There’s a reason that I want to train myself on social media and integrate a role as a community manager into my normal public relations duties. As more and more marketers profess the equal ground that social networks create between marketers and consumers, marketers have to redefine themselves.
Jeremiah Owyang questioned on a recent post how marketers could stay relevant.
Question: Many consumers loathe marketers, now consumers can bypass marketers with social media tools, the power has shifted to the participants, how do marketers stay relevant?
Answer: Marketers must participate, or let consumers participate on their behalf, it’s a new world.
The best way to participate is to become what is today defined as a community manager. Just like Larry Hryb became the face of Microsoft’s Xbox as Major Nelson and Frank O’Connor became a “Content Monkey” for Bungie, community managers have taken on the role of passing information to the community and letting the community do what they will.
This model works best with brands where a large fan base already exists on the Web. It’s not as strict and defined a communication as traditional public relations, but it is one that more consumers and fans appreciate.
Community managers produce original content and writing for the community rather than issuing press releases directly to the press. They overcome a greater challenge in establishing a relationship of trust with the consumers since they are affiliated directly with the company they represent, but those marketers that pass on a consistently honest message to the consumer reap the reward of developing a brand community out of their marketing efforts.
By bypassing the media, niche brands can also see rewards. Even though they may be too small for industry journalists to take note, they can develop a cult following through their own blogging and community development.
This passive marketing of the future puts the community managers on equal ground with consumers and allows them to interact and participate in a meaningful way. It will be the most effective marketing communication method of the future, so it would benefit every PR practitioner to integrate community management into normal PR functions in order to stay relevant.
TalentZoo.com featured a great set of 18 PR Tips for Startups from Brian Solis in a recent email. His tips feature a few pet peeves of mine about some people’s concept of public relations. Often, folks can doubt the power of PR.
2. Don’t undervalue PR.
PR, when done right, is extremely valuable to company branding, which has immeasurable benefits in the long haul. Customers have choices and if you’re not consistently vying for their attention, it’s pretty easy to fall off their radar screen when they evaluate options. Too many companies nickel and dime PR to the point of absurdity. Don’t get me wrong. Expensive PR doesn’t equal success. But short changing PR is usually a first step in the wrong direction.
As a general rule, PR should always be consistent because it does take time and maintained effort to establish relationships with the journalists that cover your business and find coverage opportunities. Solis does a great job expanding upon these two principles through all 18 tips–even enforcing how important it is for executives to meet regularly with their PR department and involve them early in decisions that can affect their messaging.
Marketing-savvy corporate executives are working with PR, Advertising, and Marcom teams to explore options and strategies on how to participate in relevant online conversations. This represents a shift in outbound marketing as it creates a direct channel between companies and customers, and ultimately people.
He even recommends my dream job within a company:
Hire a community manager. In the new world of social media, new PR can be complemented through the efforts of someone who can actively represent the company in all things social so that they can provide proactive information and support to people looking for guidance in the communities they frequent. Don’t market to them, have conversations.
Twitter has the hype. Competitors like Pownce are springing up to offer more, but it’s hard to beat a simple 140-character messaging service. It’s simple.
Marketers and public relations professionals have embraced the service and seen how useful it can be to connect with publics. Some analysts champion it as the best new opt-in direct marketing network.
For general users, Twitter is a great way to stay in touch with all your friends and broadcast what you are doing. Your messages can be met with no response or could start up a conversation–even while you are out if you forward your Twitter to a cell phone. Unlike a blog, you don’t control the conversation with comment moderation, and if you are on the public timeline, anyone can see what people are talking about.
The beauty of it is that you are always connected with one message sent, but if you are utilizing Twitter-like services in Facebook or competitors, it can difficult to keep the tool simple so that you can update all your networks at one central location.
Through doing some research on message boards and the Web, I found an easy way to link up your Facebook status, your Twitter updates and your Pownce updates. You could probably easily apply it to any other service you do as well.
Here are the steps to sync your Pownce updates with your Twitter updates:
First off, if you are going to link Pownce to Twitter, you need to set up an account at Twitterfeed.com. Twitterfeed provides a nice little service to sync RSS feeds into your Twitter updates. You can have Twitterfeed check for updates as often as every 30 minutes or just every 12 hours. The service uses OpenID, a handy universal login option that is becoming more popular online, so don’t hesitate to create one if you don’t have one already. WordPress.com logins even work as an OpenID.
Once you have an account at Twitterfeed, you can syndicate your Pownce updates through your public feed. Just login to Pownce and click on the link to your “public profile” in the bottom of the right sidebar. On the “Public Notes” header just above all your messages, you’ll see a tiny orange RSS symbol (orange square with three curved white lines inside) that you can click on to get the address of your public RSS feed.
Setup your Pownce feed as an input RSS feed for Twitterfeed and set it to update every 30 minutes. You can customize all the feed options however you wish to make it work for you.
Now, anything you post to Pownce will also be posted to Twitter–you don’t have to choose! Unfortunately, if you would prefer your Twitter updates to update to your Pownce so you can use a program like Twitteroo or Twitteriffic, you are in no luck until the Pownce loosens up a bit with their API. Pownce offers a nice software tool though.
I would suggest that if you run any blogs, you try out also feeding your RSS feeds from your blogs into Twitter on a more infrequent basis–like every 6 or 12 hours. Posting blogs to the Twitter public timeline can attract attention to a young site or start up conversation on the latest buzz topics. You can also make it easy for friends to see when you have posted an update. Just don’t post up so many that you make Scoble look like an absentee twitterer.
Now that your Twitter and Pownce are linked together, you may want to set up your Twitter to sync with your Facebook status so that you don’t have to login to Facebook or text Facebook directly to change it. This one is much easier.
Here are the steps to getting your Twitter updates with your Facebook status:
Set up your login information for Twitter inside TwitterSync and configure the options to fit your purpose. After that, you are good to go. TwitterSync lets you change the verb that comes before your status updates, and now, even adds a filter.
I talked to the developer of this app, Dustin Brewer, when I first started getting this sync working to suggest the addition of the filter for those of us who have blog RSS feeds going into Twitter. I didn’t want my blog posts syncing with my Facebook status since links don’t show up properly that way.
Dustin listened to my suggestion and added a filter in his latest release, so now you can filter out a specific word. Since I have three blogs feeding into Twitter, I use a little cheat by having the filter not sync any posts with “tinyurl” in them. Hopefully, I never post about tinyurl, but filtering just that word keeps any twits with links from Twitterfeed from updating your Facebook status and making it all messy. Only my all text, personal updates go up on Facebook. If you are using Twitterfeed to promote your blogs and share your posts, this solution should work for you too.
Now, since I have the Pownce software installed on my desktop, I can update Pownce right on my desktop and watch the same message sync with Twitter and Facebook in just a few minutes. Try it out for yourself, and keep it simple.
If you want to thank me for this post or just keep up with my latest, follow me on Twitter and send me a message.
It was found that when going after clients the rate of phone use drops by 30% for entrepreneurs in their 20’s compared to their counterparts in their 40’s.
Are we hiding behind our email or is it simply an evolution in the way our generation prefers to do business?
Growing up in a pure Internet social network, many young people getting out of college today probably consider it the norm to communicate through Web 2.0 tech and instant messages rather than an in-person meetings or phone calls. We all grew up socializing on instant messenger clients outside of our regular school day. We ran Xangas and blogs for our friends to keep up with our daily actions. We even got the benefit of Facebook and Twitter just before graduating, so that even when we were busy finishing up classes and getting a job, there was always a social network online for us.
Whether it is this upbringing or not, I realize in business that I prefer to email first and call later. In an email, I feel like I can fully introduce myself and establish a rapport without interrupting someone’s day or badgering them. Once intros are aside, I can move on to the phone.It would seem like our first instinct would be emailing others. In that way, I don’t fully rely on email as my only form of communication.
Does our Internet-first nature make us bad business people?
The study points out that face-to-face meetings are more successful in business and that email is slightly less effective–20 percent less–than these face-to-face meetings.
I don’t personally believe that preferring to communicate through email is that detrimental to business. In sales, one might argue that phone time is the best way to close a deal, but in other business functions, email can certainly be more productive because of the multitasking and less intrusive approach. Email has caught on the primary communication tool for business, so barring getting caught in the spam filter, I feel like it is the most effective way to communicate with business associates and clients throughout my day.
I can email seven people in the time it might take me to make one phone call, so by using email, I manage my time better and get more messages across to others. When a matter is urgent or a relationship is there, I can also jump on the line and use the phone.
If you are about to break into the world of business, think about your own use of email over the phone. If you are a completely email-centric person and use it as a crutch, you should make an effort to build up your skills on the phone. Even if you do think email is a more effective way of communicating–as I do–you have to keep in mind that your bosses and superiors will most likely be of the generation that prefers to go to the phones more often. They will want to see that you are able and willing to handle the phone side of business in addition to your tidy inbox.
I love ARGs–or alternate reality games–as a marketing tool. I personally find them fascinating when used effectively. Two of my recent favorites have been the ILoveBees campaign from 42 Entertainment for Microsoft’s Halo 2 release, and the “Ethan Haas was Right” mystery currently marketing J.J. Abrams’ new movie codenamed “Cloverfield” online. If you haven’t seen either one, read about ILoveBees and Ethan Haas was Right on Wikipedia.
Part of the reason they are even more successful these days is the socialization of the Web. With an online ARG, one person who becomes fascinated with the hooks and mystery of the game end up sharing links virally through social networks and outlets like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. The viral movement makes the scope of the campaign much larger than if you had to personally find and attract each person to the campaign.
The ARGs are also a great way to educate consumers and interest them in your product. The ILoveBees campaign leaked parts a side story of the Halo saga, and the Ethan Haas was Right campaign had a huge pull already because of the mystery surrounding J.J. Abrams new film and his background from Lost, the television series. ILoveBees ended up creating one of the largest media launches in history–until Halo 3 was released.
The Escapist highlighted an even more intricate campaign done by Lance Weiler to promote his film Head Trauma with a blog called Hope is Missing. The blog follows a storyline similar to the movie with the sole author logging his efforts to find the missing “Hope.” According to Weiler, with these types of games, the site feeds his creativity for the film and vice versa.
“They’re wild times right now in terms of storytelling,” says Weiler. “I’m approaching all my work in a new way – I’m creating a world. It’s not just enough to create a script anymore.”
The world is what end users and consumers cry out for these days.
The ARG isn’t Weiler’s first effort in the space. He experimented with promoting his films by integrating them with Web sites back in 1998 with his first film The Last Broadcast. His experience shows as he is smart enough to provide various levels of involvement for the passive observer or for the conspiracy theory junkie.
“Sometimes ARGs are dense and take a quite a bit of time to get into,” says Weiler. “With this we were doing media-integrated gameplay. You can enjoy it at multiple levels. You could dig as deep as you want, but you can just look at the web videos if you want. You don’t have to play the game.”
ARGs are one of my marketing passions, and while they take a great deal of effort and planning to execute, their effectiveness with the young, Internet generation has to be noted. Weiler is one of the bold few experimenting with ARGs and involving fans in the presentation of his films by interacting through cell phone text messages and remixing music and scenes live while the movie plays.
“We live in a remix culture, an on-demand culture,” says Weiler. “Media consumption is changing, and because of that media creation is changing. Everything now has become decentralized, controlled by the end user. When that happens it’s about discoverability. It’s all about empowering that user and finding ways to interact with them, and the language of that storytelling has changed.”
While Weiler focuses on the storytelling aspect of involving the fans in the ARG, the marketing aspect is visible in all parts of his site’s presentation.
ARGs can be as simple as a YouTube video or as complicated as a full-fledged puzzle site and email campaign like Ethan Haas was Right. In grassroots marketing, ARGs are cost-effective despite the effort required because of their large scope and conversational/viral value.
Be sure to consider an ARG next time you have a marketing story to tell, but make sure it’s properly introduced so as not to make a bad or scary first impression.
If your job depends on your ability to follow the “cool” or keep in touch with the latest obsessions–probably true of all entrepreneurs–then it would benefit you to follow new Web start ups. Two sites have emerged on the scene to spread the word on the latest trends.
Trend Hunter – Trend Hunters create portfolios, the best of which are published in online magazines
Chictini.com – The more digg-like phenom that let’s users vote on what hits the A-list
Trend Hunter creates a sort of competition between its hunters to see who can find the hottest new developments. Many of the top hunters are involved in the marketing/ad industry or journalists. KillerStartups.com–which isn’t a bad pulse on new business trends either–highlighted Trend Hunter, sourced in media quite often for its data collection on cool.
Trend Hunters add cool trends to their portfolios, and the site publishes the best stuff in over a dozen online magazines. These magazines generate 1.2 million views per month. They leverage this information and group the hottest trends into clusters of inspiration in the Annual Trend Report.
Chictini is more for the hipsters and social darlings who want to spread their choice selection to all their friends and fellow cool cats. In contrast to Trend Hunter, it seems to emphasize the trend posted more than the user who put it there. They integrate this social network with the digg-like voting system to create a community and society for trend hunting.
KillerStartups also posted on the many features of their site.
They want to show what’s hot before it even knows it’s hot. You can vote whether you think a posted item is “chic” or “weak”, and these votes determine whether the posted items make it to the A-list or the C-list. Unlike Digg, you can actually purchase items from the site. Chictini also has a social network set up where you can create a pretty detailed profile page. You can list all of the basic personal details, see the last ten posted items by that person, leave them comments, create a detailed bio, include contact info, and have people join your “clique.” You can even post a song to your profile.
Keep an eye on them both, and you just might land yourself a choice find in the world of trends or come up with that great idea that will make you millions.
Not to offend anyone who was caught in the crossfire of Wired’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson’s backlash recently, but one of the most important rules of media relations is knowing your target journalist and tailoring your message to their outlet/beat.
Anderson recently posted the email addresses of anyone who had emailed him as editor-in-chief rather than trying to find the correct beat writer or editor at Wired to contact. Many of the offenders had, unfortunately, purchased his email address from a list service of people to contact for their industry or freelance service–which is unfortunate considering his email is publicly available. It is horrible that list services charge just to compile a list for you.
It’s part of a growing problem in the industry that journalists are getting more and more mail since they don’t have what Godin describes as the “friction” of adding a stamp. An email is free to send and requires no commitment other than one click of the Send button, so spammers and ill-advised public relations professionals can send hundreds of emails and find themselves on the naughty list of many an editor.
The moral of the story: Don’t be lazy!
While Chris Anderson certainly went a little extreme by posting the email addresses and may have puzzled many PR professionals while being championed by journalists, the easiest way to avoid getting on anyone’s bad side is to do your homework and develop your own mailing lists from scratch.
Having a personal relationship is the best way to have any sort of profitable connection with a journalist. Even if your first email message is just an introduction about your company/business and a request to keep them in the loop, that is a better email to send their way than including them in a blanket pitch that may or may not be directed to the right person. Irresponsibility damages the relationship journalists have with public relations professionals–and hurts public relations as an industry.
If you can avoid it, try not to send out anything besides a press release update to a mass mailing list. Personal emails make a much better impression and can be tailored for each individual outlet and journalist based on your relationship. The most successful PR professionals are able to use their relationships and connection with journalists to keep them informed–no spin required.
Keep that in mind when you are starting up a new business or developing a new media list for a client. Doing your homework pays off far greater than trying to contact as many journalists as possible with little personal touch.
