Hello, my friends!
So I just watched a webinar where the speakers discussed emerging trends in the PR world and how to better engage your target audience. I took some notes, so please see below if you would like to read through them in your free time.
Please view the webinar here first before reading my notes below. Or you may use my notes to follow along if that helps more. Enjoy!
Speakers:
- Heidi Sullivan, SVP of Digital Content at Cision
- Scott Livingston, SVP of Product Marketing at Cision
Integrated communication really means your campaign should be reflective of all the channels you have available to you.
- Not creating a piece of content and distributing it out on 15 channels simultaneously
- But consistent in the approach and evaluation of each channel
We used to live in a world where there was a clearly defined line between PR and marketing. Now, a lot of companies blend the roles of earned and paid media.
Converged Media Workflow
content strategy –> publication across channels –> engagement –> amplification –> restructuring (paid, earned, owned) –> periodic strategic analysis and reporting
*real-time measurement
PR needs a makeover!
- You can’t have an audience without people.
- We can’t have effective marketing if you can’t reach those people.
Media used to be our “silver bullet,” but now, there is no more silver bullet.
e.g. PR specialists would say, “If I could just get mentioned on FOX news or get covered in Vogue, then I’ll be able to reach my audience. But now, audiences have been fractured. They are interacting with media in new ways, and there is not one, single place that they go.
News today is customized, aggregated and in real-time.
Is your content reaching your intended audience?
- Instead of finding our target audience, we need to figure out how to be where they live.
- Google increased the importance of original content when they determine how you appear in Search.
- SEO optimized, etc.
- It’s no longer about jamming key words into your content; it’s about having great, original content.
- “If the news is that important, it will find me.”
Social is changing how people value and engage with brands. Specifically when it comes to purchase decisions.
e.g. People are more influenced by online reviews and others who they think are similar to themselves rather than the actual brands.
Amplification.
- To increase the strength or amount of; to make louder (Merriam-Webster)
- Social media can increase your shares from 100 to 1,000
- Telling your story
- What’s going to resonate with your target audience
- What actions you want them to take
- What are the right hooks (humor, emotional, etc.) to embed in your story
Why influencers?
1% of any population will be active content creators
9% will be participants
90% will simply consume that content online
-Rohit Bhargava, Influential Marketing Blog
Don’t focus on that 1%, but the 10% of people are actively participating in the conversation.
Do influencers start trends?
*The Hush Puppy Concept
-The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
-theorizes that products “go viral” by a small, specific group of influencers with “social gifts”
*Duncan Watts’ Online Music Download Study
-theorizes that people are influenced by the way marketing presents the information
Who is right? Both.
-trends still begin with a small few and are spread by those with connections
-influencers can change over time – anyone can become an influencer
-however, general rule of thumb is that influencers tend to talk to each other
To identify influencers, we need to identify our “tribe.”
- Awareness –> consideration –> intent –> decision
Metrics.
- Cost-center metrics: focus on a department and how much it spends to achieve its objective
- Cost centers are meant to be managed and reduced
- Easy numbers to count (likes, shares, etc.)
- Profit-center metrics: the contribution that department makes to a brand or to an overall organization
- Provide better investment and opportunity
- More complex: understand the impact that each of your campaigns has to the business’ top and bottom line
- Focus on awareness and action
- How did you activate your community on behalf of the brand and what happened as a result
- Have a profit-center perspective rather than a cost-center perspective
Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks for reading! 🙂