Press releases are an integral part of any SEO, social media, and overall content strategy. Here are 3 tips to mastering the social media press release.

1) Social Network Optimization

Make sure that your brand name is consistent across all social networks. While this has little to do with actually writing a press release, it is the first step to effective social media press release syndication.  A great tool to secure your brand name across the social web is Knowem.com. Social media profile registration in this day an age is just as important as domain name registration.

2) Write content that is spreadable, interactive, and stands out in a world of streams.

Press releases are notoriously dry, stale and snooze-worthy. While there is a distinctive style for press releases that should be followed when trying to get traditional media coverage, be sure to tailor your release for different avenues of syndication. Here are some tips about syndicating for different social networks:

Twitter: The headline of the press release is just as important as the content of the press release itself. Make a headline that is eye-catching and  makes the content appear newsworthy. Make sure  your content then matches the quality of your headline, and people will be even more likely to share your press release on Twitter.

Facebook: When tailoring a press release for Facebook, ask yourself, “Why would people share this?”. Sharing anything on the web, and on Facebook in particular, is a personal statement about a person’s viewpoints, opinions, and a part of the construction of their online identity. Focus both your headline and press release on issues that emotionally resonate with your audience.

Video: Nothing is better at forming a relationship with readers or viewers than a video. Press releases with visual elements tend to stay in our memory, stand out, and rise above the pack.

3 ) Make your press release interactive.

Form a relationship with your readers by telling a story that emotionally resonates with them, ask for their feedback, or even go as far as including a live chat within the press release like Ford recently did:

While every press release isn’t worthy of a live chat, including interactive elements like polls, questions, or contests makes your press release remarkable and noteworthy.

To recap: First step, optimize your social media presence so your brand is consistent and well represented. Second, tailor your press release for different syndication channels, and focus on making  content both interactive and spreadable.

Have more questions about social media press releases? Feel free to ask in the comments, send us a tweet, or shoot us an email.

Many businesses see social media value in “influencer marketing” — using influencers to spur word of mouth and buzz around a certain product or business. As the social web evolves, and as our trust in peer recommendations declines, communication professionals and business owners alike are going to have to find new ways to create influence online.

The panel included:

Tim Schigel @schigel (from share this)

Mike JB John-Baptiste @peerset (peerset)

Paul Berry @teamreboot (CTO huff post)

Dave Knox @daveknox (P and G)

David Binkowski @dbinkowski (MS and L)

The panel was structured around statements/questions, so I’ll structure this blog post the same way.

Discussion Starter 1: We know where to find influencers

The panel was split on this statement. David Binkowski made the fantastic point that new influencers are popping up online everyday. How can you predict who will influence what? He went further to argue that anyone with enough time can create influence online; he thinks that people can pop up anywhere and become influencers with ample time and effort.

JB (@peerset) pointed out that we now have experts and community. How do you rally those influencers and deliver the right message? So maybe we should think more about rallying influencers than merely identifying them?

As a publisher, Paul Berry from the Huffington post had a different take. He argued that is the job of publishers to unite influencers with an audience.

My take, simply put: Influencers are everywhere, so don’t burn bridges.

Discussion Starter 2: Brands should influence consumers?

The panel was also torn on their responses on this statement. Mike John-Baptiste made the excellent points that brands, if they create content on social media channels, have an obligation to respond and interact with their customers.

My take: Regardless of whether or not they should influence customers, brands do, as we are subject to 5 million advertising messages a day.

Discussion Starter 3: Is the role of the expert dead?

Tim Schigel is of the opinion that because we’re all getting the same information, experts now matter more than ever. The access to information has been democratized, so who can we trust, who are experts?

David Binkowski @dbinkowski took a more sociological approach to the democratization of influence. He brought it back to the 1990s where people attacked the “left-wing media” and media credibility and expertise took a huge hit with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In other words, the 1990s set the stage of the death of experts.

My take: I think that we’re going to see a different kind of expertise emerge, where individuals become “experts” in closed and specialized social networks. We all have friends who we ask about certain things, whether it be music, tech things, movies or whatever else. We are all experts in some aspects in our closed social graph. This will happen more and more.

Discussion Starter 4: The value of influence is clear:

This is probably my favorite thought from the entire panel via @daveknox: While the value of postive influence may be difficult to measure exactly, the value of negative influence is extremely apparent (see Dell, see the Maytag @Dooce debacle). For Paul, finding value in influence all comes back to measurement. He also alluded to the value of Social CRM and building customer relationships by responding tho those customers and their concerns with a brand or product.

My take: Measurement is the key to finding value in influence marketing. Identifying influence with the tools available is challenge, and we are merely at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social CRM, and influencer targeting.

Discussion Starter 5: I can buy influence

Paul argued that brands should focus on messaging rather than buying influence. For Paul, a focus on messaging leads to influence. Federated Media was also talked about as a company who sells “influence buying”.

My take: Call me cynical, but just look at the way that government lobbyists buy influence everyday. Ideally, brands would focus on message, creating value for their customers, and organically produce a group of “influencers”, but in reality, most focus on shortcuts — whether it be giveaways, partnering with a celebrity, or circumventing FCC regulations.

It was a fantastic panel, and I can’t wait to learn even more at SXSWi. For more on the panel check out the hashtag #FutureOfInfluence or follow any of the panelists on Twitter.

While the importance of being on page one for your business has not changed, social media has shaken up how you get there. As social networking has increased, search engines are forced to pay attention to tweets, (public) facebook updates, forum discussions, Youtube videos etc. The list goes on.

Via

In Today’s web, Social media matters to the search engines,  which makes optimizing your businesses’ social media presence a top priority. Recently, Brian Solis wrote a fascinating article about optimizing your social media presence in order to improve your search engine positioning.

25% of search results, for the world’s top 20 brands link to user generated content (Socialnomics July, 2009).  This number is bound to get higher as social network interaction increases.

Facebook has just surpassed Google as the number one traffic driver on the web.

From these statistics it would be easy to paint a portrait of a world where Facebook could eat the entire web, and SERP is completely determined by social content. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves — Posting items about your business to Facebook and Twitter everyday is not enough to rank well on search engines, or communicate your message to your target audience.

Good content that encourages interaction and sharing is now more important that ever to your search engine ranking position.  Spending time crafting resourceful content that is engaging and shareable, combined with patience, hard work, and clean coding will get you to the top of the search engines.

Curating content, both your own, and content that offers value to your target audience syndicated expertly on social media channels is a necessary addition to any SEO campaign.

How is your business or SEO company integrating social media  to improve your search enginge rankings?

With the emergence and mass-adoption of social media, marketing buzz words are now on steroids. So, here at the Ocean Agency, we thought we would help out business owners by translating marketing buzz words and break down how they can improve your business, minus the marketing speak.

1) Augmented Reality

Definition: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.” (Wikipedia)

Our Definition: Mixing technology into physical real-world experiences

Example:

Does augmented reality make sense for you business? Possibly.

Here is one example:

If you’re a restaurant, you could have the food items on the menu reveal themselves in all 3-D glory.

Obviously, augmented reality is expensive to produce, but the future lies in digital experiences mixed in with consumers physical spaces that tell a compelling story, or, more importantly, offer some kind of value.

Biggest take away for your businesses: Incorporate technologies that improve the experience of your customers.

2) Geo-Location

Definition:” Geo-location is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other.” (Wikipedia)

Our Definition: Identifying and targeting  customers based on their location.

Examples: Foursquare location targeted specials and advertisements:

Does geo-location make sense for your business? Probably.

This one is definitely living up to the hype thus far. With the expansion of social networking on mobile devices, people are sharing their location data at an increasing rate. Businesses can create relevant ads on these platforms that aren’t intrusive.

With this data businesses can help consumers make decisions, save money, and build brand loyalty. A win-win for both brands and consumers.

Something to keep in mind:

Recently, Foursquare has partnered with a variety of major media outlets like BravoTV and the New York Times. The only incentive for users from these partnerships?

A Bravo TV or New York Times Olympic Badge.

These are great incentives for Foursquare addicted PR, communication and markerting types, but in order to encourage mainstream adoption the incentives will have to increase.

Biggest take-away for your business: Make your place of businesses a true destination. People share their location to gain incentives and because it says something about them. Ask yourself this question: Would people want to tell the world that they are at your place of business? Why? Why not?

3) Brand Utility:

Definition: “The brand utility method is concerned less with feature sets and more with functionality. How can your products make the lives of consumers better? That is the question that a brand utility advertising campaign seeks to answer.”  (Printing and Advertising)

Our Definition: Improving the lives of your customers to inspire loyalty in your customer base.

Example:

ING Direct.

If ING Direct is a bank, why does it have cafes in major cities in the US?

Brand Utility.

The ING Direct cafe offers free wifi, $1 coffee/tea and $1 pastries, in addition to employees who know all about ING Direct products.

They improve the lives of their customers by offering discounted coffee and food and even give those with an ING direct account free coffe or tea on Fridays. The ING direct cafe concept is a perfect example of brand utility, and it makes incentives offered by other banks look lame/miniscule in comparison.

Biggest take away for your business: If you improve the lives of your customers, they will thank you publicly and keep coming back.

What can you do to improve the lives of your customers in a way that fits with your overall brand message?

Alright, now it’s your turn. Business owners:

Would you use these tools in your marketing plan? Why or why not?

What makes this even more interesting is that 93% of teens are online:

These figures illustrate something really important about teenagers: They care about their friends and their actual physical network. Moreover, psychology has taught us that many teenagers) are terrible at planning ahead and thinking about the future. They live in the moment and with the consequences. The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is most involved in future planning and decision making, does not fully develop until your early 20s.

What does this have to do with “public” information sharing, like Twitter or blogging?

1) In order to blog or tweet, you inherently have to believe that you have something remotely valuable to say. This requires both a sense of personal identity and self-esteem, both of which are developing during the teen years.

2) Tweeting and blogging are linked to “personal branding” more than anything else. Personal branding requires foresight, introspection and networking with people who aren’t your “real” friends. If teens are deeply focused on physical friendship and developing a personal identity, the link between Twitter, blogs and personal branding might be seen as “lame” or inauthentic.

If teens don’t tweet or blog, how do you target teens with an interactive marketing campaign?

1) Target teens through their social graph, and create content that will give them social capital within their real life circle of friends:

A deal, discount or contest may not be enough. For teens to pay attention, creates something innovative that will make them look good within their group of friends.

2) SMS campaigns work:

We have seen SMS campaigns take off. Texting is something that is natural to teenagers, and because its ubiquitous and easy it’s accepted by teens everywhere.

So these tactics are working now, but what about the near future?

1) Video:

Check your social networks. Are you starting to see more Skype and Google video chats going on? Video-chatting is big among teens because it reinforces the bonds with their physical friend network, and it’s easier than a phone call or text if you really want to talk to someone. It’s the most rewarding virtual hang out.

Businesses and brands can do much more with video chatting. Whether it be in the customer service, branding or public relations realm.

2) Mobile application tie-ins

This year, the Dockers Super Bowl commercial will feature a tie in with “Shazzam,” one of the most popular smart phone applications out there. Shazzam tells you the artist and album of any song that is playing where you are — just hold up your phone. For the Dockers ad, if you utilize Shazzam during the commercial, it will take you to a site where you can download the jingle from the commercial.

It is innovative thoughts like these — taking services that teens already use and creating new uses — that have a big impact.

Businesses should aim to find tie-ins with well-known and well-used mobile applications.

3) Geo-location (that makes sense)

I’m not talking Foursquare. I’m talking geo-location tools that are relevant to teens — location tools that quickly and easily show them where there friends are. Think Facebook with check-ins that are broadcasted to who you want, when you want.

Alright youth-obsessed society, let’s talk about how to target teens with interactive marketing!

According to HubSpot’s “Top Twitter Cities” Chicago is number 3 in the world, behind London and Los Angeles.

Now, this Hubspot grade is not about the number of Twitter users, but based on the the number of “elite” Twitter users in an area.

What does this mean for your Chicago business? Connecting with those in the Chicago social media world is a great way to generate word of mouth about your business or product. Investing time in social networking is more and more important as social networking activity continues to grow. It has recently overtaken porn as the 1 activity for people on the web.

When you look at the top 50 Chicago Twitter users you see that they are not just marketers, PR people, or advertisers. They are the folks that are innovators,  journalists, publications, and brands that truly have a pulse on the City.

No longer is social media some new or experimental format, it is the media.

As business in Chicago, social media presents itself as a giant opportunity to expand your business. With an accurate plan and measurable objectives the time to act is now.

]]> http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100125/in-chicago-social-media-is-now-the-media/feed/ 1 http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100113/what-your-business-can-learn-about-interactive-marketing-from-the-latest-cisco-study/ http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100113/what-your-business-can-learn-about-interactive-marketing-from-the-latest-cisco-study/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:00:40 +0000 Daniel Prager http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/?p=767 We give interactive marketing advice to companies in Chicago and all over the country. Of course, the Ocean Agency is more than happy to help with interactive marketing strategy, social media guidelines, and with social business design. This is an example of where we get our inspiration from:

Today, Cisco has released findings from its latest study about how business use social media to colloberate and interact with customers.

What is so special about this study?

1) The process:

The study utilized qualitative and not just quantitative methods. By using in depth interviews by graduate students and professors from universities all over the world, the data is espcially robust and reliable.

2) The findings:

Companies need to integrate their new media efforts with internal IT professionals, and that internal social media use needs to be more effectively organized and regulated.

IT professionals? Regulation of social media efforts? What does this mean for your business?

1) You need to integrate social media into all aspects of your business.

No longer is social media merely a marketing, communications, or public relations tool it is an essential element in the structure and design of your business.

IT pepole, or at the very least, an employee who is comfortable with all the technological aspects of your business needs to put these social technologies in place.

Just as your IT person may have set up your wireless network, printer, or microsoft outlook, they need to install and regulate social media applications into your technological infrastructure.

2) You need social media guidelines and policies for you business:

Having a social strategy is more than having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or micro-blogging sites. It’s about having a vision and the infrastructure to encourage employee collaboration both internally and externally on social channels. Take time to craft a social business manifesto, that includes an overall strategy, but also includes social media guidelines for employees and management.

As a business owner, how do you control what employees post on social networks? Well, you can’t. However, you can have clear guidelines that dictate what is effective, what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable.

While the importance of these concepts have absolutely been written about before, the qualitative design, validity, and caliber of the Cisco study illustrates the importance of social business in a profound way.

Here is another great write up of the study.

It’s time. Social media is no longer an add on, it is an integral part of your future business design.

How have you integrated social into your business infrastructure?

I’ll break this post down into three sections: What I’ve learned about individual Twitter use, What I’ve learned about using Twitter for small business, and what I’ve learned about using Twitter for larger corporations and well known brands.

What I’ve learned About Individual Twitter Use :

I started using Twitter because I heard about it from countless blogs and press outlets. By no means was I the first person to use Twitter. Unlike many Twitter users I was only mildly interested in the celebrity stalking aspect. I’ll admit, my initial Twitter use was driven by selfish motives. I wanted to keep tabs on the online marketing industry, so I could have a chance at getting a job out of college in a terrible recession.

While this wish did come true (Thanks), the power of Twitter lay in the accessibility and transparency of industry “thought leaders” . Sitting on Twitter was like sitting in a room of intelligent conversations that I would have never been privy to otherwise. I was/am like a sponge, listening and reading all of the articles and blogs these thought leaders shared, until I felt confident enough in my own intellect to add the conversation.

From there, it’s been a story of constant learning, engagement, and even the forming of real life friendships and offline networking.

A couple of thought leaders who have really influenced me (among many):

Sarah Evans

Lauren Fernandez

Ian Schafer

David Armano

As an individual, Twitter gives you the power to identify the smartest and most influential people in the arenas you care about, engage with them, and then craft your own personal voice.

By no means is this an attack on anyone who uses Twitter to stay abreast of the latest celebrity scandal or sports score. Those are viable uses for Twitter as well.

Personally, I feel that your Twitter stream is a reflection of your personal goals, and perhaps more accurately, the value you place on the role of social media in the future.

What I’ve Learned About Using Twitter For Small Businesses:

Contests, giveaways and special promotions are the best ways to “generate buzz”. Twitter is also especially effective for customer service, and creating an accessible and transparent image. When it comes to brands on Twitter, 44% of people follow a brand for exclusive deals and promotions.

Listen to your customers (if they are talking about you on Twitter already), offer deals and promotions, and target publications, blogs, and individuals to get your deals, promotions, or special offers some traction.

Some small businesses who have done great things with Twitter:

Foiled Cupcakes, Green City Market, Free Spirit Yacht Cruises

What I’ve Learned About Using Twitter for Well Known Brands/ Individuals:

People are already talking about your product or activities on Twitter. If you’re feeling ambitious you can respond to every comment, but you may want to pick and choose your responses based on the Twitter influence. Tools like Klout and Listorous are great for identifying influence.

Thus, for very visible and talked about brands and individuals Twitter is really best utilized, first and foremost, as a PR and customer service tool.

While there are thousands of celebrities and huge brands on Twitter, here are some of my favorites:

Azziz Ansari, Southwest Air, Jim Gaffigan, ESPN , OchoCinco

This is a very basic run down about what I’ve learned about Twitter in the little over a year that I’ve been using it. I can’t wait to learn more in the coming year.

Have you learned some of the same lessons? Looking forward to hearing about it. Do you disagree with any of my generalizations?

1) Mobile Search

Google has recognized the growing power and widespread use of the mobile internet and is attempting to engage people on their mobile devices. Especially when it comes to searching for business listings, restaurants, or directions these are natural things to search for on mobile devices.

Each favorite place listing has a “QR” code attached that takes the mobile user directly to the businesses’ Google listing.

Great way to spur the use of mobile Google search.

2) Geo-location

Watch out. Google knows us early adopter folks are having fun with Foursquare, Gowalla and a few others. With Google’s favorite places mobile program they are setting the stage to create contests, coupons, and scavenger hunts with Google engineering behind it. This means amazing usability and simple design.

3) Augmented Reality

Imagine walking down the street and having a coupon code from Google pop up based on your mobile search for “ice cream” on Google Maps.

How about holding your phone up, and the places with Google business listings appear with a rating, user reviews, and daily deals?

While the Yelp Iphone app has tried to harness augmented reality technology, Google will definitely do it better.

4) Deals, Coupons, User Generated Content

Why do you follow a business on Twitter or Facebook? Generally, it’s to make yourself privy to special discounts, offers, and hear about brand happenings first.

So the Google favorite places program encourages businesses to create a profile where they can post coupons, deals, pictures and video. So for all us social media deal and contest hounds, will the Google favorite places program draw us away from following brands and businesses on social media profiles? Maybe.

5) Measurement

How do you measure mobile social media networking?

Well, while social media is amazingly important for branding, PR, and customer satisfaction, when it comes to pure social media marketing businesses want to see the bottom line. They want traffic, engagement, and sales.

With the favorite places business profiles, Google has made it easier than ever to track that “bottom line”.

It’s pretty easy to imagine a world where coupon codes, special offers and deals are integrated into your overall website analytics.

Imagine if you could tell a client: 240 people came to your store after finding your Monday special via Google maps on their  mobile phone.

While we can obviously track social media contests, coupons and interactions — a direct integration into Google Analytics could revolutionize the way we measure online marketing efforts.

These are just my initial thoughts after recieving the Google Favorite Places invite, how do you think it will impact online business marketing?

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you have been to a meet-up or tweet up. Let me tell you something, I love meeting new people and I love social events, but generally, tweet up are pretty bland. You go and you talk about how awesome Twitter is, and sit on your phone tweeting the whole time, and never make any real connections.

The Social Media Club Chicago holiday party/event last night, showed me just how valuable and fun a social media event can be. Here’s what they did right:

1) Got big name speakers:

Erik Qualman . His videos and books do a great job of answering the question, what’s the ROI of social media? He gave an interesting speech. He really drove the point home that social media is not just a PR or Marketing tool — it touches ever facet of your business. I’ve seen both his videos, but it was awesome watching it with the man who created them.

Shel Israel pretty much wrote the book on Twitter. It was great to see him in person. One of my favorite things about Shel is that he feels no pressure to conform or find value in social media tools just because they are popular or catch on with the masses. Google Wave, Facebook Connect? He doesn’t like them because they don’t offer any real value to him personally. You really feel like you are getting his true voice and opinions. While he may be promoting his books, you also get a real sense of his personality (pretty sure there’s a social media marketing lesson in there somewhere).

2) Found sponsors that are passionate about social media.

Just as it wouldn’t make sense for Disney to sponsor the AVN convention, it wouldn’t make sense for a company without a social media presence to sponsor a social media holiday party.

A great example, including Ramon DeLeon and Domino’s as a sponsor.

3) Maintain a strong community, while still welcoming new members

This was my first #SMCChicago event and I was welcomed with open arms. Breaking into an established community is one of the hardest things to do, and it’s wonderful that I was allowed to. At the same time, they did a great job of rewarding their existing community members with raffles, prizes, and even quips in between presentations. This is a group that is passionate about social media, but also passionate about their existing community and friendship.

4) Focusing on fun in addition to networking.

While networking is obviously a draw, this event was first and foremost about celebrating with people who share similiar passions, and recognize the changing nature of the way we communicate. While, it’s exciting and challenging to explain social media to clients, sometimes you just want to hang out with people who get it.

5) Low price point

The low price point of the event allowed just about everyone and anyone to attend. From freelancers who use social media to promote their business to big time marketing agency owners who use social media for some of the largest companies, all were able to learn from each other.

The low price point made the event feel like a gathering of friends, rather than a pedantic high powered networking event that aimed to have marketers teach other marketers how to “powerfully leverage social media for online word of mouth”.While those high powered events are important,

I’ll take a social media event that focuses on friendship and community rather than how to generate social media ROI any day. Besides, as us social media users know, relationship building, networking and friendship are integral to achieving that ROI anyway.

Personal highlights:

Loved the ugly sweater contest, still a little bitter I came in second. I really enjoyed talking with Ramon De Leon, who made the fantastic point that “We need social media war stories not success stories”. I agree. We know its here to stay, most of us aren’t working with Dell or Comcast. Give us some war stories.

Meeting Barbara Maldonado was so much fun. Her energy and enthusiasm for social media really translates from the web into real life.

Tim Jahn is always one of my favorite people to see at events. He always has a smile on his face, and always makes me feel at ease at any social media meetup.

Of course, the moment when David Armano , a consistent SM thought leader who inspires me to work harder everyday, ran across the stage to use the restroom. Classic.

I would love to hear all of your thoughts on the social media club Chicago party, what did you enjoy? What could be improved?

Thanks to Interactive Amy, Barbara Maldonado, JWilly, and all the others who made the evening such a success.