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• New Client Success Stories Exemplify What it Means to be Marketwired

  Posted: Tue, 21 May 2013 13:00:45 +0000

  Tracking down missing children. Predicting election results. Preventing children from dropping out of school. Promoting a diverse and industry-focused university. Growing a full-service gardening brand.

  Thanks to Marketwired, these noteworthy goals are being achieved in ways that could not have been imagined a few years ago. They’re brought to life in five new client case studies that demonstrate how Marketwired solutions are providing new ways for organizations to fulfill their missions.

  • Tracking Down Missing Children: The Missing Children Society of Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to reuniting missing children with their families, uses Heartbeat, powered by Sysomos, to track alerts sent to the networks of its donors. This “World’s Most Valuable Social Network” is a unique approach that leverages its donors’ personal social networks to give missing children the greatest possible chance to be found.
  • Predicting Election Results: Research firm ORI wanted to understand how social media affects politics, so it used MAP, powered by Sysomos, to assess the effectiveness of the Obama and Romney campaigns during the 2012 US presidential campaign. What ORI found, in addition to being able to identify memes developing in real-time, was a new way to understand audience perceptions and behaviors beyond what can be learned through traditional research techniques alone.
  • Preventing Children from Dropping Out of School: About one million students drop out of public school every year. City Year is a non-profit organization that fights factors that lead to dropping out. It uses Heartbeat to track its #makebetterhappen campaign, which mobilizes current City Year corps members to tweet their stories and experiences on social media about how the program helps keep children in school and on track to graduation – inspiring their peers to join the organization.
  • Promoting a Diverse and Industry-focused University: Georgia State University (GSU) uses social media to build its brand as an urban, industry-focused institution that is a national model for student success. It connects with students, creating a sense of excitement that students can share and encourage enrollment. GSU uses Heartbeat to monitor Twitter and Facebook and field questions from current and future students. Thanks to Heartbeat’s workflow feature, it’s easy to refer questions to the most appropriate departments.
  • Growing a Full-service Gardening Brand : Gardener’s Supply is the largest direct marketing gardening supply company in the United States. To compete with huge home improvement conglomerates, the company builds its brand credibility through an online newsroom using Marketwired Impress where journalists and bloggers can find rich content for their stories. Gardener’s Supply also sends out personalized emails using Marketwired Mediahub for targeted list-building, and distributes regional press releases through Marketwired, tracking results with data from Marketwired’s News Dashboard.

  Visit the Marketwired Client Success Stories web page and learn more about each featured organization’s unique challenges. You’ll find out how Marketwired solutions open new opportunities and contribute to greater success. Getting Marketwired allows these organizations to tune in to the conversations that count, find insights that matter and reach the right people.

  

  

• May 16 Webinar: “There’s No Finish Line to Innovation”

  Posted: Tue, 14 May 2013 13:00:05 +0000

  Ready to tap into your inner renegade and innovate your life? Join Marketwired on Thursday, May 16 at 1 pm ET for a free webinar featuring Amy Jo Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Renegades Write the Rules and founder/CEO of Digital Royalty.

  Amy Jo will explain how she measures influence, monetizes social media and creates groundbreaking social media campaigns for some of today’s most recognizable companies, celebrities and sports teams. Her approach has helped Shaquille O’Neal, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, FOX Sports and DoubleTree by Hilton, among others, humanize and monetize their brands.

  During the webinar, Amy Jo will also offer case studies and ideas that you can apply to your own life and work, while showing you how you can leverage social media to make positive change.

  The first 100 attendees to tune into Marketwired’s webinar will receive a free copy of Amy Jo’s book, Renegades Write the Rules — a revealing look at the innovative strategies behind the social media success of today’s top celebrities, brands and sports icons, and tips to help you follow their lead. So be sure to join early.

  • What: ”There’s No Finish Line to Innovation” — a free webinar presented by Marketwired
  • When: Thursday, May 16, 2013, 10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT
    The one-hour session will be archived for later viewing. All registrants receive access to the archived webinars.
    
  • Who: Amy Jo Martin, author of New York Times bestseller Renegades Write the Rules and Founder/CEO of Digital Royalty and Digital Royalty University
  • To Register: Click here to register for the webinar.

  On Twitter? Connect with @Marketwired and @AmyJoMartin in advance of the webinar. 

  About Amy Jo Martin
  Amy Jo Martin, author of New York Times Bestseller Renegades Write the Rules, founded Digital Royalty three years ago to help companies, celebrities, professional sports leagues, teams and athletes build, measure and monetize their digital universe. Amy Jo has 1.2 million Twitter followers @AmyJoMartin and she travels the world to speak about the latest trends in social media, how to monetize various social platforms, and how to successfully build a personal brand by utilizing social communication tools. Martin is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, and Sports Business Journal, plus she and Digital Royalty have been featured in top-tier media outlets from Vanity Fair and ESPN SportsCenter to Forbes, Fast Company and The New York Times. Martin also sits on the St. Jude Digital Board of Directors.

   

  

  

• The Future Of Investing And The Great Social Shift [Infographic]

  Posted: Thu, 09 May 2013 11:30:21 +0000

  A few weeks back the SEC (The Securities and Exchange Commission) ruled that public companies were now free to release their important information though social media channels. Since this ruling there has been a debate in the investment community as to what this means for the future of the industry. Some welcome the use of social media while others are continuing to lobby that the way things were worked just fine.

  Because of this debate, we took to the street, Wall Street, to ask the people that this ruling will affect what they thought. We surveyed stock brokers, financial and market analysts, financial advisors, individual traders and fund managers, and made their results into the infographic below.

  What we learned by doing this was that Wall Street, and investor relations in general, is changing. As the younger generation that embraces technology is coming into power in the workplace, we found that they are also the new workforce that embraces social media. And for more than just keeping in touch with friends.

  We found that the investment crowd under 40 support the SEC’s decision to allow the distribution of information through social media. In fact, 60% of those surveyed and were under 40 said that they regularly consult social channels to research investments. But it’s not just the under 40 crowd. 40% of all survey respondents said that they were using social media to find information.

  We also found that 49% of our responders companies blocked social media from the workplace, making it hard for them to use it as a source while at work. However, 48% of those people said that they had witnessed colleagues using personal devices, like a smartphone or tablet, to consult social media for investment information anyways.

  It appears that the younger generation of investors is rewriting how business is done, and social seems to be part of it.

  

  What do you think?

  

  

• Marketwired Names Jim Delaney CEO

  Posted: Tue, 07 May 2013 17:21:34 +0000

  It’s an exciting day for all of us at Marketwired. Chief operating officer Jim Delaney has been promoted to CEO, and Michael Nowlan, who has served as CEO for the past 14 years, will remain on the Board of Directors.

  Over the past year, Michael worked closely with the Board to ensure a smooth transition. In fact, when Jim was named chief operating officer, he filled a newly created role at Marketwired – one that was established in anticipation of this day. Over the past nine months, Jim and Michael have worked closely together to plan for an orderly, evolutionary change in leadership.

  In the coming days, Jim will take to the blog to share more about his priorities with you. In the meantime, we’d invite you to read the release distributed earlier today. You can also join us on Twitter to wish Jim and Michael well in their new roles.

  

  

• Measurement that Makes (Dollars and) Sense

  Posted: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:00:06 +0000

  By Shonali Burke

  I’m going to ask you to close your eyes for a moment (after you’re done reading the first two paragraphs, otherwise you won’t know what I’m asking you to do).

  Try to recall anyone who’s told you excitedly of their hopes and dreams for a new venture they’re embarking on. Maybe they’re planning to build the best new SoLoMo app around. Maybe they’ve come up with an idea that, one day, will be acquired by Google. Maybe it’s something that’s more personal, like doing a specific number of things by the time they’re 30 (or 40, or 50…).

  Now go ahead and close your eyes, and try to think of at least one person who’s told you such a story. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several, but there has to be at least one.

  When you next meet that person, say it’s after a while, what’s the first thing you think to ask them? Almost always, it’s some version of the question, “Did you succeed?”

  Did they build the best SoLoMo app around?

  Did Google acquire their company?

  And did they, indeed, achieve what they wanted to by 30, or 40, or 50…?

  Sometimes the answer is, “Yes,” sometimes it’s, “No.” Sometimes it’s, “It’s complicated” (but we won’t go there). My point is, all these people have goals in mind right from the start. They don’t necessarily know how they’re going to get there, but they do know that that is where they want to end up.

  It’s exactly the same for brands. You should not be embarking on any communication campaigns or initiatives unless you know exactly where you want them to end. How you’ll get there is where your strategy and tactics come in, but you can’t develop a smart strategy if you don’t know what you’re working towards.

  This is one of the fundamentals of public relations. Know what you’re working towards, and have measurable objectives. Why, then, is it a facet of “PR Rewired?” If you’re asking that question as you read this post, I don’t blame you!

  The reason I bring up this fundamental of PR is that, with all the “shiny new” toys we have to “measure” public relations these days, the fundamentals sometimes get lost. I can’t tell you how many times I hear people asking me how they should measure Facebook, or Twitter, or <insert social network of choice>. How many companies have we seen come and go who purport to measure the “value” of a Facebook fan, or a Twitter follower, or…?

  Here’s the thing: if you are only going to look at your fans/followers in terms of dollars and cents, you’re making a couple of big mistakes:

  1. You’re forgetting that the foremost value that your fans and followers bring to your brand is that of a human community. It will take time to nurture that community, but as you do it, you will see that their value far exceeds dollars and cents per fan or follower.
  2. There is no generic formula that will tell you what the “value” of your fans and followers is. You must create your own measurement framework, which is specific to the goals and objectives you hope to achieve. Work backwards from there to identify the most effective strategy and tactics for your program.
  3. Instead of tracking just clicks, retweets, likes, etc., for the sake of it, track actual actions that tie back to your business objectives. For example, are you trying to get people to download a white paper (which move you closer to your goal of lead generation)? And so on.

  No matter what your campaign entails, it’s one that should be pinned to specific goals and objectives. Those should be determined from the outset, and based on those, you can set specific metrics in place.

  That’s how you should set up your measurement program, not the other way around… and that’s how you can evaluate the usefulness of your communication – including social media – plans.

  Shonali Burke is president and CEO of a micro PR agency that successfully helps businesses take their communications from corporate codswallop to community cool. She founded and curates the popular #measurePR Twitter chat, is an adjunct faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University’s M.A./Communication program, and blogs at Waxing UnLyrical.

  

  

• Five Ways PR Can Integrate Internally

  Posted: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:00:22 +0000

  By Gini Dietrich

  I’m sure you see or hear this a lot: Traditional PR is dead! Media relations is dead! Websites are dead! Marketing is dead! Advertising is dead!

  Granted, sometimes those things are written to motivate people to click on a link, but all of the customary ways of communication are far from dead. Instead, we find it’s necessary to integrate the traditional with digital public relations.

  Integration isn’t new. In the late 90s and early 00s, lots of organizations were finding ways to break down internal silos and inspire departments to work together. Dell asked WPP to consolidate all of its agencies under one roof and you saw traditional ad agencies bringing in PR and vice versa.

  Integration vs. Silos

  Then, of course, the tech bubble burst, 9/11 enveloped the world, and the United States faced the Great Recession. Because of that and our unemployment rate skyrocketing, people went back to what they knew and, in most cases, created silos inside organizations again.

  But here we are, facing a world where technology comes at us so quickly now, it’s impossible to keep up, and if we don’t figure out – quickly – how to integrate and work with other departments, we’ll be left behind.

  Think about it this way: It used to be you’d have a crisis communication plan written and it would stay in a drawer until your PR team pulled it out the following year, dusted it off, and gave it a good rewrite. Now a crisis can erupt online in about 20 minutes if you have one angry employee or customer. Customer service used to be kept to the people in the cube farms who answered the phones all day. Now the PR or marketing professionals are managing customer service and experience through the social networks. And media relations meant you built relationships with journalists who stayed in the same job for years and years and years. Now influencers are bloggers, customers with large Twitter followings, or employees who have highly engaged online friends.

  Integrate Your Office

  The value of departments working together cohesively is more important now than it ever has been in our history. Following are five tips to integrate your efforts with those in other departments.

  1. Lobby your senior executives to make total integration part of the incentive program for every employee. One of the things Geoff Livingston and I talk about in Marketing in the Round is how to do that efficiently and effectively.
  2. Develop an internal team – made up of one person from every department – to lead the charge and to be sure everyone knows what the other is doing. If your organization is small, it’s easier to do this, but don’t think you don’t have silos. When you have more than three people working together, silos exist.
  3. Customer service and HR (if they’re not already) will begin to use the social networks to connect with the people PR professionals have been building relationships with for the past few years. These are the people who work with your organization: They buy from you, they support you, or they work with you. It’s imperative these people have different touchpoints within the organization. Help them help you.
  4. Work with your colleagues on all facets of the organization’s growth. No longer can product development launch something without marketing and marketing can’t do a promotion or event without customer service.
  5. Create a system for complete transparency so people move out of their comfort boxes and are willing to work together, instead of in their silos.

  In some ways, this is change management and, in others, you’re going to be asking senior leadership to do something out of the norm.

  It’s easy to say, “Oh. I’m in PR. I don’t need to do this.” But someone needs to do it and, as communicators, it’s our jobs to make sure customers and employees are getting what they need. Why not lead this charge, as well?

   

  Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm. She is the lead blogger at PR and marketing blog, Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing in the Round, and co-host of Inside PR, a weekly podcast about communications and social media. Her second book, Spin Sucks, is due out in November 2013. Connect with her on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

   

  

  

• Getting Started With E-mail Campaigns: Still a Top-performing Sales Tool

  Posted: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:00:12 +0000

  By Karen Geier

  The number-one question I get from fellow marketers and business owners is “Which Social Network Should I Be On?” While the answer is a long and multifaceted one, I often respond, “What are you doing about e-mail?”

  E-mail campaigns are still a top source of conversion and, if done right, can be excellent for referral traffic. You can also segment your lists, and by using third-party tools, you can eventually build profiles of your list members so you’re sending the right messages at the right times to the right people (for instance: not sending baby clothes advertisements to someone who isn’t in the market for them).

  A lot of businesses overlook e-mail, but it clearly works for many companies. A recent report from MarketingProfs indicates that 2013 is trending to have 5% more e-mail volume, and large companies spend a lot of money managing this channel.

  How do you get started with e-mail marketing?

  The first thing you need to know is that e-mail marketing is “opt-in” in the same way that followers on Twitter “opt-in” to hear your updates, BUT e-mail is bound by a set of laws you must not break, lest you be branded a spammer, and no company will run your campaigns.

  Once you’ve read up on the details of the CAN-SPAM Act, you’re ready to start building your list. Many people ask, “If I need permission from everyone, but I have e-mail addresses from another place, can I use that list to start building my marketing list?” The answer, to the letter of the law, is no. If you have been conversing via e-mail with customers to date, and you have their e-mail addresses, I would suggest you change your e-mail signature to indicate you’re now building your list. After your closing, insert a section that says “Keep in touch with [your brand]. Sign up here for promotions, news and more!” and link this to the form where you will be collecting e-mail addresses. Many email providers also have widgets and digital options for e-mail capture from your social networks. If this is important to you, make sure you research providers that include this service.

  You can also go low-tech when collecting addresses in the future. Simple paper sign-up sheets, which disclose that you are collecting e-mails for newsletters and promotions, work very well for events and on-site promotional visits.

  Choosing an e-mail provider and creating a form to collect addresses

  There are thousands of e-mail providers out there from freemium (free for a certain number of subscribers, then you pay a fee as your list grows) to robust, vendor-managed solutions costing thousands of dollars a month. When starting out, you should look for an e-mail provider that offers:

  • Easy-to-build forms for capturing information
  • Analytics, including open, share (including social share) rates, unsubscribes, and spam reports, click tracking, and basic “user agent” reporting (which email tool you used to view your email, and which device).
  • Easy testing protocols: You will want to A/B test everything from subject lines to design and content.
  • List segmentation: If your product line segments (e.g., along gender lines, age, marital or children status), your list should segment accordingly.
  • An easy-to-learn interface. Every service is different. Two I recommend are Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor. These are easy to navigate and won’t let you get stuck somewhere.

  There may be other features you’ll need to take advantage of in the future, so the most important thing to look for is the ability to easily export your list to another provider should the need arise. Do not sign up with a company whereby you must “request” to export your list. It’s YOUR data.

  Once you’ve chosen a provider, you’ll need to build a basic capture form, which will be used to build your list. You can ask for as much information as you think customers will give you, but be aware that the more fields in your form, the fewer sign-ups you will receive.

  General E-mail Guidelines

  The biggest questions about email campaigns are always about when you should send them (day and time), the frequency by which you should send them (you should start with no more than once a week), and what you should put into them. There are some basic guidelines, but every company is different, and you WILL need to test and optimise as you go along. The only constant is that shorter e-mails convert better. Try to keep your body copy to less than 300 words.

  Building Your First E-mail

  The most important thing to remember when writing your e-mails is that content is king, and for most of your audience, time is short. Do not use your e-mail to brag or hard sell your audience. As with all content, you need to offer value to your audience, so facts, tips, tricks, hacks, interesting stories, even related stories to your vertical are all good choices for short, sharable content.

  When you begin crafting e-mails, you need to know you’re never going to get a perfect email the first time out. You will need to test every time you send one. The three most important things to test are Subject Line, Layout, and Content. Here’s how to test them effectively.

  Start by choosing just one email to test. If you have too many variables, your experiment will not yield tangible results.

  Subject Line Testing

  This is the best test of any copywriter’s skill: how to tell the same story multiple ways in the fewest number of letters. Your goal is to summarise and tantalize: Summarise the interior contents of your e-mail, but tantalize recipients to make sure they open the e-mail. Find a fresh or provocative way to express what’s going on in the body of the email. Take your favourite two options, and send one each to one half of your list. The one with the most opens will tell you what your audience is more likely to respond to.

  Content Testing

  Next, you will need to test your content. This can be as simple as having 2 different kinds of promotions, and seeing which one converts more. You could also make your content modular: choose 4 things you want to cover, and only insert 3 in each e-mail. You will be able to tell which content resonated with your audience the best with click tracking. For every piece of content in your e-mail, make sure you link to something (whether it’s your website, Facebook page, or an external source) so you get deeper engagement.

  Design Testing

  This may seem like the hardest test to perform, but you could always test 2 templates created by your e-mail providers. Another option is to take your content modules and place them in different positions in each e-mail. You will be able to use your click tracking to tell you which module was the most successful.

  Next Steps

  Once you’ve tested what your audience wants to read, you can begin testing how often, and at what time. Each time you send out an e-mail, test it on a different day. You will eventually find the best day to send. (Start by using competitor’s e-mails to inform which day to start testing with.) You can then begin testing time of day (again, take a look at newsletters you always open and see what time those arrive to inform which times to test).

  To continue expanding your reach, you might want to consider a refer-a-friend program that you can easily execute through e-mail by asking your audience to share your e-mail campaign (with a corresponding coupon code) with friends (though, remember: if you ask them to add friends’ e-mails to your form, you can’t market to those new names unless they opt-in (confirm their e-mail address).

  You can also begin to poll or survey your audience from within your e-mails. Testing interaction can directly benefit you (make sure you ask questions your business can benefit from: which promotions your customers want, which products they like best, etc.).

  Email is still a multi-million dollar sales channel for some of the largest companies in the world. As long as you are aware of the laws that govern this channel and you are continually optimising content, you can build a thriving list of warm leads for your company. These people will refer you to their friends, expanding your reach for you while you can focus your efforts on optimising your content.

  E-mail is not a dumping ground for content, nor is it a place to brag about how wonderful your company is or a place to force-sell your newest product. E-mail should be about your company checking in and furthering your relationship with your customers.

  

  

• Navigating the SEC Ruling on Social Media: What Does it Mean for You?

  Posted: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:00:49 +0000

  By Darin Wolter, EVP of Global Sales for Marketwired

   

  By now, you have probably either read or heard about the SEC’s latest ruling regarding social media and how companies can disclose material information, such as earnings or market moving information via social channels. In an evolving age of social communication, this is an important step and a natural one. While the ruling came as big news to many, those of us at Marketwired were happy to learn the SEC is embracing options that make it easier for companies to share information with their stakeholders in ways that work for them.

  We recognize that not every company is going to immediately turn to Facebook and Twitter to post their acquisitions and earnings, but if you are an IRO, Investor Relations Professional, you likely have questions, which is good, now is the time to begin planning. Here are a few guidelines we recommend following:

   

  • All Smart Social Strategy starts with listening. Start monitoring social media if you aren’t doing so already. Watch for your company name and keywords related to your company and industry. Tune into what employees and executives are saying. Also tune into what your investors are reading on social channels (because they are paying attention.)_ It is likely your PR or Marketing Department is already listening, meet with them to discuss what information you need and how to monitor for IR’s interests.
  • Join the conversation, begin to better understand what social disclosure strategy is best for your company and gain comfort with the process. You can start simple, by tweeting a link to your earnings press release.  The immediate benefit is to create a reputation, crisis and general risk management channel that is trusted by the organization’s top investors and analysts.
  • Review your company’s social media policy. Make sure it covers disclosure issues and what to do if a mistake is made. Make it a point to educate executives and share updates.
  • Register an Investor Relations (IR) Twitter handle and dedicate a portion of your Facebook page to IR. Your social channels should reflect your website and have a dedicated IR section.
    • The IR section of the newsroom has to reflect that a company uses its social handles to disseminate information.
    • Establish these social sources as credible, corporate social channels. This will decrease confusion if there are others.
    • Publish handles everywhere: on your website, on news releases, etc.
    • Use these handles to tweet links to releases and blogs.

  • Educate investors on which social channels they can leverage and how to do so, then publish this information on your IR website. A thorough Q&A will help your analyst and financial community, as well as the general public, better understand the disclosure process.
  • Spend time with top investors, prospects and analysts to understand their views on social channels as acceptable and useful forms of disclosure.
  • Develop a solid social media crisis plan that addresses a range of “what if?” scenarios. It is critical to ensure there is a crisis plan in place for the company. From people to procedures, the planning should be proactive.

   

  Ultimately, the market sets what qualifies as good communication and transparency for a publicly traded company. Companies have many options, which gives them the ability to develop a communication plan that works best for their stakeholders and investors. IRO pros should be motivated by the social demand of their key audiences, and inspired to embrace options that support effective, efficient communication. This isn’t a revolution; it’s an evolution.

  Your investors are active on social channels, which means there is an increasing expectation that all of your company is represented in the social space as well. This expectation isn’t limited to IR pros, it extends to engagement, marketing, sales and customer service, too. Your investors want to see that you are accessible, engaged and a part of the conversation.

  What is your company doing to prepare for distributing news over social channels? How are you complementing your existing disclosure practices? What are your next steps toward social disclosure?

  

  

• PR Rewired: The Plan is Dead…Long Live the Plan

  Posted: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:00:56 +0000

  By Kevin Dugan

  Public relations professionals are in a constant state of evolution — adaptingto an industry where converging technology, fragmenting media and changing consumer habits impact everything we do.

  Why then, as everything around us is changing, is the planning process seemingly frozen in time?

  In Defense of the Golden Rule

  The golden rule of planning has NOT decreased in value. A clear plan focused on key audiences with a goal, measurable objective, strategies and tactics is still critical. If anything, in a fast-paced industry, this precious point of reference is now platinum.

  But a linear planning process is no longer realistic. Moving separately through phases of research, planning, execution and measurement has become obsolete. We have the increased availability of data and analytics to thank for this shift.

  Valuable data is now available to us through search, web analytics and, of course, social media. This data is made up of distinct consumer signals we can mine from keyword search trends, website click paths and social engagement.

  Consumer Signals Steer to Success

  All of this data can be used throughout the entire planning cycle, not just the research and measurement phases, to optimize our strategies and tactics and improve the effectiveness of our plans. As a result, planning today is an ongoing process.

  A year ago, I helped create an independent media platform for my employer. As we built the site, we tapped search data to inform the information architecture. After 90 days, we adjusted our editorial approach and promotional focus based on search and site data. This has helped ensure, 12 months later, that we can point to the site as a best practice instead of a more modest “test and learn” opportunity.

   A Smarter Planning Model

  So if the linear planning process is obsolete, what should take its place? A more flexible model that allows for optimization is needed. Don’t worry, you still get to have your annual offsite, complete with comfy seating, sticky notes and markers. Just be prepared to make planning a constant throughout the year. Remember that if your plan is built for change, it can tap into unforeseen opportunities that will certainly come up during the year.

  

  Go From Hoping to Knowing

  With a consistent use of data through a planning cycle, you won’t hope the plan was successful, you’ll know it. In fact, that success should be even greater since your plan was optimized throughout the year.

  With apologies to The Smiths, “Has the plan changed, or have I changed?” Thanks to data, and a new approach, both have changed. The Plan is Dead. Long Live the Plan!

  Kevin Dugan is Director of Content Strategy for Empower MediaMarketing’s content marketing division. He helps brands tell stories that engage consumers to build business. Blogging since 2002, he’s responsible for Strategic Public Relations, the Bad Pitch blog and is Editor-in-Chief of Media Is Power. He’s on Twitter as @prblog.

   

   

  

  

• PR Rewired: Applying Neuroplasticity to PR in the Digital Age

  Posted: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:00:32 +0000

  By Shonali Burke

  Do you know what “neuroplasticity” is? It’s essentially the brain’s ability to “rewire” itself by forming new neural connections when it needs to. Or, in other words, it’s what happens when the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain start to find new ways to connect with and “talk to” each other, when the old pathways are no longer there (for example, because of injury, or disease).

  If you read up on it (for example, via Wikipedia, the God of All Thesauri) you’ll learn that the concept of neuroplasticity is relatively new; up until the late 20^th century it was believed that after about early childhood, the structure of the brain didn’t change. That, basically, we were stuck with what we had as kids. Isn’t that a ghastly thought?!

  One of the things I find most fascinating about the practice of PR in the digital age is how we are rewiring the discipline, our practice of it and some of the earlier assumptions that went unchallenged for a long time, much in the way the brain rewires itself when it has to. Because it knows the “old” way of life has disappeared, and in order to successfully function, it has to adapt to a new world.

  However, in rewiring our discipline, I think sometimes we get a little too close to throwing out tried and true principles, simply because they’ve been around for a while. That’s a big mistake. Certainly, the tools and platforms we use on a daily basis are changing quickly. And, in fact, there is a fundamental shift in how we should be approaching building and maintaining relationships with our audiences. But one of the constants in creating and implementing effective PR programs, even in the 21^st century, is what the basis is for those programs in the first place.

  And that is research.

  With the advent of social media and digital platforms, I’ve seen far too many practitioners—and, frankly, companies too, some of them quite large ones—get extremely excited over the SNTs (shiny new toys). So much so, that they start to dream up public relations programs using X platform, or Y tool… forgetting that a good program needs to be grounded in research. That is the only way we can build solid programs that can grow.

  One of the great advantages of living and working in the digital age is that now it is so much easier to conduct research, thanks to a plethora of digital tools. Now, I’m absolutely not saying traditional research methodologies should be thrown out, like the proverbial baby with the bathwater. But we have more ways to conduct research than ever before. Many of them are free, or low-cost… so why not take advantage of them? However, once again, how we use digital tools and channels for research should be determined by what exactly we are researching for. Here are just some ways (and reasons) to do this:

  • Researching your content strategy: for many companies, a blog is a large part of that strategy. But you want to publish blog posts that resonate with your customers and prospects, right? So why not ask them what they want to hear about? If nothing else, they will appreciate the fact that you asked them… and that, in and of itself, goes a long way in building a relationship.

  How to do this: you can do this on your Facebook Page (the Arment Dietrich “Facebook Question of the Week” feature is a great example), on Twitter, on Google+… anywhere you have built up a community that is engaged enough to reply to you. Use that intelligence to populate your posts. Go a step further by incorporating the authors of the responses into your posts (with their permission, if the conversation took place on a private forum). They’ll be thrilled, they’ll help you share and generate conversation around it, and are likely to become your staunchest community supporters.

  • Keyword research: this continues to be important for search engine optimization (SEO) when you’re building your website or blog—that’s a given. But it’s also a great way to learn what other, relevant bloggers are writing about. In other words, smart keyword research is at the core of your listening program.

  How to do this: for starters, Marketwired has some excellent tools to help you with your listening program. You can also set up a regular email or RSS alert for the relevant keywords (try Talkwalker, it’s great), and that comes to your inbox on a regular basis (I was also able to tweak Talkwalker so that the results are fed to Feedly, which is my preferred alternative to Google Reader now that the latter is being sunset). This is now a triple threat: you a) stay abreast of what is being published; b) put your own, unique stamp on the subject when you write your posts; and c) build relationships with said other bloggers by commenting on their posts… all of which form a three-pronged approach to building thought leadership in the digital space.

  • Focus groups: when you launch a new product or service, you want to make sure it will be well received by the target market, right? And the best way of estimating the response once you actually get to market is to try and approximate that market ahead of time.

  How to do this: ask a few people whose opinions you respect (and who are representative of your target audience) if they would be willing to act as a beta testing group for you. Create a private, invitation-only forum in a social space they are comfortable in, e.g. a Facebook Group or a Google+ community, and make that where you show them what you’re working on, and secure their feedback. I actually recently went through this process myself as I was getting a makeover for the online home of my social PR micro agency, and it made a huge difference to the final outcome.

  There are several other tools you can use, from Twtpoll, to online surveys (I imagine you’re familiar with Survey Monkey and Zoomerang, but there are several others; Qualtrics is a platform I like very much), to everything in between.

  The key is to use the right tool for the right kind of research. So what might work really well for editorial calendar, or a blog post, research, might have disastrous results if used to generate “data” about how Americans feel about apple pie (for example). When in doubt, commission a “real” researcher or research firm to help you out; but please don’t avoid the initial, research phase of your PR planning.

  That’s one type of rewiring we’ll be better off without.

  Shonali Burke is president and CEO of a micro PR agency that successfully helps businesses take their communications from corporate codswallop to community cool. She founded and curates the popular #measurePR Twitter chat, is an adjunct faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University’s M.A./Communication program, and blogs at Waxing UnLyrical.

   

   

   

  

  

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