I’m a regular train traveler on the East Coast mainline and most of the time it’s a great service. Tonight is one of those rare occasions when my two hour train journey is running late – about 70 minutes as I write this post, with probably another 50 to go. My complaint isn’t about the delay, as I understand that is outside the control of East Coast. My complaint is about the distinct lack of information.

Good customer service isn’t about always providing a brilliant service as sometimes that is outside your control, keeping us informed isn’t. East Coast could have made passengers in my coach a lot happier with just a few more announcements:

You don’t wait until you reach the delay to warn people, especially when so close to next station that people will already have set off to pick passengers up from the station
If you announce a 60 minute delay you don’t wait over an hour and a quarter to make the next announcement
If passengers are entitled to compensation you tell them straight away then repeat it and don’t just tell them to go to website, but give out forms on the train or platform

None of these things would cost money, but all would have made for happier passengers. The delay wasn’t East Coast’s fault, the lack of communication was.

Speaking on the PR and social media panel at the SAScon SEO, Analytics and Social Media conference yesterday prompted me to finish a draft blog post that I’ve been cogitating on since February looking at how social media and the internet has changed the way we do traditional media relations. My good friend and and ex-colleague Mark Hanson called it modernised media relations. I’m still not convinced about the name, but I am about the ideas all of which I’ve used successfully so here are some of the tips.

Some of these tips I talked about yesterday, but others are new as time didn’t allow me to cover everything.

Think online first

1) Know how newsrooms work today and don’t ignore online editors

Too often corporate communications and PR professionals think primarily about print and broadcast media, downplaying the importance of the online properties of mainstream media. Former Sky News journalist Ruth Barnett said that one of the most annoying things about PRs is that they don’t understand online and appreciate that a story that didn’t deserve “20 seconds of live coverage” might benefit massively from online coverage that would “exist on Google forever”.

Many publishers expect journalists to produce content for the paper and additional content for the website. Coupled with reducing headcounts this puts considerable extra pressure on them, where you can help. Another difference is deadlines. This now means different things at different media. Some still prioritise the print edition, others break news online first, most adopt a mixed approach.

2) Think beyond mainstream media

Blogs are the most obvious media to look at if you want to go beyond mainstream media. In fact many ‘blogs’ have become so big that they challenge and dwarf mainstream media. Blogs like Engadget and Huffington Post are now proper publishers with paid journalists and huge advertising revenues. Beyond this there is still a huge range of blogs still published by ‘amateurs’ in their spare time, many of which can be highly influential and are watched by mainstream media journalists looking for stories and sources.

Another more frequently neglected area is online forums. It was good at SAScon to hear MoneySupermarket’s Ben McKay cite the importance of the Martin Lewis Moneysavingexpert forums, he could equally have cited MoneySupermarket’s own forums which are highly influential in personal finance.

Search analytics and SEO

3) Use search analytics to create your target media list

One of the main tasks for junior public relations people is to compile a target media list. The traditional way of doing this is to use one of the many commercial media databases to find media outlets and journalists that cover your particular topic. Today that list is also likely to include some blogs. You’ll consider factors such as circulation, readership, ABC profiles of the readers etc in order to help identify the most important targets.

However, there is an alternative approach. Most internet sessions start with using search and many mainstream media websites rely largely on people arriving there by using a search engine. You can therefore start to select your media targets by finding out where people will arrive if they search for that topic. That’s where you want to be.

4) Use search data to pitch your content

So if many mainstream media websites rely on search to generate traffic then it’s logical that they would perhaps welcome content that helps generate search traffic. Ways you can use this include looking for content gaps where people are searching for particular keywords or phrases, but not finding what they are looking for. Another is to look at search trends to see what is increasing. Armed with this data you can then pitch mainstream media to say look here is the evidence people want this information and we can help to provide it.

5) Optimise your content for search

When you create content you should no longer just think how you can pitch it to media and get them to cover it – your ‘earned’ media. You should also be prioritising how you use it on your ‘owned’ media and optimise it for search. The more specialist you make your content the more successful this approach can be. You can then ‘pull’ people in to your content, rather than aggressively ‘pushing’ it out to them. Journalists use search to find information and identify sources. You’ll also be making your content directly accessible to your end target audience and stakeholders without relying totally on the third party filter of the media.

SEO specialists will also tell you that you’ve got to get in-bound links to your website. However, that’s easy said than done. Many of the sites that you’ll be prioritising because of their real world influence, such as the BBC, are the ones least likely to provide you with a link. Being persuasive or creative won’t work when they have strict rules governing the use of links to external sites.

Relationships and pitching

6) Social networks complement the pub

An oft-mistaken view of public relations is that it’s all about your contact book and drinks down the pub. Today social networks open up a whole new realm of possibilities. LinkedIn, Facebook and above all Twitter enable you to network with a much larger group of contacts. You can figure a lot about what a journalist is interested in and even what stories they might be working on simply by following them. Interaction becomes easier than ever and you build up a store of goodwill by retweeting their stories and tipping them off about useful stories or contacts that aren’t necessarily of any direct benefit to you or your clients.

And many media outlets make it easy to identify journalists by either publishing a directory on their websites like the New York Times does or with public Twitter lists such as the English list of Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

Content

7) It’s multimedia content, stupid

At it’s most basic modern media relations is about understanding the changing content needs of publishers. When I started out in public relations you’d hear stories about the dumb PR who’d post photographs to a radio news show. Today that isn’t so daft as websites mean that ‘newspapers’ want audio and video content, while radio stations need photos!

So you need to constantly be thinking about what content you can provide that adds value to readers and makes the journalist’s job easier. This might be video, behind the scenes photos, infographics, podcasts or whatever you can think of. Some publishers will want you to provide content directly, others simply to offer the right type of content and make it easy for them to get it themselves.

8 Securing coverage isn’t the end of the story

Once you’ve secured a great piece of coverage on a mainstream media website or blog there is still a lot more you can do with it. As well as tweeting out the link – and remembering to @credit the journalist that wrote it – you can also maximise the value of the coverage by writing about it on company blogs, ‘liking’ it on Facebook and Google+, bookmarking it on news aggregation and bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. You can use Delicious to maintain a list of media coverage on your corporate website or online newsroom, although if you’re in the UK you need to consider the copyright of headlines following the legal action by Meltwater and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) against the NLA.

If the story has attracted reasonable attention and conversation you can then use social curation tools like Storify and Scoop.it to add further value to the coverage. That creates even more good content, without a great deal of work on your part.

Engagement

9) Offer media more reader engagement

As ‘news’ has become increasingly commoditised and readers expect to find it for free it is becoming harder and harder for mainstream media to compete and differentiate themselves. One way they can do this is by engaging with readers and developing a stronger relationship with them. Public relations can help by providing exclusive interactive content such as live webchats, which can just be simple text or even video webcasts. Instead of just a journalist interviewing the chief financial officer about the multinational’s quarterly results you can offer the CFO up to answer questions directly from readers.

Become a publisher

10) EC=MC Every Company is a Media Company

Former FT journalist Tom Foremski coined the term EC=MC for Every Company is a Media Companyand this is one of the most powerful weapons in your public relations armoury. Creating a good social media newsroom or corporate blog enables you to directly reach journalists, influencers, customers and other stakeholders. Just some of the benefits include the fact that if done properly they help SEO; you can publish content that might not be of interest to mainstream media but is of interest to some stakeholders; reduce the number of ‘mundane’ calls to the press office by making it really easy to find relevant facts; by providing genuinely useful facts and information you can actually generate positive coverage and get journalists contacting you, rather than you pitching them.

This top 10 tips about how social media and SEO can improve your media relations could just as easily been a top 100 tip list so if you’ve got any more to share then feel free to do so in the comments and I might do an update post to highlight some of the best ones.

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• Speaking at SAScon | Search – Analytics – Social Media conference (stuartbruce.biz)
• Good crisis communications – 99p Stores CEO turns tables on BBC Watchdog (stuartbruce.biz)
• Social media crisis comms – outflanking the Sunday Times (stuartbruce.biz)

To mark the first two years of the UK’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government the bright folks at Insight Public Affairs have put together a great mind map infographic of the policy issues. Insight has mapped out the:

“headline policy drivers spanning: the economy; public service reform; localism; welfare reform; and, the international agenda.”

The mind map is a useful tool not just for public affairs and corporate communications professionals, but anyone who is interested in UK politics.

You can also download a PDF or contact John Lehal at Insight for an A2 poster.

Online political monitoring company Yatterbox has created an infographic of reaction by MPs to the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday.

Browse more data visualizations.

 

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I try not to watch BBC Watchdog as it tends to annoy me with its fake concern for consumers, when it’s just making cheap ‘shock’ TV. But I’m glad I caught last Thursday’s as it contained a brilliant performance by Hussein Lalani, the entrepreneurial CEO of a family owned retail business. The 99p Stores is a fast growing value retail chain and for some bizarre reason Watchdog decided to make it the victim of one of its usual hatchet jobs.

The allegation was that 99p Stores was ripping off consumers by using misleading price claim signs such as ‘Amazing Value’, ‘Mega Deals’, ‘We will not be beaten on price’ and ‘Unbeatable Value’. On some products it also has price comparison labels on the shelves.

Watchdog’s complaint was that a lot of these labels were wrong, which does on the face of it seem rather outrageous. However, Watchdog’s own research found that most of the time 99p Stores was still actually cheaper than the comparison. Not so outrageous, in fact it makes me rather want to go to a 99p store and spend my pennies.

Watchdog’s chief attack dog is veteran TV presenter Anne Robinson, who has a reputation of being particularly aggressive, so it’s a brave business person who agrees to be humiliated by her. It is why companies so frequently resort to the tactic of simply sending a statement that can be read out.

That’s why I was surprised that the 99p Stores CEO agreed to the studio interview. However, once it started you could see why. He was brilliant and for once you saw an unfairly maligned business turning the tables on Watchdog.

The moment when Hussein Lalani apologises and says the misleading signs will be removed and then whips the new replacement poster out of his pocket is genius. The new poster makes the simple factual claim that “According to BBC Watchdog research 82.5% of the time we do beat the leading supermarkets.” Anne Robinson continued to flounder for the rest of the interview as Hussein kept responding politely making her appear to be rude, petty and unreasonable.

Watch the whole report for context or jump to 5m 36s for the interview. It’s an excellent crisis communications case study and one that I’ll be using in my online PR crisis communications training in future.

After the interview Hussein also did a great job of using social media to engage with both supporters and critics on Twitter and YouTube.

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New research reveals that many FT Global 500 companies are still failing to manage their digital strategies effectively.

The sixth annual FT Bowen Craggs Index shows that an alarming number of companies still don’t understand that the corporate website is now one of the most effective communications channels that a company owns.

The research also looks at how these companies use social media channels and apps. While it found lots of activity, much of appeared as if

“companies have simply grabbed the latest things – whether they are iPad apps or Google + pages – without considering how they will work alongside the website, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and the rest.”

Bowen Craggs & Co concludes that one of the biggest problems is a lack of senior management engagement.

“The companies at the top of the Index are those where the bosses understand how important online communication is, and have diverted (relatively trivial) resources towards them coherently. Too many of the others have jumped on the latest bandwagons, but failed to manage them strategically. That should be a real concern not just for the comms team, but for the Board.”

The top 10 from the 2012 Corporate Web Effectiveness Index are:

1 Royal Dutch Shell, UK/Netherlands
2 BP, UK
3 Eni, Italy
4 Siemens, Germany
5 Roche, Switzerland
6 Unilever, UK/Netherlands
7 British American Tobacco, UK
8 Novartis, Switzerland
9 BASF, Germany
10 IBM, USA

It’s notable that only one US company (IBM) makes the top 10 and that all of the others are European, despite the large number of FT Global 500 companies from elsewhere in the world.

Last year I led an international research project working with the United Nations to publish The Global Social Media and CSR Report 2011- the world’s first global research into how the same FT Global 500 companies use social media to support their corporate social responsibility strategies. The results were not too dissimilar with a disappointing low level and quality of activity.

The FT Bowen Craggs Index is a very useful and interesting piece of research, although it might have been better if they’d made it easier to share the story. The Bowen Craggs & Co website is a social web free zone with absolutely nothing to help you report or share the story and send readers to its website. The research isn’t on any document sharing website, there is no infographic or even crude ‘share’ or ‘bookmark’ buttons. The report rightly criticises companies for jumping on the latest bandwagons by randomly adding Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc to sites without any apparent strategy. But its own strategy appears to be do nothing, which equally certainly isn’t right!

UPDATE: Disclaimer – Unilever is a former client where I worked with the global corporate communications team on international social media.

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Today marketing automation software provider Eloqua released a UK edition of its ‘Blog Tree’ infographic of the most influential blogs in PR, social, SEO, marketing, tech, start-up and design. And this little, old blog of mine is right there near the top of the tree as one of the top three PR blogs and one of the top blogs overall. You can see the The Blog Tree: UK Edition below or download the PDF for a clickable version.

The Eloqua Experience Europe conference in May looks like it could be good as the keynote speaker is David Meerman Scott, author of Real Time Marketing & PR, the New Rules of Marketing & PR and most recently Newsjacking.

UPDATE

The news release announcing the release of the Blog Tree: UK Edition and blog post.

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Such an evocative song and even more amazing when you consider Ewan MacColl was just 17 when he wrote it for the mass trespass of Kinder Scout on April 24, 1932 – 80 years ago today.

My four year old daughter loves singing it.

I’m delighted to be once again one of the speakers at the excellent SAScon Search – Analytics – Social Media conference. I’m going to be talking about “Social Commerce – Show Me the Money”.

It promises some great content with lots to learn and some excellent networking opportunities.

One of the keynote speakers is Bruce Daisley, UK sales director of Twitter and other speakers include:

Dom Burch, Head of Corporate Comms & Social Media, ASDA @dom_asdapr LinkedIn

Kristal Ireland, Head of Digital at Propaganda Agency @kristalsmile LinkedIn

Steve Kuncewicz, Head of Legal, BooHoo LinkedIn @stevekuncewicz

Simon Wharton, MD, PushON and Founder SAScon @psychobel LinkedIn

Ben McKay, Head of SEO at Moneysupermarket.com @yetanotherben LinkedIn

Martin Bryant, Managing editor, The Next Web @MartinSFP LinkedIn

Andy Betts, Digital & Marketing Strategist @andybetts1 LinkedIn

I’ve just highlighted those that I know personally or have heard speak before, so some of the other speakers might be good as well

If like me you missed this week’s CIPRTV on the UK Cabinet Office’s proposals to introduce a Statutory Register of Lobbyists then it’s well worth catching up with it here:

It’s presented by Russell Goldsmith of Marketiersdc and guests are Iain Anderson, of Cicero Consulting and Tamasin Cave, director of Spinwatch and leader of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency.