There’s a familiar face next to the “Top 5” insurance marketing column in April’s Best Review.
Gary shared his top-line insurance communications rules for the social media age, including best newsroom practices and the importance of a social media strategy. Download the PDF of the column to read more — and let us know what you think.
PR manager ranked No. 5 as one of the most stressful jobs in 2013
Looming deadlines, hectic daily schedules, constantly connected to your phone are standard in the PR industry. So, it’s no surprise PR managers ranked as one of the most stressful jobs in 2013. “For the third straight year, public relations has landed on CareerCast’s annual list of the most-stressful jobs in America. For 2013, public relations manager is No. 5 on the list, inching up two spots from last year.” (via PR Daily) Though PR professionals face many stresses, there are ways to manage.
Tips on how to manage stress in the PR industry
Which tips will you incorporate into your hectic work schedule to stay stress-free?
With the introduction of Vine in January, business owners and managers have all the more reason to ask, “What do I want out of my business’ online relationships?” Take Valentine’s Day as a reminder to think about what social media outlets and features are the best matches for your business.
Here are five points to follow to keep successful relationships with your customers or clients on social media:
1. Social is Seductive, so be Selective
Social media can be seductive with the amount of platforms out there, and all of the various tactics one can use to reach a customer – from hashtags to video. We only see this increasing in 2013 and beyond. But, this means businesses – both B2C and B2B – need to be more and more selective about what social networks and services they include in their social media strategy.
Businesses should also focus their social strategy because users will more often pick and choose which social networks they want to pay to join. As seen with YouTube, social media will continue to be monetized. Developing the verbal and visual content that make the relationship between a business and its followers work takes time – and money. So, choose your accounts carefully.
2. Find your Social Media Sweetheart
Just like magazines and newspapers have varied demographics for readership, so do social media channels. In the crowd of companies and organizations online, you have to choose the best ways to reach your audience.
Plus, businesses don’t want just any number of followers – they want the right ones. Social media is just another powerful tool to engage the important customers and decision makers that affect your business. Don’t waste your time on Facebook if all of your potential fans have moved their attention to Twitter. To find where you want to attract followers, and what to expect from some social media outlets throughout the year, here are a few insights. Forbes shares specific stats for B2B businesses.
3. Ask, What are you Willing to Share?
In 2013, consider sharing content that is visual. More than ever, online users don’t just appreciate visual content, they expect it. Social media speaker and author Mari Smith called 2013 the “year of the video.” Before the New Year even began, we also saw social media becoming increasingly visual.
Now you have a surplus of options for visual content strategies – from quarterly infographics to a monthly Google+ Hangout video series or weekly original photos. If Vine is any indication, developers will continue to expand the multimedia possibilities that businesses can take advantage of online.
4. Fine Dining is Better than Fast Food
Image aside, be sure that any content you produce is original with substance. Consistently allotting time to develop quality content on one or two social outlets can pay off more than publishing watered-down content over eight platforms.
As Social Media Strategist Jason Miller writes, “The cookie-cutter SEO driven, keyword stuffed, generic regurgitated content is becoming a sort of white noise that blocks all of the real quality stuff from surfacing.” Remember to also give time for accuracy, grammar and punctuation (“If Your Writing Sucks, So Will Your Content”).
5. Be a Matchmaker
When pursuing your social media outlets, always integrate them with one another to ensure you’ve hit all of your target audiences. And, keep in mind how your social media sites will appear on all forms of mobile devices, as this is where your readers will live, more and more. According to the Nielson State of the Media report, consumers’ time spent with social media on mobile devices increased 63 percent in 2012.
The Social Media Examiner predicts that a new social media platform that “no one saw coming” will surface in 2013 (#16 on this list). If this does transpire, just consider if the social media site will marry well with your business plan before you start yet another online relationship.
Photo credit: Admiralspalast Berlin / Foter / CC BY-ND
While we recently posted on the current meaning of social media, we’ve also got a new perspective on the 2013 intern. In the coming year, interns – from public relations to social media and graphic design positions – should look at their internship search and their experience in a new light.
1. Change your way of thinking.
After completing two communications internships, one of which turned into my current public relations assistant position at Kimball Communications, I suggest a new way of looking at internships.
Think of an internship as a highly important class in college or as the new “grad school.” Communications majors do not often go to grad school after college – they go to work. But, first, you have to pay your dues. If you think of completing an internship as taking an educational course that will help your career, and you plan for the investment accordingly, it won’t seem like just an extra “thing” that you have to do on top of your undergraduate classes. Internships are unfortunately added expenses, but they are necessary in today’s job market.
And, don’t just think of internships as resume builders; they give you an opportunity to start building the skills to break into the communications industry. It’s up to you to take advantage of this. Ragan’s PR Daily suggests ways to do so in these 50 tips.
2. Understand what you’re searching for.
When I was pursuing internships in undergraduate school, I discovered two types of internships: 1) Those that offer a-part-of-the-team experience and 2) Those that hire interns to work from the bottom up – which isn’t necessarily negative.
If you know your top goal is to work in a highly competitive corporation or industry, then running errands or faxing media alerts is sometimes just a stepping stone in that particular job. You have to start somewhere if that you want to go into a specific field.
However, if you have no preference for an industry and are looking for a general communications internship, then search for one in which you will gain quality experience. Don’t settle for an internship where all you do is get coffee if you don’t want to be sitting at the receiving end one day.
Simply put, decide where you want to end up and search for the appropriate internships, with the right people, to lead you to that goal. Also – be prepared to change your end goal on the way. As many have said, internships are sometimes more about what you don’t want to do than what you want to do. For specifics on landing an internship, Ron Culp, PR expert and professional director of the graduate PR and advertising program at DePaul University, offers advice in his blog.
3. Prepare to be well-rounded.
While some communications internships may have a title, not all internships are specific to that title. Interns today can specialize in a certain area, but are still asked and expected to fulfill other projects. So, be prepared to schedule social media posts as an event planner or edit a video in between drafting an article.
Also, get used to the idea that PR agencies are going partially or fully virtual, and so are internships. The renowned Internship Queen Lauren Berger gives the positives of virtual internships in this article.
More importantly than the work itself – students or post-grads need to absorb their overall time in the office. These experiences introduce the language used in the field and the different types of office atmospheres (we prefer a casual environment here.) This understanding of office cultures is all a part of being a communications professional, and it will help prepare you for any type of job you go after post-internship in the 2013 PR and social media world.
Here at Kimball Communications, we’re looking for our 2013 graphic design intern and we look forward to your applications.
Yesterday, Aloft Hotels officially ended their novel #RFTweet process. Most businesses vet PR agencies through a time- and paper-consuming Request for Proposal (RFP) process, one with which we have ample experience. We were game to try something new in the pursuit of a fun, new client.
If you follow @kimballpr on Twitter, you’ll notice that we aren’t hourly tweeters like many other agencies. Frankly, we’re busy writing and calling and posting and tweeting for our clients. But don’t let that lull you into think we can’t deploy our social media skills when necessary. We did what we’re best at, producing a thoughtful yet timely, multimedia-enhanced pitch. Even if we don’t get a call for the second round of vetting, this was a valuable exercise in practicing what we preach, namely:
See our Storify of the experience for the full story.
Thanksgiving has always meant turkey, stuffing, gravy and family, but what about and credit cards, shopping bags and cash registers opening at midnight? Although Black Friday has been creeping into Thanksgiving, some consumers have been generating more interest in the shopping day that includes a full day’s break after the feast: Small Business Saturday.
More than ever, this two-year-old shopping event calls for small businesses to undertake special public relations and social media efforts. The Shop Small organization has completed a lot of the leg-work as far as social media, with more than 3.1 million supporters on Facebook. Plus, the American Express-sponsored event has advertised a $25 gift card offer to cardholders who purchase at small businesses on Saturday, November 24.
However, small businesses should develop a social media plan, tailored to their own shops. By participating in the event through social networking efforts, you can contribute to the community-based “buy local” efforts in your area—as well as help drive your sales. According to the “Shop Small” infographic, independent retailers that are in communities with a “buy local” initiative reported revenue growth of 5.6% on average in 2010, compared to 2.1% for those elsewhere.
The Shop Small website provides pre-made, editable email messages and posts for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn for the convenience of small businesses. Whether your business follows these outlines or creates your own messages, we’re offering a few tips in spreading the word:
As a small business, we appreciate the efforts of this day in supporting small businesses, as it proved last year with these shops.
As PR professionals, we also applaud American Express for conceiving the idea for the event and setting an example for an increasingly successful – and smart – integrated public relations, marketing and social media campaign for their own business.
We’ll be shopping small and local at the Easton, PA Farmers Market. Who are you supporting this Small Business Saturday?
Photo credit: Historic Third Ward Milwaukee / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
Social media policies have been tested in several recent high-profile cases. The case of Andrew Goldman, a freelance columnist for the New York Times Magazine, is almost notorious now. Goldman was suspended from the magazine for tweets to author Jennifer Weiner that were considered profane and sexist.
It’s hard to look away when such a venerable brand undergoes a minor disaster, and the issue has been discussed at length. Over at the Harvard Business Review blogs, Alexandra Samuel ponders whether or not an organization should have such a broad and vague social media policy as the Times does. After all, they claim that it isn’t even written down.
It turns out that such policies may not just be misguided, they may be illegal. In two recent court decisions, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) set precedents for what constitutes a legal social media policy. I’m certainly not a lawyer, but I’ll do my best to lay out the basics as it pertains to social media and PR professionals.
Protected and concerted
The first case concerned another major brand — Costco Wholesale. Part of a larger challenge of Costco’s employee handbook by UFCW Local 371, this case dubbed certain provisions against social media usage unlawful. In particular, the ruling stated that Costco cannot prohibit employees from posting “unauthorized” material while on company property. Also, the company’s employee handbook included broad statements prohibiting employees from using social media to discuss and debate pay, sick leave and what they thought about the company. Such prohibitions are apparently illegal under that National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), because such conversations (online or off) are considered “protected and concerted.”
The judge’s decision in the second case was a bit more nuanced. This case concerned a salesman at a car dealership who had been fired after posting two unflattering items about his employer. In the first, he posted a photo with a caption that criticized the dealership’s choice of food for an event, which led to subsequent comments by other employees. The judge deemed this discussion protected under the NLRA, and also understood that this was not why he was fired.
In another set of posts the same day, the salesman posted a photo of and sarcastic comments about a car accident at the neighboring car lot. He was apparently fired for the second set, which did not fall under the protection of the NLRA.
Still, in another case, the dealership was ordered to remove unlawful rules from its social media policy. The policy was deemed too broad and restrictive of employee communications, particularly where it concerned “courteous” language and not damaging the reputation of the dealership.
What’s in your social media policy?
Is this making you panic yet? After all, it seems that most social media policies list rules about not discussing sensitive issues like payroll or anything that will hurt the company’s image. Apparently, under the NLRA, this is illegal. Employees have a right to discuss hours, pay and other employment-related issues. And in both of these cases above, employers got in trouble with policies that were too broad and could be construed to restrict such “protected and concerted” discussions.
However, employers can ask that their employees follow appropriate laws when using social media. Posts that clearly constitute harassment and bullying are never okay and should never be condoned. Furthermore, employees must heed industry-specific laws when discussing their work online. This has been tested many times in the medical professions. Nurses and doctors have both been fired for posts that violate the privacy provisions of HIPAA. Financial sector employees can also be fired for violating industry-specific laws — and they may also face massive fines, as the recent case of a Citigroup analyst demonstrates.
Clearly, this is a far more complex issue than most business owners realize. So how do you write an enforceable, reasonable and legal social media policy? Here are five starting points:
For more information on developing quality social media policies Inc. has a great article, and Socialmedia.biz has an excellent guide. From where I sit, it seems a good place to begin is to encourage your employees to be safe, savvy and engaged participants in the social media sphere. Didactic, restrictive policies won’t necessarily protect your business or foster positive use of social media among your employees.
Photo credit: jimdeane / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND
Welcome to autumn: A time when public relations professionals and their clients return to their work-a-day worlds and business-not-so-casual apparel, all lamenting the return to “cube-ville” and the noticeable lack of sand beneath their collective flip flops.
But what if the flip-flops became career-chic? What if client meetings at the beach – or at least in a setting absent stuffy corporate culture – was the norm? What if you never went back to the office again?
It’s not that outlandish of a theory. Mobile technology has empowered employees with the ability to hold meetings and prepare documents using little more than a smartphone. Today’s technology increasingly promises to reduce or eliminate tomorrow’s commute.
Some PR agencies gather only a few times per week in the office for meetings while working from home for the rest of the time. Future generations in the communications field might not even set foot in a physical office if they can complete all work virtually.
Think about it. The virtual workplace would save on time, gas, coffee — and the priceless frustration of traffic or crowded subways.
Moreover, working remotely could actually increase employee engagement. That’s what Edinger Consulting Group founder, Scott Edinger, recently discovered. In his blog, Edinger wrote of feedback from an investment firm with which his firm worked that said employees were actually more engaged and committed while working outside their workplace than when they spent eight or more hours per day in the office.
While office employees are just doorways apart, remote employees who are motivated must work harder to reach out to and connect with their co-workers. This typically yields better results in terms of efficiency and focus. The email and phone encounters of remote workers tend to be more brief and direct, maximizing their time spent together.
Although working remotely might look good on paper as a time and money saver, there can be downsides. Entrepreneur Magazine points out in an article that a business’ valuable information, literally held in employees’ hands, can be hacked, stolen or lost in a moment.
However, as both personal and business matters increasingly move into the cloud, it’s reasonable to conclude employees working remotely will not significantly tip the scales of data security for businesses already operating in this space. Technical issues aside, the social aspect of office environments must not be overlooked. Beyond just getting out of the house (and your pajamas), it’s also about the interaction with co-workers and collaboration that can sometimes only result from face-to-face meetings and hallway conversations.
All that being said, if there is a sector of the workforce best positioned to lead the charge of remote workspaces it is public relations. Our work is defined by relationships, and we’ve been trained to overcome a wide range of barriers to forming those relationships. Whether we work to bridge the distance between cultures, generations, work environments or geography, public relations professionals are always striving to build relationships untethered from the barriers that might separate many others.
For the public relations practitioners out there, let’s take a poll: How important do you think visual elements are to journalists?
A) Very important.
B) Not important at all.
If you answered A) Very important, then your views align with 80 percent of the journalists polled in a recent PRESSfeed survey who said it is important or very important to “have access to photographs and visual images.”
While your answer might have matched up to journalists, nearly half of the PR practitioners polled said visuals in news stories are not important at all to journalists.
Of the surveyed PR professionals, 45 percent said visuals were unnecessary in news stories. Another 39 percent said the same for press releases. Even considering the wording of the survey and how answers might have been perceived, these results demonstrate a stark divide between journalists and PR practitioners regarding the value and need for visual content.
As social media trends continue to embrace highly visual platforms, such as Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, I ask: how could the polled PR practitioners not answer in favor of visuals paired with news content?
Although journalists have controlled the media straps for decades with article placements, PR professionals have their hands firmly on the reigns regarding social media content and engagement. The polled PR practitioners should have considered the volume of pictures and video populating all social media pages as they were clicking in answers to the PRESSfeed survey.
PR Newswire also conducted a study demonstrating the increasing number of press release views where visual content is added. In that study, press releases with photos, video and other media receive 77 percent more views than text-only releases – a lesson PR practitioners know – or should know – instinctively, and need to consider when filling out future surveys on the subject. Get the picture?
As you have probably heard, Sony has revealed that their customer databases have been hacked twice in the past month, potentially affecting users of their PlayStation Network, Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment products. Not only have legions of gamers been dealing with a blackout of services that they pay for and fear that their credit card information may have been stolen – but Sony failed to inform them of this massive cyber attack for a week.
According to news reports, Sony learned that they had been hacked on April 19th, took down PlayStation Network service on the 20th, and told customers seven days later, on the 27th. Sony maintains that they were unaware of the breadth of the attack until much later, but I’m not sure that is a good reason for their failure to inform customers more quickly.
Sony gamers, internet security experts, and the odd politician are angry that Sony waited so long. From a PR perspective, the outlook is equally troubling. Sony had an opportunity to take control of the situation and keep this group of highly engaged customers as happy as possible considering the circumstances. Instead, they have turned a challenging situation into a major image problem.
However, I do think some of the lambasting from the press is unwarranted. Sony could have provided more information up front, but they have made great use of the PlayStation blog to consistently communicate with their customers, including lengthy customer Q&As. Of course, the content of that communication could have been better early on.
What do you think? Could Sony have communicated better about this security breach?
PR Matters 