As the world’s tech nerds prepare for geek Spring Break, aka South by Southwest, I wanted to take a moment and share how I think somebody in the world of integrated communications can make the most of this experience.
All you need is a bit of love at SXSW.
For those of you who don’t know, #SXSW (aka “southby” for the really cool kids) is when 5,000 12,000 20,000 a lot of the world’s developers, social media gurus and marketing types invade Austin, Texas, for a week of insightful, thought provoking conference sessions parties. I’ve been to three of the last four, and I am equally thankful and remiss I won’t be there this year. I’m missing out on groundbreaking tech and emerging digital trends. But thankfully, I realize that I don’t need to be on the ground to make an impact.
Talking Story
The best part of SXSW is the people. Hands down. This is the “can’t miss” event of the tech world, and it’s an opportunity to see those Twitter friends who are usually nothing more than a scrolling avatar. In the Hawaiian culture, “talking story” is simply sitting with a good friend in the sunshine and talking for hours. And SXSW is no exception. Some of the best moments I’ve had have been while talking story or roaming the halls.
Telling Story
What’s a social media conference without the ability to create terabytes of photos, videos, podcasts, vlogs, blogs, tweets and text messages? SXSW is no different. The important thing here is to find somebody who has a story and help them tell it. Entrepreneurs, hackers, PR flacks, we all have a story to tell. Pull out the camera and help the next big thing tell its story.
The Human Story
I wrote a post in 2009 that was essentially about being human at SXSW. And the principles are the same. Just be a human. We all have a pitch. I’m a PR guy, the person next to me is the co-founder of a location-aware geo-tagging service that will add a social layer to RSS streams of daily deals. The point is, at the end of the day, we’re all human. Don’t be afraid to let your guard down and interact with the person next to you.
Your Brand’s Story
OK, we’re here to make money, right? Finding a new app to partner with or invest in; seeking a new reader base for your emerging blog even. It’s OK to pimp your brand at SXSW. Everybody expects to hear your pitch and get your business card, so have your brand’s story down. Have your twit-pitch down to a science and be ready for the comparisons — ”So, it’s like the MySpace of Groupons?”
At the end of the day, SXSW is an adventure, one you must prepare for and one you must be ready to conquer. But the best part about it is the stories you can tell before, during and after the event. Let’s hear your stories in the comments.
Thank you to @Krystyl from mylovetravels.com for the great photo from last year.
Across the globe, Social Media Week brought out the best and brightest thinkers in social communications to network, exchange ideas and brag about cool executions. Here is Asia, it was no different and agency teammates in our Singapore and Hong Kong offices turned on their out of office auto replies and hit the panels, sessions, conferences and, yes, parties. While there is no single social media APAC trend – every country is different with its own opportunities and challenge – it is safe to say the flash-flood-like adoption rate here in Asia has been phenomenal. Driven by smartphone usage and a surging youth population, social media saturation rates – especially Facebook in Indonesia and Weibo in China – are amongst the highest in the world.
From a marketing standpoint, we at Waggener Edstrom have seen continued interest from our clients across all verticals and sectors in utilizing social media in connecting with their customers. While this sounds like probably the most obvious statement in the history of marketing, the difference is that they are no longer asking the “why” questions and are rather asking the “how” questions. This tells me that social marketing here in APAC has moved out of the novelty phase in the mind of even the most conservative of companies, and marketers want to understand how to drive efficiencies, how to set up the internal processes that will ensure the right level of engagement with customers & influencers, and that social media is accruing up to bigger marketing KPIs than just the measurement of friends or likes. We call this process the Social Influence System.
Along those lines, one of the themes that I thought was most prescient at Social Media Week, was the need to conceptualize the digital brand journey for the customer. At Cloud View’s presentation at the Singapore SMW, the concept of Design Thinking was a nice philosophical counterpoint to our Social Influence System of creating scalable processes out of the potential chaos of social media. In Design Thinking, the marketer analyses three different, yet related factors when developing his strategy: the human or desirable (creating an experience that is personally relevant and has a demand); the business or viable (how business opportunities or limitations affect the desirable); and the technology or feasible (what ways the idea can be executed to have most impact).
If one of the pillars is ignored, the entire experience suffers. The key here is a deep understanding of what the drivers and preferences of a customer are, that will get them to follow through on a call to action—persona modeling, media consumption studies and audience research becomes as important to social media as it is to above-the-line marketing. With that in mind, there is a maturation of the content-is-king theme to focus more on context. The right content for the right audience on the right platforms driving the right outcomes.
At the end, the key continues to be one of the basic pillars of marketing – BE RELEVANT, which means being relevant not only in WHAT we say but also WHEN and WHERE.
You can watch a replay of the panel here.
Image: Tuppus
Subtitle: What I learned at BlogWorld L.A.
Write it. Just hit publish.
Those were my closing thoughts during a workshop I gave on how to utilize the real-time Web for better storytelling. We get so distracted by processes, editing, review cycles and proper tone that we miss the boat. We miss an opportunity to tell a story when telling that story is most vital.
Being able to tell a story is more than the words you use. Sometimes, just writing from the heart is the best way to ensure that people listen to your story. There’s no strategy that enables you to tell a story. While at BlogWorld & New Media Expo, I had a fair number of informative and enlightening experiences.
I got to meet Cloris Leachman. Thanks to Amber Osborne, aka @MissDestructo, for taking this great picture.
I got to attend my first-ever Kings game. Here’s the view from my seats at the game. Thanks to Brian at shareasale.com for these tickets!
And I even got to learn something along the way. The main thing I learned is that at the end of the day, the stories we get to tell are just content. Creating content is fun. Being able to start a new email or a new blog post or a new tweet is fun. Getting to tell stories for a living is amazing. If you happen to be able to make money from the stories you tell, that’s even better.
My workshop focused on how to create a strategy and utilize the technology available to tell better stories faster. While I was telling my aunt (who happens to be a newspaper publisher) about this, she asked me “How is this different from journalism?” Without hesitation I smiled to myself and said “it’s not.” My background is in reporting, so telling a story, quickly, is a skill I’ve been able to make work for me.
It’s just content
At our hearts, we are all storytellers. We want to connect our clients and business groups with customers, reporters and shoppers (they’re all “influencers”), and we want to do it with soul and passion and adept skill. As communications professionals, there is nothing more fun than telling a great story.
I was surrounded by food bloggers, mommy bloggers, tech bloggers and even bloggers who blog about blogging. All of them, though, are storytellers creating content. As communications professionals, we tell stories. We work with clients to create messaging and compel people to act. There are countless pieces of research on how to appeal to emotions and how to optimize for search. You can A/B test your headlines. You can put a picture above the fold or you can add a video.
But at the end of the day, your story is just content.
At BlogWorld, CC Chapman shared the story of a site created by the U.S. Army to tell the stories of soldiers on the front lines and returning from home. Go spend a few minutes reading their stories.
These are human stories told without editors and without a content calendar or SEO in mind. Whole platoons can write from the front line in Afghanistan. No filters or editors at all. And the Army is adamant about the blog having a human voice. If the U.S. Army can speak human, you can too.
Measure twice, cut once
The old carpenter’s adage seemed to ring true here as well. Being able to prove your mettle was an underlying trend at BlogWorld. From back-channel debates on what constitutes science to super smart people like Tom Webster presenting enough stats to melt your mind, the emphasis on measurement and analytics was clear. Here at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, we place an emphasis on measuring actionable metrics and using them to influence the decisions you make.
Having the tracking systems in place that show both where traffic goes and whether the goals you have in place are accomplished is vital to the continued success of your content strategy. Content and storytelling doesn’t have to be all for profit. Telling stories and communicating with an audience is great in and of itself. Being able to track performance and metrics, you can create actionable plans for future content strategies.
Products such as Ripple Effect and Narrative Network® make deciphering the streams of information easier. It’s up to you how you want to act on it.
There’s perpetual discussion about the ROI of social media. The person that tries to claim that social media doesn’t have an ROI is seriously flawed. If you can’t track, test or convert on the content you’re creating, you need to rethink your strategy. Everything has a metric. ROI means being able to track the outs of what you’re putting in. It may not have a dollar sign in front of it, but it does have action.
So, just publish. Just tell a story. Just remember to tell the story you want to tell and tell it the best you can.
OK, so you have written the perfect press release, now what? Chances are you are going to post it to a newsroom online somewhere, and send it for wire distribution. So how can you ensure you are getting the most exposure to your press release? Optimize it for search of course! By posting your press release to the wire, distribution services such as PR Newswire, PRWeb and Business Wire will post your press release to their websites and distribution networks. In turn, online news sources such as wsj.com, nytimes.com and news.yahoo.com will scour these websites for content to post to their newsrooms. Finally, search engines will scour these sites looking for relevant content to add to their search engine results pages (SERPs).
All these websites and newsrooms are potential readers of your news, so it only makes sense to optimize your press releases for search. Here are a few best practices you can follow to set your press release up for success.
Step 1: Determine your keywords
The first step in optimizing for search is determining what keywords and phrases you want to optimize your release for. Try to determine two or three phrases to keep focused. For example, if your press release is talking about the launch of the XYZ Phone from 123 Corp., then I think it is pretty clear what your phrases should be: XYZ Phone, and 123 Corp. Sometimes it can be a little tricky to determine what key phrases to go for, but there are lots on online resources out there — Wordtracker being one of my favorites.
Step 2: Write a clear and concise headline
Probably the most critical thing for optimizing your press release is having a well-written headline. Headlines are set off with the use of heading tags like <h1> and <h3> for example, so search engines can quickly spot them in the HTML code. Also headlines are often used in the Titles and URLs of webpages, greatly boosting chances for high rankings for those keyphrases. So after you determine what key phrases you are optimizing your press release for, make sure at least one of those phrases is in your headline.
Keep your headline short and to the point while you are at it. Search engines look at the keywords and the keyword density of your headline to determine what your press release is about and how important it is. So a headline with your key phrase along with six other words will have a higher keyword density then a headline with your key phrase and 20 other words. The higher the keyword density, the better.
Step 3: Use key phrases in your subheadline
OK, so using the examples above, you determined your main key phrase is XYZ Phone, and added that to your title, good work. So now, what about the other key phrase, 123 Corp.? Add it to your subheadline if possible. Use the same rules as writing your headline, keeping things clear and concise.
Step 4: Use bolding, italics and hyperlinking to your advantage
In the body of your press release, help search engines understand what phrases are important to readers by bolding and italicizing these words where it makes sense. Also hyperlinking these words is a good practice. For example, a hyperlink to a corporate website from the mention of the product makes logical sense, like so:
Today 123 corp announced the XYZ Phone which has a 12 inch screen, and reads your mind.
Step 5: Don’t be spammy
So with all this, keep in mind that more is not always better. Avoid the temptation to add your favorite key phrase to the headline of your press release three times, because if once is good then three times must be better. It’s not, and the search engines are smarter than that.
Yeah I hear you there are a million rules for search engine optimization, but keep these 5 steps in mind and you should be on the path to success. Your main focus should be to create strong content that has a clear and concise message. If you do so, search engines will respond and the visitors will follow.
We’ve all seen them in blogs, but besides the cool design they create, what are tag clouds good for? In my time here at WE Studio D I have developed a number of blogs for clients, and with each one it seems like I hear a new theory on what tag clouds are for.
It’s for SEO
Probably the most popular answer I hear is that the tag cloud is some sort of magic tool to help you reach top rankings in search for the terms you list in the tag cloud. Consequently, people litter their blog posts with dozens of tags, some barely having anything to do with the blog post topic.
While the tag cloud will not hurt your SEO campaign, it is by no means going to be the answer to your SEO dreams. Getting top rankings for specific search terms in your blog is more about how those terms are used in the content of your blog post, linking strategy, etc. That is a whole other post in itself … I am getting off topic here.
It’s for the Trippy Design
Yeah, the tag clouds look pretty sweet when there is a lot of content in your blog and you have used the tags appropriately. In most tag clouds, tags used often are large in font size, while not-so-often-used tags are in a smaller font size. It’s fun to see the pattern it creates, but there is another reason for the tag cloud.
User Experience
Ultimately, the tag cloud is a way for your blog’s readers to visualize the content of your blog. In addition, it gives another way for readers to navigate to the content they want to read more about by clicking on the tag that interests them.
So the moral of the story is, only use tags on your blog posts that are relevant to the specific post you are writing. If you are worried about traffic and getting more visitors to your blog, just work on creating good content your readers care about. Trust me, your readers will thank you, and the visits will come.
Photo courtesy of daniel_iverson.
There’s a pretty pervasive meme in the market: the concept of targeted content. By this I mean creating content that is only relevant to a niche audience, as opposed to everyone. Content is a critical part of the product experience. The challenge often with consumer brands is that the audience is “everyone.” From a brand perspective, how do we create a brand narrative that has at its core the concept of appealing to everyone? Do you? Should you? What’s the path to targeted content, and is it for everyone?
In reality, most consumer brands get more specific about both audience and content strategy in linking content and experience to an aspirational brand story. Here’s some basic components to getting product content and experience right.
1. Create the aspirational story about the brand. Take a brand such as LivingSocial. You get great local experiences using social technologies at a deep discount. The nugget? There’s a real sense that you benefit a community of like-minded friends, family and local businesses by using the product — especially during a recession. There’s the aspirational aspect of their brand.
2. Ensure the primary audience and that brand story fit. At first glance, you might think the product is for everyone. But online, the most pervasive coupon-clipping, save-a-few-bucks sort of consumers tend to be women. If you just captured urban women aged 25-40, you’d have a huge demographic, and it would allow you to focus content — and offers — on reaching that audience. Having already taken advantage of social couponing products, such as Groupon and LivingSocial, I can tell you, the word-of-mouth (WOM) pass-alongs have — for the most part — been from women friends. If you look at LivingSocial’s press, and step outside the business, venture press, the press highlights are Woman’s World, InStyle and others. There’s your target.
3. Creating secondary audience personas that are a good match to the brand story. Think about who is most likely to share and create WOM around your aspirational story. Not only did many WOM pass-alongs for local deals come from women, they came from moms. And many entertainment-starved moms (um, like me) are looking for a great deal to offset the babysitter on a date night. The deals tend to have great photography and enticing lead-in copy. In the last six months, six local offers on my friends’ Facebook posts specifically said, “there’s a LivingSocial Deal from this merchant! Cool!” But the other secondary local audience I saw pass-alongs from? My geeky early-adopter guy friends — specifically, they shared the two movie tickets for $9 Fandango offer. LivingSocial’s benefit to both audiences: If they get three other friends to buy using their unique share URL from Facebook, their tickets are free. Who doesn’t like free?
4. Ensure the brand experience keeps that aspirational story. Once you’ve captured that audience’s attention and made it easy to use and share WOM, what continues to makes the product draw you back in? For LivingSocial, offers tend to be intentionally tailored to experiences you want but don’t need: Hawaiian spa packages, massage + facial, wine tastings, restaurants, yoga, but not tire rotations or tax preparations. It a word — nummy. The brand is the experience, and lining up business offers that validate that brand is critical, especially early on in building an audience. Once they capture that demographic there’s a good chance to diversify. There are several business models out there that have done so. DailyCandy for example, has content centered on fashion, travel, home and garden, food, and drink. But they started with getting fashion right. That’s tailored content.
For LivingSocial, tailored local deals with enticing content, and rewarded sharable features make it easy — remarkably easy, as in “Did I just spend $50 on LivingSocial last month?” easy.
This week marks some great new enhancements to WE’s product Ripple Effect. The challenge, as with many products, is taking product messaging out of the “our product gives you feature blah, blah.. and oh yeah…blah“ — and translates that into something of business value.
This challenge is probably also shared by Intel. Take microprocessors — what takeaway to you get from a product announcement for a 22nm 3D Ivy Bridge processor? For us non-IEEE mortals, that chip means better performance and battery life than anything out there — allowing about twice as many transistors to be crammed into the same space as current 32nm chips. That’s got some tech types (and stock market analysts) VERY excited — especially as there’s demand on mobile, tablet and other devices to do more in less space and with less power.
Our Ripple Effect product shows which influencers or online publications had the biggest, most positive and longest lasting impact on a specific campaign, launch or announcement — say… the Intel 22 3D processor announcement last week.
The two views above show online linking and Twitter activity for the Intel announcement. In summary, the 25 websites and outlets covering the event produced 34 original posts, generated 570 comments. The subsequent ripple through social media included 204 links to the original posts from blogs and other online sources, and 2,906 tweets pointing to the original posts. That’s some pretty significant engagement!
What’s interesting is how much sites like Engadget, Ars Technica and the BBC were able to engage their audience. These three sites alone produced 68 percent or more of links and Twitter activity, and 91 percent of comments. In summary — these online publications had a significant Ripple Effect.
Daniel Stein, from San Francisco digital creative agency EVB, authored a post today with the provocative headline “PR Agencies Are Ruining Facebook.”
Compelling content?
Not surprisingly, this caught our eye.
But beyond that controversial headline (always the best kind), Mr. Stein makes excellent points about the quality of content that public relations has traditionally created and how we need to stretch our creative abilities for the new audiences that we are reaching through social media. It’s true that PR has traditionally created content for the media to consume, interpret and adapt, and that kind of content doesn’t resonate on social media and certainly doesn’t usually invite engagement.
Of course, PR has a deep history of fostering engagement, in tandem with content, when dealing with the media. And PR has historically been close to the leaders at the core of brands and organizations, which gives us an edge in developing the most authentic and credible messaging, as compared to other communications disciplines.
It’s true that the advertising discipline has been able to flex its creative muscles around content for a longer time. But we are closing the gap, as evidenced by the beautiful and engaging site WE Studio D designed for the Sasquatch! Music Festival.
And when we are talking about compelling content that fosters engagement, infographics are increasingly powerful, and PR has an edge on advertising because it’s accustomed to taking complicated news and information and making them digestible.
Finally, while content is key, the other half of success in social media is having a long-term, relationship-building strategy, again something PR has deeper skills in than the other communications disciplines.
So, Mr. Stein is right that PR needs to up its game in creating content that entertains, answers questions, intrigues audiences on social media and, ultimately, fosters engagement. We are adding more of the “pixie dust” of creativity he references, along with our deep understanding of how to make that compelling content drive influence and engagement.
Infographics are suddenly everywhere. As brands and organizations look for new and creative ways to tell their stories, infographics have emerged as a popular, powerful tool for communicating challenging concepts and presenting information in a compelling way. Timely infographics can help clarify or drive important news stories, and evergreen infographics can extend the online life of your story far out into the future. With more and more infographics being released into the wild every day, the following tips can help yours stand out above the crowd.
Lead with data
It’s tempting to think about design first, data later. But an infographic is just a visual vehicle for telling an interesting data story. Focus on refining your data and ensuring that it tells a clear story first, and then follow with design. Verify each stat that you include, and ask yourself if the stats combine to tell the story you think you’re telling. A mix of data sources can help deliver a more neutral infographic.
Lead with the right data
In a rush to get infographics out the door, publishers are not always building their graphics on a solid statistical foundation. Carefully examine your sources and consider the implications of the data — what people, groups or organizations might be affected by what you publish? Casting your own skeptical eye toward your stats before you create your infographic can save some headaches (or worse, the spreading of misinformation) down the road. The Next Web has an example of what can go wrong if you don’t pay sufficient attention to your data.
Dial back the marketing and branding
Subtly branded infographics will have more traction with bloggers and publications than ones that look like a full page advertisement for your brand or product. Consider approaching a publication to partner on creating an infographic; they’ll know what’s most interesting to their readers and may be able to provide new insights into the data.
Just the tip of the iceberg
If your data is interesting (and if you’re creating an infographic around it, hopefully it is!), let your mind wander beyond the graphic — chances are there’s an opportunity to develop a full story package. Think about how you can extend the reach of your infographic with story placements and other digital content. Amplify via social media channels, blogs, websites and owned platforms — even a well-placed search ad can be highly effective.
What do you think makes for a great infographic? Share your tips and favorites in the comments.
Images by westudio.
Build a digital newsroom
In recent days, I’ve had a burst of posts on how organizations can become media outlets, creating a well-rounded body of content to make an organization more appealing and maximizing owned digital properties.
We are particularly passionate about the strategy of creating a digital newsroom to help organizations address all of these ideas. The digital newsroom becomes the hub of content that flows out to social media and draws in the best curated content about your brand or organization.
Now, we’ve created a list of seven tips that you can follow to create a real-time content creation and publishing engine.
Let us know if you find these useful or if you have some additional ideas that can help organizations adapt and adjust to the new communications landscape.
