PR needs to re-establish itself. All too often it’s undervalued as a tool in a company’s arsenal. But you know it’s essential, because it builds your brand, generates trust, and ultimately drives revenue.
So how can you prove it?
Serena Ehrlich, Director of Social and Evolving Media for Business Wire, is going to share with us exactly how to MONITOR, MEASURE, EVALUATE, and EVOLVE, so you can fearlessly execute your communications strategy.
In this on-demand webinar, you’ll learn: simple ways to get your story noticed, why data is your friend, and how to choose the metrics that matter most.
Find out how to monitor coverage, measure impact, and evaluate findings, so you can evolve as a communicator and re-establish the influence of PR.
Webinar Transcript:
hi everyone
Richard thank you so much I am so
excited to be here as Richard said I’m
Sarina Ehrlich the director of social
and evolving media at Business Wire and
if you’ve not heard me speak before one
of the things you should know about me
one of the biggest issues I have with
the PR industry there we there we go is
that PR pros are just not paid enough
not only our PR pros not paid enough
their budgets are smaller than their
marketing counterparts this is
ridiculous every other year Nielsen does
a trust in advertising study and every
other year this study shows that
editorial coverage is trusted at a rate
of 67 or 66% this is huge
this is much higher than trust in brand
created content and it gets better when
that article is shared by a third party
as you can see on the screen the trust
in that piece jumps to 83 percent when
you look at this data you can see that
it’s actually the work that PR pros are
doing that’s building trust between the
company’s key audiences and the company
themselves it’s the PR coverage that
you’re generating that’s actually moving
people in and through your sales and
marketing funnels so why aren’t PR pros
paid as much as their marketing
counterparts it’s because PR pros do not
use data and marketers do every PR
program you initiate today generates
data that you can use to align your PR
programming closer to your company’s
business goals you’re generating
engagement that impacts every part of
your sales and marketing funnel you’re
just not tracking it you need to start
using the data you’re generating to
align your PR programs more closely to
your company’s business goals in this
presentation we’re going to show you how
so before we get started
it’s really key to note that we have to
acknowledge that technology has changed
and with that so have today’s consumers
today’s mobile phones are in fact mobile
computers I think I just said so our
today’s consume computers consumers have
changed today’s mobile phones are in
fact mobile computers they are the first
things people look at when they wake up
and the last thing they see before they
go to sleep mobile phones have put the
power of search and research in
everyone’s pockets allowing people to
research anything they’d like any where
they are at any time of day age 37 these
people those born around 1980 are the
first generation of decision making
consumers who had access to a computer
growing up I did not I am older than
that I had a set of 1979 encyclopedias
that were at my grandmother’s house when
I wanted to know something I would
either have to ask a question and
believe the answer that was given to me
or I would physically have to go to a
library or go to my grandmother’s house
just to get that information but people
today the people who are born after 1980
they’ve always had access to a computer
and therefore they were born and raised
with the innate ability to research out
anything that they’d want to know this
audience you should know is now the
primary decision makers both in b2b and
b2c this generation is extremely
comfortable with using search to find
information or to help them make
decisions this expertise in search has
directly impacted your buying cycle it
used to take seven touches to make a
sale in the 90s today it takes over 20
touches to make a sale this generation
of buyers is not only comfortable with
research they also like to share content
that they find interesting they are
active participants in the news
discovery and share cycle they enjoy
sharing what they find the other thing
to know about this audience is extremely
important for
pyaare people that marketers have
already know and marketers are already
utilizing but PR pros are not is that
this audience is highly visual they are
just as comfortable speaking in words as
they are in imagery or emojis they do
not rely solely on the text of what
you’ve written when they’re making
choices this is the new decision-making
process for today whether you’re selling
a b2b idea or if you’re selling a
product that can be purchased it for the
house but today’s consumers are not the
only ones who’ve changed it is not a
surprise to anybody on this call but
journalism has changed as well today’s
reporters are expected to create more
content than ever before but they have
fewer resources to work with 58% of
reporters in the business wires most
recent survey so that they are creating
more than 6 pieces of news content per
week and instead of simply researching
and writing today’s reporters are now
responsible for writing editing
fact-checking designing and publishing
their news stories and they’re being
buried in email pitches at a rate of 25
or more pitches per day this means is
that as much as journalists are starving
for subject material you have to stand
out to get their attention you have to
write a stronger news release you have
to have a much better headline you have
to have multimedia assets and then you
have to promote the coverage piece you
secure to help it garner the attention
it deserves and this last part is really
huge
journalists their success today is
defined by views not quality of content
but viewership of their articles if you
can supercharge a story in which you’re
mentioned driving views into that story
the journalists will thank you by
covering you again and again if you do
not drive use to your story if no one
reads the editorial coverage that you
secured that reporter will not only not
write again they may not speak to you
again but Before we jump into data I
want to make note a few more changes
some big changes I’ve been passed to the
PR industry so first is how search
results index news releases and news
coverage search is a huge part of the
news process why because when consumers
are looking for something the first
place they turn to is a search engine
users go here with the intent of finding
a piece of content that’s going to
support a decision or a thought process
that they’ve already in started this is
why it’s extremely important for your
news to be found in search because
that’s where decision makers are going
to find the information they need to
support or refute an idea that they have
the great news is Google knows this and
because of this they put news releases
in editorial coverage at the top of
search this is fantastic for everybody
on this call here’s how it works to be
an effective search engine Google
watches how people utilize their
platform and they change their
algorithms based on these changing
behaviors right now when people are
searching for a company or
organizational news they search Google
for the company name and a handful of
search terms Google will then bring up
the company’s website the company’s
social channels and their most recent
news release and/or coverage pieces
Google services these pieces of content
because they know that’s what the reader
wants to see when they’re making a
decision about a product or service so
every time you issue a news release or
secure a piece of editorial coverage it
appears at the top of search but are you
taking credit for this placement we know
we can’t control Google but we should
absolutely be taking credit for this
while we can take screenshots to
showcase your placement of your results
within search but one quick note just
because news releases are at the top of
search it does not mean they have
traditional SEO news releases do not
provide link building juice all revealed
reputable news wires add nofollow tags
to links in news releases to ensure
our clients do not get dinged with a
duplicate content penalty from from
Google but that said we have to remember
news releases have searched wait they
and the coverage you secure will appear
at the top of search for a limited time
so to maximize this you want to put your
most valuable terms in the first five to
seven words of your headline and I’ll
talk more about how to do this shortly
these terms will become your URL string
and when typed these words are typed
into search they will insist your news
coming up quickly and near the top of
search but the other thing that’s
changed another massive impact on PR is
the role of social in the PR process if
search engines are where people go to
find specific information social
networks are where news discovery occurs
the most interesting thing about social
media channels is that their rules
completely by algorithms this means that
the platform decides how much visibility
your branded update will get if this is
why it is so important for you to share
out your company’s news releases and
coverage pieces across your social
channels every time you place an update
into the network you’re giving your fans
a chance to see it and to reshare it
across their own channels this is huge
huge why
because social shares decrease the
impact of the social channel algorithm
if the algorithm is going to limit your
visibility to 8% of your feed of your
fan page every time someone shares it
out that’s going to be going to a
hundred percent of their audience so if
you want to beat the algorithm you’ve
got to generate that share to increase
the impact and visibility of your news
and editorial coverage you want to share
it constantly as we said earlier but you
want to make sure you’re customizing
your social media update to match the
aspiration of each social channel user
twitter users like to be first they like
to be smart Pinterest users like to
showcase their smarts through visuals
no the aspiration of each social Channel
right your update to tap that aspiration
and you’ll see a higher higher number of
shares and what will happen again is the
more shares you get on social not only
are you helping reporters meet their
metrics but you’re going to be
decreasing the impact of the social
media algorithm that’s limiting your
news so we know search has changed
socialist chase consumers have changed
well you know what measurement has
changed as well one of the biggest
reasons PR pros have such a hard time
getting budgets and salary is because
they continue to measure their work
their output as opposed to their outcome
it is time for PR pros to think like
marketers not only will this align your
work more closely to your company’s
business goals it will allow you to
present your work using the terminology
that’s important to your c-suite this
means we’re moving away from for example
counting coverage pieces and instead
we’re going to be looking at the quality
of the coverage and the outcomes
attached to that particular coverage
piece did the coverage piece include
your message points what about your
multimedia so you could contain a
hyperlink to your website and if so how
much inbound traffic did it generate
what did that inbound traffic do when
they were in your web site did they take
actions did they buy are you tracking
this information how many people saw the
piece how many times did they share it
what conversations were triggered by
those shares data measurement monitoring
services such as those by agility PR
Solutions provides means that you can
move past simply tracking basic numbers
and start showing the real impact of
your work and we’re going to show you a
little bit more about that shortly
because not every marketing program is a
success so why don’t marketers get
called out when they don’t achieve their
goals it’s because even failed programs
provide actionable data that you can use
to prevent and evolve your next program
by moving away from old-fashioned and
completely incorrect math
to rent points like a ves you win even
when your PR program may not have
generated all the coverage you wanted
the side benefit of this is that even if
you ultimately secure fewer pieces of
coverage than you wanted you are now
providing much more data back to your
internal teams and if you learn from
that data you’ll ensure a higher rate of
return on your next program this is
exactly what we mean when we say PR
people must think like marketers when
setting up a PR program let me just go
to the next slide here you go when
setting up a strong PR program the first
thing you want to do is set up an
initial monitoring program it’s going to
track the conversations already
occurring in your space this is huge
because the more you know about what
people are interested in right now the
stronger your created content will be
you need to ask yourself what is your
industry focusing on what problems are
they trying to solve what are your
competitors saying what is their tone
are they aggressive are they friendly
what are they how did they speak what is
the frequency of their messaging who
does their news resonate with and then
look again at your own customers and
prospects you need to research this out
you need to have the data to know what
their pain points are who are they
trying to activate and who are the
thought leaders that they are listening
to what our today’s reporters in your
space focusing on what are the top
themes that they’re writing about long
are the days of simply guessing what is
of interest to your audience by using
the data it generated by agility PR
solutions measurement tool you can
easily monitor your industry your
competitors keywords and audiences to
better understand what resonates with
your your audiences with who you’re
trying to activate ultimately letting
you create a stronger more successful PR
program you can guess what people are
interested in and you can write p are
updates press really
since blog posts and content based on
your guesses or you can actually utilize
real data write better content and
activate more people that’s going to be
the opportunity you have when you
utilize the service like agility PR
solutions measurement tools once you’ve
identified the top themes in your
positioning statements you have to start
creating your content and these tips
that I’m going to provide you next are
the same tips for what writing blog
posts and authors as news releases
because the reality is the single most
important part of your news release or
your content is going to be your
headline the best way to write a great
headline is to first write your content
right out your news release using all
the data you gleaned while doing your
initial monitoring once your news
release is written you want to print it
out and I know that sounds old-fashioned
but trust me print it out then underline
all of the industry terms or keywords
and phrases that you included in your
news release that are relevant and
important to both your release and your
audience these can be things like a
trade show you’re attending like Mobile
World Congress or key industry terms if
you’re writing a release related to net
neutrality or a product that might be
part of the Internet of Things once
you’ve identified all the key words and
phrases in your news release or in your
content go to Google Trends it’s WW
–gel comm slash trends and change the
location to your city or your country so
United States and if it’s a news release
you want to change the timeline to last
seven days for blog posts try last
thirty days or even last three months
then you’re going to copy and paste each
of your key phrases into Google Trends
what Google Trends will do is they’re
going to identify which of the terms you
selected are being searched at a high
rate at that moment and this is terrific
this is exactly what you want to
identify the more searched a word phrase
or term is the more media coverage there
usually is around that exact same phrase
so find the terms with the highest
search volume
include them in your news release
headline but big big caution here your
news release headline or your blog post
headline your headline has to be
readable so don’t create gibberish don’t
create a jibberish headline just because
Google search identified three or four
highly searched terms that you had
included in your content you don’t want
to keyword stuff your headline either
your headline must be readable it must
be relevant so pick the search terms
that have the best ranking that really
resonate with what is included in the
text of your content you do not want to
mislead your readers so find the terms
that are most relevant with the full
text of your content and include them in
the first five to seven words of your
headline that is the fastest way to
ensure that these terms and your
headline and your content shows up in
Google search now that you have a great
headline the next thing you have to do
is you have to include multimedia the
biggest mistake that PR people make
other than not utilizing the data that’s
available to them is that they do not
include multimedia PR people think press
releases our text only this has to stop
remember that our new audience is
visually fluent they’re just as likely
to purchase from a visual as they are
text visuals tell the story of what
you’re trying to say to find an image
that resonates and reflects your article
and your premise and that will make a
huge difference in the success of your
news release time after time here at
business why are we here reporters
complain that they are wasting hours
trying to find usable multimedia to
round out a story in fact we hear
reporters say that they can’t even
publish a story without images so news
releases with images tend to work very
well if you do not provide an image be
aware that a reporter will just as
easily include your competitor’s image
in their content that means you’ve lost
valuable space in your editorial
coverage you’ve secured because you’ve
given away
have your space to your competitor
today’s releases get three times more
activity than text only news releases
those with visuals so you’ve got to add
multimedia to really increase the impact
and activate all of your different
audiences now the last thing you want to
do when you’ve created this great
content so you have a great headline you
have great multimedia if you have to
distribute it widely the reality is we
all hear this all the time oh you know
content is King digit the reality is
content may be king that visibility is
the kingdom there is no such thing as
great content
there’s only scene content if you are
trying to reach and activate small
audiences or large audiences Newswires
ensure that both reporters and consumers
either in a very very niche market or a
very wide market can find and act upon
your news whether they see it in search
social or across their news desks now
let’s get into some measurement let’s
get ready to measure you know when it
comes to your measurement program to
measuring PR program you really have to
pick the right tool that’s going to work
best for you so there’s two big
questions to ask do you want an
automated monitoring measurement tool or
do you want human augmented so let’s
talk about what the differences are the
answer is really going to depend on your
team resources if you have team times to
spend on reviewing automated reports to
manually edit things like sentiment an
automated system could work perfectly
for you however if you don’t have spare
team time or you’re not as savvy with
analysis as you’d like
human augmented and monitoring is a
great solution for you this type of
service will actually review each piece
of content that it finds and manually
tag it for easier data processing most
measurement users today prefer human
augmented monitoring as it frees up team
time and allows for much faster
processing of both content and coxa and
for content and context the faster you
can process your data the faster you can
act upon
and take action so consider a human
augmented monitoring tool such as one by
agility PR services now one other
question I get all the time and the last
one is we get I get is really how to
calculate the ROI of PR it’s not an easy
question there are a lot of other inputs
that can be used here such as lifetime
value of a user or customer but in its
simplest form ROI is the overall impact
of your work – the content creation
costs distribution and amplifications
costs and team member time now I’m going
to here we go John thanks Serena hi
everyone so my name is John Smeaton I’m
a director marketing over here at
agility PR solution thanks during that
this has been really great jam-packed
with tons of tips on how to monitor and
and more effectively measure the value
of PR to help ensure that that you guys
are getting credit for what you’re doing
but more importantly that you’re proving
results and impact on the business now I
just wanted to talk a little bit more
about measurement so we’ve been working
with clients for the last 14 years to
help them better measure and more
effectively measure and prove results of
what they’re doing in in their PR
activities so as Serena had spoken to
you know measurement 101 is the coverage
it’s important everyone needs to do it
you need to understand what’s being
picked up where it’s being seen whether
it’s online or in broadcast and you know
do things like creating clip books of
covers coverage to ensure that you’re
able to share what you’re doing but if
you stop at that and you weren’t only
talking about the quantity of coverage
where you’re really losing out is
proving the impact of what it is that
you’re doing babies are the old way what
you need to do instead is start to look
at the quality of the cover
that you’re generating how easy is the
article to find where is it on the page
it’s like this article it’s a comparison
of you against your competitor where
your competitor comes out on top
this could be a negative article for you
and certainly if it’s starting to
identify influencers and and talking
about reviews this could be a very
negative article versus one that at
first glance might seem like a positive
coverage on a reputable publication
things you have to look at as well are
you know how long is the article how
many of your messaging points perhaps
were included in this all of this is
going to help you really go beyond just
counting the quantity of coverage or
talking about things like a BES and
really get to the marketing model of
measurements where you’re proving the
impact of what it is that you’re doing
and actually saying you know an article
like this has helped our company because
it was a direct review and now has led
to some weeds coming into our site
because people have read these reviews
and have determined that that where our
solution is actually the better one so
moving beyond Davies is sort of the
first step in that measurement to ensure
that you’re having the metrics and and
the reporting similar to your marketing
colleagues one of the ways that we’ve
been helping some of our clients is
shifting to measuring coverage quality
rather than quantity so one of our
clients and actually we’re working with
a number of them to do more of quality
scoring and this is where we’re starting
to quantitatively measure coverage
quality so this could be establishing a
matrix like we have here on the Left
where you establish a number of criteria
assign those points and that really
allows you to create an apples to apples
comparison of articles and/or coverage
that you’re receiving and this allows
you to say okay
eh now I can say this article gave us a
10 out of 10 this article was only 8 out
of 10 and that allows you to more
quantitatively prove not only to
yourself and measure the effectiveness
of what you’re doing
but it allows you to more quantitatively
prove to those executives and those
c-suite the results of what it is that
you’re doing with quality scoring you
can also provide that to marketing teams
or work with them to better see how an
article that you would give a 10 whether
or not that actually led to say an
increase in website traffic or an
increase in leads coming in one of the
things we recommend as well as as well
as doing these sort of quality scoring
or tracking message point pickup is
establishing baselines
so working with your web teams your
social media team and/or your marketing
teams to establish baselines
understanding where you know how many
people tend to visit the site in a day
how many leads tend to come in within a
day or a week and how many social media
followers and/or interactions are
typical now what you can then do is use
that sort of baseline knowledge to help
you take credit and prove the impact of
what you’re doing
so say you do a news release and that
goes out on June’s
on in this case they may eight now I can
look at the web traffic and see that we
had a huge jump in web traffic from May
7th to May 8th and not can be attributed
to the PR and that press release that
was done this lets you take credit and
really back that up with quantitative
data for the efforts that you’re doing
this is the start of helping you measure
against those business objectives and
proving your impact to those in
executive management just like your
marketing colleagues are doing
one of the one of the other things that
I think is just critically important is
understanding your brand against your
competitors this is again where
measurement and monitoring becomes very
important and is outside of the use so a
lot of people will say you know I don’t
do that many press releases or I don’t
do a lot of I don’t have a lot of
articles written about me what you need
to understand even if you may not do a
lot of press releases is understanding
how you’re seen in the market and who’s
talking about your competitors who’s
talking about the market in general so
that you can understand what’s being
said the language that’s being used and
then your things like sheriff voice so
one of the the you know if all of those
coverage that’s happening in a
particular industry in your industry is
all about your competitors you’re going
to have a really you’re going to
struggle in order to win in that
marketplace and so if on a quarterly
basis you start to look at the share of
voice versus your competitors and
understand and again establish those
baseline so that you can measure
differences so with additional
activities that you’re doing or by
working with your social media
colleagues or urges even engaging more
with social media influencers or
journalists are you able to shift that
share voice are you able to change that
conversation and get yourself not just
more coverage but higher-quality
coverage and more positive sentiment in
that coverage so you might understand by
looking at the share of voice that even
though your competitors have more
articles written about them the quality
is low or perhaps the sentiment is very
negative
so what you can easily point out to
executives again is that even though
they may be getting more coverage it’s
mostly negative so at the end of the day
you’re better off platforms like agility
PR solutions can help you not only pull
together this data but we have a whole
team of client success consultants who
can work to manually tone each and every
article
doing working on things like that
quality coverage matrix and providing on
on every single article that human
augmented toning so that you can
understand the context of the quotes or
the context of how you’re being measured
and understand not only the the
sentiment of it but how it’s really
helping to get your message across now I
wanted to jump as well into the evaluate
so now we’ve gone through the monitor
the measure now we want to start to talk
about evaluating because you can have
all the data in the world but if you
don’t get insight from that data and
insight that’s actionable you’re not
really going to be any farther ahead so
what you need to do is start to
illuminate all of that measurement and
all of this great data that you’re
pulling with analysis and this is where
you come in you know this is where you
start to look pull all of those data
sets those baselines and understand
what’s working and what’s not where have
you gotten pick up where maybe our
additional efforts required whether that
be on a regional basis you know most of
the coverage has tended to be negative
how can you change that conversation and
change that dialogue you can also use
this information both with the
monitoring and measurement to identify
influencers and this is really important
to understand not only who talking about
you because that’s great you want to you
want to build those relationships but
you want to know who’s talking about
your competitors who’s talking about the
industry so that you can also reach out
and start to build relationships with
those people as well finally don’t
forget about your social networks this
is really where we start to get into
what’s being called now micro
influencers so you’re not necessarily
looking for those with the biggest
number of followers but what you’re
looking for is finding those
who have a great rapport with their
audience you want to find those
influencers and whether it be on social
media or journalists who can actually
help to influence buying decisions or
influence the audience that you’re
looking to reach social media monitoring
and and media monitoring in general can
help you understand what is working and
what’s not in terms of what messages are
resonating but it also will help you in
terms of identifying people that can
help to spread your message and and
really come from that authentic voice as
Trina mentioned the trust from third
parties where you’re having news that
isn’t being directly generated by your
company but is being spread by third
parties and influencers whether micro
are macro influencers those are going to
be really important to ensuring your
message is spread in this world of sort
of data overload social media monitoring
also helps you understand what works and
what doesn’t on different social media
platforms so what you can do is not only
track what is being picked up but what
kind of message or what kind of visuals
or videos multimedia gets shared on
Facebook versus on Twitter again this is
all to help you understand what’s
working and what’s not and improve your
strategy going into the future and so
with that I’m going to pass it back to
Sarina to wrap it up with wrap it up
with the ball that’s perfect so
obviously what you want to do with the
evolution of your work is once you’ve
started utilizing you’ve created better
content you’ve done the research first
that will identify your path for
creation you’ve utilized the tools out
there such as Google Trends to help you
create the terrific content you’ve
distributed it widely and now you’ve
done your monitoring what you want to do
is obviously sit down and assess your
results
you want to look at did you activate
your audiences did you increase your
share of voice did you make an impact on
your goals so once you’ve done this the
bet then you can sit back and create
your next piece of content we’re really
excited to have you here we’re here to
answer any questions you have before we
hand it over for Richard for the Q&A; I
did want to share my favorites these are
my favorite tips and tricks so obviously
you have here Google Trends and other
keyword identifiers that are going to
help you increase the impact of your
content in both search as well as social
you should know that Facebook has trend
as keyword identification YouTube has it
Twitter has it you can use keyword
identification to increase not only
better results for your headlines but
also your your social updates that we
also have headline testers so you can
make sure that you have the best
headline and they’re possible and then
my all-time favorite one is the multi
media tester MIT actually created a
system where you can upload photos it’s
very easy just click the link upload a
photograph and it will tell you the
viral kairel nature of that photo so if
you have five or six photos that you
want to include in your social updates
or in your news releases you can do it
here and then you can also monitor your
service beer how far everything reached
using services like tweet reach and then
we just wanted to include links to learn
more about business wire or agility PR
solutions please just click right here
on either of those links agility PR
services I keep saying it incorrectly
sorry and it Richard I want to pass it
over to you do we have any questions oh
hi thanks thanks Serena absolutely we do
have some questions in the queue we’re
going to get right to those your
presentation was incredible talk about
an action-packed session you had some
truly insightful things to say there as
I’m sure everyone agree if not
absolutely profound moments there and
also some incredibly insightful points
from dawn some supplemental information
that really makes your content
actionable so good job and we enjoyed
that very much yes we do have some
questions let’s get right to the most of
them are for you Serena but there are
couple in here that relate to what Dawn
was
talking about just you might want to
stay on the line too so the first one
here is from pretty this goes back
earlier into your presentation Sarina
she asked you can you please clarify how
social media algorithms counter news how
do you increase shares on social media
help if social media counters news yeah
that’s a great question it isn’t so much
that social media channels are out to
counter news or to decrease the impact
news they are very well aware that that
is where news discovery occurs in fact
even sites like Pinterest now have pins
directly designed just for news sharing
Facebook’s instant articles helps news
visibility the helps news articles load
faster so we know the social channels
like news what they don’t like or I
shouldn’t say what they don’t like what
they’re doing is because social networks
are really nothing more than glorified
ad networks the read the way that
they’re going to make their money is
they’re going to charge you to reach
your own audiences so if you have a
Facebook page with 100 fans and you post
an update on your Facebook page
Facebook’s only going to show that
update that you created to about 8% of
your entire of all 100 of your fans
which means they’re only going to show
it to 8% what they want you to do is pay
them to increase that chair right they
want you to pay them so then you know by
paying them $50 they’ll show it to X
percent more of your audience so what
you want to do is in order to get around
paying there’s a few things you can do
on Facebook Facebook actually has an
amazingly free tool that nobody ever
uses but it’s called the audience um its
audience targeting so what it is it
looks like a little periscope button it
allows you to actually write updates for
your own Facebook audience your 100 fans
and what it does is allows you to
customize your update by demographic so
if you’re selling a coffee pod I happen
to be looking at a cup of coffee on my
desk right now if you’re selling a
coffee pod the reality is if your
audience is everybody but not
everybody’s going to resonate to the
same
you might want to do something about
coffee the people your older audiences
may resonate to an update that’s very
different than your younger audiences so
what Facebook is going to do is it’s
going to allow you to craft a very
different update by audience and they do
that for free
when you do that Facebook’s still going
to limit how many people will see the
update but what will happen is your
update is so written it’s so customized
for the reader that it’s more likely to
engage them and get them to share it out
so I always joke I’m 6 foot 2 the minute
I see a Facebook update related to pants
long enough to fit me I will share it
everywhere that’s what you ultimately
want to do you want to create social
media updates that when the reader sees
them they’re so excited about the update
they click share so you want to tap into
aspirations and I have actually several
videos and I even have a presentation
just on how to activate a social by
hitting different audiences but it’s
really just understanding why somebody’s
on that social Channel people create
different personas on each social
Channel my Twitter persona is very news
oriented and I like to think it’s kind
of funny my snapchat persona is not safe
for work it’s me and my bathrobe
complaining about everything so the
person I am varies by channel so to
increase the share ability of your news
because you want someone to physically
share it because that’s the only way to
beat the algorithm you have to write
your updates in a manner that activates
them so for Twitter think about writing
status updates that really focus on
making people smarter utilize statistics
don’t forget to use jiff files and
photos these are all things that trigger
more shares if the ad network if the
social channel is going to limit your
view to only 8 people to see it what you
want to make sure you’ve done is written
an update so awesome that those 8 people
are going to want to click the share
button or the retweet button so
hopefully I answered that question I
realize that was a little bit long but
it’s all about making sure that you
write an update so good
that it gets
into somebody else’s hands and then to
go to what Don said earlier this is
another reason why you really like
Agility’s the PR solutions or services
ability to identify micro influencers
because you can start to identify people
who are already sharing content out on
their page therefore not restricted to
algorithms and you want to activate them
alright that is a very comprehensive
answer to that question and great
information there and that’s not like a
cool Facebook tool you’re talking about
okay thanks for that question Frannie we
do have some other questions we’re going
to try to move right through here and
and get to as many as we can this one is
from Amir and he asks when you’re
sending press releases directly to
reporters through email and this is a
very good question of how to the people
aspect there are typically size limits
that they can send releases that will
your emotions will end up in spam is
there a way to get around this and
include images in multimedia
without the risk of ending up and spam
that’s a great question the reality is
no and this is what’s really funny is
and we deal with this it does Swire all
the time everybody on this call you guys
are very modern but most internal
technical systems at most media outlets
are not modern they’re rather
old-fashioned so even though we all know
things for example like Twitter exists
Twitter is still banned within a ton of
company sites even though we know that
that’s where Twitter news happens right
so we have to think about their
technical systems so what I would do in
those cases is I would not include a
photograph but what I would do is
include direct links to where they can
access that image so it not not only if
you have a landing page with ten images
on it that’s terrific if you don’t then
what you may want to do is just include
exact URLs directly to an image that
they could right-click and save but
that’s what I would do and I would put
the fact that you have imagery perhaps
pretty high up in your note maybe after
your first paragraph just let them know
that the imagery is available and then
when they’re able to access the imagery
do not forget to include a caption give
them the caption for that asset so they
know exactly how to utilize a lot of
people will send a link or so
grass with no caption if you include a
caption you’re much more likely to get
your message points in there one of the
things that Don and I both talked about
was the fact that you really want to
check and see how many of your message
points made it into a story this is one
of the massive advantages of reporters
being busier than ever
is that more message points are actually
getting into the stories so if you
include a caption you’re more likely to
get your full caption also included into
the story right that’s a good point
great all right excellent thanks Amir
for that question it will keep moving
here and like I said some of these are
just at that proposed or dawn to chime
in on so we get a conversation going
here if you guys once this is a question
from Claire and she asks for quality
scoring measuring coverage quality of
quantitatively how do you determine
matrix scores for example how do you
decide that certainly quality should get
one point versus point five points
versus one point five points and so on
you need to have data on impacts of each
quality yeah so that’s a really great
question so I’d love to take that
Richard so when we work with our clients
on quality scoring like this what we’ll
do is work with you to understand your
business objectives and you know what
are the things that you’re trying to
accomplish and from that they take a few
examples of articles that you felt had
really made a difference for instance
one of our clients travel Alberta who we
do quality scoring for they have certain
things that they’re looking for in an
article they know their audience is
online so first and foremost they want
it to be on an online source secondly
they want some beautiful imagery so to
make sure that any sort of piece has an
image of Alberta and is showing
something positive in it now getting to
the what’s worth one point or 0.5 points
that’s where essentially we need to have
examples of things that are good and
examples of things that aren’t as
positive or aren’t as valuable and and
that’s really where the human Augmented
comes in so having a client success
person who understands you works with
you daily and understands what you view
as valuable versus not this is something
that automated monitoring tools simply
can’t do and that’s not possible with so
when it comes to whether something is
one point or one point five points
that’s really based on examples of
what’s worked in the past in what you’ve
liked in the past and working with an
organization either like agility PR
solutions or whoever is providing your
monitoring and measuring to just
establish those baselines and categories
so it’s really helpful if you can have
okay you know an image must have a
picture of you know that shows more than
just a parcel of ground or you know have
a few criteria in it so it’s a bit
easier to establish those scoring’s
all right okay there you go all right
Thank You dawn and thank you Claire for
the question we’ll keep moving through
these this one is from Kim and she asks
about everything we talked about here
can you think a bit about how you’d
apply all that in the nonprofit world
where sales and competition don’t apply
as much yeah Richard Donna this is Donna
I can take that one as well actually as
I was just talking about with travel
Alberta and they obviously don’t have
sales what they’re really trying to do
is generate awareness and drive tourism
to the province so they’re not able to
measure how many people visited the
province based on certain outreach or PR
campaigns but what you need to do and
what I think Serena talked about as well
is you need to understand what the
business objectives are so what are your
sales or not sales what are what are
your executive care about what are their
business objectives what are they being
measured on what is your organization
trying to get to and then what you need
to do is figure out
how PR activities can align and help
contribute to those metrics and then
from there that’s where you develop the
scores or the the quality matrix that is
aligning to those objectives so if
you’re like Travel Alberta trying to
drive tourism to the promise what you
want to look at is working with your
regional partners to see certain events
certain activities maybe even certain
cities tracking baselines in terms of
how many people visited prior and then
working with them and doing activities
with them measuring afterwards whether
or not those activities were helpful in
driving increased traffic or more money
being spent at those at those events the
other thing I’ll add to that is that
it’s a terrific opportunity as we were
saying at the beginning of this to do
more pre research before you get your
content out there really understanding
who your audience is obviously you
probably know your audience being a
non-profit but also what really
motivates them and what key terms are
they looking at also what programs that
other nonprofits are doing that they’re
responding to do you have a competitive
nonprofits that that and what are they
doing and how much engagement are they
receiving so there’s a lot of monitoring
that you do in a non-profit before you
get started and then really thinking
about when you’re creating your content
and sending it out again who are you
activating who are your micro audiences
and how can you get that information
that you’re sharing out into more hands
ultimately increasing awareness to your
nonprofit so people know who you are and
increasing your donation funnel all
right thanks Sarina thanks dawn and
thank you Ken for that question and we
got more here here’s from one from
Richard it’s probably applicable for
both of you guys to chime in on how do
you measure positive or negative
sentiment across a wide swath of data
that’s a good question are you looking
for specific keywords or and how
accurate is that
I think I think that there’s two ways to
do that so when you’re looking at a
really wide swath especially in an
industry if you have an industry that
has a lot of key terms and key
terminology the first thing you probably
did want to do is pull a set of that
data create a subset of that data and
make it a random subset you want to pull
together both large articles and all
their and then you from there you want
to identify terms or terminology that
may be frequently found in those
articles that showcase for example
negative sentiment so instead of saying
I hate this product the negative
sentiment may be showcasing across all
these articles in a manner such as the
product doesn’t do X that might be your
negative sentiment so what you want to
identify is take a subset of your data
start with a smaller set and then what
you can do is take the learnings from
that smaller set and you can apply it to
a larger set of data but if you’re
starting out I wouldn’t start with just
your entire set of data I would probably
if it’s a very large set is I’d probably
create a random subset and then from
there try to identify the terms that
we’re seeing that that includes the most
negative or the most positive terms and
then utilize those terms but I also
think Don and you can tell me if I’m
wrong this is another terrific
opportunity for human augmented
monitoring yeah definitely I was
actually going to say something very
similar so I would say these what we
would tend to recommend is use an
automated solution that can determine
sentiment just to give you that first
pass so as Serena was saying to give you
a first pass to say categorize things
into positive and negative sentiments
and then take a subset of that a
randomized subsets like she was saying
from that automated monitoring path or
automated sentiment toning to say okay
here’s one on the positive side and the
negative side and that’s where you can
have either you know service like
agility PR solutions or even folks on
your own team to go through state 10 or
so articles on each side to determine
and
and look at the context so what our team
tends to do is not just look for
keywords because that can be misleading
you know sarcasm or even context of
where it’s placed in it in a sentence is
really important when it comes to
sentiment and that’s something that is a
human is required to do even with our
advances in artificial intelligence
people still need to understand that
context so this is where I’ve just
recommend augmenting the be automated
with picking those ten or so articles on
each side and having humans on your own
team or other services go through and
determine the tone for that and that’s
really going to improve the accuracy of
the sentiment all right there you go
okay good yeah no amount of no amount of
data is too much to handle
thank you Richard for the question I got
another question from Kim we’ve got just
a couple more here and she this one dawn
is probably for you how effective is
media monitoring for an organization
with a regional market with just a few
large media outlets is it possible to
collect the same type of data you get
for larger markets yeah I mean a
monitoring isn’t really affected by the
number of or the region that you’re
looking at that’s really all that’s
going to impacted the cost for the
content sources that you’re going to
need a subscription to in order to
monitor and what I would say though is
even if you’re only concerned with
monitoring your coverage in a certain
region it can be really important as
both Serena and I talked about to look
at the market as a whole and look beyond
just the publication’s you may be
looking to see if they’ve covered your
particular story but understand the
voice of your audience so who are you
trying to reach in the voice of your
your target what kind of words are they
using what’s the search terms that are
happening on Google in general because
that’s just going to give you better
visibility in general and and will 100%
help that regional coverage
so I think the importance is even if you
may only be getting coverage in a small
local market or even a niche industry
you need to have a better view of the
market whether it be your competitors or
global or the industry and market in
general in order to have a really good
view of what kind of messages you need
to get out there and what’s going to
resonate did you have anything to add to
that Serena no I think that is terrific
I mean we see a lot of that especially
for example here in Los Angeles we have
Google moving into our market and so we
have a lot of people doing local
outreach for example just to the city of
Venice or when I worked with average
city of Marina del Rey
another listening tool there and you
mentioned this is keywords is inbound
traffic for example Marina del Rey who
would have known that one of the biggest
topics from Marina del Rey was burial at
sea you probably would have never
thought to pitch Marina del Rey on that
but it happens to be a really hot topic
for them so really like you said really
understanding that local market knowing
exists exactly all the sides of it not
just your perspective and what you’re
trying to generate there but all the
other elements that are relevant to that
market and you’ll have a much better
opportunity to win it if you know if you
walk into a market or you’re pitching a
market and you know everything there is
to know about that market the data is
going to absolutely drive your news
program and your PR program it’s going
to work really really well
datum helps you make decisions so
utilize this data get this data before
you even start your program this is one
of the reasons why it Chile DPR
solutions is so good is that it gives
you the data you need and literally once
you have that data in your hand the road
map the content you create your keywords
for your headlines everything will fall
into place if you have that data all
right that’s great all right Thank You
Sarina Thank You dawn and thank you Ken
for the question we got one more here
this was a little bit more semi
rhetorical Sarina but how much a PR will
cross over in traditional SEO in order
to continue to reach audiences and stay
high on search engine yeah that’s a
great question we deal with this all the
time we
have to as PR pros we have to stay out
of the SIA SEO bucket SEO is link
building it’s an extraordinarily
expensive proposition it is not
something that you can just do news
release and you have SEO SEO is an
extremely expensive it’s it’s literally
like going to a regular doctor and
saying I want to add in dental care
there are things that I can tell you to
go brush your teeth but it’s not dental
care SES so that’s why I keep saying
news releases in the news industry for
example news releases we we put news
releases on thousands of websites you
would be if we did not include nofollow
links which is what negates the SEO
there’s no link building juice with news
releases if we didn’t include that it
would probably take a week and your
entire website would be in Google Jail
for for content stuffing so it’s
extremely important and we work really
closely with the with Google to make
sure that nobody gets into content jail
but but we right now we have search
ability and that’s really how I would
position this I would not position any
of the work that we’re showing here as
SEO position in a search ability because
again we’re not doing link building the
other thing that you’ll find really
interesting and we see it in the news
space it’s been happening for years is
when you’ll secure a piece of coverage
let’s say in Gizmodo well you’ll go to
Gizmodo and you’ll say can you thank you
for that piece of coverage can you put a
link to our website in there and they
will tell you no because it’s a link
building process they want you to pay
them as an advertiser to get that
inbound link juice so even reporters and
media outlets are not not actively
getting involved in this SEO issue what
Gizmodo will do is they’ll actually link
to the business wire version of the
story so you have to use your business
wire data reports to kind of track that
inbound traffic and see with what
they’re doing but it’s very interesting
definitely just try to keep the term SEO
and PR separate because they’re no
longer the same thing up until 2013 it
was very blended but Google made massive
changes in 2013 that really separates PR
from SEO
so try to keep those terms separate if
you’re a PR firm or PR person and you’re
already promising SEO contact me
directly and I can help you so you can
change your positioning from SEO –
search ability because you really want
to do that you don’t want someone to
think that you’re just doing for free
what they’re paying other people tens of
thousands of dollars to do this is part
of the PR problem is that PR people keep
taking on other areas of expertise at no
charge or at a low fee these are really
expensive scenarios SEO is not cheap so
unless you’re charging full market rates
for it don’t do SEO sorry I get a little
up on that question
wow that’s some terrific insights there
well incredible all right and thank you
CR for that question okay and we have to
eat reached yeah we have indeed reached
the top of the hour here so we’re going
to we’re going to wrap this session up
even though this information you just go
on and on but and Wow some great
insights thank you so much Sarina early
for all that insightful commentary and
those excellent high-level points really
appreciate your participation today
well and I just again I really want to
encourage everybody to go and check out
agility PR solutions and their
monitoring services without that data
you can’t do a great job but with that
data I promise you you’re going to rock
your program out all right there you go
all right thank you and well said and
also thank you john smeaton from agility
she had some great comments and great
points to make as well you guys make a
great team in fact all right so so
thanks everybody you’ll be receiving a
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right now we look forward to getting
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we’re going to have more info about that
one soon so watch your emails and social
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everybody for listening and have a great
day