Wildfire Tech PR Blog – Business and Consumer Technology Public Relations

The lustre of other companies’ success in the social media sphere has put it firmly on the agenda for many brands. Blogging is often seen as an ‘easy’ way in – a social media portal that is easy to set up and control.  But it’s not all plain sailing.

When a blog works well it can bring you closer to your customers and prospects whilst allowing you to engage with the wider community. Unfortunately, all too often, blogs become stagnant voids with reams of old, out of date content.

What follows is the first part of a series of posts we’ll be running over the next few weeks looking at all aspects of blogging. Here we examine why you might want to have a blog in the first place and how it might tie in with the rest of your social media strategy.

If you’ve any questions on anything you think we might have missed then leave a comment or get in touch – we’re always happy to help.

WHY BLOG?

Before leaping in, it’s well worth taking a step back and working out exactly what you hope to achieve and what your blog will be for.

Three key questions to ask are:

1. What are my objectives for blogging?
2. What’s my strategy (e.g. for content generation, driving traffic and SEO, getting ROI and integrating with other marketing, social media and PR activities)?
3. What does success look like?

If the answers to any of these questions are uncertain, then you need to think very carefully about why blogging is the right path to go down.

Setting objectives

Identifying the purpose of your blog can be a defining moment that paves the way for  success – or failure. The objectives for a blog can be very different for different companies, for example some may want to demonstrate their expertise and industry knowledge to customers and prospects, while others may see it as a great way of improving SEO.

It doesn’t matter what your objective is as long as you have one- as time goes on, you’ll better understand how your blog is benefitting you and set new ones. It’s also worth identifying specific and measurable business goals that your business hopes to achieve through blogging over the coming 12-18 months.

Strategic approach

Blogging is about much more than just content.  You could have the best posts in the world, but if no-one finds your blog,  knows about it or shares it, then there really isn’t any point!  Equally, if you have lots of traffic to your blog but it isn’t making an difference to your business, the investment is wasted.

Confronting these issues before you start is vital, so apply a bit of strategic thinking. When you’re considering all your campaigns, bear in mind the breadth of what is now possible and integrate your blogging activities into a much wider marketing and social media strategy.

Measuring success

Remember how I said it’s important to set some objectives?  The reason is simple. If you don’t know what you want your blog to do for your business then how can you measure its success in achieving those goals? Whether it’s increased hits on your website or more interactions with your brand,  make sure you know what success will look like.

BLOG WHAT?

Above all, your blog should strive to offer something new and valuable to your audience, becoming a source you’d follow yourselves. Asking yourself whether you’d be interested in reading your blog is a good litmus test!

For example, you could look at it as an opportunity to elevate topics that aren’t getting enough exposure or comment on what others are saying in your industry.  Tell people something they don’t know or draw their attention to articles they may not have seen.

Try and identify examples of blogs that you read and would like to emulate.  What do they do right? Where are they missing a trick?  Be sure to interact with them once you’ve got everything up and running.

WHAT NOW?

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing where you go next and giving you tips on how to get a blog off the ground and how to get people interacting with it.

In the meantime, if you think there’s anything we’ve missed or you have questions, get in touch or leave a comment below!

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We are all now confronted by more and more ‘media’ on a daily basis than at any point in history. Whether it is the traditional press, Twitter or blogs, we have gone way past ‘information overload’ to total saturation point.

But with so much media on offer, it is vital for brands (and their PR agencies) to know exactly which channels work best for which audience. In that way efforts can be focused on the media that are mosthe t appropriate to realise the objectives for a particular campaign or activity.

I was interested then to read some new research from Ofcom, which reveals that, for the first time, British web users say they trust online news sources more than television bulletins and newspapers. Although both were pipped to the post by radio (66%), 58% said they trusted online news and 54% believed TV the most. People aged 25 to 34 were by far the most confident that TV news was accurate, with women more convinced than men.

On the back of what was a fiercely contested general election, you have to wonder how much the obvious bias of the Murdoch press potentially affected these figures. The press was deemed the least trustworthy medium, with more adults saying they thought newspapers were unreliable than said they believed in them.

So what does this mean for businesses and PRs?

First, a few health warnings. The first point to make is that trust doesn’t necessarily equal influence. The second is that this is a widespread consumer survey and so the conclusions are painted with a very broad brush. It would be fascinating to drill down into specific audiences for example and see if the figures altered at all.

But, in general, we can use this as evidence that the online world is continuing to dominate our everyday lives and is becoming increasingly influential over everything from political viewpoints, buying decisions and industry thought-leadership.

I also wonder to what extent social media is having an effect here. Networks like Twitter and Facebook, not to mention bloggers, are quicker than ever to pick up on inaccuracies that are reported by the traditional media, giving a unique and immediate spin on what used to be trusted sources.

Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t tell us whether we trust our communities on social media more than traditional media outlets, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did. It  does reveal  however that almost half of the UK population has created a profile on a social networking site, and adds that adults were becoming more savvy about who they befriend online. It also said the proportion of internet users with a social networking profile had doubled since 2007.

The media landscape is increasingly fragmented and is constantly changing. All this means is that the audience-centric approach that we take here at Wildfire is more important than ever, making sure the right channels are used in the right way for your business.

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There is no doubt that the public relations agency needs to develop its skill-set to help clients meet the challenge of social media.  But we also need to accept that the changing media landscape  has had a fundamental impact on client/agency relationships.  With traditional, or even ‘tradigital’ PR, the PR agency typically creates all the written content and holds the majority of the relationships with the media on their clients’ behalf.  So much so, that giving a client a full media list complete with names and contact details would be considered to be giving away our ‘IP’.

So, how does social media change this?

Well, for a start, by definition it breaks down the old barriers between a brand and its audiences.  If you want to encourage customers or prospects to engage with your brand via Facebook or Twitter or any other online channel, then you need to be prepared to interact with your audience directly. The traditional PR approach of broadcasting content does not typically encourage engagement with anyone outside the media, but social media does.  And your audience wants to communicate directly with the people within the brand, not a PR agency.

Where do agencies fit into this two-way  conversation?

Well our traditional communications expertise means we are perfectly placed to advise clients on their social media strategy – but, unless there is a team of social media evangelists in-house – it is never going to take off.

So PR agencies – and their clients – must adapt.   Yes, we can and do run Twitter accounts for our clients.  And we believe there are certain scenarios where this is perfectly OK.   But ultimately we believe it is our responsibility to equip clients with the training, skills and confidence to help them find an authentic voice and engage in the conversation themselves over time.  Are we doing ourselves out of a job then?

Well, in some ways yes.  But it is time to seize the bull by the horns and undertake a frank assessment of the value we can offer.  As PR ‘consultants’ we should use our understanding of the social media landscape to help educate our clients and help them take a strategic approach to these new online channels.  But it will still be in our remit to  furnish them with content and ideas to feed their social media platforms and support PR and marketing campaigns, while maximising the return on their social media investment.

We understand that this isn’t going to happen overnight, and there will always be a need for agencies to provide the manpower to run campaigns when internal resources aren’t available.  But on the whole, we think it’s better that we guide you through the social media maze and assist you in building relationships directly with your audiences, rather than continue to act as another wall between you and your  customers.

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The key element to any newsjacking is wrapped up in its name; news!

And any PR worth their salt will tell you that newsjacking can only work if you know what is out there to hijack. Like a good car thief, PRs need to go on a stake out, know the routine of the owners and monitor their behaviours to optimise your chances of a successful steal.

But the growing popularity of social media, coupled with the huge number of online news sources, is adding a whole new dimension to the traditional newsjacking model.  Here, we set out some of the new rules of newsjacking.

Keep your eyes and ears open – constantly

Gone are the focused morning slots when a PR would watch the breakfast news and scan the morning papers to find that news piece to hijack.  It’s still true that the early bird catches the worm, but with news breaking across social media channels 24/7 that PR opportunity could come at any time, so make sure you are set up to constantly monitor social media channels and online news sites.

Turn things around – fast

In a fast-paced, online world that’s increasingly governed by social media, yesterday’s news is no longer ‘old’ news – it’s prehistoric! Make sure you are lined up to go in all guns blazing as soon as an opportunity is presented.

Be relevant

Remember, all the buzz in the world is not going to make a difference to your brand unless your content is genuinely interesting. Get this right and you can build valuable journalist relationships, brand advocates and market authority.

Embrace multiple channels

Spotting an opportunity is probably the easiest element of newsjacking. The tricky bit is putting the right strategy in place to make an impact. Be aware of who you’re trying to reach, there is a big difference between newsjacking a very factual hard news business piece in the Financial Times and commenting on a consumer watchdog story in The Daily Mail. Be aware of what this audience will be interested in, know what journalists at the media outlet are likely to talk about and what types of comments they usually receive and publish.

Pre-empt newsjacking opportunities

How many events are you confident you can say will happen?  I’m pretty sure Christmas day is going to happen on 25^th December every year, and then there’s that football competition that’s happening in a few weeks isn’t there.  I’d also bet that there’ll be travel chaos over bank holiday weekends, some kind of air strike, Apple will announce something ‘big’ in 2011 – and we’re bound to have some extreme weather come January.

Think about what you know, pre-empt the big news agenda and plan your activities in advance to maximise their impact.

Here at Wildfire we’ve got some excellent examples of our newsjacking campaigns (why not check out our latest Cup Classics campaign for Humax?), so why not give us a call so we can talk you through them?

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The Times has been busy promoting its new look website (see above) in advance of its launch, which will coincide with the construction of the paper’s paywall.

[Incidentally, on the look and feel of the new site, I can't help but think they've basically taken a leaf out of the New York Times and Guardian websites - hardly original is it?]

On Tuesday, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and his Times counterpart John Witherow, clashed on Radio 4 when discussing the paywall move.

Witherow admitted that the move would decimate The Times’ online readership by “easily” more than 90% but countered that it would be “perilous” to continue to focus solely on advertising as the sole means of online revenues. In a clear stab at the Guardian, he proclaimed:

“The danger of this other model is that gradually the journalism will diminish, it will get poorer and poorer, you won’t be able to afford things, you won’t be able to do things and so everybody is poorer as a result.”

In the other corner, Rusbridger countered these claims stating, “if you erect a paywall around your content you kind of go into a vault of darkness”.

As I’ve said before, the key to all of this is ‘value’. If The Times really can do as Witherow says and offer unique content that cannot be found elsewhere, then they might find a big audience willing to pay. I have my doubts as to whether they will achieve this however.

As for advertisers (and indeed PRs), who would you prefer to target, 100,000 or so subscribers to Times Online or the 32m people worldwide that use the Guardian every month?

Seems a no-brainer…