You already know that, along with everything else on your plate, you need to develop Facebook as a valuable marketing tool in some shape or form, so how will you do it? There are a number of ways to leverage Facebook as marketing technique and you need to have ‘a reason’…

• A place to interact with your consumers and potential consumers – brand building in its crudest sense.
• A means to manage customer interactions and feedback.
• A source of relevant traffic to your commercial website.
• A means to build a list of potential consumers interested in permission-based communications.
• In terms of applying those goals you need a fan page, and a Facebook marketing plan.

The challenge
Though your window is your Facebook Fan page 96% will come not come back to it after first ‘Liking’ your brand, in fact Brand Glue estimate that 99.5% of brand interactions take place in the News Feed, not on your Fan page. On top of that Brand Glue also calculate that what you do ’share’ in Facebook is actually been seen by as little as 0.5%. Very few people see what you post – they’re shielded from you by the Facebook algorithm (EdgeRank), much like Google tries it’s best to shield you from the porn, spam or just irrelevant search results (i.e most of the internet). So, like search engine optimisation, it’s down to you to breakthrough because you’re super relevant, remarkable and interesting. You know it’s true, as well. When did you last visit a page that you’d previously ‘Liked’ and how often do those brands appear on your wall? But, all’s not lost, you can still benefit from your Facebook presence and drive traffic to either/or your Facebook page or other more commercial web presence.

It’s an art, not a science
Aside from Brand Glue’s data I really liked this ‘Innovation’ post by The Daily Beast. I’ve summarised it in this section. They basically created their own test with a Facebook newbie to see what really happened around Facebook visibility, by their own admission it’s not a scientific experiment, and yet it’s good enough to reveal the obstacles that you’ll need to overcome with EdgeRank:
• Facebook does not value or help newcomers, which makes sense too – after all do you immediately trust everyone that you meet over people you’ve known months or years? As The Daily Beast comments “following 500 million people into a party means that a lot of the beer and pretzels are already long gone”, and the clique’s have formed too. They found that ‘invisibility’ is a huge issue for those new to Facebook and it’s especially acute amongst friends who are already really popular with several hundred friends (doesn’t that sound like High School!). When people interact with you the invisibility starts to change.

• The Catch 22 of Facebook is that you need friends and fans to interact with your updates in certain ways (more on that below), but you aren’t likely to have friends interacting with your updates if you don’t have exposure in the first place. Dammit. The goal, especially early on, is to get people Liking you like crazy.

• The Facebook VIP area of “Top News” is where the gold is at. The current newsfeed system offers users two options: “Top News”, a highly selective feed of updates from friends, and “Most Recent”, a “fire hose” that shows updates in reverse chronological order. The challenge is that Top news is the default for 95% of Facebook users. Again, dammit. Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer postings from others, Facebook’s ranking system makes judgments about items it thinks you’ll be interested in like Google does on search results. The Daily Beast say this: “What became clear after two weeks was that it’s not the amount of activity you have, but the type” (more on that below).

• Facebook’s “fire hose” of “Most Recent” is also censored – so no matter what you do your brand cannot guarantee any kind of cut-through. If you’ve never tinkered with the “Edit Options” button on your Most Recent feed, this underscores why you should check it out—there’s a little-used setting that caps the number of friends shown in the feed.

• Links in status updates trump plain status updates – and photos and videos in status updates trump those with links. Facebook wants you to bring something more than your solitary thoughts to the party! Think about times you’ve spotted a thumbnail-size photo from a friend in your feed and clicked to see it full-size. Facebook likes those clicks, it’s links, and rich media formats help deliver them.

• Comments are the not-so-secret Facebook visibility juice you’re looking for – if items you post attract comments from a few friends, The Daily Beast found that it clearly raises your visibility overall. The more people that are interacting, commenting and clicking – the more news feeds you will appear on.

• Breaking into the social elite is hard, even in Facebook! Those with 600+ friends are very difficult to gain visibility with compared to those with 100-200 friends. Hurts, doesn’t it! This is par for the course and a reminder you have to work your way up by doing some remarkable thinking and hard work. So the key, as you build your Facebook tribe, is making sure to include some without huge networks. They’ll see more of your feeds, interact in Facebook-approved ways, and up your visibility with all.

What are the take-aways for you?
Think of Facebook’s news feed as huge popularity contest, one that you get to control just how popular you (and your business) are, ideas and content are your tools.You and your brand need to be more social. In what you say and do, and how you say and do. There’s a reason that some of the kids at school were more popular (not the obviously good looking ones) – they were “involved”, they were social and it made them popular. Here are some pointers to keep in mind:
• Interact: “Ask for comments and likes,” says Widman, CEO of Brand Glue. That’s the immediately actionable strategy. “Put the question first, rather than last… Ask a question where people don’t need to click through a link to give you an answer… make your questions relatable, to drives results. Another example technique that Brand Glue advocates is fill-in-the-blank posts, for example, “Fill in the blank: I’m saving money to buy ____,”. Brand Glue used this with their client which resulted in 210 comments and 13 likes

• Rich media content: Given that this naturally creates more interactions, it’s going to be important that the content is relevant and of interest, think how you could weave rich media into basic posts and interactions, take a varied approach and be topical and entertaining. According to Reggie Bradford, CEO of social media management company Vitrue, “It gives the consumer the ability to engage with that content. If they watch the video or click on the photo to enlarge it, that’d show up higher on the EdgeRank.”

• Integrate: Facebook is not the be all and end all, yet it is of major importance as a part of a social media plan – what else are you doing – blogging (hopefully), using twitter (ideally), any industry specific sites? By doing that you have more reach, more touch-points with your market, more content and content ideas and more points of interaction which makes sharing back in Facebook natural as part of a wider social media plan, the content will be varied and your interactions richer

• Strategic influence: In order to show up in someone’s news feed, you need to be friends with them or fans of their page, they can be fans of yours too of course. You need to target specific individuals and businesses to friend and fan. Even if you’ve friended your top customers or clients, you should pay attention to who their friends are and who they interact with on a regular basis. The more you interact with their friends, the more likely you are to show up on their feeds as well. Who are the influencers? You want to fan as many people as I can within the relevant network, maybe I want national media as my friend and follower or to friend partners and alliances. Learn who’s talking, who are the influencers, the advocates and influencing voices. Some will be easy to interact with, if you’re interested in targeting someone that seems unresponsive, you may want to try tagging them in your posts and photos. Put the ‘@’ sign before the person or business’s name, then select the correct name from the drop down menu, this shows on their profile giving you more exposure, just be careful pushing that too far!

• Commitment: It’s a bit like a new site or a new blog – it takes time and commitment before reward comes through, otherwise everyone would do it. So are you prepared to be cute with the tactics and also commit to Facebook and your Fans for the long haul, Facebook hope so, and in return it appears they will (in an unfriendly robotic kind of way) reward you for it. Though you do not want to spam, posting very regularly is important, just make your content valuable as well as regular.

From 1 March, businesses must ensure their websites comply with rules set by the Advertising Standards Authority. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has produced a website audit service to help advertisers understand whether their online marketing communications comply with the new rules.

How to get the best from a Public Relations Media Campaign

What do you think of when you hear the phrase Public Relations?

Press releases?
Product launches?
Sponsorship?
Hot air balloon trips around the World?

In fact, it is all the above and more. Public relations is about a business creating, maintaining and developing relationships with the public. Some use the more traditional techniques whilst Virgin and Richard Branson will use public relations stunts such as balloon trips around the world simply to generate public interest in the brand.

From the sole trader to the multinational company, sending the right message to the public is critical to how they view the business. Many people hear the words Public Relations (PR) and consider it to indicate the distribution of press releases to the media. In fact, PR is much more complex and can be a vital part of any business’s strategy, as well as its downfall if not handled correctly.

So exactly what is PR?

Public relations, according to the Institute of Public Relations (IPR) “is about reputation. The result of what you do; what you say and what others say about you.”

In short, it is the communication you have with your stakeholders. Stakeholders will include: customers, suppliers, employees, associates, the local community and the government - in other words, any entity that is directly affected by your business.

Part of a PR campaign can include amongst other things:

Ø Writing and distributing press releases to the media
Ø Organising a launch event to celebrate a new product or service
Ø Public speaking at industry related exhibitions or events
Ø Sponsorship
Ø Any activity which generates attention from the public and/or media

For the purposes of this article I will concentrate on the media relations side of PR as this is the most significant and widely used technique when communicating with stakeholders.

Set your PR objectives

When planning your public relations campaign, use your own business objectives to ascertain what you want to achieve. Are you looking for new customers, investors or to promote a new product?

Decide on a budget – you can set your budget at a cost of a few postage stamps or at thousands of pounds, depending upon the impact you are looking to achieve. If you are looking for local recognition for your business, it is possible to write the release yourself and simply send it to local press and a selection of relevant media.

If you want to carry out a full campaign, it is often cost effective to outsource to an agency or PR consultant who will subscribe to journalist databases and cuttings services so releases can be sent easily and coverage monitored. The release will also be professionally produced and the consultant will often have contacts in your target media to encourage the editorial.

The Rules!

The truth is, there are certain rules that you should abide by when writing a press release. This may sound rather arrogant on the part of the media, but with the concept of “free publicity” and the fact that the public relations industry is growing at over 20% per annum, it is easy to imagine the number of press releases that arrive on a journalist’s desk every day. A large majority of releases will be quickly directed towards the bin but if you follow some basic rules and capture the journalists’ attention, you’re half way there.

PR – THE RULES!

HEADING - Type the heading PRESS RELEASE in bold at the top of the release
DATE - Always quote the release date under the heading
TITLE - The headline should briefly encompass the release’s content – make it interesting and no more than 10 words
OPENING SENTENCE - The opening paragraph, in bold, should introduce the story. This is a crucial part of the release to ensure the reader is instantly engaged and will continue to the body of the story.
LANGUAGE - Always write in the third person and never try to sell a product/service like you would in an advertisement. Think of the release as a story you would like to read yourself.
CONTENT - Keep the main body of the release free from background information on the company – the release should focus upon a hook which is relevant to the publication and readership. As above, make sure the story is interesting, topical and relevant to the readership.
NOTES - Under the NOTES TO EDITOR section at the end of the release, details of the company, background and any other additional information should be included along with full contact details.

Editors also like to see the content follow a specific theme and these tips should help you ensure the content is of the right quality:

SIMPLICITY - Keep it simple. Don’t be too flamboyant – just state the facts.
EDITING - The key to a good press release is one that does not need editing by a journalist. Making their job easy by just copying and pasting the release into the publication will be a hit!
COPY DEADLINES - Remember time frames: some monthly magazines have a 3-month copy deadline so if you are looking to promote a new product for Christmas, you should send the release in October. For this reason, planning a sustained and ongoing PR campaign is crucial.
RELEVANCE - As well as topical issues look at conducting a survey or using statistics to generate press coverage. State this information as news, then mention how your company can help. Newsworthy stories, especially aimed at local press, can also be related to anything that brings attention to your business. For instance, you celebrate receiving your 100th unique customer by inviting all regular customers for a champagne reception. This is interesting to your local free weekly paper as it has a direct affiliation with the readership, but the story is far too localised for the Sunday Times so go with an entirely different angle to this type of media.
WRITING STYLE - Journalists write in a style called the ‘inverted pyramid’ which means that any paragraph can be taken and understood without the other text supporting it. If you can follow this system, the journalist will be more inclined to use the story as their editing work is limited.
REVELVANT CONTACT - Make sure the release is distributed to the relevant news or features editor as they are unlikely to pass it to a colleague.

Target Media List

It is very important to select your target media list carefully. Send the release to the media titles who have an interest in either your industry or the news item in the release.

There are two types of press release:

1. Consumer press releases
Aimed at the general public and will be distributed via local or national newspapers and consumer magazines. The release can be written in a less formal tone but should be newsworthy, topical or statistically led.
2. Trade press releases
Aimed at specialist trade journals, business press and trade news websites. You are likely to have more success with trade press, although the circulated readership will often be much less than consumer press. You can also add quotes from the management team.

The Value of PR

Adrian Wheeler, Chairman of the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) in London states:

“The press like new things. They like innovation and entrepreneurship. The return on investment [from PR] is like 1,000% for start-ups.”

If you are looking to promote your business to your stakeholders but cannot afford advertising, PR is often the most cost effective place to start. Your PR campaign can then be backed up by an advertising campaign once your brand has received recognition from the public.

Ultimately, a prospective customer will have more time for your business after reading an article from an editorial viewpoint, than they would from an advertisement which is selling your business from a biased viewpoint. Customers will learn to recognise your brand from a trusted source.

Don’t be afraid to be creative – look at what people like Richard Branson have achieved through PR! Also, remember the phrase that all publicity is good publicity. Although Branson’s original balloon trip was a complete failure, Virgin received unprecedented press coverage which enforced their brand recognition with the public and ultimately aided the development of the business.