Newsjacking & Social Media Updated

What is newsjacking?



Newsjacking is inserting yourself or your organisation into a story that is being covered in the media. You do this by commenting prominently on the story online or by providing a link to a relevant post on your blog or web site.

Examples of this include a marketing expert suggesting a marketing plan for Occupy Wall Street, a software company president talking about a major industry takeover and inserting his own company into subsequent media stories because of the relevance of his comments and the London Fire Brigade offering Kate Winslett training after she was involved in a fire on Richard Branson's private retreat in the British Virgin Islands.

The purpose of newsjacking is to get people to click on your link, to get traffic to your site and gain visibility.

And it works.

The rules of newsjacking are that you have to insert yourself quickly into the story, coming late means the story had played out, that you have to have something relevant to say, and that you post or web site supports what you say.

The PR industry is changing. No longer is it good enough to simply push out press releases to friendly journalists and hope they will cover your story. Now you have to find a real link between something happening in the media or in the world and whatever you are promoting.

Social media is the glue that binds all this together. It's where you contact journalists covering the story and refer them to your blog post and where you inform people that you have a post and a real connection to the media article.

My highest spike in blog viewers came when I made a relevant post on the UK Guardian book page and on the New York Times in one day. That day I got over 500 views. My comment was one of the first on that page, I had something relevant to say and the comment had a link in it to my blog.

Old fashioned PR isn't entirely dead, but it's changing fast.

To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Supercharging social media with storytelling techniques: #1 Conflict

Since time immemorial we have gathered by the camp fire to listen to tales of monsters, fair maidens and battles long ago.

An interest in such stories seems hard wired into our genes.

The challenge for social media strategists is how to use such genetic hard wiring to increase the audience for any given post and build its emotional resonance. I will use post to describe anything from a short Tweet to a longer blog post.

One of the first things to consider is conflict. Conflict doesn't simply mean having a bad guy and a good guy, an antagonist and a protagonist, it's also about taking on the "machine".

If you can frame your brand, your organisation or your output as a struggle between good and evil, then you can build the emotional involvement that will inspire people to retweet, mention or pass on your post.

You will have reframed your post using one of the oldest story-telling techniques.

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or The Manhattan Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

The 7 Pillars of Social Media Audit

If you are in a medium or large organisation it is likely that some divisions or individuals in the organisation are already engaging on social media. 

In order to integrate, coordinate and effectively manage social media the first step you will need to undertake is an audit of the current use of social media in every part of your organisation.

Below are the principles of a "7 pillars of social media" audit, which you will need to report on to senior management to ensure that you have a good understanding of where you are now in social media, and to allow you to develop a social media plan.

The key process in a 7 pillars audit is a staff questionnaire and interview process to establish:

1. All current SM identities and stats (followers/posts per day/engagement/content plan etc).

2. All planned and possible SM opportunities.

3. Existing or planned governance document.

4. SM engagement analysis by seniority/position (who/what/when).

5. SM monitoring (sentiment/mentions) current & planned.

6. Software Tools in use and planned.

7. "Best competitor" analysis of optimal SM usage. 

A 7 pillars social media audit can be undertaken every six months to allow you to update your social media plan on a rolling basis to include changes in all aspects of the 7 pillars. If you want further detail on each pillar and assistance on carrying out an effective social media audit please contact the author on lob@yourasms.com

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Social Media is Dynamite for Sales

I worked in sales and sales management in the UK & Ireland for 25 years.

Social media, in my opinion, provides an unprecedented opportunity for people involved in sales to understand what is going on in prospect and client organisations. A new era of corporate openness and the widespread use of social media for customer service and stakeholder communications means that sales people, account managers of all types from national to global, have access to previously hidden data.

I have created a slideshow here: http://www.slideshare.net/SocialMediaisDynamite/social-media-is-dynamite4-sales

This describes in 7 slides the ways a major account manager/sales person can use social media to research prospects, identify problems within those accounts, listen to what is going on and to create material to propose solutions.

This ILC model (Identify - Listen - Create) can be used by all account mangers to help them sell more. It is also a model for a service to research prospects, clients and even competitors. Get in touch if you want more details.

The Five Free Tools of Social Media Success - Updated

Social media helped me get that global publishing contract and it helps me every day to promote my services. Here are the main five tools I use to build, manage and continuously develop my social media presence:

1. A blog. Wordpress and Blogger are both good. This blog uses blogger, a free blog creation service, and my main site uses Wordpress, another free blog creation site. Wordpress has more design themes and Blogger has a simple interface with links to Google. You decide which one you want, but get blogging.

2. Twitter. My main account @LPOBryan has over 50,000 followers. I also have a second account which has 30,000 followers and my daughter Tweets for me from @IsabelleOBryan where she has 20,000 followers. I firmly believe that each Tweet you send should have valuable content, a link to an interesting post, news for writers or a great new picture you have posted on Pinterest. Make each Tweet valuable and you will not lose followers,

3. Bufferapp.com a service which allows you to schedule Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn posts. This is a real time saver. It allows me to surf the news sites, find an article I think will interest people (adventure, interesting history, writing themes are what I like to read & post about) and press a button at the top right of my browser, Chrome, and the item link is auto-posted at whatever time I have set up in buffer. This is an amazing tool. I still use the free version daily.

4. Tweetdeck. is another great free tool. Instead of us having to open Twitter for each account and check messages, follows and @Connects, each account is on screen all the time. Using Tweetdeck I can respond to everyone who mentions my Twitter name in a post, wants to ask me a question or say anything to me. Tweetdeck has transformed the way I manage multiple Twitter accounts. My goal is to reply to everyone within a few hours of them sending me a message. It also allows me to schedule Tweets & retweets for later in the day. I believe Tweets should be spread out through the day.

5. Tweepi, for adding followers every day. I can add 50 followers who might be interested in my books or social media support services in about four minutes with Tweepi. I can also unfollow people who won't follow me back and people who have stopped using Twitter. Tweepi is great for building your follower base. I see it as tapping people on the shoulder and saying "follow me back if you are interested" and then leaving them alone if they are not. I see no reason to read people's Tweets if they won't read mine, so that's why I unfollow most people who don't follow me back. There are some exceptions though. I follow some media people and amazing Tweeters and never unfollow them. And I put them in a Twitter list to make sure I can see their Tweets easily. I love Twitter lists.

These are the main tools I use for building my presence on social media daily. I have no commercial connection with any of them. I love technology, so that makes it easier for me to do all this. Please add the tools you find useful below, so we can all share what works with each other.

Thanks for coming by. To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Social media payback bullshit!

Someone said to me over the weekend, "In business we need proof that there will be a payoff before we invest in anything. We're pragmatic. We don't put money up without having a proven pay back."

What a crock of bullshit!

Most large businesses invest in PR and advertising. They pay to have press releases put out, to get stories in the media and to do BIG TV advertising where even the professionals say 50% of the budget is wasted, but they don't know which 50%! I wonder what the ROI argument is there? Let's do it 'cause it makes us look important?

Why is it that traditional PR, advertising and marketing are all allowed to get away with campaigns that spend money like water, sponsoring at the Olympics is just one area, but if you ask the same marketing managers to spend 10% of their budget on social media, a trackable & growing area, then they look at you as if you had two heads, at least?

Personally, I believe the reason for such shortsightedness is fear. They don't want to be told about the change that is looming. They want to keep doing what they've always done. They're scared. Well you know what that Darwin guy said, it ain't the clever or the strong that survive, it's the individuals who embrace change, dude!

Will we have to wait for a new generation of marketing heads and smart CEO's before social media takes off the way it should? What do you think? Are you scared too? Does this picture resonate? 

 

At last, the 3 Keys to Higher Click Thru Rates

Mastering Language.

Getting more clicks is all about mastering language. If your goal is to get people to click on something you must think about each word and what it does, and you must also think about the structure of what you are saying.

Here are my three rules for getting your click rate up:

1. The Promise. Offer something of value, aimed at your target market. And make it easily understood value. Visitors want to know there will be something in it for them when the click. Make it easy for them. Make people want to click through.

2. Tell a story. Here's a story in six words;  "Baby shoes for sale. Never used." Respect the reader's intelligence. Keep it short and sweet. Stories can inspire and entertain. They can also get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise have done.

3. 5W&1H. Use who, what, when, where, why and how as ways to think about what you are asking people to do. Consider telling us who else likes what you are selling, what they are doing with it, when it will be most useful, where it is made, why it is useful and how to make it work. Then think of your own 5W&1H formula.

These are three ways to sharpen your use of language. You can use them in titles, in videos, in audio and in text.

What do you think of these three techniques for mastering language? Have I missed something? Let us all know in the comments below.

And here is one final thought; what would you do if you woke to find your partner missing? To find out what one person faced when this happened, click here.