Competition: win a copy of @Problogger’s book on blogging

Social activism: how to respond to an attack on your social media presences

February 29, 2012 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

This post provides five tips on how to respond to a social activist attack on your brand or company social media presences.

Protesting has changed

Organisations’ social presences, be they on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or elsewhere, are quickly becoming primary targets for activist organisations attempting to change company policy or build awareness of questionable business practices. Of course this is not to say the days of the old ‘hey-hey ho-ho’ chants, signed petitions and pickets are over, but there is a definite rise in activist activity on the internet and organisations need to be prepared to address and respond to these instances when they occur.

How best to respond to an attack by an activist organisation

Pre-attack create escalation procedures - Ensure comment traffic system and escalation procedures are in place across all social presences so that negative comments are quickly escalated to the PR and corp affairs team where additional escalation can be made quickly.

Investigate the source of the activity and engage – My mother always said treat the problem, not the symptoms. Identify the source or sources that are convincing people to come to your social presence and engage with them directly. Your engagement efforts with the activist influencers will be more effective that engaging with every single individual on the page. In my experience this engagement will be welcome and shows a willingness to address their concerns.

Don’t stick your head in the sand – Be transparent with your community on the channels they are attacking you on and make commitments to investigate their concerns and provide more information.

Be timely – an hour is a long time in the social media world. Get responses and information to your community as quickly as possible. Delayed silence will suggest you are trying to spin the situation.

Listen and respond – There is no magic number of negative comments that denotes when a company should change its policy, but any considerable number of negative comments should be taken seriously. Comments on Facebook and other social presences are like a barometer on your customers’ feelings towards your brand and products. Only a fool doesn’t listen to their customers.

Do you have any other tips you would add? Do you agree with what I have listed?

Image credit – Gaelx

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Featured, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Attack, Digital PR, Online, PR, Protect, Protesters, Protesting, Public Relations, Social activism, social media

Trust Barometer and its implications for social media

February 24, 2012 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

This post was first published on the Edelman Australia Blog.

The Trust Barometer findings presents interesting implications for businesses in the area of social media. Below are four aspects of the report that we thought are worth highlighting that should help justify an increased spend in the area of social for your business or organisation.

Listening to customer needs and feedback

As the above graphic highlights, listening to customer needs and providing feedback is the best way to build trust among the general public in Australia. Social media is one of the most effective ways to do this. If you are not listening and responding to the conversations occurring in the social space around your brand you may be missing one of the most effective ways to grow your brand’s or organisation’s trust.

CEOs are least trusted company spokespeople

Trust in CEOs as a company spokesperson has fallen, whilst ‘a person like me’ has risen. This is an ongoing trend that the Trust Barometer has been highlighting for some years. Community managers and normal employees speaking on behalf of organisations in social media are an effective way of building trust in your brand, especially in times of crisis.

Limiting your spokespeople to handful of very senior people is not the most effective way to build trust. The days of control communication are over. Open up your communication channels so a wide range of ordinary employees can speak on behalf of your your brand within social media. Of course that is not to say training and governance for people commenting on your brand/organisation in social media is not necessary.

Trust in social media as a credible source of information has doubled

Social media as a trusted source of information about a company has consistently risen over recent years. The 13% above are people that listed the fact they trust information they find about a company on social media ‘a great deal’. It does not mean that 87% of people don’t trust information they read about a company within social media.

If you haven’t already the time to take the jump is here. People are on social media researching your company and are trusting what they read. If you aren’t present you are missing an opportunity to influence and grow trust.

Repetition overcomes skepticism

Australians need to be exposed to the same message multiple times before they will trust the information. If you are simply relying on traditional channels you are missing opportunities to repeat your message.

Social media is one of the most cost effective means of communicating frequently. Take advantage of it.

What are your thoughts?

Does the above make sense, does it align with your experience of implementing social media and growing trust within your organisation?

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Featured, PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Australia, digital, Edelman, edelman trust barometer, social, social media, trust, trust barometer

Managing crisis in the digital age

August 22, 2011 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

Does the potential of a PR crisis played out in the modern social media environment keep you up at night? If so, this post and the presentation, created in conjunction with Edelman crisis management expert Grant Smith, at the bottom may provide some guidance.

Managing Crisis in the Digital Age

Last week I was invited to present on the topic of Managing crisis in the digital age at the PR and Communications’ the Future of Social Media Forum.

The event was a three day conference for people in the PR and marketing industries and included presentations from the likes of Gavin Heaton (servant of Chaos), Ian Lyons (who I had never met before), Alexandra Kentman (who I sadly missed) and fellow PR agency staffer Dan Young.

The presentation in summary:

The context:

Social media in and of itself is not the cause of crisis, it is merely a vehicle that people use to communicate about or learn of a crisis
Social media has, however, changed fundamentally the speed of response required to get on top of a crisis at the early stages and requires constant responses throughout the crisis

First things first:

Organisations need a way to identify the differentiate between an issue and a crisis. An issue is unfortunate, a crisis prevents business as usual
Crisis communication is part of the solution, but it isn’t the solution. An organisation’s (note I am not saying the PR person’s here) primary focus should be on finding the source of the crisis and fixing it

Five steps for managing crisis in the digital age:

Prepare - every organisation should have a crisis management plan that is ready to manage crisis in the digital age. This includes identifying all potential crisis scenarios and having Q&A documents with responses ready for multiple formats including Facebook and Twitter

Listen constantly - listening constantly to conversations happening around your brand online should be standard practice for any business of consequence

Prepare to respond quickly - the news cycle moves at blistering speed today. It is better to be part of the conversation clarifying you are seeking more facts than not at all

Online visibility - nobody is better placed to own the facts about a crisis than those in the middle of it. Owning the destination for facts about your crisis is crucial. Consider preparing a dark site that can be turned on in times of crisis and also set aside budget for an SEM buy to direct people into your online destination

Train staff and practise - in the modern environment potentially everyone is a spokesperson. Train a wide range of staff and practice regularly. Crises have a knack for appearing when key members of your team are away from the office

Crisis management matthewgain.com version

View more presentations from Matthew Gain

What do you think? Do you agree? Is there anything you would add to my advice?

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Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts, SEO, social media Tagged With: Advice, Crisis Management, Edelman, Facebook, matthew gain, PR, presentation, Public Relations, social media, Tips, Twitter

Australian social media stats video by Box Hill TAFE

February 10, 2011 By Matthew Gain 2 Comments

I saw the video below on Lee Hopkin’s blog by Box HIll TAFE today and couldn’t resist sharing it here.

I love how videos like this can break down a bunch of stats into something entertaining. I am so not talented in this area. if I attempted to make something similar it would likely look like a series of moving PPT slides. If you can do this, and are looking for a start in agency land get in touch. I may some work for you.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Digital PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Box HIll TAFE, Infographic, Lee Hopkins, social media, TAFE, Video

Optus displays great customer service with a Christmas card

December 17, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

The card above was sent to me by the nice people at Optus’s Social Media team – Julz in particular. As you can see this is no mass mail out.

In my books this card is bloody good customer service and is indicative of the way Optus engages with its customers more broadly. Tweets I have sent Julz and the team requesting assistance, during office hours, are typically responded to within 30 minutes. Though the good service also extends beyond the social media team. The call centre staff are some of the best I have dealt with. If the issue cannot be fixed in the first call the consultant tells you when they will be working next and commit to come back to you personally. That makes a big difference to me and ensures I don’t have to repeatedly talk the consultant through the issue.

Obviously Optus isn’t the only company that has excellent customer service or a social media contact team, but I thought this was pretty special. It certainly made me feel special.

Thanks Julz and Optus – keep up the good work.

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Filed Under: Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Christmas, Christmas Card, Customer Service, Julz, Optus, social media, Twitter

Virgin America partners with Awkward Family Photos

September 30, 2010 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

There’s nothing like flicking through the old family albums to give the laughing muscles a work out. In homage to this age old pastime, Virgin America has teamed up with the popular blog Awkward Family Photos (AFP) to promote its new air route to Orlando.

The premise is simple; upload your very own awkward family photo to AFP and you will receive 33.3% off your next trip to Orlando. As further enticement, Virgin America is offering four major prizes of roundtrip tickets to anywhere the airline flies for the best photos as voted by the Awkward Family Photos audience.

I love this promotion. A nice break form the normal Facebook/Twitter combo

Oh you’re still here? I thought you would be off scouring your old family photos already.

This post was originally written for and posted on the new Edelman Australia blog, but we’re not quite ready for that to fully go live yet. Stay tuned.

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Filed Under: Digital PR, PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: AFP, Awkward Family Photos, Orlando, social media, Tumblr, Virgin America

Want to work in a PR agency? Here are some tips

August 21, 2010 By Matthew Gain 9 Comments

Working in a PR Agency

View more presentations from Matthew Gain.

This week I had the honour of presenting to PR students at the University of Newcastle (my old university) on the topic of working in a PR agency. Above is the presentation I gave. It was intended to be light-hearted and was pitched assuming minimal knowledge of the agency environment. The simple reason for this is that when I was at uni I had no idea about what a PR agency did or how it all worked.

I often get asked what skills you should have to get a job in PR and how you go about getting a job at an agency. My advice typically covers the following points:

Do work experience - every junior hire we make is via work experience, I know of almost no exceptions to this. If you want to get a job in a PR agency the best route is to identify the agencies you would like to work for and approach them about work experience opportunities.
Know the media – understand the media. Watch all the television news regularly and not just the news you like. Understand the difference between ABC, Ten and SBS. Read the papers and not just the one you like best. Know the difference between the tabloids and broadsheets, understand the difference between the SMH and The Australian. Listen to the radio, think about the stories they cover. Read online voraciously. Google News is a good start. It provides a good overview of the Australian landscape but also gives an insight into international media too.
Read and comment on blogs – read PR, marketing, social media and other personal interest blogs. Understand how writing for a blog differs from a traditional media outlet. Make sure you comment and engage. The beauty of blogs is that it is about a two way conversation. Take part and enjoy the benefits. This post by the PR Warrior Trevor Young provides a good overview of some blogs to get started with. The fact I am listed in hist post is not the only reason I suggest following his advice either.
Understand how Facebook can be used to build a community – Facebook is a brilliant platform for sharing photos and staying up to date with your friends, but it can also be a platform for building a community around a particular topic, brand or passion point. Join and analyse some of the Facebook pages of your favourite brands. In fact why not try it for yourself? Set up a page for your football club, your university club or other organisation.
Have a digital footprint – I always perform a Google search when I receive a new CV. What will I see if I search for your name? Having a blog is one of the most obvious ways to grow your personal brand. Your traffic will not be high to start with, but it is not about traffic rather is more about having your thoughts and opinions there when someone searches. If having a blog is too daunting Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are easier places to start. For extra points you may want to start building an understanding of basic SEO and HTML. Check out my advice on growing your personal brand online.
Get a university degree - having a university degree is one of the things I look at. A comms degree is the obvious choice, but really I am not all that fussed what degree you have. The reason I mention a degree is because it shows you understand how to research, know how to form and present an opinion and perhaps most importantly can stick at something and get it finished without having someone looking over your shoulder. Having said that I have also worked with some amazing people that don’t have a degree.
Get involved and help a local charity - if you are a PR student odds are you already know a lot more about PR than the average punter. Why not volunteer some of your time to a local charity to assist them with their PR and social media planning. The experience you gain will likely be invaluable and will make a difference for a needy charity.
The marketing mix is converging, so understand the whole marketing mix – gone are the days of clearly defined roles between marketing functions. Media, advertising, digital and PR agencies are all increasingly offering similar services as the roles blur. The more you know about all these disciplines the better.
Finally, be creative in getting people’s attention - PR agencies receive a lot of CVs each and every day, so think about how you can stand out from the rest of the pack. Rebecca Griffith from the University of Wollongong got my attention by posting a job request on the Mumbrella job boards and this effort by an advertising hopeful in America is brilliant.

This is just my advice. What other tips should we be giving to students and others looking to start a career in PR?

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Featured, PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Australia, Digital PR, Facebook, LinkedIn, PR, PR Agency, Public Relations, social media, Tip, Tips, Twitter, Working in a PR Agency, Working in PR

Nike may have scored the first goal, but the World Cup is long

June 14, 2010 By Matthew Gain 9 Comments

Source - Nielsen

According to independent studies by Nielsen and Meltwater, Nike has stolen a march on official sponsors by generating the most buzz online in the lead up to the World Cup. This fact has been lauded high and low by a range of media houses including the FT in Europe, Yahoo 7 in Australia and USA Today in the US. Yet in my opinion this research risks misrepresenting the efforts of the other players.

Few of the articles drill into the methodology employed to generate the results and the time period when the study was conducted greatly favours Nike’s World Cup campaign.

This post is not designed to prove the research wrong, but rather to put it into context and explore some of the reasons why Nike may have outperformed those further down the table.

For the purpose of this post I conducted a review of the methodology used in the research and reviewed the marketing activity of the top five ranked brands in the study to understand why Nike had won so convincingly. Note this research was not exhaustive.

I intend to post my research of the official sponsors in a series of updates this week here on my blog.

As I struggled to find much information about the Meltwater study, beyond this post, and the fact the findings were similar to the Nielsen study, for the purposes of this post I decided to focus only on the Nielsen findings.

Research findings:

Rank	Brand	Type	% Share of Official and Competitor Buzz*
1	Nike	Non-affiliated Competitor	30.2%
2	adidas	FIFA Partner	14.4%
3	Coca-Cola	FIFA Partner	11.8%
4	Sony	FIFA Partner	11.7%
5	Visa	FIFA Partner	7.3%
6	Carlsberg	Non-affiliated Competitor	3.9%
7	McDonald’s	FIFA World Cup™ Sponsor	2.8%
8	Pepsi	Non-affiliated Competitor	2.5%
9	Hyundai/Kia	FIFA Partner	2.4%
10	Panasonic	Non-affiliated Competitor	1.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company

Research Methodology:

According to Nielsen:

Nielsen’s study, conducted between May 7^th to June 6^th 2010, looked at English language World Cup-related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, video and image sites – including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – that mentioned at least one of the 10 official FIFA partners and sponsors with a global footprint or two of their top competitors (30 brands in all).

Things to note about the methodology:

The problem with the methodology and the study for me is that it risks readers assuming that all brands were actively attempting to generate online buzz in the lead up to the event.

Nike’s World Cup video was launched on 17 May, meaning it benefited from 29 days of the survey period. Adidas’s Star Wars inspired World Cup video and its official World Cup video were launched on 4 June and 9 June respectively. Thus the research period accounted for only two days of the Star Wars video, whilst Adidas’s official World Cup video did not feature at all in the period.

The other thing to note is the fact that official sponsors will typically hold their big efforts until the tournament proper and an ambusher will always attempt to steal the early lead.

My view on the research:

Without a doubt Nike has done an amazing job generating buzz in the lead up to the World Cup, however as I have noted Nike was advantaged in this study by the favourable research period and the fact that the tournament hasn’t truly started.

I expect online buzz to increase as activity by official sponsors commences during the tournament. The tournament is a long way from being over, so are the opportunities for official sponsors to grow buzz and association from their sponsorships.

Irrespective you can’t argue about the success of Nike’s campaign and strategy of being involved with Football. Interestingly the success of the Nike video also highlights that plenty of people are still willing to be influenced and talk about a traditional advertising style piece of video content.

What do you think? Will the other brands build their momentum, or are their strategies and tactics missing the mark?

Come back through the week, to read my reviews of the official and unofficial brand’s activity in relation to the World Cup.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, PR, Professional Posts, Web stuff Tagged With: Adidas, Coke, Digital PR, Meltwater, Nielsen, Nike, Official Sponsors, Online Buzz, social media, Sponsors, World Cup

Competition: Announcing the winner of Problogger’s book on blogging

June 8, 2010 By Matthew Gain 14 Comments

Two weeks ago I launched a competition to give away my copy of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s guide to pro blogging, Problogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income.

Competition:

The competition invited readers to submit in the comment box the most successful blog post they have written and explain why they thought it was so successful. If people didn’t have a blog they could simply provide a link to post the liked on someone else’s blog.

Results:

The competition generated 17 entires, from all over the world, which is more than I anticipated. The fact Darren first and then Chris tweeted the competition no doubt helped with this.

There wasn’t a strict criteria I used for choosing the winner, other than wanting to select a winner that I thought would benefit the most from the book.

It’s a shame I don’t have 17 copies of the book to giveaway, because they were all interesting posts. Though like in any competition there has to be winners.

The runners up:

The runners up, which unfortunately win nothing, are:

Meikah:

Meikah’s post on poor service at Louis Vuitton really hit a nerve of public discontent generating more than 40 comments outlining similar poor service. Makes you realise the importance of monitoring what is said about you online. I expect there are store managers that would be horrified to hear this, but then again perhaps not?

Yvonne:

Yvonne’s excellent post on 10 ways to get creative in seven days is in my opinion a near perfect blog post. In fact it was simply too good to win. The intention of this competition was to pass this book onto an up and coming blogger who I though would really benefit from the tips. Considering Yvonne employed so many of the techniques Darren and Chris recommend I don’t know that she would benefit as much as someone else. You’re just too clever already you see Yvonne.

I encourage everyone who reads this to check out Yvonne’s post and follow her advice, it is really good. I am following it myself.

Sanjeev:

Sanjeev’s post detailed a fairly lengthy overview of Windows Live Writer (disclosure I have worked at Microsoft and my employer has Microsoft as a client). Despite the post being incredibly long Sanjeev broke his post up with plenty of headlines, which made identifying the sections you wanted and those that you didn’t really easy – very important when you consider how much of the web there is to read.

Winner:

However there can only be one winner and that is Jess Morris. In the scheme of things Jess’s post on Twitter service at Australia Post isn’t technically the best written blog post entry, yet it generated 90 hits. Not a bad number of visitors for a new blogger. It has also generated comments from her audience and has been retweeted by her Twitter followers.

As all experienced bloggers I suspect would attest, it is exciting when something you write is so well received by your audience that it generates a spike in traffic, is shared via retweets and comments accrue as people join the discussion. It’s those posts that give you the blogging bug.

Jess, I hope the book will allow you to generate more successful posts like your entry to this competition and continue to evolve your blogging. Remember though, you have to pass on the book once you have read it. I look forward to following your blog.

Thanks again to all entrants.

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Blog, Blog writing, Blogger, Chris Garrett, Competition, Darren Rowse, Problogger, social media, Twitter

Competition: win a copy of @Problogger’s book on blogging

May 26, 2010 By Matthew Gain 38 Comments

A couple of months back I made a concerted effort to increase the number of posts I made on here and increase the traffic coming to my blog. That process involved me reviewing the blogging practices of my favourite bloggers (see my blog roll in the right panel) and also involved me reading Problogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income. The purpose of this post is to provide a review of that book and also to give away my copy.

Competition:

Before I get into the review, let me outline how you can win the book. Because let’s face it that’s why you’re here right.

As the book is a guide to blogging I am going to give the book away to a commenter willing to share a link to their most successful blog post and explain why they think it has been successful. If you don’t have a blog simply provide a link to a memorable post on another person’s blog and tell us why you like it. I will select the winner. The condition of entry though is that you too pass on the book when you have finished it.

Review:

The book, as the name suggests, is a guide to making a living from your blog. It is written in the first person and is authored by successful and professional bloggers Darren Rowse and Chris Garret. Written so it can be understood by people with no experience whatsoever in blogging it covers everything from selecting a blog platform, through to tips for great content creation, blog monetisation and closes by providing case study examples of successful global blogs.

I have been blogging for quite some time now (first blog launched in 2004), so for me there was nothing in the book that was all that groundbreaking, especially as I’m a reader of Problogger, but it was nice to have it all in the one place.

For me, the most important section of the book was the one focussed on creating great blog content.

Tips covered include:

Finding your niche – does the world really need another photography or social media blog
Writing succinct posts – the internet is a big place, make your content is short and to the point
Making your posts standout – headline tips, the power of lists, formatting, using pictures
Writing for search engines – tips for ensuring your content is search engine friendly
Engaging readers – writing techniques for encouraging comments or increasing subscribers
Post frequency – theories on how often should you post

What is good about the book:

Both authors have been incredibly successful with their blogs, so it was great to get such candid insights from people who absolutely know what their writing about
The book is broken up into easily understood sections, so you can skip parts you don’t need and likewise easily find the stuff you want more information on
It provides examples of lots of free tools you can use and outlines how they help with the blogging process

What is not so good about the book:

The book is written in the first person, but there are two authors. As the reader, you are not always sure which author it is you are hearing from. Perhaps this isn’t really too much of an issue, but it did trouble me a few times whilst reading
The book focused a lot on making money from your blog directly. I thought there could have been more focus on the benefits of having a blog beyond simply making money from ads and perhaps some examples of how people have benefited in other ways from their blog
I thought the book could have focussed a little more on the role of social media in driving traffic to your blog. It focussed a lot on social bookmarking sites, like Stumbleupon and Digg, but less on the importance of growing a network of like minded people on Twitter and Facebook (two major drivers of traffic to my blog)

Who should read this book

As I mentioned above, the book is well set out, so even if you are an experienced blogger like me it is easy to skip chapters and focus on the authors’ tips for driving deeper engagement and higher readership. Having said that, those with no or little experience blogging will benefit the most from reading this book.

Competition

As I said at the top I am giving my copy away and will select a comment left on this post before Friday 4 June to be the winner. So go on, drop me a comment about the most successful blog post on your blog and why you think it has been successful. For those that don’t have a blog, simply share a link to a memorable blog post you have seen and outline why you think it was so powerful. Remember a condition of entry is that if you win, the copy then needs to be handed on to somebody else when you have finished with it.

Good luck!

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