PR + Social Media - Carri Bugbee at Engage Conference 2019

Public Relations
+
Social Media
Five Things
To Know
Right Now
@CarriBugbee PR + Social Media Marketing #EngagePDX 03.07.19

1. CRISIS PLANNING ISN’T OPTIONAL

Social media crises can damage your brand
#MeNeither

Plan for it!
• Anticipate types of crises you might face
• Prepare sites & assets
• Social media policies already posted
• Dark sites & boilerplate content created
• Prepare executives & personnel
• Approval processes & triage protocol
• Back-up personnel for social media & PR people
• Platform training & passwords—include execs!
• Plan for access outside of HQ (VPN, firewall, physical building)
• Know your biggest social supporters (Twitter lists, email, targeted fans)
• Build a brand narrative via search results in advance (ideal for SEO pros)
• Cultivate media relationships in advance so you can reach out fast
• Dive in deeper with this smart crisis planning guide from CoSchedule

2. WE’VE ARRIVED: PEAK INFLUENCER ERA

Everyone’s an
influencer now

Influencers offer authentic vibes & good value
PR News/Meltwater Survey (3/5/19):
• Top reasons PR pros use influencers:
• 40% say they have an “authentic voice”
• 38% say they offer “third-party” credibility
• 80% say influencers important to their success
• 70% said use of influencers yielded positive or
break-even ROI (only break even?!)
• 95% said spending plans for influencers will rise
(43%) or remain steady (52%) in the year ahead

Many are already fed up with influencers

Top issue: influencer fraud
Fake followers, interactions, even fake clients!

Other influencer issues
• Violations of FTC guidelines—influencers
screw up, but you’re still responsible
• Lack of follow-through & accountability
• Backlash from spurned influencers
• Some try to steal clients (faux marketers)
• Quantity of followers often doesn’t correlate
to influence
• Widely varied creative executions (may
require lots of hand-holding & monitoring)
• Managing influencer campaigns can be
extremely time consuming

Best practices for influencer marketing
• Find actual industry experts, ideally those who already like/use your brand
• Cultivate influencers organically—with care & feeding over time
• Engage in consistent outreach, RTs, shares, blog comments, etc.
• Create “insider” opportunities for influencers with your brand
• Request content contributions (UGC) from influencers
• Participate in related topical online communities
• Contribute to influencer blogs (editorial or ads)
• Don’t be fooled by large follower numbers
• Vet influencers rigorously—research their histories (several years back)
• Know the difference between influencer marketing & influencer advertising
• Bake in accountability—contracts are a must
• Figure out how to measure success in advance (can be a challenge)
• Know FTC guidelines & learn what FTC has said to Instagram influencers

Consider monikers with less baggage
• Brand ambassadors
• Thought leaders
• Advocates
• Super-users
• Trend spotters
• Gurus
• Fashionistas
• Mavens
• Experts
• Bloggers
• Evangelists
• Creators
• Makers
• Curators
• Instigators
• Mentors

3. MORE WAYS TO REACH JOURNALISTS! 😊
MORE WAYS TO ANNOY THEM. 😠

2017
A majority of journalist say Twitter is
their most valuable network

Find out how journalists in your category use
social media for news gathering/dissemination
2017 Muck Rack Survey of journos:
• 70% say Twitter is their most valuable social network
• 86% like it when PR pros follow them
• 78% don’t like pitches with emojis
• 22% cite lack of personalization for rejecting pitches
• 72% wish PR pros would stop calling them to pitch
2018 Muck Rack Survey of journos:
• Over 41% consider shareability when choosing story topics
• 63% track how many times their stories are shared (USA)
• 53% view relationship between PR and journalists as
"mutually beneficial” (almost half do not!)

Twitter can be a great tool to
find & connect with journalists
• Find & follow journalists on Twitter—put them on lists, RT & fave
frequently (don’t wait until you need to pitch a story)
• Focus on developing name familiarity (don’t have high
expectations out of the gate)
• Your bio should indicate you’re a pro—no fluff or snark
• Look at who reporters tweet, follow and put on lists
• Use Twitter search to find PR opportunities; try #JournoRequest,
#PRrequest and other industry category hashtags
• Read stories by the journalists/media you want to pitch

You can even pitch journalists on Twitter
• Pitch via DMs (not public tweets), but be judicious
• Keep it short and personalized; know (and maybe
reference) what a journo writes about
• Don’t contact journalists on a breaking news day
• No attachments—link to an online press room for press
releases, backgrounders, fact sheets, photos, etc.
• Don’t be transactional or presumptuous—journalsts
serve readers, not PR people
• Email is still the top choice of most—your subject line
will likely determine whether your pitch is ever opened
• Go easy on the phone calls

Journalists have individual preferences
They may not be clear, but try to suss them out
“Almost every journalist preferred to be pitched via anything other than the
phone…Twitter was the most popular method, as @gastrognome (Naomi
Tomky) joked.” — Businesswire event
Mixed
Messages

4. SO MANY MARTECH TOOLS!
Yikes! 6,829
MarTech tools
on the list.
Get the graphic &
Excel file from
ChiefMartec.

Dozens of digital PR & influencer tools (148)

Even more social media tools (1,325)

Categories of digital PR tools to explore
• Press databases (lists of journalists, media & contact info)
• Social CRM (use to create your own database of journalists)
• Press release distribution (aka wire services)
• Journalist query services (such as HARO & ProfNet)
• Influencer identification, networks, databases, & management
• News monitoring & clip services
• Social media measurement & analytics
• Online press (news) rooms
• Hosted on your website
• Hosted on a third-party site
• Hybrid tools (combination of the above)
• #PRStack list of tools (h/t @Wadds): http://bit.ly/PRstacktools

5. DIMINISHING TRUST IN MEDIA &
MARKETING HURTS ALL OF US

Social media can obscure fact from fiction
• More than 90% of PR execs believe the
distribution of #FakeNews & purposeful
distortion of truth are the biggest ethical
threats we face
• 64% of PR pros think that in 5 years the
average person won’t be able to
distinguish if information comes from
paid, earned, shared or owned sources
• Get the 2019 Relevance Report from the
USC Annenberg School for
Communication & Journalism

It may get worse before it gets better 😟
"When something generates this much conversation,
media coverage, and responses from people in
positions of authority…brands have to sit up and take
it seriously.”
- Jeff Beringer, global head of digital at Golin
”Years ago, trust in brands started eroding, but now
it’s the actual platforms their messages live on that
aren’t trusted...It’s two levels of distrust that brands
have to grapple with when they’re on social media.”
- Victor Pineiro, SVP at Big Spaceship

Ignoring (or contributing to) distrust
is bad for our industry & careers

Encourage & follow a code of ethics
• Follow FTC Guidelines
o Track social posts by internal team members
& marketing vendors
o Track influencers
• Offer transparency about customer data usage
• Respect copyrights & trademarks
• Competitors—have a policy about when/how to
reference them
• Tone—be careful with snark
• Slander—not everyone knows where the line is
• See Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)
code of ethics.

Do what you can to stop fraud & fakery
This is largely (though not entirely) our problem to fix

ABOUT CARRI BUGBEE
• PR pro, marketing/communications and content strategist,
writer, Agile marketing advocate
• Former adjunct professor of Social Media Marketing at
Portland State University,
• Instructor at Miami Ad School
• Contributing author: “The Big Book of Social Media Case
Studies, Stories, Perspectives”
• Co-founder of Agile Marketing Portland meetup
• Bio and links to social profiles: About.me/CarriBugbee
• Contact: LinkedIn.com/CarriBugbee
• Links about social media for marketers at: bit.ly/smmtrain
(including many related to this presentation)
@CarriBugbee

PR + Social Media - Carri Bugbee at Engage Conference 2019

PR + Social Media - Carri Bugbee at Engage Conference 2019

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