Corporate Reputation

Recently I was reading about the term corporate reputation, and learned how social media plays a significant role in maintaining a great corporate reputation. The term “corporate reputation” refers to how positively, or negatively, its key stakeholders such as employees, customers, and members of the media, investors, NGOs, suppliers and financial analysts perceive a company or similar institution. So how does this topic relate to social media? Well, in a recent symposium I attended. Dr. Matt Cabot stated, “The world people live in, is the world they see”. That message really stuck to me, because it’s true. We humans believe what we hear enough of and what we see in our computers, TV’s, and phone screens right? Right : )

So how do you protect your corporate reputation using social media?

Here are a few tips from Weber Shandwick www.corporatereputation12steps.com:

1)    Leaders must communicate, currently 10% of Fortune 500 companies now have external CEO or executive blogs. They want to present the companies point of view and start engagement with their consumers

2)    Use social media to create benchmarks, conduct reputation tracking, track what’s being said

3)    Understand that the world is changing, evolve with it

4)    Communicate through traditional media, but know NEW media and communicate there too (it’s all about real time communication)

5)    BROADCAST GOOD NEWS (Facebook, Tweet, Instagram)

 

 

 

 

27 things to know before you work in social media

Social media is new, amazing, and has the ability to deliver content in “real time” faster than ever.

Well than why all the skepticism? Although many people use social media, and many businesses want to be a part of the social phenomenon.   The fact is, is that many still fear social media and really do not know how to  build a social business and social team correctly. However, the plus side to this, is that if you are interested in working in the field of social  media there will be plenty of opportunity. But here are things you need to know before you work in the social media. Great article!

 

http://www.prdaily.com/socialmedia/Articles/16548.aspx

Social Media ROI

Businesses have found that social media isn’t just about getting LIKES anymore. It’s about how you can keep that person engaged, and ultimately purchase something. More importantly, monitor the conversations that is being said about your company/product, so that you can figure out new ways you can increase traffic, grow brand awareness and how your company can get a return. The article speaks about the different types of engagement such as Tweets, Retweets, Favorites, Follows, Shares, Reshares, Comments, and Likes. And   how you can track and engage with your consumers.

Great Article: http://socialmediatoday.com/brettrelander/2369436/social-media-roi-what-you-should-be-doing-and-why

Wislr?

Recently I joined Facebook, and I thought AWESOME! I can stalk my teenage son’s page. Well… he found out, and stopped using Facebook. Instead he found Wislr. For those of you that are not familiar with Wislr this is what they are about. Wislr is completely secure, with users’ identities verified upon sign up. This ensures that teens are connecting and interacting with real students and only students – No teachers, no parents. This app allows you to talk about any teenage topic, send crush hints etc. Great app for teens but here I go again – out of the loop : (

One Vision is KEY

The other night I was watching “The Wolfe of Wall Street”, and although I’m sure that Hollywood did it’s magic and made everything a little more dramatic than real life. What I took out of that movie was the power he had to motivate his organization. After all motivation within the motivation is key right? Like a typical sales department Leonardo has his morning drive time meetings to get the employees pump, and make employees feel connected, and wanted to sale, because their hard work is going to pay off! In retrospect, I took the same message and related to “social business”. I mean, in an organization there are so many departments. I’m sure the sales, marketing, and the millenniums in the company are all about taking the business social, and they understand the benefits of being social. On the contrary there are those in the company that just don’t care. They think that all the social stuff is a waste of time. And for whatever their reasoning is, they just want to do their daily job and not be involved. Well what do you do if you were in this situation? Be “The Wolfe of Wall Street”! Increase morale. Open the doors to employee advocacy. Inform the importance of the social media evolution. Build from within, and create ONE vision.

 

Getting People to TALK

As you all know, I am very new to the world of social media. However, now that I have started, I find it intriguing how people come up with creative ways to attract attention to their page, post, tweet, or picture. Currently I have been working on a project that consist of the number of traffic that I can pull to my page. In the beginning, it would seem that we were posting things that people were interested in. However, I have noticed that the number of people that are looking at my page has decreased by the day. I then started to look into the pages of others that were also in the same type of business, and found myself reading more and more about other brands. And at some point I was being sold on the competitors product just by reading the conversations that they had on their page. Here are the three main things that I learned and need to work on. 1) be unique 2) humor is a great way to keep people reading and interacting 3) respond.respond.respond. make sure that questions/concerns are always answered.

What PR Courses should teach undergrads

As I am thinking about my life after graduation, and the jobs that I want to apply for. I reflected on the most valuable things that I learned at San Jose State University. There were many job postings that I felt confident to apply for , because some of the expected knowledge was already taught. However, there were things that were required that I really don’t know about. In the midst of preparing for my life after college I came across an article that I  wanted to share.  The  article is about what Public Relations undergrads should learn about  Public Relations, before entering the work world. Hopefully you find it as useful as I did : )

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/16267.aspx

Every 15 Minutes

Yesterday I had to attend a secret meeting at my 17 year old son’s highschool. The topic was called every 15 minutes. It is a program that wants to send the message that every 15 min someone dies from a drunk driver, texting and driving under other drug influences. The school is to select 24 students out of 1400 that they feel that would be able to highly influence their peers. However besides just the recognition on campus, these kids must also have a “highly active social media life”,because the school as well as the CHP wants the message to spread and be able to have young adults understand the importance of driving under the influence. The meeting was intense, touching, yet so real. Through the meeting I was sobbing like a baby. As the kids involved will received a mock death certificate, will really experience jail, the emergency room etc. The whole thing will be as close to a real experience as possible. 

Before yesterday, I didn’t know that a program like this exist. However, what really was emphasized was not just the lesson that the kids will learn but the importance of social media. And how even though many parents  fear the usage of their children uses of social media they know they high impact social media delivers. Social media has changed our world not only in advanced technology but has changed the way educators teach and I think this is just the beginning.

Making Content Count

Social media is something that I am very interested in right now, because to me, it’s about how creative you are on putting information out that can cause someone to engage with you. And ultimately the more engagement. The better!  Isn’t that awesome? I think that if you look at social media whether from a personal, entertainment , or business aspect. What everyone wants  to see if the information/content that they delivered counted. 

Recently I read an awesome Public Relations plan it is called “Mashing the low carb CRAZE”. In short it was a campaign that the potato industry wanted to release, because of the decline of people consuming potatoes, because of Dr. Atkins (the low carb diet).  So Fleishman a PR company launched an informative campaign about the health benefits of eating potatoes. The informational campaign made 62 million impressions, 28 percent gain in favor of potato consumption, and 250,000 people visited the potato website. The reason why this particular campaign was successful was because the tactic of delivering information was united across all of the media outlets, and their content was carefully thought out.

There it is, delivering content that counts.

 

The Blogosphere!

Yesterday, I read a really interesting Public Relations case study on a crisis that the company Kryptonite had. For those of you that do not know who Kryptonite is, Kryptonite is a Massachusetts company that is well known for their legendary theft proof bike locks since 1972. The companies advertisments consisted of them putting bikes in the worst neighborhoods in New York, and with repeated break in attempts the locks were seemingly theft proof.

In 2004, a bike enthusiast Chris Brennan who owned a Kryptonite lock found that his bikes wheels were stolen and that a Bic pen can unlock a u-lock Kryptonite bike lock. He then contact his friend, and next thing you know , the information was posted on a bike blog, than a video of how a Bic pen can actually unlock the lengendary safe lock was posted. Within days of the post 340,000 people viewed the post and the video were downloaded 3 million times.

 Kryptonite’s PR professional Tocci decided that she was not going to respond to the blogs, she thought that the best way was the conventional way, which was answering phone calls, talking to media outlets, and having customer service answer customer concerns. In fact monitoring internet and blog actvitiy was something that the company did not do. This crisis cost the company 10 million dollars, and daunting lessson.

However, it was a learning experience for the company as the world has changed.  Kryptonite’s General manager Steve Down referred to it as the BLOGOSPHERE! He stated that Web blogs are a reality, and that after the companies crisis he reccommends that business should take blogs seriously and adequately respond to consumers concerns.

This case story really opened my mind about socail media as well. As noted, I am not too familiar with the world of social media. However, I now understand that although many use social media as a means of entertainment, and staying in touch with friends. Social media plays a huge role in business as well. It is a two way communication tool between a business and a consumer, and social media is a tool that should be mastered.