, then you are guaranteed to achieve your goal – and you’ll spend less time doing all those irrelevant things. You might even get to go home on time!

I will blog a series of how to put together a great PR plan, with lots of hints and tips. Below is what I would consider to a basic structure of a PR or comms plan and I’ll give more detail on how to build out each section over the coming weeks.

Broadly speaking (and in an agency), a director should set the strategy and an account director should spend their time putting together insightful detailed plans (and not executing the plan). An account manager is responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the plan and account executives are responsible, along with the account manager and the rest of the team, for delivering the plan.

A basic PR plan structure should be along these lines:

Contents

• Executive summary
• Situational analysis
• Assumptions, problems and consequences
• PR/Campaign goal
• Audience and messages
• Objectives
• Strategy
• Tactics & deliverables
• Schedule
• Critical success factors
• Budget
• Evaluation
• Reporting and administration
• Team & responsibilities

Subscribe to this blog via our RSS feed, or keep popping back for more detail. And please give me your thoughts and experiences or what you want to know more about. Next update soon…

Server hosting company Leaseweb is one of the largest and fastest growing companies in its field in Europe, serving the global market.  LeaseWeb handles internet traffic for clients like The Wikimedia Foundation, operators ofWikipedia, Heineken, and Hyves, the largest social media site in the Netherlands.  Evoswitch is the cutting edge, next generation datacentre, based near Amsterdam that is 100% climate neutral – providing customers with advanced, state of the art, eco-friendly and secure IT housing alternatives.

Firefly’s immediate brief is to build brand awareness in the UK and manage the Netherlands execution through Dutch PR agency partner MarcommIT, before embarking on a Pan-EMEA campaign to build the brands’ profiles across Europe.  Firefly’s remit covers traditional and online PR, corporate profiling, forum engagement and industry analyst relations.