Social Media News

Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group posted an excellent slide deck today that shows a roadmap for integrating social content with a corporate website.

The roadmap looks like this:

 In an analysis we did at the end of 2009 we found that while more than 50% of the companies in the Fortune 500 and the Inc 500 lists were active on social media, most of them are still at Step 1 on this roadmap.  Less than 20% had any links to their social content  (Step 2.)

We will be revisiting that list this month to see how these companies stack up against this roadmap.

We’re excited to note that adding a PRESSfeed social media newsroom immediately puts a website at Step 5.  And the features due to be added soon will put it at Step 7! 

It’s a quick and easy way to jump start your integration and keep your website relevant.

Now that social media has been acknowledged as “just another medium” and something that has to be part of every PR plan, mastering the skills of social media are top of the list for most PR folk.  And it is not a simple task. 

The young, tech-savvy folk know how to use the tools, but don’t always have the experience to put together a strategic PR plan.   The more seasoned PR veterans need help with the new technology.  And even those who use computers every day and are quite tech-savvy find aspects of social media a challenge.   So social media training and coaching can be very helpful. 

We’ll be posting PR tips twice a week on the PRESSfeed blog

The first one is how to setup a NetVibes dashboard to monitor and tap into online conversations. 

If you are not yet using an RSS reader to collect data about your company and your industry, that would be the place to start. 

Here are two short videos that will help you set up a dashboard in NetVibes that you can use to find and collect mentions of your compnay/brand/industry/keywords online.

New Media PR Tips is brought to you by PRESSfeed – the social media newsroom. 

If you know other PR people who would find our blog and Twitter feed useful, please tell them about us.

Twitter is the new CNN, writes Lance Ulanoff in PCMag.com today. He’s referring to the study What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? released at the International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference in Raleigh NC last week.

The researchers cite the definition of media as a means of communication that reaches or influences people widely.

In the summary of their findings the researchers point out that:

• following is not mutual on Twitter
• a few users can reach a large audience directly
• most users can reach a large audience by word of mouth quickly
• users talk about timely topics
• the majority of topics are headlines

Adding your Twitter feed to your online newsroom makes a lot of sense

Ian Capstick posted an excellent piece about news releases and online newsrooms in the PR column of the PBS MediaShift blog yesterday.  (And of course we were delighted that he chose a release about the Social Media Roadmap webinar series I did with Marketwire as his example.)

News Releases

Looking back at the history of the press release one can see that the way we format a release to reach the media has changed as the media has changed.  Back in 1906 press releases came into being.  They were specifically formatted as a way to get information to newspapers.  They were crafted for that medium  The releases were written in the news story format of an inverted triangle and the need to fit pieces of news into the layout of the paper was taken into account. 

Then came radio. PR agencies started to add recorded interviews and sound bites to releases sent to radio stations because that was what the medium demanded.  If you wanted radio coverage you figured out what radio journalists and editors wanted and you supplied your news in that format.  Nobody thought this was weird or that the press release had died.   It’s just smart PR.

Along came TV and the Video News Release was born.  Another smart move on the part of forward thinking PR people who stayed abreast of technology and the need to evolve with a new medium. Sending a TV newsroom a video news release in the exact format that made it easy for a news editor to use often got you the coverage you wanted. Companies sprang up to service this need and PR people had to learn a new skill – video news.

So why is the Internet and social media any different?  Why is a social media news release a strange and foreign idea?  It’s not a case of killing the press release.  It’s just presenting your news in the format that gets the best results.

As long as there are newspapers a press release will exist.  Radio stations still like audio releases and sound bites.  But now there are so many online opportunities for exposure  and most of them require content in multimedia format with embed codes. It just makes good PR sense to use a social media release.

Journalists today are under pressure.  Newspapers and magazines all have websites.  A website has a voracious appetite for content.  As an example, most stories in the Wall Street Journal say ‘More on wsj.com’. Print publications are extending their coverage online.  They have podcasts and video on their websites. Tthey have blogs Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. And that means they need more content and they need it in new ways.

Online journalists, editors and bloggers want access to news in a way that makes it easy for them to use it. PR people need to acknowledge the shift and learn to present their news in the format that best suits this new medium.

It’s not rocket science.  It’s just good PR.

Newsrooms:

The same evolution has applied to how we supply access to all our news content.  It started with printed press kits we painstakingly compiled and sent off to the media.  Then we had Electronic Press Kits in digital form, often on a CD.  Once websites became mainstream this moved to an online newsroom. That’s been the PR standard for at least six years now. 

But once again we’ve seen a big shift in technology. It’s time to move up a notch and make your newsroom a social media newsroom. 

• Offer links to all your social content. (A recent analysis of  Fortune 100, INC 500 and Entrepreneur Hot 100 sites shows that less than 20 percent of the companies that are active in social media have links to this content on their websites.)
• Publish all news releases in social media format on your own website 
• Add all multimedia assets to your newsroom
• Add these to your press releases
• Optimize your news content for search so it can be found
• Syndicate all news content in RSS feeds
• Provide embed codes with images and video so bloggers or journalists can easily use your content

Take a look at the Society for New Communication Research social media newsroom

It’s not rocket science – it’s just good PR

2010 is going to be a much better year for travel industry, says Travel Insights 100.  They’re an interesting group: a panel of 100 travel experts that includes activists, traditional media, independent travelers, and airline and hotel experts who have banded together to monitor travel insights and trends.

They’ve  made some predictions about travel in 2010:

• Travel will begin to recover driven in part by a pent-up demand from those who have put off traveling due to economic concerns.
• These eager travelers will still be looking for discounts and promotional pricing.
• The big change? Where they’ll be looking.  Social media will be the game-changer for travel in 2010.

“Social media (Twitter in particular) will continue to reshape how destinations are promoted and companies will increase their participation in and creative use of social media.”

If that’s the case many  hotels have their work cut out for them.  We recently did an analysis of the top 50 hotel chains’ websites and social media activity  – only 21% are currently on Twitter and a scant 16% are engaging with their community.

That does not take into account the smaller hotel groups, bed and breakfasts or tour operators.

If you are in the travel business  now would be the time to update your Travel PR strategy.

And once you get your content out into the social web, update your site with a social media newsroom.

Image credit:  Idle type

If 2008 was the year of dipping the toes in the water and 2009 was the social media checklist approach, companies need to move up to the next level and start to integrate social media into their overall PR and marketing plans. It’s time to move beyond a social media presence, get strategic and really engage with your community.

“Resembling any in-person exchange, socializing requires more than just being there — you have to interact with others, instigate discussions, and respond during conversations. Our study implies value in social engagement on top of social presence — it pays to actively and continually participate and invest in your networks.”  Engagementdb study.

We’ve put together a social media resource page for PR people interested in the latest research and successful case studies.

And once you have engagement happening on all your social media networks, be sure to publish your company news in this format too – and gather all your social content on your own site in a social media newsroom.

DigitalVisitor.com, has been shortlisted for an online travel award alongside industry giants such as Air France, Lastminute.com and Kuoni.  Their social media solution, Visitor Review, features in the ‘Best Online Application’ category at this year’s Travolution Awards.

“Social media has become a huge area of importance for the travel industry,”  said Digital Visitor’s Managing Director Anthony Rawlins.  “Visitor Review was developed to enable businesses to take advantage of the benefits of user generated content whilst keeping clients in their own branded environment.  As a white-labelled solution each platform is tailored to reflect a company’s own branding, allowing users to upload text, photo and video.”

Now that is a smart idea.

Another smart idea would be to syndicate this content in a feed.

A report from eMarketer shows that 260,000 small businesses in the US and Canada are using some form of social media in their marketing activities. That’s only about 1% of all small businesses in those two countries.

Yet there are many stories of how small businesses that are involved in social media are getting great results.  Even local businesses.

One is Boston Court Theater in Pasadena, CA.  They are interested in building a community of art and theater lovers in the Pasadena area and they’ve used sites like Twitter to build that support.  They tweet the back stage “insider stories” that let people get a glimpse into the world of the theater. They’ve built up a loyal following of over 600 local folk.

Another is Naked Pizza in New Orleans. Reuters reports that this small company has 4,300 followers on Twitter and a recent online promotion brought in 69& of their business on that day.  They’re now seeing a sustained 20% of sales volume coming from their social media marketing.

There’s an excellent post about how small businesses can use social media at Search  Engine Land

They suggest:

1. Start a blog
2. Comment on other blogs that talk about your industry or subject
3. Get active on Yahoo Answers
4. Make and share videos
5. Take and share pictures
6. Try the social  news aite StumbleUpon
7. Find and join relevant groups

4, 5, & 6 are particularly good ideas.  However, if you want people to share your content you have to make it easy to do so. That means #8 should be ‘add your content to feeds.”  Feeds are the blood vessels of the social web -  they keep all this content flowing.

Make it easy to socialize your content so that people can save and share it.

The long tail has come to travel. If your search strategy is focused on one or two word keywords, you’re probably missing the target right now.

“Google recently stated that most of the recent growth in travel query volume has come from the tail. In fact, the average number of terms in a travel-related search phrase has increased from 2.5 to 4+. Conversely, the head’s query volume has dropped sharply. Consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated searchers, and it is important for search marketers to embrace this opportunity to provide more relevant ads for long tail keywords.” Kayak.com’s manager, search marketing, Shehzad Daredia in an interview with EyeforTravel,

Most marketers are looking at how to use this information to adjust their SEM/paid search strategies

However, the best way to reach long tail searchers is with content marketing – write good articles about your resort, cruise or destination.  Add images and video.  Syndicate the content with RSS feeds, so it gets seen by search engines, news aggregators, bloggers, journalists and new audiences.

The feeds help to raise your organic search visibility on many longer phrases. And it occurs naturally.  Just keep writing and syndicating with feeds and the long tail phrases start to show up in search.

The very best part of this online travel PR strategy is that is that it is easy and affordable to implement, and it gets excellent ROI.

Toby Bloomberg of DivaMarketing is writing a book on Twitter - each line is 140 characters!   In Chapter 6 of the book she covers tactics and content syndication using RSS feeds:

Real Simple Syndication/RSS is the secret of the success of many social media marketing programs. You choose the content you want

Toby interviewed two of the top experts on RSS:

Nick Burcher:

RSS makes your central content point (website, blog etc) like a radio station, with RSS broadcasting a virtual signal (aka a feed)

RSS is the technological backbone of social media, allowing people to consume content wherever they want, whenever they want

RSS enables marketers to easily distribute content to multiple locations – Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, other sites, email etc

Bill Flitter of Pheedo:

RSS is a tool that enables two key components of Social Media Marketing Strategy: Aggregation and Syndication.

Social Media Marketing is not a campaign, its a marathon

Find your digital center (Twitter/Blog/Meet-ups): hub of where your Social Media Marketing begins. Use it as a springboard to syndicate beyond

A successful Social Media Marketing Strategy includes RSS.  It makes it easy to extend your reach/brand where traditional methods fail. It’s the ground troops