Social Networking Sites – Part 2 January 4, 2009
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Social Media, Social Networking.Tags: Facebook, Social Networking
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Here are some practical tips to get the most out of using social networking sites according to David Meerman Scott in his book – “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” :
- Target a specific audience
- Be a thought leader
- Be authentic and transparent
- Create lots of links
- Encourage people to contact you
- Participate
- Make it easy to find you
- Experiment
Based on these tips, I went back to analyse one of the branded profiles I’ve found previously – the Apple Students profile which currently has 990,791 fans.
Apple Students Profile on Facebook
It targets a specific audience which is obviously students. It also provides interesting information such as the special discounts for students, free music to download, recent top movies, etc. It also provides links to many other websites related to Apple. It also has discussion boards, review sections, and the Wall that allow people to discuss and post questions. Its profile page is incredibly easy to be found as it has so many users that invite their own friends to also participate in the profile and there is a logo on any user’s profile who has become its fan, ie. bearing the name “Apple Students”.
So I can say these tips really work!
Social Networking Sites – Part 1 January 3, 2009
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media, Social Networking.Tags: Branded- Profile, Branded-Application, Facebook, Social Networking
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Having known from the Top Social Media Sites 2008 that Facebook, one of the popular social networking sites, has massively grown 116% in a year reaching 200 million users, I am interested to look further into this.
What actually is people doing with social networking sites? How does it benefit the PR industry in being a channel to promote and engage brands with the public? According to the McCann research – the Social Media Tracker Wave 3 (conducted on March 08 ) – below are the things people typically do with their social networking profiles:
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The McCann research also mentioned that it is important to “exist inside social networks to create profiles, develop networks to distribute content and employ advertising and sponsorship to drive engagement with consumers.” I was curious to know how brands exist in those social networking sites so I decided to search for any existing branded-profiles in Facebook and here are some interesting one that I found:
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Apple Students, has 990,791 fans who have connected their profile with the Apple Students profile. You can get all the latest news of Apple products in here. There are also some interesting sections to attract its members by providing free songs to be downloaded and most importantly special discounts up to $200 for the student members.
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Twilight, the famous novel series and movies, has 1,089,950 fans. It provides links to the official websites, updates for the latest news, pictures and upcoming events for Twilight.
On the other hand, from the graph above we can also see that 23.3% users install applications on their social networking sites. Hence, I was searching again to find out whether there is any branded-application exists in Facebook and actually there are quite many! Here are just a few examples:
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Send Ben and Jerry Ice Cream application, allows users to send virtual Ben and Jerry ice cream to each other. It has 75 different flavours of the real ice cream to be sent out. It also provides reviews and discussion board sections. Currently, there are 36,904 monthly active users sending out those virtual ice creams to each other.
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Virtual iPhone is one interesting application that allows people to explore the iPhone device virtually. There are discussion boards, reviews section, etc posted by Facebook users who have added this application to their profiles. You can see that there is also a lucky draw to win an iPhone simply by adding this application to the profile. As such, this is one interesting way to engage people to participate. Virtual iPhone currently has 4,969 fans in Facebook.
It is very impressive to see that these brands succeed in connecting their brands with the Facebook users simply by asking the users to be fans of the brand’s or the product’s profile or by installing an application onto their profiles. In my upcoming blog posts, there will be some tips on how to be successful in using social networking sites as a channel for PR. So come back soon! 
The Trend of Blogging December 26, 2008
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media, Weblogs.Tags: Blogs, Social Media
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Weblogs is one of the applications that play an important role in the PR 2.0 industry.
This year, there are about 346 millions people in this world that read blogs and there is an 11% growth compared to last year. (source: The McCann research – the Social Media Tracker Wave 3).
More and more people are reading blogs online. So I think instead of spending a lot of money for media relations programme trying to convince reporters to cover news, why not try to create a blog or target bloggers to help us convey our messages directly to our target public online? We no longer need to wait for the traditional media to cover our news. We are now free from their filter and we have the power to send our messages across directly to our targeted public and this is all so GREAT!
After setting up blogs or having bloggers write our stories, we should be happy that all our hard work are actually worth it. Just take a look at the research result below:
However, there is a problem. Not everyone is writing a favourable story for us. Someone might post, write or leave negative comments and/or stories in their blogs and we have no control over that. Of course, we should be worried about that!
However, according to David Meerman Scott in his book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, he said: “I strongly believe that comments from readers offering different viewpoints than the original post are actually a good thing on a blog, because they add credibility to your viewpoint by showing two sides of an issue and by highlighting that your readership is passionate enough to want to contribute to a debate on your blog”.
I agree with David as it is much more credible to have both positive and negative comments/stories on blogs. It makes much more sense to the readers that all the opinions do come from actual users of the products or services rather than just posting some edited comments on the blogs, for example. We need to welcome such negative feedbacks and then find an effective way to handle the criticisms.
“The New Rules of Marketing and PR” – by David Meerman Scott December 22, 2008
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Marketing, PR and Web 2.0.Tags: Book, David Scott, New Rules of PR, PR and Marketing
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These days I’ve been reading this book. It is definitely one interesting book and I learn quite a lot from it. This book is very accessible as it is written in blog-style which makes me feel like I’m reading a story book. It also provides a lot of examples and links so I can then find out more about a particular topic from resources on the Internet.
The first chapter starts with an interesting title: “The Old Rules of Marketing and PR Are Ineffective in an Online World”. It struck me that I’ve got a lot to learn to work in the new media as all the old rules applied in the traditional media that I have learnt are not applicable in the case of new media.
So what are the new rules that we all have to know then? According to Scott, these are the new rules of Marketing and PR:
- Marketing is more than just advertising.
- PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience.
- You are what you publish.
- People want authenticity, not spin.
- People want participation, not propaganda.
- Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it.
- Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.
- PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the Web.
- Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It’s about your organization winning business.
- The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media.
- Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content.
- Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate.
- On the Web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred.
I second his thought on those rules, especially the following rules. First, the rule – “Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate” - is similar to the statement from the video I posted here previously that “PR should engage people when, where and how they want to be engaged”. I think this is one advantage of Web 2.0 which was hardly done in the traditional media because we didn’t really have as many ways in sending our messages across. Nowadays, with Web 2.0, we can send our messages by using the media that is mostly appreciated by the targeted public. Of course we should do some research to determine which platform is the appropriate one. It’s about sending the right messages in the right time, at the right place, with the right way.
Secondly, with regards to the rule that says – “On the Web, the lines between Marketing and PR have blurred” – I do think that actually, be it on the Web or in real life, Marketing and PR should work hand in hand with each other anyway. It is ideal to work within an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) concept. It would be good if Marketing and PR are supporting each other. The messages would be addressed and understood better by the public. However, I realise that in the real life, it is hard to practise IMC for reasons that we all know well.
Later on at the part three of this book, there are lots of “How To” tips which are very useful. A must-read book for PR practitioner who is interested in new media!
If you are Athens users, click and log in here to read the book.
More about Social Media December 19, 2008
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Social Media, YouTube Videos.Tags: Social Media, Web 2.0
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While browsing today, I came across an interesting video on YouTube that helps me understand better about the relationship between PR, Web 2.0 and social media.
This video titled “What’s the Buzz About PR 2.0/Social Media?” is created by Robert Sears, the PR 2.0 Social Media Manager from the SSA Public Relations agency based in Denver and Phoenix – USA. He talks about the usage of social media in PR.
I agree with his statement that in using Web 2.0, PR should engage people when, where and how they want to be engaged. I do really think it is important to find out the “when, where and how” our targeted public want to be engaged with. Now with the emergence of Web 2.0, we have plenty of choices to convey our messages across. We can upload videos on Youtube, upload pictures on Flickr, create a profile on Facebook, post stories on weblogs, and etc. But we can’t just use all of them, we need to know what our target public are really involved with. We need to know whether they only read blogs or watch videos or both.
Another interesting point that Robert made in his video is that social media provides a global public focus group. Everyone expresses their opinions online which somehow lets us know what they think about our products and services. It provides us a valuable insight into what they really wants and needs. So, simply get online and you can follow their conversation to find out what they really wants or needs. This is such a great contribution from Web 2.0 since consumer insight is one important point in PR.
PR and Web 2.0 – An Overview December 18, 2008
Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media.Tags: Web 2.0
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New media, especially the emergence of web 2.0, presents a significant impact for the Public Relations industry as it has challenged how public relations is practiced. PR is no longer only about sending out press releases to media and hoping to get the news appear on the media by building good relationship with the journalists. By the emergence of web 2.0, PR is now about communicating directly with the public without relying solely on the traditional media.
So what actually is web 2.0? To make it clear, I looked it up in Wikipedia and it says:
“The term Web 2.0 is described as the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web.”
Web 2.0 is about the interconnection and interaction between the web and the users. It allows users to do more than just get information from the web. Users can now participate and “interact” with the web. That’s why Web 2.0 could help PR to communicate directly with the public. I really think that It is a new, helpful channel for PR to disseminate information to the public and then somehow get feedback from them. Social media, one of the platforms based on Web 2.0, is used largely in the PR industry.
According to Universal McCann company, in one of its research - the Social Media Tracker Wave 3 (conducted in March 08), it defines social media as the online applications, platforms, media which aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration, and the sharing of content. The research shows that there is a significant growth of social media usage which includes social networking, blogs, RSS, widgets, podcasts, photo and video sharing, message boards and chat rooms from year to year.
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More and more people are getting online and using social media. I think that it is important for PR to take a look and understand this growing trends of social media usage so we can then take advantage of it in conducting PR practices. It is both fun and challenging to make use of Web 2.0 as PR now has new channel to communicate with the public BUT no longer can control the spread of the public’s opinion because they can now express their opinion freely online, anytime and anywhere.
So how effective is new media used in the PR industry? Even better question: Should PR concentrate only in new media or use both new and traditional media? Well, keep following my blog and you’ll find out more..
