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In this week’s member newsletter (#22), I discussed Zillow plans for Canada, financial planning, and coworking.
In my “non-industry reads” section, one of the links included was I Can’t Wait for You to See What We Do Next by Kevin Gibbon (CEO of Shyp). Kevin mentioned “…growth at all costs is a dangerous trap that many startups fall into, mine included.” Like many other startups, they scaled too prematurely with bad unit economics. I worry about this with both Uber and Lyft. Sure, they’ve delivered a win to the consumer in the form of lower prices and a better rider experience. However, the “driver” side of the market is not happy, and we all know an unbalanced marketplace of incentives won’t stand the test of time. Many real estate startups who heavily favor one side (agents or consumers) in sellers market may be wiped out quickly once the market self corrects to normal.
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In theory, Keyzz is interesting to me given they supposedly “empower realtors by giving them short and long-term tools that increase their value proposition.” That said, I’m a bit perplexed on exactly what “short and long-term tools” are as I am about what problem this is solving for the agents’ clients.
Having been in this industry, I’ve seen numerous products that are “Developed by Realtors for Realtors” or “built for agents, by agents”. While that positioning may help sell products since agents believe you understand their pain, it doesn’t help to win over consumers — and winning consumers is the way to shifting the balance of power.
Thus, I don’t really think the question of whether Keyzz can “empower agents” matters that much. The question that matters:
When it comes to branded content, tout your organization sparingly for the best results.
A recent Pressboard study of branded content revealed that although transparency is important, content marketers and copywriters shouldn’t cross the line into overt promotion.
After evaluating more than 300 pieces of brand content, Pressboard reported that articles in which the organization sponsoring it was mentioned in the first 100 words carried an average reading time of 56.2 seconds. That’s considerably less than the average reading time of 68.1 seconds—the benchmark for articles where the organization was mentioned after the first 300 words.
Though delaying a brand mention can increase engagement, don’t wait too long. The study showed that articles in which the organization was mentioned after the 600-word mark saw an average reading time of 66.3 seconds, proving that readership decreased with less transparency.
Proper placement for your brand mention also affects how much of the article readers will scroll through.
Pressboard reported that on average, a reader will scroll through 72 percent of an article that mentions the sponsor organization within the first 100 words. When content marketers place a brand mention 300 to 600 words in, however, the reader scrolls through an average of 80.5 percent of the article.
Scrolling behavior increases the later your organization is mentioned—sponsored content in which a brand mentioned occurred late in the article saw an average reader scrolling behavior of 81.5 percent of the text—but active reader time will still decrease.
To maximize the amount of time people spend scrolling through and reading your branded content, aim to mention your organization around 300 to 600 words into the article.
You might not be surprised that mentioning your organization’s name multiple times within sponsored content decreases engagement—but don’t skip a mention altogether. Sponsored content that carried brand mentions sparingly and strategically achieved more reading time than articles that didn’t name the organization behind it.
Content that didn’t mention a sponsoring organization grabbed an average reading time of 63.5 seconds—higher than the time readers spend on sponsored content with more than three brand mentions (57.3 seconds) and more than five brand mentions (55.5 seconds).
However, articles in which the sponsoring organization was mentioned only once garnered an average of 69.6 seconds of read time—more than six seconds more than skipping a brand mention altogether.
“This is consistent with most marketers’ expectations,” Pressboard wrote. “If a reader feels that the focus of the article is more on your brand than on the story you're telling, they’re less likely to engage with it.”
Scrolling behavior is also dependent on the number of times a brand is mentioned. In branded articles with only one mention of the organization, readers scrolled an average of 80 percent through the text.
That percentage decreases as more brand mentions appear: Readers scrolled through an average of 76.8 percent of articles with two mentions, 76.4 percent of an article with three or four mentions, and only 74 percent of an article with more than five mentions of the sponsoring organization.
For content marketers, the takeaway from this study is simple: Be transparent, but don’t sell your readers.
Joe Lazauskas, head of content strategy for Contently, said:
… Consumers really want brands to clearly disclose their sponsorship of sponsored content, featuring both their name, logo, and a clear labeling like "advertisement" or "sponsored", but they don't want to be sold to. Self-promotion in branded content kills trust—by 27%. Tell stories people crave. Don't try to dress up a display ad in sheep's clothing.
Jesper Laursen, Native Advertising Institute’s chief executive, agreed. Speaking of the study’s results, he said:
… We always urge brands, publishers and agencies to be completely clear about who is behind a piece of sponsored content. For legal reasons, for moral reasons, but also because we truly believe that if you publish relevant, valuable and engaging content, the audience is perfectly fine with listening to a brand - as long as you do not overdo it.
With today’s consumer AI tools at your fingertips, it may feel like you don’t need a computer science degree to understand how artificial intelligence will bring value to the communications process.
“Siri, find me the top food and wine reporters . . . ranked in order from the outlet with the largest audience to the smallest . . . that prefers pitches via e-mail with phone call followup afterward . . . in the mid-Western U.S. . . . that we’ve never connected with before.”
Assuming that didn’t work for you, it brings up a larger point: While you don’t need a degree in computer science to build an AI strategy, it is important that PR pros don’t sit on the sidelines and let an AI strategy get defined for them without their input. In this post, we’ll go through some practical steps you and your team can do to get started.
The Industry Take On AI So Far
Today, most agency executives only seem to agree on what the limits of AI in PR will be. In a recent column on PRWeek, Ivan Ristic of Diffusion suggested that while AI might be good for data mining keywords across blogs and online publications to find trends for clients, it still won’t replace relationships that make the industry go-round.
“A bot can’t lay claim to emotional intelligence, a cornerstone of all PR work. Teams employing AI handling external communication would be wise to have plans to manage reputation should anything go awry,” he wrote. “Humans build trust with humans — not bots.”
You might be forgiven, however, if you wondered just how much AI could take on in the earned media capacity. When used effectively, machines can get smarter about how to book hotels, solve customer service issues, and much more. Is it really so difficult to imagine a bot that would generate pitch ideas for specific journalists? While some in the profession loathe to hear it, it’s not far-fetched.
The good news for comms pros: It will be a blend of both technology and human insight. Most experts suggest AI will augment that strategic thinking by synthesizing details the way marketing automation has done for other parts of the enterprise. This recent story on Ragan sums it up well:
“By taking advantage of massive quantities of data and using AI to draw insights on it, PR pros can now . . . cut through clutter and find useful, relevant data, quantify buzz and press hits, properly attribute revenue, know which tactics are working, spot brand and revenue indicators and identify PR funnel accelerators.”
Comms pros don’t need to move immediately on changing their workflow for AI, but they would also be making a mistake to not prepare. Just as personal computers entered the workplace to reduce onerous paperwork and administrative tasks, there’s nothing wrong with taking baby steps with AI before PR professionals maximize its potential. In fact, a blogger on Towards Data Science suggested this is precisely the low-hanging fruit they should begin to pick:
“If you have an agency full of clients, you probably already realize how exhausting it is, engaging with the public on social media, liking, replying, following, searching all over again for every single account you manage daily,” she wrote. “How good it would be if every task could be automated, saving the time of PR professionals for vital tasks such as creative work and decision-making activities?
Maybe the best way to get started is by learning how technology experts are defining AI. According to market research firm Forrester, for example, there’s a big difference between “pure AI” — where machines literally think and reason the way humans do — and “pragmatic AI,” which is designed to learn the steps involved in doing specific tasks the way Siri looks up information online or, in its more advanced form, playing games like chess.
When we talk about pragmatic AI, we’re talking about a collection of technologies that include natural language processing and machine learning (algorithms that analyze information and try to predict what will happen).
The below video from PBS Digital Studios explains in detail the difference between automated machine learning and AI.
In a PR context, think of these two examples:
An AI tool you could use to look through all the potential influencers (including non-professional journalists who simply have a large social media following). It could determine which ones will be receptive to a pitch and whose coverage would tie back to any of the client’s key performance indicators, including sales revenue.
An AI tool you could use to “meet” with a new client to get a sense of their needs, their narrative, their culture and other factors. This tool would be able to answer questions about your firm in a way that inspires confidence and helps you land the account.
The first example is pragmatic AI. It represents the kind of value you can get when you pair good data with great technology. The second probably still feels unnerving, as this is where human insight and emotion is still very important for storytelling and campaign creation.
One day the PR industry may want and rely on both pure and pragmatic AI, but to make that call you need to understand how a machine actually learns.
Stages Of AI Supervision
Think about how we teach children in school. There is the classroom scenario where teachers are working directly with students to get across certain concepts. Then there is “independent study” — usually introduced as they get a little older — where they are given just enough information and instructions to experiment and figure out concepts on their own.
A lot of education also falls somewhere in between. A group of elementary children might be asked to learn their multiplication tables and solve a few problems, but are free to ask for help here and there. Machine learning in AI works much the same way.
In what’s called “supervised learning,” for instance, technology can use what it is given, or “training data,” to get from A to B on a particular task where you know exactly what the end result should be. Let’s use one of the simple PR tasks referenced earlier — social media duties — as an example. And let’s break down the tasks as if a human would still be doing them instead of a machine.
Let’s imagine you want to take headlines and rewrite them for social media in a way that highlights your client’s or brand’s role in the story. The next step might be copying and pasting the text with the URL in the field of a social networking service. Then it might be cross-referencing the right hashtags, including one created for a particular PR campaign, to include in the post that is known to get the most amount of pick up. Then you would be press “post.”
While most people have a person do this today, supervised learning algorithms with good training data, however, might be able to manage some social media promotion to scale some of your social media engagement. Now think of other tasks where AI could be put to work organizing work back schedules or even writing rough drafts of a press release based on your firm’s brand voice and guidelines. The Associated Press is already using AI to write earnings stories.
Source: Automated Insights Associated Press Case Study
Unsupervised learning doesn’t need training data but instead has the system learn on the fly. It tries to identify what the problem is, and the steps required to solve it. Imagine, for instance, you’ve created a microsite for a PR campaign that repurposes a library of blog posts, media mentions and other assets. Unsupervised AI might figure out that, based on the dates of various files, that it should be organized in reverse chronological order on the microsite, or classify it in some other way based on the attributes of the information. It may not know the “right” answer with certainty, but it will work more like a human being in using whatever it can to make the best possible guess.
A more complex version of unsupervised machine learning might be able to look for clues about the sentiment of earned media coverage, sending alerts about negative stories the second they appear so PR professionals can respond more quickly. The technology might also become sophisticated enough to spot “fake news” or inaccuracies in the way a company operates, or nicknames for people and organizations that might otherwise get missed when looking for where a brand is being mentioned online. That might take “semi-supervised learning,” where PR or corporate comms professionals do some of the AI “training” and leave some aspects up to the machines.
“The impact of algorithms on discourse in the public sphere needs to be characterized and their creators held to account,” he wrote. “Public relations, like other professions, is sleepwalking into the issue of artificial intelligence. It’s an issue that is rarely addressed at events and by media in the business of public relations. That needs to change.”
In terms of how that change could take place, here are a few ideas:
Seek out an AI advantage: Whether it’s high-end machine learning to solve big problems or just reducing some of the grunt work, begin brainstorming with your team, as well as though in other departments, on where AI might make sense as a pilot project.
Lay the foundation for automation: The transition to AI-enabled processes will be much smoother for firms that have already gotten familiar with technologies that assist in areas that have traditionally been manual, error-prone or both. If you’re a data-driven PR shop, you may have a head start on what AI could do.
Adopt a reporter’s mindset: The journalists you pitch are often infinitely curious — and highly skeptical — about what they see and hear. They ask a lot of questions to get at important details. They may even focus on the negative angle before they get to any “good news.” All of these behaviors and characteristics could serve PR professionals well as they learn more about AI and what it could do for them.
Finally, it may be best to think of AI as a member of the team you’re coaching, rather than a technology out to make traditional PR obsolete. In fact, if all goes as planned, AI may turn out to be one of your most valuable players.
Chris Lynch oversees Cision’s global marketing teams. Serving as Chief Marketing Officer, Lynch is responsible for Cision’s global marketing strategy — spanning communications, product and digital marketing. Previously, he ran product marketing and go-to-market strategy for Oracle’s Marketing Cloud business and also held leadership positions at companies like Badgeville and TIBCO. Based in San Francisco, Lynch attended Northeastern University where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. Follow him on Twitter @cglynch.
Facebook, Microsoft, ConEd, Whole Foods, SAS, Legacy Health, Disney Parks, Florida International University and Southwest Airlines are a few of ours.
What do they have in common? They’ve all hosted Ragan events and gotten expert communications training for free—helping their team become the best of the best.
The benefits of hosting a Ragan conference are legion. But here are the five top reasons mentioned by our host organizations:
You receive complimentary registrations for your communication team
You select the training topics and work with our team to tailor the conference to your needs
You choose the time and duration of the events
You showcase your organization’s brand and culture, and establish yourself as a leader in communications
You hear from experts in a variety of industries, and learn from their failures and successes
It’s a win-win situation for our team and yours.
We’re currently looking for one-day workshop hosts and three-day conference hosts on topics including public relations, internal communications, writing and editing, social media, visual communications and more.
Get the training and exposure you need to become an industry giant. Contact Danielle Barrera to learn more about hosting today.
Engagements on LinkedIn have risen exponentially in the last two years.
Our team dove into the data to see which publishers were the most successful on the platform in recent months. The findings can point your LinkedIn content strategy in the right direction.
Since 2015, the growth of shares of the top content on LinkedIn has seen a steady trend upward, with conservative estimates of growth in engagements of four times over the two-year period we looked at, visualized in the graph below:
If nothing else, this proves that LinkedIn is becoming a genuine force as a platform where people read and engage with content. As such, it is worth paying attention to which publishers’ content is having the most success on LinkedIn. Here’s what we found:
Who were the top publishers on LinkedIn?
The preeminent publishers on LinkedIn were a bit different than those that dominate other prominent social media platforms.
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal do make an appearance in the top 10, for instance, but business-centric content seems to be winning the day. During the timeframe we analyzed, Forbes was the top publisher in terms of LinkedIn interaction, with nearly 10 million engagements with its content on the platform.
Business Insider also performed well, as did such publications as bizjournals.com and Inc. As for NBC, its LinkedIn interactions are largely driven by its business-focused subsidiary CNBC.
What were the top stories on LinkedIn in 2017?
In the data we mined, LinkedIn’s most viral content focused on workplace issues. Inc., Business Insider, Thrive Global and CNBC dominated the top 10.
The top story, with more than 80,000 engagements, was from Inc. The piece focused on Google’s attempts to create the perfect team, but the post was not necessarily predictive of which content would perform well.
Are there any content trends on LinkedIn?
The top 10 articles fall roughly into three categories, and all of which tuck under the larger umbrella of “workplace advice.”
The first category of successful content uses the “one thing” theme, which purports to tell the reader something that can add a positive or remove a negative from his or her life. This sort of behavioral advice for the workplace crops up in three of the top 10 articles.
The second grouping relates to job interview advice, which also appears in three of the top 10 stories. These posts offer guidance for answering tricky questions, from “What’s your current salary?” to the dreaded “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Clearly, this sort of helpful, practical advice resonates with LinkedIn’s famously “professional” demographics.
The third category reveals the popularity of “great CEO worship.” Posts that highlight successful CEOs’ routines, habits, emotional intelligence or communication skills often go viral. If you’re ever unsure of what to write about, something about Elon Musk is a safe bet.
Which publishers have the highest average engagement on LinkedIn?
Among the top 20 publishers on LinkedIn, the breakout star in terms of average content engagement is Thrive Global.
The publication’s wellness and workplace content garners more than 2,000 engagements per article, four times higher than any of its nearest rivals. Thrive Global’s interaction dwarfs that of larger competitors, such as The New York Times. The Times’ average engagements across social media for the period we analyzed was 4,916 per post, but on LinkedIn it’s just 113. A household name doesn’t guarantee success on every platform.
Of course, certain publications have adopted a content strategy that revolves around LinkedIn. PR Newswire, Thrive Global, Business Wire and Biz Journals receive most of their social media traction via LinkedIn.
This is a good reminder to find your niche on social media. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone on every platform, focus on the channels where you can most effectively reach your target audience. Select topics that tend to perform well in certain venues, and deliver the content your audience craves.
How can you create successful LinkedIn content?
Here are four guidelines to follow when crafting content for LinkedIn:
• Know your platform. LinkedIn is not like Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform. The demographics are different, as are the types of posts that tend to perform well.
• Know your competition. Identify and scout out the big players in your field. What are they doing well? Which strategies from the competition can you adopt?
• Know what content works. During the 2017 time period we analyzed, workplace advice and CEO-centric content ruled the roost. Of course, this is always subject to change, so monitor current trends consistently.
• Use social media data to perfect your strategy. Let metrics be your guide. Test different types of content and ways of sharing until you find what resonates with your audience.
Though older generations might grumble, emojis are here to stay.
In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries gave its Word of the Year title to the “tears of joy” emoji—and social analytics platform Talkwalker reported that emojis were in 13 percent more tweets in March 2018 as compared to last year.
“Emojis are a part of your consumers’ language, and whether you’re already using social media listening or not, it’s essential for you to use emoji analysis to fully understand what consumers are saying,” Talkwalker says.
Beyond using emojis to cater your messages to younger audiences on Twitter, PR and marketing pros can analyze emojis online to gain insights that can help them hone their communications efforts.
Consider these insights that you can get from emojis:
However, many social media users tweet the pizza emoji without also including the keyword in their tweets’ text.
Talkwalker reported that “pizza” was mentioned 70.2 million times in the past 13 months on Twitter. However, there were 13.3 million tweets with the pizza emoji (🍕) and no mention of the keyword, meaning that marketing and PR pros who searched “pizza OR 🍕” would find 18.9 percent more mentions on the subject.
Emojis can not only surface additional consumer conversations, but they can also show how strong your brand is in comparison to your competitors.
Consider the 83.5 million tweets about pizza (whether using keywords or just emojis). Talkwalker found that Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s are the most-mentioned companies—but the latter receives 12.4 percent more emoji-only mentions than Domino’s.
Talkwalker also reported:
The hamburger (🍔) fries (🍟) emojis are most commonly associated with McDonald’s.
Consumers use the car emoji (🚗 ) most when talking about BMW.
The Philadelphia Eagles is the team to rack up the most mentions when people use the football emoji (🏈).
Collecting data around emoji use can help you measure how your organization ranks against the competition—and it can help you better interact with customers.
Who could use the surge of joy only a free calzone can provide? #FREEtweet 🍕🔀💸
“It’s like one big Rorschach test,” Talkwalker says. “If the wider population associate a specific brand with certain emojis, it demonstrates how well that brand has diffused into the consumer psyche.”
Many digital marketing and PR pros use sentiment analysis to monitor how their organizations’ reputation is faring online. Analyzing emojis can offer additional data and context to what you’ve already gathered.
Talkwalker reported that Netflix received more than 15 million negative mentions in the last 13 months, which represented 19 percent of the company’s overall sentiment.
Talkwalker then explains:
But that only highlights them as negative, without any emotional context. By looking at the emojis included in those mentions, we can get a better idea what negative emotion is driving those conversations.
Take, for example, the angry-face emoji (😡). These tweets are most likely to be counted among an organization’s negative sentiment, but there are several reasons why consumers would use it in tweets about the streaming service.
Some social media users complained that Netflix took off the shows and movies that they wanted to watch:
WHY has mamma mia been taken off of netflix i am LIVID 😡😡😡
The search results for angry-face emoji tweets about Netflix also surfaces a plethora of tweets criticizing the company for hiring Ambassador Susan Rice, who previously served as former President Barack Obama’s national security advisor. Many are calling for a boycott of the company:
I need to cancel Netflix right away! Susan Rice should not be anywhere near it, let alone in a leadership position at Netflix!!!!!😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
Welppp guess I’m cancelling my @netflix membership when I get home from work today. Wouldn’t be caught dead paying them with @AmbassadorRice on the Board 😡
However, tweets with the angry-face emoji don’t necessarily represent a problem with Netflix—nor are all of them negative. Take, for example, these tweets:
Whichever BROKE weirdo thinks it’s okay to keep using my Netflix ITS NOT 😡 it’s literally £6 a month
This additional context is seen with more than just the angry-face emoji.
Talkwalker explains:
The sad 😭 emoji often relates to either an emotional ending or incident in a show, or to a popular series being taken off Netflix. Both are worth monitoring to see which show their consumers are engaging with.
… Though not in the top 50 emojis, three of the ones related to sickness (😷🤒🤧) were linked to numerous mentions. These were due to people choosing Netflix when sick. It appears “Netflix and ill” is a trend.
The optimal size of your online image depends on how you are using it.
Consider that on one platform, Facebook, a different size is recommended for a profile image versus a photo that anchors an event announcement. Your cover photo should be a wide landscape image, but other photos should be more square.
PR is more than media relations, but gaining press coverage comprises a large part of many communicators’ daily responsibilities.
Seeking a media relations win for your organization or client? Colleen Newvine, a marketing consultant and AP Stylebook’s product manager, shared several writing and pitching secrets that you can use to secure headlines.
Consider these insights:
1. Put journalists first.
Many PR pros write press releases and pitches that focus on the organization, product or announcement they want covered. Instead, try thinking of the reporter and his or her needs.
Newvine says she remembers listening to a colleague expertly pitch journalists on the phone:
… [I]t was so obvious he understood the needs of the reporters he called. He knew what they covered and that he was offering them information that would help them do their jobs. He was their ally.
To test whether your pitch has teeth, Newvine suggests PR pros envision meeting a journalist at an event:
If you went to a party and ran into a reporter you’re going to pitch, would you tell him or her about this story? And would you expect the response to be, “Thanks, that’s interesting!” or “Can you excuse me while I run to the bar?”
Newvine says that sometimes an organization’s politics or a client or executive request can force you to write a press release “you know is boring and completely unlikely to get picked up,” but building relationships with reporters who cover your industry can help in the long run. Get to know them and what types of stories they seek, and then suggest that route the next time you’re faced with writing up a new-hire announcement or press release for a client acquisition or anniversary.
The relationships you build can give you valuable insight to strengthen your arguments and take a certain story direction, too.
Newvine says PR pros can help executives and clients let go of non-newsworthy ideas by positioning your expert advice as the way you’ll deliver exactly what they want: media coverage.
“I had a boss years ago whose advice was, ‘Don’t say no—say yes to a different question,’” Newvine says.
[RELATED: Learn more from Colleen Newvine and other communications experts from Associated Press, AAA, Condé Nast, NPR and more with Ragan’s PR & Media Relations Conference on April 3-5 in NYC or from your computer.]
“AP style is the common language of reporters, so if you write in AP style, you’re speaking journalists’ language,” Newvine says. “You’re also making it easier for a reporter to cut and paste from your release without having to rework it.”
Many of us who went to journalism school can’t help but see typos and AP style errors as we read. They just jump out and grab our attention. So when you don’t use AP style, you risk having little speed bumps as the reporter thinks, “that should be p.m., not PM.” It’s a distraction from the idea you’re trying to convey.
Along with using AP style, drop the jargon and corporate speak.
“Would you speak French in Japan?” Newvine asks. “No? Then why would you speak your corporate secret code instead of the language your readers use?”
Here’s why Newvine says PR pros should write simply:
If the goal of your copy is to convey an idea, you want to make it as clear as possible and remove all the barriers to comprehension. Every five-dollar word or acronym or cliché that slows the reader down distracts from your idea.
If you’re having problems distilling complex information and finding alternatives to a jargon-laden statement your executive hands you, practice explaining the concept(s) to a layman.
Newvine is the former information officer for the University of Michigan News Service, and during her time there, she asked world-class medical researchers to envision talking to “Aunt Edna” over Thanksgiving dinner and explaining their work in words that she could easily understand.
“Picturing explaining a complex idea to someone completely outside their fields seemed to help,” Newvine says. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of writing for your sources or writing for your boss, so imagining a reader, a specific reader, and asking if he or she would get it can help.”
3. Take advantage of news and trends in a timely fashion.
Reaching out to reporters to offer reports or quotes that support current events, trends and upcoming holidays can be a great way to gain media coverage—but PR pros should be timely and not try too hard to draw a parallel.
“Think about the expertise and information you have that will make a reporter’s job easier,” Newvine says.
Newvine recommends offering journalists items that can help enhance their stories, such as interviews with experts within your organization, images, statistics and videos. No matter what you offer, do it with enough time for the reporter to take advantage of it. Newvine says reporters prepare holiday and event coverage far in advance, so offering extras the day of the holiday—or worse, “the day after you saw the story”—won’t win you any favors.
Don’t try to make a connection between your organization and a holiday or current trend when there’s not an obvious tie, either.
Newvine says:
Forcing an association that isn’t there, like a cocktail roundup for Passover, or aligning your light-hearted product pitch to a serious, somber event might not only fail to get coverage but could lead to #PRFail mocking on social media.
Many social media users have criticized brand managers tweeting marketing messages under unrelated hashtags and trends, and overreaching for a connection can also bring bigger backlash—such as Dodge endured after its Super Bowl commercial featuring Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice.
“Don’t hitch your cart to the wrong horse,” Newvine says.
4. Practice makes perfect.
Even as a veteran writer, Newvine says she still writes “convoluted sentences that confuse people.” The more you can practice proper writing—including correct grammar, punctuation and story structure—the less you’ll have moments where you want to cringe reading your copy.
Communicators who evaluate their own copy as well as others’ stand to gain insights that can help them hone their writing skills, too.
“… [I]t really helps to read good writing and think about what’s so compelling about it,” Newvine says. “Is it the idea itself, the way it’s structured or the way it’s phrased?”
Along with practice, PR pros should take feedback from editors and compare pre-edited versions to the final copy to glean additional insights. Doing so can help you write lean, compelling copy.
“It’s … a gift to work with an editor you trust,” Newvine says.
You can glean more insights from Colleen Newvine as well as other communications experts from Associated Press, AMC Theaters, Condé Nast, NPR, AAA and more at Ragan’s PR & Media Conference on April 3-5 at KPMG in New York, New York. Can’t physically attend? Sign up to virtually attend the event.
With the return of warmer days come the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd.
Opening day is a time of hope as Major League Baseball franchises, regardless of their offseason acquisitions, dream of playoff opportunities and maybe, just maybe, World Series glory.
Fans and teams alike are tweeting their excitement for the beginning of a new season.
Happy #openingday! In honor of the day, check out JFK throwing the first pitch at the home opener for the Washington Senators against the Baltimore @Orioles in 1963. pic.twitter.com/TlVroe3rss
Whats up Cincy? Yall ready for tomorrow? I’m currently in🎅mode, so I’m teaming up with @Carhartt x @47 to give away 2 Opening Day tickets –– hidden with hats somewhere in the city. Stay tuned for a clue tomorrow around 10AM. #OutworkOutroot
You get only one shot at a first impression—don’t squander your opportunity.
Myriad résumés from well-qualified candidates make their way onto the desk—or into the inboxes—of hiring employers. Surely another bland, formulaic résumé won’t knock their socks off.
Really want your résumé to stand out from the sea of Times New Roman? Yes, creative résumés—like infographics, videos, or presentations—or résumés with icons or graphicscan set you apart, but you should use them thoughtfully. If you’re applying through an ATS, keep to the standard formatting without any bells and whistles so the computer can read it effectively. If you’re applying to a more traditional company, don’t get too crazy, but feel free to add some tasteful design elements or a little color to make it pop. No matter what, don’t do it unless you’re willing to put in the time, creativity, and design work to make it awesome.
You have limited time and space to prove to a potential employer that you’re a great candidate, so be meticulous when it comes to the organization and layout of your CV.
Think you’ve got a sparkling résumé that will dazzle employers? Oxford University Press is looking for a marketing coordinator in North Carolina.
The organization describes the role:
As Marketing Coordinator you will devise and deliver results-driven marketing strategies targeting readers and authors of our high profile journals list. You will have a direct relationship with key journals and societies and you will have the confidence, diplomacy and flexibility to help you win support for your marketing plans.
Not the job for you? See what else we have in our weekly professional pickings:
If you have a position you’d like to see highlighted in PR Daily’s weekly jobs post, or if you’re searching for career opportunities,RaganJobs.comis the perfect place to find or post high-quality job openings.
Today we’re announcing that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.
To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page's content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for.
We continue to have one single index that we use for serving search results. We do not have a “mobile-first index” that’s separate from our main index. Historically, the desktop version was indexed, but increasingly, we will be using the mobile versions of content.
Back in 2016, Google first detailed its plan to change the way its search index operates, explaining how its algorithms would eventually be shifted to use the mobile version of a website’s content to index its pages, as well as to understand its structured data and to show snippets from the site in the Google search results.
… However, Google has begun to prioritize mobile sites in several ways. For example, it began to boost the rank of mobile-friendly webpages on mobile search results back in 2015, and more recently said it was adding a signal that uses page speed to help determine a page’s mobile search ranking. Starting in July 2018, slow-loading content will be downranked.
This is the first time Google has confirmed it is moving a large number of sites to this mobile-first indexing process. Google did tell us last October that a limited number of sites had been moved over. But this Google announcement makes it sound like the process of mobile-first indexing on a larger scale has already begun.
It’s important to note that Google isn’t moving every website to its mobile-first indexing strategy, but rather will move websites that already boast best practices in mobile landing pages. All websites that will be included in this first wave of the shift will be notified through Google’s Search Console and should start to see more traffic from Google’s Smartphone Googlebot.
PR and marketing pros also shouldn’t worry if their organizations’ websites aren’t following mobile-first browsing best practices (at least, not yet).
… Sites that are not in this initial wave don’t need to panic. Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content. Moreover, if you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index.
Having said that, we continue to encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly. We do evaluate all content in our index -- whether it is desktop or mobile -- to determine how mobile-friendly it is. Since 2015, this measure can help mobile-friendly content perform better for those who are searching on mobile. Related, we recently announced that beginning in July 2018, content that is slow-loading may perform less well for both desktop and mobile searchers.
[Google] is adamant that desktop-only sites won't vanish from the index, and that phone-optimized sites included in the first wave won't have an advantage over either desktop content or mobile pages that have yet to be included. And if it happens that a desktop site is more relevant to a given search, you'll still see it ranked higher than its mobile alternatives.
However, Google’s change will eventually affect all websites competing for the coveted top spots in its search results on mobile devices.
The bigger picture here is that Google wants to “encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly.” Even if the mobile-first indexing does not affect ranking right now, Google still evaluates all content in its index to determine how mobile-friendly it is.
PR and marketing pros looking to rank high for consumers browsing on phones and tablets should prepare now to make their digital content as mobile-friendly as possible, which includes ensuring that your website’s pages load quickly.
Google’s announcements also highlight the importance of incorporating consumers’ increasing use of mobile devices into their marketing and PR efforts.
Inbound marketers have been following the rise of mobile marketing for years, but considering how ingrained mobile devices are in our lives as both consumers and professionals today, it shouldn't really be considered a "trend." It should be a staple.
Optimizing for mobile (if not creating a dedicated mobile marketing strategy) is something you should've done by now, but if you haven't, it needs to be done in 2018. No excuses.
Influencer marketing is in a constant state of evolution.
Market researchers are tracking trends and insights in the influencer marketing industry to uncover the type of tactics that are not only driving the most engagement across influencer and company collaborations, but also generating the most conversions.
Here are five key insights into how to ensure your next influencer partnership is a successful one:
1.Work with new and different influencers.
While many organizations still have a certain amount of hesitation when it comes to working with smaller, up-and-coming influencers, we have found that brands are increasingly placing their trust in influencers other than the top one percen—and finding success with quality content and substantially moreengagement.
However, it’s not just about looking to work with fresh faces. Another way organizations can drive engagement with influencer campaigns is to look beyond their traditional vertical. For example, beauty brands don’t need to work with strictly beauty influencer. Beauty brands can have success working with pet influencers. Urban Decay, NYX and The Body Shop all had success sharing their cruelty-free brand values by working with some of Instagram’s most beloved dogs.
As long as organizations are thoughtfully considering the audiences of those influencers and whether the branded content makes sense for the demographic, out-of-the box influencer collaborations can really make a big splash.
For companies that may be just starting to test influencer marketing, instances where they call on an influencer are typically one-offs. They might call on influencers for specific events or product launches, but in today’s marketplace, it can be beneficial to double down and build out influencer/brand collaborations that span longer periods of time.
With this type of relationship, however, marketers must be more thoughtful when selecting influencers, be more strategic in finding ways to collaborate and be even more measured in calculating results over the longer time period.
In return, these longer relationships will result in more exclusive partnerships with influencers. Both marketers and influencers can spend more time developing the content itself, driving more key messages home to your desired audiences.
3.Test new formats and channels.
While the focus should be around testing and innovating content strategy, savvy communicators will also test across formats, particularly within Instagram. Largely driven by new features released by the social platform giant, Instagram Stories and the whole host of new features that have come out (e.g. Polls, Stickers, Swipe Up) are continually being included in more and more influencer-brand collaborations.
4.Scale top influencer content with paid social media marketing.
Now that you have all this great influencer content, don’t just leave it be. Especially for integrated communications plans, content from influencers is extremely useful.
When evaluating influencer campaigns, identify which pieces of content performed the best and consider paying to boost those posts behind it—either by boosting or re-targeting with clear audiences in mind.
This not only provides scale, but also effectively connects an influencer’s inspirational content to performance strategy, like lead generation.
5.Measure “conversion” beyond affiliate tracking.
Most marketers or PR professionals are looking at “click throughs”, promo codes or affiliate link conversions to define conversion rates—and, usually, overall campaign success. This, however, can oftentimes be at odds with using influencers to tell a story about your company to raise awareness, not necessarily seeking to drive consumers to immediately buy a product or use a service.
Proper tracking can drive a deeper understanding of exactly the types of conversions your influencer campaigns bring about. For example, strategies to push brand values can drive other consumer activities, like search, that may eventually lead to sales conversion, but the purpose of the campaign at-large was brand awareness.
Overall, it’s important to approach an influencer campaign with creativity. Working with influencers on a long-term basis and consistently using their content for additional integrated communications channels like social and advertising is how you can ensure optimal engagement and return-on-investment.
Kamiu Lee is the VP of Strategy & Business Development for Activate by Bloglovin.’
Walmart might be advancing the #MeToo movement with its decision to remove Cosmopolitan magazine from its checkout line shelves.
Then again, maybe it’s just another round in a fight over racy magazines at supermarkets. (The glossy, ad-laden publication will still be available in Walmart stores, among the latest issues of other popular fare.)
The magazine that made its name with provocative covers will no longer be found in Walmart on sale at the checkout lines, a move that the company is calling a "business decision" but which one advocacy group is touting as a victory against sexual exploitation.
Cosmopolitan, owned by Hearst Communications, describes itself as a "bible for fun, fearless females that reaches more than 18 million readers a month." In its early days, it made a splash with its provocative covers and sex advice for readers. It has been critiqued for marrying its racier content with young starlets on its covers.
The move is being celebrated as a victory by The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), an advocacy group that got its start campaigning against pornography.
“You can go through and buy your groceries with your family knowing you don't have to be exposed to this graphic and often degrading and offensive material," NCOSE Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach Haley Halverson said in a Facebook live session Tuesday. "Instead, all of these magazines will be moved, in isolation, to the magazine racks."
However, Walmart wants to appear unmoved by outside pressure, and it has claimed the magazine was moved for “business reasons,” though it acknowledges that “the concerns raised were heard.”
USA Today reported:
In a statement shared with USA TODAY, Walmart spokesperson Meggan Kring said: “As with all products in our store, we continue to evaluate our assortment and make changes. Walmart will continue to offer Cosmopolitan to customers that wish to purchase the magazine, but it will no longer be located in the checkout aisles. While this was primarily a business decision, the concerns raised were heard.”
Some are viewing this decision against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, which has many organizations reevaluating how women are treated in the workplace.
USA Today continued:
Walmart's decision comes amid the Me Too movement and a national reckoning on sexual harassment, according to Halverson.
"This is one less drop of hyper-sexualized media that is going to be bombarding people in their everyday lives, which does make a difference, especially in this Me Too culture that we're living in, where we really want a culture that will respect women and ensure their dignity is understood," Halverson said.
Some see this move as the wrong response to the #MeToo efforts to empower women.
The #MeToo era is upon us, and one would think magazine covers showcasing talented and influential women would be empowering. But someone forgot to tell Walmart.
The writer Nicole Gallucci went on to defend the articles found within Cosmo’s pages, citing “moving personal essays, helpful style and beauty suggestions, and informative sexual health and relationship tips.”
Women have fought hard on all fronts, including the ability to openly talk about sex and educate youngsters about it. Are we seriously going to applaud efforts of the puritans to keep a national publication out of easy reach because it covers sex?
Sure, you can get the magazine in checkout aisles elsewhere. But that’s not the point. It’s about a retail giant telling customers what they should or shouldn’t read.
What’s next? A ban on sex talk because it offends some?
On Twitter, many shared their displeasure:
Cosmopolitan being axed from Walmart checkouts is shameful. The #MeToo movement is so not about blaming women, conservative women are victims of sexual assault too.
Walmart using #MeToo as an excuse to stop selling Cosmopolitan in checkout lines is pretty ridiculous. Censoring frank information about sex feeds into rape culture by denying girls knowledge about their sexuality and choices they can make for themselves.https://t.co/gyPllZ7QFVpic.twitter.com/YiwQQF0Vd7
Twitter wouldn’t be Twitter without some snark, of course:
Walmart just announced that it's removing @cosmopolitan from check-out lines. I wish they would have done this before my then 8-year-old asked me what "spicy orgasms" were and why would somebody need two of them.
Others noted that, all things considered, moving the magazine to another part of the store was small potatoes:
Ooooh nooo.
Walmart is changing the location of @Cosmopolitan magazine!?
Walk on over to the ISOLATED section and toss it in your cart along with the hundreds of other ‘hidden’ publications. #MeToo#Cosmo
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