With Halloween over, we’re seeing other upcoming major holidays quickly descend upon us. From Christmas countdowns on Facebook, Holiday party invites emails and gift suggestions on Amazon, I’m well aware that December and the end of year is approaching. From a marketing and PR viewpoint, this triggers something bigger to think about for clients — 2016 planning. You may think, “It’s only November!” and be boggled down into Q3 recaps and Q4 planning. However, most budgets for 2016 are being finalized now, before the start of the New Year. Without the stress of the December rush, today is the perfect time to start thinking about 2016. At PAN, we already have begun.
Topics: Digital, integrated marketing communications, 2016 planning
Image from Keith Hoffart used under CC license.
92 percent of people trust strangers over brands. How can that be? Why are people turning to strangers to give them information about a product over the brand that created the product? Are strangers more knowledgeable than brands? As both a consumer and a marketer, it is important to understand both sides of this statistic.
As a consumer, I can certainly recall various times when I have trusted strangers over brands. Before I make an online purchase, I almost always read the reviews that strangers give the product I intend to buy. Why? Well, to me the answer is seemingly obvious; I want to know the truth about the product. If I’m going to spend money on something, I don’t want to just read the product description given by the brand – the brand would never point out any possible flaws the product may have! Strangers, on the other hand, have no problem giving the honest truth about the product. In this sense, I bestow more trust in strangers than I do in the brand that created the product.
Topics: influencers, Marketing, Digital, influencer relations
Perception is said to be reality, but when it comes to your digital and social communications, perception can be misleading...and costly. The power and impact of digital is clear. Ninety-two percent of marketers say it’s important to their business, 84 percent of B2B marketers usie social in some form, and nearly 70 percent put dollars toward it. On the other end of the spectrum, however, 53 percent of social media marketers don't measure their success! In today’s digital and content marketing economy, everyone is a publisher and can syndicate content in text, image, and video formats. Because of this, paid, owned and earned media channels have converged with over $135 billion being spent on digital content creation (in 2014).
Topics: integrated marketing, Digital Marketing, PR, Digital, integrated public relations, PANDigital,
I love this line from a recent Mashable article on trends supercharging today’s PR. As I contemplated taking my new role as VP PANdigital, I gave a lot of thought to the next frontier of digital communications and marketing. After 20 years in the digital space I tend to be calculated and skeptical when evaluating what is on the horizon and shaping the future. I kept coming back to one key point: the universe of public relations is changing. The lines of marketing versus PR are increasingly blurred, causing success to rely more heavily on strategies that use content, community, and experiences to create actionable results.
At PAN, we strongly believe “traditional PR” is being enhanced by the continual evolution of digital and its integration into all aspects of our lives. In fact, we are staking our livelihood on it. But it’s not just about Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube, or as I like to joke, “electrons.” Once the basics of technology and platform are addressed, it comes down to the relevancy and timeliness of your message (hasn’t it always?). The focus switches to consistently valuable, shareable content that appeals to your audience.
Topics: Marketing, Digital, PANDigital,
For anyone who followed ‘Cuse Chronicles, a blog series in which I documented my experience teaching at Syracuse this spring, something I talked about frequently with my students was how the PR industry has been effected by the digitization of business. For my students, the digital world is what they know and grew up with. Most of them can’t remember a time when cell phones weren’t in their hands. For many of them, the hype around the rise of digital, especially in PR, only seems natural but for those of us who have been in PR for a few years, the impact that digital has had on the industry is pretty groundbreaking.
For some time now, PR has been more about media relations and distributing press releases. As we began to get more comfortable with digital offerings in our personal lives, we slowly started to see those same trends trickling into the business world. For example, when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004, it was purely a way for friends to stay connected. Fast forward to 2015 and every company, brand and influencer has their own Facebook page.
Topics: digital communications, Digital, PANDigital,