MediaVantage is packing up and going on tour; the conference circuit tour that is. Here where we’ll be this summer!

2011 MARCOM Annual Forum – Ottawa, ON June 1-2, 2011

Touted as the premiere educational forum for public and not-for-profit sector marketers and communicators, MARCOM 2011 will feature workshops and sessions on how the marketing landscape has transformed and how we can adapt in a timely fashion. The emphasis will be on how to socialize in the most authentic ways, mobilize through persuasive marketing, and communications and current technologies to revolutionize our approach and achieve measureable results.

Come visit the MediaVantage booth on the trade show floor at spot 104 to learn more about what we’re up to these days, and well, just to say hello! Who knows, you just may walk away with a brand new Amazon Kindle!

IABC 2011 World Conference – San Diego, CA June 12-15, 2011

The MediaVantage team is off to sunny San Diego for this year’s IABC World Conference. More than 1,400 communications professionals from around the world will be heading to the annual event that brings together fresh ideas, winning case studies and best practices in communication.

This year’s conference will look at how business communicators are adapting to global economic conditions by achieving more with less – maintaining the basics while capitalizing on the resources they have in unique and deliberate ways.

Join the MediaVantage team in the Exhibit Hall at booth spot 208.  Stop by, say hello and you may be heading home with an exhibit prize as well.

Hearing whispers about a Canada Party? We’re hosting some MediaVantage friends at CNW’s Canada Party at the Altitude Sky Lounge on Sunday, June 12. Find one of our team members at the conference on Sunday for a special invitation to the event you’ve been waiting all year for.

Not making it to either of those?

Our CNW colleagues will also be on hand at these conferences and available to speak with you about any MediaVantage questions you may have:

• CIRI National Conference – Lake Louise, AB June 5 to 7, 2011
• CPRS National Conference – Saint John, NB June 5 to 7, 2011

Check out CNW’s conference schedule on Beyond the Wire.

When I think of a traditional media coverage clipbook, my mind wanders to the set of Mad Men. I imagine a stack of paper piled high on a desk with an ashtray and a decanter. By comparison, today’s clipbooks have evolved to become leaner and greener.

The New Clipbook

Clipbooks have always been an important tool for sharing media mentions of campaigns and issues with internal audiences, usually senior management teams. In the past, the sheer heftiness of a clipbook was a satisfactory indicator of PR success and effort. In the not so distant past, clipbooks spoke to advertising value equivalents (AVE) or volume of mentions and focused on traditional print and broadcast media. Now clipbooks speak to an understanding of influence or relationship insight and focus on digital media such as blogs and social media, as well as traditional media.  As the popularity of AVE in measurement wanes, we are exploring new measurement possibilities for digital content, replacing volume as a key success indicator.

Digital means real-time global collaboration

In the past, the activity of finding and sharing news articles between groups in different regions presented a challenge for communicators trying to coordinate a cohesive corporate response. With clipbook content and publishing tools now available online, geographically disparate teams are benefitting from real-time collaboration. Groups can contribute to the clipbook during their working hours, regardless of time zones. Digital distribution makes it possible to share clipbooks at any time. A digital format is also easily viewed on mobile devices, keeping people in the field aware and up to date.

Saving trees and time

Digital means less paper and more trees saved, but digital efficiency also extends to workflow.  Today’s clipbook tools can and should be a simple extension of your media monitoring practise. Spending time cutting, pasting and formatting articles is almost as painful as it was to snip them out of newsprint and type up transcripts. So choose the tools that can make the tradition of clipbooks as lean and green as possible. And speaking of tradition, whatever happened to those office decanters?

What’s the role of a media clipbook in your corporate culture?  What is the balance between traditional media and digital media sources?

By Joanne Kern, Training and Education Manager, MediaVantage

When a crisis hits your organization, it’s integral to listen to how the media and your audiences are reacting to the issue. This will help you align your messages and adjust your plans as the issue unfolds.

In January 2009, salmonella contamination at a peanut manufacturing plant was linked to nine deaths and 691 reported illnesses resulting in the largest food recall in North American history. The industry association, the American Peanut Council (APC), looked to Argyle Communications to help weather the storm.

Argyle used media relations and digital strategies to provide accurate information to consumers, preserve confidence in the U.S. peanut industry’s products and practices, and to develop an industry consensus for a post-crisis recovery strategy. With Argyle’s help, the American Peanut Council emerged from the crisis as a leading source on food safety.

On Monday, April 11, 2011, Argyle president Daniel Tisch and vice president Alison George shared the secrets of their successful crisis management campaign as part of the CPRS National webinar series. You can listen to the archived webcast on the CPRS website here.

CNW connected with Dan and Alison to ask them some questions about media relations and crisis communications:

Obviously, media relations played a big part in managing this crisis. As the messages and information changed, how did you ensure your spokespeople stayed on message?

“While training and preparation were very important, our client’s success flowed mainly from never forgetting the most important principle: food safety must be a food industry’s number one priority. It was critical to be completely aligned with messages coming from federal regulators, and later to be direct and honest in condemning the unconscionable actions of the manufacturer at the centre of the crisis.”

How important was it to track media coverage? How did these insights affect your plans?

“We tracked both mainstream and social media every day, since this was one of the first major recalls played out on the social web. We quickly realized that our target consumer was going online for information about food safety, so we had to watch that channel and use it to reach her. Monitoring also told us early that broadcast media were more likely to get the story wrong, leading us to deploy our dietician spokesperson on TV.

Monitoring also told us we were turning around the story. We tracked a rapid decline in inaccurate stories and a rapid growth in stories featuring our client’s messages. Tracking of social web coverage on peanut butter showed a coverage balance of 18% positive, 33% neutral, 49% negative in the first 30 days, exceeding our expectations given the seriousness of the situation.”

Of course, the program went on to win a CPRS National Award of Excellence, but what made it successful in your mind?

“The most important legacy of our program was the facilitation of an industry-wide consensus to review agricultural and manufacturing practices, enhance collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration, improve training and education at all levels, and reaffirm the American Peanut Council’s role in leading food safety initiatives. This provided important reassurance to consumers and propelled the industry not just to a recovery, but to a new record in sales.”

Is there anything you would have done differently?

“The major thing we would have done differently is being not just web-savvy – which we were – but also “web-ready.” We had to put a lot of online resources in place very quickly. With online and social media so much more advanced today than in 2009, it’s critical for all industries to have Internet tools ready for a crisis at any time.”

What key lessons or tips would you share based on your experience with this crisis?

1. Make sure you understand your client’s business, the policy and regulatory environment surrounding it, and the drivers of consumer attitudes and behaviour.
2. Know and anticipate the triggers of controversy.
3. Understand the decision-making process — both within the organization and within government and other stakeholders that could affect the outcome.
4. Build relationships with stakeholders early – not just when you need them.
5. Accept that you can’t control everything. Control what you say, and try to influence others with timely, accurate information – proactively and responsively.
6. Be web-savvy and web-ready.
7. If change is going to be thrust upon you, try to lead that change.

Media monitoring has evolved beyond a package of clippings that arrives on your desk the week after a launch. With online communications proliferating daily, communicators – and government communicators are no exception – need to keep their ear to the ground, listening for media mentions, social media conversations and online news.

But listening is only half the battle. Reporting on and analyzing your monitoring results can help you detect trends, nip a crisis in the bud, or adjust your communication strategy on the fly.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) uses MediaVantage for monitoring and reporting. Here’s what Mathieu Larocque, CATSA’s Senior Advisor, External Communications, had to say about why reporting is crucial to their team:

“Monthly reports that we produce using MediaVantage are an integral part of our dashboard reporting approach. We use the information to evaluate and adjust both our proactive and reactive media relations strategies. They are also used more broadly to evaluate the work of our branch. The data generated by MediaVantage is incorporated in a larger dashboard that includes many other indicators. The reports are also used at the end of each proactive campaign to evaluate reach and the overall effectiveness of a specific campaign. Likewise, we also use the reporting function to analyze a particular situation or episode related to our operations.”

For more on how reporting on monitoring results can give you the intelligence to analyze why and when to adjust your strategic communication plans, download our white paper, Continuous Measurement and Analysis.

In January we announced significantly enhanced online media monitoring capabilities within the MediaVantage platform. Today, we’ve got more good news to share. Powered by Lexalytics, a leader in sentiment analysis, MediaVantage now offers automated tonality scoring and sentiment analysis in English and French.

The French speaking community is an important audience for Canadian organizations and inter-listed US companies. Now, even if you don’t speak French, you can understand how the market is responding to your brand online and in social media.

Here’s what Nicole Guillot, CNW’s Vice President of Product Management and Operations, had to say about the announcement:

For more on this announcement, check out our Social Media Release. And if you’re still scratching your head on what the heck sentiment analysis is all about, check out these recent posts:

• What the Heck is Sentiment Analysis Anyway?
• How public relations and corporate communications can leverage sentiment analysis

I was recently invited by the Carleton Communications Studies Undergraduate Student Society (CUSS) and the Algonquin College Public Relations program (ACPR), to speak with students and share my experiences as a communications and PR professional. These are the type of events that I personally love to attend, as I find it to be very important to give back to students who are preparing to enter the workforce.

While I had the pleasure to share my thoughts on various topics, many of the questions revolved around career path and work opportunities. I’m summed up my recommendations in the following three points:

1. Get active on social networks. Remember this cliché? ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. In comms and PR, this is amplified by 10. Your networks are crucial going forward so it’s never too early to start making a name for yourself. Web 2.0 is the way of the future for practitioners, and establishing your digital profile is important. Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging are great ways to connect with others and help you develop your skill sets.
2. Get involved with extra curricular. I hate to break it to some of you, but if you’re hoping to land your dream job by browsing Jobboom and Monster, it’s probably not going to happen. Once again, good contacts have to be developed, groomed, and over time, will help you elevate your status. To get there, nothing beats getting involved with extra-curricular activities. For example, volunteering your time with local associations (CPRS, IABC, etc) will give you the chance to meet other professionals. If you do a good job, it will be easy to approach them to discuss work opportunities, and many of them will likely go to bat for you. Remember, most people who are on the board of such associations are usually well connected comms/PR practitioners…wink wink.
3. Make a short list of potential employers. You have to ask yourself ‘Where do I want to work?’ Agency? Non-profit? Public sector? Make a short list and start doing the ground work. If you don’t have the contacts, your first step can be as easy as contacting the HR department and finding out when they will be hiring next. If they say three months, call back in two and half to be sure the date hasn’t changed. The logic behind this is to do the leg work before the job posting goes up. By doing this, you’ll give yourself a running start over other applicants.

While there is no perfect science in successfully landing a PR job or internship, implementing these three points will give you traction and the best chances of landing your dream position.

This is the final post in our series on how professional communicators can benefit from online media monitoring and sentiment analysis. Don’t miss our posts on public relations and investor relations.

Analyst or Industry Relations teams are responsible for keeping their industry analysts up to date on their company’s strategy, products and services. The objective is to persuade analysts to review your company in the best positive light to end users of your product in their high-level industry research reports. Thus, for AR folk, it is important they keep tabs on which analysts are covering their industry – to ensure that they are focusing their relationship building efforts on the right people!

Online and social media monitoring, together with sentiment analysis, can help AR professionals by giving them the tools to a) identify which market research reports and research analysts are covering their space, and b) which of the above reflect positive and negative sentiment about their company and its competitors.

By having media monitoring searches for key phrases, research firm names, job titles and authors (analyst names), Analyst Relations pros can monitor and influence analyst coverage.

I use MediaVantage to monitor analyst research trends within the industries of relevance to us: media intelligence, public relations management, customer intelligence software By regularly reviewing the content that my saved keyword searches bring in, I’m able to keep up to date with the latest research reports my key analysts are publishing and the sentiment of the coverage the companies included in these reports are receiving.

All of this intelligence helps guide the Product Development roadmap, and further solidifies the foundation of our relationship with our analyst friends. As an analyst relations professional how do you use sentiment analysis to be more effective in your role? Please comment!

The potential effect a crisis can have on your stock price

This is our second post on how professional communicators can benefit from sentiment analysis. Last week we looked at public relations and today we’ll dig in to IR.

A key challenge for investor relations teams is gaining insight into the sentiment of the investment community. Fortunately with social media and social networks, understanding how your investors and potential investors are feeling on any given day is now possible.

Consider this. You’re in IR and looking to release your quarterly earnings statement. Prior to online monitoring and analysis tools, you would be more or less putting your release on the wire with a less than comprehensive understanding of what frame of mind your audience was in, let alone how your message will be received. Scary thought when your bottom line is showing.

Online media monitoring gives IR professionals the ability to explore and develop a greater understanding of the general attitudes of their investors, gaining insight into the tone of online and social media coverage.

Using an aggregator with automated sentiment analysis like MediaVantage, IR teams can track financial blogs, investor forums, websites and their investor community on Twitter, giving the department the advantage of identifying (and riding) the sentiment of investors. Automated platforms can significantly assist in filtering out the noise via tonality filters (among others) that investor relations pros can leverage directly on their media coverage dashboard.

Financial blogs, and investor bloggers are often the source of lengthy candid reviews, possibly more representative of the general market as they are often written by active investors. Investor relations practitioners can use this information to get a better handle on the sentiment or attitudes of investors and influencers within the stock trade industry.

As an investor relations professional, how do you use sentiment analysis to be more effective in your role? Please comment!

Next week I’ll look at how Analyst Relations can benefit from sentiment analysis.

In my post last week I talked about sentiment analysis and introduced the technology powering our automated text analytics engine, Lexalytics.  We made loads of people happy with our news and I had a great question posed to me about the value that I saw specifically for the communications functions – beyond the typical PR that we so often discuss.

Over the next three weeks I’ll share how Public Relations, Investor Relations and Analyst Relations professionals can benefit from both passive listening and active engagement using social media monitoring and sentiment analysis. First up, PR pros.

Public Relations and Corporate Communications

Crafting and delivering a targeted message, and having that message accurately received by the target audience are the objectives of the communications game. PR pros can use sentiment analysis to gauge the attitudes and predisposition of their audience prior to conducting their outreach, letting them adjust their message accordingly to ensure maximum effectiveness and hopefully, positive pick-up.

Monitoring keywords relevant to their brand or industry, allows PR pros to identify who the most influential and valuable thought leaders are. Go deeper by monitoring topics of interest, the volume generated and their sentiment.

In my role as Director of Marketing for MediaVantage, I am interested in listening and engaging with influential bloggers on topics like “reputation management”, “PR technology” and “social media monitoring.” Having set-up these monitoring keywords in MediaVantage, I go in on a daily basis and review the content that has been returned, filtering first by tonality (to get quick insight on the very negative and very positive coverage).  When I start to see specific sources (i.e. a blogger or PR thought leader’s name) occurring more regularly in my search results, I’ll create an entirely new search term, dedicated specifically to that source and keywords of interest.

This helps me expand my media ‘watch’ list to ensure that I only focus on furthering relationships with media outlets/thought leaders with interest, authority and clout in my space. Doing this also helps me identify which of the online thought leaders generate more negative articles than positive – for it’s those journalists to which I need to devote special attention.

PR and communications professionals can also use automated sentiment analysis to identify which of their company’s employees and products are the most influential and valuable in terms of media coverage volume and sentiment. With this information strategic decisions can be made about which product to promote, key messages, internal resources and thought leadership opportunities.

Finally, sentiment analysis can also help public relations practitioners track the impact of a specific campaign or promotion by comparing coverage sentiment – before and after the event.

As a public relations professional, how do you use sentiment analysis to be more effective in your role? Please comment! Next week I’ll look at the benefits of Sentiment Analysis for Investor Relations professionals. Stay tuned.

Understanding the general public feeling towards your brand was once as simple as reading a few media clips. Social media and a 24-hour online news cycle now means your brand could be mentioned 10,000 times or more, overnight – making it near impossible to gain insight into the tone of coverage. Enter automated sentiment analysis.

Sentiment Analysis 101

Automated sentiment analysis, also known as tonality scoring, is the process of automatic extraction of the sentiment, or tone, from a series of documents using Natural Language Processing (NLP). In layman’s terms: visualize a thumbs-up for a “you’re awesome” mention, and a thumbs down for an “uh-oh” mention. NLP also gives an aggregate view for a topic as a whole.

Automated tonality scoring is a highlight of MediaVantage’s latest product release. Powered by Lexalytics, a leader in the sentiment analysis space, our clients will now benefit from high-level analysis and trend information, leading to more effective communications strategies, product launches, brand recognition, customer sentiment, etc. Automated tonality scoring is to PR pro’s as Google Adwords is to marketers. It’s quick, reliable and a bucket-load easier than having to do it manually.

If you really want to know how it works, read Sentiment Extraction: Measuring the Emotional Tone of Content from the team at Lexalytics. They clearly know what they’re talking about it. If you have any questions or feedback regarding MediaVantage’s new automated tonality scoring feature, let us know.