Join Chris Abraham for an extended tutorial on how to use Google Plus for business

He delivered a 30 minute webinar, but he felt he had to rush through the information so he has taken the time to make the extended tutorial and show you all the insider tips and tricks of using Google Plus for business.

It is 80 minutes – Pehaps watch it in sections, but it is worth watching if you want to get the most out of your G+ account.

I hope that these companies don’t have any women customers. The recent BlogHer survey of 2000 women in the US found that women regard blogs as their most trustworthy source of information and advice. Blogs beat out Facebook and Twitter by a big margin. In fact Facebook was in a distant third place for the general US female population.

“Blogging requires more investment. You need content regularly,” said Nora Ganim Barnes, who wrote the UMASS report. Yes, it does. A blog is a publication. It’s not a quick conversation at the water cooler. It’s not a news feed.

A blog requires good writers and editors. It needs images and graphics. It needs an editorial calendar. The content has to be timely, relevant, interesting and worth sharing. Oh, and did I mention that it’s a publication?

A BofA spokesman said the bank dropped its blog because its social media strategy is focused on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are completely different methods of communication and should not mean that you don’t blog. And since BofA has many female customers (I know, I am one of them and I see many women in the bank) looking at the BlogHer figures, I can only say ‘Good luck with that”. If you are not going to maintain your corporate blog o blog, best plan you should embark on a blogger outreach program and build relationships with other women bloggers.

I agree that the reason companies don’t blog is more likely to be a lack of resources or insight into how to blog and the value of a blog.

“Companies often underestimate the amount of work a blog requires” Pete Stegee, director of marketing communications and Web strategy for digital storage device maker Rimage.

“Many corporate blogs fail to attract readers because they exist solely to pitch products and are badly written.” Lou Hoffman, PR veteran.

If you have a blog and are struggling to fill it with good content read these tips from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger

And stick these tips on your wall.

1. Hire a great writer
2. Create an Editorial Calendar
3. Set up news alerts for phrases you often cover
4. Get stories from other employees and execs
5. Post regularly
6. Link to other stories and blogs
7. Optimize all content for search
8. Make it easy to share the content
9. Use original, interesting images
10. Make it a news blog – write like a journalist.

A blog should be the hub of your brand journalism.

However, what journalists need has changed dramatically.

Jim Brady on the Changes in News Consumption

They’ve been telling us for at least five years now that they need more than just a page of text. And PR Newswire’s study of how multimedia with a press release increases views makes it very clear that we have to provide images, video and graphics with our news releases.

Yet today I saw this press release about a survey of marketing decision-makers regarding their organization’s attitudes and practices in social media. The release has some useful statistics:

• 65% of C-suite execs are interested in how their brand is perceived in social media. (I’d love to know what the other 35% think of social media, but that’s another blog post altogether)
• 71% of those surveyed think they are doing a good job of reporting on the brand’s perception in social media
• 56% says they measure it by levels of engagement
• 31% use quantitative measures (# of fans, followers)
• 11% rely on gut feel ( very scientific!)

Perceived Value to the Brand

• 84% ranked Facebook #1
• 45% ranked YouTube first
• 41% said LinkedIn was their best bet

The Engagement Gap

Although the majority of companies surveyed see Facebook as the most valuable social media platform, the public is not so enamored of brand fan pages. A recent BlogHer study surveyed 2000 women and discovered that Facebook is not their most trusted source for information and advice:

• Blogs 81%
• Pinterest 81%
• Twitter 73%
• Facebook 67%

The press release references a paper released at the 2012 International Public Relations Conference on Millenials’ interaction with fan pages on Facebook that shows that this group (intensive users of social media platforms) have an arms-length relationship with Facebook fan pages.

All of this data would make a fascinating infographic. At the very least it should have been in a chart or two.

A slidedeck using visuals to depict the data could have been made – see what BlogHer did with their survey:

2012 social media final, v2

View more presentations from BlogHer

Using the slide deck a short video of the main points, with perhaps a couple of interviews and interesting quotes could have been produced for next to no cost.

What a missed PR opportunity.

Text 100 surveyed 72 journalists and found that the press release is still the preferred format for receiving corporate news.

While you are celebrating this news, there is one caveat: text only releases don’t do much for you.

PR Newswire reports that a study of releases on their wire service shows that::

• Adding a photo or an image increases views of the release by 14%
• Adding a video gives you a 28% increase in views
• Make that an image and a video and you’ll get a 48% boost in views
• Go all the way and put in a photo, a video, a graphic and a download and you’ll see a 78% jump in the number of views

Watch this video of how to craft a Social Media News Release with multimedia

The Power of a Good Online Newsroom

Nipping right at the heels of the press release is the corporate website. This highlights the importance of having a comprehensive online press centre. It should give journalists access to

• Press releases
• Press contacts
• Photos
• Images
• Video
• Graphics
• Downloads
• Slide shows
• Embed Codes

Your online newsroom should also display your social content, such as your corporate blog posts and your Twitter feed. Did you see that the number three source for journalists is the company blog and number six is the Twitter feed?

Make this content easily visible in your newsroom. A well-designed online newsroom should provide a one-stop source for journalists and bloggers.

There is however a plan to make a video go viral. And it does not take an experienced video team or in-depth technical knowledge.

Step One:

You do need a network of people with some measure of influence that you can tap into to give the video an initial push. You need to give it some traction. This is not something that can be done overnight. You should be developing your social network anyway, because it’s the smart business thing to do. Then when you need it for spreading a video, or another piece of content or in a crisis, it’s already in place.

Step Two

You need a video that will attract attention and interest. That’s not likely to be a standard corporate video. It has to be interesting, unusual, exciting content.

For example: I went to Salt Lake City last week to host ten bloggers at the Grand Opening of City Creek Center. I had heard a lot about the features of the center. The feature that I felt would most likely get people’s attention and interest is the fountain built by WETDesign, the people who built the Bellagio Fountain, which combines fire and water.

I made sure that I got the shot once it got dark and the fire was turned on in the fountain. It was shot on a Kodak Zi8 – a simple handheld camcorder. I am not a brilliant videographer. But I know enough to get the job done.

Step Three

Get the video online fast. I had the video up a couple of hours later. I had primed several of my best connections to watch for the tweet about the video. By Thursday morning it was already being retweeted.

Step Four

Keep an eye on the views, and who is retweeting or posting about the video. Send it to more people with influence and lots of followers.Ask them to retweet the link.

Step Five

Thank everyone who helps you with the distribution of the video.

Step Six

Watch for pick up in big blogs and mainstream media.
Retweet those links.

This video has been posted in the Huffington Post and Gizmodo
A Google Search of those headlines shows that those two posts have been republished on more than 1000 other websites and blogs.

To date the video has had 92,923 views.

This chart shows how many views most videos on YouTube get.

This puts the video in the top 2.69% of all videos on YouTube.

Not a bad result for a 2 minute video shot by a PR person on a flip-type camcorder.

And if it gets over 10,000 views it will be in the top 1.73%!! So pass the link along, would ya?

The State of the Blogosphere from Technorati claims 70% of businesses are blogging.

According to a recent analysis of websites and blogs by Percussion only 20.5% of mid market tech companies have an active blog.

UMass Dartmouth studies show that back in 2007 INC 500 companies were outstripping the Fortune 100 when it came to blogging, but that the bloom has definitely gone off the blogging rose. The number of INC 500 companies blogging is down to 37%. Facebook nad LinkedIn now lead the way in these fast-growing companies.

So are companies blogging or not? And if they’re not, should they be?

There is currently a lot of buzz about content marketing and the need for a central content hub. A good blog can serve as that hub. Think twice before you abandon your corporate blog, says Aaron Dun, Percussions’ VP of marketing and strategy.

“Research shows that blogs play a critical role in helping companies create compelling content for engaging constituents, and guiding them into taking action that drives measurable results for the business. The findings uncovered in our research spotlight an enormous opportunity for companies to reframe their content marketing efforts to, first and foremost, include a blog.”

Whats’ your take – does your company have an active blog? Is is part of your social media content strategy?

So if you want to score an “A” in PR on your website what should your online newsroom offer?

Social Media Integration:

According to a report from the Altimeter Group social integration keeps visitors to your newsroom on your site longer and provides one URL where they can access all content. The Washington Post listed not having a social content hub as one of the top 10 mistakes companies make in social media.

Sharing Icons:

According to the Pew State of the Media report sharing your news content should be a priority. Provide one-click buttons that allow visitors to post content they like to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social sites. Use the most social form of these sharing tools – ones that show them their friends who have liked or shared this content.

Diverse Audiences:

In today’s digital world your newsroom has to serve more than just mainstream media. You should also deliver content for bloggers, buyers, consumers, analysts and investors.

RSS feeds:

Journalists and bloggers use feeds to access and organize their information. Feeds also increase your search visibility and filter your content into the social web. Allow visitors to filter your content and subscribe to sections of news they are interested in – don’t just offer one feed of all content.

Search Engine Optimization:

Journalists, bloggers and the public find their news and information via search engines. Just throwing a few keywords into a release won’t do the job. You need an SEO strategy for your PR content and the hour newsroom should allow you to tag all content, including images and videos, with keywords.

Content Quality:
Does your newsroom focus on news releases or do you consistently deliver high quality content that will drive qualified traffic to your website?

Content Format:

In a recent study PR Newswire found that news release views increase significantly with the addition of visual material. When you add an image, a video and a graphic to a release views increase by as much as 77%.

An online newsroom needs a multimedia gallery with images, videos, slide decks and graphics. You should be able to pull these visual assets from the gallery and use them with any release.

Embed Codes: This is one of those new tools journalists find invaluable – and corporate newsrooms don’t supply.

Web editors, reporters and bloggers are asking for embed codes because it makes it possible to embed a video, flash presentation or slide deck right on their site with just a few clicks. 85% of media websites use video today and 76% ask for embed codes. Only 11% of corporate newsrooms offer embed codes.

Your online newsroom should have a place to add the embed code for every multimedia asset you offer in the newsroom.

Brian Wong has an excellent article on how to embed video

Analytics: It takes very little effort to add Google Analytics to an online newsroom. Your webmaster or IT folk can do it in a jiffy. Buy SAMS Teach Yourself Google Analytics in 10 Minutes and watch the Google Analytics IQ presentations and videos on their site. Take the time to learn the basics, so you can see what is working and what is not.

There are many ways to achieve this “A” rated online newsroom. You can build it in WordPress, if you have a programmer who can tweak the basic WordPress templates. You can hire a team to build you a custom newsroom, or you can use an online newsroom vendor, like PRESSfeed. PRESSfeed can have an “A” rated online newsroom, with all the required elements in place, up and running in just two weeks. And they offer free training sessions so you know just how to use all the features.

The first W is Who.

Unless you know who you are talking to, odds are your communication efforts won’t hit the mark.

Think back to the basic communication theory you learned at school: Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect. (Laswell)

Let’s just start with the first part of that statement: Who says what to whom.

So someone has to be the originator of the communication. (That would be you) There has to be an idea, a concept, a message. You have to know what you want to say and who you are going to say it to.

This is not new, and it is not rocket science. But it seems to have been brushed aside in the new media era.

“We must be on Twitter, we need a Facebook page.” “Oh! Everyone is on Pinterest – let’s do that.” Without a thought to who is on those channels and what they’re are looking for or interested in. So you make lots of content and throw it against the Facebook wall to see if it sticks.

Then we hear comments like:

“Social media is hard to measure.”

“Where is the ROI in all this engagement?”

“I can’t see the point, it’s just a bunch of people nattering on about nothing.”

And studies that prove only a third of Tweets have any value.

So before you start producing content, spend some time analyzing your comm theory formula so you have a viable Digital PR strategy.

Concentrate on who you should be talking to and what they might find interesting and valuable.

Listen, learn and then respond.

Social media is about communication. As The Cluetrain Manifesto pointed out – Markets are Conversations

And as we strive to improve our conversations we have to improve our grasp of the basics of communication. Take a new look at the 5Ws.

Who: Who are the people we might want to have a conversation with – women, men, mothers, IT executives? Are gardeners, nurses or grandmothers? Are they young, old, well-educated, underserved? Who talks about you? Who uses your products and services? Who has a need you might fill or a problem you could solve?

What: What are people saying about you? What do they think of your company, products and service? What do they say about your competitors? What needs do they have that you could identify and fill? What language do they speak – and by that I don’t just mean English, Spanish or Russian. Engineers have a language. Surfers have a language.

Where: Where are they gathering? Where do these conversations take place? Do some people talk about one subject on Facebook but another on Twitter? Where are the threats and opportunities?

When: Are there certain times of the day or the week when conversations are more likely to take place? When are most of your fans and followers seeing your content? When do they respond? That doesn’t only mean time – take a look at when they respond to content. What did you post and when did you post it?

Why: Why would they want to have a conversation with you – what interests them, what content can you offer that would spark an interesting and positive conversation? Why are they talking about you – is it positive or negative? Is it something you could or should improve or fix?

How do you find all this out? Listen. Do more than just monitor brand mentions. Really listen. Dig into the conversations and look for those W’s.

The 5W’s have been a basic part of PR for over a century. They can also be the foundation of a successful digital PR strategy.

iGoogle is one easy-to-create and easy-to-use dashboard. Here’s how to do it:

1. If you don’t already have a Google account, set one up.
   If you have an account, sign in.
2. Once you’ve signed in to your Google account, click on the gear icon on the top right and select iGoogle.
3. If this is your first time using iGoogle, you’ll see the setup wizard called “Create your own homepage in under 30 seconds.”
4. Once you have the iGoogle page set up, you can being to create your dashboard.
5. Organize your dashboard into tabs for easier analysis – next to the Home tab there is a drop down menu.
6. Choose Add a tab and and name the tab according to the categories of content you plan to monitor.

Brand names, competitors, descriptive phrases about your products, and so on.

7. Now add feeds of content to each tab.

8. In a new browser window go to the web, news and social search engines and do a search for the brand names and phrases you have chosen to monitor. You can use Yahoo News, IceRocket, Social Mention or Topsy. (If you use Icerocket or Topsy remember to adjust the language you want to see.)

8. Find the RSS feed for each search. You may have to hunt around the page, but it will be there.

9. Click that link and follow the instructions to add it to your Google Homepage

And voila! Once you have added all the search feeds from news, blogs, twitter etc., you should have a dashboard that looks something like this

Monitor these feeds of conversations every day for two weeks. Make a spreadsheet and keep track of conversations that are particularly relevant or the people who talk about you or your competitors often, very positively or negatively.

This simple dashboard will help you organize your listening efforts. If you analyze the content it will also be a great tool for learning what people are saying about you and how you should respond.

Once you have narrowed down the conversations and the people you need to follow you can upgrade to a paid dashboard. You can use the phrases and feeds you know to be relevant and use a smarter tool for long term monitoring and social intelligence gathering.

A few months ago when PRSA announced that it was engaging the PR community in an ‘open and collaborative effort’ to modernize the definition of PR, there was a spate of posts from PR people. Many applauded the crowd sourcing approach, but there were also detractors.

As with any such effort, there’s always the risk that individuals or groups with zero, limited or even slanted knowledge of public relations will chime in. There will also likely be a number of agenda-driven folks aimed at unfairly smearing PR. Phil Gomes

Not sure PRSA’s “fill in the blanks” crowd-sourcing approach will yield the type of definition that truly reflects the enhanced role of PR in the era of social media. Inside PR.com

Edward Bernays, father of PR, defined PR as:

A management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization. . . followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.

Here are three possible definitions PRSA published this week:

1. Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually beneficial relationships and achieve results.
2. Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.
   
3. Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.

What do you think of these definitions? Are they better than the original? Do we need a new, more modern definition, or did Bernays get it right and all we need is an update on how we do it?

There is no doubt that we have new media and new tools. The media has been dramatically impacted by the online world. The way people get news and information has changed too. But do the Internet and social media change the basics of what we do in PR, or do they just enhance the way we do it – and give us more options so we can do it better?

While a press release does not necessarily need to be well-written.…

What could possibly lead anyone to the conclusion that a press release doesn’t have to be well-written?

The purpose of a press release has changed; that I am the first to acknowledge. I started telling PR people that back in 2005. But that doesn’t mean there is no value in a press release today and one should not bother with how they are written.

There’s tremendous value in press releases today – it is just different value.

In 1906, when the first press release was issued, the purpose was to give information about a company (and an incident that occurred) to the press. Over the next 100 years changes in mass communication media and advances in technology created changes in the format and purpose of the press release. It became a news release, since it was no longer only for the press. We saw the rise (and fall) of video news releases for TV.

Now we have the Internet and social media.

We know that very few journalists or bloggers get their news from the news wire anymore. So we have to expand our media relations activity – agreed. Replacing the journalists, we have new audiences for news releases: search engines and news engines index and publish news releases. And, as a result, the public reads them. Yahoo! News has the largest news audience in the world. When you place a news release on the wire, it will appear in Yahoo! News, Google News and many other news websites listed in the Nielsen top ten.

If you want to be listed high in the search rankings when someone interested in the subject searches either Google or Yahoo! News, and you want the public who find them to read them, your releases had best be well-written. It must also be optimized for search and news and have visual assets attached.

Digital Journalists are requesting that we present our news releases in a new format: the social media news release. But, believe me, they still expect them to be well-written.

In the era of digital PR and social media there is a lot more to media relations than most PR people are aware of. There are new skills you should have in your 2012 PR resume:

1. The ability to write well in many different styles – press releases, articles, blog posts. tweets
2. Understanding the criteria that gets good ranking in web search and news search.( yes, Virginia they are different)
3. What makes a good news image
4. How to optimize an image for web search and news search
5. What makes an interesting online news video people will watch longer than 10 seconds
6. How to optimize video for web search and news search
7. Why video is currently the biggest PR opportunity
8. How to create and provide embed codes with your videos, so they are quick and easy to republish
9. The concept of newsjacking – and how to use this in a news release
10. How to craft a well-written social media news release with all the elements a digital journalist or blogger demands today

In his keynote speech Robert Kyncl, vice president, global head of content for YouTube, predicts that in a few years video will be 90% of all the traffic online. In case you missed my earlier posts and webinars about the importance of using video in PR, I’m a believer.

Video is obviously a big platform for entertainment. But it is just as important for news content.

The vast majority of media websites now use video to enhance and supplement their stories. Adding video to your news content today increases the chance of media pickup. Learn exactly how your chosen media website prefers to receive their video material: do they want a finished piece or B-roll? Do they want it delivered with an embed code? Does your newsroom offer these features? Figure out how you can better service the digital journalists you want to have cover your news and then craft your news the way they want to receive it.

Take this quote from Steven Covey to heart:

“If we trust our customers, we can actively listen to what they’re saying. We can build the right product for our customers, instead of finding the right customers for our products.”

OK, he is talking about physical products. But our “product’ if you will, is news. And our ‘customer’ for that news is the media.

Media websites have an insatiable appetite for good news content. And more and more they want video. To get more coverage feed them the right content in the right format.

1. Know who your customers are and where they are active online
2. Understand the power of social media for positive and negative impact
3. Make social media a part of your risk management strategy
4. Educate your employees – all your employees – about the far-reaching effects a social media comment can have
5. Strive to give the best possible experience to all customers
6. Understand how social content gets indexed in search results and how search affects your reputation

Case in Point

At 8:10 pm on Friday night Minhee Cho, a communications manager at ProPublica, ordered a pizza at the Papa John’s on Broadway in NYC.

Her pizza receipt from Papa Johns identified her as “lady chinky eyes”.

Ms. Cho is @mintymin on Twitter. She has 1903 followers and a Peer Index score of 39. (It took me a few seconds find that information)

On Saturday morning Ms. Cho posted this image of the receipt via Twitpic to her Twitter account with this message:

Hey @PapaJohns just FYI my name isn’t “lady chinky eyes”.

Since it was a Saturday morning not all of her 1903 followers saw the message, but enough of them saw it to escalate the situation and by Saturday afternoon at 5:22 pm The New York Daily News published the story. By Sunday over 200,000 people had clicked the link and seen the receipt.

Today Google News has 358 results about this incident in newspapers and TV stations across the country. It’s been covered on CNN.

When you search Papa Johns in Google today, the first result is no longer their website – it is these news articles

I bet that the Papa Johns execs had a tense weekend. And I hope they know how to take care of this social and search content. Kryptonite Locks had a PR flap caused by a customer’s comment going viral in the media in 2006.

This kind of content does not go away on its own. Search Google for Kryptonite Locks today and you’ll see that negative, damaging content right there on page one.

Every brand needs to:

• map their social graph and know their customers
• train their employees on good customer service
• make sure their marketing and PR people know how to deal with an online crisis when it occurs

According to the Burson Marstellar Digital PR Crisis study very few companies are prepared for a crisis like this.

Are you ready?

“Competitive advantage goes to companies who quickly figure out how to enable effective aggregation curation. Look for rapid innovation in this field.”

There are already a slew of tools that enable curation of content.  You can do it with a blog or use a more sophisticated platform like Curata.

One obvious place to do curation of content – including your own social content – is on your online newsroom with social features. You can create a channel of industry news and interesting content that your customers and stakeholders would find interesting and useful.  As Rebecca Lieb says in her new book about Content Marketing: It’s time to think like a publisher.

This is not a new idea in PR. Many companies have published a regular newsletter for years.  Some firms have produced very professional and sophisticated publications.  If you have been in that sphere of PR, now’s the time to learn digital publishing skills and put that experience to work.

Online media is catching on to this idea.  Advertorial has  always been a good revenue vehicle for the media and a means for brands to publish their content their way.  Forbes now offers branded blogging and HuffPo just followed suit.  I’ll put money on the table that more of these opportunities will arise in 2012.

If you do plan to start curating content in 2012 as part of your Digital PR strategy, read this post  by Robin Good and take note of his curation  checklist:

A great curator:

1. Optimizes titles so it is relevant for that audience
2. Edits  the content to add further relevance of the message
3. Formats the material so it is easy for the audience to read and apply to  their situation
4. Adds good images and other visual material that complements and reinforces the content
5. Excerpts selected text so the reader can quickly and easily grasp the most important elements
6. Adds his or her own voice in an intro  to the piece, adding context and relevance for the reader
7. Tags all content with relevant words and phrases so it is easily found by that audience
8. Supplies links to expand the scope of the piece and give access to added resources about the subject
9. Personalizes each piece for the relevant audience when posting to social sites, when appropriate
10. Ensures all curated content is correct and from a reliable source
11. Always gives attribution and links to sources
12. Filters content vigorously and does not publish anything and everything
13. Has a network of experts and curators in their sphere that they can tap into for personal insights
14. Suggests stories and items to other curators
15. Searches for additional material that can add depth and value or context to an item
16. Constantly scouts for interesting new sources
17. Sets up searches, filters and feeds to get a constant flow of relevant information
18. Makes the focus of the curated content perfectly clear and easy to see right upfront
19. Recommends other newsmasters and curators with great content
20. Crowd sources tips and suggestions from readers and always acknowledges their contributions

“The more of these activities you incorporate in your content curation workflow, the higher the quality and the value that you will be creating.   It is not easy, nor fast, but it is something meaningful for me and it makes me feel I have truly contributed to “make sense” of the information and resources available out there.”

Robin Good MasterNewMedia.com

There is no doubt that content curation is a Digital PR skill that can gather an audience and create a thought leadership position.  And, just as with most activities, success comes from excellent execution.

• The rise of Social Intelligence

• Better use of analytics and more focus on measurement

• Content creation and curation

• Social media education and training

Social Media Intelligence is a sure bet in my view – see this post.

Let’s take a look at Analytics and Measurement.

Measurement

One of the aspects of social media that is changing as it matures is measurement  When businesses first started to experiment with social media activity no-one was particularly concerned with measuring anything.  Kind of like we found a new game of water polo, we all jumped in at the deep end, splashed around a lot and the more people in the pool and the more people we splashed, the better.  We were playing the game, but we weren’t too sure who was on our team or where the goals were.  But since everyone else was there, it seemed like we should be too.

Social media is no longer a game or an experiment.  It’s an accepted and effective business strategy.  It is on the CEO’s radar.  According to a report byUseful Social Media, 12% of the companies surveyed claimed that social media was under the direct control of the CEO.

There is certainly an increased pressure on corporate social media practitioners to deliver on investment – there’s an ever more pressing need to demonstrate ROI, along with progress against other crucial KPIs. But this simply represents social media being treated as a regular business investment, says the report.

74% of CMOS agree that social efforts were finally tied to hard ROI.  What are they measuring?

Some of these are outputs and outtakes, but a good number of them are outcomes: what did people do as a result  of reading your content or engaging with you on a social site?

Did they click a link, share your content, visit a landing page, fill in a form, download a whitepaper or a coupon, watch a video or recommend you to a friend?

CMOs are also measuring purchases and customer satisfaction via  reduced returns, lower call center volume and fewer complaints.

One measurement that rarely gets mentioned in these studies is amplification. We know that word of mouth is powerful and it’s even more so on social media.  When a friend shares something with you it has a much deeper effect that if you received it from the brand.

It is possible to measure how many times your message gets shared by your fans and followers in Facebook and Twitter and it gives you a good measure of the success of your social content.  It also highlights brand affinities and identifies your brand advocates.

Analytics

This is an area that traditionally has not been a PR skill, but it is one we have to master.  And we need to do it in a hurry!

Several years ago Jim Sterne of the Web Metrics Summit said that someone who can understand web analytics and interpret the numbers for the marketing and PR people is worth their weight in gold – and I believe that is still the case today.

So how can you measure all these items?  What tools can you use?

Start by learning the basics of Google Analytics.   Buy this book and spend 10 minutes a day reading it.

Facebook Insights has a fairly robust set of analytics.  Read their product guide here and watch this video tutorial.

TweetReach is a good tool for tracking amplifiers in Twitter.

And what about Google+?  Christopher Penn has a very smart idea of what to do with your amplifiers – create a G+ circle for them

Although measurement, statistics and analytics have not been top of the list of PR skills in the past, they are going to become more and more important going forward.  It’s no surprise to me that they are on the list of hot trends for 2012.

For instance: Social media is primarily the domain of marketing.  Less than half (48%) of companies have PR leading the social media efforts.

And Social Media is gaining the attention of the CEO

88% of companies use social media for PR purposes.

Most companies will be increasing their social media spend.  57% say they will hire inhouse talent vs 47% who prefer to work with outsource partners.

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.” The official Google search blog.

The algorithm update can now figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

Why is this such a gift to PR? The content that is getting better search ranking is mostly PR related:

• Recent events
• Trending hot topics
• News

According to SearchMetrics, the winners in this new search landscape will be news sites or blogs, broadcast sites, and video portals.

If you are already working on your 2012 PR content strategy here are some items that could help you take advantage of Google’s update:

1. How and where are you posting your news releases?
2. Are you using the social media format for news?
3. Evaluate your online newsroom. Does it have RSS news f eeds?  Is it connected to your social content stream?
4. Do you have an image gallery with a feed in your newsroom?
5. Do you have a video gallery?
6. Are you using your blog to best effect? Recruit and train a team of writers
7. Do you have a calendar section that can be easily updated?

This new update has to be balanced with the recent Panda content updates.  Google wants freshness, yes.  But they also want quality.  To be viewed as a genuine news site you need to be supplying industry news from a variety of sources and authors, not just your own content.

And give yourself another gift for the New Year: Read Rebecca Lieb’s Content Marketing: Think Like Publisher.  It will help you devise a better strategy for 2012.

Make your online newsroom a news portal with images, videos and industry news. Post regularly and post great content and Santa Google will smile on you with better search ranking all year long.   It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

The rise of Social Intelligence

Better use of analytics and more focus on measurement

Content curation

Social media education and training

Social Intelligence

For several years now we’ve been told that at the very least we have to listen to the online conversations.  The number of social media monitoring tools has exploded and at last count there were over 200 on the market. However, there is much more to be learned from these conversations than just brand mentions, complaints and sentiment.

Savvy PR and marketing folk are digging deep into the conversations – mining that data to find insights that can drive strategy, inform product R & D, give the competitive edge and improve that pesky bottom line.

You start by listening and gathering information about your brand/s, your company and your competitors.  Once you have the data use that old PR skill called content analysis.

• Map your brand’s social graph
• Find the influencers in each node of the graph
• Discover what different groups within one node are talking about and what’s important to them
• Find out where they are talking about those things
• Tap into what your competitors are doing and what people are saying about them
• Identify threats and opportunities
• Share the data you find with your team and others across the organization
• Brainstorm how best to implement what you find to support the organization ‘s goals

There is a ton of information available in the social networks and conversations, but it takes commitment and work to find all the threads.  A monitoring tool can do a lot of the work, but there is still a lot that  has to be done manually.  And the analysis cannot be done automatically. It takes a  live person with a bright and inquiring mind to read the content and figure out what’s important and what’s connected.  To see those  brewing threats and spot the low-hanging fruit that will bring big rewards.

Stacy Poliseo, Internet Marketing Project Manager, Marketing and Communications for Johns Hopkins Medicine has just recently completed a thorough social audit and will share her insights on Friday November 18 on the Bulldog Reporter Social Media for Hospitals webinar.

Johns Hopkins Medicine, like most companies and organizations, started in social media without much of a strategy.  They just jumped right in.  They had a Twitter feed, a Facebook page and a YouTube Channel going, but the weren’t too sure who they were talking to in which channel.

One of the biggest AHA! moments Stacy had during this audit was discovering the demographics of the audience in each social channel.  She now knows exactly who they’re engaging with in each social site, and what kind of content works for that audience.

There is an old PR saying – “Know before you go.”

For the past few years Social Media has been treated as a warm and fuzzy experiment.  Now that we know it works, it’s time to get serious about this data stream and use it to discover really useful information that can move the needle.

Social Media Intelligence is definitely a trend to watch in 2012

Learn how to do social audits and provide your company with the data they need to make the tough decision. It  will definitely get the attention of the C-Suite and might even earn PR a seat at that elusive boardroom table.

There are some distinct advantages to having your news releases found via search engines:

• You know they are interested in that subject because they asked for it by keyword.

• Online releases can be tracked – for the first time you can get statistics of how many times your press release was accessed or downloaded.

In the State of the Media 2011 report Pew Research Center states that the one factor that most impacted the news industry in the last decade was search engines. Why would search engines affect news consumption?

The Internet gave people the ability to search online for news they‘re interested in and find sources they trust. Since 88% of economically-active Americans are on the Internet, and using a search engine is high on the list of online activities, learning how to write a news release for both the public and the search engines, are skills PR professionals must master.

Where should you aim to have your release indexed?

There are many choices for news online – according to Nielsen ratings the top ten online news websites are:

1. Yahoo! News
2. MSNBC
3. CNN
4. AOL News
5. NYTimes.com
6. Fox News
7. Google News
8. ABC News
9. USAToday.com
10. Washington Post

As you can see, some of the mainstream media websites are high on the list and you should be building relationships with journalists and bloggers from these publications. But you may be surprised to see that Yahoo News is number one – they have the largest news audience in the world! And Google News and AOL News are also on the list. Your news releases must be written so that they will be indexed in these news search engines and ranked well for the subject of the release, so it can be found by interested people who are searching for news on the subject – and found by bloggers and journalists research the subject.

After a couple of weeks, when your release is no longer considered news, it will migrate from the news search to the web search index.

Web Search

When you type a word or phrase into Google, or another search engine, you are using Web Search.   And by the way – this is how 98% of reporters start a story. They use Google to find sources and background information for their stories.

If you want your news releases to be ranked high in a search engine for a particular word or phrase, so that journalists  searching for sources on that subject find your content, it is essential to understand how the search engines evaluate and rank content.

Google and other search engines operate on a technical algorithm, but luckily we don’t have to have a PhD in Math to understand it. The search engines have been quite open about what they’re looking for:

• Good content that is relevant to the word or phrase someone searches for.
• A ‘good reputation’ for having quality content on this subject.

How do search engines gauge this concept of reputation online? They evaluate the number and quality of links, from other sites, that refer people to your news releases that have been indexed and stored in the search engines under a particular word or phrase.

For example: If you have a news release about cancer care, the search engines look at the release to see whether those words appear in the right places throughout the release AND they look for links to the release on other websites, blogs and tweets that refer to this release with words ‘cancer care.’

Search Engine Results Pages

For many years search engines only displayed links to ten websites on a search results page. They had other sections of the search engine where you could search for images, news, video and blogs.

In the fall of 2007 Google changed the way they displayed their search results and started to include news, images and video in their general web search results. Soon, other search engines followed suit and now they all deliver what they call “blended search results.”

Why is this important to PR and news releases?

Blended search opens the door to page one search engine visibility for your news release and multimedia content. Search engines are looking for news content and video to feature on the first page of a “blended search result.” So, if you have well-written, search-optimized news releases and videos they could be featured on page one in a web search for your key phrases.

Technology advances have provided the tools that allow us to contribute and participate. Almost half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device.

Apple released the first iPad in April of 2010 and sold 3 million within 80 days.  In January 2011, 7% of Americans reported owning some kind of electronic tablet – nearly double the number that owned tablets just four months earlier.  3 out of 5 tablet owners consume news on their tablets and many news publications have created a tablet app.

Digital cameras are shrinking in size yet their capability is improving. What would have taken a crew of at least 3 to 4 to do lighting and sound equipment, as well as post-production and editing can now be done on a smart phone and a laptop.

With apps for different film techniques, and edit software available on phones as well as tablets, the world of media has changed forever. People on the ground who witness events are sending images and video to the news stations. The Tsunami in Japan, the London bombings and the recent Norway massacre come to mind.

As musician and author Gil Scott-Heron said, “The revolution will not be televised.” And we certainly saw that as the Arab Spring of 2011 was tweeted and streamed live online, even as the authorities tried to clamp down on the media.

Citizen journalism doesn’t only apply to major political events or disasters. Citizen journalism is one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business right now.  Many newsrooms are implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative. On the evening news you regularly see these words: “If you witness news in your area send us images and video.”

A citizen is not a journalist, simply because she uses Twitter and Facebook to talk about current events, but because when she does come across an unusual event, she acts in a journalistic manner. What does that mean? You have to find corroborating evidence, interview people involved, vet your sources, confirm information before sharing it, analyze what happened and provide context. then you need to capture good images and video and send it to a relevant news station as soon as possible.

As PR people we’ve been schooled in how to do this. We analyze news and craft news releases every day. If you do it right, tie your release to a current news item the media is interested in and then present it in the right format, you’re likely to see your news content on the evening news, in print or on a media website.

One example is a company that offers temporary office space. They saw a sudden spike in demand for their services during the severe winter storms blanketing Europe and the UK over the Christmas period in 2010.  Thousands of business travelers were stranded on both sides of the Atlantic and they needed a place to continue working while stuck in a foreign country. The company cleverly correlated the data, and presented the information in a news release that emphasized the statistics and the trend tied into a major news event. Their story got picked up and covered by the mainstream media.

Newsrooms are under financial pressure. Some newsrooms, like Gannet newspapers, have recently placed news staff on furlough to cut expenses. That means there are gaps in the newsroom and news reporting. This creates a plethora of opportunities for citizen journalists and corporate communicators who craft good news releases and manage an online pressroom.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting understands the value of citizen journalists – they are funding a $4.1 million grant to American Public Media to expand its network of “citizen sources” that help provide local news coverage across the country.

An intelligent PR strategy would be to cultivate this “citizen journalist” mindset among your fans and advocates. Help your loyal supporters contribute to and participate in the reporting of the news around your brand.

An energy drink discovered that a young man who was one of the top ‘diggers’ – people who post news to the social news site digg.com – is a huge fan of their brand and their Xtreme Sports events. They invited him to their next event, gave him access to behind-the-scenes information and allowed him to meet and interview some of his favorite Xtreme Sports heroes. This resulted in a flood of coverage on the Digg homepage.    A start-up in Los Angeles discovered that two of the top diggers have a podcast that reaches college kids.  Getting covered on this podcast is now high on their wishlist so they can get buzz going in relevant social networks that reach their target audience.

A list of the most popular news sites based on traffic figures from Alexa, a website that tracks traffic on most websites and reports on their statistics, ranks Digg at #8 with over 25 million visitors a month.

Another online news outlet that is climbing up the ranks fast is the Huffington Post. They’re right on Google News’ heels with 54 million visitors a month. A well-crafted social media news story with good images and video attached will find favor with bloggers, online journalists and editors.

At the Media Relations Summit in New York City the editor of The Daily Beast, Tina Brown, highlighted the fact that there are many online opportunities for PR news coverage, but says she rarely gets well crafted, interesting news releases she can use. Her advice?   Partner with news websites looking for content.

A savvy supplement company that has a customer base of seniors reached out to social websites aimed at the over 50 demographic. They found that several of these sites needed regular health content aimed at seniors and the supplement company was delighted to provide them with articles by excellent health writers that focused on using supplements and vitamins to improve your quality of life.   Almost every news release they crafted specifically for these sites was published.

Another avenue for citizen journalism is to write for an online news outlet – KPCC, the local NPR station allows local citizens to blog on their site.  The Examiner allows people to start a column on their site. Of course the content has to be relevant, interesting and newsworthy – not promotional.  Valerie Simon of Burrelle’s Luce writes the PR Examiner column.

About.com has guides for subjects – although it has been in existence for so long now there are not too many subjects available anymore. But it is possible to find a gap – for example there is no guide for Alzheimer’s disease.  This would be a perfect opportunity for the Alzheimer’s Foundation to gain excellent exposure for their cause.  There is currently no guide for senior health either.  That supplement company could expand their online news footprint by taking on this citizen journalist position.

Learn to think like a citizen journalist. Discover all the ways your news releases could be used to “report the news”, become a resource for bloggers and media websites and if possible, report the news yourself.

Ten years ago the Internet was in its infancy and most people got their news from newspapers and TV and the public, journalists and PR people alike were all accustomed to a 24-hour news cycle. That has changed dramatically in the last five years and we now live in a 24/7 news cycle where people expect to see eye-witness accounts of events as they are occurring.

This has wrought some major changes in how journalist go about news gathering and reporting.   And since a large part of our job as PR practitioners is media relations, it affects our work too.

We need to understand the current media landscape: What journalists need today, how best to work with them, where the opportunities lie for PR news material — and what that means for Press Releases.

Jim Brady of the Washington Post says, “As journalists we can’t sit back and say this is how we’ve reported on the news for the last 50 years. The world is changing, how people consume media is changing – by the day. We’re fighting for the attention of every reader. It’s hard, but we have to figure it out and learn how to produce better journalism.”

This means journalists have to learn new skills. Every media outlet has a website and they want more than just a text story: they want images, audio and video. A tough challenge for journalists, but a wonderful opportunity for PR practitioners!

Over 40% of journalists say that their dependence on PR news content will increase as a consequence of these changes.

How does this affect the way we write a press release?

We have to move from text only to the social media news release – we have to provide images, video and audio with our news releases so we can help journalists do their job in this tough new media environment. Just as they have had to learn to produce excellent digital content and use open, collaborative tools and methods, so must we.

Take a look at the big changes that have taken place over the last ten years:

• In 2000 only 46% of US adults used the Internet.
• Just 5% had broadband at home.
• No one was wirelessly connected.
• 10% were using the so-called “cloud”—or hosted applications, or services delivered over the Internet.
• While there were vigorous conversations going on in forums and message boards, there were no social networks.
• Connections were slow and stationery and focused around your own computer.

Fast forward to 2010:

• 79% of adults use the Internet.
• 64% have broadband at home.
• 59% connect wirelessly.
• Two-thirds use the “cloud.”
• Forrester Research reports that 59% are active in social networks.
• Connections are faster, mobile and focused on outside servers and storage.
• The Internet is the third most popular source for news, trailing behind local and national television, but ahead of newspapers and radio broadcasts.
• Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of people get news online and 68% have watched a video news story online. (Pew Research Center‘s Project for Excellence in Journalism)

By 2008 we started to see the effects these changes were having on the traditional media:

• Detroit newspapers lost so much revenue they announced a plan to publish and distribute a traditional paper only two days a week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• NPR had lost so much revenue that it announced it would cancel programs, once considered the network’s future, to conserve resources for its decades-old hits, according to an NPR announcement.
• NBC ‘s revenue was down so much it decided to program four hours a week of traditional prime time entertainment. (The press release is available here.)
• The Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and a host of other newspapers, filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors, sending shockwaves throughout the industry.

All these changes have placed newsrooms under financial pressure, as they see their circulations dwindle and ad revenues go up in smoke. Who ever thought we’d see the end of the daytime soaps due to lack of sponsorship?

Media companies are struggling to adapt to the new real- time, 24/7 news cycle fueled by Twitter and FAcebook.

Journalists across all categories are under pressure to produce more stories faster – and, wherever possible, stories that break news. They’re using blogs, Facebook and Twitter, as well as continuing to produce news and features for print, online, video and audio formats. The European Digital Journalism Survey 2009 polled over 350 journalists across Europe and discovered that one in three thinks that their traditional channel may well be taken off the market. For one in five that’s already happened.

Some newspapers have shut down and others are on the brink of extinction. The result is an increased workload for journalists with over 40% confirming they have to produce more content. Almost a third of the journalists polled (29%) say they have to cover more beats and work longer hours.

One silver lining s that there is a strong move to video news online. Broadband connections have made it possible for people to watch video online and the number doing so has jumped remarkably since December 2010. 85% of media websites now offer video. Most print publication now give video cameras to their reporters and expect them to bring back visual material that enhances the story they are reporting on. This is another opportunity for PR, as we know how to tell a story in a video news release.

One of the key findings from World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC2) was that social media is now an essential part of a journalist’s kitbag. Blogs and social sites are tools for news-gathering and dissemination; for investigation and crowd-sourced fact-checking. Newsroom editors say that social media conversations influence the news that gets reported. Perhaps most importantly, though, they are platforms for engagement with what NYU’s Jay Rosen famously dubbed “the people formerly known as the audience” — each one of whom is a potential source.

What are the implications of these media shifts for PR and the news release?

1. Social networks have become the filters, curators and distribution channels for the news.
2. Consumers are in charge of the news – they’re active in the news gathering and distribution process.
3. There is more information available, but people spend less time with the news.
4. Media outlets see more participation and engagement, yet less revenue.
5. News media is trusted less.

This poses new challenges for us as we write our news releases. It’s no longer enough to craft a release in the old inverted triangle format and dash it off to a handful of reporters. We have to make them relevant for search engines and interesting to the people who find and read them online. Releases have to be shareable so that people can pass them along to friends in social networks. And, above all, they must be a resource for digital journalists and bloggers who are always on the lookout for fresh content and sources for articles.

Some companies are not even listening: In Europe just under a third of companies have implemented monitoring and analysis of the social media conversations. (Social Media Governance 2011)  In the US 55 percent use search alerts , but  only 16 percent are using a social media monitoring tool.

Too many of those that are listening are not learning from what they hear: It’s one thing to collect the data, but quite another to analyze those conversations and dig down to find customer insights, key opinion leaders, risks and opportunities. Accenture reports that 75 percent of companies don’t know where their most valuable customers are talking about them, and only 23 percent are using social media analysis. (Acting on Intelligence from Social Media, 2011)

And then we come to respond: 70 percent of companies ignore people who post comments and complaints about them on Twitter. (Maritz and Evolve24) The idea that if you ignore negative responses from customers it will just ‘go away’ still seems to be pervasive, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

In pre-Internet days research showed that, on average, a customer who had a negative experience told 13 people.  Today the average Facebook user has 130 friends.  So at the very least you are looking at a 10X scenario if someone posts a negative comment about your company on their Facebook page.

What if that customer has a measure of influence online?  What if they have 1300 friends or followers? Or they are a Key Opinion Leader for your brand or industry and they have 13,000 or 130,000?

A Harris poll shows that of the customers that received a response from a company after posting negative feedback about their experience with a brand, 33% turned around and posted a positive review, and 34% deleted the original negative review.

Dell recently commissioned Forrester to do some research on the impact of responding to customers and they found that those with a listening and digital engagement initiative are rewarded with improved customer satisfaction scores, loyalty and brand metrics. (No big surprise there!)

Yet despite the fact that this seems to be self-evident, the Engagement Gap is alive and well. Businesses are lagging way behind their customers in the use of social media:

• 80 percent of economically active people in the US are active on social media
• Only 50 percent of companies surveyed say their social media efforts are serious, yet not a core function
• Recent figures from Facebook show that only 25% of companies respond to comments and complaints.
• Just 6 percent claim that their companies’ listening and engagement initiatives are integrated with other core functions
• 25% of the UK retailers with a Twitter account responded to a question posed to them
• 17% of UK retailers on Facebook respond to positive comments left on their walls; that figure dropped to 11% for negative comments

Social Bakers published this chart by vertical and commented that Telecom, Services, Airlines and others should have a response rate between 65 and 75% to all user questions.

A recent personal experience bears out this research:  Our family flew to the UK in October to attend my older son’s wedding. We all flew Virgin Atlantic.  We all had a less than stellar experience. Much less.

Three of us tweeted our displeasure after the flight there and again after the flight back. My younger son has a modest following.  The older one has quite a decent international following, many of them in the UK.  So does his wife. I have 7,500 thousand followers who are all in media or PR.  Some of them are major social media influencers.

None of us has heard a word from @VirginAtlantic.

In contrast, I had a disappointing experience with the Hilton at Gatwick Airport when I arrived and was stranded there due to miscommunication.  I needed assistance, a phone and internet access.  So instead of booking into the Hilton, I got a cab and found a local Band B where I got a warm welcome, lots of help and stellar service.  Once I got online I tweeted about my experience. Within minutes I had reply from @HiltonOnline. They were concerned, efficient and effective and they dealt with my issue right away.  They used the opportunity to strengthen my bond with #HHonors, assured me I was a valuable customer and kept me feeling positive about the brand. And I let my Twitter followers know that had occurred.

Every interaction with your brand is a “Moment of Truth.”  That person comes away with an impression – be it good, bad or indifferent. And they will tell others.   Lot of others. And those people  might tell their friends and followers.

It pays to map your social graph. You need to know who your customers are and how active they are online.  You should know which of your stakeholders are influential. It’s easy enough – you don’t have to have a complicated algorithmic method.  A simple score like Peer Index is a good start.

Give every customer the best service possible. Listen to their conversations online.  Learn from what you hear – analyze what’s being said.  Nurture your evangelists.  And, in the event of a slip, respond to all comments and complaints rapidly and appropriately.

Ignore them at your peril – especially those from stakeholders with online influence.  It could be a disaster in the making.

One of the additions to a social media news release that journalists find useful is a bookmarked research page with all resources and notes they might need to write the story. Very few PR people are providing this with their releases.  It really helps a journalist to have this information in one place.

Many educators and researchers have discovered Diigo and once PR people realize what it can do, it’s bound to become a staple in the Digital PR Toolkit  too.

What is Diigo?

Diigo is a free social bookmarking tool that makes it easy to share content and facilitate conversations around that content.  It certainly makes it easier and faster to produce a resource page for a news release.

There are three main areas of the site:  My Library, My Network and My Groups.

The Research feature allows you to annotate, archive and organize your content, crating the resource page.   You can highlight text on a web page, just as you would on a paper document.  You can choose different highlight colors for various sections and add personal notations using their sticky note function.  These highlighted sections and notes will be visible on the page when you, or someone else you have invited, visit that page in the future. These pages are bookmarked and become a part of your online archive.

Adding Sticky Notes

Highlight a section of text in the supporting article or news release and right click it.   You will see an option to add a sticky note.

Use folders to organize the supporting data for different releases. You can even make a folder with a specific blogger or journalist’s name on it. Put in 3 or 4 links and notate each one with commentary like “this supports the quote on hotel growth.”

When you bookmark a page in Diigo you can choose to capture a snapshot or cache of the page.  This way Diigo saves both an HTML version of the page and captures it in an image.  This way a link you have bookmarked can never disappear.   The links on your resource page for your news release will always be available, even if the link breaks or the content goes away.  This is particularly useful for links to articles in the mainstream media that are open to view for a short period of time and then go behind a pay wall. There’s nothing as frustrating for a journalist on deadline as receiving a link that does not work.

Adding tags is a feature journalists have requested in news releases so that the content is easy to find online.  Since all your bookmarked content is in the cloud it can be accessed and searched from anywhere.  All the links tagged with a particular keyword can be shared via an RSS feed.  Be sure to choose a tag that fits the list of  links for each release and don’t duplicate this tag in other releases,  otherwise you won’t have a clean list of links for each release.

Once you have them all tagged correctly simply click the RSS icon and copy and paste the feed URL to your Social media news release.   You can also promote the feed URL to your custom list of bloggers and journalists.  Remember to bookmark your own release and tag it with this keyword too, so it appears in the feed.

Another way to organize and display a collection of bookmarks for a specific release is the “list” function.  Create a list and name it with a relevant keyword and write a short description of the links in that list.  Find the resources you want to share with the bloggers and journalists, bookmark them and assign them to that list.   Once your list is complete you can share it with others in several ways:

• Email the list to colleagues, bloggers and journalists

• Tweet it right from Diigo

• Use the Share This button which gives you the option to share the list on a plethora of social sites

One of the most useful features of Diigo is the collaboration and sharing tools.  You can create a network of people on Diigo  and invite industry experts as well as bloggers and journalists you work with on a regular basis to join Diigo and become part of your network.  You might even find some bloggers and journalists who are already using the site.

In the My Network area of the site you can create a network of people interested in your industry and use the tools provided to generate conversation around your releases.  If they are not Diigo users you can still send them your annotated links.

You can create a group and invite people to join.  Group members automatically get email notifications of new bookmarks added to the list, comment on or off the bookmarked pages and have threaded discussions about the content.

As your bookmarks are stored in the cloud they can be accessed via any mobile platform that Diigo supports.  With Diigo Powernote for Android smart phones or the Diigo Offline Reader for the iPhone you can read your bookmarks or the pages you marked Read Later while standing in line, on a train or a bus, or waiting for a meeting

Watch the video

Getting Started

Sign up for an account and install the Diigo Toolbar. Click the Install Diigo Toolbar button. It’s easy to do on Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome.

Read later: Diigo incorporates a read later button in its Firefox toolbar. You can save an item directly into Diigo to review and tag it later, which is a great time-saving feature.

Publishing to my blog: Diigo has a very useful feature for bloggers – you can publish links you’ve saved along with annotations directly to your blog.

Diigo also offers a web‐based “Diigolet” that provides limited functionality, but does not require installation like the ful toolbar does. the Diigolet is also available for the iPhone and iPad.

Educators have adopted the use of Diigo and are using it to great effect in the classroom.  It’s just as effective for PR use and it’s the perfect choice for organizing, annotating, and sharing supporting information for social media news releases.  The tools on Diigo make research and collaboration much easier, and allow for a better flow of communication between PR colleagues, bloggers and journalists.

There are currently just 386 people on Diigo who have tagged their profiles with PR or public relations. I see only a handful of the Digital PR luminaries, such as Brain Solis and Chris Abraham.

Get in on the ground floor – join my network on Diigo and start using this tool with your news releases.

OutBrain recently released an update to their  Content Discovery and Engagement Report.

The original study was done in Q1 and the update is for Q2.

Top 20 Traffic Sources to Content Pages

1 Google
2 Yahoo
3 AOL/Huffington Post
4 Facebook
5 MSN*
6 Drudge Report
7 CNN
8 Outbrain
9 StumbleUpon
10 Twitter
11 FoxNews.com
12 reddit
13 MediaTakeOut
14 Fark
15 Slate
16 Comcast
17 NewsNow.co.uk
18 Wikipedia
19 Digg
20 Real Clear Politics
*Includes Bing
Live.com

Key changes
AOL moved up from #5 to #3
Facebook moved from #11 to #4 – that’s quite a jump from April to August.
StumbleUpon entered the list at #9.  Hello StumbleUpon!  I mentioned the power of SU in a recent post and I urge you to include it in your content and news planning.

The original study found that social media was referring 7% of traffic to content, and the update now shows it has doubled to 14%!