Strategic Public Relations

Could LinkedIn Contacts Become LinkedIn Social CRM?

2013-04-28T22:09:30-04:00

LinkedIn's new Contacts app is designed to help users stay in touch with important business contacts and build contacts with others.

According to Mashable: "LinkedIn Contacts integrates into your email, mobile address book and calendar to create a one stop shop of sorts for all of your contacts that is accessible from the web and an app."

LinkedIn has rolled out a steady stream of design, social and content enhancements over the last six months as it aims to increase the engagement across its business platform. And this new app will certainly increase the odds that you'll be connected to your entire contact database on LinkedIn.

Community + Content x Contacts = Social CRM?
To its credit, LinkedIn has never been a walled garden; you can export your contact information. And with email plugins for Outlook and GMail as well as apps like Cardmunch, it's been simple to benefit from LinkedIn data across other platforms.

LinkedIn's recent focus on community, content and contacts shows it's trying to reverse the flow of data outside the site and give users more reasons to spend time on LinkedIn. And if you look at all of the LinkedIn enhancements in aggregate, it starts to look as if we're being given a mix of tools used for "extraction, transfer and loading" of data into a customer relationship marketing (CRM) platform.

Consider if LinkedIn continued enhancing the platform and, within the next 12 months, it started offering a basic and paid level of CRM functionality to its more than 200 million members.

1) User Base: It's user base would increase and it would encourage all users to invest more time in the platform.

2) Social Business: Whether or not you consider LinkedIn a niche platform due to its business focus, by expanding its focus on contacts into CRM it becomes THE business platform and much tougher to displace.

3) Monetization: In addition to the revenue from its paid CRM services, the advertising potential would be significant. Consider a utility like email - it's open all day. Turning LinkedIn into a CRM utility would increase user exposure to advertising.

Personal CRM
There's a distinct delta between a CRM platform and the functionality that LinkedIn currently provides. But it's not so significant that it prevents the social platform from becoming a CRM platform with more than 200 million potential users on its first day of launch.

LinkedIn CRM wouldn't seemingly be able to disrupt large companies' use of enterprise-wide CRM packages, but it could usher in the trend of personal CRM. Like any idea, it's fraught with potential and peril. But it's safe to say we've only just begun to see the impact of LinkedIn's steady stream of innovations, acquisitions and enhancements.

Who Should Own Content Marketing In Your Organization?

2013-03-06T11:18:51-05:00

Read enough industry opinion on content marketing, and you can start to determine each author’s professional background. If their point of view is focused on:

Interactive: the author tends to be in digital marketing or may work with a digital agency;
Creative: a traditional marketer might be chief storyteller, perhaps working with a creative agency;
Editorial: the expert could come from public relations or might work with a PR agency;
Media: someone with paid media background, who takes a media-neutral approach to building an audience or may be working with a digital agency.

Read Between the Lines
If I’d written this article just a few years ago, you could easily tell my roots are in public relations. By their name alone, my two personal blogs would confirm this assumption.

But over the last 10 years, my focus became more broadly focused in marketing. And in the last five years, I’ve witnessed content morph into a clear mix of editorial, design and development. My last four years at a media agency have further evolved my point of view.

Marketing’s True North
This experience has taught me that the focus should always be on the audience – regardless of your background. While this isn’t an epiphany or a deep thought, it’s critical to remind ourselves of this timeless rule. It tends to fade into the background when the marketing industry, inevitably, debates who in an organization should own a new practice area.

Content marketing can’t live anywhere in the building, but it does take a variety of stakeholders and skill sets to make it work. Regardless of where content marketing lives in your building, make sure the team has the skill sets needed for each phase of content marketing.

Plan: The planning phase requires strategists with an a deep understanding of the brand and its audience as well as an appreciation of content and media.
Publish: Publishing requires a mix of editorial, design and creative that taps technology to distribute and share the content as relevant.
Promote: All content needs help being found. In addition to paid media expertise, analytics, search marketing and social media mindsets are required.
Optimize: The key to sustainable success is constant, informed iteration of the entire process and the platform. A team capable of drawing insights from analytics and relevant search data is critical.

Story or Science?
Each member on a content marketing team, based on their background, will focus on the left- or right-brain aspects of content marketing. That’s understandable. The point is simply to make sure you’ve got the right mix of team skills and that the focus is, first and foremost, on the audience.

And if anyone asks who should own content marketing? The answer is: the audience.

An Important Tip for Sustainable Content Creation

2013-03-06T10:46:10-05:00

At the recent, inaugural #solopr conference, I really enjoyed the other speakers' presentations. One of those individuals, Tom Martin, served up a simple but powerful tip regarding content creation.

Whether you're blogging, part of a brand newsroom or just creating content - think in terms of cornerstones and not just cobblestones.

Star Wars as Cobblestones and Cornerstone
Star Wars offers the simplest way to understand the cornerstones vs. cobblestones concept. Each episode in the Star Wars franchise is a cobblestone. All six movies together are a cornerstone. George Lucas made one movie at a time. But he knew the entire story before he started with Epsiode 4.

Rock Solid Content Strategy
You can take two approaches to the cornerstone strategy, depending on your approach to content.

Star Wars Approach: Think the larger story through, as part of a larger strategy, but then produce this content in pieces. The other benefit to this approach? Your final piece, that aggregates each article into a larger piece of content, will benefit from reader comments and other industry news that unfold along with your ideas.

Reverse Engineer: Literally producing the entire story and then chopping it into pieces to distribute over time is a more traditional, long form approach. To be honest, it's working harder than smart...especially if you were to publish all of it immediately as a single, longform "white paper."

Regardless of how you employ the cornerstone/cobblestone approach to content, it ensures a steady pace of publishing relevant content. In fact, it's a concept I need to employ at this blog. My publishing frequency is guided solely by quality vs. quantity. If I'm not inspired, I don't write. This approach to articles on this blog would have a positive impact.

5 Tips for Easier Writing - Infographic

2013-02-05T16:03:43-05:00

While this infographic has five tips to help brands create content,** the tips apply to anyone -- including you. We encounter multiple stories on a daily basis, regardless of our job. We just need to look at things from a different, content marketing, perspective.

Full-Sized Version is Available for Download Here.

**Strategic Public Relations has been even slower than usual lately. It's because I'm also Editor-in-Chief at Media Is Power. It's an independent media platform I helped Empower MediaMarketing's content marketing practice create. Our editorial mission is to track the changing media landscape. It's my employer's best practice in action and I'll write more posts at some point that detail the process involved in making a sustainable content marketing plaform.

Vine's Foes, & Most Fans, Are Missing the Point

2013-02-02T23:19:33-05:00

Less than 10 days after it's debut, news about the Vine app is a lot like Super Bowl pre-game commentary. We've got so-called experts everywhere weighing in on who will win and who will lose. Whether you like Vine, hate it or couldn't care less whether it thrives or withers, I'm willing to bet you're missing the point of this app.

It's not about a shiny new social toy. It's not about the increasing popularity of snack-sized content, social video or the recent resurgence of the gif.

It's all about Twitter.

Twitter Tool First, Video Platform Second
Vine extends Twitter's utility, giving users another reason to make the 140-character platform their social destination of choice. That's a big deal for Twitter, making it a more desirable ad platform for brands. Some suggest that Vine is as important to Twitter as YouTube was to Google.

And I'm willing to bet that a Venn diagram of Twitter and Vine users would show most of Vine's circle overlapping with Twitter's (much larger) circle. Vine's generated a lot of conversation on Twitter over the last seven days, racking up more than 26,000 mentions each day.

One reason Vine's generating buzz and is a top download on iTunes is because Twitter owns the app and promoted Vine on it's blog. Social video isn't a new concept. But Twitter's promotion was the rough equivalent of the Oprah Book Club, driving more downloads, more quickly, than the app could have achieved on its own. Brands as varied as Gap, CNN, Jo-Ann Stores and others are already playing with Vine's stop-action video snippets.

Controversy = Sign of Success
Unfortunately, pornography was being posted on Vine seemingly hours after the launch. Vine responded quickly, after a brief stumble. But I'm wondering if such an early attempt to exploit the platform is more a sign of its potential than of its potential issues. Either way, you can assume the app will be tweaked on an ongoing basis to deal with its issues.

Bottom Line?
Despite my opinion of Vine, the decision to tap this shiny new app for your marketing efforts comes down to a few simple questions:

Is your audience using Vine?
Is your audience using Twitter?
Does Vine allow you to reach them more effectively?

If Vine, or another other shiny new tool, doesn't help a brand more effectively connect with consumers? It's just noise.

Related Articles
Vine's Potential & Problems - Nieman Journalism Labs' take on Vine's news impact.
Seven Places to Watch Videos on Vine, Even if You Don't Have the App - FastCompany points to several sites that have already sprung up to serve up Vine content on the web.
Vine: The New Twitter or Chatroulette? Salon walks through the pros and cons of the app, including its connection to the popular gif movement.

Instagram vs. Vine .gif via Laughing Squid

Tips for Brands on Instagram

2012-12-19T14:37:01-05:00

Instagram changed its terms of service earlier this week, unleashing a vocal and fast-emerging online protest. For brands, the “Instadrama” raises a more important question. As brands and their loyal consumers become invested in free online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, what should brands do as these platforms evolve into a business? How brands react to things like a "controversial" terms of service change can have broader implications, including how consumers perceive the brand.

Rules of Disengagement?
Much like the “rules of engagement” many social media teams craft when it comes to responding to negative comments online, perhaps brands should consider “rules of platform disengagement.” At a minimum, the following tips should help prevent any rash decisions and, more importantly, it can help ensure a brand’s investment in a platform is not lost.

For more of this article, visit Media Is Power.

3 Tips to Pwn Storify

2012-12-17T12:09:19-05:00

Storify’s new site design makes it easier to find relevant content on the site. As part of the more cosmetic changes to the site, Storify also became the latest social platform to add landscape header photos to its users’ profiles.

The changes might also be designed to make Storify less of a distribution tool and more of a destination platform. A quick review of active users shows that few have updated their profiles to capitalize on the new header design. It’s a telling sign that more Storify users tap the social curation tool through content management platforms instead of through the site

I've been playing with Storify to curate content for posts. It's a great tool -- one I'll bet you're either not using, or not using to its full potential. Regardless of your Storify-savvy, here are three tips to help you pwn Storify.

1) Curate Cross-Platform Content
Storify is used by most to capture Twitter conversations. The ability to pull in tweets on a certain topic, before they vanish from Twitter’s short-term memory, to select and then organize the best ones into a story is certainly an example of where Storify shines.

But Storify allows you to pull in content from several platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr. You can also pull in direct URLs to easily add content. In an age of distributed storytelling, the need to pull in content from across multiple platforms is important.

One example of using Storify to contain a fast-emerging, distributed story is the #SignalPG Storify I built. It’s based on the Signal event held at Procter & Gamble earlier this year. Storify made it simple to curate content from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to give a brief event overview of the event.

2) Get Creative With Curation (like Moleskine, Lego & MIT)
And while Storify is typically used to capture temporary moments, like Twitter chats or events, it can be used for projects with longer timelines as well. For a recent product launch, Moleskine tapped Storify to create an online clip book. In addition to news, the brand captured consumer conversation for an even more potent compilation of buzz emanating from the co-branded product launch.

The ability to organize all of the conversation, add context and then embed it anywhere reminds us of Storify’s utility. Creativity is the only limitation as to where and how it can be used. This behind the scenes tour of MIT’s Media Lab. Is a great example of using Storify to give your audience access to something they can’t get elsewhere. And you’re not limited to one platform in doing so.

3) Become a Power User
This post assumes most users start and stop their use of Storify with Twitter chats. But there are a variety of ways to get more out of the site.

Plug-In: Using Storify as a browser plug-in is not just more convenient and efficient, it makes for a much smoother embed, including eliminating duplicate titles between your blog post and the curated story.
Research: If you’re using Storify just to curate and distribute your own content, keep in mind a variety of brands and media outlets use it. The end result is an untapped platform for informal research on a variety of topics.
Miscellany: From tapping into each story’s analytics to clicking “View All” on a user’s profile to see all of their stories, there are a few basic steps worth remembering. More basic steps are included in "Getting Started.” This story is automatically generated for every profile and worth walking through. And while you’re at it, if you have a profile on the site, update your header photo!

Other Brands Crushing It On Storify
We’ve seen a broad variety of brands demonstrating how Storify can help content marketing efforts. Here are a few that stand out in addition to the ones highlighted above.

Vanderbilt: The Vanderbilt news room curates tweets and Instagram pics into a weekly buzz roundup to engage students and other university fans while creating promotional content.
General Electric: In addition to covering its own news stories, it uses Storify to get more long-term use out of its more evergreen event content.
Smashing Pumpkins: In addition to increasing fan engagement with Twitter Chats, the socially active band memorializes the content with Storify and even used Storify to leverage a fan photo challenge for their latest album release.

If you’re curating content and not using Storify, it’s a free tool worth checking out. As the above shows, it’s becoming a go to for brands, journalists and content marketers.

Content Marketing Lessons from Facebook, Twitter & Google

2012-12-16T15:32:05-05:00

Three pieces of content driving some serious sharing online last week are "year in review" stories from Facebook, Twitter and Google. Perhaps stories doesn't do their projects justice. More than just breezy content, each story also holds lessons for brands and their approach to content marketing.

It's Not About You: Facebook
By tapping into each user's last 12 months of activity, Facebook gets high marks for its year in review on two levels.

First and foremost, they do not make the project about Facebook. It's about the life moments each visitor shared on Facebook

Making the user the center of the story makes them more inclined to participate. And the project's output, a personal visualization of each user's activity, is slowly helping consumers get more comfortable playing with, visualizing and sharing their personal data.

Brand Lesson: To encourage consumer engagement through content marketing, consider what your brand enables the consumer to do instead of simply focusing on your brand.

Click here to read the rest of this story on Media Is Power. Media is Power is a new content marketing project from my employer.

Facebook, Online Privacy & the Bottom Line

2012-12-12T15:33:07-05:00

Facebook just changed its privacy controls, making it impossible to hide from Facebook Search.

Unfortunately, the bulk of users that are even aware of these changes will probably spend more time complaining about it instead of either learning about the changes or doing something about it.

Learn
According to Mashable,

"The new privacy tools will make it easier for you to pick which of your friends or subscribers can view your personal info, status updates and photos, according to Reuters. It also makes it simpler for you to request that a photograph of yourself be taken down by the uploader."

There's good news and bad news here. The bad news is that these changes are driven by Facebook's desire to offer better advertising options to brands. Like it or not, brands have always come before users on Facebook. And it's because brands pay for Facebook. But the good news is, while you can't hide from search, you CAN control who sees what content. Facebook is putting the onus of individual user privacy into the hands of the individual - albeit at a granular and incomplete level.

CNET reminds us that I may be a bit Pollyanna in my outlook.

"Facebook has mostly just fostered apathy in the vast majority of its subscribers -- and confusion among those who are paying attention to what Facebook is doing with their activity and the resulting data."

Facebook is horrible at communicating privacy changes. The apathy and confusion mentioned above plays to Facebook's advantage. And they are user issues of Facebook's own design. I've always learned about changes from users -- never Facebook itself.

Do
Had I written this earlier in the week, I'd have suggested voting via Facebook's community voting process. But there was not enough voter turnout -- the option has been eliminated. Users can still do something about it though. They can either get Medieval on their privacy settings or they can leave Facebook.

I know about 1 billion reasons why most users are more likely to complain than to leave Facebook.

Bottom Line?
No matter how self-entitled the user base may become, Facebook is a free site. We play by their rules. And whether it's Facebook or any other corner of the internet, it's up to individual users to manage their privacy. Facebook makes this clear time and time again. Whenever I get online privacy questions, it's usually from someone that wants to create a private/stealth spot on Facebook. And whenever this happens, I point to my favorite venn diagram (above).

If you don't want someone to see it? Don't put it online.

Guy Kawasaki's Latest on Apple, Google+ & Facebook

2012-11-12T07:05:30-05:00

In a recent Google+ Hangout** Guy Kawasaki offered up some new perspectives on a number of topics. Here's a quick recap.

Disenchanted with Apple?
It's no surprise Apple was on Guy's list of brands living the principles of enchantment -- being likeable, trustworthy and with quality products. But he also noted Apple lived these principles "up until six weeks ago." Clearly Guy's one of a growing number of critics wondering if it's the beginning of the end for Apple.

Will History Repeat for Google+?
It was also no surprise to hear Guy go long on Google+, but it was very interesting to consider a comparison he made to another underdog platform.

"Google+ makes me better. And the response it's getting reminds me of when the first Mac computers came out. Compared to Microsoft's operating platform, the Mac was better. It was also used by fewer people. Window's operating platform had so much market share, and Mac's were so different, everyone said the products would fail. And while everyone compares its user base to Facebook, don't forget Google's true size. It's integrating Google+ with its other products. It's one of several reasons Google+ isn't going anywhere."

Can Facebook Edgerank & Opt-In Mix?
Guy's take on Edgerank does a great job of summing up an issue thought leaders like Chris Pirillo, and some brands, are having with Facebook's newsfeed algorithm.

"I have 276,000 people subscribing to my updates on Facebook. By subscribing, they've personally opted in to receive my information in their newsfeeds. Facebook is letting math decide which 15 percent of my subscribers receive my posts. The only obvious option Facebook gives me is to promote my posts. It doesn't make sense."

Edgerank has come under fire lately as an unfair approach to monetization -- despite research showing how many users see an average post. In my opinion, applying a broadcast strategy like opt-in to an engagement platform like Facebook is not always a direct correlation.

**HYPE's Bold Fusion 2012
The hangout focused onGuy's upcoming presentation at the upcoming Bold Fusion 2012 event. The hangout and the event are organized by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. I'm one of several bloggers getting free access to the event which will focus on how the art of enchantment can lead to big impact for attendees, their company and their community. Guy is presenting on his book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds & Actions. I'm looking forward to attending #boldfusion.