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Public Relations Tips From The Pope, @Pontifex

Pope Francis

If you’ve turned on a television or gone online in the past week, you know that Pope Francis is in the United States. As this is his first trip to the U.S., the media and country alike are overjoyed to host the Pope during his visit. Since arriving, Pope Francis has met with President Obama, spoken before Congress and will meet with the United Nations today.

Through his philanthropy, inter-faith outreach and even social media, the “People’s Pope” has already made a huge impact on the world. His connection with the people has only been strengthened by this trip.

With over 23 million Twitter followers, he is currently the most retweeted leader in the world. Known to be straightforward with the general public on Twitter, Pope Francis has helped shape a humble, more accessible and service-oriented image for the Catholic Church. His ability to connect and understand creates a mixture of leadership, engagement and strategy, all important factors for engaging with an audience.

Here are three ways to improve your communication tactics based on Pope Francis’s social strategy via Crenshaw Communications:

  • Show, Don’t Just Tell. Our political and business leaders have mastered the art of speaking a lot while saying very little. They avoid tough questions by “bridging” to robotic message points and are quick to offer a hollow apology when things go bad. But behavior speaks louder than even the most polished tweet or speech. Much of Francis’ reputation is built on true stories about his experience in South America or his small but symbolic rejection of traditional papal luxuries.
  • Speak Plainly. When Francis does speak or write, he uses plain language. To sound the alarm about environmental peril, the Vatican’s statement was larded with bureaucratic terms. But @pontifex’s tweet was more direct. Plain speaking is powerful.

PR Twitter

  • Be Inclusive. Public Relations professionals see clients that fall into the trap of addressing only their own customers, employees and even competitors. Similarly, previous pontiffs have been preaching to the choir – literally – in reaching out to devout Catholics. This Pope includes non-Catholics and lapsed churchgoers in his communications.

Whether your beliefs align with his or not, there are many communication tips to be learned from Pope Francis. He is changing the way world leaders communicate with their audience – the world.

For more information take a look at Crenshaw Communications’ full article here: http://crenshawcomm.com/3-simple-pr-lessons-from-pope-francis/

 

Twitter Chat: A Different Avenue to Engage Your Audience

Twitter Chat

Twitter is famous – or infamous—for only allowing its users 140 characters to relay their message. So, why is it that this social media outlet is generally considered the best platform to capture brands’ audiences? The answer lies in Twitter chats, a discussion about an arranged topic. The short messages make it easy for participants to stay involved and interested. The chats create a comfortable atmosphere to connect with a brand, event or product. It can also build advocacy, loyalty and community with participants. Once a topic is chosen that will appeal to followers and future followers, what’s next? Twitter chats can work, but it takes a lot of effort beforehand.

Here are our favorite tips from PR Daily on how to host a successful Twitter chat:

  1. Invite Influential Users

If this is your first time throwing a digital party, it’s best to engage a few well-known tweeters who are experts on your topic. Find and invite some users with big followings who will bring their audience along to your chat and add a respected voice to your topic. Imagine the amount of knowledge available during an effective chat with a number of tweeters who can access real-time, expert advice with the click of a few keys.

  1. Hashtag it

So you have your topic and your special guests.  Now you need a hashtag so your audience can follow along and respond. The hashtag is important so your audience can find the conversation and use it to chime in when they have something of value to add. We’re not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s quite a bit of activity on Twitter; let’s call it noise. Using a consistent and easy hashtag mean people will notice there’s an organized discussion happening that’s also easy to track.

  1. Go With the Flow, But Have a Plan

Twitter chats are fun, but ensure that you:

  • Promote it.
  • Keep the conversation going
  • Give guests equal time.
  • Don’t ignore your followers
  • Document it

To check out the rest of PR Daily’s tips visit: http://prdaily.com/socialmedia/Articles/19311.aspx.

How to Evolve as a Public Relations Professional

Public Relations Professionals

Today, public relations is vital to every brand, industry and individual. The PR profession has progressed into much more than just basic communications; it now includes media relations, planning for crises, media counseling and training, social media and much more. Since PR’s scope is increasing every day, it’s important for PR professionals to hone their skills based on the advancements in technology and PR. PR Daily seemed to agree with us when they shared “5 Ways for PR Pros to Step up Their Game”. Here are the top three that stood out to us:

  • Increase Social Media Skills.

Social media continues to gain popularity every day, so using it to your advantage is important if you want to stay relevant as a PR professional. Use both personal and client social media platforms to post newsworthy articles and communicate with other professionals and brands. Social media is also a great way to gain exposure for your own business and the business of your clients, while always making connections and networking.

  • Get Away from Phones and Computers to make Human Connections.

Online networking is great, but it isn’t everything. Face-to-face connections are still vital to creating personal relationships. Other professionals will see that you are responsible and committed to your work and gaining their trust. It makes clients feel more comfortable as well because they see how much their business means to you

  • Be Nice.

A PR professional’s main job is to be of service to clients. So, being nice goes a long way when it comes to building personal relationships with brands and clients. Business will come easier and more people will respect and trust you if you also treat them with respect.

What are some other ways you stay current in the field of PR? To check out the other tips from PR Daily, visit: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/19164.aspx

Taking Control of Your Personal Brand

personal-branding
Building a personal brand, or the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers, has become an important tool in becoming more successful in the age of technology. Due to the quick spread of social media, online profiles have become some of the most effective resources to enhance your career and personal brand, as well as build boundaries between your professional and private life.

Here are our four favorite tips from Forbes on how to control your personal brand on social media in an authentic way:

  1. Embrace your story: Get used to sharing how you landed your dream job, the mistakes you made or where you went to college with others because it will ultimately help you make relationships and market yourself to influencers. Make sure you’re the primary force in telling your story to the rest of the world.
  2. Reach out: Some people go too far in trying to keep their privacy and reputation from being damaged on social media by shrinking their digital presence. When doing this, a digital search of their name means nothing. Be your own advocate and don’t be afraid to market yourself based on who you are, what you do and what you stand for.
  3. Make an impression: Your picture and profile content heavily influence a first impression. Make your profile true to you but remember to always stay professional. Sharing and publishing ideas that can help other people get a better understanding of who you are and what you’re passionate about can also help make lasting impressions on future employers or clients.
  4. Know your limits: When it comes to building a personal brand, the challenge is to portray yourself in the best light as well as being authentic to who you are. Know when posting pictures from last night is a good or bad decision. Understand the boundaries of your personal and professional life by thinking “would I want to explain this to my boss?” before you post it. Everything on social media can be seen by employers so if you are questioning whether or not you should post the picture – don’t do it!

Snapchat: Sharing Stories Between Strangers Around the World

SnapchatStories_Skift

Snapchat, an app that hosts 10 second long user pictures/videos and aggregates content into live stories with a 24-hour shelf life, has grown into a mobile-first visual-based company with 100 million daily active users, 65% of them uploading at least one snap a day.

Over the past few months, Snapchat has increased its viewer base by targeting users based on their location. Users get a look into other people’s daily lives ─ music festivals, sporting events and reactions to breaking news. Snapchat recently made it easier to view content when they launched a Tap to View feature where users only tap their screens to view snaps rather than holding down their screen to view.

As a way to diversify content and broaden their reach, Snapchat launched City Life in April 2015 as a feature that collects moments from various cities. In the span of 24-hours, moments are picked and strung together to show what everyday life is like in that city. Users that select their photos or videos to be included in their city’s story become part of geo-tagged content that Snapchat’s team chooses to display.

The City Life feature can inspire people to consider those cities as future travel destinations by promoting the city and various attractions in the area. To date, Snapchat has featured users’ snaps from over fifty cities in thirty countries including Brazil, Singapore, South Africa and the United States.

Snapchat’s travel features help the world see how users’ are communicating and living their lives. The 10 second moments connect users by allowing them to look into other’s lives and share in their unique experiences, if only briefly. As an outlet for displaying global experiences, Snapchat can be a tool for travel brands to effectively convey travelers to visit their cities, musical festivals and restaurants by wanting to share in locals’ experiences. Using Snapchat’s excessive outreach, users can easily connect to others and see how people like them around the world are living.

In Honor of the 45th Anniversary of Earth Day, Companies Launch Impactful Campaigns Online

Earth Day 2015

This past Wednesday, April 22, the world celebrated its 45th Earth Day. Every year, communities come together to demonstrate their support of environmental protection by putting together events that help encourage public awareness. In addition to individual efforts, research from the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) indicates that “over the past five years both U.S. consumer awareness and consumer attitudes toward sustainable or ‘green,’ brands have increased to an all-time high.”

Many companies and brands participated in Earth day this year by using social media accounts to showcase their “pride for the planet.” On a variety of social media platforms, companies inspired one another to launch campaigns focusing on their sustainability efforts reaffirming their commitments to the environment. A sense of community and public pride was evoked having companies across the globe provide tips for environmental protection to their networks.

Neutrogena was one brand that stood out among many others this year. For its annual Earth Month campaign, the brand choose to dramatically change how it targets its audiences by launching a digital-only campaign that promoting water conservation in addition to a new line of environmentally friendly makeup wipes with actress Kisten Bell as the brand’s spokeswoman. The efforts of this new campaign center around the #WipeforWater hashtag to inspire consumers to use Neutrogena’s wipes for seven days which would save about 35 gallons of water per person. Neutrogena will also be donating $1 (up to $50,000) to the Nature Conservatory for every person who pledges online to Neutrogena’s Earth Month cause.

Inspired by Neutrogena’s engaging campaign and creative thinking, how can we as consumers start holding ourselves at a higher standard and become actively conscious of our environmental responsibility in our daily lives?

Watch Kristen Bell explain Neutrogena’s campaign here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ScVY-hZJ4&feature=youtu.be

Meerkat: SXSW’s Breakout Video-Streaming App

Meerkat

From March 13 – 22, the South by Southwest Conferences & Festivals, commonly referred to as SXSW, hosted its annual festival in celebration of unique music, independent films and emerging technologies. Often over-shadowed by its musical showcases, SXSW is a breeding-ground for new media presentations where the most innovative and creative industry leaders come to showcase new products with the festival’s numerous audience members, many of whom are tech enthusiasts and early adaptors in addition to music and film aficionados.

While performances by popular artists such as Stromae, Best Coast and Miley Cyrus were highly anticipated, according to an article by Time, it was Meerkat, a new iOS livestreaming video app that “stole the show away.”

Recently launched on February 27 by a local startup tech company from San Francisco, Meerkat connects users on Twitter to broadcast themselves through video capabilities. Meerkat facilitates conversation between audiences in a simplistic manner. This new technological avenue is creating an enormous opportunity that brands should take advantage of in order to help promote business and create buzz. Meerkat is an example of the “massive shift in the way people will consume news, sports or entertainment.”

The app lets users “like” follower videos, see how many people are viewing their posts and send comments that show up on-screen in real-time connecting to both Twitter and Meerkat accounts. Another feature of this app includes viewing other users to see which individuals have a high-level of watch frequencies and schedule embargoed streams to notify followers at a later time.

Many attendees at the SXSW festival used Meerkat to livestream their daily activities and location to keep their social groups constantly updated on their experience. Celebrity endorsers, such as Jimmy Fallon, are also using this app to connect with fans.

With Twitter’s recent acquisition of Periscope, Meerkat advocates will have to wait and see how it will differentiate itself from competition. Will Meerkat reach out to other social graphs to maintain popularity with users?

To read the full article, click here: http://time.com/3742746/meerkat

Will Social Media Predict This Year’s March Madness?

NCAA 2015 March Madness

The month of March is an indicator that spring is right around the corner and with it, the frenzy of March Madness. Each year, college basketball fans spend copious amounts of time reviewing team statistics in hopes of accurately selecting and predicting a winning bracket. According to a recent article published by CNBC, social media users’ bracket should have the best picks:

    “This is what the data folks at Prime Visibility are suggesting. According to their research, the company has accurately predicted 74 percent of games in the last two years, based on the public’s positive comments toward each team. It’s a better performance than simply picking the favorites according to gamblers—who win 71 percent of the time. Prime Visibility is a full-service digital marketing agency with experience in various channels including social media. The results for its March Madness bracket came by combing through Twitter and Facebook, looking for positive mentions throughout the entire college basketball season for each team. The company has analyzed 4.25 million positive mentions—ignoring neutral or negative ones, such as ‘Kentucky is playing a game today.’”

David Neuman, Director of Social Media Services for Prime Visibility states that, “while social media mentions aren’t 100 percent accurate in predicting outcomes of a game, it can certainly provide insight into which team is more likely to win, as it factors in all of the positive things a team has done throughout the year.”

After Thursday night’s upset with Iowa State and Baylor losses, perhaps before next year’s season, you might want to think about looking through your social media feeds before finalizing your bracket. To add insult to injury, Prime Visibility has correctly predicted 13 out 16 games so far this season, and are currently ahead of 98.7 brackets at ESPN. Last year, they were perfect in their Final Four prediction including a seed eight and nine team, which is historical rare for the Final Four.

Time will only tell who will be this year’s winner leaving us to wonder, is the public voice a better predictor than the experts?

Here is Prime Visibility’s full 2015 bracket:

Prime Visibility Full 2015 March Madness Bracket

Read more of the article here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102519662

Giving Tuesday Kicked Off the Celebration of Generosity this Holiday Season

heartgivingdayredwhiteblue

The third annual Giving Tuesday, a movement that takes place after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, took place this past Tuesday on December 2, 2014. The day was designated to remind Americans that generosity of the holiday season should extend beyond friends and family and give back to the community. Last year, Giving Tuesday raised $19.2 million and had over 10,000 nonprofits worldwide participating in this global day dedicated to giving back.

This year, 68 countries and over 15,000 nonprofits participated in Giving Tuesday, increasing donations by nearly 63% since last year. An estimated $45.68 million was donated to charities across the globe. Part of the success of spreading the word on Giving Tuesday was due to the help of social media. Charities, families, businesses, community centers and students around the world were encouraged to share their stories of how they celebrate generosity and give back to their communities with the hashtag #GivingTuesday, inspiring others to do the same. This Giving Tuesday alone, #GivingTuesday had 698,600 hashtag mentions and 32.7 million Twitter impressions.

Beyond Giving Tuesday, there are companies who provide an easy way for consumers to give back year-round. GIV Mobile, the first no-contract consumer conscious wireless service, was proud to participate on this day and every other day of the year by donating 8% of every customer’s monthly bill amount to up to three nonprofit charities of his or her choice. Some of these charities include Scholarship America, Kids In Need Foundation, The Conservation Fund, Alzheimer’s Association and many more.

Although Giving Tuesday has past, don’t forget there is still plenty of time to help out your favorite cause this year! J

Find out more information on Giving Tuesday on their website: http://www.givingtuesday.org/