Did your Public Relations strategy lose steam this year? Or were all of your projects overwhelming successes?

As 2012 winds down, it might be time for some reflection. What went well? What didn’t go so well? What will you repeat and what will you shelve in the New Year?

Once you’ve reflected on 2012, it’s time to gear up for what’s ahead. Here are a few fresh ideas to kick-start your planning for 2013.

Give the people what they want

This one begins and ends with listening. Customer complaints, while seemingly negative on the surface, are actually good opportunities to make adjustments. Any suggestions are opportunities for improvement (and earned revenue).

If your company doesn’t have a solid feedback system in place – meaning no way to gather customer feedback – then 2013 is the year to implement that infrastructure. Add a satisfaction survey if you can or solicit client feedback online. Depending on the resources available to you, social media might be a platform you can use to engage and improve.

No matter your budget, finding a way to listen to your customers just makes sense. But it’s not just enough to hear them, be prepared to make the necessary changes (that make sense for your business) to please the masses.

Focus on relationships

Following suit, focusing on the relationships important to your company can never fall to the wayside. You may not follow the flock when it comes to social media, but whatever your strategy, partnerships are probably the cornerstone of your business.

For 2013, focus on at least 2 partnership-building opportunities. Host a customer-appreciation event (online or in person) and try reaching out to a person or business (maybe via LinkedIn) that might add positively to one or more of your campaigns.

It’s important to remember that even your most steadfast fans can’t be forgotten, but trying new things has to be part of your plan.

Gather expertise and share it

Those positive business relationships need to be used. This year, add a panel of experts to your arsenal. Build your thought leadership program.

You could arrange to have your thought leaders draft a new content series. Or maybe they’re more suited to live interaction. Maybe they can host an online event on a burning issue important to your social media audiences. You might even choose to host a live event with your thought leaders as the expert panel.

There are many options available; the beauty of partnerships and thought leadership is that you don’t have to do all the thinking on your own.

Engage with rich multimedia

With the advent of Pinterest and Instagram, it’s obvious that more and more audiences are attracted to companies who offer something visual.

This year, you’ll have to spend some time figuring out how to create or revamp your company’s visual identity. That’s the fun part.

The trick here is to stand out from the crowd. This visual marketing has been a popular strategy, so the key is differentiation. If your videos, images and infographics are flat, it might be time to call in the help of the professionals.

Try something new

Has your use of Facebook and Twitter become tired, second-hand marketing decoration? If you’re bored of the same ol’ social media platforms, why not try a new one this year?

Take the plunge: explore Pinterest or Intstagram. And maybe Lino or Twiddla could be of some use to your business? Take the time (before it’s too late) to do some research on an up-and-coming tool, or a well-known (but untapped to you) platform.

Get moving because social media will always be changing – this year and the next. Your social media strategy can make the difference for your success in 2013.

So, you think you know media relations.

You’ve handled the tough questions, established some good relationships with key journalists and you know most of the how-tos.

Know how your audiences are talking about you: this is a common theme in the world of reputation management.

In our last post about setting up effective searches, we spoke about spending time figuring out the terms your audiences use to talk about you. To drive home this point, we’ve got two recent examples of companies doing just that.

Here are two good examples of smart community management:

1) Delta (the airline) catches a tweet that didn’t use its Twitter handle and even misspelled “Delta” as “Detla”. We caught this on the UnMarketer’s blog. And, as he says, Delta’s tweet saved the brand day.

This is a great example of proactive monitoring. Delta clearly took the time to segment some search terms. Even more, this let Delta engage (apologetically) in an otherwise missed opportunity.

2) Taco Bell sees a tweet from Old Spice referencing its “fire sauce”. Mind you, the tweet was a dig, and Taco Bell had a comeback. But the important thing to note on this one is that “Taco Bell” was never mentioned in the original tweet. Just another example of knowing how your audiences are talking about you and your products.

So what? Don’t let opportunities to engage pass you by – take the time to really understand how your brand is talked about. And apply the knowledge to your reputation management program as a whole.

(image via AdWeek)

I try to keep up with current events. MediaVantage helps with that – but that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about your personal brand. An interesting (read: awful) example in the news recently is the story of (former) Greek Olympian, Paraskevi (Voula) Papachristou. If you haven’t heard about her, you will.

What’s notable about this Twitter gaffe is that even though Papachristou represents Greece in the Olympics, Olympians are individuals competing for sport. So, each Olympian, even if they’re competing in a team sport and represent an entire nation, has a personal brand to uphold.

An Olympian’s livelihood often comes from sponsorships. After the Twitterverse erupted, Papachristou’s sponsors ran for the hills; the effects of a reverse halo effect. The same way sponsors will abandon affiliations with her, so too would an employer for me if I made as grave an error in the online space.

As a PR professional, I’m going to be responsible to coach executives in their own personal branding. It’s also something I have to balance for myself. And there are a lot of things to watch out for and be aware of.

Within the online space, having a Twitter presence, Facebook presence, Pinterest account, a blog, friends’ photos of me – there’s a myriad of information about me online. And it’s fully public. The same thing goes for Papachristou (and a majority of North Americans). She’s now set in motion a need to manage a crisis – a personal brand crisis. The difference? A global spotlight brought on by the Olympics shines on her every move.

Something to think about.

(image © Gallo Images)

Finding what you’re looking for online can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Even Google has built different engines, specific to different types of content: Google Scholar, Google Blogs, Google Images, etc. Google created different platforms because, depending on your search terms, the engine might not grab all the content that’s useful to you.

In the MV platform, setting up search terms is key. And while it’s only one part of your reputation management, it’s an important one. One of our experts recently gave the team a breakdown of how to refine search terms, and here’s what I got from it:

Optimizing search terms across different media

In the MV platform, you can select different types of media you’d like to scan. Whether it’s broadcast, print, Internet or social media, you can filter your search and tweak the keywords for each one.

When setting up search terms and keywords, consider the nuances among different types of media:

Broadcast

Broadcasts are built in sound bites. Closed captioning can be misspelled or adlibbed. In a crisis situation, you might be looking for a spokesperson’s full name. But a broadcast transcript might site the person’s position and company instead.

Print

Print publications funnel out information so the less important information ends up at the bottom of the article. This is because if the publication needs to cut down the length of an article (for layout reasons), they can cut from the bottom-up without losing the meat of the story. It’s probably easiest to find content in print sources because of the obligation and tradition of writing for publications – spokespersons’ full names and companies’ legal names are used.

Internet and social media

Internet sources often carry on the print story and may end up having a bit of a social spin. The Internet isn’t edited the same way a print publication is, so the online space often sees more frequent use of synonyms, slang terms, acronyms, hashtags and variations on company names.

Ever heard of Brangelina? Do you call McDonald’s “Mickey D’s”? Do you use “iPod” and “mp3 player” interchangeably? When you talk about your mobile device, do you call it a cell phone? A cell? Your mobile? Maybe you’ve been misspelling Led Zeppelin incorrectly all these years? You can’t tell me you know for certain that it’s Walmart and not Wal-Mart. Or is it? You’re probably not the only one – why would your audiences be any different?

Adapt your search term for better results by:

• Using media-specific tools (filters, regions, channels, program guide);
• Test different keywords to see which combinations work best for your topic (if at first you don’t succeed);
• Tailor search terms and keywords to each of the media categories.

Ultimately, the onus is on the user to enter appropriate keywords to get the results they’re looking for.

It’s important to listen to your audiences and perform searches using the language they speak. To dig up all of the media mentions of your brand, using your company’s full legal name might not always point you to all the useful references.

Looking for information the right way is the key to effective monitoring, so it’s vital to know how your audiences are talking about you.

You’ve made the decision to buy reporting and monitoring software. But it’s not all sunshine and roses – there are some pitfalls.

The process can be overwhelming. It’s hard to differentiate between the advantages and disadvantages of all the options. And while the platforms for gathering metrics are many and vary widely, when all is said and done, you have to pick the solution that works best for your company.

Asking the right questions (of yourself and of the provider) can help you avoid the headache of being in a service agreement that doesn’t suit your business.

Here are 5 pitfalls that can be easily avoided:

1. Short-sighted purchasing decision

Before you engage service providers, it’s important to do a bit of a self-audit. Ask yourself: “Are my requirements now the same requirements I’ll have five years from now?” What if something controversial happens in your industry? Can the platform grow with your constantly-changing business?

2. I have to be at my desk to manage my portal

Is it important to you to know when something’s happened even if you’re not at your desk? Ask the service provider how their solution supports a travelling practitioner. Maybe you want real-time alerts sent to your smartphone. Does the provider offer that as an option?

3. Unexpected transactional fees

Budget certainty is important to many businesses. How important is it to your business? After the implementation costs, what other fees might be incurred? This one’s like getting locked in a cell phone service contract where you signed up for a $45/month plan but your bill always comes in at $75/month.

4. Having to pay for extra searches

Change is inevitable and flexibility in your search terms is paramount. Things may seem quiet right now, but maybe you have a product launch in a few months. Would the number of search terms you purchased be enough to monitor an influx in chatter? Does the provider offer unlimited search terms? If not, what will those extra ones cost?

5. I can’t preview my clips before purchasing them

In the end, engagement is usually what you’re trying to measure. Numbers can help tell the story, but the difference is in how your audiences are talking about you. If you’re tracking an issue, wouldn’t it be nice to preview some of the content so you can decide whether or not it’s worth including in your analysis? Ask the provider if they allow clips to be previewed before you purchase them.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Before you sign a service agreement, make sure you’re evaluating the provider from all angles. There’s a lot to take into account but you can avoid these pitfalls by asking the right questions.

What would you add?

Have you ever stopped to think about how much media monitoring costs your company?

Your PR department has been collecting clips for your company for a while and you’ve even managed to come up with some metrics to trend for tone. But how do you know you’re capturing all the coverage that’s meaningful to your business? How many sources do you examine?

Have you ever really considered the cost of doing this kind of thing manually?

We did.

Made a few assumptions, adjusted for inflation, and voila! We figured out what a North American company spends on average per year on monitoring its media coverage. When trying to justify a monitoring service, consider these figures.

How much time would it take to compile a clipbook manually? This depends on the size of the company but, on a regular day (no issue to be managed or crisis to quell), let’s assume (if you’ve had your morning coffee)…it takes:

• ~ 2 hours every morning to scan the news sites, broadcast sites, video sites, RSS feeds, and collect news clips
• ~ 1 hour to manually generate a clipbook
• ~ 1 hour converting the information into manipulate-able data…if you’re an Excel wiz
• A few hours for tone analysis and reporting brings you to your full 8-hour work day

Some days will be worse than others. You might be sluggish because it’s a Monday or maybe your company recently released its earnings and there are a higher volume of mentions.

Now let’s talk money. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics website, in 2010, the hourly mean wage for a Public Relations Specialist is about $33.50 per hour. The Living in Canada website, in 2010, cites the average wage for a Public Relations professional working in Toronto at about $25.00 per hour. Landing somewhere in the middle, we’ll use $29.00 per hour as our yardstick wage.

Let’s say that he/she spends about 95% of their time working on media monitoring-related things. So, based on a 40-hour work week, your company pays about $1,000.00 per week toward manual media monitoring – which rings you in at about $52,000.00 per year.

Now, if you’re a larger company, you could be paying 2 or 3 staff members to share that work. Or consider if your PR pro is at the higher end of the pay scale and makes closer to $40.00 per hour – now it’s costing your company about $80,000 yearly.

When you consider that your company pays somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 annually on manual media monitoring, it might be time to consider a full-service provider.

Is earned media the PR campaign Holy Grail? The PR practitioner’s quest to garner earned media might drive a campaign, but we have to be honest about realities of engagement.

If you’re still not sure of the difference between each type of media, here’s a bit of a breakdown:

What you pay for. This includes paid advertisements, TV spots, radio spots, news releases (you paid for distribution and you own the content), web banners, paid searches, etc. This type of media is often targeted at new markets or “strangers”.

What you own. This includes your corporate website, microsites (your Twitter account, for example), your company’s Facebook page, branded collateral, a live event you put on for clients, etc. This is often targeted at current and future customers.

What you earn: This includes focused social media content (retweets, for example), organic blog posts (this means a blogger talks about your company or product without incentive), videos, cover stories, etc. This is often targeted at existing and potential brand advocates or fans.

In a way, none of the media you garner is free. The planning and management of the campaign itself could be labour intensive and costly. And, more often than not, you’ve paid for a conversation starter (beware: you might get in to hot water if you try to buy the entire conversation).

The advantage to paid and owned media is that mentions are more predictable. You control the owned outlets, and you likely produced the content you’ve bought. It’s the aftermath of that campaign initiation – the earned media – that comes littered with nuances and subtleties. This is likely because earned media is often based on trust. Journalists and bloggers are often hesitant to talk kindly about a brand if they don’t fully believe in the cause. If they don’t trust your product, they won’t promote you. And, don’t forget, it doesn’t count as earned media if it’s incentive-based mentions (like sending a blogger a freebie to get them to talk kindly about your product).

It’s not always easy to differentiate between the different levels of media mentions. Especially when it comes to earned media. If you use a media monitoring service here are some first steps to take once you’ve performed your searches:

• Categorize your content: organize your clips based on paid, owned and earned.
• Clean it up: go through the earned media to make sure the “earned” really happened organically; that the mention happened without incentive or payment; re-categorize if necessary.
• Scrutinize: be sure that if you’ve categorized a clip as “earned” that it’s more than just a name drop – did the mention result from your campaign? Was the earned media positive or negative? Did that mention lead to more sharing? If not, does it make sense to keep it in the “earned” pile? Is it worth reporting on?

In the end, a solid campaign is built around successful engagement. No engagement, no sale. You’ll have to take time to monitor what’s being said about your brand. And the levels of engagement should be the focus.  Don’t forget some of that media can be negative. So be honest with yourself – knowing the true landscape will give you a better chance to improve.

Still trying to get a handle on your brand’s reputation and influence?

Brent Carey, Director of Communications for Mattamy Homes tells us how their company uses MediaVantage to do just that.

Q: Why did Mattamy Homes start using MV?

We needed a solid foundation for our external communications strategy going forward – policies, monitoring, training and outreach. We knew we needed to start taking a more planned, deliberate approach, and that this needed to start with the essentials – getting a handle on the reach and perception of the Mattamy brand with key external audiences, as a lead-in to more proactive work down the road. In the end, it was an easy decision to start using MediaVantage to help us do that.

Q: How do you use the MV suite daily, weekly and quarterly?

On a daily basis, we monitor references to the Mattamy brand and our competitors, to see if there are any issues or emerging trends that we need to watch or respond to.

Weekly, we generate clipbooks of company and competitor information for our Senior Management Team. We add our own commentary and post the results to the company intranet.

Quarterly, we use MediaVantage to produce detailed metrics reports and trends for tone over time. We also track the sources of our coverage.

Q: What’s been your experience with MV services and support?

The training and setup was perfect. The staff was very, very helpful. If I have questions, they’re always answered right away. I really have nothing but great things to say about the service and support.

Q: How does using MV help your business?

As I enter my budgeting phase, I need to answer: “What does it enable us to do?”

Because we use MediaVantage, we now know how our brand is perceived in mainstream media and in social media. It has helped us move from a reactive, ‘no comment’ organization to one that is starting to engage our audiences with tailored communications.

Brent says MediaVantage helped their team put in place a foundation to be able to move forward strategically. And when asked if Mattamy Homes has considered alternate solutions to CNW’s MediaVantage suite, Brent responded: “I didn’t even think of anyone else.”

As communicators, it’s our job to help our company leaders earn and maintain trust for the business. But that’s a tricky feat. Trust is a tough thing to measure because there are a lot of factors that make up a company’s reputation and affect and influence a public’s willingness to trust.

When our business leaders communicate publically, how can we, as communicators, make sure what they’re saying means something and adds value to the conversation? And ultimately contributes to our trust-building efforts?

The 12^th annual Edelman Trust Barometer global survey results were recently released. In the report, one particular finding stood out:

• Credibility of CEOs and government officials plummeted, whereas credibility of peers and regular employees saw a dramatic rise.

In his foreword, President & CEO Richard Edelman talks about businesses needing to “earn a license to lead.” He identifies four ways to do that:

1. Exercise principles-based leadership
2. Recognize that the operational factors responsible for current trust in business won’t build future trust
3. Practice radical transparency
4. Shape the public discourse

Considering the survey results, this is great advice for communicators to keep in mind when advising our senior leaders. But it seems like we’ve heard it all before. So why are we hesitating to heed the call?

Sometimes I think it’s that we’re not exactly sure how to frame what it is we want to say. We don’t always understand the full breadth of what’s being said about our company and we don’t want leadership to speak, just to speak – we want it to be meaningful.

So, we must first study the landscape. Simply put, in order to influence and shape public discourse, we have to monitor what’s being said about our brand. And although trust is difficult to calculate, there are other things we can measure more concretely, like media and social media mentions, for instance.

Knowing where your company and its leadership stands in the eyes of your audience means that you, as a communicator, will be able to better gauge the impact of a specific communications campaign. This will help you guide strategic planning. And, if you can drill it down and pull out what’s being said about your CEO specifically, for example, then you’ll be able to better position your trust-building efforts.

If we know how and when our publics are talking about us, we can respond and, more importantly, engage, in more meaningful and timely ways. That’s the first step to building future trust.