Corporate Reputation : a cocktail of rational and emotion ?

February 27, 2013 by 1 Comment

The concept of Corporate Reputation is a core element in the strategy of directors that have understood how important its impact on their activity and success is. In few years, it has elvoved from a background idea to a tangible reality that impacts each management and communication decision.

For all that, there are only few definitions of Corporate Reputation that allow understanding the global dimension of this concept.

In this new video of our Web TV “Reputation Management Decision Makers”, Thierry Wellhoff shares with us its vision of the most valued and intangible asset of organizations : reputation is the sedimentation of :

  • Image, the emotional value associated to perception of the brand
  • Opinion, rational dimension based on experiences and facts

Armed with this evidence, how should we support the reputation of our companies?

The answer is in the coherence between all the signals we emit -that determine the perception- and our communication -that determine opinions-. Having in a same media environment the company (through its website, its production of content, social footprint) and the employees, clients, NGOs and other type of stakeholders whose share of voice in the global discussion is proportional to the interest generated by their interventions and publications, can make this balance very difficult to reach.

In practice,  analyzing beforehand the missions and values of the organization, as well as its communication fundments represent a first essential diagnostic to set up a digital strategy. The adjustment of this strategy, its execution on blogs, forums and social networks are as many points I encourage you to discover in this video.

See you soon on “Reputation Management Decision Makers“

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New journalistic practises : a high-tech job ?

December 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

On Dec 10th, and as every year since its creation, SciencesPo’s School of Journalism organised a conference on the new journalistic practises (#npdj12).

Sciences Po's Conference on the new practises of Journalism in 2012

The viability of media companies was central to many of the presentations and it doesn’t take much magic to guess that the Internet is the main catalyst for it. However, some of the suggest development avenues were probably a surprise for many and very intellectually stimulating. I will try to summarise 3 broad areas :

  • Tech: If there’s one point all speakers agree on, it’s the evolution of journalism towards more diverse and advanced technologies. Whether you look at the Huffington Post and its multilingual, multi-country CMS or at Buzzfeed, its 5 full-time developers (for a total staff of 75) and its highly elaborate and internally developed Web Analytics tools, new media are all resorting to elaborate technology in order to optimise their content production.

    Mark Hansen, presented a striking example of visualisation of the propagation of New York Times articles through various social media in order to understand factors of virality. According to Hansen, journalists, better trained into data capture technologies could bring a lot to the interpretation and analysis of Big Data. The use of publicly accessible data is also at the heart of The Texas Tribune‘s brand and 60% of the site’s articles provide viewers with dynamic, customisable graphs as well as the raw data used to calculated them.

    And the one tech evolution to take notice of is mobile publishing. Contrarily to TV and other traditional channels, for which the percentage of media spend closely follows the percentage of time spent by the public, traditional newspapers and mobile media sites stand at opposite ends of the time/investment spectrum. In spite of its well documented decline, newspaper advertising still outweighs the share of attention these media receive today. Whereas ad sped on mobile is still far below what it could be in the light of the time mobile users spend consuming information on Smartphones and tablets. The inevitable game of communicating vessels budgets therefore encourages the media to publish their articles on mobile platforms a.s.a.p., notably through the use of responsive design, a web technology allowing the display of information on a page to automatically adapt to the size of the navigator / screen on which it is being viewed. At the Washington Post, two full-time jobs are dedicated to mobile publishing and that department will likely grow in the future.

  • Going visual: As noted by Michael Downing, the Web, since its origins, has been built around printed media paradigms (text pages, banner ads …) whereas the public at large is more interested in brief and interactive experiences (particularly on mobile, I would add). This probably explains why the monetization opportunities of a 5-10 paragraph article are limited (by ad rates of a few dollars/CPM) which makes the economic model of online news companies extremely fragile. In contrast, monetization of short videos is 6 to 10 times superior!

    Big Data lends itself remarkably well to the most audacious and attractive graphical representations. The rise of infographics is one illustration, but it is necessary to see beyond these to stand out.

    A man flying on a fire extinguisher in the tube

    Buzzfeed, a fast-growing pure-player online information company is championing a form of visual storytelling particularly suited to media: animated GIFs. This 25 year-old graphic format received a boost in 1995 the Netscape navigator added automatic looping to its rendering of these animated pictures. And 2012 was definitely the year of the animated GIF which, for the first time made the homepage of prestigious publications such as The Guardian and The New York Times. The media’s recent interest for the format derives from its ability to present in brief sequences the essence of an action or an event. The ever repeating images tell much more of a story than a still while at the same time presenting the facts in a much more focused and condensed manner than a whole video. Scott Lamb strongly encourages journalists to learn to create and use these files in their work.

  • The role of social media in information propagation: According to Joshua Benton, on 48% of traffic to New York Times articles originates on the site’s homepage. This proportion falls to 12% for The Atlantic and to 6% for Benton’s Nieman Lab. An increasingly large portion of the public is discovering news and other forms of content via social media. Google still reigns king of traffic providers in many cases but media organisations that are prospering online focus more on the sharing of their content online than on any other visibility factor. Page views isn’t even a metric on Buzzfeed’s analytics dashboard! Virality takes precedence over all other goals. All the more so because the site’s business model relies on this sharing not only of published articles but also of advertisements (mainly stories sponsored by large brands)!

     

    Analysing social sharing in various social media

    The most ‘liked’ content (which can range from a lolcat picture page to the analysis of a political discourse) is dissected, as are the social accounts at the origin of viral trend and all other factors playing a role in enhanced sharing. On the Huffington Post, social sharing modules occupy the right margin, using-up almost as much space as content itself.

These broad tendencies are just 3 among many others (live video, the will of large media to globalize their audience, adaptive content taking into account the visitor’s navigation history …) Lessons for the media and budding journalists are plenty, but one in particular really drives the point home for me: Stéphane Distinguin urges journalists to become decathletes rather than sprinters, by which he means to broaden the range of their abilities (photography, video shooting and editing, programming, data analysis …), and to scan the environment in search of untapped niches such as hyper-local information.

So, where does this leave PR pros? What should they take home from this day? Evidently, providing rich content (pictures, videos, slide shows …) has become essential to be notices. But I also think that they should follow closely the propagation, on social media, of their own releases and of the articles written about them, a practise that seems very seldom a priority in the industry. Obviously, this can be a chore but media monitoring is there to help.

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Why managing reputation overseas matters (and how to)

September 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

In our previous “Reputation Management Decision Makers” video, Alain Cayzac explained how to use the style, personality and actions of a company to strengthen its reputation.

In this episode, Michael Jaïs and Kasper Ulf Nielsen (Executive Partner with the Reputation Institute) discuss the international implications of reputation management.

Earlier this year, the Reputation Institute published the results of their Global RepTrack™ 100, a larger surveys evaluating the reputations of the world’s 100 largest companies by interviewing consumers in the 15 largest markets. This work reveals that although 50% to 95% of revenue comes from international business, only 11 out of the 100 groups under scrutiny manage to create reputation levels as favourable abroad as it is in their home land.

Exporting reputation is indeed a difficult task for most corporations because it is necessarily based on the trust that consumers in foreign countries have in these companies and those consumers often know very little of their history or values.

Kasper Ulf Nielsen therefore recommends that foreign markets never be considered simply as export markets but as new locations for reputation crafting and interaction with local communities in order to let other drivers than product quality play an important role in reputation management and financial success.

I invite you to watch the video to learn what these other drivers are and what role social media play in this strategy.

See you soon, for new episodes.

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The 3 essential aspects of lasting enterprise reputation

September 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

In this new episode of our “Reputation Management Decision Makers” WebTV series, Michael Jaïs interviews Alain Cayzac, Senior Advisor for GOETZ bank, in a discussion focused on crisis and reputation management.

The two men being such passionate football supporters, conversation could only begin with news of the Paris Saint-Germain ;)

But, beyond purely sports-related topics, the top club is used as an example company throughout the discussion and the various elements of reputation analysis mentioned in the video are also applied to it.

Crisis management insights

And the former President of Paris Saint-Germain has plenty to explain when it comes to crisis management, a discipline all football clubs must learn to master efficiently :

  • First of all, always know the difference between mere incidents turned into crises artificially – to defuse them – and real crises the consequences of which are dire and difficult to manage both in human and professional terms
  • For the latter : always acknowledge rather than try to avoid, show the empathy and compassion in a situation that implies real suffering from the victims, take action and communicate it efficiently.

Reputation management insights

And to answer Reputation Management, Alain Cayzac dons his co-founder of EuroRSCG jacket to draw a parallel between a person (human being) and a company, a dynamic and evolving organisation, in order to apply to the corporate world practical rules inherited from the Personal Brand model and its virtuous trinity : Being, Character and Style.

I’ll let you discover for yourself the details of this theory and the real-life examples of enterprise reputation analyses (including that of Paris Saint-Germain! ;) ) in the video itself and invite you to apply the same reasoning to your own organisation.

Is your balance perfect ?

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How to get press even when your company has no news

August 28, 2012 by 1 Comment

It’s summer and most of us (especially in Europe) are on vacation – at least mentally if not physically as well. And so it’s only natural that the press seems to get a little quieter around this time of the year as well. Most companies refrain from making big announcements during the summer as people are more likely to be at the pool than at their desks. But just because your company isn’t making any announcements doesn’t mean that you can’t get press. In fact, there are several ways you can get coverage even when your company has nothing to announce. Here’s an example.

Behold: the guest post.

It amazes me how few companies think to publish guest posts. For many online publications, more content simply means more page views. It’s a simple equation, which means that lots of publications won’t shy away from the chance to publish another article – especially if it’s written by a so-called “expert” and adds a new voice to their catalogue of regular journalists.

Who publishes guest posts? Oh. Everyone.

Yes, it’s true. A majority of publications publish guest posts.

Here is an example from TechCrunch:

And here is an example from Forbes:

Essentially if you’ve ever seen a guest post in a publication, it’s likely that they publish guest posts on a regular basis. But even if you haven’t stumbled upon a guest post, it doesn’t mean the publication would be against publishing your piece.

How to get published and what to expect.

First things first, do not expect to get paid and it is very unlikely that these publications will be paying for your article. You can always ask but just know not to expect a fat check. Remember that you are writing to help your company gain more exposure – but that said, you should by no means “sell” your company in what you write. Your goal with the article is to provide an opinion or demonstrate your industry expertise. If at any point you get into grey territory, it’s likely that you won’t get published.

A (really good) example.

When I was running TechCrunch France, I regularly got pitched to publish guest posts. But there was one that really stole the show in my mind. The piece was published by the former CEO of a France-based startup, Charles Mignot, who is now at Google. What was brilliant about this piece was that Mignot didn’t write at all about his company’s service. In fact, he decided to focus on a topic that would be pertinent for the TechCrunch audience (which is largely entrepreneurs): the benefits and drawbacks of using Freemium as a business model. And the TechCrunch France audience simply loved it.

What NOT to do.

Writing a guest post is definitely a great way to gain exposure but you should definitely avoid trying to sell your own business, bashing your competitors, etc. through what you write. In other words, avoid anything that may seem like a conflict of interest. I recently stumbled upon someone on Quora who wanted to write a guest post on his own product – which is not very likely to get published (but there are exceptions).

Because it can be hard to know ahead of time what publications will or will not publish, I advise anyone who wants to write a guest post to pitch the topic before actually drafting the article. It’ll save you a lot of time and wasted effort in case publications say no, for whatever reason.

The results.

Writing a guest post like may not immediately result in more sales. However, it will definitely drive more trafic to your site (especially if the publication links to your website in the byline) and place you as a thought leader in your given industry. Ultimately, guest posts are a terrific way to increase your exposure but also to share your thoughts and experiences with others. Therefore, I highly encourage entrepreneurs and businesses to consider writing guest posts whenever possible.

If you have questions or other advice or comments regarding guest posts, please feel free to share.

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7 indispensable features of a PR monitoring platform

July 16, 2012 by 1 Comment

With the rising importance for corporations of understanding Internet conversations, monitoring platforms seem to be sprouting from nowhere every week-end. And with prices ranging from nil to 6 figures and feature sets tailored for many different use cases, it has become almost impossible to compare offerings directly.

Here are 7 essential features you’ll want to look for if your monitoring is PR and reputation management oriented.

Defining clean reading-lists

When watching out for crisis-alerts, it is a good idea to include as many significant sources as possible in your data: picking up a criticism from a small blog before a larger one amplifies it will prove invaluable to crisis management.

But if you’re monitoring competition or launching a niche product, more sources will simply mean more noise and less ability to analyze your coverage in meaningful ways (share of discussion, sentiment analysis by humans …)

Clean reading-lists are essential to media monitoring

Depending on your usage scenario, you need to be able to tailor your reading lists very accurately.

Staying flexible

  • One product today, three tomorrow.
  • Four competitors today, six tomorrow.
  • New technology, new regulations, new blogs, new buzzwords.

How easy is it for you to adapt to these changes? A monitoring plan optimized for January may look pretty outdated in July. Can you easily add or remove sources and keyphrases to your monitoring?

Mixing it up

Twitter delivers news (and rumours). Fast. Facebook provides recommendation. Good blogs are niche lighthouses. But don’t count traditional media out just yet.

While there is great value in social media monitoring, it cannot be your only source of information for PR and reputation management. According to Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer, traditional media are still, by a safe margin, the most influent source of information when it comes to trust.

Traditional media are still influent for reputation management

The ability to mix data from online and social monitoring and traditional offline clipping into a consistent feed is essential to analyse and understand along what paths news about your company circulate, which source is more influent and to be sure you are not missing out on anything important.

Blocking out the noise

What do SERPs look like for your company name, CEO, brand, products, competitors, technology (…)?

Hopefully, you own the first lines or pages of results, but beneath these are plenty of other pages unrelated to your brand and which are all likely to place news in your unfiltered monitoring feed.

For Augure, noise sources (from our point of view ;) ) are many : atmospheric metal music (yes, that exists), world of warcraft guilds, organist fan clubs, photography exhibitions, magic tricks … plus a constant slew of good and bad omens (Augure means omen, in French) in all types of activities, from business to arts. All of these use the term Augure so a simple keyword based monitoring feed would probably contain 80% of noise.

Noise hurts the efficiency of media monitoring

It’s important. Noise will lower your confidence in monitoring results and lower your focus. More importantly, it will make all analysis impossible and crisis detection very unreliable.

Your ability to add that double glazing to your monitoring windows, with far more than single word exclusions to deal with noise, is critical to the success of your monitoring goals.

Striving to qualify

What good is a list of clips and mentions to your management?

Qualified data makes efficient analysis and reporting possible. A monitoring platform that provides information such as author influence, theme, audience metrics, source type, (…) not only lets you refine your monitoring plan and reduce noise but also helps integration with your engagement platform and its reporting module.

Management usually prefer strategic insights and ROI evaluations to a bunch of URLs or paper clips. Do you qualify?

Finding your target

Most monitoring companies focus on specific areas of the world, which makes perfect sense (unfortunately, not all are perfectly clear about it).

Our focus is on France (6000 fully crawled sources), the UK and Southern Europe. Plus quite a few Spanish-speaking countries (our technology originated in Spain). Which doesn’t mean we don’t monitor the US or China, but our main focus what I just described.

Does your monitoring platform match your target ?

Whenever choosing a monitoring platform, be sure to check whether it covers your area extensively. Products from one continent may not be ideally suited for another.

Seeing beyond RSS

Most entry-level offerings – but also some more expensive and well-known platforms – rely exclusively on RSS feeds as their source of data. RSS feeds are a standardized output format from websites and blogs so tapping into them is extremely easy. In fact, you can build yourself a very similar monitoring rig using only a free RSS reader with search or filtering capabilities and cherry picking your sources.

But there are a number of problems with this approach.

First of all not all websites have RSS feeds. They’re a distinct minority but some of them are important and RSS-only will miss anything published by their website.

More often, a website will have separate sections and a specialized article might be published in a dedicated area with – or without – a dedicated RSS feed. Monitoring all the feeds from the website will result in duplicates if the article changes sections (e.g. a few hours on the homepage, then finances, then sports for an article on Football club debts).

Finally, many influent bloggers use their blogs as their sole website and make a solid proportion of their income from promoting their books, white papers, speaking bookings … in their sidebars. These prolific – and very important – authors deliberately place only a small portion, an appetizer, of their articles in their RSS feeds. If your company is mentioned in the body but not the header, RSS-only will miss the mention.

Clean crawling of websites, not using RSS, is a labour intensive job to perform and maintain. A large portion of the price difference between solutions can be attributed to this choice of sourcing technology. While free or entry-level software cannot be expected to go beyond RSS, any platform carrying a healthy monthly fee absolutely should.

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Media monitoring for profit

May 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

In previous instalments of this media monitoring series of posts, I described 5 steps for defining an efficient monitoring plan and 12 important goals to always keep in mind.

One of these aspects is sharing. Sharing the results of our monitoring is something we never used to do in the good old days of the press review and media analysis. A summary of these results were sent to some members of the C-Suite and the rest was for us to crunch on in the hope of building ever better campaigns.

Today, sharing is essential in many ways, as you will want to keep brand ambassadors, tweeting employees, prospects and customers as well as any number of other stakeholder types up to date with what’s fresh about your brand.

It all makes good sense for image and reputation management. But there’s one other reason for sharing that should not be overlooked and that’s data curation.

Needles in the haystacks

Our companies, our partners’ companies, our clients’ companies all evolve in an endless sea of content that continuous streams of data from every corner of the Internet make that much bigger every day.

Meaningful information is like gold in that context. Information is power. Information gives companies the ability to base decisions on facts.

gold pan

Panning for gold (creative commons image by Racy Rachel)

Sifting sands all day long in search of elusive nuggets is a task few organizations have the know-how and financial backing to perform on a regular basis. Which is why dedicated consulting firms charge hundreds or thousands of euro/pound/dollars for information that is often readily available on the web but which they serve in digested, curated and organized reports. The cost of producing work of similar quality would increase tenfold.

Putting you monitoring to use

An efficient monitoring plan will do just that for you: remove unwanted noise from a stream of data and articles. If you have set-up a good competitive and industry monitoring project, you will receive all the news that is useful for your team and your management to base strategic decision-making on. Why not share this information?

If you are an agency in the automotive industry, it is more than likely that your clients would be delighted to receive a weekly digest of the most important automobile-related news.

Curating automotive data with Augure's monitoring and webzine

Automotive curation with Webzine, Augure’s social press review (click for more information on our website)

As the traditional or only media articles, blogs, Facebook updates, Flickr images or tweets come your way loaded with keywords and other metadata, why not go even further and use this information to further refine your feed into sub-topical ones and share only the most relevant facts with the customers most likely to be interested?

And why not create another for your colleagues at Marketing to use in their newsletters? Data curation is now a major component of content marketing, as scoop.it, paper.li and many other dedicated solutions highlight. Putting your monitoring to similar use would reap the same financial and reputation rewards.

Are you extracting the most from your monitoring?

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