PR 2.0: The New Frontier

When the Internet arrived on the scene, the world of marketing changed – and changed fast. With the advent of Web 2.0, the marketing world began using new strategies that we did not think about five years ago. Now, PR must adjust to keep pace with the changes in marketing. This is creating buzz about PR 2.0. The new wave of PR involves integrating traditional tactics with the power of the web and what the web brings to the table.

With the expansion of the social media frontier and the speed at which things are changing how we communicate and receive information, questions arise over how all of this impacts the way we work with the media and share information intended to hit the press.

Media Kits and the Online Equivalent
We used to compile folders loaded with press releases, glossy photographs and biographies. Don’t be misunderstood, distributing a well-organized folder with pertinent information is still effective in some cases, like at trade shows or when editors find it quicker and more efficient to peruse information offline. However, directing a reporter to your website that contains your press materials is very efficient, too. And it’s much more cost effective. Here are some tips for managing your media kit/online newsroom:
  • Make sure your online media kit/newsroom is easy to find: Include a tab or link on your homepage.
  • Keep your newsroom current: Post everything that you would normally include in a media kit. Also, take advantage of the Internet’s ability to play back video and/or audio clips of speeches.
  • Adopt an RSS feed to communicate updated information: This allows reporters to receive immediate updates as your newsroom is made current.
  • Hire a web designer that follows best practices in terms of clean design and content accessibility as identified by W3C.
Blogging
Blogging has caught the attention of the PR world and, when used properly, can be a great resource. But it can be dangerous if mismanaged or misused, so be careful to blog responsibly.

Here are some tips to make blogs work for you:
  • Put a blog on your website or use an existing template, such as blogger.com, blog.com or blogstream.com.
  • Make sure that whoever manages the blog is truly knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter and is willing to dedicate the time.
  • The very nature of blogging allows you to position yourself in front of the media as an expert on a particular subject. Remember that you are quotable once your materials hit cyberspace.
Further Online Interaction
The use of webinars and podcasts for PR is relatively new:

Using a webinar to promote a product or service is a great way to offer an interactive format for journalists. This can be a great replacement for a press event that requires attendance. You may want to consider moving to this format to introduce products or to announce milestones.

Podcasts were originally created to turn website content into audio content that can be downloaded to iPods. With podcasts, people can receive your news through a simple subscription.

Video 2.0
The new generation of video content – narrative marketing – is being placed within web ads and is particularly engaging to consumers. Narrative marketing is essentially PR video. You can purchase exposure for this video content on television, radio and web media. You can also ensure that your message reaches the intended viewers by targeting precise demographic and geographic audiences.

PR video is designed to inform or explain the benefits of a brand or product. Each video typically runs for 30 seconds and provides clips of interviews with fully identified, unpaid endorsers – company employees, consumers or industry authorities. A presenter, who is visible on camera to introduce and close each segment, serves as a narrator and provides the voice-over to advance the story line. In addition, a web address is offered to help viewers or listeners learn more about the source of the content and act on the message.

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Standing Strong During a Downturn

Most businesses are feeling the aches and pains of a struggling economy. Naturally, many company leaders are making internal changes, jumping into survival mode and doing whatever it takes to stay buoyant and move onward and upward through the storm. Following is a list of proven survival strategies used by successful companies:
  1. Take a closer look at your company from the perspective of a consumer. Are you giving consumers what they want and expect? Are you giving them a little extra? Are you keeping them excited about your company and your brand? What are you doing to keep consumers engaged and interested in your business? How are you staying relevant to them? (If you need ideas on how to accomplish these, contact Seroka today.)
  2. Make sure you have the right people on your "bus." One of the many enlightening messages in Jim Collins' book Good to Great is making sure you have the right people in the right seats on your "bus." If everyone isn't "on board" or perfectly aligned with your mission, it may be time to make some necessary internal staffing adjustments. If you hire and retain the best people, a team of 90 to 95 people can often do the work of 100 people.
  3. Keep your people informed. If it's your habit to hire the best people you can find and afford, then you can assume they are smart, intuitive and can sense unease (if there is any within your company). Communicate your plan, motivate your people and treat them as good as, if not better than, your best customers. Your employees are your brand ambassadors, often giving you 200% and remaining loyal to you when times get rough.
  4. Keep your eye on where you want to be in one to three years or more. If you've ever clung to the edge of a cliff, then you’re familiar with the voice in your head that keeps reminding you not to look down at the drop. The same rule applies in business. Yes, you need to make it through the day, week or month, but you must always be looking up at your long-term goals.
  5. Keep your marketing initiatives going. It took time and momentum to establish yourself, build awareness, communicate your relevance, build rapport with your customers, convince people to do business with you and keep your customers engaged. Any slowdown or absence will give your rivals an opportunity to lure customers away from you. (They’re trying to do it anyway.) Keep your messaging strong. Don’t "drop out." Keep reminding customers why they should stay with you, so they keep buying from you and refer their friends.
  6. Price competitively. This doesn't mean you should become a low-price leader. If you offer premium products and/or services, continue charging a premium. But be cognizant of what your closest rivals are charging. In a tough economy, people will still pay premiums as long as they continue to perceive and receive value.
Keep your customers at the top of your mind. Think in terms of your company's greater purpose. Get the right players in the right seats, and, in the words of Jack Welch, "Stay focused."

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Why Widgets Work

Funny Name, Serious Brand Lift
Widgets have been attracting much attention in the Web 2.0 world, which is not surprising when you consider their ability to engage customers and increase brand loyalty. Plus, the vast number of people using widgets is enough to make marketers take a second look. According to comScore, more than 87 million people – nearly half of all Internet users in the U.S. – use widgets. These online applications truly keep customers connected to advertisers. Widgets work by virally spreading your message, attracting visitors to your website and ultimately increasing engagement and loyalty to your brand. Often through audio, video, games and animation, widgets allow active target audiences opportunities to download, display and share your brand’s message. When users upload widgets to their personal websites, advertisers' messages are experienced more frequently, especially considering widgets can be voluntarily posted to other sites by the users' friends.

What’s Out There?
Widgets should include whatever interests your target audience. Widgets that people are using include:
  • Calendars
  • Weather updates
  • Stocks
  • Picture slideshows
  • Rewards point tracking
  • Countdown to movie or television premieres
  • Travel rates
  • Currency converters
  • Playlists of song or video favorites
  • News
  • Search engines
Tips to Make Widgets Work
  • Make the application easy to grab and embed it in users’ blogs, websites or social networking pages.
  • Include an instantly recognizable call to action, inviting users to grab widgets for their own uses.
  • Make widgets available across multiple venues. Embedding widgets directly into ads will result in a higher number of widget downloads than if you only offer them on your website.
  • Have a strategy in place for promoting widgets – viral growth takes good planning and hard work.
  • Provide value and a reason for users to invite their friends to use the application.
  • Keep users interested and create a lasting relationship with them by updating widgets with quality content.
  • Track information such as how many users grab and embed the widgets and how many impressions or views occur with the widgets.
Widgets give advertisers a fresh way to connect with their target audiences and build brand loyalty, plus widgets give advertisers the ability to track the viral behavior generated. Giving your target audience the opportunity to display and share your brand’s content from within their own online venues is a new trend that deserves special attention.

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Innovative Ad Targeting: Behavioral Advertising

Online ad targeting is changing – again. With the current format, websites host ads related to the sites' general content, so all online visitors see the same basic ads. For example, an athletic store's website might host an ad from a partnering company trying to cross sell sporting event tickets, based on the likelihood that site shoppers possess a general interest in sports.

Due to developments in ad targeting and, more specifically, the new wave of behavioral advertising, Internet users are starting to see ads specifically geared toward them when viewing a website at the same time as other users. The targeted ads are generated from data collected about the users’ behavior, based on other sites they visited in the past. Many web surfers might not realize that information about their Internet activity is monitored, and the ads they see are tailored to their interests and online shopping patterns. According to adweek.com, behavioral advertising companies "see a chance to use purchase activity as a more direct indicator of interests, or sophisticated psychographic analysis[,] to find likely targets for brand advertisers."

Adweek.com also reported that companies such as AOL's Tacoda, Revenue Science and Yahoo!’s BlueLithium – pioneers of behavioral advertising technology and owners of the largest behavioral advertising networks – have systems that "gather new forms of data to make digital advertising more personal and comprehensive." Furthermore, companies like NebuAd have reached agreements with Internet service providers to track web users across all their online activities. NebuAd's CEO, Bob Dykes, claimed that his company "cobbled together a data-collection network that covers 'tens of millions' of people." After data has been collected, NebuAd buys ad space on networks and, through exchanges like Yahoo! owned Right Media, finds those people.

A system called aCerno is similar in approach to NebuAd. Used by an increasing number of online retailers, aCerno stores and shares consumer purchasing data. With aCerno, retailers contribute data linked to a customer, and another online retailer can then tap into the database to locate the customer to show a behavior–linked ad.

Behavioral advertising is also creating new companies looking to capitalize on a promising future for ad targeting. Launching in 2008, companies 33 Across and Mindset Media will continue testing behavioral advertising. In fact, Mindset Media hopes to implement personality surveys and modeling techniques to categorize target consumers by 20 personality traits that could link them to marketers.

The goal of these different behavioral systems is the same – create more closely targeted ads to make online advertising more effective. Most companies engaging in behavioral advertising are experiencing success because the ads closely appeal to consumer interests or shopping patterns. Marketers hope that as behavioral advertising grows, it will account for a large percentage of online advertising.

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