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PR News Online | Page 22

Check-in, Please!

19 April 2010
by Philippe Caillet
Tags: apps, communication, community, localisation, location-based, mobile, PR, Services, Social Media

Lately we’ve seen the emergence of a new kind of social media: localisation services such as FourSquare, Gowalla, Plyce or Veniu, as well as mash-ups like TellMeWhere. Most are based on the model whereby people share their locality among their network of friends and possibly include some (hopefully) positive recommendations about the place they’re visiting – perhaps a restaurant, a store, etc…

Firstly, this underlines the evolution of social media: the more you go, the more you share with your community of friends. Once these sites reach critical mass, imagine how easy it will be to know where your friends are on a Saturday night, instead of spending half the evening trying to reach their mobile (also bear in mind they may not want to share their beer with you!)

Secondly, you can see tremendous opportunity for marketing and communications when these tools are used smartly. Imagine a club rewarding the “mayor” of the day (or, more accurately, night) with some free beverages, or a store giving extra discount to the first five “checkers” each day. The applications are endless. And in terms of PR, we already have a few ideas in mind.

Watch this space…

Monitoring solutions – When will it stop?

23 March 2010
by Sophie Goodwin
Tags: brand exposure, monitoring, online engagement, PR, Social Media, social media consolidation, social media monitoring, social media tools, social media wiki, tips traffic, wikipedia

Over the last couple of years, I have seen a plethora of bold new social media monitoring solutions promising to cut through the unstructured chaos of online conversations. 

Are we ever going to see a consolidation?  Only yesterday I came across a wiki, providing me with a list of 130 solutions, I just wonder how many will still be running in 6 months…?

Social media cheat sheet?

8 March 2010
by Claire Walker
Tags: brand exposure, CMO, customer communications, media, SEO, social, social landscape, tips, traffic

Of course we don’t condone cheating but this isn’t really cheating! The CMO’s guide to: the Social landscape, is an easily digestible summary of major social media, created by Drew McLellan

Good for collecting top line thoughts to jump start your thinking, this sheet serves as a comparison between various sites and the positive effects that the incorporation of these tactics could have on your overall strategy.

It comprises a dissection of ‘Customer comms’, ‘Brand exposure’, Traffic to site’, and ‘SEO’ and which of these sites are ‘good’, ‘ok’, or ‘bad’ for each of these disciplines.

Click here to view the Social media cheat sheet

The Social Media Landscape

Social media, proof of the pudding

3 February 2010
by Sophie Goodwin
Tags: eCairn, Google Analytics, Omgili, online engagement, PR, Radian6, Social Media, social media tools, Technorati

Proof and measurement of online engagement is critical, especially if we as PRs are to get our clients as enthused in social media activities as we would like. While we must measure engagement, reputation and sentiment, being naturally pre-occupied with outcome-based results businesses also need tangible proof, such as number of downloads, comments, click-throughs, enquiries etc to provide that halfway stage between campaigns and direct sales.

There are hundreds of tools available that can prove sentiment and engagement, some free and some paid for – some are rubbish and some are pretty good. Radian6 is expensive, but provides the most comprehensive measurement reports in a really simple format. eCairn is arguably the best, but is fairly raw in format and the reporting function is not as ‘glossy’ and easily digestible as Radian6.

Then you have the free tools. Most do the same job as the paid-for tools, but you just need to spend more time digesting the information and putting it into digestable and meaningful format. We find a combination of Google Analytics (including blog and site search), Technorati and Omgili is sufficient much of the time.

Social media measurement tools do come with a health warning – not one tool is really able to provide a truly accurate view of positive or negative sentiment (although several sites claim to do this), so you really must have human intervention. The sentiment reporting function should really be used as a good initial guide for any red flags, but you then need humans to research buzz properly to verify positive/negative sentiment.

Of course, while proving sentiment and maintaining reputation is a start, converting it to direct output is quite another.

What adland can teach agency PROs?

2 February 2010
by Claire Walker
Tags: Adland, Advertising, Claire Walker, client handling, COI, Mark Lund, media, PR

Oh how PRs love to have a bash at the advertising industry! Truth is we’re in this together…whilst on the PR side, earned media is highly influential, there is and will always be a place for bought media as well.

Now this blog caught my eye this morning. Dan Shute interviews Mark Lund, the grande fromage at the COI. Everything he says about the suits in advertising applies completely and utterly to agency PROs as well. Take note, this is a classy training course in client handling, from the comfort of your desk.