The Corporate Blog -
Globally, 91% of corporate bloggers cite internal communications as their primary function, but recent research shows that 67% of journalists use corporate blogs as secondary source material and 58% of investment analysts refer to them for their research. The blog has become an important communications channel for all stakeholder groups so why does the UK trail behind the US and much of corporate Europe in corporate blogging? This session highlights the role blogs can play.
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Social Media in a Corporate Context 2010 - Peter Granat, Cision
1. April 2010 Digital reputation management Why Do “Blogs” Matter? Peter Granat CEO Europe Cision www.cision.com
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10. “ Media companies efforts, coupled with the increase in sharing online, have effectively turned social networks into massive engines of recommendation, responsible for directing an ever greater volume of online traffic”
To discover reputation among stakeholders used to require market research – and lots of assumptions
And analysis of the channels in which reputation is created and conveyed – of which mainstream media was once the dominant channel A common “canon” made measuring – and building – reputation comparatively straightforward
But then came the blogs – starting with jorn barger’s robot wisdom, which “logged the web” – crucially in REVERSE CHRONOLIGICAL ORDER (most recent post on top), which became key defining characteristic of blogs, along with “AUTHOR PROFILE” and “SPACE FOR READER COMMENTS”
But these characteristics now apply to things not really thought of as blogs….
These platforms used together, creating, sharing content online competes with MSM canon for attention (and feeds on MSM). NB Note what KIND of content is being shared – “we are moving toward a world of ‘snackable news… shared like pieces of candy or gum. Unfortunately we run the risk of losing substance and nutritive value” Ray Valdes, Gartner Analyst
These new channels aren’t just delivering their “own” content, but also helping to form content in other channels – see the initial tweets of around the Nov 08 Mumbai bombings, which preceded reports in the Times India, Sindh Daily. Note though that those initial tweets were by no means fully formed “news reports” – initial questions/reactions only – the bulk of SM content is about mainstream content Subsequent tweets refer to MSM content
As this Cornell study shows, this is usually the case – news might “break” by tweets, but coherence is provided by the mainstream media, which the blogs then reflect.
Brandee barker (head of pr at FB) and adam sohn (snr VP sales & marketing at Microsoft) inadvertently “break” news of Microsoft’s $240m investment in FB – from FB status via valleywag blog Reputation management challenge across all these platforms, but…
… journalists recognise blogs as the foremost social media source (Cision GWU) – richer content, more information, alongside the “press releases” the first thing journos will look for on a corporate website
New market research – BIG DATA the above for 3m tweets, 1.2m users, 24 films. By contrast, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which has been the gold standard for opening box-office predictions, had a 96.5% accuracy
Also deliberate crowdsourcing of market research NB most voluble voices in SM aren’t necessarily the most valuable – treat crowdsourcing with caution. Most of Starbucks “crowdsourced” ideas were already on the table
How is having your own blog useful?
Cision’s multinational blogs
Complemented with other channels – but the blog provides a hub Note argument in B2C especially that FB Fan Pages can provide an equally valuable hub with less investment
Using these touchpoints to put users on the sales path – blog connects the web to the corporate presence (click) red line is the sales path you want visitors to take
So conversing via the touchpoints to bring users on to your site – blog is “front door for the social web”, one for which you own all the data (not the case for Twitter, FB, et al) Measurable return through sales
But in order to understand the return – and increase it – you need to understand the social media steps taken to get there Measure activity according to the INFLUENCE of your channels and the channels with which you interact
We are enhancing social media capabilities within our core software, adding metrics and (click) content that provides context
Can we combine all these metrics in a single measure of influence? Not even (yet) for the web, measurement tends to be by platform type at the moment
Not enough analytics? More like too many. Need to treat pipeline sales value at ROI, while media metrics (newspaper circ to twitter followers) are the KPIs that inform the strategy
So for the meerkats campaign, we have KPIs for, say, Twitter, including follower:following ratio, #updates, #RTs…
Which correlate to sales (in this case the marketing itself has become revenue generating, as you can see through this hit app)
Comms tools continue to develop – we’re currently in the midst of a mobile revolution, set to be supplemented by augmented reality such as the superb Phantom City app shown here – layering real-time, real-world experience with virtual information
Some organisations already exploiting this mindset – Nike’s global human race campaign features widgets for all major social networks that allow for real-time sharing of training schedules, routes, performance, etc NB not true augmented reality as isn’t a virtual layer, but the thinking is the same
But it’s all just comms – simple tools playing to timeless human behaviour