Infographics are quickly becoming a media and public relations industry buzz word / topic. Why you ask? Two major reasons. As corporations continue to shift into their role as media companies and content curators, they’re realizing the opportunity to package interesting data to the media and consumers in new ways. More importantly, media organizations and editors are now focusing on finding new ways to engage their readership. Infographics happen to solve both of these problems by packaging data in a way that makes it both engaging and easy to read.
A few weeks ago I sat down with Sam Whitmore of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey for Racepoint Group’s video newsletter to discuss how brands and agencies can leverage infographics and why they’re becoming the “new slide shows” for media outlets desperate for engaging content. While Sam cautioned that infographics aren’t B-roll (most media outlets like to play a role in building them), he did pass along some interesting insight into how PR practitioners and marketers can leverage the media’s interest in this new category of content.
For more insight on infographics, along with the latest news and trends in marketing, PR and communications in the technology space subscribe to Racepoint’s “The Point: Tech Edition.
Shankman started HARO as a Facebook group in 2007 and the following grew so large he took the concept to the web in March 2008 at www.helpareporter.com.
HARO has been acquired by Vocus, Inc. one of HARO’s largest and most loyal advertisers. According the video below of Shankman and Vocus representative, Bill Wagner, nothing about the service will change. HARO will still be free. Shankman will still write up front notes about where is in the world and what he’s up to.
The only thing that will change is that HARO will now grow in new ways, with these additional resources. One example, Vocus plans to expand HARO to other countries.
HARO is a perfect case study of an entrepreneurial idea come to life. Shankman saw a need and created a service. The service grew in popularity and reach and became a direct competitor to long time paid service ProfNet (read RaceTalk’s post about how they could have merged, but didn’t). Now, HARO has been acquired (a major win for Shankman) providing the service with fresh momentum.
Shankman is also employing a critical PR necessity: transparency. As soon as the acquisition was final, Shankman took to the blog not only providing a written update, but a video message. HARO supporters heard the news directly from him, as it happened. This is key in building customer loyalty and trust, which is the cornerstone of a strong brand.
As long time subscribers to HARO, we look forward to being a part of what’s next for this growing service.
Today Racepoint Group is launching a new offering – Racepoint Labs – to help companies, communities, causes and countries leverage the power of social media. To mark this launch we sat down with W2 founder Larry Weber, to get his thoughts on what this means for the overall digital marketing landscape.
It’s safe to say that Kevin Smith, the well known director and producer of cult-classics such as Clerks, is not nuts about Southwest. If you’ve been hiding under a rock and missed last weekend’s (turned this week’s) PR fire drill for SouthWest; Smith was asked off of a Southwest plane with the airline citing their two-seat rule for passengers who don’t safely fit in two seats. Smith, who is also a new media media influencer in every essence of the word, took to social media after that, giving his side of the story.
In a slew of Tweets following the incident, Smith detailed his take on the Southwest policy. Ever since then (now nearly a week after the incident), it has been “he said,” “she said,” between Southwest and a man with 1.6 million Twitter followers.
Such is corporate communications life in the world of new influencers. No matter how social media savvy your PR department and company is (Southwest is pretty savvy), Smith and others don’t walk around with Twitter badges on.
But a funny thing happened as this incident transpired. Southwest did a lot of things to make the bad situation better. They noted to their Twitter followers that they’d be contacting Smith by phone (code: offline). They posted an “apology” on their blog and updated it after talking with Smith (who voiced issues with the language in the post). They did a lot of things right. Smith even took hits from media members noting the incident was hurting his brand more than Southwest’s brand.
What can be learned from the incident? This won’t be the last time a high-profile person (with a large social media platform) is “wronged” by a company. Mistakes will happen and the Twitter-storm will follow. However, if you take the time to gather facts, take the conversation off-line, address it personally, don’t treat the person with the platform any different than another customer and mean what you’re saying – it can be handled.
Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out) announced today that the service will become a little more personalized next week. In a blog post, Shankman reported that on Tuesday, HARO will begin offering users new ways to access the site, and trim down the amount of queries they receive daily.
Among the new features HARO will offer:
Subscribers can chose which sections of HARO they want to receive and access HARO through email (the current method) or through HARO’s website.
Advertisers can chose to place ads for individual sections (i.e. technology, lifestyle).
Reporters can rate and comment on pitches (a tool Shankman hopes will teach people how to write better pitches).
Shankman says that while each of these updates have come from user feedback, these are all optional, so that subscribers and advertisers only have to make these changes if they want to.
HARO’s turn towards personalization is a smart move, as recent emails have given subscribers as many as 75 queries to search through – which can be overwhelming and time consuming. Furthermore, making all changes optional allows HARO to keep its users happy, unlike every time Facebook implements massive mandatory changes to its layout.
Over the past 1-2 years, ProfNet (a service from PRNewswire) has found itself overtaken by HARO (Help A Reporter Out), Peter Shankman’s brainchild. While both sites offer the same product (a platform for reporters to find sources and PR companies / individuals to receive some publicity), HARO has seen tremendous growth over the past couple years, and how has over 100,000 subscribers and a significant revenue stream.
Yesterday Shankman was in Boston for a PRSA event, and shared an interesting piece of information about how HARO came to be. While his service was still a Facebook group with a small group of members back in its early days, ProfNet placed a call to him, wanting him to stay clear of their businesses. Shankman suggested meeting in person to discuss their differences, and told them to call and arrange a time to meet.
At the time, Shankman insists that he had every intention of providing them a lit of his members that they could add onto their subscriber list (which comes with a fee). However, no one ever called him to arrange a meeting, and a few weeks later he decided to build out a Web site for HARO and draw in the masses.
The rest of this story is history, as Shankman’s free service has trumped ProfNet, which is still very much in existence but has certainly taken the backseat.
Editor’s note: ProfNet was contacted for this story but has not offered a comment.
Earlier this week Advertising Age took a look at how PR heads are shifting towards the center of marketing departments. The role shift at top levels evidence of a larger shift for communications and PR as a whole. The media meltdown, combined with the explosion of social media, has served as the great equalizer for the PR and marketing / advertising industries.
Corporations no longer able to leverage “old media” to reach mass or niche audiences with messages are moving their budgets online to new media channels. Channels that are up for grabs in the agency world. And guess what? PR agencies have the early leg up on owning these channels.
PR leads marketing in the management of all social media communications channels.
In 51% of organizations, PR lead digital communications compared to 40.5% where marketing leads
PR is responsible for blogging at 49% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for blogging at 22% of all organizations. PR is responsible for social networking at 48% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for social networking at 27% of all organizations.
PR is responsible for micro-blogging at 52% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for micro-blogging at 22% of all organizations.
Capitalizing on the fact that social media is relationship-based, a top PR characteristic, and that we specialize in creating content, a big part of social media, it’s not that surprising.
However, a troubling stat caught my eye on Mashable earlier this week, given that PR and communications are leading the way with social media. An August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education found that 84% of professionals using social media – in a variety of fields – don’t currently measure the ROI of their social media programs.
RED FLAG. No wonder the head of the PRSA is calling out the entire industry to establish measurement standards – Fast. The fallout of Madison Avenue, combined with the digital media evolution, is a huge opportunity for the communications and PR industry. One opportunity that we better get right – with measurement. If we’ve learned one thing from our peers in online advertising, it’s that today, companies pay for measurable ROI. While Google may not have been recession proof, it’s successful because it efficiently provides and measures ROI with its search marketing services. If we hope to move corporate communications where we believe it belongs – into a key component of marketing’s media planning stage, we better make numbers (more than 3)a top priority.
With a seemingly worse reputation than its second cousin – the press release – the press conference has been brought out to the cow pastures in most industries. Political leaders, along with governments and corporations in Asia, making up the fairly small list of abstaining parties still practicing the art of the media scrum and photo op.
However, thanks in large part to Apple and Steve Jobs, a new ‘press conference on steroids’ has emerged over the last several years in the form of the live press event.
Capitalizing on the Internet Age, and the media’s desire and willingness to report stories minute-by-minute, the live event has become a powerful PR tool to disseminate major announcements to a broad list of media outlets. It allows for pre-event buzz, live event buzz and post-event feature stories, which maximizes the exposure for the brand and whatever they are announcing. It also allows corporations and PR folks to avoid going down the road of pre-briefings under embargo, which have become unbelievably challenging with bloggers and reporters looking to scoop each other by minutes, and even seconds.
Unfortunately for most corporations thinking about hosting a live event (to paraphrase the great Rick Pitino), “Steve Jobs isn’t walking through that door.” So how do you pull off a successful live event without an iconic CEO? Here’s a few basic tips.
1. It all starts with the invitation: The number one goal of most live press events is to get butts in the seats. In order to ensure this you need a good invitation. The trick is you need to spark interest in attending while maintaining a certain level of mystery to increase pre-event speculation.
One way to spark interest, without giving the announcement away, is with the location. Most successful live events are hosted in a location that is a natural tie-in to the theme of the announcement. For instance, Apple’s Rock-N- Roll themed event last week utilized the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – which usually hosts dance groups and other entertainment acts. Try to plan for a location like this rather than using corporate headquarters. It will help with getting bloggers out of their current seats, and into yours.
Apple has also capitalized on pictures being more powerful than words in their invites. A picture that symbolizes the theme with a few teasing words – keeps the pre-event buzz going, and serves as the art for pre-event blog posts. It also allows you to get reporters in the right frame of mind heading into the live event, to ensure that they aren’t let down by what actually transpires.
Aim for getting the invites out 2 weeks in advance of the event and plan on following up repeatedly with media to get the event on their calendar.
Keep reminding them even if you get an RSVP. Attendance at live events is usually (anecdotal evidence) 60 – 70 percent of those that said they will be there.
2. Room logistics: A great location is nothing without a good room. The old PR trick of lots of people in a small room still can work, but if you want to spawn live blogging you better make sure everyone can see the stage.
Stadium-style seating is best. If that’s not possible, just make sure everyone has an equal view.
Bloggers and reporters interested in live-blogging will want seats and space to type. Try not to overfill a room to the point where no one can report live because they can’t get their laptop up in front of them.
Make sure you have the room set-up for the conclusion of the live event. A room close by for one-on-one interviews (great for the ever-popular Flip interviews), a demo area and some food should be in the planning.
3. The connection is key: While the status of the Internet connection may be an after thought for the typical press conference, it’s a top line item for the live event. In order to maximize the exposure of the event, you need to make sure that the connection will support minute-by-minute tweets and posts by attending press. Bring in IT people to make sure the connection is fast and reliable.
Make sure you let media know that they will be able to live-blog, and there will be a reliable connection. Some folks have given up trying to cover events live do to unreliable connections provided by companies.
Make it simple for media to log in. We’ve handed out cards with press materials at events, which detail network names and passwords for easy log-in.
4. It’s all in the delivery: Steve Jobs and Apple are successful with live events because they keep the media hanging on every word. While your news may not rival Apple’s (in terms of media interest), you have something important to share (that’s why you’re considering a live event). Make sure that news is shared at the end of the event, so the media hang on every word throughout.
The live event should be planned out minute-by-minute. You want to make sure that you give media attendees the news in advance of it crossing wires, but you don’t want to take the air out of your spokesperson’s delivery. Plan to email the details on the big news (along with the secondary news and pictures) to attending media when the spokesperson finally delivers it.
It’s a good idea to give those folks attending a head start on reporting that news before the release crosses the wire. 15-20 minutes after the email has gone to attendees seems to be a good time to officially put the news over the wire.
5. Become one of the live-bloggers: Given that every company is a media company, the live event is the ideal venue to leverage all of the media channels you have available to you. Even if you can’t attract 100 media outlets like Apple, you can get your story out to everyone through your own channels.
Make sure the folks managing your corporate Twitter handle(s) put out the hashtag (#) to follow the live event a day in advance of the conference.
Assuming you have a corporate blog to leverage, you should also leverage it to live-blog. In addition, have a full blog post written in advance – that you can put up when the release crosses the wire. House photos and other media there, to increase traffic to the blog and the corporate Website.
If it makes sense, and you calculate that it won’t take butts out of seats, look into the possibility of live streaming the live event. Ustream provides a quality service. You could even host the live stream on your corporate Facebook fan page.
I recently wrote a post about how journalists were getting very tired of phone pitches and preferred receiving them via email or Twitter. In the post I mentioned how Twitter could become a great pitching platform if not for a few things holding it back. So, here is how Twitter can make itself the best pitching platform for journalists and PR people.
The first step is to create a new communication option/folder beyond a @reply and a DM. This option would be specifically for pitching and does not require someone to follow you. It would allow PR people to send 140 character pitches to journalists through a separate folder within Twitter, where they can be read and either responded to or discarded. Here are a few benefits to this method:
Since journalists can’t follow everyone, this will allow them to still receive pitches without having their regular Twitter stream full of tweets they don’t want.
Since pitches will be 140 characters or less, journalists won’t have to spend a lot of time reading them and PR people can get right to the point.
PR people will have a great way to share news with relevant journalists they may not have existing relationships with.
To enhance this feature even more, each message should have 3 options for journalists. They can either respond, archive, or trash the message. Once they select which option, the PR person will be automatically notified so that there are no follow-up calls needed (a common complaint from journalists). If the journalist doesn’t like the topic then the PR person will know and can move on. If the message is archived it means that the reporter might have use for it later, and if the journalist responds then it’s a win-win for everyone.
To take this a step further, this system could also make things really easy for journalists. When they are looking for sources for an article, instead of posting their request to HARO or ProfNet and waiting for the emails to be blasted out, they can simply send their request on Twitter and have pitches sent to their pitch folder.
Additionally, if anyone abuses this system journalists can simply block the user so they won’t receive any more messages from them.
Can you think of any other ways we can make Twitter an amazing pitching tool for all?
One online service that I’ve grown attached to is Mint.com. Simply, Mint.com is the most effective way to manage your money, rent, loans, bills, expenses, financial planning in the Web era (Personally, I love the email alerts when I go over my chosen budget). All of this has allowed Mint to become the most used online personal finance service on the Internet, with more than 1 million users.
It has also enabled the company to build a high brand affinity with its users. In addition to being a great service, Mint has harnessed user’s positive experiences with the service and turned them into brand fans on Facebook. As I’ve followedcloselyover the last several months, Facebook is making very steady progress in appealing to marketers. Fan and brand pages, check. Vanity URL’s, check. Mint.com is one company that has taken advantage of these changes.
Their Facebook page has grown extremely popular with more than 32, 000 followers and constant interaction. From Mint.com prize pack giveaways, to financial haiku contests, to updates on their latest blog posts, Mint leverages Facebook to the fullest.
Before the vanity URL gold rush I speculated that Mint would be one of the first companies to get their customized Facebook URL. And they were. You can now find them easily at www.facebook.com/mint. Yup, they beat the US Mint, the herb and Wrigley to the findable, SEO-friendly domain.
In addition, Mint’s Facebook admins have been diligent in integrating video and their other social media channels (i.e. Twitter) into the Facebook experience. They’ve also started to use Facebook as their de-facto HARO or Profnet service; allowing their PR and marketing team to track down users for stories that may fit a particular angle or be from a certain area. Anyone from Minn-e-sota?
Mint’s approach is not siloed within Facebook. Their aforementioned blog is extremely popular with more than 11,000 RSS subscribers. This visual-friendly post got 400 plus Digs.
It’s obvious that Aaron and his team understand the future of integrated marketing and are building a brand that has real staying power.
