The research can be market research, where a specific group of people are questioned on an aspect of their knowledge, opinions or behaviour, or it can investigate phenomena which already has underpinning data in existence. The latter might include the behaviour of mining shares from Australian-based companies over a period of time, factors which are impacting on home lending or the population movements and trends within a specific country.

For the best possible credibility, an organisation would commission a 3^rd party to undertake the research (the 3^rd party can be paid, but it must be a reputable 3^rd party), so as to make it known the findings were generated without bias or to meet the commissioning organisation’s preferences.

The findings themselves would then be analysed, perhaps by another credible 3^rd party, but certainly by the commissioning organisation itself as well:

• the final result could be captured in a white paper which contains all the data and insights
• this, in turn, forms the basis of a media release and opinion pieces for the media, as well as other forms of content for organisational websites
• a further media tactic is to offer the white paper/index content as a media exclusive
• the content can also be shared with relevant bloggers to write about the research and insights.

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When making an investment such as this, however, because doing this properly is not cheap, the ideal is to ensure a wide array of media coverage and stakeholder interest. Further applications and benefits of this content include:

• Being used in direct sales mail or email to target audiences as a value-adding, thought leadership approach
• Conference and client presentations
• Organisational website/blog to enhance SEO.

Steps to creating an index for public relations results

When using market research to create an index, following are steps to potentially be undertaken:

• A topic is chosen on which market research is undertaken. The topic will be very relevant to an organisation’s reason-for-being and, especially, be relevant to what keeps its target audiences up at night

• The market research will of course be independently undertaken (e.g. Galaxy, Newspoll etc) so it has 3^rd party credibility with media and other stakeholders. Another option is having an academic undertake the research

• Questions in regard to the research do not need to be extensive and it is possible they can be part of an omnibus survey, thereby reducing costs

• The initial tranche of market research should be quantitative and use a sample that serves your purposes, even if that sample is not your target audience (e.g. you might survey business people in general, or even the general community, on a relevant issue)

• Using quantitative research is very important (and, by extension, having a statistically meaningful sample) as the numbers give the process credibility and the media loves seeing how numbers change each year (or on an ongoing basis at least)

• It is then optional to undertake a secondary tranche of market research, this being qualitative in nature and the sample for this almost certainly being an organisational target audience or those who are influential on a target audience (e.g. business leaders, business association heads, academics). The sample for this only need be small – six to ten being sufficient. The nature of the qual will be quite in-depth and exploratory

• Whether the secondary tranche (qual) of market research is undertaken or not, the commissioning organisation will look at all the content and provide in-depth analysis and thought leadership commentary on it

• The index will be branded as ‘X organisation’s 2013 Index on XYZ topic’

• The research and the index can be repeated annually (which helps build the brand of the index itself and the commissioning organisation, as well as the connection between the index topic and the organisation). Often it’s fine for the index to be researched and appear every two years

• Whilst the core aspects of the index topic and content should remain consistent, there can be elements of the index which change each time it is undertaken. For instance, whilst the index could have a general business focus, in one implementation it could have a section relevant specifically to industry X, in the next it could be specific to industry Y, in the next it could be specific to industry W etc. Taking this approach delivers core content for business media, as well as content that can be pitched for specific industry vertical media. Of course, it also provides content that gives presentations to specific industry audiences more resonance

• After each implementation, there would always be a review to assess how the index content and its marketing could be enhanced to help achieve better content results and marketing outcomes.

Yes, it is possible an organisation with an internal market research team, or even a sufficient number of marketing and/or PR employees, could undertake the research themselves, without using a 3^rd party market researcher. And yes, it is equally possible this research could be undertaken using an online surveying tool like SurveyMonkey which costs almost nothing.

This approach has the potential to deliver data just as accurate and, in many ways, as meaningful as a 3^rd party market researcher would have come up with.

The problem with this approach, however, is media and other stakeholders may well shoot holes in it because the methodology is not as rigourous as a recognised market research company might apply and, more importantly, your organisation might have an excellent reputation in producing widgets, but it sure as hell doesn’t have any sort of reputation in market research.

Your choice…but if at all possible use the external party for the research, otherwise your media and target audience impact might prove very disappointing to you.

Using existing data for public relations-driven indexes

Depending on the organisation, the topic and the budget, using existing data (from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, for instance) and having this investigated and analysed by a think tank, academic or other reputable stakeholder, can also be an excellent way to generate content for an index.

Finding the right data will be the most difficult element of this process. Whilst we are a world drowning in data, due to privacy and other issues, it is not easy to find the right data. Let’s not forget, we are talking about content very relevant to the commissioning organisation AND its target audiences, so this is a very specific remit.

Let’s also not forget the content we are looking for needs to be compelling. So it doesn’t necessarily always need to be the most useful data or commentary, but it absolutely must generate interest and enhance the organisation’s reputation. You would think these three elements – usefulness, interesting, reputation-enhancing – would all go hand-in-hand.

It’s not an illogical analysis. At the end of the day, it’s your call. To make the right call, as with any effective public relations strategy, you’ll of course refer to the evidence-based market research you have undertaken with your target audiences that underpins your communication strategy.

Because, um, you have undertaken this even more important market research. Haven’t you?

Have you been involved in an organisation which has implemented an index-based research and communication program? What did you learn from the process? How was the content shared? What impact did it have? If you haven’t been involved in implementing such a program, what are your thoughts on ideas articulated in this post?

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The question of thought leadership making money for an organisation is one of a number of topics which came up in a discussion I had with Craig Badings and Dr Liz Alexander, who recently published a compelling e-book entitled 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign. Written as a series of tweetable insights, it works both as an inspiration for thinking about effective communication, as well as a practical ‘how-to’ handbook.

Other topics which came up in our discussion were methodologies which can be used to measure the impact of thought leadership and the challenge of carving out a thought leadership ‘space’ in an area already occupied by a rival organisation.

Increasing revenue through the practice of thought leadership

Craig gives three examples from the ebook: Thought Leadership: How to differentiate your company and stand out from the crowd, written by Mignon van Halderen, Kym Kettler-Paddock and himself (you should check it out as it is a substantial piece of work with many useful case studies):

According to IBM, its Smarter Planet campaign achieved the following:

• Clients’ preference for IBM increased by 5%-10%
• Brand value increased by 20% (11.3 billion dollars)
• Stock price increased by 64%.

GE’s Ecomagination campaign achieved the following:

• From 2005-2010, GE earned $85 billion in revenue on Ecomagination products
• Ecomagination sales are expected to grow two times faster than the rest of the company
• 22 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 30 percent reduction in water use and $130 million in energy efficiency savings.

According to Unilever, it’s Dove Campaign for Real Beauty achieved the following:

• Within two months of the launch, sales rose in the US by 600%
• within six months of the campaign launch, Dove’s sales rose by 700% in Europe
• The brand is estimated to have had an 11% increase in revenues in Q1 2005 as well as double digit growth in Q2 2005
• As of 2010, Dove sales total more than €2.5 billion
• Sales have grown by more than $1.5 billion in revenue within five years after the campaign’s launch.

Reputation, marketing and stakeholder engagement driven by thought leadership

Craig and Liz also outlined additional business-relevant tangible outcomes thought leadership provides:

1. Deeper engagement with existing and new clients/customers and converting prospects into customers.

1. Establishing a relationship with clients and prospects based on your insights into their issues or challenges, not your products or services. This enables very different conversations and clearly differentiates your brand from the competition.

1. A significant lift to brand reputation as evidenced by the GE figures.

1. Opening up marketing opportunities the company would otherwise never had had. For example, Booz & Co’s Global Innovation 1000 thought leadership campaign’s study is cited each year in nearly 200 publications around the globe, spanning 27 countries. It receives numerous invitations to write by-lined or guest articles in other publications. Their employees are invited to speak at innovation conferences around the world. Their employees are invited to join advisory boards of clients and innovation-related associations.

1. And, finally, one that is often overlooked: equipping your own employees – especially your sales team and new business team – with rich, valuable data/information which leapfrogs them in terms of the conversations they can have with clients and prospects compared to the competition.

Measurement of thought leadership impact

I asked Craig and Liz what methodology they recommend to measure the impact of thought leadership on achieving new revenue or other business outcomes. They came up with a range of ideas on this topic. Clearly, you need to customise these approaches to your campaign, how it is being rolled out (e.g. online only?) and your budget.

“The critical first step is to define, very clearly and to have it written down, your objectives,” said Craig and Liz. “Based on the organisation’s specific objectives, measurement criteria could include the following:

• Visits to the content webpage
• Email click through rates
• Video views
• Attendance at webinars
• Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook followers
• The number of names who opt in to download e-books or white papers
• Attendance at talks
• Third party support (e.g., validation of your thought leadership by key influencers in the industry and/or research entities like think tanks etc.)
• Media coverage across tier one (mainstream) and tier two media (trade)
• Measurement of tone and the key messages
• Speaking engagements
• One-on-one client contact
• New prospect engagement
• Qualitative, researched client feedback – case studies and suchlike
• Internal impact (i.e. how do employees view it, how do they use it, how useful it is in prompting conversations with clients?)
• New business pipeline
• Brand reputation (using research and then benchmarking tools)
• Google rankings on agreed search terms
• Klout score for your thought leadership champion.

“Depending on the tools you use for measurement,” continued Craig and Liz, “You can start becoming quite sophisticated in your measurement of things like: the segment of clients and prospects that respond best to your thought leadership content and why; seasonal impact; impact depending on the day and the time of day.

“The beauty of almost all of this is that it can be done automatically.”

Entering a competitive space with thought leadership

In Craig and Liz’s book, they mention undertaking research to ensure the thought leadership space an organisation might seek to inhabit is not already dominated by a competitor. Are there occasions, I asked them, when there is a benefit to seeking ‘dual occupancy’ of a thought leadership ’space’ for a newcomer?

“Yes; there is something called the ‘long tail’, the concept introduced by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine (and formerly The Economist) to describe the shift away from a few mass markets to a much larger number of niche opportunities/markets,” asserted Craig and Liz.

“A good example of this would be innovation. The innovation space is pretty much owned by Booz & Co with their Global Innovation 1000 study which they have been conducting for seven years.

“However, innovation is a very broad topic and within that there may well be a niche market that a company or brand could own (e.g. the long tail). For example, a company specialising in manufacturing might find a niche they could own in manufacturing innovation or a plastics company may come up with a plastics innovation thought leadership platform. Moves are already underway on this niche with the Think Beyond Plastic innovation competition.

Have you implemented a thought leadership campaign and evaluated its effectiveness? What did you find? Were you able to determine a link to financial outcomes?

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The majority of Africa’s 55 countries have active public sectors which provide basic government services to their sovereign citizenries. With a representation cutting across board, it is not uncommon anymore to find a dedicated public relations unit or department in, say, a law enforcement parastatal like the police. This is definitely a welcome departure from the one-man-battalion, ‘official spokesperson’ that obtained decades ago.

This is a guest post from Adedamola Jayeola (@drjayePR), a public relations professional who writes from the University Of Cape Coast, Ghana. If you find this post of value, please go to the PR blog homepage and share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – or make a comment at the end of the post. Thanks in advance!

Finally, the general public has a ‘face’ to Government, one they can forward queries to and demand answers from or, depending on the scenario, throw flowers at or pellet with eggs,..

Public relations departmental structure

Whoever said bureaucracy was “a tool for converting energy into solid waste” was not being economical with the truth. Most public sector PR units, labelled as “Public Affairs/Communication Offices” are modelled as ‘Service Bureaus’, and I do not mean that in a theatrical way.

The scenario is one where a single department is broken down into several clone units which are basically replicas of each other. It is therefore not unusual to have a ‘Public Affairs Department’ with offices/units like ‘Public Relations’, ‘Protocol’, ‘Media Relations’, ‘Community Affairs’, ‘Alumni Relations’, etc. all existing separately without cohesion or synergy.

In most cases, the majority of these clones are autonomous and work with different budgets. What you get is a replication of duties and the duplication of responsibilities.

Welcome to the ‘Bureau’!

Operational challenges in African PR

With a background as described above, problems are in regular occurrence. Discrepancies revolving around the utilisation of resources, all traceable to a lack of coordination are quite the order of the day. More often than not, very important and essential issues are ignored while much ado is paid to the trifling and unnecessary.

It is heartbreaking to still witness a lot of communication and public relations officers, purportedly ‘doing stakeholder management’, either go incommunicado in times of crises or emerge to chant the “No Comment” phrase, in an age where Google is providing comments by the second and is busy telling the world what you had for breakfast.

Content management and online communication

Online content and information management faces considerable hitches as there is still no synchrony between content managers and the IT units. Most online content managers have no administrative access to department websites and ‘submit’ information to be uploaded.

This also spills into offline content where not enough review and editing is undertaken before information is released. It becomes embarrassing to find spelling and grammatical errors in a government parastatal’s official gazette or on a website that is not up to date.

Social media and web 2.0

For what is fast becoming the ‘unannounced’ best practice for the profession, social media integration is still quite low at this level. ‘Social media engagement’ would then mean having a chat with old friends and former school mates on Facebook and uploading fancy pictures during work hours, even when client/customer requests or service demands, albeit on the same platform, are left pending and often ignored.

The unit director is probably the only one with a LinkedIn profile which was created a decade ago for him by the guys in the IT department on a budget of 200 dollars for a non-premium account. In 2013, where news breaks on social media some 72 hours before it gets on print, media monitoring is being done via a stuffy print library, on a radio with a huge ball tuner and a large TV set that will pass as e-waste.

Twitter? Don’t even go there.

PR projects

Projects, especially events, suffer poor coordination and those contracted to management companies are not well supervised by the in-house team. Units with well manned events/ceremonial teams are confidently corrupt and would argue for an inflated budget. In some cases, the PR department is expected to automatically key-in to ‘committee arrangements’ they were never even briefed about.

What could be tougher than trying to fulfil unknown objectives? Expecting a work breakdown structure or a post-event analysis/assessment report is an exercise in futility. You see, it is all about the party, not the day after.

The call to action for best practice public relations in Africa

All the same, for someone with a private sector bias, maybe I am just downplaying the might of the all powerful Public Service ‘drudge-bug’ which could have well bitten the profession in the neck. Or it could just be true that, aside from these 55 states (UN figure), these same peculiarities draw similarities internationally. There are more possibilities one must not overlook. However there is but one universal truth, which is that activity is still not a synonym for productivity.

For public relations in Africa’s public sector to be done right:

• the focus must shift from ‘clocking in’ to putting some soul in the job
• PR departments and professionals must incite a collective responsibility and start ‘owning’ their careers to stop ‘living’ the job
• It has to start meaning more than a meal ticket, raises and bonuses, holiday entitlements, estacode or retirement benefits.

In getting the job done the conscience question must be answered. The piper must muster more confidence even if it is for a suggestion of the tune to be played.

Social media is definitely making press agency more irrelevant, beckoning all and sundry to reality, literarily. In a bid to solve unemployment, African Governments must be careful not to start cloning responsibilities just because it is ‘the public sector’.

More justified and accountable funding for PR departments should be provided. Project management methodologies should be adopted to ensure finesse is applied to projects.

Only then can we start proving we are up to the task.

African Governments must realise that public relations professionals are not bodyguards, personal assistants, pimps or escorts (yes, you read that right).

PR professionals are perception managers, issues and crises managers, brand strategists and communicators, stakeholder and project managers. Hopefully, cross-continental industry associations like the African Public Relations Association (APRA) can begin to exert enough influence to ensure professionalism is entrenched across the board.

According to the report from the ePractice Workshop of the European Commission Information Society and Media (Public Services 2.0) held in Brussels, 2009, “Governments are now faced with a challenge to their previously uncontested power. They must manage changing relationships with an increasingly demanding public, better able than ever before to voice views, concerns and wants”.

In order to meet these challenges, Africa’s public relations practitioners in the public sector must brace themselves and heed the call for professionalism and global relevance.

Adedamola Jayeola (@drjayePR), a public relations professional, writes from the University Of Cape Coast, Ghana. If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, email craig@craigpearce.info

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The most frequently quoted benefits of thought leadership are its positioning, differentiation and sales lead generation benefits.  These benefits are emphasised the more synergistic they are with the qualities of the individual and/or the organisation producing the thought leadership.

Those organisations with an innovation dimension, which clearly have a business based on the necessity of intelligence and the need to foster their own intellectual property, have a distinct advantage in pursuing thought leadership content production as a fundamental organisation-stakeholder communication strategy:

• The business is in lockstep with its strategic communication
• Momentum is enhanced
• Benefits are magnified.

Regardless of this ‘marriage made in heaven’, however, the following points remain salient for all organisations.

Factual reporting dying the death

It has been purported that the media has become increasingly reliant on ‘comment’ and analysis, rather than straight factual reporting. This, it has been speculated, has been driven by the reduction of journalists being employed by media outlets, which has become a tragically rampant phenomenon in Australia in the past two years.

An outcome of the ruthless journalist cull has been the decline of the rigour and fact checking media applies to its news stories, as well as the willingness of the media to invest its resources into generating copy which requires such processes. As a result, by natural evolution there is more ‘thought leadership’ or opinion pieces appearing than there once were, written both by journalists themselves and non-journalist media ‘outsiders’.

Because these pieces have a strong personal opinion slant and are not predicated on reporting straight facts, there is less of a need to ensure the content of these pieces is accurate by the letter of the law. One wonders if this is accelerating the media’s tendency towards sensationalising stories, with the underlying old school attitude of ‘don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story’ becoming, as it once was, the predominant paradigm.

Perhaps, in Australia, we should ask journalists like Andrew Bolt and Mark Latham this question?

An embedded irony in the media lacking the resources (and possessing what sometimes seem a credo to shoot first and fire [i.e. fact check] later) is this makes it more like the media-criticised blogotariat who, we are intermittently told, can’t be trusted because they don’t have the due diligence of traditional media.

For those of us who have worked in media relations for any time, this criticism is profoundly disingenuous. I’ve lost track of the times when issues have been comprehensively misrepresented and/or stories have featured incorrect information. This is especially the case with right-leaning media outlets in Australia.

Winning greater control over reputation and brand

Thought leadership, as expressed in a published opinion piece in the media, allows the author to express their thoughts with greater clarity and accuracy than being interviewed for the article. The interview is edited at the journalist’s and editor’s (very selective) discretion. It is highly unlikely the interviewee will be shown the article to see if their opinions are fairly represented or, certainly, if the article represents the issues/facts accurately.

The media does not have the time to do this and nor does it have the interest.

In an ideal world, nor is there anything wrong with this approach. This ‘ideal world’ involves a media which has a genuine passion for representing facts accurately and in a manner which the broader community (or its targeted group of readers) will gain value from. Sadly, the media is often not interested in this mindset. Its preference for conflict, confrontation and a ‘good story’ often overrides any motivation to get it right.

It would be preferable for the media to not seek recourse from an interviewee’s perspective because the media should offer an objective, fearless perspective, one not swayed by political agendas or influence. But humans are vulnerable to any sort of influence, so perhaps this is being naively optimistic.

The primary point I am making in this control diatribe, however, is a submitted opinion piece gives the writer more control over their words and how their thoughts are represented. In general, the pieces are published precisely as they have been articulated by the author. This provides the individual and their organisation with the greatest possible potential for optimised positioning and differentiation.

Sadly, there are exceptions to this too. It does happen that opinion pieces are accepted by the media then edited without the author being offered an opportunity to comment on the edits. Not particularly ethical, but it does happen.

Another frustrating dimension in submitting opinion pieces to the media is they can be accepted, then not used.

A variation of this is the media can laud the submitted piece, say they are waiting for the right opportunity, then never use the piece. This ‘teasing’ of the piece being used can go on for months. And as, in many cases, the opinion pieces are topical at a particular time, the increasing delay in using them means they cannot be offered to an alternative media outlet at a later stage.

And when you have one desirable media outlet saying they are just about to use the piece, or strongly implying this, it makes the life of a public relations professional extraordinarily difficult and the organisation/individual seeking the media coverage very irascible. Knowing when to pull the piece and offer it to an alternative outlet when a preferred media outlet has expressed its interest or commitment, is a devil and deep blue sea decision.

Building better media relationships with PR thought leadership

The provision of thought leadership opinion pieces creates a positive relationship with the media it has been given to. As a result, the media is more likely to call the submitter or submitter’s organisation, over its competitors, when an opportunity to provide comment on an issue emerges.

This is likely to occur because of the mutually beneficial relationship the two parties have and because the ‘provider’ has proven its intellect and worth through having its thoughts accepted for publication. Credibility exists, it doesn’t need to be pitched in. It’s another version of inbound marketing, in fact, before inbound marketing was even invented!

Have you considered the factors regarding thought leadership publication such as control over brand this post flags? What are your thoughts on this? What experiences can you share in pursuing a thought leadership content generation strategy for an organisation?

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Company pages on LinkedIn provide an additional means for organisations to leverage their presence on the platform. They enable the business personas of individuals to boost a company’s profile.

LinkedIn is a B2B social marketing platform without peer:

• Research has identified LinkedIn has a four times better conversion rate of visitors-to-leads than Twitter or Facebook
• Marketing Profs refers to research saying: “61% of registered LinkedIn users say LinkedIn is the social site they use most for professional networking, and 35% check the site daily.”

But do you agree? Please share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

These thoughts are in addition to previous discussions on the communication strategy behind using LinkedIn, as well as its market research and professional networking tactical capabilities.

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Using employees as brand ambassadors on LinkedIn

How may organisations, I wonder, really use their employees effectively as advocates on LinkedIn? Very few, I suspect.

Of course, you need to have a thought leadership platform to promote, such as a blog featuring helpful insights and advice, to make this an exercise likely to be able to be sustained, but still…

According to LinkedIn itself, employees are 70% more likely to engage with their company’s status updates, thus helping spread the message across LinkedIn, with mornings being the best time to post these updates. That makes for powerful marketing. And it’s not hard to do:

• Set up a company blog; post insights and advice
• The company places a summary of the post on its company page with a link to it
• An email is sent company-wide to let employees know of the post and encouraging them to read it and share to their contacts via LinkedIn etc.

Doing this will ultimately make a significant difference – directly and indirectly, via SEO for instance – to how easily this company blog content is found and read on the internet. There is NO company which will not benefit from undertaking this approach and it is so simple it is ridiculous.

Let’s not forget, Peter Paul and Mary, that after word of mouth recommendations from people we trust, the next most influential form of communication is how highly a service or product ranks on Google searches. This is supported by the power of social proof that comes from visiting a blog page and seeing it has been shared hundreds if not thousands of times.

Why aren’t we all doing this?? Well, actually maybe many of us are, as recent research has pointed out LinkedIn is the most popular social media channel for sharing content organisations produce.

Public relations uses for LinkedIn Company pages

Any organisation serious about leveraging LinkedIn or utilising it in a truly strategic (i.e. holistic) manner will have a LinkedIn company page and will populate it with information, including thought leadership and curated content.

Often, content links will reach back to discussions in LinkedIn groups, but so will they simply link externally. It seems fair to assume people who follow a company page are very serious about the company and, in the main, are probably advocates of the company or, at the very least, strong supporters of it.

As per web best practice, photos and videos should be posted to the company page, but sparingly, to enhance interest and engagement. According to LinkedIn, company page status updates with links result in 45% higher engagement than updates without links. This is in line with findings about Tweets, too, so clearly people like having sources of information to refer to.

And as with any social media platform, you need to have a content calendar, no matter how formal or informal, and as part of this you need to post updates regularly. How regular is a moot point and will be different for each organisation, but twice a week at a minimum seems sensible to me. The response to different sorts of content and the timings of it needs to be reviewed periodically and the content strategy adjusted accordingly to optimise results and ROI.

Part of this calendar should be based on the obvious presumption that sharing the content of those who you want to influence or become best business buddies with will help enamour you to them:

• It might help you open up a dialogue with a potential customer
• It might help enhance the relationship you have with a current customer, thus growing your business with them
• It might help create a more positive relationship with an influencer on customers and potential customers, thus making them more ripe for a direct sales pitch from your organisation and/or make them more likely to reach out to you for support.

Personal LinkedIn pages as promotional platforms

I have noted on a number of occasions the power of using employees’ LinkedIn profile as a means to increase the impact of using this platform for organisational strategic communication. It will serve organisations well to remember, however, people’s social media real estate – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs etc – is their own personal property.

An individual’s social media real estate is not owned by a person’s employer or clients. It is entirely up to the individual whether they want to use their ‘real estate’ to help their employers. Personally, I use Facebook for personal use and won’t Like, for instance, a posting on Facebook simply because it’s a work priority. I would only do so if it has personal resonance for me.

In the context of LinkedIn, however, I am more than happy to share if not all, then many, posts of relevance to work. I still, however, reserve the right to evaluate each piece of information and pass judgement on it before I share. Employers should be pleased with this approach, as it does two things:

• It definitely enhances the uniqueness and individuality  of the person who is sharing information thought their social media platforms
• It, um, hopefully anyway, provides a qualitative filter to the information they share, making their real estate (and them) more credible.

Where do you think the line should be drawn in using personal social media real estate for employers’ purposes? Is LinkedIn different to Facebook in this regard? Have you seen organisations effectively use their employees for LinkedIn marketing purposes? How do you think the tactical communication approaches discussed in this post and its preceding ones could be improved upon?

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It offers so many strategic communication options, in fact, it is tempting to rely on LinkedIn as a ‘one-stop marketing shop’ for marketing to some groups of professionals. As I have asserted in a previous post, however, concentrating on LinkedIn alone for a strategic communication program would be a mistake. That said, it offers a cornucopia of tools few organisations seem to use to their full capability.

Strange, as it has been claimed by Experian Marketing Services LinkedIn received 94 million total US visits in December 2012, an increase of 40% in traffic compared to December 2011. Balance this with the ability of the platform to hone in on target audiences through profession, seniority, geography and industry sector (there’s more) – and you really do have an exceptionally flexible and authoritative professional communication tool.

By the way, if you find this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Thanks in advance!

This post focuses on the market research and professional networking groups capabilities of LinkedIn. A future post will focus on direct marketing e-campaigns to your range of contacts, Company pages and leveraging off organisational employee LinkedIn profiles.

Market research; public relations objectives

A communication strategy should start by undertaking research. This is for a number of reasons:

• Identify if presumptions being made about target audiences are correct
• These include confirming the best ways to communicate to them, clarifying the issues which they are passionate about and understanding whether a product or service conceptualised for them actually cuts the mustard
• Set benchmarks for what success should look like in the communication strategy
• Identify who or what influences the target audience.

There are a range of ways market research can be integrated into a LinkedIn strategic communication program:

• Use LinkedIn groups to ask questions of large numbers of people at once and facilitate the conversation (a qualitative approach to market research)
• Use LinkedIn polls to gain answers to a limited number of multiple choice options. These could be related to an issue of prospective importance or a communication mode of potential utility (a quantitative approach to market research)
• Send an email out to all of your contacts. From this approach you can do two things. Firstly, you can ask them their thoughts on any issue relevant to your prospective communication program. Secondly, you could direct them to a survey (using the free online SurveyMonkey, perhaps) where you ask your contacts as few or as many questions relevant to your prospective strategy as you think appropriate (depending on how you apply this approach, it can be a qualitative and/or quantitative approach to market research)

Three more tips:

• When undertaking your email blast, you can use LinkedIn’s advanced people search facility so you are only emailing those people specifically relevant to your survey, as we all have a lot of contacts not relevant to our target audience
• You can recruit a range of employees to send the email out to their contacts, thus enlarging the sample size, making it more likely to achieve an acceptably rigourous sample response
• You can export all of your personal LinkedIn contacts into discrete file, enabling you to send an email out from your own email account rather than through LinkedIn. This can help efficiency, but it may also lessen the credibility of the email as it will occur without the LinkedIn branding. There are pros and cons to this approach but it does have its appeal.

Depending on your approach and the response (e.g. is the sample likely to make it worthwhile repeating the process) a variation of the above approach can be repeated either at the end of the communication program or at a certain stage during it.

The normal rules of best practice market research apply, which I won’t go into here, and it is unlikely to replicate the validity a thorough (i.e. ‘standard’) market research program possesses, but depending on the assiduousness with which these approaches are applied, they can be very effective.

Let’s face it, undertaking research and setting meaningful, business-relevant objectives is one of public relations’ greatest weaknesses, so virtually any market research is better than none.

LinkedIn groups can be good marketing

Most of the advice centred around the strategic marketing power of LinkedIn groups tends to say ‘form your own group, be the centre of conversations relevant to your industry sector and look like a genius’. Then everyone will admire you and flock to your ‘cause’ (profit-aligned or otherwise). Yes, well, maybe!

There are three problems to this:

• There are already a plethora of groups on the platform dedicated to a multiplicity of topics
• Facilitating a group effectively takes a lot of time, attention and content
• As per the non-LinkedIn world, in a B2B environment such as LinkedIn exists in and for, industry associations and non-individual business aligned communication possess a high degree of 3^rd party credibility an individual organisation will struggle to achieve.

Having said that, if your organisation specialises in a certain business field and there are no LinkedIn groups dedicated to this field in existence, or they are 2^nd rate, or they are dedicated to a different part of the world to yours, or their global focus means there is a niche for a more country-specific group, then you may well decide after doing your competitive analysis, there is a gold-plated opportunity for you…so go for it!

Even if you decide to start your own LinkedIn group, however, branding it as XYZ company LinkedIn group isn’t an option. It sounds too me-centred and not enough target audience-oriented. So there is a branding opportunity lost! It needs to have a name relevant to the sector.

But this is not as big an issue as it could be. Don’t forget, this is social media. This is LinkedIn. Success comes through inbound marketing approaches, not old school shout and deliver, invasive and interrupting approaches. Content and helpfulness rules and will deliver brand enhancement. It’s more subtle than the old days of marketing.

It can be just as effective to piggyback on existing groups relevant to your target audiences, especially if run by industry associations. Very similar methodologies apply whether you piggy back on other groups or run your own show:

• Post content produced by your organisation and try to stimulate a conversation
• Post content produced by those with nothing to do with your organisation and try to stimulate a conversation
• Make helpful and meaningful contributions to the discussions others have started or respond to questions that have been asked
• Use the relationships you form through doing this to invite people to become a LinkedIn connection
• Ensure there are a few people from your organisation who make contributions to the groups. This will enrich the brand of your organisation in the eyes of your target audience, it will reduce the risk to your organisation if a LinkedIn-dedicated employee leaves and it will incentivise to employees to want to be advocates for and spokespeople of your organisations.

It is true running your own group allows you a modicum more ‘control’ over the group. But this is social media, remember. Control is not what it is about. If you want to exist in the old school days and apply the command and control approach to business communication then what are you looking at social media for anyway?

Like any form of social media, LinkedIn is designed to be participant-led, rather than ‘leader’/moderator/’owner’ led, which is its fundamental, but paradoxical, simultaneous beauty and challenge. This shared ownership means greater cut through, stakeholder ownership and impact. Inclusive in this is a greater bank of resources to draw upon to help attract and retain interest from target audiences.

But what do you think? Can you share examples of LinkedIn being used for these tactical communication purposes? How would you refine the approaches I have flagged to make them work better? Are there particular sorts of organisations you think would benefit from using these LinkedIn tactics?

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We should all by now be well versed in the personal brand building capabilities of LinkedIn. Not only is it an online resume and often first port of call on Google when anyone – not just recruiters or potential employers and clients – go looking for you, but it is an interactive, ongoing reflection of your professional interests, achievements and proactivity. Manifestations of this proactivity and your engagement with your profession include:

• how up to date your LinkedIn profile is and how frequently you update it
• the number, nature and frequency of updates you publish on your profile
• the sort of LinkedIn groups you are a member of and how often, and how meaningfully, you contribute to discussions in these groups.

When it comes to using LinkedIn for professional, strategic organisational communication, there are also ways of using the platform to help build reputation and increase sales.

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It is my view that organisations using LinkedIn for professional communication/marketing/public relations/stakeholder relations et al do, however, need to be operating in a B2B environment and primarily be providing services, as opposed to products, to their customers or stakeholders.

The B2B characteristic is imperative because of the nature of those who populate and utilise LinkedIn. It is a social network designed for, and populated by, those with an interest in business-related matters. It is a social network, in fact, that is ‘social’ only to achieve business-related outcomes. You don’t get on LinkedIn to have a chat with your buddies.

My bias towards believing LinkedIn is better for service-leaning organisations is because of LinkedIn’s proclivity for better suiting the approaches of thought leadership and inbound marketing (noted below).

Thought leadership and inbound marketing at the heart of LinkedIn

There is no getting around it. At the core of any effective LinkedIn communication strategy, is an absolute, no-compromise necessity to apply the approaches thought leadership and inbound marketing. This is consistent with most approaches to social media marketing.

Value will only be perceived in the communicating organisation, and its credibility will only be enhanced, by the creation and sharing of content which enriches the professional lives of organisational target audiences. Furthermore, the sharing of content and expertise without pushing out too many calls for sales (outbound marketing) must be the default.

The opposite of taking a thought leadership and inbound marketing approach is manifested in the following:

• Only sharing content not original to the organisation and/or it being of a low-level and not very useful nature
• Communication from the organisation frequently, if not entirely, being of a sales call nature (in other words, all about me/the organisation and not frequently enough about the customer/target audience and what their needs are).

To gain true, full value out of the thought leadership approach most content needs to be created by the organisation. A significant amount of content not created by the organisation can also be shared through LinkedIn, too. This is ‘curated’ information. A few points to bear mind with curated content include:

• It is an invaluable means of maintaining a consistent (saying constant makes it sound like an organisation will drown its target audiences in information, which is not a desired outcome) stream of content
• By using valuable content from a non-organisational employee offers 3^rd party credibility and it also sends a message of humility to target audiences
• When sharing content from others, it is important to try to add value to it with an additional comment or two as often as possible. This provides some stamp of originality from the organisation and aids in its branding.

Integrated communication for effective outcomes

Communication via LinkedIn as a stand-alone strategy is unlikely to yield results. It needs to be part of a broader, more holistic strategy containing a diversity of communication channels.

When using the approaches of thought leadership and inbound marketing this should be self-evident. One reason for this is that when generating thought leadership content an organisation will want to leverage it across multiple platforms. This is not just to share the content, but to facilitate the viral impetus which will help propel it through the internet to as many target audiences as possible – influence and resonance.

The eternal argument: branding or tactical?

There is no rigid rule for when LinkedIn can be used as a branding tool or a tactical sales too, but any organisation which chooses to put most of its communication efforts into the tactical sales basket will not succeed. In a future post I’ll discuss objectives and KPIs for LinkedIn communication, but it is mainly in the reputation growing and enhancing area where positive outcomes will be gained.

Once again, this goes back to the thought leadership and inbound marketing themes. Yes, there may well be a sales outcome that is ultimately sought, but it is not being sought by outbound marketing (sales calls, deliberate interruption of prospects’ time etc). It is being sought by providing excellent content of value to target audiences, about being involved in the right sort of conversations with the right sorts of people and about, often, those people finding you rather than vice versa:

• Yes, this goes to the approaches of utilising LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Company pages
• Yes, this goes towards strategies to join LinkedIn networks with both target audiences and influencers on target audiences.

Shared voices through LinkedIn, public relations and social media

A sub-set of the branding vs. tactical discussion is the notion of whether LinkedIn strategic business communication needs to be founded on the notion of ‘creating a community’ or being centred on the organisation which is driving the communication. This goes back to the fundamental rationales which are at the heart of both public relations and social media:

• Public relations and social media are both, theoretically at least, about sharing power, about equalising opportunities to have perspectives heard, about at least some form of consensual decision making.

In the context of LinkedIn, involvement in the platform will only succeed if it is focused on the needs of target audiences and the organisation is willing to put in the long-term effort (as this is not about short-term wins). The upside of this considerable investment is it will lead to ‘sticky’ target audiences, those who are committed to the organisation providing resources and facilitating the flow of resources to them.

When you get this balance right; when the sums add up; when LinkedIn is one part of an integrated strategic thought leadership and inbound marketing approach to organisational communication – then, and only then, can LinkedIn prove a successful means of generating leads,  enhancing reputation and building up solid financial return of investment.

A future post on the tactical dimensions of LinkedIn business communication will follow in the not too distant future.

Have you used LinkedIn for strategic business communication? What have been the strategic underpinnings of your LinkedIn communication? Have you seen it used successfully for B2C communication, as well as B2B? Do you feel as if you have been effectively marketed to through LinkedIn – what have been the hallmarks of effective and non-effective business communication in your experience?

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It is one of the first approaches public relations professionals should consider as part of their communication arsenal. And as anyone who is inquisitive about public relations and/or is committed to continual professional development will tell you, the musings of experienced corporate communicator Craig Badings on his Thought Leadership blog are required and compelling reading.

Craig and Dr Liz Alexander have just published a fascinating, thought provoking and eminently practical e-book entitled 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign, which as the title implies contains a series of tweetable insights into the practice of thought leadership.

The e-book also provides additional perspective and context to assist in applying thought leadership as well as referencing a range of resources to help kick your brain into gear, increase the potency of your thinking on the discipline and help achieve the best results possible.

Such is the depth of information in this e-book, a single post discussing it will not do it justice, but some of the many aspects I found interesting are highlighted below.

The culture of thought leadership

Like CSR, thought leadership needs to be built-in, not bolt-on. As thought leadership is about providing perspectives and insights different (i.e. leading the way) to competitors, it makes sense for content/platforms to reflect the innovation and point of difference an organisation offers.

It will be difficult for organisations that do not behave in an innovative manner to think outside the square, or to at the very least seek to expand the boundaries of the square, which is essentially what thought leadership entails.

Conversely, the tail wagging the dog is a well known means of instigating change! If it takes a communication program to help galvanise an organisation into behaving differently, perhaps by seeing the impact a thought leadership campaign or approach can have, then why not!

Too often organisations (and public relations practitioners for that matter) rely on a crisis to help change organisational culture and behaviour. Why rely on bad news or bad things happening to motivate organisational evolution?

As Craig and Liz point out, thought leadership takes bravery to instigate as it sometimes means sticking your neck out, challenging orthodoxies. In pure business action, Henry Ford did it; Richard Branson did and does it; Dick Smith did and does it – and look at them.

Preparation and thinking for thought leadership

Craig and Liz hit on one of the biggest bugbears of the practice of public relations when they point out allowing time to think (and by extension, prepare) is a critically important element of thought leadership. Too often communication programs are undertaken without sufficient thought being put into them.

Whether it is the fault of the organisation/client or the PR practitioner, this is a risk-laden approach. And especially so with thought leadership.

Here are some steps to thought leadership that take time to get right:

• Understanding what thought leadership positions competitors inhabit
• Determining what the most productive thought leadership platforms are your organisation can inhabit
• Identifying thought leadership business objectives and putting in place mechanisms to measure the impact of the campaign
• Deciding – is this a campaign (e.g. does it have a limited lifespan) or is this a way of life (e.g. is the thought leadership program so embedded into, and driven by, organisational culture its intent is to continue and evolve on an ongoing basis?).

Listening in thought leadership public relations

It’s interesting the term ‘public relations’ doesn’t appear in the e-book narrative itself. Yet thought leadership is clearly a PR 101 strategic approach.

Why are Craig and Liz shy about flagging this? I bet it’s so as not to marginalise thought leadership in a perceived PR ‘ghetto’. This is somewhat of a shame as it’s reflective of a malaise within PR not to shout out the business relevance and potency of the discipline, but such is life.

Certainly, I can’t see how any other business discipline can lay claim to managing the approach effectively. Not marketing, that’s for sure.

One reason why PR is the only business discipline to practice thought leadership is because, as Craig and Liz imply, listening is an important aspect of not just thought leadership, but any communication strategy. This is to help understand the needs, wants and issues of stakeholders, then to help identify opportunities and threats relevant to stakeholder relationship enhancing.

(Or I guess we could call it stakeholder relations, which as I’ve written previously is simply a self-hating term for PR that we as practitioners have Harry Pottered up out of our shame in working in PR…or so it seems.)

One manifestation of listening is undertaking market research, and whilst there are inexpensive means of undertaking market research, other approaches include media and internet scanning, conversations with key stakeholders (including influencers over target audiences) and undertaking internal reviews with employees to gather intelligence from them as to what turns organisational stakeholders on…and off.

The fear of thought leadership

A fair criticism of thought leadership is it gives up organisational intellectual property other organisations can leverage to position themselves favourably. The IP can also give potential clients a resource for free that otherwise they would have paid for.

These comments are both true, so thought must clearly be given to the specific thought leadership platforms and what aspects of the platforms organisations will give up information on.

It is vital to remember that in an internet age it is increasingly expected organisations will give up information for free (an inbound marketing approach). This is partially because it has been proven the viral impact of sharing useful information positively impacts on organisational reputation and business results.

These results are equally relevant to the B2C and B2B environments, as well as a third paradigm I like to call B2Community.  This third paradigm is relevant in communicating with target audiences who are not necessarily going to buy a product or service. Examples are ratepayers in a local government area, or residents near large parklands or close to schools.

I have merely dipped a toe into the water of 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign and plan on returning to it in the future. What did you think about aspects of thought leadership and its salient issues discussed in this post? Can you give examples of effective and failed thought leadership programs? Do you have any insights and recommendations to share?

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This may seem simplistic, but consider the following:

Common sense includes:

• understanding the operating environment and the opportunities and threats it presents (market research being sensible route to your destination)
• knowing what your resources are and customising, as appropriate, communication business activity
• being able to articulate how your PR strategy delivers results relevant to your organisation’s business objectives and mission.

Creativity in PR includes:

• generating concepts to help your organisation and/or its products or services stand out from the crowd in a communication campaign
• finding new ways to engage the attention of 3^rd party stakeholders (e.g. media, strategic alliances) to help them promote the subject of your campaign (i.e. so the method of engagement, such as a Tweet or product package to a journo, rather than the creative itself)
• relying on both intuition and logic to work in tandem and in left brain-right brain cooperative fashion.

Kindness is imperative because it:

• is core to empathy, which is needed understand the needs and wants of stakeholders
• will enable you to generate enthusiasm and support from organisational stakeholders and your colleagues and partners in pushing your campaign in a direction that will lead to success
• will reflect well on you and your own aspirations (including career-specific ones) as people want to work with those who they feel respect, understand and are sympathetic to their needs. This doesn’t mean being spineless and bending to the will of others. In fact, one of the great challenges of kindness is being true to yourself and your beliefs, whilst respecting those of others and, even more importantly, being strong enough to allow others to influence and change you.

Not so simplistic now, is it? Are you confident in applying all the elements noted above in the bullet points? Share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

Use common sense in public relations

Ever since I first got a grasp (or what I think was a grasp – others might say I was and am still living in delusion) on public relations, its practice made complete and utter sense to me.

Straightforward sense.

Common sense.

And as per everything I write on this blog, this is fundamentally based on my advocacy of the two-way symmetrical communication model and its mixed-motive variation. Just as humans need to adapt the way we go about our lives to take into consideration the feelings, beliefs and behaviours of others, so do organisations.

This is necessary to achieve personal and business objectives. It is necessary as no person or no business exists in isolation from others (this is society, after all). And it is necessary to help us, ultimately, be happy about our behaviour and ourselves, which very much includes within a business or work context.

We spend most of our waking adult lives at work, so who wants to feel despised or unfulfilled in this environment?

Making sense of being sceptical when proactive and positive when being defensive

Sounds counter-intuitive? Well, you’re right, it is.

But too often the sparkly product and service promotion side of PR fails to look sufficiently at potentially negative outcomes of well-meaning activity.  This can come back to bite an organisation.

Conversely, there are many doors that defensive crisis communication activity can open for organisations to engage more meaningfully with their stakeholders.

A caveat of this being the PR 101 mantra, of course, that to have excellent relationships with stakeholders organisations need not only listen to, understand and have a dialogue with stakeholders, but organisations must be willing to adapt/change, to some degree, according to the needs and wants of these stakeholders.

But if you aren’t willing to push an organisation to do this, what are you doing in PR anyway?

You’re not in it just to, um, sell stuff are you?

What examples can you share of common sense, creativity and kindness in the practice of public relations, either ones you have been involved in or have observed? What about the converse – illogical approaches, dull campaigns and lack of kindness? Do you think these are useful precepts to apply to the practice of public relations – why or why not?

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You can actually practice pretty good – and sometimes even great – PR by applying just one or two of this power play triumvirate. Examples include:

• mind bending creativity applied to a product launch which captures the zeitgeist and transforms an opportunity into an occurrence which galvanises its target audience
• a consistent, professional but thoroughly dry approach to providing information to, and interacting with, a community impacted on by infrastructure development
• where multiple communication strands are woven together in a complex manner which also features customised messages and information on essentially the same topic to different target audiences.

But to achieve really great PR, and to do it consistently, you are far better offer to get strategy, rigour and creativity working together. You are taking an unnecessary risk by not applying this approach.

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An interesting paradox of creativity is that rarely does it manifest itself without taking a degree of risk. Creativity involves departing from the norm – the ‘shock of the new’ – and through doing this it can galvanise, alienate or bemuse. Well, at least you won’t die wondering, though the client may not be satisfied with such a summation of a campaign…

Science in public relations

Public relations is a social science. And just like physical sciences like physics, excellent results generally come from using educated creativity. How does this manifest itself in PR? Well, not that much different from materials or some other form of the physical sciences:

• You undertake research
• You postulate (i.e. you apply creative thinking)
• You test your postulations
• You refine your approach based on research
• You implement (using the best stratagem you can formulate)
• You succeed.

Undertaking some form of market research is, therefore, a necessity in public relations that is seeking to achieve the best possible result. Guess work doesn’t cut it.

Budgetary issues always make undertaking research an issue, but inexpensive forms of qual or quant research can be undertaken and, often, there will be existing research which can be used to help refine a creative approach to help make it more effective.

And of course, without undertaking some form of market research prior to a campaign beginning, you have absolutely no way known of identifying how effective the campaign is, including what elements it contains helped or didn’t help the campaign.

Whether in-house or in consultancy, research, benchmarking and evaluation are critically important steps in public relations. it’s one way of proving to senior management and/or clients the value of PR.

Creativity in PR

Here are three ways in which creativity can manifest itself in PR:

• Visuals – images, video, Prezi/PowerPoint presentations
• Text
• Concepts and the manner in which concepts engage target audiences.

Rigour in PR

Three ways in rigour manifests itself in PR are:

• Testing creativity before it is applied. This can occur through a pilot program or market research (a small and qual approach will often suffice)
• Staying within scope and budget in the application of creativity
• The consistency of application of the approach. Paradoxically, variations of application for different target audiences may also be appropriate. Are you tough enough to deal with this and do it consistently?

PR strategy

Characteristics and manifestations of taking a strategic approach to PR are many. The include aspects like the following:

• The timing of the roll out of the strategy and what tactical elements hit target audiences when
• Using 3^rd parties to aid in organisational credibility
• Applying thought leadership to assist in positioning, differentiation and stakeholder relationship enhancement
• Forming and leveraging strategic alliances
• Making a decision on which aspects of an organisation, issue, product or service to focus upon
• How much different points of view on a organisation, issue, product or service are recognised and discussed by an organisation.

What about you – where have you applied rigour, creativity and/or strategy in a PR campaign? What worked for you and what didn’t work? Are any of these three elements poorly applied in PR, do you think? Why and where?

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