Archive for the Listening & Monitoring Category
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[draft chapter excerpted from Strategic Social Media, due out in 2012 from Routledge] Reality check. People are having conversations every day about your organization and they have been for a long time. Despite these conversations occurring practically under your nose, prior to social media, hearing them wasn’t easy even for the most vigilant organizations. Maybe a customer complaint here, or a comment in the comment box there, a focus group or survey every couple of years communication managers could get glimpses into what audiences were thinking. Using the info gleaned, the organization could communicate with its audiences but the communication channels were traditionally “one way” – brochures, media relations, websites, events, etc. – and focused on the topic that the organization wanted to talk about. Fortunately for modern day communicators, we have the ability to easily, and continuously, listen and monitor. You can listen in on those conversations that people... Continue Reading
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This is a guest post from Jamie Szwiec, a PR colleague I connected with on Twitter. More about Jamie at the bottom of the post. I can remember when I went client-side and my boss gave me the task of personally monitoring the news, daily, through Google news alerts and RSS feeds. Something along the lines of … “Spend an hour a day, first thing. I’m not talking about those third-party monitors that charge an arm and a leg. Do it diligently, for competitive analysis, tracking trends and sharing ideas with the team. Most importantly, media relations.” The internal dialogue in my head was along the lines of … “Dude, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Fine, I’m client-side and don’t have to worry about the lingering 0.25’s and billing my time now.” At first, it was daunting. More than a dozen Google alerts to sift through every morning followed by... Continue Reading
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If you’re thinking about getting started in social media and have designated “this summer” as a chance to do so, the first thing you should do is start reading. Find 10 or 20 (or more) blogs that cover areas of public relations, marketing and social media that you’re interested in and start reading. Not sure how to begin? Two PR agencies (and me) have created tools to get you started. Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s Daily Influence: Powered by Netvibes (also my feed reader of choice), Daily Influence has tabs for categories in advertising, public relations and social media and subscribes to a lot of the most influential blogs in each. You can create an account on Netvibes and customize your page based on Daily Influence. Keep what you like, delete what you don’t and add in your own. MWW Group’s M.Insight is a mobile app, which rules. You can get... Continue Reading
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Participating in the blogosphere and social media requires that you have an ear to the ground. But where do you start? Active listening is the first step to establishing a blogging or social media strategy (or any communication strategy for that matter…). As you think about blogging for a class or for a client or for your company, start with the basics. Some resources:Ogilvy Blog Feeds: A collection of some of the most influential blog feeds out there, from one of the most influential agencies. Constantin Basturea: Blogger & PR Guru with Converseon has a variety of PR-related social media projects. My favorites: PR Blogs (a massive 600+ feed list of the PR blogs being published), The New PR Wiki (a collective knowledge base and collaboration tool) and his Google Co-Op project (a Google search that searches PR-related blogs, sites and wikis). When you find a great blog like Communication... Continue Reading
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