All Ears
8/5/2010
By Lisa M. Larranaga
Online talk isn’t cheap. More and more people are building an online presence to share opinions on brands, events and life. The rapid explosion of online tools and platforms and the constantly evolving scene make for a fast-paced lifestyle. What can users do to find an online identity, and is it just a passing trend?
“One thing is for sure, staying the course long enough to justify resource investment has gotten much harder than it was even a few short years ago,” says Valeria Maltoni, a brand strategist and blogger at Conversation Agent. “Many new tools are coming out it seems daily, and the reality is that it continues to be a challenge to justify allocating proper resources to social media.”
People talk and expect others to listen because, after all, an online conversation can influence perceptions of a market or brand.
“There is lots of buzz happening as we speak … and [PR professionals] have to stay tuned to it and show they care about their brands and spaces,” says Bob Geller, president of Fusion Social Fluency and blogger at Flack’s Revenge. “If they don’t listen online where a lot of the actions and conversations are happening, I don’t think it’s a shrewd business move.”
The numbers show more and more people are spending time online, notes Geller, and companies should be listening to the marketplace to see what’s being said about clients, their brands and the markets they serve.
“The immediate opportunity is people are sharing their thoughts online in growing numbers and for us, it’s a tremendous opportunity,” Geller said. “For once, people are thinking out loud and expressing their opinions out loud. And for those that listen and take action on the information and use it to get smarter, then it’s a tremendous advantage.”
Maltoni says the way individuals and organizations engage favors digital media. The ease of new tools is attractive and social networks allow the human side of business to be seen.
“Earning attention with your customers and prospective customers, engaging the peer-to-peer network effects and forging those relationships directly can deliver the value that gets results when you know what you’re looking to do.”
To bridge the gap between technology adoption challenges and online success, Geller thinks PR professionals should look to education.
“I think it’s great to look at cutting edge technology and what’s coming next, but let’s face it, a lot of people haven’t mastered what’s out there now,” he said. “I think we have to continue to educate ourselves on the tools out there to use them to our advantage and our clients’ advantage.”
Many organizations now have corporate online accounts, as well as individual employees who share insights online. Maltoni says using social media as a company-wide initiative is a wise move.
“Companies that apply social across the whole organization are benefiting from a more engaged and energized employee base. That carries over in the customer experience.”
Expectations are high in the digital world and many users anticipate how they’ll benefit and be rewarded for the time they dedicate to an online presence. PR professionals should be ready to respond.
“Even without developing a community or starting accounts in social networks, customers expect that someone is listening,” Maltoni says. “They expect that someone respond, especially when you’re active in social media. And when the response time lags, they question all of their previous interactions with the system, be it a brand community or a social feed.”
She continues, “A crisis in social media can escalate quickly without the proper communications plan in place. Are PR professionals ready to address planning and response for crisis in social networks? Are they ready to help companies help themselves? Are PR professionals and media outlets dipping their toes in social media, or are they hard at work at figuring out how the tools need to evolve to meet the needs of their clients and their customers? Depending on where your answer fits along this spectrum, you will know what you need to do to prepare for what’s next.”
As for the future, Maltoni thinks push technology – where information is pushed instead of waiting for it to be requested – will be replaced by pull technology, where information is requested from a source. She says this will lead to many changes, including how data is dealt with, the growth of networks, opt-in e-mail and dealing with bandwidth.
“Will push go away? Not any time soon,” she says. “And we may actually benefit from the serendipitous nature of something not being part of what we already know and do coming our way. What’s next is actual execution. I know it’s fashionable to constantly look to the new – I feel we barely scratched the surface on many of these things because they’re not old until they’re done.”
For Geller, the future involves better ways to organize information and search online.
“Better search tools and the ability to classify and categorize information and do this as close to real-time as possible, that is something I think is needed,” he says. “Organize information by topic, by sentiment … and the ability to take information from various sources and make sense of it and organize and report on it for internal planning or publishing, I think that’s another area that has potential for growth.”
After all, it’s all about experimenting and staying educated in the current climate.
“It requires all people of the PR profession and by extension, their clients, to continue to be smart and stay ahead of the curve, which is constantly changing,” he said. “That changes the rules a little bit and opens opportunities. We constantly have to stay on top of the game and stay ahead of the curve, place our bets in what we think is coming next and experiment to see what’s effective. … It’s an interesting time.”
Making the Pitch
Geller says Flack’s Revenge is more of an analysis and opinion blog than a news blog, so PR professionals shouldn’t be too eager for him to cover product news.
“From time-to-time I will cover those things but people shouldn’t expect it,” he says.
He is interested in books on social media, as he wants to continue learning about the topic and keep his readers informed.
Maltoni isn’t looking for press releases, saying stories catch her eye on their own merits.
“The best way to have a relationship is to work on having one,” she says. “I’m the editor and writer at my blog. I’m not sitting there waiting for pitches to propose conversations. PR professionals should know that already.”
And if you do have a client you know she will be interested in talking to, be sure to answer her queries after you contact her.
“On occasion, a PR professional has pitched me a client based upon something I had written, to then not follow up when I responded I was interested. Then we wonder why the profession is suffering from an image problem.”
In short, don’t pitch Maltoni but instead listen to what she has to say.
“The best way to get my attention is actually doing something interesting, like listening, offering insights, helping my community out,” she says. “Send good research my way, it doesn’t have to be done or sponsored by you. Sending out a boilerplate press release saying you ‘thought my community would be interested’ in whatever you’ve got this week doesn’t mean helping my community.”
Geller occasionally highlights successful pitches he receives but also receives ones that don’t hit the target.
“I wish I could come up with something more original but it’s what a lot of other people talk about: Getting irrelevant pitches or getting spammed with multiple pitches from the same person after you’ve already replied that you’re not interested or it’s not topical,” he says. “You would think at this point people would be a little smarter about that. I guess there are still some bad habits in the industry that, over time, will go away.”
Contact Information
Conversation Agent
http://twitter.com/ConversationAge
Valeria Maltoni, editor
Flack’s Revenge
Bob Geller, blogger
http://twitter.com/rgeller