Social media tools are designed to be easy to use—but they’re not always easy to use well. Between typos, hasty responses and toggling multiple accounts in one dashboard, posting to social media can be perilous. What’s a social media manager to do?
Being careful doesn’t need to take a lot of time. Check out this checklist before the next time you hit “post.”
Photo credit: Transferwise.com
Social media is to branding a successful business as cheese is to mozzarella sticks. We’ve known for quite some time that marketers need to look alive every second of the day (or even just six hours per week), on the Twitterverse. But when opportunity arises or crisis strikes, it’s all about tactical PR. A strong media presence requires time commitment, creativity, and responsiveness; dedicated and experienced PR support is the best way to meet these demands. Without a practiced PR team or agency, your company may fall victim to the #nightmares detailed below.
#Wheresthecheese
Speaking of mozzarella sticks, McDonald’s launched them as a new item on their menu recently. Customers quickly took to social media to vent their frustrations with their cheesy purchase turned “lactose-free.“ McDonald’s came out with their explanation/ apology via The Chicago Tribune, but not before some smart competitors took to social media to boast the cheesy goodness they offer.
PR Takeaways:
1) Keep a close eye on social media callouts, so you can respond to the problem before the hashtag becomes the new problem.
2) Seize the opportunity, or dare we say, “cheese the opportunity.” Use humor and offer incentives to keep the situation friendly. Your audience will get a good laugh and hopefully drop in for a bite to eat. Just be sure to put your money where your mouth is if you’re going to play this card.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s has discontinued this product in response to negative feedback.
“Fire your agency. Then fire everyone who hired them”
Twitter users across the country did not appreciate the response Red Lobster gave to their Super Bowl Sunday shout out from none other than Queen Bey herself in her newly released single, “Formation”. The somewhat controversial lyric referencing Red Lobster turned all eyes on the seafood chain restaurant. While clearly trying to maintain their family-friendly rep, Red Lobster landed themselves in hot water with the masses on Twitter who waited hours for a clever response.
PR Takeaways:
#RIPTwitter
The social media site fell victim to the power of its creation when rumors spread that they may change their news stream from reverse-chronological order to an algorithm based feed, similar to Facebook’s. Even a few celebrities got on board with #RIPTwitter to express their discontent, to which CEO Jack Dorsey had to step in and quell the chaos.
PR Takeaways:
Whether you work for a fast food giant or an insurance company, it’s important to control your own message. A small business may not generate viral hashtags the way Red Lobster would, but you can never be too sure what will happen in the realm of social media. Stay alert, stay focused, and stay out there.
The majority of hotels recognize the critical need for crisis response planning. But have they factored in social media? Over at Hotel Executive, Gary explains eight ways hotels can be effectively using social media during a crisis response.
Summer is conference season, and we all know preparing for a conference is an important part of the experience. Social media has become a powerful tool for connecting with people at conferences, driving traffic to your booth and letting your audiences at home know what you’re learning. Below are some simple tips for being social media-ready at a conference or event.
Plan ahead. Ensure you have a designated tweeter while you’re attending. If several employees from your company are attending, don’t duplicate efforts and post the same content. Be sure you know the basics before attending: booth number, hashtag, speakers info., etc.
Consider bringing a portable charger for your phone. Outlets can be scarce at conferences and posting on social media all day will suck your battery dry. Most importantly, post ahead of the conference. Let others know you’ll be there.
Use the appropriate hashtag. Be sure to use the correct hashtag while tweeting. We’ve seen companies use two or three different hashtags while attending a conference. This can be very confusing and you may lose credibility.
Post photos and videos. I cannot stress enough how important it is to post visual content while you’re there. People want to see what’s happening. Photos also appear more prominently on the feed and you may have a better chance of being retweeted. What should you take photos of? Include photos of employees, your booth, speakers, etc. Keep it professional. If you’re heading to a bar after, it’s probably best not to include that shot (literally!).
Engage. Retweet interesting posts, mention speakers Twitter handles in your tweets, etc.
Include names. Mention who is at your booth and include name(s) and title(s). Double check to make sure the spelling is correct.
Drive traffic to your booth. Give attendees a reason to stop by your booth. Offer prizes (gift cards, iPads, etc.) or promote a new product.
Don’t disappear when it’s over. Just because it is over doesn’t mean you need to vanish. Discuss your favorite session or speaker, what you’re looking forward to next year, etc.
Before your next conference, you’ll be fully prepared. Enjoy conference season and happy tweeting!
Photo credit: Scott Beale / Source / CC BY-NC-ND
You’ve decided it’s time to create a new social media account for your company, but you’re not exactly sure where you should start. Whether you’re thinking about creating a LinkedIn Company Page, Twitter account, Instagram account or Facebook Page, you need to think about several factors before you dive in. Here are a few things to consider before you create a new social media account and push out your first message.
Identify your audience. Identify your target audience and determine who you want to reach. Most importantly, is your target audience on the platform you’re considering creating?
Spy on your competition. See if your competition is on the particular platform you’re interested in creating. If they are on a given platform, see who your competition is connecting with on that particular platform. Look at the different types of content they’re sharing. See what’s working well for your competition and what is not working as well. What types of content have the highest engagement?
Identify the content you’ll share. Ask yourself why people would want to follow you. What do you have to offer? Give them a reason to follow you by positioning yourself as the expert in your given industry. If you’re in the insurance industry, consider sharing tips, industry news, original visual content (such as infographics and photos from conferences), etc.
Frequency. Ask yourself if you and your team are able to devote enough time to another platform. How much time do you have to tweet/post on the new platform? Don’t set expectations too high, meaning, don’t plan to tweet three times a day, if you only have time to tweet a few times a week.
Ensure voice/tone is consistent. Be sure there’s a designated person tweeting and not several. This will ensure your tone is consistent throughout. Make sure your tone is appropriate for the industry you’re reaching out to.
Determine your end-goal and be realistic. Are you looking to increase traffic to your website? Consider sharing company news, blogs and other pages on your domain. Maybe you’re looking to create overall awareness for your company. Share company news while sprinkling in relevant industry news that will pertain to your audience.
Don’t try to tackle too many goals at once. Stick to a few until you’ve perfected your approach and go from there.
Those are just a few things to consider before you jump into creating a new social media account. Have anything to add? Comment below.
A crisis is a time of uncertainty that requires the careful management of information. If you don’t move quickly to present the facts and explain your position, then others will do it for you – and that puts the accuracy of the words and images they use beyond your control.
The words and images you use can either spell success and strengthen your future or damage your company’s reputation for years to come. The impact of social media on the crisis communications process has been significant.
Today information flows faster is more complex and independent. It is spread through multiple channels, and as a result, is often less reliable and more difficult to control. You often have just a few hours or minutes to communicate.
Social media must be fully integrated in your crisis communications plan. That means, your social networks are of equal import as other audiences and your community manager should be an effective communicator, as well as a media-savvy professional with appropriate technical skills.
Messaging must be also consistent with other channels, but appropriate for social networks. Candor is expected and an authentic voice is critical. And, as crisis communications is a two-way process, listening through your social networks can inform your communications with many different audiences.
Above all, you need to consider and plan for all contingencies. Each type of crisis should be considered. Social media will play a critical role in communicating during and after natural disasters, terrorist attacks, cyber breaches and, of course, crises created by social media. But also consider its role in financial crises, human resources issues and (in the insurance world) claims and service issues.
Join me on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 at 11 a.m. EST for the IMCA webcast, “Integrating Social Media in Crisis Communications,” where I’ll explore these issues in more detail.
Don’t appeal to empty seats—know your audience.
Recently, a minor controversy flared up on a Facebook page for an outdoors magazine. In a web feature on getting fit for hiking, the lede read: “Doughy is a lifestyle choice.” Huh?
On certain fitness blogs or emblazoned on across a “fitspo” meme, such a statement wouldn’t be out of place. But to the readers of this magazine it seemed an odd crack aimed at heavy hikers. Most of the comments below the related Facebook post were some variation of this, from a commenter named Todd: “LoL I am doughy and I out hike lean athletes any day of the week. It’s not all about the cover. Over weight people can have very good fitness.”
If commenters were not taking the magazine to task for shaming bigger hikers, they were confused by the very nature of the article. That is, they didn’t understand why a hiker would need these fitness tips. As commenter Katherine quipped, “I got in shape for hiking by… hiking.”
So what’s going on here (aside from insensitivity)? If we examine this from a writing and public relations angle, it becomes clear the magazine made a basic, yet extremely common mistake: they misjudged their audience.
Under ever-increasing pressure to produce more and more content, companies sometimes forget for whom they are writing. They seek out new formats and approaches to writing quick blog posts and features, often mimicking what works elsewhere on the web. Though this can lead to content that is more interesting to readers, writers and brands have to keep those readers in mind. You can adapt a form or approach to mesh with the information and tone your audience seeks from you.
So let this little hiker dustup serve as a reminder: next time you sit down to write a new blog post, article, white paper or other piece of content, ask, “who is this for and what do the want from me?”
Yelp, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com… The web has given travelers have so many ways to evaluate, select, book and review hotels. How do hotels manage their reputations proactively and honestly?
Our president Gary Kimball has some advice, which he shares with Hotel Business Review:
Hotels should look at how they are allocating their precious marketing and public relations dollars. This means comparing the value of social media buzz to advertising and print and broadcast media coverage. A review in a popular blog or traditional media like The New York Times or Travel + Leisure can do wonders in building awareness. But those readers may still seek online reviews before making decisions.
Read more at HotelExecutive.com.
Many companies and the marketing and communications agencies that represent them use social media management tools such as SproutSocial, Hootsuite or Radian6 to manage their social media accounts.
Many social media professionals love the scheduling features of these tools. Often scheduling tweets and Facebook posts in advance is done to save time, but is this having a negative effect on your engagement?
1. Don’t be a robot. If your company’s tweets are posted everyday at 10 am, noon and 2 pm, followers will notice that. It will seem like you are simply tweeting three times a day because that’s what you’re expected to do, not because you have genuinely useful or relevant information to share. Also, it seems robotic, like a real person didn’t take the time to craft the tweet him or herself.
2. Interaction goes both ways. If your posts are all scheduled, you will be missing opportunities to interact with your followers. Say someone asks a question on Facebook. Ideally you would respond to their question in a timely fashion. One way to be sure you catch notifications quickly is to have your social media management tool up in the background of your computer, so that while still working on other projects, you can occasionally check to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
3. Stay up to date on the news. If your posts for the day are all already scheduled, you may not be taking into account breaking news and events that come up that affect your industry or company. When these things happen it is important that you respond as soon as possible, so as not to get lost in the crowd. Simply taking a half hour during the day to go through your news feed as well as search the news for any relevant industry updates, is a great way to share or retweet the timely news your audience wants to know.
There is absolutely a place for scheduling automated posts, such as if you want to share company news or a link to your newest blog post. However, scheduled posts have to be mixed with live posts in order to most effectively communicate with your audience.
When it comes to managing social media platforms, consistency matters. From the content that is shared to the voice/tone, being consistent is vital. Below we explore a few ways to keep everything in sync.
A few things to consider …
Feel free to share any additional tips in the comments!
Photo credit: mkhmarketing / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
PR Matters 