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Scoop.it!
So, how is it possible that so many businesses (especially small or online-based businesses) are failing to utilize social media for PR? After all, it can only be vastly improved by the use of direct engagement with both customers and the press -- and social media is perfect for both. 
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Scoop.it!
A couple of weeks ago my colleague Tony wrote about the importance of content in marketing, and how a return to the art of storytelling...This is a subject I wanted to follow up on, partly because we’ve been getting a lot of interest lately from clients looking to invest in content-based agencies, and also because here at Green Square we’re all in agreement that content marketing is as much a part of the future of marketing as data and mobile. This is particularly the case in PR, which of all marketing disciplines has put itself forward as the custodian of content for brands; it has always been closest to journalism as well....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Content rules and PR drools.
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...What I love about today’s Content We Love example is twofold. The company issuing the survey results, Videology, is doing a great job of promoting a piece of their own content by surfacing the newsy elements, writing a really good press release, adding an infographic and distributing the whole package to the media. (Link to the release: Heavy Video Viewers 57% More Likely to Spend on Holiday Gifts) However, the way the PR team packaged the story will help direct resulting any news coverage advantageously for the brand....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's an excellent example of a news release that provides valuable information and does a great job at selling without "marketing." Thanks to Sarah Skerik at PRNewswire for this example
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...Although companies understand the part about becoming a media company they missed something very important: media companies don’t create media about themselves. This is why companies have problems with the content they produce, people are immediately skeptical about any media that is about the company that produces it — no matter how high the quality. Take a look at the Nielsen study released this week, commissioned by InPowered. It found that branded content ranked extremely low among consumers but content written by journalists — independent of any brand — ranked very highly....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Yes, content by independent third parties is are credible when it's written by credible journalists practicing credible journalism.
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Real-time social media are transforming marketing and public relations. I recently visited two firms in Chicago that are responding to the need for speed within the flow of online conversationconversation. ...Content and storytelling are at the heart of how we help our clients build meaningful relationships with their audiences," said Mark Hass, president and CEO, Edelman U.S. Edelman's plan focuses on client partnerships with five U.S. newsrooms and one in the U.K.Edelman newsroom "trend spotters" identify trends and events, collaborate with account leaders and design creative concepts. Ideas are shared with clients, and then decisions are made about posting or not.Real-time PR and marketing content frequently is covered by traditional media -- television, radio, newspapers and magazines. News organizations, too, are now in the business of conversation monitoring and engaging. In this sense, the news model shares with PR the goal of creating viral videos, flashy graphics, photographs, memes and other popular social media content. Everyone is competing for measurable engagement that may translate into new revenue....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Read how Edelman and Golin-Harris are innovating in PR with strong content marketing efforts using social media channels, a brand journalism newsroom and more.
Phillip Newsome's curator insight,
October 18, 2013 3:26 PM
Today branding agencies must operate like news rooms, monitoring developing stories as they develop and updating audiences on their client's POV.
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Save time. Blog better. The blogosphere is stuffed with tips for bloggers, but if you don’t have time to sift through 100,0000 articles, Here are 50 quick-hitting blogging tips.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Jeff Bullas offers up a great blogging resource.
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We all love lists, especially “best of lists” related to our own profession. It is even better, of course, when people we know actually make the list—and when we make the list ourselves. A number of “best PR blogs” lists recently surfaced. InkyBee, Cision and CyberAlert all weighed in, tackling the ranking in different ways using a variety of criteria....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Shelley Pringle wonders what's up with Canadian PR firms.
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Google now calls links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. Even though Google took away the anchor text links in press releases (and guest posts and articles), there are still press release optimization opportunities. Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEO and online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists. It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?For brands publishing a press release or an article on your site and distributing it through a paid wire service, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or through an article site, you must first make sure to nofollow the links if those links are "optimized anchor text." Is This a Big SEO Deal? Yes. No. Maybe. Google has been slowly squeezing the SEO life out of press releases for a while now. "In 2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much," said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator. "Online press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining. However, I still thought it was a good part of a large organic link building strategy until the new guideline changes."...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
So there. The sky is not falling but the landscape is changing and the ways to get better news release results need revamping.
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Companies rely on PR firms for a variety of services and consulting ranging from strategy and message development to media relations and social media outreach to monitoring and reporting. Product launches, press conferences, event management and promotion, reputation and crisis management, media training, investor relations and of course content creation are all services provided by different PR agencies. Press releases are most often at the top of the list of public relations content along with reports, white papers, newsletters, case studies, corporate website pages, newsrooms, blog posts, short form social media content and media from images to audio to video. To suggest that overly optimized press releases and other content will bring down the PR industry is simply a sensational headline. It’s true, there are a lot of changes happening in the PR world right now and one area in particular that’s worth exploring risks and rewards involves the shift to native ads or as Google calls it, “commerce journalism”. I talked with Cara Posey about this recently and will likely post more about it here. But back to this business of optimized press releases killing PR agencies. Really?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Lee Odden offers solid advice on SEO for PR pros and throws cold water on the hysteria about Google killing PR.
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...You’re off to a great start. However, you’ve only started to scratch the surface of the content possibilities because your audience reach is still limited — while your corner of the world is engaged, you aren’t quite at the center of the wider industry conversation yet. If we agree that the goal of content marketing should be to enable your content creators to function as brand journalists (we do, right?), then it’s fair to equate your content effort to that of a weekly community paper. However, there’s an even bigger opportunity here, because online content can help you extend your reach far beyond your current community and create an exponential opportunity for your business....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Practical tips for better brand journalism and content marketing.
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When we’re building audience archetypes or buying personas, what we’re really doing is trying to get into the heads of our prospective buyers, and figure out how they think, feel, and experience the world.... In fact, both of those words are baked into the definition of content marketing presented by the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” The driving principle behind content marketing isn’t really about marketing at all.It’s about producing and distributing information-rich content to your intended buyer to make them better informed about the stuff you sell. The logic goes something like this: If an organization/brand/company delivers valuable information — consistently — to their current and prospective buyer, those buyers will reward said knowledge share with their hard-earned dollars and, perhaps more importantly, their loyalty....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
More relevant content will deliver stronger connections and results. That's the content marketing challenge.
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...On the Web, people trade attention for good, useful content. So you need to have a plan that will help you develop, publish, and catalog content to make you more effective in attracting search and keeping people coming back to your source.
There are still companies that struggle with the idea of becoming content producers, and thus have not yet formulated a content strategy. It makes sense to have one because it helps you define why content is useful and usable, good for the bottom line and for instilling a sense of purpose -- for customers and business alike. Some organizations are affected by the sprawling issue when it comes to content. Separate groups that develop their own and don't necessarily map to the business' overall direction is one example. Others have the opposite problem -- too few resources means not enough content to start generating the search and participation volumes they need....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Great quote from Valeria Maltoni: "Content, which is anything that informs, educates, or entertain online, is your business digital body language. The Internet changed how people find and read content."
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In their survey of 100 global brands, Mynewsdesk found that 35% display out of date information in their online newsrooms. The type of information being left to stagnate includes annual reports, staff bios and product listings. Furthermore, many are sticking to traditional press releases and 70% fail to provide additional information in the form of video, infographics or other multi-media content that bloggers and online influencers can use. Only 51% of newsrooms surveyed provided video content and 40% had no image library. Disappointingly, half of all brands that did offer video and images did not provide them in a format or at a level of quality needed for publications.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
What's up with these brands not tending to their online newsrooms? Unforgivable!
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A couple of weeks ago my colleague Tony wrote about the importance of content in marketing, and how a return to the art of storytelling would be one of the big stories of 2015 come year end. This is a subject I wanted to follow up on, partly because we’ve been getting a lot of interest lately from clients looking to invest in content-based agencies, and also because here at Green Square we’re all in agreement that content marketing is as much a part of the future of marketing as data and mobile. This is particularly the case in PR, which of all marketing disciplines has put itself forward as the custodian of content for brands; it has always been closest to journalism as well....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
How PR has taken the lead when it comes to content marketing.
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Doug Scott’s recent departure from OgilvyEntertainment, the successful unit he founded eight years ago, has raised questions about whether its WPP parent might fold it into another corporate entertainment sibling like media agency Mindshare Entertainment or GroupM Entertainment at the operating level. While Ogilvy execs say that isn’t in the works, such speculation still begs the larger industry question: As media, creative and PR agencies—along with production companies—vie to lead the growing number of marketer content initiatives, where should responsibility for branded storytelling reside? With traditional advertising becoming less profitable, everyone, obviously, is scrambling for these new income sources. On the creative agency front, proponents argue that without a great concept born from understanding a brand’s narrative, long-form storytelling doesn’t hold an audience’s attention and justify the media expense....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
it's not the department, it's the creativity and the ability to get results that matter most.
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Hill+Knowltons Group SJR doesnt make branded content. It makes publications that you might not even realize come from company marketing budgets. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can now be a publisher. Which is kind of like saying that anyone in a crowded football stadium could stand and deliver an eloquent speech. The hard part is not making noise. The hard part is getting people to listen. So by most aspiring publications’ definitions of success, a technology blog called the Txchnologist has made it. Last year, its articles were picked up about 200 times, including in Time, Smithsonian magazine, and on MSN News. You may have seen its coverage of temporary tattoos that could make electric telekinesis possible. Or eyewear that could help people with red-green color blindness. But what you may not have noticed, unless you read all the way to the bottom of an article or navigated to the blog’s homepage, is that the entire production comes out of GE’s marketing budget. It’s been created by a branch of PR firm Hill+Knowlton called Group SJR....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Native advertising. Brand journalism. Content marketing. Call it what you will, it' a huge trend in marketing and media and the smart players using it to full marketing advantage.
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“Content is a shitty business. You listicle-making sheep are following us off the cliff!”- Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachineDespite Jarvis’ colorful warning to the crowd of PR professionals at the Council of PR Firms Critical Issues Forum, dubbed “Content Frenzy,” we PRs came to listen and learn at the feet of the media and content pundits. The forum’s subtitle, “Holy Grail or Spam-a-lot?” pretty well sums up the PR dilemma. We’ve drunk the content Kool-Aid. No one doubts its potency, nor PR’s ownership claim, given our storytelling DNA and earned media chops. But literally every second brings a new flood of the stuff — tips lists, cat videos, white papers, parodies, inforgraphics, you name it. We’re in a frenzy to make our content bigger and stronger, but with so much out there, how to go beyond the listicle? How can we make ourselves and our clients heard?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Dorothy Crenshaw reports on a recent conference and the blurring the lines between PR and content marketing.
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Do people quoted in newspapers review the stories before they run? Can advertisers legally lie? Are PR people the biggest liars of all? How much does it cost to get a story into The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star? Just a few questions that show people do not understand public relations.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Brian Kilgore provides dinosaur definitions of PR and tries to convince us PR people aren't involved in "marketing." Fail. That was yesterday.
Jared Hill's curator insight,
October 11, 2013 10:45 AM
This helps to show the distinction between the two fields
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Are you struggling to come up with blog posts that attract the right type of visitors?Are you unsure where to turn for new article ideas? In this article I’ll show you how to make sure your future articles are the ones your audience is really interested in. Here’s a hint how: your social connections can help you discover the topics that will perform well on your business blog....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
4 great blogging tips: Here's how to find the best topics for your business blog, with a little research on your social networks.
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I wince at 99.99% of the press releases I receive daily. That’s because 99.99% look like sloppy cut-and-paste jobs, ones that have nothing to do with the Daily Fix and its readers, and everything to do with the sender, the sender, and, oh, right, the sender. Reading a press release that doesn’t make me wince is rare—yet not impossible.Now and then, I receive press releases that are smart, audience-focused, brief, and interesting. So, for this week’s post, I thought I’d stay on the sunny side of the street and share seven traits about press releases that DO get read....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Good reminder about news release best practices that get news results.
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There are few companies or organisations that can come close to rivalling the power that Google wields over the internet and search in particular.... So when the search engine updated its rules on unnatural link schemes recently, making specific reference to press releases, it triggered a rather alarmist article from ZDNet asking whether Google had killed PR agencies. The convergence of PR and SEO is something we’ve covered previously on the blog, with articles focusing on the importance of search optimised PR and suggesting seven SEO tools to improve online PR efficiency. However the article on ZDNet understandably (and probably intentionally) ruffled a few feathers within the PR industry as it painted them as black hat SEOs, out to flood the internet with dull, keyword loaded press releases just so they could help their clients climb a few places in search rankings....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Take a breath PR and marketing people. News releases are still helpful but better care needs to be taken to get better results.
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For companies that haven't found a humorous voice on social media, the joke's on them. For those that have, here's how they leverage laughs.... Done well, tweeting can even land you a dream job. Here at Fast Company, our executive editor Noah Robischon even has a framed edict on his office wall: “Stop tweeting boring shit.” But stifling yawn-worthy tweets is one thing, composing a one-line comedic gem for the masses is quite another. We’ve come to expect it from stand-up comedians such as Megan Amram, the spambot @horse_ebooks that posts bits of context-free hilarity randomly pulled from online texts, and formerly unknown Justin Halpern, who rose to fame tweeting the caustic observations of his father from @shitmydadsays. But brands bringing the funny on Twitter? Not so much. To wit: @ChipotleTweets took to fake hacking its feed to produce a stream of nonsense notes meant to evoke a chaotic mirth similar to that of @horse_ebooks. Though the tactic earned the burrito chain several thousand new followers, Chipotle quickly resumed its regular (not particularly humorous) promotional voice....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The joke's on brands that fail to use humor effectively. While it can be effective, humor is a dangerous game in marketing. An even bigger issue for brands is using fake hacking as a social media and content marketing strategy. Definitely, doomed to fail.
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In the old days, children carried canteens with water to quench their thirst. Today kids sip from BPA-free plastic bottles filled with electrolytes and vitamin water for “hydration.” New term, same concept... ...“People also discovered with search engines and social networks that they can ask each other. They trust each other more than they trust vendors. People shifted their attention away from radio, TV, and magazines and the authorities (journalists, editors, etc.) They now prefer the anarchy of home-made video on Youtube and the anything-goes situation at blogs, Facebook FB +1.4% and Twitter. This conjunction of forces — digitization, social, search engines — never existed before.” Eric Schwartzman, CEO of social media training provider Comply Socially, says content marketing changes the fundamental nature of public relations. “Conventional PR is an interruption tactic,” Schwartzman says. ”PR people are experts at breaking and making news. Content marketers, on the other hand, fulfill existing demand for information by staking out specific keyword queries, and creating content that’s most likely to get found when people search those terms. If you compare the skills it takes to write and pitch a press release versus a search engine optimized product demo, they’re completely different skill sets. Just because you can write up and present impartial information to journalists to try and get them to write a story, doesn’t mean you have the ability to actually write the story yourself...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
My favorite quote in this post: "PR and content marketing are totally different. PR is an outbound, interruption tactic. Content marketing is an inbound tactic designed to get you found by people with a much higher purchase intent than those perusing a Twitter feed."
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Corporations have spotted a gaping hole in the market left by traditional media and are attempting to fill it with their own forms of corporate media.
But according to former-Financial Times journalist turned media entrepreneur Tom Foremski, corporates are failing to connect with their audiences and there are very few successful examples of the genre....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Tom Foremski shares some clear lessons for corporate communicators including: "organizations must avoid vanity media and report and share stories that engage their audience." He also worries about journalism in an era where page views count more than news.
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...From a PR’s perspective, there are three reasons to take in interest in podcasts: 1. Listen: learn about your industry. 2. Reach out: get your clients or your company featured on leading podcasts. 3. Speak out: make your own podcast and reach your target audience in a different way, at a different time.
The reasons also map quite nicely onto a three-step process for PRs to get into podcasting. I’ve spoken to half a dozen podcasters to get an insight into why they do it and ways PR people can engage with them, with some surprising insights....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's a fresh look at the value of podcasting for marketing and PR pros.
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Ann Smarty shares a handful of useful social media tips for better PR.