Ready to tap into your inner renegade and innovate your life? Join Marketwired on Thursday, May 16 at 1 pm ET for a free webinar featuring Amy Jo Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Renegades Write the Rules and founder/CEO of Digital Royalty.

Amy Jo will explain how she measures influence, monetizes social media and creates groundbreaking social media campaigns for some of today’s most recognizable companies, celebrities and sports teams. Her approach has helped Shaquille O’Neal, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, FOX Sports and DoubleTree by Hilton, among others, humanize and monetize their brands.

During the webinar, Amy Jo will also offer case studies and ideas that you can apply to your own life and work, while showing you how you can leverage social media to make positive change.

The first 100 attendees to tune into Marketwired’s webinar will receive a free copy of Amy Jo’s book, Renegades Write the Rules — a revealing look at the innovative strategies behind the social media success of today’s top celebrities, brands and sports icons, and tips to help you follow their lead. So be sure to join early.

• What: ”There’s No Finish Line to Innovation” — a free webinar presented by Marketwired
• When: Thursday, May 16, 2013, 10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT
  The one-hour session will be archived for later viewing. All registrants receive access to the archived webinars.
  
• Who: Amy Jo Martin, author of New York Times bestseller Renegades Write the Rules and Founder/CEO of Digital Royalty and Digital Royalty University
• To Register: Click here to register for the webinar.

On Twitter? Connect with @Marketwired and @AmyJoMartin in advance of the webinar. 

About Amy Jo Martin
Amy Jo Martin, author of New York Times Bestseller Renegades Write the Rules, founded Digital Royalty three years ago to help companies, celebrities, professional sports leagues, teams and athletes build, measure and monetize their digital universe. Amy Jo has 1.2 million Twitter followers @AmyJoMartin and she travels the world to speak about the latest trends in social media, how to monetize various social platforms, and how to successfully build a personal brand by utilizing social communication tools. Martin is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, and Sports Business Journal, plus she and Digital Royalty have been featured in top-tier media outlets from Vanity Fair and ESPN SportsCenter to Forbes, Fast Company and The New York Times. Martin also sits on the St. Jude Digital Board of Directors.

A few weeks back the SEC (The Securities and Exchange Commission) ruled that public companies were now free to release their important information though social media channels. Since this ruling there has been a debate in the investment community as to what this means for the future of the industry. Some welcome the use of social media while others are continuing to lobby that the way things were worked just fine.

Because of this debate, we took to the street, Wall Street, to ask the people that this ruling will affect what they thought. We surveyed stock brokers, financial and market analysts, financial advisors, individual traders and fund managers, and made their results into the infographic below.

What we learned by doing this was that Wall Street, and investor relations in general, is changing. As the younger generation that embraces technology is coming into power in the workplace, we found that they are also the new workforce that embraces social media. And for more than just keeping in touch with friends.

We found that the investment crowd under 40 support the SEC’s decision to allow the distribution of information through social media. In fact, 60% of those surveyed and were under 40 said that they regularly consult social channels to research investments. But it’s not just the under 40 crowd. 40% of all survey respondents said that they were using social media to find information.

We also found that 49% of our responders companies blocked social media from the workplace, making it hard for them to use it as a source while at work. However, 48% of those people said that they had witnessed colleagues using personal devices, like a smartphone or tablet, to consult social media for investment information anyways.

It appears that the younger generation of investors is rewriting how business is done, and social seems to be part of it.

What do you think?

By Shonali Burke

I’m going to ask you to close your eyes for a moment (after you’re done reading the first two paragraphs, otherwise you won’t know what I’m asking you to do).

Try to recall anyone who’s told you excitedly of their hopes and dreams for a new venture they’re embarking on. Maybe they’re planning to build the best new SoLoMo app around. Maybe they’ve come up with an idea that, one day, will be acquired by Google. Maybe it’s something that’s more personal, like doing a specific number of things by the time they’re 30 (or 40, or 50…).

Now go ahead and close your eyes, and try to think of at least one person who’s told you such a story. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several, but there has to be at least one.

When you next meet that person, say it’s after a while, what’s the first thing you think to ask them? Almost always, it’s some version of the question, “Did you succeed?”

Did they build the best SoLoMo app around?

Did Google acquire their company?

And did they, indeed, achieve what they wanted to by 30, or 40, or 50…?

Sometimes the answer is, “Yes,” sometimes it’s, “No.” Sometimes it’s, “It’s complicated” (but we won’t go there). My point is, all these people have goals in mind right from the start. They don’t necessarily know how they’re going to get there, but they do know that that is where they want to end up.

It’s exactly the same for brands. You should not be embarking on any communication campaigns or initiatives unless you know exactly where you want them to end. How you’ll get there is where your strategy and tactics come in, but you can’t develop a smart strategy if you don’t know what you’re working towards.

This is one of the fundamentals of public relations. Know what you’re working towards, and have measurable objectives. Why, then, is it a facet of “PR Rewired?” If you’re asking that question as you read this post, I don’t blame you!

The reason I bring up this fundamental of PR is that, with all the “shiny new” toys we have to “measure” public relations these days, the fundamentals sometimes get lost. I can’t tell you how many times I hear people asking me how they should measure Facebook, or Twitter, or <insert social network of choice>. How many companies have we seen come and go who purport to measure the “value” of a Facebook fan, or a Twitter follower, or…?

Here’s the thing: if you are only going to look at your fans/followers in terms of dollars and cents, you’re making a couple of big mistakes:

1. You’re forgetting that the foremost value that your fans and followers bring to your brand is that of a human community. It will take time to nurture that community, but as you do it, you will see that their value far exceeds dollars and cents per fan or follower.
2. There is no generic formula that will tell you what the “value” of your fans and followers is. You must create your own measurement framework, which is specific to the goals and objectives you hope to achieve. Work backwards from there to identify the most effective strategy and tactics for your program.
3. Instead of tracking just clicks, retweets, likes, etc., for the sake of it, track actual actions that tie back to your business objectives. For example, are you trying to get people to download a white paper (which move you closer to your goal of lead generation)? And so on.

No matter what your campaign entails, it’s one that should be pinned to specific goals and objectives. Those should be determined from the outset, and based on those, you can set specific metrics in place.

That’s how you should set up your measurement program, not the other way around… and that’s how you can evaluate the usefulness of your communication – including social media – plans.

Shonali Burke is president and CEO of a micro PR agency that successfully helps businesses take their communications from corporate codswallop to community cool. She founded and curates the popular #measurePR Twitter chat, is an adjunct faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University’s M.A./Communication program, and blogs at Waxing UnLyrical.

By Gini Dietrich

I’m sure you see or hear this a lot: Traditional PR is dead! Media relations is dead! Websites are dead! Marketing is dead! Advertising is dead!

Granted, sometimes those things are written to motivate people to click on a link, but all of the customary ways of communication are far from dead. Instead, we find it’s necessary to integrate the traditional with digital public relations.

Integration isn’t new. In the late 90s and early 00s, lots of organizations were finding ways to break down internal silos and inspire departments to work together. Dell asked WPP to consolidate all of its agencies under one roof and you saw traditional ad agencies bringing in PR and vice versa.

Integration vs. Silos

Then, of course, the tech bubble burst, 9/11 enveloped the world, and the United States faced the Great Recession. Because of that and our unemployment rate skyrocketing, people went back to what they knew and, in most cases, created silos inside organizations again.

But here we are, facing a world where technology comes at us so quickly now, it’s impossible to keep up, and if we don’t figure out – quickly – how to integrate and work with other departments, we’ll be left behind.

Think about it this way: It used to be you’d have a crisis communication plan written and it would stay in a drawer until your PR team pulled it out the following year, dusted it off, and gave it a good rewrite. Now a crisis can erupt online in about 20 minutes if you have one angry employee or customer. Customer service used to be kept to the people in the cube farms who answered the phones all day. Now the PR or marketing professionals are managing customer service and experience through the social networks. And media relations meant you built relationships with journalists who stayed in the same job for years and years and years. Now influencers are bloggers, customers with large Twitter followings, or employees who have highly engaged online friends.

Integrate Your Office

The value of departments working together cohesively is more important now than it ever has been in our history. Following are five tips to integrate your efforts with those in other departments.

1. Lobby your senior executives to make total integration part of the incentive program for every employee. One of the things Geoff Livingston and I talk about in Marketing in the Round is how to do that efficiently and effectively.
2. Develop an internal team – made up of one person from every department – to lead the charge and to be sure everyone knows what the other is doing. If your organization is small, it’s easier to do this, but don’t think you don’t have silos. When you have more than three people working together, silos exist.
3. Customer service and HR (if they’re not already) will begin to use the social networks to connect with the people PR professionals have been building relationships with for the past few years. These are the people who work with your organization: They buy from you, they support you, or they work with you. It’s imperative these people have different touchpoints within the organization. Help them help you.
4. Work with your colleagues on all facets of the organization’s growth. No longer can product development launch something without marketing and marketing can’t do a promotion or event without customer service.
5. Create a system for complete transparency so people move out of their comfort boxes and are willing to work together, instead of in their silos.

In some ways, this is change management and, in others, you’re going to be asking senior leadership to do something out of the norm.

It’s easy to say, “Oh. I’m in PR. I don’t need to do this.” But someone needs to do it and, as communicators, it’s our jobs to make sure customers and employees are getting what they need. Why not lead this charge, as well?

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm. She is the lead blogger at PR and marketing blog, Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing in the Round, and co-host of Inside PR, a weekly podcast about communications and social media. Her second book, Spin Sucks, is due out in November 2013. Connect with her on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

By Karen Geier

The number-one question I get from fellow marketers and business owners is “Which Social Network Should I Be On?” While the answer is a long and multifaceted one, I often respond, “What are you doing about e-mail?”

E-mail campaigns are still a top source of conversion and, if done right, can be excellent for referral traffic. You can also segment your lists, and by using third-party tools, you can eventually build profiles of your list members so you’re sending the right messages at the right times to the right people (for instance: not sending baby clothes advertisements to someone who isn’t in the market for them).

A lot of businesses overlook e-mail, but it clearly works for many companies. A recent report from MarketingProfs indicates that 2013 is trending to have 5% more e-mail volume, and large companies spend a lot of money managing this channel.

How do you get started with e-mail marketing?

The first thing you need to know is that e-mail marketing is “opt-in” in the same way that followers on Twitter “opt-in” to hear your updates, BUT e-mail is bound by a set of laws you must not break, lest you be branded a spammer, and no company will run your campaigns.

Once you’ve read up on the details of the CAN-SPAM Act, you’re ready to start building your list. Many people ask, “If I need permission from everyone, but I have e-mail addresses from another place, can I use that list to start building my marketing list?” The answer, to the letter of the law, is no. If you have been conversing via e-mail with customers to date, and you have their e-mail addresses, I would suggest you change your e-mail signature to indicate you’re now building your list. After your closing, insert a section that says “Keep in touch with [your brand]. Sign up here for promotions, news and more!” and link this to the form where you will be collecting e-mail addresses. Many email providers also have widgets and digital options for e-mail capture from your social networks. If this is important to you, make sure you research providers that include this service.

You can also go low-tech when collecting addresses in the future. Simple paper sign-up sheets, which disclose that you are collecting e-mails for newsletters and promotions, work very well for events and on-site promotional visits.

Choosing an e-mail provider and creating a form to collect addresses

There are thousands of e-mail providers out there from freemium (free for a certain number of subscribers, then you pay a fee as your list grows) to robust, vendor-managed solutions costing thousands of dollars a month. When starting out, you should look for an e-mail provider that offers:

• Easy-to-build forms for capturing information
• Analytics, including open, share (including social share) rates, unsubscribes, and spam reports, click tracking, and basic “user agent” reporting (which email tool you used to view your email, and which device).
• Easy testing protocols: You will want to A/B test everything from subject lines to design and content.
• List segmentation: If your product line segments (e.g., along gender lines, age, marital or children status), your list should segment accordingly.
• An easy-to-learn interface. Every service is different. Two I recommend are Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor. These are easy to navigate and won’t let you get stuck somewhere.

There may be other features you’ll need to take advantage of in the future, so the most important thing to look for is the ability to easily export your list to another provider should the need arise. Do not sign up with a company whereby you must “request” to export your list. It’s YOUR data.

Once you’ve chosen a provider, you’ll need to build a basic capture form, which will be used to build your list. You can ask for as much information as you think customers will give you, but be aware that the more fields in your form, the fewer sign-ups you will receive.

General E-mail Guidelines

The biggest questions about email campaigns are always about when you should send them (day and time), the frequency by which you should send them (you should start with no more than once a week), and what you should put into them. There are some basic guidelines, but every company is different, and you WILL need to test and optimise as you go along. The only constant is that shorter e-mails convert better. Try to keep your body copy to less than 300 words.

Building Your First E-mail

The most important thing to remember when writing your e-mails is that content is king, and for most of your audience, time is short. Do not use your e-mail to brag or hard sell your audience. As with all content, you need to offer value to your audience, so facts, tips, tricks, hacks, interesting stories, even related stories to your vertical are all good choices for short, sharable content.

When you begin crafting e-mails, you need to know you’re never going to get a perfect email the first time out. You will need to test every time you send one. The three most important things to test are Subject Line, Layout, and Content. Here’s how to test them effectively.

Start by choosing just one email to test. If you have too many variables, your experiment will not yield tangible results.

Subject Line Testing

This is the best test of any copywriter’s skill: how to tell the same story multiple ways in the fewest number of letters. Your goal is to summarise and tantalize: Summarise the interior contents of your e-mail, but tantalize recipients to make sure they open the e-mail. Find a fresh or provocative way to express what’s going on in the body of the email. Take your favourite two options, and send one each to one half of your list. The one with the most opens will tell you what your audience is more likely to respond to.

Content Testing

Next, you will need to test your content. This can be as simple as having 2 different kinds of promotions, and seeing which one converts more. You could also make your content modular: choose 4 things you want to cover, and only insert 3 in each e-mail. You will be able to tell which content resonated with your audience the best with click tracking. For every piece of content in your e-mail, make sure you link to something (whether it’s your website, Facebook page, or an external source) so you get deeper engagement.

Design Testing

This may seem like the hardest test to perform, but you could always test 2 templates created by your e-mail providers. Another option is to take your content modules and place them in different positions in each e-mail. You will be able to use your click tracking to tell you which module was the most successful.

Next Steps

Once you’ve tested what your audience wants to read, you can begin testing how often, and at what time. Each time you send out an e-mail, test it on a different day. You will eventually find the best day to send. (Start by using competitor’s e-mails to inform which day to start testing with.) You can then begin testing time of day (again, take a look at newsletters you always open and see what time those arrive to inform which times to test).

To continue expanding your reach, you might want to consider a refer-a-friend program that you can easily execute through e-mail by asking your audience to share your e-mail campaign (with a corresponding coupon code) with friends (though, remember: if you ask them to add friends’ e-mails to your form, you can’t market to those new names unless they opt-in (confirm their e-mail address).

You can also begin to poll or survey your audience from within your e-mails. Testing interaction can directly benefit you (make sure you ask questions your business can benefit from: which promotions your customers want, which products they like best, etc.).

Email is still a multi-million dollar sales channel for some of the largest companies in the world. As long as you are aware of the laws that govern this channel and you are continually optimising content, you can build a thriving list of warm leads for your company. These people will refer you to their friends, expanding your reach for you while you can focus your efforts on optimising your content.

E-mail is not a dumping ground for content, nor is it a place to brag about how wonderful your company is or a place to force-sell your newest product. E-mail should be about your company checking in and furthering your relationship with your customers.

By Darin Wolter, EVP of Global Sales for Marketwired

By now, you have probably either read or heard about the SEC’s latest ruling regarding social media and how companies can disclose material information, such as earnings or market moving information via social channels. In an evolving age of social communication, this is an important step and a natural one. While the ruling came as big news to many, those of us at Marketwired were happy to learn the SEC is embracing options that make it easier for companies to share information with their stakeholders in ways that work for them.

We recognize that not every company is going to immediately turn to Facebook and Twitter to post their acquisitions and earnings, but if you are an IRO, Investor Relations Professional, you likely have questions, which is good, now is the time to begin planning. Here are a few guidelines we recommend following:

• All Smart Social Strategy starts with listening. Start monitoring social media if you aren’t doing so already. Watch for your company name and keywords related to your company and industry. Tune into what employees and executives are saying. Also tune into what your investors are reading on social channels (because they are paying attention.)_ It is likely your PR or Marketing Department is already listening, meet with them to discuss what information you need and how to monitor for IR’s interests.
• Join the conversation, begin to better understand what social disclosure strategy is best for your company and gain comfort with the process. You can start simple, by tweeting a link to your earnings press release.  The immediate benefit is to create a reputation, crisis and general risk management channel that is trusted by the organization’s top investors and analysts.
• Review your company’s social media policy. Make sure it covers disclosure issues and what to do if a mistake is made. Make it a point to educate executives and share updates.
• Register an Investor Relations (IR) Twitter handle and dedicate a portion of your Facebook page to IR. Your social channels should reflect your website and have a dedicated IR section.
  • The IR section of the newsroom has to reflect that a company uses its social handles to disseminate information.
  • Establish these social sources as credible, corporate social channels. This will decrease confusion if there are others.
  • Publish handles everywhere: on your website, on news releases, etc.
  • Use these handles to tweet links to releases and blogs.

• Educate investors on which social channels they can leverage and how to do so, then publish this information on your IR website. A thorough Q&A will help your analyst and financial community, as well as the general public, better understand the disclosure process.
• Spend time with top investors, prospects and analysts to understand their views on social channels as acceptable and useful forms of disclosure.
• Develop a solid social media crisis plan that addresses a range of “what if?” scenarios. It is critical to ensure there is a crisis plan in place for the company. From people to procedures, the planning should be proactive.

Ultimately, the market sets what qualifies as good communication and transparency for a publicly traded company. Companies have many options, which gives them the ability to develop a communication plan that works best for their stakeholders and investors. IRO pros should be motivated by the social demand of their key audiences, and inspired to embrace options that support effective, efficient communication. This isn’t a revolution; it’s an evolution.

Your investors are active on social channels, which means there is an increasing expectation that all of your company is represented in the social space as well. This expectation isn’t limited to IR pros, it extends to engagement, marketing, sales and customer service, too. Your investors want to see that you are accessible, engaged and a part of the conversation.

What is your company doing to prepare for distributing news over social channels? How are you complementing your existing disclosure practices? What are your next steps toward social disclosure?

By Kevin Dugan

Public relations professionals are in a constant state of evolution — adaptingto an industry where converging technology, fragmenting media and changing consumer habits impact everything we do.

Why then, as everything around us is changing, is the planning process seemingly frozen in time?

In Defense of the Golden Rule

The golden rule of planning has NOT decreased in value. A clear plan focused on key audiences with a goal, measurable objective, strategies and tactics is still critical. If anything, in a fast-paced industry, this precious point of reference is now platinum.

But a linear planning process is no longer realistic. Moving separately through phases of research, planning, execution and measurement has become obsolete. We have the increased availability of data and analytics to thank for this shift.

Valuable data is now available to us through search, web analytics and, of course, social media. This data is made up of distinct consumer signals we can mine from keyword search trends, website click paths and social engagement.

Consumer Signals Steer to Success

All of this data can be used throughout the entire planning cycle, not just the research and measurement phases, to optimize our strategies and tactics and improve the effectiveness of our plans. As a result, planning today is an ongoing process.

A year ago, I helped create an independent media platform for my employer. As we built the site, we tapped search data to inform the information architecture. After 90 days, we adjusted our editorial approach and promotional focus based on search and site data. This has helped ensure, 12 months later, that we can point to the site as a best practice instead of a more modest “test and learn” opportunity.

 A Smarter Planning Model

So if the linear planning process is obsolete, what should take its place? A more flexible model that allows for optimization is needed. Don’t worry, you still get to have your annual offsite, complete with comfy seating, sticky notes and markers. Just be prepared to make planning a constant throughout the year. Remember that if your plan is built for change, it can tap into unforeseen opportunities that will certainly come up during the year.

Go From Hoping to Knowing

With a consistent use of data through a planning cycle, you won’t hope the plan was successful, you’ll know it. In fact, that success should be even greater since your plan was optimized throughout the year.

With apologies to The Smiths, “Has the plan changed, or have I changed?” Thanks to data, and a new approach, both have changed. The Plan is Dead. Long Live the Plan!

Kevin Dugan is Director of Content Strategy for Empower MediaMarketing’s content marketing division. He helps brands tell stories that engage consumers to build business. Blogging since 2002, he’s responsible for Strategic Public Relations, the Bad Pitch blog and is Editor-in-Chief of Media Is Power. He’s on Twitter as @prblog.

Chris Brogan Helps Brands Rise above the Noise and Make an Impact

By Dagmar King

How can brands excel in today’s “open business” world, where customers are setting transaction terms and driving innovation? New York Times bestselling author and Forbes social media power influencer, Chris Brogan, will share his proven method for success from his book “The Impact Equation” during a free webinar hosted by Marketwired on Monday, April 15, 2013 at 1 p.m. ET.

Brogan’s simple formula solves a complex challenge: How do you spread a strong idea across a platform to reach a community of people who care enough for that idea to succeed? According to Brogan, The Impact Equation makes online sales and promotion efforts more effective.

What: “The Impact Equation with Chris Brogan” – a free webinar presented by Marketwired

When: Monday, April 15, 2013, 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST

The one-hour session will be archived for later viewing. All registrants receive access to the archived webinars.

Who: Chris Brogan, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Impact Equation and CEO of publishing and media company, Human Business Works

To Register: Click here to register for the webinar.

About Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Impact Equation. He is CEO of Human Business Works, a publishing and media company that helps you do the work you want to do, only better. Chris has consulted and spoken with companies like Google, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Microsoft, Pepsico, and many more. He lives in Massachusetts, and is half of the band D3ONE3. Learn more at chrisbrogan.com.

By Michael Nowlan

Last July, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings turned to social media to share an impressive bit of news, publicly declaring that the streaming video company had exceeded one billion viewer hours in a month for the first time. The announcement sent Netflix shares soaring. As a result of Hastings’ decision to release the information via social media, the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation to determine if the post had violated rules that prevent companies from selectively disclosing information.

On Tuesday, the SEC issued a ruling stating that social sites such as Twitter and Facebook are acceptable outlets for disseminating public information as long as companies have made investors aware of which outlets they intend to use. As I see it, this decision is less about social media and more about the changing face, needs and habits of stakeholders over the past decade.

While the ruling may come as big news to many, those of us at Marketwired are happy to learn the SEC is recognizing a changing communications landscape and supporting options that make it easier for companies to share information in ways that work for them. Marketwired has been focused on the evolution of information distribution for years. We pioneered the social media news release and multimedia news release. For companies that opt to distribute information via social, we can help measure and gauge the impact of that information by monitoring who is leading the conversation, where they’re sharing and what they’re saying. We are well positioned to work with our customers on this.

Naturally, the SEC’s announcement has raised questions about the future of the wire, and I can’t help but think back to a couple years ago when rulings about web disclosure came out. The SEC ruled that companies could post public information to their websites, but only if they were compliant.

Ultimately, the market sets what qualifies as good communication and transparency for a publicly traded company. The vast majority of companies still issue news releases because they are a real-time, effective way to distribute information to shareholders. The networks are deep, broad and efficient.

The SEC’s ruling was inevitable, and we fully support it. Their decision aligns with everything Marketwired is already doing and the tools and solutions we have in place. As a major company, it’s important to take advantage of all available mediums to ensure that when you disclose information, you are reaching all your shareholders. Whatever route you take, Marketwired remains committed to empowering communication that is clear, consistent and efficient.

By Michael Nowlan

It was Robert F. Kennedy who wrote, “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” We asked ourselves, “why not” with respect to our company. Why not evolve from a wire service to a wired company so we’re better positioned to keep our clients ahead of the curve? Over the past few years, we’ve embraced technology to move the company forward. And, now, we’re ready to share the outcome of our answering “why not?”

In the true spirit of business innovation, we’ve embraced technology to become an “open business”—improving our products, people and processes. More importantly, we’ve become a nimble, flexible partner for companies that are looking to leverage actionable insights to improve decision-making.

To reflect this shift, as of today, Marketwire and Sysomos become Marketwired. The updated name represents transformation—in how we work, how our clients reach out to customers and achieve growth, and how we help them do it. The similarity between the new company name and the old signals that we are preserving the best parts of our identity, while making these significant changes.

Our goal is to keep you ahead of the curve and expand how you think about social communications by including all the sources of influence on your business.  We want to help you find the conversations that count—those you want to influence and those that will influence your customers.  As the thousands of people, events and opinions influence your target markets, we can assist in turning that influence into advantage. That’s what we call the “Power of Influence.”

Will this change affect the products and services that we offer? Yes, it actually enhances them. Marketwired will still offer news release distribution and social media monitoring tools. The transformed Marketwired brand integrates these solutions, making it even easier for our clients to ‘create opportunity’ through easier access to all of the Marketwired services.

What is happening to the Sysomos name? It’s still a very integral part of Marketwired. Our social intelligence platform is powered by Sysomos, the world’s most comprehensive social monitoring solution.  A transformation in marketing reveals a rapidly growing emphasis on “revenue marketing” with a clear expectation that marketing efforts must directly drive revenue results.  And, big Data, or what we like to call “Smart Data,” is a major fuel to this revolution. Our technology is a social media guidance system for true customer connectivity—helping brands hone in on the influences that matter and becoming more influential in return.

Our evolution is about our customers and our community. When we talk about the “The Power of Influence,” it’s to show how our services revolve around influence—from the influence our clients want to create through the communications we distribute and publish for them to the influence consumers can have on our clients through social media.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our transformation and the opportunities that lie ahead. Tweet me at @MJNowlan and let me know how we can get you wired! You can also follow us at @marketwired and join our Facebook conversations.

This post originally appeared on Marketwire’s Small Business Blog on March 28.

By Karen Geier

We live in a world where you probably know more about what your friends had for lunch than you do about some of your extended family. Social media has disrupted so much of the “old way” of doing things that it comes as a surprise most branded events are still very analogue.

Luckily, there are some very simple ways before, during, and after your event you can enhance it and increase your engagement with clients and customers.

Before Your Event:  Publicise and Build Excitement

The easiest way to integrate social media with your branded event is to get people talking and excited to attend it. There are several ways you can do this, depending on which social media accounts you have.

You can use your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram feeds to tease out details of the event, including venue pictures, decorations, pictures of special guests, food, etc. Let your attendees build up the event in their own minds.

You might even want to crowdsource your event in some way. Using your social media feeds, have your guests vote on an option for the event. Invite them to vote for a speaker, or even offer choices for food (this would make an interesting Pinterest campaign)

Make sure when you’re sending out any and all communications that you tell attendees about your official event hashtag. This ensures your followers will use it into the run-up to the event, and you can retweet or post these updates in a dedicated feed on your blog or website.

During Your Event: Hashtags, Feeds, and Gathering User-Generated Content

The easiest way to gauge guest reaction at your event is by using a dedicated hashtag (users with Instagram or Vine can use these tags as well, don’t forget). You can display these on-the-fly reactions on a TwitterFall. One of the benefits of TwitterFall is that you can customise what gets displayed, and you can filter out naughty words. You should still have a dedicated social media point person at the event looking at the raw feed to make sure that guest complaints are remedied quickly, or that potentially troublesome (over-served) guests are dealt with appropriately.

You could also consider displaying an Instagram feed of all images generated during your party. People love to look at themselves onscreen, and will contribute more if they know there is a possibility they will make it on to the wall. You can use a program like Statigram to achieve this easily.

If you’re interested in posting Vines, you can use Vineaholic to display all Vines on a given hashtag.

Consider the surprise and delight of your invitees if you set up a special Foursquare message for attendees that notifies them of a special feature of your party (a secret sweet table, for instance.) As they head to the special place, they’ll tell their friends, and you will have provided a VIP experience to those “in the know.”

Fun Takeaways: Photo Booths and More

Most parties have a step and repeat background now. Why not take your step and repeat and make it social? Post a hashtag near the background, and let participants take Instagrams or TwitPics of themselves that you can collect for a dedicated event page on your blog or website. You can also hire companies like Instaprint to print “photo booth” type photos for your guests on-the-fly. Instaprint even posts the event hashtag right on the camera, eliminating your need for an extra sign.

After the Party: Your Event Portal

You can still get a boost from fans by connecting with them one last time after your party. Consider setting up a page on your site or blog, which is the clearing house for all the content you collected from attendees.

Think about having a few event helpers present to take video of your event. You might even consider setting up a place where attendees can upload their videos. You can edit your video along withy videos you’ve collected and stills from Instagram, Twitpic, etc. into a short video that you can then post on your dedicated event page.

For a fun thank-you gift, you could also collect the Instagram photos taken by hashtag, download them using a program like Instamac or Instagram Downloader, and print off stickers to mail to event attendees after the fact.

If you’re using Facebook to post event photos, invite your attendees to tag themselves and each other in the images. Offer a special prize to one tagger. (By having the names, you can cross-check your invitation list, and see who actually attended, and who had a good time.)

Consider putting together a Storify of the event. Storify allows you to pull in social media, blog, and web updates, write a story around them, and publish the story to the web in an easily embeddable form. You can always edit the Storify as you get more user generated content in, or if you get media coverage.

Just as customer care and retail are about an end-to-end service with many marketing touchpoints, events are an opportunity to interact with brand advocates in a real-time, reactive way. Don’t make your parties a hit-and-run experience. You can extend the life and excitement of a party well beyond the party date.

By Dagmar King

ALERT: Your organization’s brand image is no longer in your control.

Not that it ever entirely was, but once upon a time you had more say in convincing people what to think about your company, its products and services than you do today.

Now your brand and what it represents is largely shaped by social forces that fall outside the influence of traditional advertising and public relations. It’s no longer a “top-down” world. But what’s exciting is that today you have more opportunities to win hearts and minds than ever before.

Brent Heatley says it best in his op-ed “The brand control delusion,” which appeared this past December in the Australian publication AdNews: “Building and evolving brand strategies from the customer perspective is a smarter way of gaining permission to connect, adding value and, ultimately, of winning hearts and minds. Marketers who persist in imposing their top-down processes are likely to end up with brand strategies that are little more than wishful thinking.”

Build a brand strategy from the customer’s perspective

So how do you build and evolve a brand strategy from the customer’s perspective? Short answer: start by researching and monitoring social media. It is no longer optional to ignore social media conversations about your industry, your company and its competitors. Insight into relevant conversations on social sites like Twitter, blogs and industry forums will help you shape successful business decisions and strategies in today’s new world.

But what if you don’t have the time, tools or resources to analyze or monitor social media activity? Or you haven’t perfected the skills to generate and deliver a professional social media report and/or presentation? In these situations, you may want to consider having social media analytical reports created for you.

Marketwire Reports to the rescue

Marketwire provides a service called Marketwire Reports that does all the work for you. The only requirement is that you are a Marketwire client. Even if you’re not currently a client, it costs nothing to sign up – there’s no annual fee and you pay only for the reports you want.

To begin, our social media experts consult with you to set up and create a custom report using MAP (Media Analysis Platform) and Heartbeat, both powered by the industry-leading social media platform Sysomos. After your initial consultation, your first report is delivered to you in five business days.

You can order a Competitive Intelligence Report or a Brand Mention Report and each includes a wealth of valuable information. Following are some analytics from a Competitive Intelligence report on the Smartphone industry.

DASHBOARD

Below is a competitive overview of mentions collected for all Smartphones industry conversations, compared to Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone from June 1 to August 31, 2012.

INDUSTRY SHARE OF VOICE

The following graphs represent the total share of voice for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone within generic smartphone conversations. The “Non-Branded” portion represents mentions that do not include a reference to any of these four brands (but may reference others).

Insights:

• The iPhone continues to dominate the smartphone conversations.
• While overall BlackBerry received the second greatest number of mentions of all the smartphone brands analyzed when we removed all the conversations where people also talked about their competitors, they fell down to having the second fewest mentions.
• BlackBerry phones get talked about most often when people compare their products to the other phones in the market. If we also factor in their low favorability rating from the dashboard we can conclude that people talk about BlackBerry in terms of needing to catch up with the other smartphone brands.
• Within the competitive landscape of smartphones, all brands lose a significant amount of conversation when they are not being compared to or talked about with their competitors.

INDUSTRY LEADER PROFILES

Insights

• The iPhone gets mentioned more than twice as much on average as the next most talked-about smartphone, both overall and on a monthly average.
• After the iPhone, the BlackBerry gets the second greatest volume of talk, but a lot of that chatter is coming from outside of the United States. For all the smartphones, the United States has the greatest number of conversations, but BlackBerrys seem to be talked about more outside of the United States as well.
• Both Android and BlackBerry phones seem to be more popular on a worldwide basis as the United States seems to talk about them less than the other phones on a share-of-voice per-country volume.

TEXT ANALYTICS

Android – Frequent Word Analysis

The following mention results are for Android from June 1 to August 31, 2012. The Word Cloud shows (by size) the most frequently mentioned words from all sources, and beneath it the Entities Word Cloud shows (by size) the most frequently referenced nouns.

The Payback: Better ROI

It doesn’t matter if you represent a large consumer brand, a B2B company or a non-profit. People are talking about you and/or your type of product, service and industry. Until you find out what they are saying and gauge the sentiment of their social media conversations, your outreaches will largely be in the dark. When you use social intelligence to guide your strategies and tactics – especially before, during and after a marketing campaign – you’ll not only make more informed decisions, but you’ll ultimately find out if you’re getting a decent ROI for your work and efforts.

Learn more about Marketwire Reports.

By Deborah Baum

Eventually all companies will make a mistake. It may be a big mistake or a tiny, insignificant error.  But it will be made at one time or another. When a mistake happens, most of us do all that we can to correct it before it snowballs.

A mistake made on a live press release is a dilemma that can be fixed very simply: by issuing an updated press release, or in some cases, a full wire correction.  While that may sound scary, every paper of record has had to correct misinformation at some point, and has done so without trepidation; doing so via the wire medium is just as easy.

A correction does not, and should not, be the big, bad, boogeyman used to frighten eager, young marketing professionals. There are simple methods to ensure that incorrect information that has been sent out will be corrected.  Here’s an example: your company is planning a webcasting event and in your zeal to publish your announcement, the date given is Tuesday, April 17, 2013.  As it turns out though, April 17, 2013 is a Wednesday.  This day/date mismatch needs to be corrected to ensure that stakeholders, as well as all interested parties, will know to tune in on the correct date.

Once the mix-up has been identified there are two basic ways to handle the situation: by issuing an updated press release, or by issuing a wire correction.  By notifying Marketwire, you can discuss your options in greater detail and your company can decide on the best course of action.

Option 1: Updated Press Release

An updated press release is, in general terms, a re-issue of exactly the same content as was previously circulated, with two major changes: words such as “update,” “revised” or “new information” appear in the headline to notify readers of a change from the original document, and the correct information, as in the day/date mismatch in our example above, has been inserted in place of the original text.

Option 2: Wire Correction

A wire correction is also a separate press release that contains some, if not all, of the same content as was distributed originally, with the addition of a very crucial paragraph at the beginning explaining what information has been changed in the text, and describing its exact location in the document.  This decisive correction paragraph is a clear message to the media and stakeholders of revised information, whereas the softer update option does not point out specifically what has been altered.

Both updated news releases and wire correction releases are distributed to the same journalists that received the earlier erroneous text.  This ensures that all relevant parties have access to the most recent, accurate data.

Here are a few examples of textual changes that might best be handled by means of an update:

• Change in speaker at an event
• Alteration in the contact person or phone number for the media
• Minor rephrasing of text or diction (i.e. grand vs. large)

By choosing to issue an updated press release, the new text will not replace or overwrite any information previously distributed; however, it will be the newest information of record and will be the content used by journalists reporting on your company.

Sometimes though, updated information is just not enough and a clear recognition of inaccurate content must be made.  Revisions that fall into this category include: incorrect financial numbers related to a company’s earnings, erroneous spelling of an individual’s name, or a mistaken title, and of course any false or untrue information regarding your company’s business and activities.

Both updated documents and wire corrections can be viewed as expensive and extreme measures to fix minor problems; in some cases it’s best to leave the disseminated text as is. Instances like this might include missing punctuation, incorrect grammatical usage, or minor misspellings.  While you may be unhappy leaving such things as is, drawing attention to them by issuing new text can sometimes do more harm than good as journalists do not want to see four re-issues of a document containing no new information.

Before twisting yourself into a tailspin of self-doubt, here are a few quick tips to remember when you come across incorrect information in the text of a press release already live on the internet.

• How important is it that the information be corrected or updated?  In the day/date mismatch given above, the answer is simply “very important.”  A more mundane typo such as the transposition of two words in a sentence (“The company a is” vs. “The company is a”) might only warrant an updated press release or could be left as is; a full wire correction might draw more notice than it really warrants.
• What type of press release announcement was issued, and who is the intended audience? A simple media advisory advising the press of the location of an event with a minor change like a misspelled word is small beans, whereas a company’s year-end financial statement with incorrect numbers is a capital letters BIG DEAL. Photographers checking the information on your company’s media advisory to reach a press event will forgive you the spelling error, whereas financial journalists and shareholders cannot excuse erroneous figures as too much is riding on that data.
• How soon after the embargo time was the error caught and how soon can you decide on a course of action?  If your press release has been posted and live for over a month, a full correction is probably not warranted, especially for small nut-and-bolts types of spelling and grammar gaffes. The exception to this being, if such a slip-up might change the meaning of the sentence in such a way that your company finds itself at fault, then acting quickly and decisively is your first priority.

By Adam Lovinus

One of the most common pitfalls in drafting a press release is injecting it full of copy that belongs in an advertisement.  Think of advertisements and press releases as being cousins:  they are of the same family, share a few common characteristics, have the same broad goals — but too much intermingling is taboo. So how can we avoid it?

Center your release around something newsworthy. Before you write a single word, take time to pinpoint the element that will make your press release appealing to the news media, your target audience. Tradeshows, conferences, grand openings, product launches, new hires, mergers & acquisitions, notable stock activities – these are the bread-and-butter reasons for writing a news release.  Without a solid news peg, a press release naturally has to resort to the storytelling methods more akin to advertising. A good news peg makes writing a press release simple: just answer the what, who, when, why and how of what your company has going on.

Use headlines, not taglines. The overarching aesthetic of a press release should resemble a news story. So, just like a story you’d find in a newspaper, a press release should contain a well-crafted headline that is fact-based and summarizes the story your press release tells. This is the opposite of a tagline, which might use wordplay and abstractions to implore the reader. Instead, tell the reader in about 70 words why you are writing a press release; use a subject-verb-object sentence structure for optimal clarity.

Implement an inverted pyramid structure. This refers to how a journalist orients the hierarchy of a news story: the most important facts up top in the beginning paragraphs, the lesser facts and supporting details toward the middle and bottom of a press release. This helps a press release flow, keeps it concise, and most important, makes it stay factual. Your “facts” are the answers to the who, what, where, when and why questions; it might help to make a list of these facts before drafting the release so you can orient them accordingly.   

Attribute all opinion statements. The narrative of a press release must never be confused for opinion. That mars the tone of your news release, and under some circumstances, news outlets may be unable to use your information.  But don’t let that stop you from adding opinions in a release altogether; just remember, anything that seems like an opinion needs to appear as a quote or a paraphrase. Let the company CEO espouse the opinions. You, the writer, stick to the facts.

Avoid exclamation marks and flowery adjectives.  These types of elements distract from the factual tone that a press release should have. Plain and simple. There’s rarely any reason to use an exclamation mark in news reporting; the same goes for a press release.

Implement these five tips in each stage of drafting your press materials and you will be in good shape. For other points of advice on how to make an impactful, resonant news release, here are a few more articles to reference:

• Beyond Buzzwords: Rising Above the Garble Online
• Think Local: Tips for a Community-Focused Press Release
• How to Make Your News Release Stand Out
• Writing Your Technical Press Release for Every Reader
• Press Release Structure: Making Your Content Stand Out on the Screen

By Dagmar King

Today, business success relies heavily on getting social media influencers on your side. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) defines an influencer as having “greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace.” So it’s word-of-mouth marketing at its best when a well-known, well-respected expert in your industry positively reviews and promotes your product, service or brand on her blog or website, or tweets about it to his followers.

From finding the right influencers to fostering those relationships, how do you know that you’re focusing your time and efforts on those who will generate the best results for your business? Especially when your influencers all seem equal in their level of influence?

Tune in to our upcoming, complimentary one-hour webinar to learn the surprisingly simple answer to this very important question.

On March 21, social media expert Tamsen Webster walks you through a fascinating case study about social influence. Did you know that there are four types of social media influencers? Find out who they are, and learn what benefits each group brings to your marketing efforts. You’ll learn how to prioritize these groups based on budget, time and effort. This will help you shape the outreach, incentive and reward programs that will maximize your marketing efforts.

Maximizing Social Influence: A Case Study (or, Glasses, a Love Study)
Presented by Tamsen Webster
Thursday, March 21 at 1pm EDT, 10 am PDT

Register here

The webinar will be recorded and available to view later on demand.

About the Expert
Tamsen Webster specializes in how to tell the right story to the right people at the right time to drive business results. As the SVP of Content Activation and Digital Strategy for independent Boston advertising agency Allen & Gerritsen, she creates brand, content, digital, social, integrated media, community building, and audience engagement strategies for startups, retail, restaurant, CPG, and B2B brands.

By Michal Sorensen, Associate Editor

Cloud computing originally began as a way to back up files, photos, data and the like in case of a computer or server crash. If your files were stored “in the cloud” (read through the Internet on someone else’s servers), you were protected from losing all of your information at once. But then, companies began to realize that so many more things could be accomplished by using the cloud as an everyday working environment. For example, when your files/data are stored in the cloud, they can be accessed from anywhere that has an Internet connection: computer, tablet, or phone. This makes an employee completely mobile. Not only can employees work from home, the train, or a hotel, but they can work with anyone: different city, state, or country. With instant access to the most up-to-date version of their files, employees become more productive. Plus, many of the costs associated with IT are passed along to the cloud provider; no longer is an IT person needed on staff to install and update software, servers or run backups. But the cloud provides so much more for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses)..

By taking advantage of the mobility and social business aspect (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) afforded by cloud computing, SMBs can identify, engage, and/or collaborate with new customers or partner businesses. This allows for innovation and partnerships that could have been left undiscovered.  In a world where immediacy is key to survival, cloud computing allows SMBs to meet their customers’ expectations for information at their fingertips in the form of mobile and tablet apps. An added convenience for consumers and the SMB: feedback made easy. With a presence on Facebook/Twitter or with an easy-to-use app, client feedback can be addressed immediately and from anywhere to redress an issue and track to see if this is a one-time problem or a bigger issue that needs immediate attention. But is cloud computing all hearts and roses?

As with all new technology there are concerns that need to be given careful consideration. For example, if your data/files are stored ONLY in the cloud, and that cloud service provider goes down, you go down with it. Or if your cloud provider acquires a virus or is hacked, your information could be compromised. However, most cloud-stored data is now encrypted for safety reasons, and most cloud service providers work very hard to create a secure environment for their data storage, often investing more resources in data backup and security that SMBs could for their own companies. Plus, no one can eliminate all risk from a computing environment.  Anyone can get a virus or get hacked, hard drives and servers can fail, or laptops with private work data can be stolen.  It is up to SMBs to research their cloud service providers to ensure they are reputable and then, as with any business decision, weigh the benefits vs. the risks.

How and when SMBs take advantage of the cloud is up to them, but eventually they will. Let’s face it, the cloud is not the future, it’s the present. How, though, can SMBs advertise their cloud computing capabilities? Is it enough to just use the term “the cloud” in press releases, email marketing campaigns, and on company websites and assume readers will be impressed? Right now, hundreds of press releases a week are distributed to reporters and websites by SMBs about their cloud computing capabilities. “I can hardly stomach the term ‘cloud’ anymore because it has become so overused by marketing personnel,” said Eric Kilgore, a member of the information technology infrastructure team for Severstal North America, a Dearborn, Mich.-based manufacturing company.

To stand out, SMBs need to explain how cloud computing is setting their company apart from the competition, not just that they are now a part of the cloud in some way. What feature are they using (in the cloud) that makes them outshine everyone else, makes them faster, makes them smarter, easier to use, more profitable, etc.? Where does the competitive edge come from? “In two years’ time, […] I don’t think we’ll be talking cloud,” said Nigel Beighton, international VP of technology for Rackspace. “I think it’s an old word, almost. Look at some of the advanced markets, areas like the West Coast; the phrase is starting to die down.” The mentality is changing from ‘who is in the cloud’ to ‘what are you doing with the cloud?’ and that is what SMBs should be focusing on explaining to their current and future customers.”

Eric’s quote source: http://www.altaflux.com/enterprise-skepticism-remains-despite-cloud-benefits-growth/

Nigel’s quote source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2249408/in-two-years-time-we-won’t-be-talking-about-the-cloud

By Dagmar King

Today’s marketers are in the midst of a massive strategic shift as traditional outbound strategies like advertising are giving way to customer-driven, inbound programs based on two-way conversation.  They’ve had to learn how to listen, create relationships with their customers, and find new ways to define and measure success.

In this new environment, do you ever wonder how your perspectives, strategies and practices compare with other marketers – and what those marketers consider “ideal”? If so, you might find that you have a lot in common.

Success factors defined

According to a newly released study, “Defining the Modern Marketer: From Real to Ideal,” sponsored by Oracle|Eloqua and conducted by B2B, the digital marketing professionals surveyed rated themselves at only 65% of the ideal based on five factors they felt define marketing success today:

• Marketing Technology
• Analytics
• Conversion
• Engagement
• Targeting

That percentage seems fairly high considering that the components the survey participants say define their success were all largely or completely nonexistent just five years ago.

Survey participants rated the importance of five essential competencies impacting their work (left) compared with how they believe they measure up to the ideal (right).

A new media environment opens new doors of opportunity

The massive and accelerating changes facing marketing professionals show no signs of slowing down. But these changes open new doors of opportunity. More than ever before, marketers must demonstrate the value of their efforts, so it’s no surprise that survey participants said the ability to track marketing ROI due to technology is the most transformative factor they face today. Following that is the ability to leverage social media as power shifts from the brand to the consumer, along with the capability to market to mobile and fragmented media environments.

What activites are digital marketers actually using?

While email is still considered their most important and frequently used digital channel, the digital marketers surveyed rated social media just behind that. It’s rapidly gaining ground, which is a phenomenon that couldn’t have been predicted a few years ago.  PR, blogging and case studies point to the importance of content marketing as do webinars/virtual events, while pay-per-click and organic search remain important marketing staples.

The bottom line

Today’s marketer must possess the creative skills required for traditional marketing while also knowing how to market in a social culture that fosters two-way communication rather than top-down promotion. Challenges include reduced resources and the ability to respond to the market quickly with tailored, effective messages. Factors defining success include targeting, audience engagement, lead delivery, measurement and generation of ROI – and all require the ability to leverage new tools and technologies that didn’t exist just a few years ago.

Are we there yet? Not quite, but survey participants give themselves credit for coping relatively well in the midst of dramatic change and feel they are making progress in adopting the concepts required by today’s marketing realities.

Survey methodology

In January 2013, BtoB surveyed 556 b-to-b marketing professionals representative of the market: 54% of respondents said their company revenue is less than $100 million, 18% reported revenue of $100 million to $499 million, 8% said their companies have revenue of $500 million to $999 million, and 20% reported annual revenue of $1 billion or more.

Marketers from technology companies comprised 29% of all respondents, with financial services companies (including accounting, banking, insurance and real estate) at 9% of the total, and consulting firms, publishing/media companies and manufacturing companies each at 8%.

This post originally appeared on the Sysomos blog on Tuesday March 5th (just in case you’re wondering why it’s 2 days short of some data)

We’re just days away from what may be the worlds largest gathering of geeks, nerds and lots of new apps. That’s right, South By South West Interactive (SXSWi) starts on Thursday and brings together thousands of marketers, PR professionals, social media specialists, techies and app makers in Austin, Texas.

Of course there’s also a lot more to SXSW, like the music that the festival was built around in the first place, but it’s the interactive portion that is attracting us. Probably you too.

While our excitement is building as we look forward to five great days of learning, meeting new and old friends and the infamous SXSWi parties, we thought we’d take a look through MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software, to see everyone else’s excitement as well. And you can actually see it building. In the last month we found over 393,000 mentions of “SXSW” OR “SXSWi”. We found 8,466 blog posts, 9,449 online news articles, 9,136 forum postings and 366,428 tweets. Some would probably call this the calm before the storm.

As I said, the excitement and chatter is visibly rising as the start nears. A look at the mentions of SXSW and SXSWi over time shows that week over week the talk has been increasing. As well, we can see that yesterday was actually the most chatter we found around the event. We expect to see that continue rising as this week goes on as well.

It’s interesting to see just how many people the event attracts. A look at people tweeting around the world about SXSW or SXSWi shows that people from around the world are gearing up to either head to Austin to attend or try to keep up with it online. It appears that SXSW attracts people from every continent.

We then took a look at the conversations happening. Since Twitter was mainly driving the conversations we pulled up the most RT’d tweets around SXSWi. For this search we had to remove SXSW because all the retweets around it were retweet contests to win wristbands to the music festival. The tweets we found around SXSWi though seemed to be all about getting people ready for the event. The most RT’d tweet was from The Next Web telling people about an app designed to find all the SXSW parties. Others show how many people are expected to be there this year, surviving the event and The Wall Street Journal asking if it’s still worth it to attend. Of course, our favourite is the map of where all the tacos in Austin are located.

Lastly, we looked at the sentiment around the event. Here we found an astounding 54% of the conversations to be positive. SXSW has a 96% favourable rating around it. Apparently we’re not the only ones excited.

This was just a quick look at what’s coming up, but keep an eye out after SXSW because we’ll be releasing an in-depth report about the entire Interactive section.

Are you going to be attending SXSWi? If so, there will be a bunch of us from Sysomos down there and we’d love to meet you.

By Denielli Dy, Associate Editor

In today’s world, people rely on their mobile devices and electronic gadgets to connect with others near and far. They obtain information about the world and their surroundings via these handheld devices and these tools assist in making activities easier and more enjoyable.

‘Apps,’ or small software applications designed to operate on mobile devices, are developed for each social media platform to allow users to download and browse data in real-time. Users can gather information, organize files, expand their networks and be more productive. They can collect data from various applications using different devices, and even connect with people anywhere in the world to help them carry out their day-to-day tasks with ease and comfort.

People utilize their mobile devices in many ways — from learning about the most ground-breaking news, to finding the most mundane information like the weather report. There is no doubt that press releases and news that are delivered via the mobile app platform have a huge audience that can span the world.

So how can public relations professionals adapt their press releases to ensure they’re most effectively utilized on mobile devices?

1. Keep content concise. People who get information through their mobile devices are usually on-the-go and need to obtain facts quickly, hence, most prefer to read information that is readily available and can be easily understood. Therefore, the text should be direct to the point and written with plenty of details in a small space without sacrificing clarity. Unnecessary details and lengthy explanations should be avoided in order to keep the text clear and easy to read.

2. Make the headline simple but catchy. A brief, easily scanable headline gives readers the general essence of the article and holds their interest longer. An inviting header provides a good opening for more details while supplying the basics of the overall information.

3. Use short text. Information shared through the Internet should not be too wordy and long-winded. Long news with big file size requires more data transfer from the server to the device and takes more time to download. This not only hinders the reader attaining information quickly, but also requires more data usage (and will directly affect your reader’s bottom line).

4. Avoid too many multimedia enhancements. Images and other multimedia enhancements surely make an article more interesting and appealing when viewed from the comfort of a tabletop computer screen, however, images and videos have huge file sizes and will make the download time longer. Instead of including the actual image and video in the article, use SEO (search engine optimization). This allows you to hyperlink words or phrases in your text to other websites, which help extend the reach of the article by optimizing the visibility of the website in search engines and allowing faster file transfer. By linking words or phrases to multimedia-hosting websites such as YouTube and Flickr, you can share your multimedia assets without weighing down the size of your press releases.

Modern technology makes information sharing easier and faster. Mobile devices allow communication and information transfer possible among people – whenever, wherever. Using the mobile device platform to disseminate news is without a doubt beneficial to both the news provider and the consumer

By Daniel Kushnir, Associate Editor

When it comes to pop music, video may have killed the radio star — but in the world of marketing and public relations, it is rapidly becoming the lifeline. Currently YouTube estimates its site receives over 4 billion views per day and is projecting gross revenue for 2012 somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.6 billion, placing it as the fourth most-viewed website in the world.

Business owners and marketers see this data and understand the importance of including visual media when attempting to spread a name, product, or message. In fact, 70% of B2B content marketers use video, with this segment growing from 52% in 2011 to 70% in 2012. And 58% of B2B marketers rate video as the most effective content marketing tactic. For the B2C market, the average Internet user in the US watches 19 hours of online video each month, and shoppers who view video are 174% more likely to purchase.

However, as including embedded video/visual media in a press release becomes more common, we now begin the search for ways to ensure that the media we upload doesn’t get drowned out among the billions of other videos that reside in cyberspace. The content of your video may be ground-breaking and absolutely relevant to your target market, but it must be put in a position to be seen by that market.

Here are several tricks that will help your release and video “pop” (be more visible) than others’:

1. Direct readers to your video by putting a sentence in the text of the body that describes the video as well as gives a link for where to view it.

EXAMPLE: View the [your name] video on [your subject] here: [www.yourvideourl.youtube.com]

By putting the link and a short description in the body of the release text, not only will it increase the video’s accessibility and visibility for the reader, but it will also increase the chances of search engine crawlers seeing your video and placing it on the first page of related searches.

2. Another great way to enhance your press release and video’s searchability — which naturally will increase the number of eyes that see your video — is through the use of embedded links.

Identify ahead of time what your target market is. Next, pick a phrase in the text of your release that is both related to your video and also seems likely to be used by that market in a related search. Finally, embed the URL of the video within those words.

EXAMPLE: Our research team has put together this extensive video on how to [get more views on YouTube]

It is very important not to over-use this technique as too many embedded links will end up being looked at as spam by sites like Google or Bing. A general guideline is to try to include one embedded link for every 300 words. Of course, this is not an exact science, so if your release calls for a few more or a few less, then so be it! Just use discretion and be conscious that web crawlers do factor these things in when organizing a search query.

3. Finally, as obvious as it may seem, make sure to stay relevant. All videos, along with their descriptions, hyperlinks, embedded text, etc., must be totally relevant to the topic of the press release. Yes, making a video can take a lot of hard work and time, so it is completely understandable that we would want to show it off to all audiences as much as possible. But, while not having visual media in your release won’t help the visibility of your release, putting an unrelated video or video link in your press release can actually have a negative impact on its pick-up.

While the obvious reason is that “tricking” people into going to your website or viewing your video – having a misleading video title or an incorrect description of the video – will eventually only damage your credibility in the eyes of the public, it also will work against all of your other efforts to optimize the video’s searchability. If the keywords, tags, descriptions, embedded links, etc., in your release don’t match those on/in your video, if will confuse search engine crawlers and, in turn, have quite the opposite effect of what you had hoped for (more views).

There is no exact science to getting more publicity, but keep the three aforementioned tips in mind next time when putting together your press release and you may be pleasantly surprised with the response you receive.