Trendspotters: May 2013

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Constance Aguilar

Client Spotlight: Post Planner

Do you ever have those days when you just aren’t feeling creative, and posting good content on Facebook seems harder than creating the cure for cancer? Thanks to our newest client, your creativity can be restored. Post Planner is an app that helps you find content faster and easier, plus boost your reach on your Facebook pages. It can be your Facebook library and basecamp. So far, we’ve seen some pretty impressive engagement results. It’s priced to afford, and definitely worth checking out. We are excited to work with a social media app yet again and will keep everyone updated on the Post Planner success!

What’s Hot: Snapchat

Snapchat is one of the world’s hottest, most talked about, and most controversial apps on the market right now. Snapchat users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a list of recipients. What separates it from traditional texting is the fact that users can choose how long the recipient can view the content for. Once that time has expired, it is automatically deleted from their phone. The controversy? The phenomenon of “sexting” now has its ideal solution. While the creators, four former Stanford students, argue that its intention is to put the fun back in communication, it only makes sense that the primary demographic of Snapchat users, between 13 years to 25 years of age, use it with alternative intentions. Now the app is under fire for its “deletion” methods. While tech writers and the founders are taking various sides on the issues, the simple fact is Snapchat is experiencing over three dozen images sent per second during peak hours. It’s a social platform that is impossible to ignore; if only to satisfy the clandestine photographer in all of us.

Toolbox: Instagram Tagging

It should come as no surprise that since being acquired by Facebook, the world’s most popular photo sharing app, Instagram, is slowly releasing features traditionally found on the Facebook platform. Instagram recently launched the ability to tag other Instagram users in your photos, just as you tag photos with other Facebook profiles on Facebook. They’ve made the feature “individual” to Instagram by branding it with the name “Photos of You”. Not to be confused with Facebook “tagging”, of course. Only the photographer can tag their photos with friends, places, and brands. “Photos of You” are currently private, but will go public starting May 16. It’s a great new marketing tool for brands looking to capitalize on their Instagram presence. We’ll see if Red Bull or Southwest launches a campaign first!

How to measure success online

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Nicole Rose Dion

So you’re managing a client’s online presence or reputation. Everything is going well … or at least you think? How do you measure all of your efforts and prove ROI to your client?

Measuring eCommerce

If your client’s end goal is ecommerce, whatever efforts you’re doing on your website should be geared toward getting people to make purchases. So how do you measure this? Through the use of Google Analytics you can determine:

How much money was made online
Where those people who purchased things came from
Where customers dropped off and decided not to buy anything

[Related: Google Analytics for PR]

Measuring a blog

If you’re running a blog on a platform that allows for email subscription, do it. RSS feeds are great and all, but email subscription is better. You’ll be provided with a list of all your email subscribers and they will get email notifications every time you blog. This is your audience. The more blog subscribers, the better. These are people who enjoy your content so much, they have decided to be notified every time you push out new content. That is way more valuable than a page view or site visit. An easy way to measure the success of a blog is how many people come to the site (you can use Google Analytics for this) versus how many people decided to subscribe (conversion!) within a month’s time.

Measuring a newsletter

Many people measure the success of a newsletter by open rate, thinking that as long as their email is being opened, it’s being read. True? Not necessarily. For example, I will often group a bunch of new messages together, mark them as read and never come back to them (usually emails from online stores that I’ve signed up to be on their mailing lists). So I’m completely skewing their numbers and never even looking at the email. You could also open it and close it immediately.

A better judge of email newsletter success is whether or not your content is being clicked. For example, you send out a newsletter that says 20 percent off bagels, click here. Then measure how many people click that button. Most email programs will list number of clicks for a campaign and you can also use Google Analytics for this. Or, if you’re promoting an event, include a link to the event RSVP page and track how many people RSVP after you send out your campaign.

Measuring social media

Engagement is just a fancy word that means whether or not people care about what you’re posting. Just because you have 10,000 fans on Facebook doesn’t mean you have a successful Facebook page. Just because you have 2,000 followers on Twitter, doesn’t mean people actually read the tweets you’re sending out. A better way to measure success on social media is how much and how often people are interacting with your content. This means liking, forwarding, sharing, commenting, Retweeting … etc. This can be found using third-party applications like Radian6 or the platform’s internal analytics.

Equipment for your Social Media Toolbox

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Callie Crawford

Organization is vital when managing multiple clients’ social media accounts. You also need a system for finding quality content your audience will want to interact with. Great content is what makes the social media world go round. It is important to know the tools available to help you provide valuable content for your audience in a timely fashion. (Because we all know there are not enough hours in a day!)

Here are some of my favorite tools for finding content, organizing and managing multiple social media accounts:

Post Planner

Post Planner is an app that works directly through Facebook. One of my favorite features is it provides you with quality content for a particular topic. Not only quality content, but TRENDING content! From hunting to heart disease, Post Planner has you covered. This app saves you time browsing the web for an article your audience will find value in reading. Post Planner can also help you come up with a clever status for a particular topic. For the days I’m not feeling creative or am time pressed, Post Planner is my number-one stop.

Scoop.it:

No one wants another tool that takes up more time than it is worth. Scoop.it has been just the opposite for me. It saves time and helps find quality content. It uses visuals to draw you to each article, similar to Pinterest. It is easy to use and lets your pick up to 15 topics you’re interested in. There is also a suggestion RSS feed you can scroll through and simply scoop the content you are interested in.

Bit.ly

Always, always shorten your URL’s with bit.ly. Bit.ly allows you to shorten, share and track the resulting usage of that URL. I use bit.ly when sharing a URL on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Bit.ly URL’s are more likely to get clicked on, and you can track your “bitemarks.”

Sprout Social

So the question is; isn’t there a smarter way to connect the above resources all together? That’s when Sprout Social comes in, a must have! Sprout Social is a social media manager that allows you to post content, queue content, track content and provide social analytics. The queue picks the optimum times to send your Tweets – the times they will get the most interaction. Sprout social provides great analytics including impressions, engagement, shares, demographics and influencers. You can set it up for all of your clients and work through one dashboard. The dashboard provides great charts for social media reporting and is super easy to use.

Content is Still King

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Abbi Whitaker

* Reblog
* This post originally appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal

The digital revolution has left many under the impression that the written word is dead or dying. But nothing could be further from the truth. In public relations and marketing, content remains king. Business owners, often working with savvy public relations professionals, are finding an even stronger market for their message in a media landscape eternally altered by the digital revolution. From press releases, to blogs, to expert columns in targeted publications, the written word is gaining a wider audience on more platforms that deliver more targeted audiences for companies. Many see the expanding influence of social media and the skyrocketing popularity of mobile communication as the advent of a coming dark age for the written word. But for those who know how to deliver their message in the numerous avenues available, technological advancement is ushering in a new golden age for content. Here are three ways to get your message out to your audience.

• Press Releases Still Work

Perhaps the most obvious public relations tool is still alive and kicking in the social-media-choked, app-friendly age. The truth is that bad press releases have always had limited success. But good press releases are gaining an even wider range of media exposure, from newspapers and magazines to industry publications, blogs and independent websites. A well written press release is still the best way to get the word out to media about a product launch, a business expansion or industry recognition. In an age where newspapers are shedding reporters and web-based media often spend limited time doing original reporting, a well written press release with a good news hook will gain strong media exposure over a variety of news outlets. If you are pitching social media, tech or industry websites, think about building a social media-style release that includes video, web links and bulleted facts and quotes.

• Blogs Leave you in Control of Your Message

For companies wanting to raise their organic SEO profile and deliver news to their industry audience, blogs fit the bill. They also often become a resource for media searching your site for background, story ideas, or details about your industry. Every company has more than enough to talk about, and a blog allows you to do that talking without the filter of the news media, where you are not in complete control of your message. Learn to piggyback on news within your given industry to generate blog ideas, drive SEO and build an industry audience. This is also a great place to talk directly to your customers, and build brand loyalty and familiarity that will turn customers into long-term patrons.

• Expert Columns Build Your Credibility

Everyone wants to be an expert in his or her industry. But it takes a lot of hard work — much of it in the media and marketing fields — to be recognized as such. One way to raise your profile and gain credibility within your industry is to submit expert columns to industry publications, newspapers and business magazines. Publications love free, well written, authoritative content. Readers love to read the opinions of experts in a given field. Pair those together, and the executives of your company have a great opportunity to build their credibility by being published as a guest columnist in the publications where they want exposure. Look for topics the news media is already talking about in your industry, pair your opinions with those topics, and your chances of getting media exposure are very high. Expert columns and being quoted as an expert source are the highest level of media exposure. It builds your brand, your credibility and your business.

SXSW 2013: Television has gone social and it’s not looking back

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Nicole Rose Dion

What I most enjoyed about college was making connections between my classes. For example, say I’m taking a sociology class and we are discussing gender roles and how that affects society, and then in my media ethics class we are discussing a controversial Benetton advertising campaign that many people found sexist. BAM! Connection across disciplines made.

I experienced the same joy in attending South by Southwest Interactive 2013 by happy accident. The second day I was there I attended a session called “How Twitter Has Changed How We Watch TV” by Jenn Deering Davis @jdeeringdavis (check out the conversation from the session via the hashtag: #tweetTV). Davis discussed how Twitter conversation can help predict whether or not a show is going to be (or is) successful. Also, I just barely made it into this session, check out this vine, it’s the people waiting to get into the session that is already full.

According to amount of tweets, here is a comparison of different types of programming:

Photo credit: @mahdz on Twitter.

Ongoing: A show that has many “shocking” things happen throughout the series (like Pretty Little Liars or The Walking Dead)

Finale: A show that saves the “shocking” moments for the finale

Event: A big, one time event like the Grammys or the Super Bowl

Streaming: Something like when Netflix released “House of Cards” season 1 all at once.

So basically what is happening is people are watching these shows live (ideally) and tweeting/facebooking about what is happening as it happens. In fact, 88 percent of people are now multi-tasking while watch TV. Why do they do it? To feel like they are part of something: 51 percent of people tweet about shows to feel more connected to other viewers.

But all of this is happening live right? So what about when people are watching popular TV shows the next day, or the next week on Hulu or online? They won’t want to check social media for fear of spoilers. So now what?

So then the next day I happen to end up at this panel discussion called “Death of the couch potato: the future of social TV.” Perfect right? The panelists were from USA Network, Univision and The Next Web @Jesseredniss @dbecktweets @hermioneway @starexplorer (check out conversation from the session via the hashtag: #socialTV). So the question going into this session was: But what if they aren’t watching live? Everything the networks are doing is encouraging live viewing. But I know that many people in my generation don’t even bother purchasing cable because we know we can watch whatever we want online (hbo go, hulu, Netflix, network websites … etc). So I was elated when David Beck from Univision answered my question. I discuss his answer in this video below:

We can learn a lot from what TV is doing. They are listening to their viewers and they are responding in real time. Some shows even provide alternate endings depending on how their fans vote. Networks of course want viewers to watch live because it builds hype and ultimately makes their shows more popular. But now what do we do about these people who aren’t watching TV live? We can look at the release of “House of Cards” on Netflix and how much conversation that drove even though it wasn’t live viewing. And what do we do about non-live viewers avoiding spoilers? Simulate the “live” experience by watching online and viewing the social interactions in pace with the programming. That’s not the only solution but it’s definitely a start. The future of television viewing is capturing the fans, no matter where they are and inviting them to be a part of this overall phenomenon. USA Network is giving their fans special access online with bonus content and getting behind the scenes looks. The more you engage, the more you get out of it. And the fans will want to dive deeper into their favorite shows to get to know their favorite characters better.

The takeaway is that if fans are passionate about a show they will show up no matter what, no matter when and participate in the social conversation, which will drive their friends to want to find out what that show is about. But TV aside, we can apply this to any industry and how important it is to listen to your audience or customers for feedback and adjust accordingly.