Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

Power PR To Speak at Fashion Group International Event

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 by Amy Power

Join us tonight at this month’s Fashion Group International (FGI) networking event. Amy will be moderating a panel discussion on Digital Branding. Kate, our director of client services, will be on the panel with Maxine Trowbridge from Pink Memo and Sabrina Dee from Black Book Ink. We will be talking social media and digital strategy and answering any questions.

To attend the event, register here. And be sure to follow us @PowerPR on Twitter as we live tweet from the event and stay tuned on Facebook for photos. Hope to see you there!

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Posted in Digital Branding, Facebook, Fashion, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Top 3 Social Resolutions for 2013

Monday, January 7th, 2013 by Amy Power

Every year as January rolls around millions of Americans vow to stop something, pick something up or a combination of the two for their New Year’s Resolutions. As we think of goals and themes for our personal lives this year, we are also applying them to work. As social media strategists, we thought of the following “Social Resolutions” community managers could apply to their social strategy.

Be more active

Everyone strives to be healthier and more balanced in the New Year and the same can be true for your social communities. This is a great time to evaluate where you are, how far you have come, and where you are going. What social channels are you underutilizing? Are there new networks you should experiment with? Social media management is constantly evolving with new social features, new tools and tricks, new metrics, etc. Just look at the pending rebirth of Myspace or the recent growth of community sites like Quora or Instagram monitoring tool, Statigram.

Keep track of your progress

As people set their yearly goals, the ones with the highest chance for success will be those that are tracked and measured. How are you doing this with your communities? You should already be measuring ongoing community growth through the number of qualified fans, amount of engagement or an increase in positive sentiment, but be sure you are recording other metrics like when your community is most responsive. Generally, what topics do they like to talk about? What kinds of content do they like to share? And if you are running any kind of contest or app, make sure you have tools in place to measure its success and engagement.

Get organized

Our Dallas PR agency always strives to say organized (see more of the top characteristics of a PR professional in a recent blog post), and your social media communities should be no exception. When you are creating content, developing promotions or handling social media responses, being organized is crucial to executing a successful and stress-free campaign. We develop creative briefs with agreed upon message points, assets, timelines and budgets. We also outline our goals for the campaign, and then create editorial calendars for the content across one (or several) social networks. At the end of a promotion or campaign, we can easily go back through our plans and accurately record results, successes and future opportunities we may have identified.

Do you have any Social Resolutions? What are your community goals for 2013?

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Posted in Facebook, PR Firms, Public Relations, Publicity, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

TWEETING @YOURBRAND….

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 by Amy Power

Two weeks ago, around Memorial Day, the US Army was tweeting about social media and how they are trying to beef up their accounts:

@USArmy tweet “HOOAH! Army is ‘working hard’ to increase their #socialmedia efforts.”

That had us thinking: how do you tweet as a brand?  And how could your brand increase its social media efforts?

After an 18 page research paper was filed away on this topic it boils down to these points:

1. You’re not you when tweeting – you’re @yourbrand

This means no complaining about personal matters. And, not everyone will think your joke is funny so your best bet is not to try to be a comedian.  @yourbrand’s tweets should be relevant to @yourbrand and your followers.

2. Leave the drama for the diva’s!

The old adage is true today- when it doubt, leave it out. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.  If you’re not sure if a tweet is appropriate ask a mentor for a second opinion. And, typically @yourbrand should be positive so leave the negative, ranting tweets at home.

3. Follow your followers

If @yourband wants to know what clients and customers are saying, it is essential to follow your followers.  This promotes discussion.  If a follower tweets at @yourbrand you are aware and can tweet back if appropriate.  Also, who doesn’t like to be followed?  If @yourbrand follows their followers it let’s them know that @yourbrand is interested in what’s happening in their lives.

4. It’s a teeter-totter balancing act

It’s important to balance personality with educational tweets.  This can be tricky.  After following a variety of companies and industry accounts, I found that most lacked this balance.  There were tweets about the traffic on the way to work with overwhelming hashtag usage like #annoyed #wokeuponthewrongsideofthebed.  Or there were companies that only tweeted scholarly articles, and let’s face it; your followers probably want more diverse, fun content.

5. Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be intimidated by twitter.  It may be intimating for first time users, but after a while it will become natural.  @yourbrand has the potential to grow and build positive brand association and affinity if this social media tool is used correctly.

How is @yourbrand tweeting?

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Scheduled Tweets – Bad, Good or Indifferent?

Monday, May 2nd, 2011 by Amy Power

The breaking news of Osama Bin Laden’s death perfectly illustrated why brands should use scheduled tweets carefully.

I first heard the breaking news of Osama Bin Laden’s death via Twitter. Thank you @petershankman and Twitter for always being on top of breaking news.

Over the next hour, while waiting for President Obama to formally address the nation, the Twitter community posted their thoughts, feelings and breaking news tips. As I watched the tweets speed through my iPhone I was taken aback by the intrusive, random, branded “scheduled tweets” which promoted sandwiches, dining specials and miscellaneous thoughts – which on any other given day – would have been completely fine.  However, during this collective moment when the nation – and the world for that matter – were hungry for the latest developments, nothing else mattered.

Which brings me to a simple point:  there will be times when people don’t want what to know what your company is doing. If you do use scheduled tweets you can’t just load them and walk away. Because when significant breaking news happens, you quickly become irrelevant and annoying “noise” to a community seeking pertinent, and in this case, very emotional information. The last thing a brand wants to be is annoying, noisy and inappropriate.

Be mindful of the social media communities you serve and the news that is happening around you.  You can talk about your brand the following day. And, this might be one of the best times to listen. Listen to what your consumers are saying and how they are reacting. This simple act can put your brand above the rest when it comes to understanding and relating to your consumers.

What position do you take on scheduled tweets? I’d like to hear your opinion.

Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Upping the Ante

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 by Amy Power

Ford’s Scott Monty has taken it to a new level, again. And, I’m not just talking about his killer Social Media skills… he is transforming a fundamental PR practice: pitching.

Last week, Ford started pitching influential editors to get them to attend its Global Test Drive event and to invite their readers to participate in a Facebook promotion. How do I know this? No, I am not on their PR team… they made their pitches public. As a matter of fact, they transformed their usual email or print pitch into a script for employees to read on video.

Take a look at one of the invitations:

 A Special Ford Invitation for Michael Graham Richard

The video pitches are innovative and different; marrying both social media and PR for a combined win. Chris Crum and the folks at WebProNews  recently talked with Monty about making marketing channels work together, to which he replied, “There’s fundamentally much greater impact when we start to think about paid, earned, and owned media all working together.” 

“Traditionally, advertising and PR and then social media have kind of stood on their own, and they each do their own function fairly well,” Monty explained. “But when used in conjunction, there’s such a much more powerful momentum and aggregator behind that it absolutely makes a difference for us.”

And the difference will certainly be measured over the next year as PR and social media continue to leverage each other to give brands and promotions more momentum.

What makes this campaign golden

  • The videos demonstrate authenticity, transparency and further build media relationships.
  • The employees that are the closest to the media’s specific topics are the ones delivering the message. Ford is able to leverage personable employees giving the content more credibility and allowing the brand and the media contact to “speak the same language.”
  • Ford is using videos to promote a video campaign for consumers (it seems so simple!), but they are not limiting their promotional activities to YouTube. Instead, one of the biggest social players in this campaign is Facebook and Twitter is an effective tool as well. For those of you wondering how Twitter can be used to build brands … read on.
  • It’s actually working.

While a campaign template like this wouldn’t fly with most brands, it is a brilliant example of the convergence of PR (personal, individualized pitching and relationship building) with innovative social strategy and a creative product/ event promotion.

How will you innovate?

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Posted in Facebook, PR Campaign, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, Video | No Comments »