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.

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)

Tragically, on Sunday, February 26, VIA Rail’s train number 92 derailed in Ontario, killing three of its crew members and injuring many passengers. You can read VIA Rail’s press release for the details.

This was certainly a crisis situation and VIA Rail responded. How they responded and whether or not the communication was effective or timely has all been up for debate.

Regardless, there’s always PR impact in these types of crisis situations. Immediately following the accident, the public turned to Twitter and other media outlets to find out what happened. They wanted answers. What went wrong? How did this happen? How many people were affected? What will happen to other scheduled trains?

The VIA Rail communications team did a lot of things right. Seemingly, they tried to get the facts before engaging in social media. Here are some highlights of what VIA Rail did following the initial crisis:

• Identified the deceased and notified their families
• Made sure all survivors from the scene were properly cared for
• Made sure everyone on their team used clear and consistent messages when “speaking” publically
• Issued a press release once they had the facts
• Answered all questions and concerns from the public on social media sites after the communications plan was aligned
  • Even went as far as answering each individual’s concern or question
• Set up a special toll-free number for anyone seeking information about passengers
• Made alternative plans to accommodate already-scheduled trips

With every crisis there is something to be learned and there’s always room for improvement in case of another potential crisis. Here are a few of our suggestions:

• Although all traditional media were part of the communication crisis strategy, social media needs to be more than an after-thought.
• With social media being a massive source for people to get their news, there needs to be a “voice of authority” present as soon as possible – even if the message is “we don’t have answers yet, but we’re working to get them.”

What would you add to this list?

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

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.

In the past, it was the sole responsibility of the corporate communications team to preserve a company’s reputation. However, with the advent of social media, all corporate departments – including investor relations – need to play a role in monitoring and upholding corporate reputation.

For IR, that role is about being aware of where investors are gathering information and helping to shape that. The IR team has a unique perspective on what topics could be of interest or detriment to the organization, and also has its own set of stakeholders and influences to watch.

Incorporating social media into your investor relations program is easier than many think and it needn’t be fraught with worry. The benefits of engaging in social media can be immediate and scalable to the time and effort you can devote to it.

Our latest white paper, titled Investor Relations: Taking on Social Media, is filled with tips to help your IR team develop a social media strategy that works for your company.

Download the white paper now.